洋随筆　Western Rambles

From the Rooftops

2009-11-25T06:24:48Z

From my morning news surfing, words to gladden my woman's heart, after the years -- nay, decades -- of always being told that the male of the species was dangerous, and that it was up to me to curtail my activities, appetites and very being if I was to have any hope of safety.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon has unveiled a Network of Men Leaders to act as male role models in a campaign opposing violence against women. It's short and to the point: men must make known to their fellows, that subjecting women to violence, committing acts of violence against women, is UNACCEPTABLE.

A good quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu (who I hope my readers can respect, even if they don't like the United Nations affiliation of Ban Ki Moon), said: "You are a weak man if you use your physical superiority to assault and brutalise women.

And so say all of us.

The Lady and Her Bath

2009-11-17T21:11:25Z

4 drops laurel bay leaf
4 drops frankincense
1 drop vetiver
in 5 ml sweet almond oil

From the Workbook

2009-11-15T18:55:13Z

Draw a picture of life.

Intro:
I'm not much of a drawing person: I am too attached to the idea that if I'm going to draw, it's going to be just perfect, if not in a technical way, then in a manner that perfectly expresses what I want to express. So, I put this off. Well, today I thought, "If you want to draw a picture, why not use a medium you're very comfortable with - that is actually part of the notion of exploring oneself, is being in a place where you do not struggle with the medium."

So...

The picture:
This would actually be a comics-style, story board kind of series of images. One: a plant, a small one. Tender, just starting out, sweetly green, two main leaves at the top, the remnants of the two "feeder leaves" with which it first emerges from its seed with. Two: small shift of perspective - the plant is still occupying a large part of the frame, but the viewer sees, way in the distance, a car. Three: car is closer, the frame shifting even more: the plant is growing in a crack in the pavement, between the curb and the main road. Four: WHAM!! the car has run over the plant, squashing it flat.

But, something in me rebels at such a sere picture, and so, in frame Five: a little while later, not far from the shriveled and dried remains, a new plant has started to lift its tender leaves up toward the sun.

I like the subversiveness of life. Although individuals get creamed, all the time, the processes? They're still there, churning out the next one.

Still, it's a damned hard view, I'm afraid. It's hard not to judge myself as somehow "wanting" in the department of how I view life. I can point at any number of times when I was confronted by someone important to me, saying "You don't mean that!" and actually believing that by that assertion alone they would bend me to their will. (Sad thing was, as a kid, that worked, because I was poleaxed by abandonment issues, big time. These days, someone tries that on me and they get cut out, cold. I will not be made to feel like that inadequate but still human child again.)

The Lady and her Bath

2009-11-11T20:56:37Z

Four drops petitgrain
Three drops cypress
One drop vetivert
in approx. a teaspoon sweet almond oil - luckily, I remembered to store the bottle in the bathroom. I couldn't have faced a trek to the kitchen.

Words! Words!

2009-11-09T19:44:46Z

how Yonmei sees me:

Beer, backrubs, books... Coffee; chocolate.

(Or, if the above is too pedestrian: kindness, Japanese, writing, Tarot, dreams.)

I allowed this meme she was participating in to give me a reminding sort of poke, to return here and write a bit. (Larger world: actually pretty okay, some distractions from combined guest visits and special events at school, which aren't distressing at all, just eating up my focus on longer term projects like this journal.)

