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unforthI can't believe I've been here for four weeks already. In honor of that, I thought it was time to assess how various aspects of life stand. Meanwhile, I watch an episode of the new Doctor Who that I saw many months ago at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kitsune_zen's, except this time it's dubbed in Japanese. (the one with Harriet Jones and the aliens) :)
In a general sense, life is really good. I'm pretty happy, I love Japan, and I'm so happy to be living in a city again. I miss my friends a lot, but - surprisingly - I find I don't miss Bloomington itself all that much. This is odd, because I thought I really liked Bloomington the place (this is divorcing it from Bloomington where my friends are ;) ). Scratch that, I DID like Bloomington the place, especially in comparison to Binghamton the place. I remember when I first got to Binghamton, I was insanely happy about all my new friends and the freedom of being in college but I missed NYC. In 7 years, I guess I'd forgotten just how different it is to live in a city and how much I LOVE it.
Meanwhile, I'm slowly on the track of friends, which is so nice. I need to e-mail the GM of the game I'm going to be joining with my character concept; I picked up a copy of PHB 3.5, which I didn't own in the states, and it only had a 50% mark up - not bad for a specialty market, really. I could have gotten it for cover price...in Japanese. ;) The game is meeting on Sunday, though I need to find out more specifically when and where. I think I've got an interesting idea, and I'll get to meet a handful more gamers. I've also joined a small mailing list community, and will be meeting the people who are in it (which includes some of the people I'll be gaming with already) on the 29th. I've been asked tentatively to take a lead role in trying to get some sort of order in the Tokyo members of the group (it's main mods are located in Chiba, which is a bit aways (commutable, but not - for example - walkable). All in all, I find I'm much less worried about the whole friends thing than I was even a week ago. Very nice.
I've figured out at this point where to get most of the things I might want - I know of at least four places with good to excellent selections of English books - none compare to an actual American bookstore, but combine them and I have a reasonable degree of faith that I could find anything relatively mainstream, especially - surprisingly - in the area of science, which seems to be a popular reading topic in English here. I know where to find new gaming books, I know places to find cheap manga, cheap doujinshi, cheap Japanese video games, cheap DVD's, cheap CD's, etc. Other than English books, indeed, there is no reason I should have to pay full price for anything other than food. This pleases me immensely.
I bought my long desired convection oven, and made a spectacle of myself carrying it home on Sunday. No matter what I wear, no one really looks at me twice yesterday. But apparently wearing a fancy white top, a full length brides-maid style skirt, my Kathryn boots, and resting a box the size of my torso on my neck is, in fact, what it takes to get people in Tokyo to do a double take, cause I got multiple shocked glances. The box was really stinkin' heavy, too, and I carried it mile. I was rather proud of myself. Meanwhile, I haven't even plugged the friken thing in yet. :) I've been too busy doing other stuff. It's a nice Hitachi, and it was $40 off the tag price, and it's rather shiny all the way around. Once I hook it up, I'll pick up the ingredients for scones (I have most of them, but I don't have flour, or eggs, or milk. OH!! And I'm in the market for clever ways of using less butter that won't add fat - there are no ridiculous weird low fat butters here that I've been able to find.
My writing is going excellently, in other news. I know the general outline for most of the rest of the book, and yesterday I broke 80,000 words. I'm starting to think about the shape of another novel - the one based on my dream - and how I want it to be and what research I'm going to need to do. Before I get to that, though, I'm going to finish up the Hogwarts story I started long ago, the Changeling writing I'm partly done with, the Sirius Black short story I talked withswan_tower about, and another project I was kind of in the middle of. That'll give me some time to research and the like. Because I think this project is going to need an outline, and research, and a whole lot of words. Like maybe more than one books worth of words. :)
I've been pouring a lot of time into a project for mom, which I'm hoping to be done with by Monday. It's involved tons of staring at spreadsheets until my eyes cross, and I'm very much looking forward to being done with that part - though I'm nervous about the rest, which involves writing a report. Ah well, I'm sure I'll manage, it can't be scarier than writing a grant. In other ways, things are going well in that department. I was worried, honestly, that mom wouldn't have enough work for me - I wanted to be working 10 to 20 hours a week at least for her - and that I'd feel bad, but so far it hasn't been a problem, and it doesn't look like it will be for the foreseeable future. As she continues to have trouble with her surgery recovery, I've been taking over more and bigger responsibilities, which suits me fine.
