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In the midst of exam stress, personal breakthroughs [02 Jun 2009|01:49pm] Not, I hasten to add, breakdowns, okay? I've not been doing all that well in this period of exam stress - it's the first year of a new year's worth of material, and I knew I would be having trouble at this stage. But knowing that in September, and facing the actual experience of crashing and burning a series of exams now? Well, it's definitely different. But, in the midst of all this, I'm discovering that I have actually progressed to the point of being able to read some old and treasured volumes, once that I'd acquired at the tender age of 18, when I'd first encountered the anime show Mobile Suit Gundam; this is a veritable classic, beginning a sub-genre of gigantic robots fighting it out, steered individually by pilots riding in the belly of the robot. A rather goofy yet cool blend of high-tech combat and personal champions fighting it out... Thanks to my contact in the science fiction fandom of the Midwest US, I was apparently in contact with one of the earlier fan groups to have imported this series, which was notable not only for its new take on the fighting robots line but also for a complicated set of political intrigues involving a group of young people from a space colony, caught up in a interplanetary civil war, pressed into service aboard a military ship. (Well, they actually seemed quite willing, but that might be the Japanese group psychology being depicted.) Through my contact with that group, an album covering the 43 original episodes of the show came into my possession. Even though I could only read the little bits of English, sprinkled through the pages like spice, I kept this book through all the moves my life went through after. And now? In this day and age, I can even find fan-subs of the episodes, so I can hear original language and enjoy the meaning - or just avoid reading subtitles and just enjoy the little bits I can get even on a first listen. And the very best treasure? Well, I located the opening text of every episode, and - to relieve a bit of my stress - went through it with a dictionary. Scroll past because the rest is a detailed translation project report! Or, if you're still curious but not interested in the Japanese, the very end has my attempt at a translation. Text and vocabulary list 　人類がふえすぎた人口を宇宙に移民させるようになってすでに半世紀がすぎていった。地球のまわりの巨大な人口都市は人類の第２に故郷となり、人々は、そこで子を生み、育て、そして死んで行った。 　宇宙世紀ダブルオー７９ー地球から最も遠い宇宙都市サイドスリーは、ジオン公国を名乗り連邦政府に独立戦争を挑んできた。この１ヵ月余りのジオン公国と連邦軍は総人口の半分を死に至らしめた。人々は、自らの行為に恐怖した。 　戦争はこう着状態に入り、８ヵ月余りがすぎた。 vocab list (not including basic structures like grammatical particles) 人類 - じんるい human race ふえすぎた - increase too much; basic verb 増える to increase, and すぎる to be too much, surpass, or just pass (as in time) 人口 - じんこう population 宇宙 - うちゅう space, universe 移民させるようになって - divided as the following 移民 - いみん - to go out, emigrate, immigrate させる is a form of the verb する, which is "to do," but with this form, it means "cause to be done" 〜ようになって proceeded by a verb means this is a state of affairs that has developed or come to pass すでに - already 半世紀 - half century すぎていった - passed (すぎて is a form of すぎる, mentioned above) 地球 - ちきゅう Earth まわり - around 巨大な - きょだいな enormous, massive 人口都市 - じんこうとし artificial cities 第２ - second (ordinal) 故郷 - hometown 人々 - ひとびと people (in general) 子を生み - こをうみ bear children 育て - そだて from そだる to raise (children) 死んでいった - しんでいった died 宇宙世紀 - うちゅうせいき - "Universal Century"; name of the time-keeping in this series 最も - もっとも most 遠い - とおい far 宇宙都市 - うちゅうとし space city サイドスリー "Side 3"; in the series, the individual stations are called "sides" and numbered ジオン公国 - 〜こうこく the Principality of Gion 名乗り - なのり "proclaimed" 連邦政府 - れんぽうせいふ - Federation government 独立戦争 - どくりつせんそう war of independence 挑んできた - いどんできた came to challenge １ヵ月余り - いっかげつあまり in just one month 連邦軍 - れんぽうぐん - Federation army 総人口 - そうじんこう the entire population 半分 - はんぶん half 死に至らしめた - しにいたらしめた 死に die 至る to go, lead, to reach a stage 〜しめた indicates an attitude, of what exactly I can't make out in my Japanese dictionary. (*sigh*) But it reflects on the entire sentence before, and context, plus my own memory of the translation from the fansub, makes me think it's not a good thing. 自らの - みずから personally 行為 - こうい act, deed 恐怖した - きょうふした terrorized, horrified - した is the past form of the verb する, to do 膠着状態 - こうちゃくじょうたい (a condition of) deadlock 入り - はいり to enter すぎた - past form of すぎる Translation A half century has passed since the excess population of humanity has been moved out to space. In massive artificial cities around the Earth, these second homes, people have born children, raised them, died. In the Universal Century 0079, on Side Three, the colony most distant from Earth, the Gion Principality have confronted the Federation government with a war for independence. In just this one month of battle, both the Gion Principality and the Federation armies have caused the deaths of half of the general population. People were terrified by these acts. Eight months have passed, and the war has entered a deadlock. Just for grins, this is the text of the fansub, for comparison: A half century has passed since mankind began moving its burgeoning population to outer space. Inside the cylindrical walls of the hundreds of colonies that now orbit the Earth, humanity has recreated its former world. In this new habitat, people are born, raised and die. The year is Universal Century 0079. The group of colonies farthest from the Earth, Side 3, have declared themselves the Principality of Zeon, and launched a war of independence against the Earth Federation government. Both Zeon and the Federation lost half of their respective populations in the war's first month alone. Mankind was horrified by the atrocities committed on each side. Eight months have passed since the war began, and both sides are locked in a stalemate. post comment