beer - the irony is, I detested beer until well into my 20's. But my first beer drunk with enjoyment and intent was a Belgian one, consumed right here in Belgium, in fact. It was a really hot summer many years ago, what was then a very surprising thing. (These years, we all just seem to brace for a hot one, and heave a sigh of relief when it turns out to be more "normal".)
backrubs - this one is rather easy, from the standpoint of why yonmei would associate it with me: at the World Science Fiction convention in Scotland, the 1995 one that is, we were meeting for the first time, after already having been acquainted with one another in print (we were both in a womens' apa, which would count as regular correspondence, eh?) She mentioned something about her back hurting, and I'd just received a lovely standing massage from the publishing partner of Mr Sweetie, so I told her to turn around, and paid the massage forward, right in front of Mr Sweetie's book stall. Good times.
books - are such a commonplace in my life that it's a real culture shock to get to know anyone who is not a regular reader. (Some of the guys in aikido, however, are exactly that - non-readers, in any sense of reading for recreation, that is.) But I can remember a time from very early in my reading years, when it was the artifact itself that fascinated me: the covers with their linen fabric surfaces, the little bit of stripy cord at the top and bottom of the spine, and - especially - the revelation of how a book signature was printed, before being folded and cut. *sigh* I can still see it in mind's eye, even though the graphic came from nearly 40 years ago. It was in a kids' encyclopedia. A male printer (well, in those days, they would have been axiomatically male, but luckily, these days I have to actually qualify the gender...) held aloft a large piece of paper, nearly as long as he was tall. On it were numbers, but I could see they were not in sequence. Some of them were also printed upside down, and roughly half of the numbers were printed in a burnt-reddish color; the two groups were not the same, but overlapped about half-way. It took me quite a while to puzzle out, but puzzle it I did, thanks to the text. (My mother was not helpful: "It's the way they print it," without any further engagement on the topic. I suppose I can count myself lucky that she had some life-of-the-mind, as regards books regularly in the house, or I may not have been much of a reader.) Eventually, I understood that the up-side down numbers would be right-side-up when the sheet had been folded. Likewise, the numbers printed in red were the page numbers on the reverse side of the sheet. To test this out, and later just to marvel at the magic of this method, I went through a phase of folding a paper carefully, half, quarter, eighths, and - super hard because of the resulting thickness - 16ths, then unfolding, and carefully marking the resulting areas with their future page numbers, refolding and then - with a lot of effort and nearly never with a good scissors (handling the good scissors was judge too dangerous for a little girl, but no available adult was offering to help me neatly cut the edges of this proto-signature) I would hack through the edged, then cradle the resultant booklet in my hand, lovingly counting 1 to 32... if I got the numbers in the correct places, that is!
coffee -as with beer, I was not a born-coffee-drinker, but made one through an extreme circumstance. Which, on the whole was a good thing, since I very much like the taste, but have also remained a tea drinker (to the extent permitted by a somewhat uncooperative digestion, that is.)
chocolate - I always loved chocolate. I would refuse soft-serve ice cream if they only had vanilla and no chocolate. But I learned to adore the special chocolate my dad would bring from the airport after one of his many absences. Without quite meaning to, I think, he started me on the gateway of Toblerone, then quickly progressed to the continental European flavors and qualities, such that I was no longer really looking at a mere Hershey's, except when I was feeling a bit blue and there was truly nothing else available. Eventually, I learned which specialty shop in the mall imported those special chocolate sorts, and despite the clear difference in price, I was directing my pennies towards them, and no one could convince me that I was getting a bad bargain. (They tried, you know. They didn't understand I wasn't buying expensive chocolate for the sake of a "statement", I bloody well preferred the taste of it! Especially the dark stuff.) These years? Hmmm, Leonidas and 99% pure with either a glass of red wine or even a whiskey. It works, it really does! (If you're into those beverages, that is.)
kindness - me receiving it? Or giving it? It feels a bit odd that someone would associate this word with me, but perhaps not unprecedented. I remember once listenting to intelligentrix as she described me as "forthrightly diplomatic". Not quite "kindness" but I was pleased to see something I strive for coming back to me in that comment - I may want to tell truth, but if I don't have to be hurtful, I don't want to. There is a point when "nice" is what it was supposed to be - remembering the other person in front of you is a human being, too. I don't always do that, and I feel badly when I fail at it, but the point is at least trying. (The most likely provocation leading to failure? Someone failing to demonstrate at least a similar kind of consideration: like when your admired author says the only way to talk to liberals it so beat them up. Definitely a compassion-fail, right there.) Getting kindness, well, that's more or less the well from which I draw when I manage to pass some on to someone else. That's not very big of me at all, in the end.
Japanese - it wasn't supposed to be this way, taking the courses for a bachelors degree. Back when Japan won the Worldcon bid, all I wanted to do was to be able to read a bit - with the fond thought of attending the Worldcon in my mind, I took seriously the notion of being handicapped without at least some literacy at my command. After that, though, well,... it just growed. There was the rest of my life, and fitting an independent study in between the cracks, then an international move, and... by the time the dust settled, I started looking at alternatives and, well, the rest, as they say, is history. I sound like a very rude five year old with pretensions of politeness. But in the last year, despite my struggles, I can actually pick through a newspaper article, and (with the help of online supports) get the general idea, enough for me to decide if I want to read more deeply. And that is a development I find profoundly satisfying.
writing - ack! I've hardly done any lately; I feel like such a fake! I still want to, but I think at this moment I'm refilling a well that had emptied rather precipitously. I need to be in a good place to do the inner confrontation out of which the best writing, the stuff that's worth reading, can be produced.
Tarot - oh really? Not sure where this came from. Sometime just after moving here, I bought a new tarot deck, noting with amusement that the cards were given Dutch and not English names. I decided I wanted them around as a method of randomly generating events and character dilemmas, since they're less cut-and-dried than, say, picking slips of newspaper articles out of a hat. I might not want to write a murder (at least, not right away, but if I pull randomly a card with a man working on the inside of a church interior, talking to two other worthies - with the 3 pentacles cleverly creating the decorative gothic window, well, I can just kind of riff on that...) Mind, there is a story, a longer one about a time in my teens, when I'd given a reading to an entirely labile woman some years my senior; her utter lack of filter when receiving what I had to say in response to the moment of reading these cards prompted me to toss every deck I owned. I did not want that kind of power over another human being. I'm not sure if I'd told this story to Yonmei. (Did I?)
dreams - wheee, another can-of-worms word, eh? The dreams of our nights? Our woolgathering, "wouldn't-it-be-nice-if...?" daydreams? The "calling of my heart" dreams? I have some doozies of dreams, pre-anti-depressant days, which not only were nocturnal maunderings but managing to illuminate some of my "calling of the heart", although not in any "what's my job" kind of way. Dreams have changed and yet not since I went on this treatment - they seem like they record more pedestrian details, yet invest them with importance that I don't see in waking life. Which might just mean that, somewhere in all this, I must still be having to learn the lesson to pay attention to now.