Related to that, though, I'm starting to get the eerie feeling that my life is being pulled in other and new directions. The end of my first novel in sight - I think it's crap, but whatever, the first one is sort of going to be crap by definition ;) - and big plans which I think are much less crappy for a second. More and more work on the grants stuff. And the third aspect of work, which is that I WANT to bind stuff, seriously I do, but I have yet to figure out an effective way to integrate it. I'm thinking I need to name a day each week that that is definitely what I will do. Like Monday. Or something. At the moment, I'm not worrying about it too much. I've got a lot of time to get more on the ball, and I'm still getting everything together otherwise. After all, I only moved a month ago. :) It's an odd feeling, though one I vaguely anticipated being a side effect of deciding to move to Japan - I mean, how could it NOT change my life, right? In a strange way, I feel like I'm completely free. After this, maybe I should move some where else crazy. Why not, right? Then I remind myself that I run the risk of not getting the other side - I'll spend so much time adventuring that I won't get to have a normal life. That doesn't sound like much fun at all to me. Ah well. I just need to wait and see I think. :)
Living here has had one very positive effect on me. I'm much more willing to experiment with food. See, I order something, and I can't ask what's in it, because I won't understand what they tell me anyway, and I can't ask for changes (like no mayo) without risking the same problem, so usually I don't say anything at all. And once it's in front of me, I might as well just eat it. Hence the other week, I ordered something and it came out with some form of tempura something on top of it, I have no idea what it was...and I just ate it. And it was tasty. Today, I got kitsune soba, and it had a pink thing they put in it. So I ate it. Heck, today I willing added something that grew to my food - I've gotten so used to onion being put in my soba that it tasted wrong with out it, so when I found that one of the things on the table had onion bits in it, I added onion bits to my soba. I wouldn't say I'm adventurous yet, but I'm getting there slowly but surely, especially because so are none of my efforts have been bad, everything has been neutral or better. I've also found two incredibly tasty things. One I've mentioned, crepes, which are just amazing. To that I add mochi creams. OMG. They have a flavor, "Halloween Pudding," and it's to DIE for, one of the tastiest deserts I have EVER EATEN. I'm in love. :)
I don't have a scale, but I have a means of approximating my weight. Every morning after I get up, I take a tape measure and pull it as tight as it will go on my bust, my hips, and my waist. Obviously, I couldn't actually wear anything as small as those measurements - my actual comfortable measurements are about three inches bigger - but even so. Anyway, the first day my measurements were 34", 30", 38 1/2". Today, My measurements were 32", 27 1/4", and 36 3/4" inches. Oddly, my clothing doesn't seem to fit all that much better, but I can tell when I look in the mirror that I look better. (please note that following statement is not a cry for help, a request for compliments, or anything other than an honest reflection of my terrible self image as it comes to my appearance ;) ) I also know that whereas in the past I would see my reflection and invariably think "sure I've lost weight but I'm still a fat cow," now I have times where I see my reflection and I think, "hey, I don't actually look that bad, is that really me?" I have a ways to go, but I think I can do it. It's so much easier to eat healthily here that there is no comparison.