Oh, joy: another environmentally-triggered migraine [29 May 2009|01:13pm] Okay, for my smoking friends... you don't want to read this next bit. I just need to vent a bit. If it were up to me, Belgium wouldn't just stop at banning cigarette smoke from a variety of indoor places - it would go the whole hog, and make ta tobacco illegal. I am sick to the back teeth of sitting on a terrace, comfortably enjoying my place under the sunshade, out of the strong sun, but then having several people park at a near-by table and light up. Worse, the fresh cigarette smoke triggers every other smoker near-by into lighting up yet another ciggie. Damn it if I were not the absolutely only person who was NOT smoking. And to the old lady who thought she was going to smoke me out of my chair? I paid for my damn drink, same as you. Trying to actually check if I was still downwind of your effluvience was just plain rude. Too bad I didn't have a flatulance-making meal the previous couple hours - it would have been delivered, all just for you. And I would have enjoyed it. Okie-dokie </rant> The lovely friends who happen to be regular users of ta tobacco can tune in once more. ETA - well, actually, to subtract - a spelling error, due to the distraction of an over-tight jaw and still-incipent headache... 3 comments|post comment

About that flooding... [26 May 2009|10:45pm] A few thoughts... locally last night, we had a downpour of Biblical proportions. The falling of rain woke me, then the thunder and lightning. And the fire truck down the road - near as we can piece together, from various accounts in the news, they were there inspecting a roof that suffered wind-damage. While it was the thunder and lightning that woke me, it was the crow's nest crane motor of the fire truck that kept us awake. Not that I'm complaining - if the fire service are out, I accept that they have a Very Good Reason. But the kicker came when I arrived downstairs to make the morning coffee, a couple hours later. (Thank goodness, Mr Sweetie saw fit to decline my offer of some tea in the wee hours - and you will see why...) We live on a 1st floor, but our kitchen and dining room are on the ground floor. The dining room is beneath a large sky-light. And, sometime in the middle of the night, the area had become flooded enough to overwhelm the structure, and so it started to leak. Mightily. There wasn't much to note of the cats - they'd all retreated to their 1st floor room - and the reason became quickly apparent: the kitchen tiles still sported little puddles, and everything I'd left on the dining table, where I'd been studying the previous day, was sopping wet. Thank goodness that I'd been embracing a certain psychologically responsible habit, of putting away my work for the day - notes got soaked, but nothing lost. Eventually, I gently pulled apart 30 sheets that threatened to stick together, and laid them out on a bedsheet to dry. And by golly, my decision to park my very best kanji dictionary on a chair, to keep a cat from claiming it later, meant that it was sheltered by the dining table during the deluge. Our racks of staple goods in plastic containers, and our cookbooks, fared rather less well... and Mr Sweetie, after getting my help in spreading out books to dry (and triage - yes, we're going to toss a couple, but nothing particularly wrenching, thank goodness!), gave me leave to return to studying for exams. I lost a half-day, but he devoted the entire day (of his free-time within working half-time) to recovering what staples could still be used, and tossing those that had become drenched despite their plastic containers. We'll be eating a lot of lentils, red beans and chickpeas this coming week. That's because he spent most of the day cooking up those legumes that could reasonably be salvaged. Stuff that was only a little damp. There were other things... a container of dates, only 4 or so, thank goodness, but swimming. Good God, but the actual event must have been a sight. So, I'm again grateful that Mr Sweetie did not take me up on the offer of tea in the early hours: I would have received an even greater shock, confronted by the immediate result of the deluge. In the end, it was better this way - remaining night's sleep, and let at least a little of the first rush of water pass. I can vividly imaging what my state of mind would have been, confronted by water pouring from the skylight, as it most surely must have been doing at some point. A lot of our cookbooks are no longer pretty - but I forbade Mr Sweetie from throwing away the Dutch "cooking encyclopedia" he bought the year before we moved in together. Not just a sentimental thing: there is a hell of a lot of information in those books we have no where else. And while the covers all stuck together and ripped as he pulled them apart, the pages can still be consulted. If we remember to take time to pull them gently apart, before we really have to use them for recipe consultations. It was a weird day. It could have been a lot worse, though. Now, we're waiting another day before trying to turn on the lights in that area... 1 comment|post comment

Localized flooding [26 May 2009|12:56pm] This morning was one of those, "I am so blogging this!" But, for the moment, I am going to try to catch up on the lost study time, when I had to join the clean-up effort. Things could have been much worse, so we feel pretty happy, all things considered. Just a wee bit annoyed at the mess... More in a bit. post comment

I'm a little weblog, rarr! (Part the umdiddy-ump) [20 May 2009|09:37pm] Uhm, yeah. The last couple of weeks have been... packed. I suppose that's what happens during the final weeks of the semester's classes, but still, sheesh! I'm sorry for having dropped out on folks. I know of several friends going through rough patches, and learned of several more when I took time, after my very last class of the semester, to catch up on the various journals and blogs I like reading. Sheesh! again. Would the universe please, please, pretty-please-with-sugar-on-it stop dumping on my friends? Particularly when I'm busy getting my brain sucked out by classes? Kthxbye. Locally, it's also been "interesting" - I've had something of a front-row seat in watching two local friends of long standing part ways. It's really sad, as they're both people of good will; it's just that they've hit a difference of opinion, hard. One of them is now not likely to be around as much anymore, which I will definitely be the poorer for. Our own home situation is blessedly peaceful and stable. Mr Sweetie's been especially doting, because I'll be away for the weekend to an aikido event. This is all the more special as he has not one jot of interest in this activity; and yet, whenever I leave for a practice, he wishes me two things - have fun at aikido, and be careful. I've spent my afternoon somewhat reacquainting myself with the concept of free time. I watched an episode of a fan-subbed anime, something from my youth (misters rdkeir and tandw probably have a good idea which series I'm talking about) - I got them from a classmate nearly a month ago, but now was really the first moment I felt I could just watch. And.... links, mostly just repeating a few fun ones encountered in my reading: one via twistedchick , about how all those cute cat photos become tools of subversion (Well, not quite, but as a catalyst... er... oh, ouch, never mind me...). And someone writing on LJ about the obesity paradox, as illustrated by her terminally ill cat. Then another LJer with a pithy comment about why calling people, or parties you don't agree with, names is a bad idea. post comment

