Sunday, August 13, 2006

A brief stop

It's been a month since my last entry. I was feeling kind of guilty disappearing from blogspot like that and when I browsed through the others' blogs. Heck, no update either. So it's still summer where everyone's in non-operating mode.

I'll be going back home in a week and therefore the past few weeks have been the most hectic, the culmination of summer craze! A big chunk of my time is spent in lab as usual and out of my notice(when did it happen, really?), I have a few more jobs newly added to the task list although they're in essential, revovles around the same cloning technique. Sometimes even Shrivani, the master student who guides me along gets pretty lost as what stage I'm at. Once we discussed it over lunch. I said 'A is for B. C is for D. A is not for the purpose of D. I'm doing AB.' my progress report of some sort and after a brief silence where I stared at her for confirmation of my correctness and she, stared at me practically just dumbfounded by the amount of things going on in paralle, we both bursted out laughing. Hail to all the mess.

When the hand hits seven or eight, I thought 'hey, maybe I should go home. I kinda want to go home.' It's hard resisting the temptation of homely comfort but I know if I don't finish it today, I'll have to do it again tomorrow anyway and in between, 12 good hours are wasted for nothing. I lugged all my snacks and instant drinks from home to our cafeteria. A cup of steamy capuccino/hot chocolate really helps boosting the half dormant neurons.

Anybody heard of a non mainstream Japanese group called 'Sleepy ab.?' Ah I should probably post this in uku. Their style is atmospheric and abstract (so comes 'ab' in the name), filled with colourful visions.

I shouldnt' shy telling my buffet experience. This Thur. after lab, I went to an 'all you can eat' sushi buffet with my labmate Sherry. It's 19+ dollar each. We ate 35 dollars worth. I ordered lots of dishes just coz they have funny names. I should've known better the Japanese illiterate me was in a rather dangerous postion blind ordering off the menu like that. Therefore in the 5th round of order, I pointed randomly at a name under 'soup, noodles and wat not'. It was called 'Ten Don', clean and simple. I thought 'Don' sounds similar to the chinese pronounciation of 'Tang'(as in soup). We all know Japanese borrows from Chinese kanji so my guess shouldn't be too much off the target. Who cares what Ten is. It's a Don. And I need a Don. (the thirsty me speaking) In 10 min's time, a big steamy bowl of rice richly topped with tempura, sweet potatoes and fried beans loomed into my sight. What da hell is this?? After non-believing, checking and rechecking, there was no doubt I, I, ordered the monster bowl. That was a final, lethal blow to self confidence.

3 comments:

jeremy said...

Lol, Ah, the unsightly complexities of Kanji. I think most kanji ON readings retain pronounciations from borrowing during the Tang dynasty.

Esther said...

hahaha
Zhu,,,,,zen zen wakanai ne...
anata no nihon go...zen zen dame...

haha...hope you've recovered!

have a great time back home!!!

Cheers!

how's your project getting on anyhows?

Z said...

Yes everybody, watashi no nihongo zen zen dame da.