As for fitness, after today I'm prepared to say that my weight aside, I am in shape. This morning, I had an errand: I had to go to Shinjuku and pay my rent. However, after the agony on Sunday, I decided that I wanted to avoid jogging today, and clearly the way to do this was to walk to Shinjuku again. Remember that I did this two weeks ago and it left me a miserably whiny exhausted wreck. Anyway, I was a little worried that it would once again leave me a miserably, whiny, exhausted wreck, but decided to take the chance. I left at 10:30. I arrived in Shinjuku at 1, having stopped for lunch and also for a tasty cream filled pastry from Beard Papa. It's about 7 miles I think - maybe a little farther - so not a bad pace, about 3.5 mph taking in to account the stops, the lights, etc. Then I wandered around Shinjuku until 4, buying myself a mochi cream, visiting a couple of museums, paying my rent, and generally having a nice time of it all. I picked up an old friend, and decided that in honor of one month in Japan what I really wanted was a fricken hamburger, and not like they have at Mos Burger, a real Hamburger. I managed to find one with the help of the travel books at Kinokuniya, and went and had it and wow was it good to have some real beef for a change - most of the beef here we wouldn't serve outside of crappy Chinese Food in the states. Now, a crazy idea had occurred to me earlier in the day, and I'd convinced myself it was crazy and not to do it. But sitting in the restaurant, reading my old friend (one guess), having just enjoyed a wonderful American style burger, I had to wonder: they had cheesecake. Was it ACTUALLY cheesecake, or was it the imitation cheesecake I've found here so far? Eying the menu, my crazy idea came back. I wouldn't be violating my diet - despite the junk food I'd already eaten - and could even get myself a crepe and still potentially eat dinner - and get the cheesecake - if I walked home too. I was kind of stiff, it was true, and in my time in Shinjuku I'd climbed about 20 flights of stairs on top of the walking I'd already done (most businesses here are multiple story, often 7 or 8, and I try to take the stairs whenever possible) but...but wouldn't it be cool if I could? I could always hop a train if it didn't work.
So two weeks after walking about 10 miles in a day left me wanting to curl up and not move for two days, today I walked about 15 miles. The walk home? It went fine. Took less time than the walk out. I was in the zooooone. And I'm kind of stiff, and my feet hurt a little, but over all I feel kind of okay. I walked a fucking half marathon, and I feel okay. Heck, I feel like I could walk more, though I'll admit it wouldn't be my first choice. Now, granting that I've learned a whole lot about the importance of staying hydrated and now I'm much more careful to drink enough than I was two weeks ago, even so! I think I'm in shape. :)
(oh, wait, a trailer for Stardust! I wonder if it's coming here? I want to see it again!)
Lastly, even though I've already rambled a lot, I wanted to touch briefly on something I've just started to think about. I realized about a week ago that I'm getting a glimpse of life that most people at my education level don't normally get: I've spent a month living in a place where I am functionally illiterate. Beyond that, it's beyond my ability to communicate even simply ideas often. Beyond THAT, it's not even the kind of illiteracy I can fix by looking in a dictionary, because the problem is the kanji, which I can't read well enough to even figure out what word it's supposed to be I'm looking up.
It's been fascinating to watch how being unable to read affects my choices. I've already mentioned a little about how it affects food. Beyond that, it means that if I don't see certain cues, I don't go in to stores. I avoid any situation where I think I might need to sign up for something, or explain any sort of difficult concept. I try to find ways to make sure I'll have time with a menu that don't cause me to be in the way of other people, because even when I can read the characters I'm slow.
On the one hand, I'm not entirely illiterate. Last night I read 3 pages of Harry Potter in an hour and a half - terrifying in a way, but when you realize it's twice as fast as I read pages of HP even two weeks ago, it's clear how far I've come. I've been speeding up at One Piece, too, and seeing distinct signs that I'm starting to learn a lot. There are entire sentences I just read now and know what they mean that I didn't know any of the words in a month ago. And of course, given what I'm reading, I'm learning all sorts of useful words. I now know how to say "He Who Must Not Be Named," and "strange cloak-wearing people," thanks to HP. And owl, I mustn't for get that. Meanwhile, One Piece has been a fount of useful vocabulary, everything from "I will become king of the pirates!" to about a dozen ways to say "strong," I know how to say that the navy have sunk the pirate ship, and vice versa, and many other ship related terms. Thanks to Zolo I'm getting more used to slang, and thanks to Sanji and his friends I've learned a lot of vulgar terms. And, most importantly, I will never forget how to say "to shit ones pants in fear." This will clearly improve my quality of life.