A Stroll in the Early Quiet [03 May 2009|08:54am] I continue to be charmed by Our Town. Mr Sweetie was away in the Netherlands last night, so I woke up on my own this morning, and after a gentle interval of sipping a single cup of coffee, I dressed and went out to get some danishes. The weather is pretty clear, the sun not quite yet risen over the surrounding buildings, the air still crisp from the night before. I walked across our square, breathing in the peace and drinking in the sight of the buildings around the square, the church, the townhall, the various shops that make up the center of Our Town. A neighbor once described this moment as a feeling of owning the town, and he's right - one moves in the quiet is if through one's very own estate, at least for as long as a lack of people keeps the illusion. And the danishes were just lovely. 3 comments|post comment

Sudden Excitements [02 May 2009|12:25pm] Forgive me for being a princess laying on the pea, but it's only halfway through Saturday and I've had just about all the excitement I can take. Aikido very nearly did not happen: it seems that there's a huge gymnastics event taking place, and nearly every available space. Certainly all the dressing rooms, although our dojo space was officially unoccupied until the afternoon. (Didn't stop at least one group of performers from trying to get in to use it as warm-up space...) A massive misfunction of communication, which the sensei managed to at least magic into an agreement from the center (since the failure to inform us seems to be their fault and not ours) to let us in to train. Although dressing room arrangements were, shall we say, impromptu. There were new people galore, some of whom had not made the attempt to contact the sensei before the class. One of those were definitely forgiven: she's a Japanese woman, on a trip around the world, currently staying with a former colleague, a dojo-mate of ours. Well, no one held a gun to my head to do this, but I felt the best thing was to make sure I was available to her first as a partner, since we weren't sure if her English was much better than my Japanese. In the end, it worked out, especially since all of the aikido terminology is Japanese vocabulary. Still, her host kind of dumped her on me, rather than sticking around so she'd get a couple different people. Big kudos to G., who came to train with us as a three-some at one point. And to the sensei also, since after every demonstration, he'd come to our corner, and our guest would get a special demonstration, with me as the training partner. I'm going to stick my head under the duvet for a bit. And whimper. Definitely whimper. post comment

