Monthly Archives: April 2008

Taking Time Out

Life In Japan

I could barely enjoy the outdoors nowadays because of my allergies, and believe it or not, we’re seeing more of rain than sunshine these days. What a bummer! But last weekend we actually got lucky – we were blessed with sunshine and clear skies, and it was warm enough to just wear a shirt outside. We hied off to Doho Park – for the first time in months. If there’s one thing I’m grateful for living here in Tsukuba, it’s the accessibility to parks. We all need time to unwind. For me, parks will do the trick quite easily. Just roll out the mat, soak in the sun (within reasonable time limits), jog around, play.

And so we did exactly just that.

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Who, Me?

Random Thoughts

Scene One:

The year: 1995. I was hunched over my book, reading. Then one of the guys from our lab approached me from behind and exclaimed:

“Kathy, nakakalbo ka na.” (Kathy, you’re starting to go bald.)

I carelessly shrugged off the comment the way you would dust off dandruff from your shoulders. I have had super-thin fine hair for as long as I could remember. I wasn’t exactly blessed with glorious mane like my two wicked sisters. And I have this ahm…cowlick that looks like a gash right smack on top of my head. We call it puyo in Tagalog, I think. My “puyo” is so obvious, peeking through the barest amount of hair, that it makes me sort of look err…balding. Depends on which angle you’re looking. Not as bald as your Archbishop in your favorite church, but …you get the picture. Incidentally my puyo is conveniently hidden whenever I tie my hair into a ponytail.

Scene Two:

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The Analogy Between Papers and Souls

Random Thoughts

“You’ve got to get rid of all those papers,” Baggy told me one evening while we were sitting down for dinner.

“What papers?” I asked him.

“Those papers which you have accumulated for the last twelve years,” he replied. He was referring to the piles of papers I’ve kept all these years, and are still awaiting Judgement Day in the boxes which we had used when we moved out of our old place.

“Oh, that.” I sighed. I’m an avid collector of memorabilia and other mundane stuffs. And that includes anything and everything. I love to go over old stashes of papers and reminisce the events associated with each one. Like that brochure we got from the hotel when we stayed in Narita, or Singapore, or wherever. Or the handouts I got from my first six months of Japanese intensive course in Tohoku U, complete with my doodles and notes. You get the picture.

But this is Japan – where space is precious, and we don’t have the luxury of spacious storage space in our house. We have to take the “minimalist” approach: retain only what is essential, trash the inessentials.

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The Reluctant Birthday Girl

Special Occasions

Yep, that would be me. Sigh.

When we were young, we looked forward to birthdays.  Birthdays are always happy occasions – cakes, parties, gifts, friends. We simply couldn’t wait till the next birthday celebration.

But as we grow older, more often than not we wish that the birthdays wouldn’t come anymore. We wish that we could skip that particular day and not have to count the years anymore. We wish we could just hide from the world and let the day slip by without anyone else remembering. Or maybe that’s just me. I usually start getting depressed at the start of my birth month – March – and this continues until the very end of the month. I always wished that I could breeze through the days and get to April…fast.

But then the birthday greetings would pour in – and no matter how fervently I wished that nobody would remember my birthday, exactly the opposite happens. Friends and families will never make you forget, hahah. 😉 The only way you could get back at them is to do the same thing to them when their own birthdays come.

birthday card

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