On the other hand, talking to people is still torture. Even if I can think of how to say what I want, they might not understand. And even if I phrase questions to get the answers I'll understand, this never seems to happen. Somehow, asking yes or no questions like "Is it okay for me to take pictures in here?" never produces just a yes or a no, and instead I find myself guessing from what I catch of their answers and their facial expressions.
The illiteracy, ultimately, is the biggest problem though. I'm improving VERY fast, but just not fast enough. I'm losing my train of thought, though, so I guess I'll have to write more about this later. I've been typing too long.
That ended up more scatter brained than I thought it would - guess I'm a little more tired than I thought. ;) Anyway, last thing. Today, as I wrote, I bought an old friend, as I suggested I might yesterday. I mean the Eye of the World, in case it wasn't obvious. Anyway, I'm gonna try to read one to two chapters a day and, inspired byswan_tower, I think I'm gonna blog my way through. I'll write some general stuff, but I've also always had a lot of love for the way that Jordan traces out the history of the world, and the planning he's put in to his prophecies, so even though I know I'm rehashing work others have already done, I'm gonna particularly focus on compiling these aspects of the book. If anyone is interested, rather than post it either public or friends locked on here, I thought I'd just go ahead and use a blogger blog, that way it'd be available to everyone in the universe without bothering my LJ friends who don't care. I'm gonna try to update daily, if only to say "nothin' much about this chapter, I don't like Perrin much." ;) If anyone is interested, feel free to join in, follow along, or whatever, the link is The Wheel Turns, though I might not get a post up tonight because I'm tired and I still haven't done my Ni90 writing. And I certainly won't be posting anything until after Hanazakari Kimitachie (the live action TV show of Hanakimi). ;)
kitsune_zen's, except this time it's dubbed in Japanese. (the one with Harriet Jones and the aliens) :)In a general sense, life is really good. I'm pretty happy, I love Japan, and I'm so happy to be living in a city again. I miss my friends a lot, but - surprisingly - I find I don't miss Bloomington itself all that much. This is odd, because I thought I really liked Bloomington the place (this is divorcing it from Bloomington where my friends are ;) ). Scratch that, I DID like Bloomington the place, especially in comparison to Binghamton the place. I remember when I first got to Binghamton, I was insanely happy about all my new friends and the freedom of being in college but I missed NYC. In 7 years, I guess I'd forgotten just how different it is to live in a city and how much I LOVE it.
Meanwhile, I'm slowly on the track of friends, which is so nice. I need to e-mail the GM of the game I'm going to be joining with my character concept; I picked up a copy of PHB 3.5, which I didn't own in the states, and it only had a 50% mark up - not bad for a specialty market, really. I could have gotten it for cover price...in Japanese. ;) The game is meeting on Sunday, though I need to find out more specifically when and where. I think I've got an interesting idea, and I'll get to meet a handful more gamers. I've also joined a small mailing list community, and will be meeting the people who are in it (which includes some of the people I'll be gaming with already) on the 29th. I've been asked tentatively to take a lead role in trying to get some sort of order in the Tokyo members of the group (it's main mods are located in Chiba, which is a bit aways (commutable, but not - for example - walkable). All in all, I find I'm much less worried about the whole friends thing than I was even a week ago. Very nice.
I've figured out at this point where to get most of the things I might want - I know of at least four places with good to excellent selections of English books - none compare to an actual American bookstore, but combine them and I have a reasonable degree of faith that I could find anything relatively mainstream, especially - surprisingly - in the area of science, which seems to be a popular reading topic in English here. I know where to find new gaming books, I know places to find cheap manga, cheap doujinshi, cheap Japanese video games, cheap DVD's, cheap CD's, etc. Other than English books, indeed, there is no reason I should have to pay full price for anything other than food. This pleases me immensely.
