i didn't see this coming!

when i purchased my iPhone, it was only the week before the iPhone white was launched. and i originally didn't even have that strong desire to possess an iPhone in the first place, especially the design that does not particularly attract me at all. but i did after all, it's a smart phone, and the line provider is softbank (this is the major reason coz practically everyone close to me is using that, so to use another will be my loss)

and today, i just saw this:

it's a flip and it's smart phone!!

btw, smap in this is sooo funny.

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

Baskin robbins a.k.a sa-tiwan

From the first time i went to indulge the srumptiliciousness of baskin robbin's ice-cream here, it took me less than a month to savor it for the third time already. But there's something quite different between the one in malaysia and in japan. It's how it is known.

The first time i went was on 31st of last month. It was chilly at the time, but who cares, there's discount! I invited my friend to go along with me (i don't wanna eat alone at the shop). So i gave a mail:

Me : there's discount at baskin robbins today right? I want to eat icecream, let's go together!

My friend : alright! Where's the place?

Me: i think it's very near to Saizeriya

My friend : u mean Sa-tiwan?

*it took me about a few minutes to figure out what he said, i was like "what korean word he's talking about now?"*

me : yea!

Apparently no one knows the name baskin robbins here. Even the website is www.31ice.co.jp they call it thirty-one (of coz with the katakana english). I wonder why they don't translate it fully like 'sanjuuichi'? Lol but yeah, it's really a delight especially in a hot weather like now. I'm still trying to get used with the recent heat. It's just like malaysia now. Wearing 2 layers nearly not applicable. Back to the topic, actually i also tried another place for ice-cream just the other day. They have many specialty menu with the icecream and they prepare it on the spot, like handling dough on the ice-cold stone slabs. btw, the shop's name is 'cold stone' (and aisya jLo mistook it as 'cold storage' at first :P) what makes it quite special is how merry the atmosphere they personally create! They practically sing a lot songs (mostly that sounds like nursery rhymes) every now and then while serving the customers. But maybe because they are simply attracted to our foreigner self, when it was our turn, they interviewed us instead. Maa ii ka, at least the icecream was truly delicious!!

 

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

2 consecutive weekends at home

(okay, i lied as it's not entirely true, for lunch on the recent saturday, i went somewhere which i spent about 5 hours, but yeah, it's only for lunch, with dessert of a very delicious ice-cream).

yet, what i did was just idling time away leaving the works all done at the very last minute. give me no matter how many hours in a day, and i can still fill it with nothing beneficial at all.

what's wrong with my head? can't i feel the sense of crisis by now?

about 2/3 weeks left before the final exam.


p/s: i want a new purse(mine is lost for quite a while). a leather purse specifically. a beautiful one but won't cost me much. is that too much to ask?

something like these perhaps?  (just why these are sooo damn expensive??)

Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

Thus the 8th weekend

This view is magnificent. For some reason i managed to drag my feet to odaiba last friday, but still no chance to ride this. Anyone would like to ride this together? Odaiba is beautiful and i believe it's even more so if viewed from above, like from inside the gondola.

Everyone, do your best completing all the works! It's school again tomorrow. I'm trying hard doing mine in the remaining of the day while listening to Oceanlane. I love their music, if only there's any of their concerts i can go to....

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

Borborygmus

i just found an interesting word.

it's a word that describes what always happens to me recently. it simply means the growling of the stomach.

i just woke up and it makes that sound again.

by the time i'm writing this, it's about a quarter to 5 in the morning and it's already so bright.

this is the sight i get from my balcony at 4:50 a.m. passing that gate at the other side is my university. walking about 100 meters from there is pretty much the engineering department. i love my current house.

and actually yesterday i slept from nearly 8 p.m. until it was nearly 4 in the morning. i missed yesterday episode of BOSS!

okay, i should be grateful i woke up in time for Subuh prayer, but regrettable for the Isya' that i missed (never thought i could actually miss that one, astaghfirullah)

what happened to my body clock? it seems not to be in japan. this is not the first time. it's becoming frequent lately. even on the previous day too (but there was no drama i watch on the tv on that day, so i don't particularly care)

i just hope today it won't behave that way again, i have something to look forward tonite. yeah, nico!

jaa, mata!

