focusing on good stuff

[jinian]

Work continues intense and not very successful. 12-hour day yesterday, going in again today for hopefully not too long. Here are some good things, though.

Amazing snack: basically homemade Pocky? Like a 6 inch x 1cm stick of hard cookie-bread, which seemed to have cocoa in it. Then it had been dipped twice, first in a white substance and then in a delicious purplish-red raspberry-flavored substance.

Russian researcher in another lab telling funny stories about the birth of his daughter two weeks ago. Also he told us her age would be two weeks in an hour and a half, which I think is the funniest elapsed-time specificity I've heard yet.

I got to proofread something for someone I like! Very hard to explain why English does certain things, but I like that, too.

The lab I'm working in at the moment uses methyl salicylate in their experiments, so it smells charmingly (once I found out it was normal) of wintergreen at irregular intervals.

All cultures surveyed thus far (me, Japan, Russia) have an equivalent expression to "third time's the charm."

Comments

[oyceter]

Ooo, how about "eyes are hungrier than the stomach"? I know it has equivalents in Mandarin ("eyes are bigger than your stomach"), Tagalog, and English so far...

[jinian]

Good idea! Will try to remember to ask. 15-hour day today, not much room in brain.

[jinian]

Apparently not? There's some "more is too much" saying, but he tried to give me "your neighbor's flowers are always prettier" too. This guy's English is really good, so I think that was a sign of reaching rather than misunderstanding. It might be relevant that taking too much food is really pretty unacceptable in Japan, maybe not the kind of thing there'd be a teasing saying for.