Tag: english

About the exams

October 10, 2009
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I wish they were not. In the meaning that the idea of their existence or their being brought into existence would have been flushed down the toilet with a pile of what usually is flushed down the toilet, and a huge amount of very effective sodium hypochlorite (hypo), just to kill the surviving remains of such a ruinous thought. The politics-economics one was a catastrophe and not just for me. It was funny though that exactly because i thought it’d be dangerous i asked the teacher the day before if there is a chance that the exam will have calculations and numbers in it, and he said no… Of course it was fun that half of the exam consisted of calculations and stuff like that (not to mention more or less having to quote the constitution of Japan, which is not easy to understand in english either, what a surprise from lawyer-language)… For the other parts the problem was that although i knew the answer but didn’t have the sufficient wordpower… Whatever. I didn’t want to stay in Tokyo after this year anyway, but i very much hope that with this i could still get into Osaka or Hokkaido (former for the concerts, latter for the weather and the ainu). The listening wasn’t difficult, actually we did lot worse in class. Then maths, which except for immense stupidity miscalculating stuff, wasn’t that difficult either. (True, i like calculus anyway, much more than for example trigonometry.)

Pro and con

October 7, 2009
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Today was the day of pros and cons. Which one should i start with? (I can never decide this (“typical man” ladies could say) so i’ll go chronologically.) Bad point is that i haven’t done any homework this week. And don’t plan to. I don’t have any time for that—good question would be then how do i have time to blog, but the answer is simple: after six hours of pol-eco and one of maths, i need a bit of break, and blogging is one of the most refreshing things i can do without moving out of my room. Next was that we got a new teacher for listening class. This is neither good or bad, because he seems nice, but 金子先生 is nice as well. Definite good point, that we had no afternoon classes today, so i cooked myself a nice lunch and started studying pol-eco. The downside of this is that there are loads of new words, and reading the stuff once doesn’t really make me remember it, unlike most stuff, so i’ll have to check the complicated and formula parts again. Good point is that i got a mail that i have a reservation for next wednesday (after the grammar exam) for the barber’s which will be fun—six years since my hair was touched by a hairdresser (how gay this word sounds)… Bad point was that Comodo decided that it has some problem so it froze the whole computer, and i couldn’t boot either. From restricted mode i uninstalled it, then back again, because i don’t know anything better. It works all fine for now. Good point is that i managed to understand (thanks to Anh from Vietnam) the math problem i couldn’t get earlier. (I missed the point.) Bad point is that obviously i won’t have time today or tomorrow to finish all the math problems. Good is that at least probably i could finish pol-eco. Bad is that my father was hospitalized, his hernia got really bad, and he was operated today. I don’t know any more. Good is that i got a delicious cookie from Adina. And good is that the blog i created with the purpose of helping students like me find the Japanese university best suited for their expectations and needs, so that blog is getting writers, thanks to Huyen from Vietnam. And probably the day will end without anything else, just maths and dinner.

No

October 5, 2009
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I don’t want to live like a worm in the books, eating the pages with an empty mind without knowing anything of the bigger picture… (Side note, song playing now is Vodka by Korpiklaani.) I have 450 words to learn just for the japanese exams, that not counting the ones for pol-eco (politics-economics) and maths, of which especially the first one’s are pretty numerous (let’s say about 150 or more). And those are still just the words, not the stuff i actually have to know, how to solve those creepy math problems (that usually take me twice as long to solve as for others, and that’s quite a problem considering the given timeframe for the exam this friday).

But at least i had some fun, trying to understand and write down the lyrics of Can’t keep a good man down by Eastern Standard Time. I really had/have a tough time with it. It’s really sung in the “reggae style” so very difficult to catch all the words.

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あまり

October 5, 2009
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I hardly have opportunity to blog. There’d be stuff to write about for sure, but either i don’t have time because of studying, or the net’s not working. Since the new people moved in, the net’s back to it’s old style: not working at all. I don’t get it how this works. It’s obvious that even if we all requested different webpages at the same moment, it wouldn’t eat too much bandwidth – in the summer i measured the speed and it’s quite fast (i forgot exactly what bandwidth but it’s not easy to use it all). I guess no one cares about the request not to use P2P software and Skype in the peak hours… I don’t care if someone runs torrent while we’re in school, have fun with all your pr0n and w4r3z… but it’s a bit funny that at five pm i can’t load a japanese plaintext website, because the connection times out. Heck.

But at least i have other stuff to do, like learning kanji all afternoon, for today. Tomorrow the plan is to continue maths and that’ll probably take all the time. I decided not to care about everyday school in this one week. (They don’t seem to know that we have exams coming, we got four pages of kanji homework just today…) Seriously… these exams matter…

Awaken

September 24, 2009
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It sucks that even if i sleep enough, after a great lunch (see, that’s why i love to cook for myself, and not eat at the cafeteria, even if that means eating alone) i get so sleepy that i can hardly stay awake. But there are good methods for waking myself, mostly including reading interesting stuff. That’s usually Wikipedia, or books, whichever occurs first. Now it was languages (again). I have too high expectations set for myself. I want to learn a couple of languages that are probably impossible to use anywhere except for that small community. As of now, i have two such languages on my list to learn, nuxálk in Canada and ainu here in Japan. Ainu might not be that difficult now i live in Japan, but getting to Bella Coola and learning an almost extinct language is not that simple. Other (more “mainstream”) languages i want to learn are first finnish and russian, then continue spanish and learn french, as a key to Canada. I may be able to accomplish russian and ainu here, then i “just” need to get to Finland (not to mention i have to keep my german alive somehow)… And figure the rest out then. But this means a lot of changing, which wouldn’t really trouble me, as i love to travel and get to know new people, but it also makes any kind of family planning totally impossible, as it’s pretty difficult to find someone who would come with me all the way around the world…