I bought my long desired convection oven, and made a spectacle of myself carrying it home on Sunday. No matter what I wear, no one really looks at me twice yesterday. But apparently wearing a fancy white top, a full length brides-maid style skirt, my Kathryn boots, and resting a box the size of my torso on my neck is, in fact, what it takes to get people in Tokyo to do a double take, cause I got multiple shocked glances. The box was really stinkin' heavy, too, and I carried it mile. I was rather proud of myself. Meanwhile, I haven't even plugged the friken thing in yet. :) I've been too busy doing other stuff. It's a nice Hitachi, and it was $40 off the tag price, and it's rather shiny all the way around. Once I hook it up, I'll pick up the ingredients for scones (I have most of them, but I don't have flour, or eggs, or milk. OH!! And I'm in the market for clever ways of using less butter that won't add fat - there are no ridiculous weird low fat butters here that I've been able to find.
My writing is going excellently, in other news. I know the general outline for most of the rest of the book, and yesterday I broke 80,000 words. I'm starting to think about the shape of another novel - the one based on my dream - and how I want it to be and what research I'm going to need to do. Before I get to that, though, I'm going to finish up the Hogwarts story I started long ago, the Changeling writing I'm partly done with, the Sirius Black short story I talked with
swan_tower about, and another project I was kind of in the middle of. That'll give me some time to research and the like. Because I think this project is going to need an outline, and research, and a whole lot of words. Like maybe more than one books worth of words. :)I've been pouring a lot of time into a project for mom, which I'm hoping to be done with by Monday. It's involved tons of staring at spreadsheets until my eyes cross, and I'm very much looking forward to being done with that part - though I'm nervous about the rest, which involves writing a report. Ah well, I'm sure I'll manage, it can't be scarier than writing a grant. In other ways, things are going well in that department. I was worried, honestly, that mom wouldn't have enough work for me - I wanted to be working 10 to 20 hours a week at least for her - and that I'd feel bad, but so far it hasn't been a problem, and it doesn't look like it will be for the foreseeable future. As she continues to have trouble with her surgery recovery, I've been taking over more and bigger responsibilities, which suits me fine.
Related to that, though, I'm starting to get the eerie feeling that my life is being pulled in other and new directions. The end of my first novel in sight - I think it's crap, but whatever, the first one is sort of going to be crap by definition ;) - and big plans which I think are much less crappy for a second. More and more work on the grants stuff. And the third aspect of work, which is that I WANT to bind stuff, seriously I do, but I have yet to figure out an effective way to integrate it. I'm thinking I need to name a day each week that that is definitely what I will do. Like Monday. Or something. At the moment, I'm not worrying about it too much. I've got a lot of time to get more on the ball, and I'm still getting everything together otherwise. After all, I only moved a month ago. :) It's an odd feeling, though one I vaguely anticipated being a side effect of deciding to move to Japan - I mean, how could it NOT change my life, right? In a strange way, I feel like I'm completely free. After this, maybe I should move some where else crazy. Why not, right? Then I remind myself that I run the risk of not getting the other side - I'll spend so much time adventuring that I won't get to have a normal life. That doesn't sound like much fun at all to me. Ah well. I just need to wait and see I think. :)
Living here has had one very positive effect on me. I'm much more willing to experiment with food. See, I order something, and I can't ask what's in it, because I won't understand what they tell me anyway, and I can't ask for changes (like no mayo) without risking the same problem, so usually I don't say anything at all. And once it's in front of me, I might as well just eat it. Hence the other week, I ordered something and it came out with some form of tempura something on top of it, I have no idea what it was...and I just ate it. And it was tasty. Today, I got kitsune soba, and it had a pink thing they put in it. So I ate it. Heck, today I willing added something that grew to my food - I've gotten so used to onion being put in my soba that it tasted wrong with out it, so when I found that one of the things on the table had onion bits in it, I added onion bits to my soba. I wouldn't say I'm adventurous yet, but I'm getting there slowly but surely, especially because so are none of my efforts have been bad, everything has been neutral or better. I've also found two incredibly tasty things. One I've mentioned, crepes, which are just amazing. To that I add mochi creams. OMG. They have a flavor, "Halloween Pudding," and it's to DIE for, one of the tastiest deserts I have EVER EATEN. I'm in love. :)
