Instantly Growing Mankind: October 2009

Monday, 19 October 2009

A 'Busy' Week

I'm finally back crapping here once again ! :)

Not because I found back my so-called 'feeling', I got fed-up with my report. Arh !

You guys must be wondering what kept me so 'busy' for the week before huh. I shall just brief through it.

Last week, was the first week I attended for my experiment class (実験). Honestly speaking, experiment doesn't really makes me down yet I prefer it to sitting on my chair, copying notes as written on the blackboard, dreaming. Yes, lectures don't really help but the notes do. Haha. Ok, back to the point. I didn't have experiment for the previous semester but I had practical class (実習). Basically it's quite alike with experiment except reports are written for few weeks instead of every week. And now, for my second semester, I have both practical and experiment classes!! Kill me man!!

'Bandul'. (I remember we called it so during high school. Haha.)

Spring experiment (sorry I don't know how to translate the title from Japanese to English. Haha) was the first experiment. It wasn't hard, I mean it was easy. But the tough part comes after the experiment was over. REPORT time ! Damn lousy broken Japanese makes my day tougher. Just imagine not having writing reports on your own without any guidances plus in a language that you don't master well just right yet. It means hell man !

Leave out from the experiment topic as my head is full with those experimental terms. *Dizzy*

Ok, stepping forward to the next one. We had an outing with all foreign students in my college to a sushi shop nearby. (not near pun la. 20mins cycle.) It's a celebration as all of our 5th year seniors passed their respective university exams. (University exams are needed in order to continue for our degree as a college graduate.) And guess what was the great thing of all? It was a buffet for all of us ! No, it wasn't a buffet type shop, but those 5th year seniors treated everyone of us. It's a tradition actually, so it's not too far to become my turn to belanja. Haha

One of the 4 tables.

Clock on my iPhone showed half past eight by the time we finished our buffet, and we decided to go for bowling and some opted for billiard. I was a first timer but gosh, I must say that I do have a hidden talent in bowling inside me man! Haha. Anyway, we had fun throughout the 2 sets of game. The day continued with football matches back in our hostel. Chelsea and Liverpool lost came together with a Manchester United victory over Bolton can't make my night even better. :)

Bowling lane.

Those was back on Saturday, and on Sunday, I . . erm . . washed my bed sheets, cooked my lunch, done some part of my report, slacking around. Yes, basically nothing important to write of about my sunday. Haha. Getting late, reports left unfinished, revisions undone. What am I up too now. *Laughters . . . continued with . . . yet . . . just laughters*

Saturday, 17 October 2009

Moodless

I'm just not into the mood of blogging these few days. Loads of things for me to post about, but . . . Nah . . . It just doesn't match with my feelings these days. Sorry for those who viewed my blog.

May I get 'it', I'll be back til then.

Monday, 12 October 2009

Foreign Students Program 留学生交流会

12th of October, is a public holiday for Japan. Sports Day. I have no idea what is it all about though. Haha. It falls on Monday this year so we had 3 consecutive days of holiday dragging from Saturday to Monday. As scheduled months ago, I participated a short program organized by the Japanese. It's a program mainly for foreign students from colleges located in Kanto region(mainly around Tokyo) fully sponsored by the Japanese government. This is a yearly program which will be held at different places every year and it goes to Gunma this time.

10/10

Depart from Oyama College at 9.20am, reached Takasaki Station, Gunma at 11.50am. D. Sheng, Kazi (Bangladesh), I and another teacher were representatives from Oyama College. We met our bunch of friends not at the meet up point, but at McD where we headed for our lunch. Haha.

Our first destination was Gunma College. We had our opening ceremony in one of the halls. Next, our journey continued with a drop-by at a daruma,tumbling doll shop(factory?) which is a famous point at Gunma Prefecture. We were each gave a palm sized of doll before we went into the shop. Next, we were 'lectured' by the sifu, owner of the shop. The place where the dolls were made is actually holly but was open for those who want to try out making those dolls. Sifu then had a brush on one of his hands and started working on the gigantic dolls placed in front of him. Everyone watched the way he painted the face of the dolls as we had to do so with ours then.