About a language

September 23, 2009
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Or more, if you’ll replace “japanese” with something else—i guess it’d stay correct anyway. The thing is, school sucks. Delicately phrased, nay? Well, the truth is that for most of the time they can’t really choose correctly what to teach “not so kids anymore” like us. Or maybe it’s just me to find the third text about the cultivation of a fruit boring, when all three are virtually the same template with words changed. Yeah, it’s probably just me to find it a nuisance to learn words that i will probably never ever need again. To quote a japanese-studying friend of mine: “you can already say foreigner registration id card, but don’t know how to write the word for room?” (where room is without abstract meanings the place we live in). Finely balanced curriculum, i must say. To be honest, even though we study from japanese teachers, and live here, we’re almost totally isolated from the actual japanese language. I feel i learnt more japanese in the past five days from bus drivers, information personnel, and manga than in the past month of school. Or maybe it’s my fault for expecting to being taught first those phrases i need for normal communication, and not only those if i say in a shop, the cashier will laugh at me, it’s so crazy official? Whatever, i’ll manage. Just have to learn a couple of kanji each day, try not to forget them and do my homework roughly on time so the teachers will be happy as well and i won’t be braindead or get a nervous breakdown like some…

High and mighty color

September 18, 2009
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Now i have a bit of time to blog the events of the past (last?) week. On tuesday, a concert, a great one of that for sure. High and mighty color in the Liquidroom of Ebisu.

I was a bit sceptical about how the gig will turn out before because, to be honest, i only knew one song of them, the former Bleach opening and hit single Ichirin no Hana. Well, i regret that now. This band is no longer a small garage-rock band with a great girl vocalist and nice ideas, but they really gave the impression of being real professionals by now. Really surprised me.

Same, the volume of the gig surprised me as well – although a totally japanese concert, it was not overamplified. It was loud, but just as loud where it’s simply just loud, and not painful. Not to mention, roaring sound power matches this music. Since then i listened to a lot of their songs, and decided that if they happen to have such cheap gigs around here any time soon, i’ll sure to be there.

I don’t know the exact tracklist of the concert, but they played all of their great hits, as far as i remember, and for my great joy, Ichirin no hana as well. Turned out to be an unexpectedly great gig.

Simple

September 13, 2009
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Today was simply fantastic. Even though we were late for the Stratovarius concert, it was so far the best concert i’ve been to for a very long time. Songs like Rest in peace or Higher we go (just to mention the first two that came to my mind now) made me shout at the top of my voice (i was actually surprised i could keep up with Kotipelto’s range), so after a gig it was pretty hard to talk, but it definitely worth it, this concert would’ve worth quite much anything! My first really good metal concert for a year, and this one was simply ecstatic. Because we were late (so sorry about that) i don’t know if they played Dreamweaver or Hunting high and low, my two favourite songs, i can only hope not—i could hardly forgive myself for being late then. The concert was for short: perfect. It was finally not overamplified like most of the gigs i’ve been to in Japan. And i had a great experience… After the last song, Kotipelto asked if we could count to four in Finnish, for them to bow after that. Naturally silence among the japanese, when i realised that i could count to four in Finnish! “Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä!” I went shouting out, visibly surprising the band, but then they saw that i was “apparently a westerner”. So fun! I want to learn Finnish! (And i think that’s the only language i ever wrote with a capital letter here in the blog.) (If anyone interested, i learnt the numbers from my father and the Nils Holgersson book, where the geese were named with Finnish numerals if i remember right.)

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Dead man lives on

September 11, 2009
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Today i cut the one week constant coffee overdose, and had none, and plan to keep this up for 11 more days. The reason is that i had three dose coffee every day except for sunday, which is there with only one in the morning, thus i had two extra each day, which is 12 coffee over normal. That is twelve days of coffee gone for “nothing” in one week, so i won’t have coffee for that long so i’ll be at zero. Today was the first, so 11 more to go.

I was surprised i could stay awake at all. Yesterday evening that caused trouble, even though i had the triple dose in me… Apropos yesterday, in the evening i went to the gym, and had fun there for an hour. Results: arms not aching anymore, but in exchange my legs started.

Today i managed to get out of bed a bit late, but i had time to do anything and was from late even less than usually. School was as if it wasn’t at all, the economy movie we had this week was better than expected, math was challenging, the last economy was dead boring, even though two of us made presentations.

Now the plan is to play guitar or do something, just something so i won’t be so tempted to “lay down for a moment”. I have to leave the computer because i’ll be downloading the last Haruhi episode of this season (too bad it’s not available on YouTube now), and with torrent, curse me if you want. I guess direct downloading eats more bandwidth then my tuned and limited torrent.

Bits version 2.0

September 10, 2009
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2.0 Yesterday ended up totally differently. I couldn’t go to pingpong training because i had an appointment about homeworks that time. Anyway i’m not sure if there was any, as i got a mail from them saying something about a tournament yesterday (i didn’t struggle to understand it). At least this way i could go to the guitar class where i learnt a lot of new things and that’s good. Included a few more ways to pick and the first two chords (C, G7). Will have to practice till next week.

2.1 The old alarm clock, the only alarm clock i ever had, the alarm clock my sister gave me sometime i couldn’t even remember properly, has problems with its voice. Tuesday morning it fell to the floor and since then its beeping got very quiet. No other injury. I’ll look into the problem (literally) when i have time and dare to.

2.2 Disappearances occur around me. First my student id got lost, no idea how, but it did, so for a week i was entering the dorm the tricky way, until yesterday i applied for a new one. My grammar exercise book disappeared as well, so i couldn’t do homework for the past week (i felt so sorry), but i got it back today so i’ll have to write all that stuff tonight (i really am sorry about that).