Which might just be the moment for me to put some shoes on, and go for a walk, breathe some fresh air, admire the evening and our town. Good for you if you read this far - not so good when I don't write for so long and then regurgitate... well, if you want to pass along the joy, just put "words!" in my comments, and I'll do my best to give you some introspection prompts. Many thanks for Yonmei for giving me mine!

Bedding down in the new semester

2009-10-12T13:47:56Z

Well, it's the beginning of week 4 of the new semester - which actually, being a third of the way (almost), probably means it's not so new anymore.

I have some hopes that this semester will be less traumatic than the previous year. However, the university admin being what it is, I still don't know if an application I've made to reduce my credit load is going to be accepted. It's going to be a shitty climb back if I have to return to the full load after week five. Or even later.

Then again, I "shouldn't" borrow trouble, I know.

I'm taking another history class this semester, this time of modern Japan, to compliment the modern history of China I did last year. There is the same mountain of unfamiliar names, although some of the names become familiar in their repetitions after getting stuck into the first chapter (actually, the middle chapter of a book designed to cover 2 courses, the first half covering, logically enough, the history of Japan from earliest times to the dawn of the modern era - which in the Japanese time-frame means the moment their country was forced open by Commodore Perry...).

It's just icing on the cake that I get to take this class with my friend M. from the previous years' languages classes. So we walk back after class to catch our transports home (the city has the train station and bus depot handily gathered in one area), chatting about the little frustrations of our student lives. (Or, in some cases, big frustrations, like dealing with the university's international office... talk about a private little fiefdom... sheesh!)

One more day

2009-09-11T19:40:55Z

These past several weeks have been a process of putting one foot in front of the other.

There were exams. There were re-sits. There was waiting.

There was rediscovering reading a fiction book for sheer pleasure. There was plenty of self-doubt. There was a quick trip to Amsterdam - Mr Sweetie's editor activities, and this time I decided to tag along.

The event was an author's reading, a book launch, a first book launch. The author's wife (as he told us in the little speech) had thought carefully about the book her loving spouse had asked her to read, and suggested the perfect venue - so, about 50 of us gathered in a little group by the light of a few fluorescent lamps, 40 meters below the Nieuw Amsterdamse Peil (the "New Amsterdam Level", or what passes for sea-level in the lowlands...), listening to two fragments of the novel, itself set on a non-Earth location deep beneath the planetary surface.

It worked. It really did.

