Mother, should I run for President? Roger Waters
Hearing this album for perhaps the billionth time since I turned 12, I just realised tonight that this particular piece of lyrics just doesn’t make any sense, being sung by an Englishman.
[…]
Class president, maybe?
[…]
I have way too much free time (not really).
I just spent half a day learning how to handle radio-isotopic material, feed my hypothetical SPF testing mice and properly dispose of dichloromethane (hint: not by flushing it down the drain), all in Japanese.
… Which would all be very useful if, you know, I ever worked with anything else than my computer and a blackboard.
Hanami season is officially on.
Yesterday was the day I chose to take care of all official administrative duties required by my new occupation and place of residence. Since I am not one to spread the pain, I went the all-inclusive package road and decided to do in one fell swoop: Foreigner Registration, National Health Insurance and Postal Savings Account (required, since the Monbukagakushō won’t give me my money on any other type of account)…
A delightful half-day excursion into the darkest recesses of Uji’s city hall and its – luckily adjacent – post office, made only more fun by the foreshadowing brought upon by close to five years living in Japan and nearly as many trips to a local city-hall…
First, was the usual cursing-under-my-breath of my parents’ screwed-up sense of humour whimsical inspiration, while trying to explain a frightened counter guy that, really, I could do with only two of my five given names and that anyway, the form would never fit them all. All in vain, of course, as the 500-pages form-validation manual for employees is very clear on that: [all] given names must be filled-in. Unfortunately said manual did not indicate how to deal with printer limitation on field size leading to half the names being left out of the printed version. But it only took another couple breaks of cold sweat and a dozen trips to various superiors to be settled by manual use of a ballpoint pen.
Then, I must be becoming really jaded (or I have done this too many times), but the only question on my mind while filling my slightly unusual (yet technically EU territory) place of birth was not: “will they take it as is” but: “how long before they come back to the counter with their world atlas in hand”.
I was wrong.
The employee who came back 10 minutes later, was carrying Wikipedia printouts. Times, my friend: they’re a-changing.
Incidentally, my current home address, not counting name and apartment number, is:
京都府宇治市五ヵ庄三番割官有地
京都大学国際交流会館おうばく分館.
Do you know how many kanji there are in there?
I do.
After filling out by hand eight different forms requiring my address, I. most. certainly. do.
And for the record: don’t even think of abbreviating 京都大学 to 京大 to save two kanji, because she’ll catch you and make you correct it like the naughty schoolboy that you are.
I just can’t wait to do it all again in six months when I move cities.
I need to dramatically raise the hang-drying capacity of my balcony…
Or start doing laundry more often than once a month.
If, like me, you delight in advance at the possibility of one day being diagnosed with an incurable disease linked to a gene named after the world’s most famous blue hedgehog, feel free to circulate the following petition:
Dear fellows at the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Guidelines Committee,
It has recently come to my attention that you have decided to do away with names deemed “inappropriate or offensive” found in the existing international gene nomenclature.
I couldn’t agree more: I always thought that the officially registered name for gene kill-all-the-Jews-and-drink-their-blood was a bit politicised for a scientific setting.
Whatever you do, however, keep your hands off gene SHH, otherwise officially known as sonic hedgehog homolog (Drosophila) gene. We like it the way it is (blue, spiky and running very fast). Beside, what better way to break the news of some potentially fatal gene mutation disease to a kid, than by introducing a beloved computer game mascot!
PS: and for chrissake, drop the Comic Sans font: it makes your world-class gene database website look like it was coded by a 1st year CS student in 1991 (yes, I know: it probably was).
Love,
Most unfortunate quote of the week, courtesy of some economist quoted by the Guardian:
[…] One should not forget the great depression, and that the way we got out of it was a world war. Germany, Japan and China have to do more. […] Heiner Flassbeck, Guardian.co.uk
Of course, this is taken entirely out-of-context for comic relief. I still did a double-take upon reading that sentence.
Am I the only one absolutely befuddled that a multi-billion dollar company that has had over two decades to iron out the details of its poor excuse for a enterprise-standard word processor, has never managed to come up with one single passable built-in template for business letters?
And I am not talking about their “Fantasy” or even “Elegant” letter templates, which would make my niece’s MySpace page seem sober and sophisticated by comparison. No: I am referring to their most basic, no-frills, “Business modern” template, which still manages to look like the caricature of a “don’t” example in a primer on business etiquette and communication (pro tip: the fact that your monitor has colours, and possibly so does your printer, doesn’t mean you should try to stuff the entire rainbow in your official print documents).
Time to start writing my mail with LaTeX.
In Paris (and Europe at large) for the week… Should be back in the Kyo just in time for hanami.
Sensei: Blah blah blah… international collaboration project… blah blah blah… grant submission accepted… blah blah blah… Five year budget.
Dave: Great. But, huh, how does it affect me?
Sensei: How would you feel about going to Berlin or Boston for three months? All expenses paid, of course.
Dave: Sure, what’s the schedule and which project would I be working on?
Sensei: Oh, it’s entirely up to you, just pick the faculty and project you’d like to work on and a time during this fiscal year you’d like to go. Where would you prefer: Berlin or Boston?
Dave: Dunno. Both are nice.
Does either include daily spa and massage, by any chance?Sensei: If you want, you can do one country this year and the other next year.
Dave: You don’t say.
Sensei: We’ll also send you to their workshop in Boston this Summer anyway.
Dave: Recession hasn’t hit our lab yet, has it…