I don't have a scale, but I have a means of approximating my weight. Every morning after I get up, I take a tape measure and pull it as tight as it will go on my bust, my hips, and my waist. Obviously, I couldn't actually wear anything as small as those measurements - my actual comfortable measurements are about three inches bigger - but even so. Anyway, the first day my measurements were 34", 30", 38 1/2". Today, My measurements were 32", 27 1/4", and 36 3/4" inches. Oddly, my clothing doesn't seem to fit all that much better, but I can tell when I look in the mirror that I look better. (please note that following statement is not a cry for help, a request for compliments, or anything other than an honest reflection of my terrible self image as it comes to my appearance ;) ) I also know that whereas in the past I would see my reflection and invariably think "sure I've lost weight but I'm still a fat cow," now I have times where I see my reflection and I think, "hey, I don't actually look that bad, is that really me?" I have a ways to go, but I think I can do it. It's so much easier to eat healthily here that there is no comparison.
As for fitness, after today I'm prepared to say that my weight aside, I am in shape. This morning, I had an errand: I had to go to Shinjuku and pay my rent. However, after the agony on Sunday, I decided that I wanted to avoid jogging today, and clearly the way to do this was to walk to Shinjuku again. Remember that I did this two weeks ago and it left me a miserably whiny exhausted wreck. Anyway, I was a little worried that it would once again leave me a miserably, whiny, exhausted wreck, but decided to take the chance. I left at 10:30. I arrived in Shinjuku at 1, having stopped for lunch and also for a tasty cream filled pastry from Beard Papa. It's about 7 miles I think - maybe a little farther - so not a bad pace, about 3.5 mph taking in to account the stops, the lights, etc. Then I wandered around Shinjuku until 4, buying myself a mochi cream, visiting a couple of museums, paying my rent, and generally having a nice time of it all. I picked up an old friend, and decided that in honor of one month in Japan what I really wanted was a fricken hamburger, and not like they have at Mos Burger, a real Hamburger. I managed to find one with the help of the travel books at Kinokuniya, and went and had it and wow was it good to have some real beef for a change - most of the beef here we wouldn't serve outside of crappy Chinese Food in the states. Now, a crazy idea had occurred to me earlier in the day, and I'd convinced myself it was crazy and not to do it. But sitting in the restaurant, reading my old friend (one guess), having just enjoyed a wonderful American style burger, I had to wonder: they had cheesecake. Was it ACTUALLY cheesecake, or was it the imitation cheesecake I've found here so far? Eying the menu, my crazy idea came back. I wouldn't be violating my diet - despite the junk food I'd already eaten - and could even get myself a crepe and still potentially eat dinner - and get the cheesecake - if I walked home too. I was kind of stiff, it was true, and in my time in Shinjuku I'd climbed about 20 flights of stairs on top of the walking I'd already done (most businesses here are multiple story, often 7 or 8, and I try to take the stairs whenever possible) but...but wouldn't it be cool if I could? I could always hop a train if it didn't work.
So two weeks after walking about 10 miles in a day left me wanting to curl up and not move for two days, today I walked about 15 miles. The walk home? It went fine. Took less time than the walk out. I was in the zooooone. And I'm kind of stiff, and my feet hurt a little, but over all I feel kind of okay. I walked a fucking half marathon, and I feel okay. Heck, I feel like I could walk more, though I'll admit it wouldn't be my first choice. Now, granting that I've learned a whole lot about the importance of staying hydrated and now I'm much more careful to drink enough than I was two weeks ago, even so! I think I'm in shape. :)
(oh, wait, a trailer for Stardust! I wonder if it's coming here? I want to see it again!)