The day after, Mr Sweetie and I wandered around Amsterdam, just drinking in the sights of canals and rowhouses, without any schedule at all. It was heaven. At one point, Mr Sweetie said, "Oh, hey, we're near the apartment of S.!" A couple of text messages and one phone call later (over the relaxed course of an hour, in which we sit on at a corner café, on a specially-built bit of furniture, of wood, two lovely relaxing chairs attached to a table, with a sun-brolly over it), we meet with her at a local flea- and antiques market, and talk up a storm between the stalls of old jewelry, new "vintage" clothes and enameled signs hawking soft drinks in faded hues.

She's here before a visit with an osteopath, one more step in her journey to health (she's got more allergies than you can shake a stick at), and I get a slight headache from delaying my lunch (she can't eat much that's on offer in any restaurant, due to too many wayward glutens, citrus juices, and other things), while we drink tea (hers is fresh mint - a lovely fashion adopted in recent years around here).

It's the little things that remind me - every day is a gift. The evening spent with our host L., watching Kung Fu Panda, relaxing after an easy meal in a local Chinese restaurant, and then a DVD (love the new technologies!) of a German science fiction series from around the time of Star Trek Raumpatroille ("Space Patrol"). L pities me because my German isn't up to the needed level - I acknowledge his pity, but say, "Actually, I think it's brilliant - I actually don't get to try out my language skills with science fiction very often, because it's so often only in English...." and L nods thoughtfully, surprised by the notion that my luck in being born with a mother-tongue of English might have taken away some pleasure. Over breakfast on the day we leave, we tease one another in "baby-Deutsch", repeating choice lines from the evening's episode. (Vocabulary word: Zauerstof, or "oxygen".)

Somewhere, always present, a time from 8 years ago. The banal moments - my strained shoulder that day, the smell of exhaust and dust on the Rathmines Road in Dublin, the jumble of the bric-a-brack shop on Wexford Street, where I wandered, dazed, after Mr Sweetie and then my good friend Mags text-messaged me about That Event - forever set in memory. It takes no effort; in fact, the implication that one might forget, in the favored tactic of a few adrenaline junkies and right-wing manipulators? A dire and unforgivable insult.

Recover. Rebuild. Remember.

We haven't even begun to recover. If anything, a hole that was opened has been dug deeper into, by people who are those wolves in sheepskins we are warned about in sacred texts. Terrible, terrible things have been done, in our name. I hope, naively but still, I hope, that there will be a putting to rights. If we don't manage to do something worse to the world, and ourselves, in the meantime.

On the personal scale, life has still been kind. I have my exam results today. The language classes were about what I expected, and I'm anticipating the repeat of them, to learn even better what I'd only been able to scratch the surface of. The other class, the one I thought I did somewhat better on, turns out to have been a lot better. Which pretty much confirms my own approach, which remains somewhat counter to that of the Big Name Authorities in charge of the university - I need to be able to concentrate on only a very few classes at a time, and give myself over to their study without the distraction of an overloaded schedule. I'm not 20 any more. (Thank goodness. That was a tough age for me.) I hope the university will take notice, in a nice way.

Government Interference

2009-09-03T15:23:58Z

I have this little story, brought on by reading a couple of things on the internet.

Back in the day, when we'd bought our wonderful house (because all houses you've just bought are wonderful, or so you think) in Dublin, we'd called a contractor in to perform some semi-remodeling kinds of tasks.

However, after their first walk-through, they ABSOLUTELY had to talk to us, like not one minute after we possibly could be free. "Please," they also said.

So, off we trundled to the conference with our contractors. It was then we learned, as they were required by Irish law to inform us, of the state of our electricity in our recently-purchased house. Long story short: the system installed by the previous owner not only lacked much conformity to the code, it was downright unsafe - there was an old fashioned fuse box, with absolutely no sense to the groupings, no grounding for anything save the group for the washer/dryer, and a clearly shock-ready arrangement for the power shower.

A few Anglo-Saxon expressions later (the builders nodded with great sympathy, and no surprise at all), we'd come to the decision that we'd have to put the money we thought we would be spending on redecoration into a complete re-wiring. Including "chasing" the electrical outlets so that a proper ground/earth conduit could be added.

Later on, one of the supervisors added, "By rights, the pre-sale survey should have caught this, but with the way the housing market keeps going up and up, the surveyors tend not to look too closely at the properties they're supposed to inspect. They're almost there more for the banks than the people paying for the house..." You can say that again - the item with which the surveyor could have discovered the problems with the electricity was a 10 Punt (Irish Pound) plug that would light up in succession to indicate the presence each of the needed wires. If we'd know to buy one, it would have been in our own househunting kit.

