Graduation

Two of my closest friends from the lab just finished grad school today. I feel that the past two years I have spent with them are entirely an era in itself, and that the coming graduation next month will take my life, in general, into a whole new spin. I feel a bit anxious for myself, but at the same time, I share the success that they now enjoy. I look forward to the new lives they will take on this coming spring, content at the the thought that they generously filled mine ever since Tokyo took me into her arms.
ありがとう!

The consolation of the days I have enjoyed much is that I cannot pick a single one that can summarize all the wonders of a thankful heart. But if I have to, it would be this one day when they drove me out of Tokyo to their hometown, because we were all clueless of what to do with me during the days of my depression. That proved to be one morning that I can remember now in full clarity a streak of carbon-blue in my sky.

These are the photos from the black car, towing along, wafting the growing smell of pine trees of Ibaraki at the break of autumn last year.

おめでとうございます Gunji-chan and Koma-chan! すばらしい~\(^_^)/






New Black Car by the July for Kings. (I remember the radio was on.)

Joyeux anniversaire

Just how much we have grown older? Me with the meds, and you with "Paris je t'aime".

That 5PM when we were scaring the birds from the 4th floor, and how much hungry we were of the golden hours in the upper west side of the globe when we were 17, remember?

Happy birthday to you. All the love from Tokyo.

Music from Benton Paul, Paris

Last Friday's dinner

Sharing some photos from our little dinner over at Jay's house the other week.



Someone said that day was the coldest this winter in Tokyo so far . Deciding on nabe was certainly a good pick. Had fun! ^^

Sushi!

The other day, I had sushi for dinner at some random revolving sushi shop near the university with YG. Nothing fancy, all you gotta do is stuff your tummy with as much sushi your fingers can point.

I forgot to list down the names! You bet I was busy stuffing everything in my mouth.

Beer, and the interiors.

YG (the way he wants to be mysteriousy called in this blog, haha), eating lotsa sushi!

I think I couldn't fit in back inside my jacket after the dinner. xox

This is the ending! Now I couldn't possibly think how we ate everything on those plates! 'Twas a sushi overload night. haha...

Happy Birthday, Crazy!

Today is Wednesday and Crazy is celebrating her birthday. I promised her that I would take a photo of how my Wednesday would look like. So here it is, to Singapore!

Picture above is the train track passing through my university. This isn't exactly what captured my day, but I think today's weather is quite clear in this picture.

Today is a cloudy day. And very cold, too.

Me wants to snuggle back to my bed the whole day just like this,

but I got a TA job in the afternoon so I had to drag myself out.

So since this day was pretty lethargic, I decided to get lunch in a coffee shop.

^^

That's half of my day, Crazy, on your birthday. May you have a nice dinner with friends and Nemo later.

Kyoto again

Last July 20 to 21, I went to Kyoto with my labmate, Koma-chan. It was a very fast trip, most of which was spent in the conference Koma-chan was attending.

We didn't visit many places but glad I had the chance to go to those which I haven't been to the last time I visited Kyoto.

Hiking

I went hiking to this little mountain near Tokyo the other day with friends from the university. This week is Golden week, which means one week of holidays.

By some twist of stupidity, I erased all the photos I took using my camera. (>o<)

I only had the photos above from Felipe.

Had fun though!

TGIF

The best reward for a very long week is a Friday night.

A Friday night with a long-necked, ice cold beer sitting like a flirt on a table surrounded by communicative smoke, and friends whose level of exhaustion is as crispy as Pringles.

Everyone was morose as I predicted. Each one has a dart board with faces of professors on target. No one has better plans than getting drunk.

Sigh. That was a tough week, and another one is coming. Fed-ex me luck.

Diana left me a message

Spring 1940

Spring was always an awful time for me about work. I always felt that in the long boredom of winter there was nothing to do but study. But I lost the feeling in the long, dreamy spring days and managed to be in scholastic hot water by June. I can’t tell you what to do about it- all my suggestions seem to be remote and academic. But if I were with you and we could talk again like we used to, I might lift you out of your trouble about concentration. It really isn’t so hard, even with dreamy people like you and me - it’s just that we feel so damned secure at times as long as there’s enough in the bank to buy the next meal, and enough moral stuff in reserve to take us through the next ordeal. Our danger is imagining we have resources- material and moral- which we haven’t got. One of the reasons I find myself so consistently in valleys of depression is that every few years I seem to be climbing uphill to recover from some bankruptcy. Do you know what bankruptcy exactly means? It means drawing on resources which one does not possess. I thought that I was so strong that I never would be ill and suddenly I was ill for three years, and faced with a long, slow uphill climb. Wiser people seem to manage to pile up a reserve- so that if on a night you had set aside to study for a philosophy test, you learned that your best friend was in trouble and needed your help, you could skip that night and find you had a reserve of one or two days preparation to draw on. But I think that, like me, you will be something of a fool in that regard all your life, so I am wasting my words.”

-a letter from F.S. Fitzgerald to his daughter Frances

I'm drunk of missing so many people. I remember the last talk with Diana. That one was for the books.