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

when my tongue got frozen

one of the thing that i feel a bit anxious here is when someone ask me something about my religion, like the 'why' questions. obviously, muslims are a minority here, and most japanese barely have any interaction with muslims, so they are full of curiosity upon meeting one. because i'm the one writing here, yes i'm talking about the very conspicuous me. and given my very restricted japanese ability, explaining is always so difficult, and i'm most afraid i'll cause misunderstanding due to my own shortcomings, or being offensive instead.

one of the friends i made here has some muslim friends before (and malaysian in fact, very similar as me). so he was quite informed about muslim, he knows that we do pray and have stuff we eat and do not eat. i was a bit comfortable with that, at least he's not puzzled when i say i want to go pray when we are in the middle of something. but just the other day, he asked me this:

"why do you not eat pig? is it because it's holy?"

at the time, i was eating ice-cream, and when he says that, the image of pig came across my head, and this is my first time hearing such idea that pig is a sacred animal. let's just say the ice-cream somehow tasted awry all of a sudden. okay, actually it makes sense if he considers about hinduism, and applies the same rule as well. and here is where i could not properly explain it. i wanted to say, because it's not halal, but of course he'll understand nothing of this. instantaneously i answered with my limited japanese "NO, it's not a holy animal at all! rather, we look down at the animal, it's dirty" okay, i don't know whether that's the correct way of putting it. honestly, i wanted to say how very dirty we view the animal, but when i blurted those kind of words out, it just seems insensible to the other party.

it struck me deep and i really felt how my nihongo fails me. it really made me feel down. not being able to say the correct stuff and to get the point across.

so, after a few researches on the net, it was interesting to find how some japanese found their explanation to the above matter. for instance:

1.pigs spread disease in the past, so it was prohibited to eat
2.in the dessert, pigs eat everything, including the dung which are valuable for fuel. so it was prohibited to have pigs. (this probably refers to origin of islam, where prophet Muhammad s.w.t comes from)

but of course. those are nowhere near the true reason at all. but those are what the people here would come to if they thought of searching the answer to that question online.

i wish they have manuals from long ago to enable us to answer question so we are more prepared. so with some efforts following that, currently the best answer i could get for the above question is from here. or, the closest they can understand is relating it with dog-they don't eat that too, and in our view dog and pig belongs to the same group after all.

another famous question from them, "do you wear that scarf even while sleeping?" ^^"

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

the 7th weekend : yokohama (part one)

in the previous weekend, i spent time cooped up in my room, so i regained my momentum back, and there i go, more places added to my weekend diary.

to start it off, the journey there was epic. i mean, i would never ever forget that super clumsy me. the plan was to meet up with Ceca at shibuya station and together we would go to Lia's house. as we didn't particularly have any other plan to do on that Saturday, i thought i could complete my report first prior to going out in the afternoon. in fact the rendezvous was supposed to be at around 4:30, so stepping out of my house even after asar (half past 3) is still okay.

but no, i did not manage to complete the report, so i had no choice but to bring it along with me to yokohama. i dared not to finish the weekend with reports still undone, the dateline being monday. and i'm going to house of the geniuses after all, they can help me. so, i was busy packing my bag, the clothes, the netbook, the notes, the relevant books. thankfully my backpack fit all that. so, quite later than planned, it was nearly 4 p.m that i started off the journey. the closest train station(Minamiyono) only takes 10-15 minutes by bicycle from what i heard, so i guess i could just save 170yen if i were to go there by bus. paddling  the bicycle, i tried reaching there with the help of the map in the phone. okay, it was no 10-15 minutes, i got lost. and the route was partially hills, so it took more time than i thought. even to find where to park my bicycle took time too. i was ready to apologize to ceca coz i was about to be late. to reach shibuya, i also had to change trains. and then, here where the unexpected came-it was only a station away from shibuya. i realized i forgot a very very important thing at home!! 

i alighted at Shinjuku (can you believe it, it was already this far!) and took another train back to Minamiyono again. in 3 hours, i travelled so far just to reach the same point again. i'm relieved they don't charge you if you get in and out from the same station. quickly got on the bicycle again, and rushed to my house in haste. okay, this time it was truly in that 10-15 minutes range. entered the house again, took the stuff i forgot, drank water straight from the 2-litre bottle, and dashed out again. (let's count how many times i typed again) but i think my head actually got dizzy, i haven't eaten the whole day. so it was nearly impossible to reach the station by bicycle again. in the end, i  parked the bicycle in the campus and took the bus. yeah, the 170yen that i wanted to save got spent after all-with an extra 3 hours of time wasted.