Ah well, 6 weeks later (and a double whammy of paying the rent in the previous place while also paying the first month's mortgage), we got into our "new" house, with a full moving truck of our possessions, and spent the next several hours overseeing the immediately necessary bits like getting perishables into the 'fridge and building our bed. Ah, yes, our bed... the one that had a kind of headboard lighting, two small 30 watt lamps, one on either side. We settled down for the night, after a long day of moving boxes and furniture (even if most of the carrying was being done for us, there was a lot of little detail to sort, and would remain so for a while to come). We were both a bit buzzy from all the new activity, the dislocation from our previous place, and both ready to read in bed a bit before we would sleep. We turned on the bedstead light and --

ZZZT! *click*

The house was plunged in darkness. Mr Sweetie made the first realization: "That click must have been the circuit breaker downstairs." Our spanking, new electrical system had already kicked in its first safety - the bedstead lamps had worked before without a bother, but something from the move must have jiggled loose a connection, and created a short circuit, which the new system caught just as it was supposed to.

It did occur to me to wonder, rather later on - what if we'd elected to ignore the legally mandated warnings from our contractor, and moved in with the house's electricity un-renovated. It didn't seem to bear much thinking about. I could be glad that, in the absence of being able to know everything about absolutely everything, including our electricity supply, there was a resource we could employ for our protection. One that was not dependent on the self-perceptions of a large multinational company with profit as its main motive. In the main, I'm much happier considering the reliance on my fellow humans through the social contract that says we have duly-elected representatives, who - with input from us - map out the rules of play for all our mutual benefit.

It's a pity that seems such a difficult concept for some people, these days.

Friends Stop Friends from Digging Deeper Holes

2009-08-14T17:29:55Z

Well, some of you may have encountered the bru-ha-ha over Investors' Business Daily. That was where an editorial tried to use Stephen Hawking as an example of the sort of person who, supposedly, the UK-style National Health Service would have cut off because trying to treat his illness would have cost too much. (There is one of the many reactions to this here.)

Except for that pesky bit where, uhm... Stephen Hawking has lived in the UK most of his life? And has been treated for his condition through the NHS, with good results: I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS,... I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

Now, I know admitting one has been wrong can be difficult. But...

Instead of just making a plain admission of an error, the IBD has apparently tried to salvage their initial thesis - by implying that Stephen Hawking only got the care he needed because he was famous. The quote (here if you want to give the IBD a click before they change that, too) is repeated in the second paragraph of a column from The Guardian of the UK, "Okay, we got it wrong but "not everyone suffering from a debilitating disease is Stephen Hawking, and we hope our critics would acknowledge that."

However, I'm sure it takes very little effort to go check the initial onset of Hawking's case and the first inklings of fame. He was born in 1942. (Saith the Wikipedia.) The disease manifested age 21. That, and his subsequent treatment, would appear to predate the main work for which an amateur crank like me would have heard of him - A Brief History of Time, from 1988.

I hope that someone acknowledges that not only is the NHS not in possession any time-travel tech or communications, but also that accusing anyone of that kind of standard of judgement for treatment seems to have a bit of an odor about it - the odor of the crooked innkeeper, to be exact.

(h/t to the-gardener)

Oh, and a link to a gratuitious HawkingLOL - http://lh3.ggpht.com/_3pqx_Cf9Pj0/SoTnODgqmFI/AAAAAAAAAlw/VuYyCEZfVho/s640/lolhawking.jpg

and not a LOL but a very sweet photo, I think: http://marydell.livejournal.com/92331.html Just look at that grin!!! (All right, will stop fan-girling, now. This was supposed to be serious.)

Wanting to know a bit of everything

2009-07-29T19:13:17Z

Today was just one of those days - a good study day, to be sure, but also with things crossing my bow that OH! I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THAT, TOO!!

Or, shorter and without the CAPS LOCK: "Shiney!"

Like a constructed script called Layaklan, with its origins in a work by author M. A. Foster. While I saw a very, teenie tiny image of a separate script, the article I've pointed to has only indications in Roman script.

Pooh, I say, pooh.

Someone also dropped a reference to a ~~middle~~ OLD-English poem called "The Wanderer", and after looking up a couple of things, I suddenly wondering what a siþ-motief is. Travel, journeying, but is that all?