What Floats to the Top is Not Always Scum [01 May 2009|06:06pm] Our friend who was attacked two days ago is doing much better - conscious, although still intubated and in the intensive care unit. However, he's getting a look-over by a specialist (worries about the throat swelling), with an eye to taking out the tubes and putting him in a more ordinary bed. This, by us, is Progress. Today, the First of May, Labor Day in these here parts and a day off, I've spent calligraphing like a mad-woman, trying to get the 合気道 calligraphy for our dojo just right. And, I think I got it. *phew* Mr Sweetie has helped with the scanning and cut-and-paste (I calligraphed individual characters on single sheets, then we put them together in a larger file), and I should now send it on to the very nice dojo-member who had actually delayed putting in the order for a couple of days, to give me time to come up with a calligraphy piece we're both happy with. (He'll probably scratch his head and ask, "So, what's so different about this one?" when I send him this new one and he has a chance to compare...) Small break while I attend to a small e-mail errand, then, eh?? So, it's actually been, oh, something like three weeks since the previous update? Yeesh More and more of my library is turning into a social history documentation archive - the spring break at uni was 2 weeks long, and we would be going to Italy for the second week. In between the necessary study for Japanese, I dusted off a couple of my old, old, old volumes on learning Italian - apart from the very personal time-binding mental bombs, there were some rather more universally accessible - like references in dialogues to being able to smoke in a cinema (holy cow!, that seems like from the '60's, not the 80's!), or, rather more predictably, payment for items in Italian lire, rather than our lovely and convenient Euro. Bit of a spring-clean with the hakama I own (that would be plural, which the Japanese word doesn't inflect to indicate) - the best day is when one is otherwise feeling a bit in need of a duvet day, since it's all mindless work, from the removal of the back-boards (the koshita), which means you also get to puzzle out sewing back up the emptied fabric bundle - don't want it unravelling in the wash! After washing, I make sure the pleats are properly set, by getting the hakama to an iron while the fabric is still semi-damp. Despite my feeling less-than-optimal, Mr Sweetie remarked that I seemed rather industrious, with all this activity. A new hazard of owning a mobile phone: forgetting to turn the damn thing on the one day a dojo-mate tried to get in touch. Ah well, at least it was not urgent, and we could catch up with one another the following day at training. The focus on the Japanese study has left me slightly out of touch with my local environment - to the tune of feeling, while taking a walk with Mr Sweetie on the Easter Monday, that I had not seen much of Our Town for a very long time, long enough to notice a lot of those little changes that otherwise pile up unnoticed. Typically, a long trip to anywhere involves the packing phase the day before. And, these days, the internet research phase, too. Apart from some of the transportation info we needed, I happened on a discovery of wifi in Bologna, with no need to even be a resident. Whoo hoo! Also, on the theme of pre-trip discoveries, we found that our intended suitcase had developed a problem with one of the locks - after futzing with it, Mr Sweetie made the brilliant move of finding a similar suitcase in our collection (we bought these when we first moved from the Netherlands, to take all our extra bits then. There were a lot of extra bits...) and swapping out the clasp/hinge with a non-broken one. Yay! Pre-travel crisis averted! How very odd, too - being able to compare the Piazza Maggiore square with the main square of Our Town. Piazza Maggiore predates our own by a couple of centuries, and is comprised mainly of government buildings, next to cathedral and one of the first seats of the famed University of Bologna. Our Town's own square is more jumbled, being mostly individual houses lined up in rows around the square, with the ground floor being dedicated to a business - café, shop, bank... In the end, I still rather like our little square, but decided the main thing I enjoyed about Piazza Maggiore was it's sense of gravitas. You don't get that much anymore these days. Fresh pasta, made on the premises, cut to order while you wait. €3.60 of goodness for two people, aaaah! Visited some more "old friends" in the catagory of places I haunted 25 years ago, and - fabulously - discovered that Italians still do the very, very thick ciocolato. And, this time, I finally got around to asking what product I had to look for in the supermarket. So now, we have some here in the house... actually, for "some", read a lot. Mr Sweetie and I, on an afternoon we spent doing our own things individually, both went into grocery stores, and... you guessed it. Still, we figure, that gives the household one drink of ciocolato per week for a whole year. If we're that careful... After the difficulties of Japanese, Italian - while still a language not my own - is a comparative doddle. Especially as I'd had the chance this trip to review some basic grammar and stuff. I only popped out with "Hai!" two or three times this trip, not the rather excesssive amount of the previous time. While I won't say I own a good knowledge of Italian, it was nice to be able to follow at least some conversations in the bar - I just love eavesdropping and listening to how people say things, convey those everyday little messages we have for each other. Mr Sweetie's patience was tried, in that he's more someone, when travelling, who wants to "do" monuments, museums and the like. Me? Walking through streets of "other" architecture, and people watching. Still, Mr Sweetie is gracious enough to thank me for my "work" when speaking in Italian in places where no one speaks English (or is uncomfortable enough that they're relieved to discover they don't have to), while I'm just so pleased that, despite some hand-and-foot work making up for my linguistic shortcomings, there are doors that open for me that won't open for other Americans. And? I even got to do aikido in Bologna - definitely a new experience, as I wasn't even near the notion of doing a martial art back when I was living there as a student. Re-entry to normal life was last week, and predictably a bit "ugh". We did soften the blow of returning, by going to a kind of book-arts sellers' exhibition. We did not emerge unscathed: I got a rather large and Very Nice brush to do Very Large Calligraphy with. Plus a couple of more modest brushes. In the end, we spent enough that the seller, a rather friendly Chinese man living in Brussels, heaped us with a variety of gifties - some stick ink, a rather large roll of rice paper, and - after carefully asking if I would mind (!) - a brush that had been broken by some passer-by's child. However, the head still wrote quite nicely (he let me test it), and I declared myself ready to care for this orphan. (And, since, I've had the chance to re-glue it... perfectly serviceable!) This past week of class has been... odd, due to a variety of eruptions of Real Life: my own work in class has slowed to a crawl, as we've really reached my limit, so I had to e-mail the teachers to let them know, I wasn't being feckless, I was just spent. Then there was a major conference taking over our spaces, and a not-inconsiderable amount of security work. However, we evaded the biggest disruption by something even more pressing: a teacher had a sudden family emergency, and hence class was cancelled. It left me feeling rather at odds, instead of relaxing into the sudden release of time, mostly because of the cause. A very sad ending to this entry - one of my favorite holidays since getting to know Mr Sweetie has been Konninginnedag - Queen's Day, in the Netherlands. It was a moment of letting hair down, and - in Amsterdam, certainly - indulging in whimsey as well as garage-sale activity on the street. The Dutch royal family seemed to be a counterpoint to the British one, jumping in and having fun, getting kisses from perfect strangers, giving lifts to similarly unknown people on motor-bikes. That's likely to be no more, after someone drove his car through a crowd watching the Dutch royal family travelling in an open top bus. Apparently his intended target was the royal family itself, but his own track ended when his car crashed into a war monument. Meanwhile, 5 people died, with many more injured, and the innocence of the day has been destroyed, given that security around these people will be much intensified. Things seen along the way: http://www.malleusdelic.com/eng/home.html (silkscreen posters, very rock-music but wow!) post comment

Well, that didn't last long... [25 Apr 2009|09:30pm] I just finished the 合気道 calligraphy and... I'm looking at the individual characters (which is what I had paper for) and feeling full of fail. *sigh* I've given the person who's in charge of the project full permission to not use this piece (Mr Sweetie helped me knit the individual characters into one .jpg file, for the final work). Just in case he's worried he has to deal with an ego-bruised me. post comment

Me, Big Ego, ugh! *thump* *thump* ME!! [23 Apr 2009|06:03pm] Heh, it had to happen, sometime: I'm angling for trying to place some of my very own brush calligraphy in a public setting. A very public setting. You see, one of the lads at our local dojo took up the initiative to search out some very nice t-shirts and polo-shirts, and got some samples made, with our club logo and "aikido" on the back. In the traditional Chinese/Japanese characters, so 合気道, right? Except... yours truly spotted at least one fatal error in the calligraphy, and several places of "uhm, not so much good". I even checked the 気 with my teacher, to make sure it was not a varient I'd not encountered before. (There are such, due to processes of simplification, etc.) But this was not one such. As soon as I showed her my copy (and it hurt to have to write the character with that one mistaken stroke), she said, "Oh, no, that's absolutely a mistake." I had an immediate reaction of relief combined with "hooray! I spotted it!!" Anyway, so. Now, I'm trying to reach the organizer of these lovely shirts and putting it to him, hopefully in a gentle way, that I could do the calligraphy, if his process of production hasn't proceeded beyond the point of being able to include a new set of artwork for the characters... Ego, much? Not just that I'm offering this at such a stage (at least he's only starting to collect orders for the definitive production), but - egad!! - this is likely to be a bit of calligraphy work that I'll be looking at a very, very long time, seeing as how my dojo-mates are likely to keep these shirts and wear them about the place for years to come.... On the other hand, I don't seem to find this prospect 100% daunting, despite my protests. If I manage to get this done and accepted, I'm already planning on "signing" mine with a wee bit of red-threaded embroidery, in visual reference to the stamps/seals used on Oriental artwork.... vanity, pure vanity. *pththth* 1 comment|post comment

