I wrote in my diary a year ago – “Growing old is everyone’s business. There will always be someone younger than you, and always someone older than you. The point is not in comparing your age to someone else’s, but in comparing yourself now to yourself as you were years ago. How much you have changed in the years that passed is what matters.”

Today I feel nostalgic of sorts, because today marks the 10th year since I last spent my birthday together with my family in the Philippines. Fortunately, I’ve got my own family here in Japan – Baggy, Aya, and with Mommy as a “bonus,” heheh. Plus the friends and other acquaintances I’ve made – Japanese, Filipinos, and other foreign friends. They’re as much as my family now.

I’m not much into gifts, but well, I’ve just received my early gifts on this day. One is a humongous card from Mom and my sisters. The other is another flower “shower” from Baggy! Sobrang daming roses, hay – I have to use three flower vases to contain them all! A word of advice to all single women out there – if you’re looking for a lifetime partner, look for someone who will give you flowers not when he is wooing you, but someone who will still give you flowers way after you’re married. Di ba?

So much to be thankful for, so much to look forward to. I know this year will be GREAT.

See how big it is???

Don’t expect any gifts. Right. Thanks for the reminder! haha

I’m a sucker for red roses. Kung puede lang kainin tong rose na to, kakainin ko eh.

Petit pink roses!

Well, I do want one gift for my birthday – a digital SLR camera! Heheh! I’m tired of using point-and-shoot cameras and would really, really love to experiment with a “real” camera.

Aya, together with her classmates, has only two more days to go in her current class, the Momo (Japanese word for peach) class. Starting next month, the start of the fiscal year in Japan, she will be moving to the 3-year old class. Unlike her current class where they had three adult teachers looking after the children, the 3-year old class will be looked after by only one teacher. Wow, they’re not babies anymore!

Aya chan with the rest of the Momo class. She’s the one wearing a maroon sweater at the center. I find it rather amusing that some of the kids are already flashing the “V” sign!

Starting next month, Aya will be moving to the other wing of the building, where the “big kids” rooms are located. And starting next month, she will be bringing a lunchbox filled with gohan (rice). Good thing we didn’t have to prepare a complete lunch meal. The rest will still be provided by the daycare. Money-wise, we will be paying much less than what we are paying now. And here’s a big plus for me – I won’t have to make entries in her journal everyday, and instead of private communications from the respective teachers, announcements and other notices will only be posted at the door or at the entrance to the room. Well, that’s goodbye to my forced Japanese writing everyday! Yay! Now, if only I could do speed reading…sigh. My only recourse right now is to take pictures of announcements and read them at home, where I can plough through the unknown kanji characters in the comfort of my online and handheld dictionaries.

Anyways, every year the whole class is photographed together with their senseis and copies are given to each one as keepsake. Tanong ng Mom ko, may bayad ba yun? Actually wala. Sa Pinas kasi di ba kailangang bayaran mo pa ang kopya ng picture mo. Racket kasi nila, hehe. 😛

In our group, a postdoc is packing up and leaving us for another institute, but next month another one will be joining us. Every year we face the same cycle of students leaving at the end of March, and new faces greeting us at the start of April. Many of our friends are hauling their stuffs and cleaning out their rooms before the end of the month in preparation for moving into their new niches by April 1. I think it’s no coincidence that the start of the fiscal year here in Japan is about the same time when the sakuras bloom and the spring season has officially arrived. It’s an appropriate symbolism for the start of new things, the rebirth and reawakening of life.

Time to move on, indeed.

The last game I’ve ever played on PS2 was Final Fantasy X (FFX), about four years ago. That was about the time when Aya was born. Since we had to spend many a night wide awake tending to her, we were able to finish the game spending a lot of time up to the wee hours of the morning. As a newborn baby Aya would just sleep clutched in our arms (of course we had to take turns). It was as much fun to watch the game as playing it.

Here’s the cover of the just-released Final Fantasy XII.

After that, well, we just became too busy to play anymore. Baggy went back to Osaka to resume work, and he brought the PS2 with him. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t get to play anything else since then. When he finally joined us in Tsukuba, of course he brought the PS2 back with him. But since then the PS2 had been tucked inside the AV board, hidden from sight. It was only when we had our cable upgraded to digital did we finally take it out of its hiding place, and only because the digital tuner set top box was too big to place on top of our tv. The only place to put it is inside the AV board. So the PS2 had to be displaced outside.