God, I feel pig-ignorant sometimes. And with not enough time to correct that.

Pardon me, while I go poke my kid brother's email box - there's an article on the uses of Facebook (many thanks to the inimitable davidlevine who passed along the link). I think it'll amuse him. TTFN.

Oh, wait, just one more thing - I'm looking for a good expression in Dutch for "arranged marriage", but the answer I'm not looking for is "huwelijkspolitiek", I think. That has more to do with dynastic arrangements, but I'm trying to track down something for the more run-of-the-mill institution as practiced once upon a time in China, and still is in some other places. Mr Sweetie can't really come up with anything, and my guesses with the dictionaries aren't yielding much result, either.

Thanks for listening!

A Snapshot of My Life

2009-07-20T11:17:41Z

At the moment, Mr Sweetie has a visit from a former colleague from our days of living in Ireland. They're off taking a day in Brussels, while I continue to study (or something resembling it).

A Very Large freight truck rumbles by in the street, and stops. I don't really take much notice until the doorbell rings, and then it's one of those, "Oh.... shit!" moments. This one is rooted in Mr Sweetie's hobby, which I fully endorse, of running a small press publishing house. Contact with an on-demand printer has meant the occasional delivery of books - a single full pallet, sometimes two.

But this is the first time I've taken delivery of one by my lonesome here. Ooops.

The first hurdle is relatively straightforward: explaining to the driver that, yes, they have exactly the correct address. Part of the problem at this initial moment is that they're looking for a warehouse; but what they find is a private residence on a not-quiet street, frequently backing up a bus or two while we sort out what needs doing. It's only because they have to deliver that they'll agree to our solution: leave the pallet on the sidewalk.

In the usual case, Mr Sweetie and I can clear one pallet in less than ten minutes, and with two of us (and the cats safely trapped behind two closed doors - they helpfully flee as soon as the doorbell goes, thank goodness for small favors!) we have a reasonably secure view of the goods before we get them safely indoors. No one's ever tried to help themselves to a box (it's impossible to see what's in them, and only a reasonably thoughtful person is going to realize they'll probably contain books) but even in a smallish place, there's always a first time.

Luckily, "first time" was NOT today. *Phew!* and other noises of relief. Only one pallet and that not too horribly loaded. (We've unloaded one pallet that was stacked five deep - not fun!) So, by my lonesome, that was not quite 20 minutes work, and that just before lunch, which definitely felt earned after all that.

Mr Sweetie had been so good with his timing - not just being away (he's already let me know via text message he's grateful for my help) but also having just finished a first phase of delivering excess stock to the recycling. On the other hand, he's going to be the one to fill up all that lovely freed space with the new books!

A moment of truth

2009-07-03T12:34:01Z

My exam results are in.

I knew I had done pretty badly in the practical part of the Japanese language, so the utter fail there was no surprise. For the grammar (which is actually also bundled with reading), I didn't think I'd pass; and I was right about that. However, I am within an asses' bray of passing if I do some extra study during the rest of the summer, just like I did two years ago with the first year class.

It would be so nice if I only had to concentrate on one of these classes at a time, next year. Though, of course, that means some serious re-jigging of my study plan. I had been trying, not with great success, to prepare for a re-sit in modern history of China. On the other hand, after today's attempt to do some reading, before the heat of the day set in, I had something of a minor epiphany, which might lead to a more effective way of studying than simply attempting to redraft my reading notes in Dutch. So, I'll take some time today to do some sub-conscious munching on the situation (while it may only look like I'm having a beer on a terrace - that's my story and I'M STICKING TO IT, I am!) today, and recover from the shock of the grades, however ready I kept telling myself I was for the news; tomorrow and Sunday will be redrafting a new plan that will include a thorough review of the grammar materials, then I'll remount the study horse and see how far I get.

Oh, and... the Chinese calligraphy? *breathes on nails and buffs them on shirt* 17/20. YIPPEE HOORAY HOORAAAAY!! Whee, and here I was, thinking that because I'd not succeeded in finishing one short answer and got a couple of things incompletely, I could maybe reckon on only 14/20, and would be disappointed if it went below 12/20 (which would still have been a pass, so this was really one class I was confident enough about). Good news, and also a bit of a shock, but a hap-py hap-py one!!