Decisions, decisions [12 Apr 2009|09:38am] Some folks who used to work for Live Journal got together and have established a new site Dreamwidth. Or so I heard. Just for grins, I went over, found I could validate my e-mail using this Insane Journal account and OpenID. So far, so good. Yesterday, then, I got an e-mail which I nearly tossed away as spam - until I read the entire subject line. Oh, goodness, I did not know that Dreamwidth were doing a validated e-mail lottery for invite codes! Now, I cannot decide, or rather, I'd like some input on this next decision... do I set myself up at Dreamwidth as myself here, or as my former identification on Live Journal? If you give an opinion, let me know why, too. Thanks! 2 comments|post comment

The Spring is Springing [08 Apr 2009|09:47pm] I've just had an uncommon pleasure: Mr Sweetie, modeling for me an ensemble he's put together, with an eye towards our attendance at a couple of Renaissance/Fantasy type faires this coming summer. It's not complete yet, but he put on for me a top hat, a bright white shirt with one of those tiny collars, a bow tie, and a "morning coat" of a shade of cranberry with very subtle stripes. And white gloves. He's promised me a waistcoat ("vest" to us Americans) is on the way in the mail. Ah, the joys of Ebay. I'm still so pleased, beyond just the notion of Mr Sweetie playing "the gentleman bookseller" at some of these costume faires. He picked this stuff out, entirely on his own initiative. Okay, not everything has been successful the very first time - I think he'll try for a smaller pair of gloves, and, if such exists, a(n even) slightly larger top hat. (I mean, it's not quite normal to show that much forehead,... is it? I've instructed him, only half in jest, that he must watch more BBC costume dramas.) The spring vacation has started, and oh my goodness am I taking a HUGE rest. Blast from the past, our traveller-to-Japan (thanks to his work) has shown up again at the dojo, something like 2 years after we'd last seen him. Poor guy, as soon as I realized who he was (and he remembered who I was) I nearly pounced with my eagerness to try some of the Japanese I've been studying. But he plead for mercy, saying that he'd been back in these parts long enough for the switch between Dutch and Japanese to be extremely difficult. Well, he's been let off... this time! W and E both took their examinations for 3rd kyu and passed! Hooray! W was a bit mischievous and tried to tease me that he'd "caught up" with me - I simply let one eyebrow lift and asked him if we were going to see him any time soon in a hakama. (For non-regular readers, those are the black trousers committed students to aikido will train in.) That shut him right up. But the following time he showed up at training, he wasn't too proud to ask for help in getting his hakama folded properly - the pleats are a bit of a nightmare, although I love the connection it gives me with a different notion of clothing. Some of the students at the university had a bit of whimsey in the week before the start of vacation - they reconfigured the garden near the lecture hall into a peddle cart speed-way. Fun! The spring visited for a couple of days (it's currently a wee bit chillier than that), and so I got out my favorite floaty sleeveless dress, paired it with a loosely flowing half jacket thing with very long and curly sleeves, and my straw hat. I was in a good mood, I didn't care if people gave my straw hat funny looks - I prefer that to having a sunburned scalp or having to smear myself in sun-screen goop. We watched (finally!) the film In Bruges. I know I read it somewhere, but I'd forgotten that the script is by Irish playwright Martin Macdonagh - but listening to the dialogue (liberally sprinkled with the F word, alas for my more puritan friends), I could have guessed if I had not known: his style is so blackly humorous that its verging on making one insane. A very enjoyable film, but you have to have the tolerance for your toes curling from the sheer painfulness of what the characters put themselves and one another through. I guess that's enough for now, isn't it? 1 comment|post comment

Milestones of advancing age [07 Apr 2009|07:29am] It had to happen sometime. We boarded an underground train toward the end of the day, a pleasant time spent in Brussels. I made brief eye-contact with a young woman (maybe an Ethiopian? guessing from her general features and build of the face) who was sitting in a seat near the door of the train. I continued a scan of the train interior: alas, no seats, I thought. I was a little bit tired at the end of the day's strolls, but I figured I wouldn't mind, as the train itself wasn't crowded otherwise, and Mr Sweetie and I could stand near one another, enjoying the general glow of a good day out. The young woman leaned forward, waved her hand at me, and then started to get up out of her seat. Er, ooops! I smiled, waved madly, and tried to indicate she was to keep her own seat. We didn't really share a common language (dang, the time I don't have!) but she did understand that I was happy to remain on my feet. I'm sort of used to older gentlemen giving up a seat, in the seas of people who generally don't give up a seat for anyone. (I'll be guilty of that as much as anyone, especially if I get a furry eye-ball from someone who thinks they are entitled to my seat; but that's a different issue, really, power-plays versus garden-variety politeness and consideration.) But this is the first time woman who was pretty much in her prime tried to stand up an offer me her seat. Okay, I thought. Probably because, when I wear my hair up (which I do a lot, to protect the ends), the grey at the temples is particularly prominent - I call it my "racing stripe" because it shows so well against what is still more dark brown than grey... although,... well, there is a lot of grey these days, and some people read that more immediately as "aged" than other cues like general stance, ease (or not) of movement, etc. Still, I can hope folks are that polite when I really do need that seat - in what I hope to be still another 40-50 years down the road, eh? 1 comment|post comment