Since Baggy joined us in Tsukuba, he had been quite busy with FAST affairs. Now that he has already passed on the responsibilities to somebody else, we can have our weekends back. Yay! 🙂

Anyway, to make a long story short, the temptation proved too much to resist. Pretty soon Baggy and I were twiddling the controllers again. At ang kunsintidor na tatay, tinuruan pa ang anak na si Aya. Kaya ayun, marunong nang maggalaw-galaw ng controller. 🙂 In fact for the past week Baggy has been playing FFX all over again. I’ve lost interest in FFX and really wanted to play something else. Coincidentally, Final Fantaxy XII was just released last March 16. We saw the full motion video being played at the electronics shop nearby, and oh boy, it was damn gorgeous. It was all we could do to keep from buying it. Suckers. Hehehe. But the graphics are really awesome. That’s about four years of improvement from the last FF we played. We skipped the online game FFXI, so I can’t tell if there was something extra we missed between FFX and FFXII.

I found a cool website made by a gamer already playing FFXII. You can find his review of the game here. We have completed as much as he (the gamer) had already, actually up to fighting the T-Rex. In my play, I got too cocky as well and tried to take on the T-Rex. Big mistake! Anyway, since everything is in Japanese, progress is a bit slow, because I had to take a lot of time trying to understand the dialogues and all. Playing the game is easy enough, but we’d really like to follow the story line because that’s part of enjoying the game, too.

Signout na ko para makapaglaro ulit…hahahaa.

While others are celebrating the beginning of spring already, we “kafunsho” or hay fever patients are suffering in every sense of the word. We were lucky in that we didn’t experience the symptoms as early as February, as in some years. But you can bet your bottom dollar that the hay fever season will surely come. Right smack at the beginning of this month, we started experiencing the sniffles. Red, itchy eyes and clogged nostrils. Hay buhay.

Eto ang may kasalanan ng lahat. Ang sugi…bow. Dito galing lahat ng pollen na nalalanghap namin.

Funny thing is, we only developed these allergies after having stayed here for a long time – during the first three years or so of our stay here, we breezed through spring and enjoyed the sakuras and all the other stuff you can enjoy in spring. I remember when my labmate asked me if I had “kafunsho,” I could only reply, huh? What the heck is that? I didn’t have a clue then. A few years later, I was wheezing like the rest of them.

Why in the world did the Japanese plant “sugi” or Japanese cedar (cryptomeria japonica) all over their mountains? I don’t know the reason. What I do know is that about 20 years ago the word “kafunsho” was inexistent. They made up the word when the number of allergy sufferers shot up. Apparently, they are now trying to develop species of the cedar which do not pollinate so much. Good luck to them. In the meantime, the pharmaceutical companies and drug stores are drawing for a kill. Everything from nose sprays, eye drops, anti-histamines, masks and even goggles are for sale. I’ve tried all except for the goggles. They simply look silly. Parang pang-Halloween costume. Anyway, good thing that at our clinic I could get all my drugs for free. The perks of health insurance. I have to buy the masks, though. 🙁

Since both Baggy and I are hay-fever sufferers, there is a very good chance that Aya would develop her own allergy, too. Good thing she is not experiencing it yet.

As for us, we’ll enjoy the cool spring air, but we’ll curse the pollen.

I’ve created a separate category for blogs about Aya’s experiments (see “Experiments” – what a no-brainer, eh?). Last week we performed a so-called “bottle tornado,” where we created a water vortex using two PET bottles.

For this experiment, we used the following: 2 PET bottles, one make-shift washer (just one of the caps for the PET bottle, with a hole bored through it), tape, and some food coloring.

Aya fills one of the PET bottles with water, about 2/3 full.

Aya then adds food coloring to the water. This is only optional, actually. Aya chose yellow, her favorite color!

The mouth of the second bottle is then balanced on top of the make-shift washer. The two bottles are fastened with tape.

The bottles are then turned over. With Tatay’s help, Aya then moves the top bottle in rapid circles.

After giving the bottle a good spin, a water vortex is formed – success! 🙂

Here’s a closeup of the water vortex formed at the top bottle. Can you see it?

The principle is simple – water is held in the top bottle by the air pressure in the lower bottle, and the surface tension of the water in the “washer.” Spinning the bottle creates a turning force in the water that breaks the surface tension, allowing the water to flow. The air in the lower bottle is then forced into the top.

Till next experiment! 🙂 🙂 🙂