The Return of the Weekend Update
How was my weekend?
Pretty awesome, as it happens.
Friday, this quarter at least, is a pretty short day. I only have Japanese class and then I have the rest of the day to myself. But this time was a little different.
To begin with, my Japanese teacher had arranged specially for a representative from Temple University's Tokyo campus to come and visit our school. There are a few of us in the class who are pretty serious about transferring to Temple for Junior and Senior year; it's a great school with a good rep, and I can get a decent shot at the Master's Linguistics program at Kyoto University from there. Should I feel like doing that, that is.
And I might do, since Shiomi-sensei and I had a really interesting conversation after class. I'm working up an educational plan that might allow me to pursue both statistical analysis AND Asian languages. It's too early to look at it too directly, but it's the beginnings of a direction.
At any rate, Shiomi-sensei arranged for a very nice guy from Temple to come over and chat with us for a bit, and that was really productive. I had estimated, based on some rough numbers that I pulled out of my based on some faulty data, that Temple was going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of what it cost SpaceX to develop the Dragon spacecraft. To my surprise, it turns out that the total annual cost, all included, is... well, okay, it's still godawful expensive, but not as bad as I thought it might be. It was good news, trust me.
I had to leave the meeting a little early, though, as I had to give a short speech that I had written. In Japanese. In front of two dozen very cute Japanese girls from Kinjo University in Nagoya. They come over every year to study and do internships in the hospitality industry, and every year we apparently do a little welcoming ceremony for them. I guess my speech went down well.
I did the grocery shopping on the way home, pumping the brakes to keep the pressure up on the pedal as the master cylinder is going bye-bye. I called Les Schwab to see how much it would run for them to replace it. Four hundred bucks.
Oy.
Saturday I called EEB to see if swapping out a master cylinder on a Volvo S40 was something that actual humans could do. Ed has a pretty fair assessment of my mechanical skills.
"Sure, you could do it," he said, after talking me through the process.
I went to AutoZone and ordered the part for seventy bucks. It should be here tomorrow and Martial and I can take care of it next weekend.
The rest of Saturday was spent watching James Bond movies on Blu-Ray and eating absolutely everything that got in arm's reach, as it's Cheat Day. I made a loaf of bread and went for sushi at Blue Island (authentic Federal Way sushi greeting: "Irrashaimase, señor!") and drank Mexican Cokes.
Today was almost all homework, except for short breaks to do homework, take a short walk along the Green River, and a brief visit to Guitar Center to not spend any money. We're coming up on finals now, so I've got a paper, a research project, two written finals and an oral exam all looming.
But it's fun.
Pretty awesome, as it happens.
Friday, this quarter at least, is a pretty short day. I only have Japanese class and then I have the rest of the day to myself. But this time was a little different.
To begin with, my Japanese teacher had arranged specially for a representative from Temple University's Tokyo campus to come and visit our school. There are a few of us in the class who are pretty serious about transferring to Temple for Junior and Senior year; it's a great school with a good rep, and I can get a decent shot at the Master's Linguistics program at Kyoto University from there. Should I feel like doing that, that is.
And I might do, since Shiomi-sensei and I had a really interesting conversation after class. I'm working up an educational plan that might allow me to pursue both statistical analysis AND Asian languages. It's too early to look at it too directly, but it's the beginnings of a direction.
At any rate, Shiomi-sensei arranged for a very nice guy from Temple to come over and chat with us for a bit, and that was really productive. I had estimated, based on some rough numbers that I pulled out of my based on some faulty data, that Temple was going to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of what it cost SpaceX to develop the Dragon spacecraft. To my surprise, it turns out that the total annual cost, all included, is... well, okay, it's still godawful expensive, but not as bad as I thought it might be. It was good news, trust me.
I had to leave the meeting a little early, though, as I had to give a short speech that I had written. In Japanese. In front of two dozen very cute Japanese girls from Kinjo University in Nagoya. They come over every year to study and do internships in the hospitality industry, and every year we apparently do a little welcoming ceremony for them. I guess my speech went down well.
I did the grocery shopping on the way home, pumping the brakes to keep the pressure up on the pedal as the master cylinder is going bye-bye. I called Les Schwab to see how much it would run for them to replace it. Four hundred bucks.
Oy.
Saturday I called EEB to see if swapping out a master cylinder on a Volvo S40 was something that actual humans could do. Ed has a pretty fair assessment of my mechanical skills.
"Sure, you could do it," he said, after talking me through the process.
I went to AutoZone and ordered the part for seventy bucks. It should be here tomorrow and Martial and I can take care of it next weekend.
The rest of Saturday was spent watching James Bond movies on Blu-Ray and eating absolutely everything that got in arm's reach, as it's Cheat Day. I made a loaf of bread and went for sushi at Blue Island (authentic Federal Way sushi greeting: "Irrashaimase, señor!") and drank Mexican Cokes.
Today was almost all homework, except for short breaks to do homework, take a short walk along the Green River, and a brief visit to Guitar Center to not spend any money. We're coming up on finals now, so I've got a paper, a research project, two written finals and an oral exam all looming.
But it's fun.