End of March, the lion came in the middle [30 Mar 2009|09:19pm] I can't believe it's already the end of the month. Well, one more day, right? We're ending it with near-perfect spring weather, a bit on the chilly side, but enough light and warmth for the trees to be seriously budding; the crocusses (crocii?) were up a couple weeks ago, and I'm seeing daffodils in bloom. Mr Sweetie pointed out that he'd gotten his hair cut... last Friday. Well, in my defense, that had been a rather topsy-turvy day, with an opportunity to watch the film Ran with classmates, then go to a performance of a couple of Flemish cabaret artists (Kommil foo, for the curious) - both intense cultural experiences on their own anyday, let alone them sharing the same 12-hour period. Anyway, I missed noticing he'd had his hair cut, and he finally mentioned it explicitly to me today. Yeesh. I wrote in detail about my eyeful of drama, so I don't need to review it. :) By some minor miracle, even though I really didn't have enough time to totally study the kanji up for the quiz this week, I somehow managed to actually have studied enough to get through the quiz with my ego intact. *phew* Alas, if there wasn't enough time for that, then there certainly wasn't enough time to prepare for the following class, in which we were expected to work through a sheet of fairly standard expressions - except there were so many of them, and also a number of them which we'd not regularly exercised since reading them in an exercise at the beginning of the semester. *deep sigh* I know I can't keep up with the new material being presented, so it's a trick to not get totally frustrated at the clear expectation that these things are being drilled to keep fresh in the memory as well. At the end of class, though, I was feeling sorry for our teacher, who normally is a mellow and cheery person. She was slowly "cooking", and anyone else would have clearly spent 20 minutes telling off the entire class for being so feckless. But that's not her style. I still want to write her a quick note to apologize, and take the opportunity to explain what my particular difficulties are, so that she at least knows that it's not this one student being obstreperous on purpose. We worked on carving stamps from erasers in the Chinese calligraphy class - there's a whole world of their use and role in the culture, of which we only got a taste. Having something of a notion this would be part of the class, I'd spent the night before using the internet to research an old-fashioned script used for stamps, so I was ready the next day to whip up my carved eraser stamp with my name - in this nested narrative, years ago, a friend had travelled to China, and had spent her time sending back letters to each of us with our "Chinese" name: really, just our names transliterated into the Chinese sound system. My actual birthname isn't all that difficult, but the fun thing with the character system is that the characters attached to the sounds also have meanings - she'd shared her version of "Reagan" (the president at the time, which dates this pretty comprehensively) as "Thunder-Root", which amused her no end. (Me, too, by the way.) Anyway, I'll have to arrange for some version of this internet name to be rendered using kanji, so I can show off my mad carving and stamping ski11z. (As if I haven't had enough ego-boo - the teacher asked me to keep my stamp around to show the following class, and also asked for a second copy of a cute "brush painting" of a rabbit - really just a large circle with rabbit bits sketched with the brush on the inside - with the character for rabbit 兔 and the hiragana うさぎ for usagi, finished off of course with my brand-new name stamp. Once I get back one of these pages, I'll probably mail it off to my rabbit-mad friend Mags in Dublin. Mr Sweetie did a hero's work on Sunday - friends of ours are trying to be proactive about their housing situation, despite some major set-backs in their health issues. However, the universe wasn't cooperating so far: the one place they've applied to so far for living space turned them down... because they made too much money. Mr Sweetie was given access to their household admin, in an effort to figure out if re-applying with a subsequent year's income (which has taken a dive). Although the admin help is important, I believe (and treasure Mr Sweetie for helping with this) that his presence and involvement will help keep their courage up, and lighten the load of insecurity. Getting an improved result out of the housing association would be good, too. J at aikido came through her operation for a hernia, hooray! Her husband G mentioned she might have tried to get to a class to just watch, but in the end, she stayed at home. A good thing, although that meant I didn't get to see her face when G brought home the orange and white roses I'd brought in for her. When we were arriving home on our bikes, a pair of police were cruising on their bikes, coming towards us, looking at the nearly-eternally parked white van of the shop run by the Evil Landlord next door to us. Words Were Had (while we simply went into our own house) and the van was moved post-haste. It's unlikely there will be follow-through, but we never know. post comment

