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accumulated things
Oct. 5th, 2012 02:44 pmStill no internet at home.
Suitemates
- Lulu (plant bio! boosting CO2 metabolism for higher productivity; chatty and fun; afraid to cook spaghetti)
- Nicole (economics, some industrial level whatsit; has never seen the ocean; lots of experience with Americans in some special institute so very American accent and fluency)
- [name plate in hanzi only] (seems nice, not much English; offered me a tomato for my salad)
- new person moved in Thursday, haven't seen her yet
Peanut cream is really, really not peanut butter. I suspected this, given that I've always heard it's impossible to get peanut butter outside North America, but I didn't know what it might be like. Well, strawberry jam from Lawson is completely reasonable jam, and white bread is super-thick and soft but also clearly itself. Peanut cream is... translucent. It is nothing like cream either. Imagine the syrup you might cook to make peanut butter fudge. Peanut cream has that clarity and some of that sweetness. Maybe 25% syrup and 25% peanut solids, by the flavor. However, what the 50% remaining may be I know not. It's not actually bad, just kind of eldritch.
I got to use a microscope Wednesday! Hurrah! Spinning disc confocal. And had lunch with women of the lab, and learned to dissect and image ovules. Work steadies me. Also, it is blessedly cool in the plant growth room and actually a bit chilly in the miscroscope room. Aaahhhh. The weather here is no worse than it was in Boston during my recent trip, but August in Boston made me tired and floppy too. Also, Boston in general agrees with me about what reasonable room temp is; the lab thermostat is set to 26-28C, which is still too damned hot for being this muggy. (The university vice president told us during orientation that this was ridiculous weather for the season compared to his childhood 40 years ago, and that it would get fall-like soon, honest. I expect it's the same thing as me telling new people in the lab that normally Seattle weather isn't like whatever it's like at the time.)
Okay, so the toilets. Everyone knows that Japanese toilets are ridiculous, right? Either they're regular Asian style squat types, or they're Western style but with about fifty more options than necessary. There is no middle ground. And, as it turns out, I am stuck with two main options for using toilets: at the dorm and at the lab. Both offend me. They're both the absurd over-elaborate Western style, which normally is fine -- and honestly the "powerful deodorizer" button is a good idea and we should all have them, it just seems to be a really strong vent fan in the bowl -- but they have different obnoxious features.
At the dorm, we have the Hot Seat. Normally the butt warmer is a CHOICE; here it is constant. We are admonished to put the seat down when we're done, too, so power isn't wasted while it's non-optionally keeping the damned thing hot for our asses. Have I mentioned it is 30 degrees out? (86F)
And at the lab, we have the Skirt Lifter. Most toilets allow me to start the necessary interaction; not so my new friend at the lab. As soon as one enters the stall, the seat automatically raises up. In combination with the shorter height of Japanese folks, which means that there's less leg room in the stall, this behavior means that my dress goes up rather before I intended it to, and in unhelpful ways. It also plays loud water-rushing noises automatically, which considering how dehydrated I keep getting sometimes leaves me wondering whether I have peed at all.
[ETA] Oh, I almost forgot. At orientation yesterday, the most useful presentation was about identifying and dealing with culture shock, and they said you can start in a "honeymoon phase." Okay so far! But she compared the honeymoon phase to being introduced to your first Japanese toilet, with the strong implication that obviously we find them heavenly. Audience: "..." I am pretty sure that the entire room of international students was thinking WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOUR TOILETS ARE ABSURD, just like I was. I did wonder whether lota users were satisfied with the washing options or would still prefer to self-serve, but it's not the kind of thing I can find out readily.
Fun thing from Thursday: The guy with the desk next to mine said "see you later" to me as he was leaving. Okay, not exactly the usual leaving-work thing in English, but I said "see you tomorrow" all cheerfully. He said it again on the way out the door, in place of what one normally says, leading to widespread laughter and I swear like fifteen minutes of other people repeating it in wondering tones and seeming to discuss whether this was reasonable or what it meant or what else one might say, and how it was clearly because of Kylee-san. Being me, I figured it would be funny if I said the Japanese thing on my own way out, so I looked it up. It's a little long and my Japanese sucks, so I wrote it down, but I did read it out to everyone and got a laugh. Hopefully this indicates that I am fun and a good sport rather than just a pathetic failure at speaking like humans. :)
Thursday morning I had bad touch-hunger. I don't think it's just ovulation. I don't feel like I've been all that cuddly recently, but there's a huge difference between someone to hold in your bed every night (if you are not too hot) and no one on the continent to snuggle up to at all.
Today has been spent almost entirely in bank shenanigans, but my tuition has now been paid. I would like a medal now, please. In general daily life is a huge amount of work right now; just buying lunch, I felt like SUCCESS! Which is kind of great, yay succeeding, but honestly the fact that buying lunch requires any all-caps reaction of any kind is tiring. And it's like that for almost everything.