My master piece. :)

Next we had a brief walk at the festival held just a stone throw away from the hotel we stayed. It was the second time I went to Gunma and the second time I went for a festival at Gunma and both are held at the same area ! Unbelievable. Haha.

Japanese Festival.

We enjoyed our buffet dinner at one of the mini ballrooms in the hotel, followed by speech from each and everyone of us.

Kisarazu College Representatives.

Japanese programs always ends after dinner and we had our spare time together for the whole night. It surely won't be the same case as programs organized by Malaysians as they will make sure they torture you until the last minute of the day before they let you go to bed. Me and few other friends talked about it and found out maybe Japanese have more important 'business' of the day to be settled at night. That's why. Haha.

11/10

Mount Haruna. The temperature was roughly 8 celsius up there despite bright sunshine.

Ropeway.

Mountain View.

Next, we headed to one of the most famous hot spring in Japan, Kusatsu Onsen.

Hot spring. Haha.

After walking around the hot spring area, we were finally brought to our Kusatsu Onsen Resort where we spent our second night. I must say that it was a really nice resort to stay in. Clean, comfortable and most important, there is a open-air hot spring in it! Damn nice man. We enjoyed another meal at the resort as our dinner and whole night we went crapping and playing all sorts of games together with the company of one of our chinese senior, Elvin. We walked around the resort, walked to seven eleven to buy cup noodles, played 'thief and police' until 3 am. I bet he might be surprised by our batch eh siao kia-s. Haha.

12/10

Our plan was to wake up at 6.45 am and have a last bath and hot spring, but slept at 3 am the night before, everyone was late even for the breakfast. Haha. After checking out, we went to the Fukuoka silk factory. I was pretty frustrated the our tour guide as he treated us as we don't understand Japanese and repeating the same thing in English every sentences he said in Japnaese. Luckily one of the teachers stood up and explained to him. Sign. But even so, it was a boring sightseeing in the factory as I was sleepy for the whole journey(result from sleepless night).

Fukuoka Silk Factory.

Oppss. Made a mistake. Before that, we went for a sightseeing view of volcano. Too bad the top of te volcano was clouded and we got nothing. Haha.

View.

We had our lunch at one of the shops located beside Fukuoka Silk Factory and were sent back to the nearby train station as each and everyone of us waved goodbye and continued our journey back to Oyama Station.

It was a great experience throughout the 3 days 2 nights trip. Too bad such trips are just mainly for 3rd year foreign students each year. (We prayed that not too many juniors will come to our college next year. Haha) An enjoyable way to spend my 3 days holiday. =)

Friday, 9 October 2009

Cruel 'Dream'

" It was the end of mid-semester exam. Relief. It was over but that particular incident still remains in my mind. I was sitting for the XXX exam. There were some calculation solving questions. Our teachers were quite confusing because some require us to write the answers in two decimal places, yet some don't. Not wanting to take the risk, I raised my hand. ' Teacher, am I suppose to answer in two decimal places or . . . ? ' I asked. The teacher looked straightly into my eyes, starred. ' I can't tell you. I can't tell you the answer!' The teacher replied to me with some kind of expression on his face. (as if I was ASKING the ANSWER from him) Of course, I gave back him the exact face expression back to him. Haha. Like this also been considered as asking answer? -.-

After distancing my sit, he was walking around and could be saw and heard telling some other students to double check their answers as there're some error with the + and - symbols which may cause them lots full of marks. Sigh. I wonder how could it happened, yet on a Japanese teacher(Japanese are well known for well-known manner and justice huh?). Such a disgrace.

Then, I woke up from my dream.

Phew . . . . It was just a dream. Luckily . . . It was just a dream. " was what I wrote in my notebook.

" Really huh. I thought it happened in reality when I first read it. Shocked." was the 'compliment' from my class teacher, Ito Seiko.

It was few days back when I happened to open up my notebook and came across this short note I wrote. It was a small lil note book that I used since my PPKTJ (Pusat Persediaan Kajian Teknikal ke Jepun) days as my Japanese Language notebook, and I brought it together with me here.