what a long journey just to arrive here

so that was the journey. 

from shibuya to my final destination-Hiyoshi took another half an hour. so, when i arrived at Hiyoshi station, ceca was already with Lia and Iza. Hiyoshi is the station next to Keio University. i know those 2 girls hate this when i say this, but i when i reached the station, i really do feel the atmosphere where it's like smart-looking people are all around. there were a lot of students, perhaps on the way back from their club activities. i don't know how to describe this, of course, here the infrastructure is clearly different, even the people exude different aura. it's like a different world LOL. so, it was night when i arrived, though i can't view much of the surrounding, it was beautiful. 

my breakfast+lunch+dinner at otoya. ikan bakar. how nice if they also have sambal belacan or sambal kicap.

and of course, desert included

the next day.... (continued to next post :P)

p/s: and i just remembered i still have the bicycle in the campus as of now

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken

and we were taught the wrong one all along

know how the school textbook sometimes don't exactly teach the right thing? and it stays like that until no one knows when.

so today was Seminar (i don't know how to explain this, but let's just say it's a subject where we're exposed to the research labs, something like that). for the past half semester, it was only like a class session with the sensei from respective research labs giving lectures explaining stuff regarding the topics related to their labs. as any lecture may be, those were as effective as sleeping pills. sorry sensei m(_ _)m

so, from this week onward, we're split up into 4 different major labs. there were Fluid Dynamic, Machining, Control Engineering and Thermodynamic. fortunately i got the one of my choice-fluid dynamic. coz it just seems interesting. as my sensei says, choose something you like, and this one involves aeroplane.

and here, like i mentioned, we learn about planes. yeay, i love this! so, we went at the meeting place and the sensei later arrived. seems like we were to watch a DVD for about half an hour.

it's a video about migrating birds. rather than 'about' the birds, it only 'shows' the bird. half an hour watching birds flying and flying through the globe, with barely any narration. how i think the video is actually a video for relaxation or somewhat. well, it does have a soothing effect like a healing video for stressed people.

okay, the point here was only to spot the difference between flying mechanism of living things (bird) compared  to human inventions (okay, now i wonder why 30 minutes are needed for that sole reason). so, we were asked to explain how exactly things fly. the stuff about lift and all. this reminds me a lot to Ishimatsu-sensei. i was like, "why the heck don't i remember much of the contents of what he taught me before?".

so, the 7 of us tried to remember what we've learned so far, and the explanation that there are pressure difference due to the different velocity of air above and below the aerofoil. i sensed something when the sensei was not really satisfied but i had no clue at the time. he even asked us why exactly the air that split at the front of the aerofoil must meet at the tail. of course, we were puzzled too. well, the above explanation was generally what we were taught during school and i've remembered it like that ever since.

if only i remembered Ishimatsu-sensei's class...

so yeah, that kind of explanation(the so-called "principle of equal transit times") is already obsolete. and i only discovered that after i returned home and surfed the net. when i read it here, it all makes sense. and i'm pretty sure i've heard/read this same explanation before, but it just didn't stick in my mind. like how 'Newton Law' or 'Air Viscosity' play a role in lift. we are people, and we forget stuff.

and i got to do this as a report, and present the findings next week. i wish my nihongo won't fail me.

so, how i wish they teach the right things from the beginning. sometimes, the memory of the first contact with something is the one that lasts long. like how i still remember there are 4 different area of taste on our tongue, and they still haven't introduced umami in textbook yet, have they? and i still cannot remember the correct chemical reactivity series, there was a bit of confusion when the one i remembered from high school is different for when i entered university, is there really any difference?


btw, i'm happy today i got to remember the names of the members of our group, hopefully i'll still remember when i'm gonna meet them next week^^ *nagasu*tomoi*minami*matsunaga*matsuda* just typing down to not let me forget, at least i'll try not to mix up all these

Location:Saitama University, Saitama-shi, Saitama-ken