Lastly, even though I've already rambled a lot, I wanted to touch briefly on something I've just started to think about. I realized about a week ago that I'm getting a glimpse of life that most people at my education level don't normally get: I've spent a month living in a place where I am functionally illiterate. Beyond that, it's beyond my ability to communicate even simply ideas often. Beyond THAT, it's not even the kind of illiteracy I can fix by looking in a dictionary, because the problem is the kanji, which I can't read well enough to even figure out what word it's supposed to be I'm looking up.
It's been fascinating to watch how being unable to read affects my choices. I've already mentioned a little about how it affects food. Beyond that, it means that if I don't see certain cues, I don't go in to stores. I avoid any situation where I think I might need to sign up for something, or explain any sort of difficult concept. I try to find ways to make sure I'll have time with a menu that don't cause me to be in the way of other people, because even when I can read the characters I'm slow.
On the one hand, I'm not entirely illiterate. Last night I read 3 pages of Harry Potter in an hour and a half - terrifying in a way, but when you realize it's twice as fast as I read pages of HP even two weeks ago, it's clear how far I've come. I've been speeding up at One Piece, too, and seeing distinct signs that I'm starting to learn a lot. There are entire sentences I just read now and know what they mean that I didn't know any of the words in a month ago. And of course, given what I'm reading, I'm learning all sorts of useful words. I now know how to say "He Who Must Not Be Named," and "strange cloak-wearing people," thanks to HP. And owl, I mustn't for get that. Meanwhile, One Piece has been a fount of useful vocabulary, everything from "I will become king of the pirates!" to about a dozen ways to say "strong," I know how to say that the navy have sunk the pirate ship, and vice versa, and many other ship related terms. Thanks to Zolo I'm getting more used to slang, and thanks to Sanji and his friends I've learned a lot of vulgar terms. And, most importantly, I will never forget how to say "to shit ones pants in fear." This will clearly improve my quality of life.
On the other hand, talking to people is still torture. Even if I can think of how to say what I want, they might not understand. And even if I phrase questions to get the answers I'll understand, this never seems to happen. Somehow, asking yes or no questions like "Is it okay for me to take pictures in here?" never produces just a yes or a no, and instead I find myself guessing from what I catch of their answers and their facial expressions.
The illiteracy, ultimately, is the biggest problem though. I'm improving VERY fast, but just not fast enough. I'm losing my train of thought, though, so I guess I'll have to write more about this later. I've been typing too long.
That ended up more scatter brained than I thought it would - guess I'm a little more tired than I thought. ;) Anyway, last thing. Today, as I wrote, I bought an old friend, as I suggested I might yesterday. I mean the Eye of the World, in case it wasn't obvious. Anyway, I'm gonna try to read one to two chapters a day and, inspired by
swan_tower, I think I'm gonna blog my way through. I'll write some general stuff, but I've also always had a lot of love for the way that Jordan traces out the history of the world, and the planning he's put in to his prophecies, so even though I know I'm rehashing work others have already done, I'm gonna particularly focus on compiling these aspects of the book. If anyone is interested, rather than post it either public or friends locked on here, I thought I'd just go ahead and use a blogger blog, that way it'd be available to everyone in the universe without bothering my LJ friends who don't care. I'm gonna try to update daily, if only to say "nothin' much about this chapter, I don't like Perrin much." ;) If anyone is interested, feel free to join in, follow along, or whatever, the link is The Wheel Turns, though I might not get a post up tonight because I'm tired and I still haven't done my Ni90 writing. And I certainly won't be posting anything until after Hanazakari Kimitachie (the live action TV show of Hanakimi). ;)