So, commiserate, celebrate and rededicate... I will be a busy girl in the next wee while.

whimper melt

2009-07-02T14:20:03Z

It's definitely Too Hot. And it's been this way since before we got back - in fact, our time in Dublin seemed to coincide perfectly, being about 5 degrees (Celsius) cooler than Belgium.

We're promised some kind of relief by the weekend, thank goodness. I am getting absolutely no studying done in this, *argh* and *jitterjitter* but I'm trying to not let that get too much on top of me, after 2 days of trying to push past 2 hours of study. I'm hoping the absolute rest I've taken today will knock something back into shape, because my study plan didn't have all that much extra room.

A Trip to Dublin

2009-06-30T06:38:14Z

So, one of the reasons for the quiet from these pages has been we've been on a short break to Dublin.

We did things that were more social or atmospheric than touristic, although Mr Sweetie did find out that the Chester Beatty Library had put on a special display, in connection with the millennial birthday of Tale of Genji, of manuscripts of that work from its own collection. Droo-oo-oo-ool!

I also put a beautiful birthday present through its paces - a very recent model of a digital single lens reflex camera. (Alas, no pictures allowed of the exhibits at the Library, but there were many other things to photograph.) I am a bit shocked that I managed to just about half-way fill a 4 GB memory card. Mr Sweetie mentions that we might want to consider moving our entire photo archive, including the images I will be making, over to a dedicated hard disk.

The absolute best thing about the trip was getting to see our old neighbor and still dear friend, Mags. Changes in her life included the expansion of her family with a retired greyhound. This dog was a truly sweet-natured boy, and I was just floored, because I'm a confirmed, dyed-in-the-wool cat-person. He's provided Mags the opportunity to learn (and educate us) about the world of dogs, from the dynamics of the dog-racing industry to the challenges of introducing this new member of her house to the currently residing dog, a rather excitable German Shepherd mix. (A girl... sorry, I know "bitch" is the right word, but it's become so debased through its use as a term of abuse to women that I find it hard to use for its proper function.) Mags has also enjoyed a collateral benefit: through all the walking she does to keep her charges exercised and in good condition, she herself has trimmed down considerably. It truly did our hearts good to see her in such a happy place.

She also organized a party, what was called a "Person's Night In" (as contrasted with the "Girls' Night Out", that we used to do back during our time in Dublin); a nicely-sized party, not quite ten people, only a couple of "us" missing through work or prior commitments (although I did spend a moment to also recall a couple of our other friends who were no longer with us), and a wonderful evening of sitting in a circle, dogs nearby, telling stories and enjoying the company. It was simply wonderful.

I touched base with my old aikido buddies, primarily through a new dojo set up by a teacher who sometimes did substitute work for my main sensei. I was pleased to have a chance to learn from him again, too; a different style, a different "wavelength", but always educational. My main sensei, however, was Off The Mat: his partner had given birth the week before, and I got to pay a visit to the new one on my way to training.

Alas, I only got the one evening in, as I came down with a stinking cold a couple of days after. I was even wiped just taking the bus out to the suburban location of the dojo. *sigh* Well, they were fine with me taking photos, so it was another opportunity to put my new camera through its' paces, so it wasn't a total loss.

Luckily, the cold managed to resolve before we had to board the plane, thank goodness. The whole ear-popping pressurization changes thing was pretty rough as it was; I'd have hated to have gone through that with the sinuses stuffed with goo.

We also visited friends of Mr Sweetie's, lovely people who are the sort who become friends with everyone, not just the work-partner. We ended up seeing them twice, Mags in tow - once at a cook-out, the second time to view a new purchase (from an inheritance) of an honest-to-goodness yacht. "Only" 11 meters long, and we only sat with it still moored at the dock, but.... wow. Wow. Apart from the other-worldliness of being on a boat, there was the living space with its series of cleverly designed space-saving and efficient facilities. Mags was a confirmed land-lubber, but even she enjoyed the tour of the boat and appreciated how someone might want to live on it while using it to travel on waterways from point A to B. And, true to their good natures, our hosts made a cordial invitation to Mags to drop in sometime, with the dogs if she liked; "Great for the kids," they added.

So, not quite "what I did on my summer vacation", since this was only a week, although it is effectively my vacation - back to the study grind, as soon as we've settled all the post-vacation luggage bits and laundry. But, however pleasant our time in Dublin was, I still said, as I crossed our own threshold, "Oost, west; thuis, best." ("East, west; home is best", a/k/a "There's no place like home.") Even if Mags pretty much made her house into a home for us while we were there. A real treasure of a friend!