It was a short holiday and everyone of us were assigned few short notes to be written in our notebooks and hand it up after the holiday. It was part of our exercise to use Japanese more often, just in case anyone forgotten about it after the short break. Haha. And this was what I wrote. Honestly, it did happened in real life. Upset? Disappointed? Sad? Instead, I felt funny. Haha. Maybe the teacher was 'looking down' on me as I wasn't excellent in that subject since the very beginning. He might just thought, ' This boy trying to korek answer from me la ?' and rejected me. Haha. Lucky for me, I did pretty well for that paper, and got the initiative to say (or just whisper) to the teacher, ' Eh, I did pretty well even you didn't want to tell me the 'answer' huh? ' But, of cause I didn't. =P

* Japanese aren't that prefect as everyone thought, huh?*

Saturday, 3 October 2009

Mid-Autumn Festival Abroad #1

The ' #1 ' was written as this surely won't be the first and only one for me. Haha.

And, sorry for such blur photos as I just able to take'em with my phone's camera.

' 中秋节快乐 '

' Happy Mooncake Festival '

' Happy Mid-Autumn Festival '

Were wishes which flooded my facebook for the whole day since yesterday. I ain't a mooncake lover since then, but of cause mooncake will always be filling my tummy on this particular festival. Mum who is always busy with her teaching would always buy loads of mooncakes for us. Haha. And on this day, she would surely come up with a mooncake eating + tea drinking 'party' sort of things for us. Mooncakes which always come with thick fillings of lotus seed paste (without yolks ! I mean it) would always be my choice. :) We were used to the traditional one with the chocolate-ly baked skin, but this world is just running too far and we get modern ones which comes with jelly kind of crust (agar-agar should it be?) with all kinds of filling ! Amazing isn't it?

Mid-Autumn Festival wasn't really a 'big day' for me since small, because nothing much to be thought of, nothing to be done, mummy will prepare everything and what we do is just and just, EAT. So, since morning nothing special happened (or I did) as I went to a book shop nearby to look out for reference books regarding a Japanese Test I'm taking soon, as I shared in the previous post. Cycling pass Jusco, I decided to give it a try to check out the beverage section to search for mooncakes.

I, ' Japan, got sell mooncake anot wo . . . '

D.Sheng, ' Find see la . . . Aya, we should have went to Chinatown at Yokohama, sure got eh there ! '

I, ' Oh Sh*t ! Should have went there! '

Was the conversation I had with my college-mate, D.Sheng on the way.(Of cause I created it myself, but the isi is some sort of that la). Haha. We should have make a trip to Yokohama if I thought about this earlier. Guess what, lucky enough for us when we found mooncakes at jusco! Joy~

Mooncake 78円.

U see big ones? normal ones? small ones? We laughed out when we saw that man! Maybe the exact size can't be seen through the first photo. Have a look down here.

Looks normal?

See?!

Saw it? can see the size when it's on my hand? Gosh! Haha. I call it 'flatty' mooncake! But yet, we were happy enough to grab one. Not so sure about the taste, will try it later at night. Haha.

Since it's a festival day, it became an excuse for us to go for dinner at one of the restaurants instead of cooking. Yes, I do get lazy to cook since I finished my summer break. Haha. We always face difficulties choosing what to eat but this time we get it easier since it's a chinese festival, chinese cuisine then. *Laughs* There we went. Me, D.Sheng, Agung(Indonesian Senior).

Boiled pork dumplings with spicy sauce.

(四川辣餃子)

Stewed blocks of pork "tonpowrow".

Fried rice with whole blue crab.

Whole chicken.

After 1 hour.

Blur one taken by the waiter. Sigh.

We even take away, da-pao 1 char sao pao back. =)

Wait, we didn't head back straight away.

Dessert time!

Crepe.

I had a strawberry cheese cream crepe as my dessert. Haha. It doesn't taste as nice as those sold at Harajuku though. But that wasn't the main problem. The main problem was, how am I suppose to eat my mooncake after this! Haha.

Foods during my summer break.

This suppose to be posted long time ago, but I just didn't have that 'push' to flip through all my photos and make a collection of it. This won't be a storytelling post, but a long dragging one with photos taking center show of it. Here we go ! =)