Like a teddy-bear with no stuffing [23 Mar 2009|04:01pm] Sheesh, I wish I'd realized better at the beginning of the day - I'd have just officially called it a duvet day and got it over with. (Oh, I just realized this is mostly about eyes, and some up-close-and-personal treatment. Scroll if you have to, I won't mind. But if you can stand it, I am fishing for some sympathy...) Saturday night, we went to a fire-works display. It was a lovely one, but we were standing pretty-much beneath the display - what happens when you leave your face turned up toward the sky, while spent fire-works crud gently (or not so gently) rains down? I wear glasses, but still managed to get something damn awful in one eye. Damn-damn-DAMN! The only blessing was that it was towards the end of the display: okay, I still missed most of the "climax", but I enjoyed the bits I did see. But that left me with the task of getting home (luckily, not too difficult) then trying to flush out the eye. I managed sort of - Mr Sweetie is darn-near perfect, but the poor bunny was left weakly saying, "Ask me to do the insurance papers; I'm good with that" after I tried to enlist his help to peer up underneath my eyelid. I thought I'd gotten out all the grit, but my eye still kept bugging me and bugging me. Yesterday, we consulted the nearest pharmacy, to learn which even-smaller-town we'd have to go to for the Sunday-open service. I liked the new adventure somewhat less than I would have normally - by this time, I'd lost enough study-and-prep time to be seriously fretting. At least Mr Sweetie was along to hold my hand. So, we paid somewhat inflated prices for a few items to do an eyewash - verdict: slightly helpful, but not really. By this morning, it was a trip to the doctor. Luckily, also not a huge production, and the open surgery hour was lightly attended. Still, each waiting person is a 15 minute slot, more or less - I discovered that there was also a steady stream of phone calls coming into my gp's office, effectively lengthening the time she needed for the warm body in front of her. (And, I'm sorry to say, a lot of utterances like, "I said for you to do it that way," or "I wrote that prescription and left it there; I simply don't know what you did with it after." Ay, ay, ay: I wished the poor woman strength as I left the consulting room.) However, the visit was effective, and not for any prescription or potion - nope, this was old-fashioned saw-bones medicine. We spent a fruitless 5 minutes trying to get the upper lid to flip up, until I offered to lay down (less movement for the doctor to contend with, less distraction for me trying to stay upright and not sway in a reflexive avoidance): then she got the eyelid to flip up so she could get a good look and even a swab or two with a moistened cotton bud. Good thing she did that, too; because when we looked, we saw a tiny black speck on the cotton bud. "You wouldn't believe such a tiny thing would cause so much," she said. "Oh, yes I would!" I replied, already feeling the mighty relief of no more juddering itchiness. Just in case the relief was going to be only temporary, I waited for the eye to settle. When it did, there was no return of the tell-tale scratchiness, and we had a general moment of "hooray" between us. (I think my gp is generally pretty good, but - although she'll never actually say such a thing, I think eyes kind of squick her. It was just some of the ways she spoke when we were struggling with the eyelid-flip thing...) And... I thought after a moment or two of general rest and recovery, I'd return to fixing my week and study - I'd already bagged a day full of classes to attend the surgery, and while that was clearly for A Good Cause, I was anxious to get back in the saddle. Except... I slept. And slept. And slept. Oh, sheesh, I even dreamed, and in the afternoon that is once-in-a-blue-moon rare for me. I hadn't thought I'd suffered that badly from sleep deprivation, given that I thought most of the intervening two nights I'd actually been asleep. But apparently not. Here's to the rest of my duvet day, and gently treating the body so that it'll be a bit more ready for tomorrow and the coming weeks. (Man, I am so looking forward to the Easter vacation, though.) ETA: why didn't we go to the emergency room? Hmm, hard to say. I didn't think it was an emergency. That sounds kind of lame, but I have to admit I would have felt lamer going there on a Saturday night amidst the cases of rather more direly needing folks. Still, if I go through this again, I may have to seriously rethink that. I might still say, "But it's not an emergency"; but then, Mr Sweetie - knowing this of me - might push a bit harder. Anything, I think, to save him having to try and peer himself beneath the eyelid. (Poor bunny.) 2 comments|post comment

List of the week [21 Mar 2009|07:44pm] It's been cold today, but very sunny, the sort of sun that keeps making you think it would nice to sit and sunbathe. Except not with such a chilly breeze! Already mentioned the camp-following. I seem to have survived another week - it's week six by now, I think? It's amazing, so fast yet so much material at once. Completely missed St. Patrick's Day, of course. It happens much more easily when one doesn't live in Ireland anymore... and the local "Celtic" pub had handled its business badly enough that the business packed it in over 6 months ago. I sort of missed the silly wear-green thing. Oh well, that's one more milestone passed, getting less at home with a former home, more at home with the locale we're now in. N. arrived after aikido, having been away for nearly 2 months - recovering from something that had required a stay of 5 days in the hospital. She's on the mend, now. Thank goodness. She promised to try and start training again in 2 weeks' time - of course, that's pending her recovering some of her former condition, and even then, as she's close to my age, the training will probably not be up to her accustomed speed for awhile yet - even just a day or two in bed due to a cold and I feel it, now; heaven knows what N. will be going through as she returns to the mat. (Luckily, as I've noticed with my current home dojo, they are very sympathetic and understanding when it comes to individual circumstances and health issues. This was the dojo where I first learned about "learning by looking" or mitori geiko, literally learning that one pulls in with the eyes.... M and F gave us some leek they'd bought from a local farmer. When I say "some", think about 2 arms-full of leek, and you'll know how much Mr Sweetie, Hero of the Republic, cleaned, chopped, packed into bags and froze. All except for the bit that he combined with hamburger meat, sautéd mushrooms and fennel - a very nice taste with the leek, by the way! The calligraphy teacher is getting some of her students to help out other students; yeah, one of those helpers would be me. I actually like it, and given the amount of time I expect to be having to work on this degree, I consider that I could do much worse than be a meter, or "godmother", to future students in this same class. Mr Sweetie's indulged in a few brainwaves - he's put in the shop window a display mannequin (which we seem to be collecting, by now - dollies for grown-ups!) and put on it a mask we bought over 25 years ago; a fabulous bug-eyed thing, we'd found for sale during our first Konninginnedag in the Amsterdam neighborhood (de) Jordaan. It's fun to see the mask in a kind of public display, in celebration of some local activities. Nearly all is right with the world... now, if only the wee little muscles in my eye would stop spasming, so I can comfortably carry on with my studying. Sitting quietly in the dark to still the spasms got old after about 5 minutes, but - argh!! - I may have to give up simply because the twitchy movement over the eyeball is hideously distracting. *pout* Maybe a comforting, hot bath instead of running the risk of falling asleep way too early in the evening..... post comment

Back! [15 Mar 2009|08:37pm] Got rather less school work done than I'd hoped, but more than nothing. I'm too tired from the journey - and another concert! this time in Breda - to really do much more than sit in a corner jibbering, or the modern equivalent of mindlessly surfing on the internet, until a somewhat earlier-than-usual bedtime. It was a good trip, though. post comment

Away, Campfollowing [15 Mar 2009|09:46am] We've ducked out of Our Town for two days, making a quick dash to the Netherlands - yesterday we switched between The Hague and Delft (with Mr Sweetie also adding Rotterdam to his itinerary, in order to pick up some comics he'd bought via eBay), contending with a huge marathon; the hundreds of runners threw the tram schedules into a serious disarray. I did get some studying done (and a take-home test, which resurfaced among my papers when I started to survey what I had to do as preparation for next week) but there was a lot of "Ooh, look, that has changed..." I do remind myself that it's been 12 years since we lived in this area and, yes, things do change. But still, attachments to the way things were remain strong. The reason for traveling, as nearly always, was to get to an Anúna concert. Happy, happy us - while the venue was slightly 'meh', we found the performance itself most enjoyable. Hooray! Today, we're using the morning to relax, and I've got my eye on a near-by beadshop with Sunday opening hours. (I hope they open as promised on time at noon; we don't have much time to spare if we're to get to the afternoon performance in Breda.) A big happy thought also for the local friend who is feeding our cats. I haven't found anything quite appropriate for a thank-you gift, though. Maybe because my mind is too stuck on the item my cat-carer said she'd love to have but was not likely to buy for herself. I have to figure out if I wouldn't embarrass her too much by getting it for her. (The detail in this: she's admired a handbag from Hedgren, but has gone "ouch" at the price, which is in a not-outrageous range for me, particularly considering the complete usefulness and high-quality/durability of the materials and finish... so, I'm seriously tempted to just buy one for her, as well.) post comment