Suitemates
- Lulu (plant bio! boosting CO2 metabolism for higher productivity; chatty and fun; afraid to cook spaghetti)
- Nicole (economics, some industrial level whatsit; has never seen the ocean; lots of experience with Americans in some special institute so very American accent and fluency)
- [name plate in hanzi only] (seems nice, not much English; offered me a tomato for my salad)
- new person moved in Thursday, haven't seen her yet
Peanut cream is really, really not peanut butter. I suspected this, given that I've always heard it's impossible to get peanut butter outside North America, but I didn't know what it might be like. Well, strawberry jam from Lawson is completely reasonable jam, and white bread is super-thick and soft but also clearly itself. Peanut cream is... translucent. It is nothing like cream either. Imagine the syrup you might cook to make peanut butter fudge. Peanut cream has that clarity and some of that sweetness. Maybe 25% syrup and 25% peanut solids, by the flavor. However, what the 50% remaining may be I know not. It's not actually bad, just kind of eldritch.
I got to use a microscope Wednesday! Hurrah! Spinning disc confocal. And had lunch with women of the lab, and learned to dissect and image ovules. Work steadies me. Also, it is blessedly cool in the plant growth room and actually a bit chilly in the miscroscope room. Aaahhhh. The weather here is no worse than it was in Boston during my recent trip, but August in Boston made me tired and floppy too. Also, Boston in general agrees with me about what reasonable room temp is; the lab thermostat is set to 26-28C, which is still too damned hot for being this muggy. (The university vice president told us during orientation that this was ridiculous weather for the season compared to his childhood 40 years ago, and that it would get fall-like soon, honest. I expect it's the same thing as me telling new people in the lab that normally Seattle weather isn't like whatever it's like at the time.)
Okay, so the toilets. Everyone knows that Japanese toilets are ridiculous, right? Either they're regular Asian style squat types, or they're Western style but with about fifty more options than necessary. There is no middle ground. And, as it turns out, I am stuck with two main options for using toilets: at the dorm and at the lab. Both offend me. They're both the absurd over-elaborate Western style, which normally is fine -- and honestly the "powerful deodorizer" button is a good idea and we should all have them, it just seems to be a really strong vent fan in the bowl -- but they have different obnoxious features.
At the dorm, we have the Hot Seat. Normally the butt warmer is a CHOICE; here it is constant. We are admonished to put the seat down when we're done, too, so power isn't wasted while it's non-optionally keeping the damned thing hot for our asses. Have I mentioned it is 30 degrees out? (86F)
And at the lab, we have the Skirt Lifter. Most toilets allow me to start the necessary interaction; not so my new friend at the lab. As soon as one enters the stall, the seat automatically raises up. In combination with the shorter height of Japanese folks, which means that there's less leg room in the stall, this behavior means that my dress goes up rather before I intended it to, and in unhelpful ways. It also plays loud water-rushing noises automatically, which considering how dehydrated I keep getting sometimes leaves me wondering whether I have peed at all.
[ETA] Oh, I almost forgot. At orientation yesterday, the most useful presentation was about identifying and dealing with culture shock, and they said you can start in a "honeymoon phase." Okay so far! But she compared the honeymoon phase to being introduced to your first Japanese toilet, with the strong implication that obviously we find them heavenly. Audience: "..." I am pretty sure that the entire room of international students was thinking WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOUR TOILETS ARE ABSURD, just like I was. I did wonder whether lota users were satisfied with the washing options or would still prefer to self-serve, but it's not the kind of thing I can find out readily.
Fun thing from Thursday: The guy with the desk next to mine said "see you later" to me as he was leaving. Okay, not exactly the usual leaving-work thing in English, but I said "see you tomorrow" all cheerfully. He said it again on the way out the door, in place of what one normally says, leading to widespread laughter and I swear like fifteen minutes of other people repeating it in wondering tones and seeming to discuss whether this was reasonable or what it meant or what else one might say, and how it was clearly because of Kylee-san. Being me, I figured it would be funny if I said the Japanese thing on my own way out, so I looked it up. It's a little long and my Japanese sucks, so I wrote it down, but I did read it out to everyone and got a laugh. Hopefully this indicates that I am fun and a good sport rather than just a pathetic failure at speaking like humans. :)
Thursday morning I had bad touch-hunger. I don't think it's just ovulation. I don't feel like I've been all that cuddly recently, but there's a huge difference between someone to hold in your bed every night (if you are not too hot) and no one on the continent to snuggle up to at all.
Today has been spent almost entirely in bank shenanigans, but my tuition has now been paid. I would like a medal now, please. In general daily life is a huge amount of work right now; just buying lunch, I felt like SUCCESS! Which is kind of great, yay succeeding, but honestly the fact that buying lunch requires any all-caps reaction of any kind is tiring. And it's like that for almost everything.