Liking our town

2009-06-19T14:34:41Z

In the middle of a study break, I realize the sound I'm hearing - screeEE! screeEE! screeEE! screeEE! - is one of a falcon pair, resident in a near-by tower.

(This does have a down-side; we've had the occasional need to clean up a bird carcass left by their feeding... raptors, eh?)

The Purity of Study on One's Own

2009-06-18T14:46:40Z

The previous two days, I had pretty much all to myself for study. Well, yesterday, at the request of Mr Sweetie, I also made a meal.

With some negotiation - he'd thawed a bit of lamb he got on special; but the day was shaping up to become very warm. So, a household negotiation moved "dinner" to "lunch", and I had one break in the middle of a study day. A bit of extra organization, but otherwise, okay.

But today, a friend came over for the morning. (She's entered a work-internship and has suddenly disappeared from the lives of me and our other friends, but today she was free.) And that was good, too - concentrate without guilt on the friend in the morning, back to the study after lunch.

And now.... a relaxing glass of a white wine from Sicily. A moment of calm to share. Dinner sometime in the near future. More study tomorrow. A feeling of gratefulness for the stability and peace around us.

State of the Me

2009-06-15T09:09:49Z

Exams for myself are currently over - a number of my classmates who are taking a full load will be suffering one more week, as they go through the breadth requirement courses of the degree. (I'm saving those for later.)

Now I'm back to a concentrated study - this time for retaking an exam in September. I'll be doing at least the modern history of China one. I'll possibly also be doing one of the language classes' exams; I'm pretty sure I did not pass, and have mentioned before how I am reconciled with repeating that course. On the other hand, if my current result is a near-miss on the pass, I'll put some time into studying for a re-sit on that exam as well. But only if the miss is a near one; otherwise, I'll be happy to give all the language classes a repeat, and not just the practical course.

Service by Phone

2009-06-09T13:02:04Z

Mr Sweetie: "Hello?"
Me: "Hello, Sweetie! This is a phone call to the Hero of the Republic!"
Mr Sweetie: "Oh, look - it's really raining hard outside!"
Me: "Yeah! Actually, that's what I was phoning about! Could you get an umbrella, and bring it to our local bus stop? I'm on a bus from the station, you see..."
Mr Sweetie: "Yes, actually that ought to be possible. But we'll have to get back to the house soon as we can - I'm checking that roof for leaks."

***

And, true to his word, Mr Sweetie was running up to the bus stop just as my bus had pulled in. The rain was still pelting down. But the glass skylight was showing no signs of the flooding that had visited us during the previous 10 liter/second downpours, so in all, we feel it's been a day of feeling relieved - the household analysis of the problem, that leaves had clogged the downspout to the point of letting the water back up and then over into the skylight, was both correct and pointed to a simple, cheap and effective fix. Namely, cleaning the entry to the downspout.

Extra points for my personal hero bringing the brolly, trotting up looking all breezy in a lime green polo shirt contrasting with a bright blue brolly. I was wearing a hand-woven poncho of burgundy and salmon. He handed me the blue brolly, then proceeded to pull out a smaller but bright red one for himself.

I hope we didn't give anyone shopping on the main street a headache from all that color clash.

Reverse psychology

2009-06-07T14:25:16Z

Do folks reading this remember the song with the line "I'm not in love..."

Well, I'm doing this thing, called "I'm not studying." That's the only way I can keep the examination jitters to a reasonable level right now. I've loaded up an mp3 player with language files, and lay on the couch listening to them, open textbook to hand. But I'm not studying, oh no.

(I will be so glad when these damn exams are done with.)

In the midst of exam stress, personal breakthroughs

2009-06-02T11:49:33Z

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
- 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.

Oh, joy: another environmentally-triggered migraine

2009-05-29T11:21:20Z

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...

About that flooding...

2009-05-26T20:45:37Z

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...

Localized flooding

2009-05-26T10:57:55Z

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.

I'm a little weblog, rarr! (Part the umdiddy-ump)

2009-05-20T19:37:24Z

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.

A Stroll in the Early Quiet

2009-05-03T06:58:27Z

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.

洋随筆 Western Rambles