A Quiet Friday [13 Mar 2009|10:07pm] Time to reflect! Whoa, luxury... I got a jacket out of the closet last weekend, and was then reminded of an incident I'm not very proud of. That's because in the jacket pocket was a pair of leather gloves that I had given up for lost. Specifically, when they went missing, I had been at a café in Dublin, while we were still living there. (Yes, I do keep a coat I'm not using that long, and since it's proved useful recently, it's got a new lease on its space in my wardrobe, rather than going to the second-hand charity/recycle people.) To my shame, when I realized the gloves had gone, I'd nearly accused the people in the café of having kept the gloves when they turned up without an owner. Not quite but close enough. Of course, no one but I was responsible, having tucked them away in a jacket like that... In a curious way, it's a touchstone for how seriously messed up I could get, even when not "officially" in a depressive episode - this incident wasn't the only time, just one of the more intense. (I also had one after we moved here - fortunately, again, I didn't get as far as making a formal accusation, and thank goodness I didn't get that chance. But I was -><- this close.) Since going on the anti-depressant, coming on two years ago, that kind of incident, that sudden and unarguable conviction that Someone Had Wronged Me has gone way, way down in frequency. Which, remembering just how deeply upset I had been before, is now a blessed relief. Apart from the shame bit, that is. Me and the Life With Gadgets series continues to be, as they say around the internet, "full of win." Conversation class this week included a bit of a pop-quiz on a newspaper article in Japanese, about a kind of identity fraud. Anyway, the pop-quiz is meant to check if we'd paid attention to some of the specialist vocabulary, and to that end I thought I had packed my article and vocabulary list. But... not. I muttered a curse or two under my breath, then remembered that I had brought with me the internet tablet. (That thing has saved my student-y backside more times in a month than I would ever want to remember - it was a gift for Christmas, but definitely paying back its investment hundred-fold.) The school has wi-fi, and off I was, reloading the newspaper article from the school's bulletin board, then visiting Reading Tutor, where I could cut-and-paste the article into an input window, and get a rough-and-ready vocabulary list. After that, it was simplicity itself to save the list to a text document on the internet tablet, and draw off of it the words I recognized as the key buzz-words needed to explain the news article topic. I'm just sorry I couldn't also help the fellow-student who'd come to me asking if I had my vocab sheet in the first place; but we all have our limits and trying to share the space of a small screen was more than beyond most people's. For some reason, post-aikido ache was especially bad, and on a day I was very busy in class, which pretty much knocked my stuffing out of me. Uhm... if you're in a place of financial or job woe at the moment, you might want to scroll past this item, because here in follows a period of unashamed self-indulgence, and it probably will make you quite pissed off at me. It started, actually, when my path took me past a sort of dry-dock connected to the trains, and - a la the television series The Wire, I began idly wondering what kinds of goodies were in those containers. I was appalled at myself, but took a minute to suss out, that probably the feeling of mischief was coming from a sense of frustrated (if still unjustified) entitlement. Right, so how to get the sorry-ass inner troll? Smother with indulgence. I got home, drew a very hot bath, got some very nice chocolates (Mr Sweetie had busily arranged some to be in the house, enough that an unscheduled use wasn't going to be a problem) and, to top off the indulgence, I opened a bottle of sparkling wine. The one concession to "be grown up, be responsible" was finding the little gizmo one can use to re-seal a bottle like that, so that I could re-seal the bottle after taking one only takes a glass or two. (That wasn't being responsible as much as being realistic: more than that and I would have felt so crap, defeating the purpose of this exercise.) Oh, yes, it was so-o-o-o indulgent. And afterward, I felt so-o-o-o-o much better. I got home late one evening, and realized I didn't have my keys with me. Mr Sweetie gallantly offered to fetch some take-out, but in the following flurry of text messages and quick phone calls between mobile phones, the poor man missed any bus that was on offer, and walked home with dinner in the rain. Not the idea, and he was understandably ripe afterwards. friar-bacon, commenting here, thank you and you're pretty much right there - it's been a hard-won attitude to learn, but it's been the most fruitful of my adult life, and I'm grateful for it. bibliofile, commenting here, Oh, yeah! Also, Anysia pointed out to me in a comment that she's got her own LOLcat page - I haven't gotten around to mentioning yet that I've visited it occasionally as well even before she mentioned it, but it's most certainly worth a visit when needing a bit of a pick-me-up! post comment

The Wretched News [12 Mar 2009|07:51am] Right behind the arrival of news from the US about a mass-shooting in Arkansas, there was one also from Germany. Of all the news sources I've listened to (being in this part of the world, there are quite a few, and that's before I start to read on the Internet), I've only learned from the Belgian news service that of the 15 vicitms, 11 of them were female. I'm feeling another re-read of The Gift of Fear coming on, this time with an eye towards the role of gender-hate in the choices of the perpetrators. Alas, apart from a desire to find the magic that'll make it all better, I don't see much better in that than in my own dedication to language study. Edited to add: hat-tip to ginmar, who points out the New York Times article; second mention of the gender composition of the victims. 2 comments|post comment

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