十月24

I woke up to the language logging website standardizing the squares, so that they do not darken unless you read 100+ pages or accrue 100+ points. I never did that much before, so my squares are a medium light color. The darkest square is 300+ points. Which feels to me, impossible..

Feeling a bit below average, I just think to myself what the main character dude in Dance Dance Dance said; even if it is out of place:

高度資本主義社会

On my website, I inserted drawings of my visual novel girls on my hobbies page! They are also in squares, but inside of them are anime girl drawings. I am pretty happy about them. I guess, these are also squares in a way, but drawing is the only thing that authentically feels mine, as I have been doing it for a long time..

Today, I called my sister and that took up a lot of my day. After, it was getting pretty dark. I was growing tired of eating delivered food. I feel like one of the reasons why I feel like I am rotting from the inside out, is because I haven’t been cooking and eating home cooked meals. A few months back, I made pesto with basil leaves, and these nuts called 北杏仁 and it turned out to be perfect. It is kind of like a pistachio, but minty and fresh tasting. It replaced pine nuts, and I reflected on how I don’t even know what normal pesto or pine nuts tasted like. I had a bit of it in the freezer and made that with boiled pasta and olives. They were good.

I find it hard to practice guitar, I should fix it, but feel a bit too tired to go find a shop and go to the city. So I tried to practice a bit, but felt low in motivation. I noticed that when I forget how to sing some lines (due to me not remembering lyrics or song), I can look at the position of the notes on the music sheet and sing higher vs lower. That was at least some progress; I tried to sing and play through the first page of music.

It was late, and the sun was already setting, but on the weekend I usually go to a nearby cafe to read. I now also have Linear Algebra, so I intended to do that. When I arrived, a woman was reading so when there is someone reading I feel compelled to read too. The cafe is perfect; it is very quiet. There are these front windows by the front door and it is just open, and I can sit outside and people watch while reading. I grappled with some more Hegel, I think he is still talking about the philosophy of science, but then argumentation, how bad argumentation causes some sort of self-negation.

I spent a lot of the time typing this at the cafe, though. And was distracted and lost in thoughts when I began walking home, listening to trashy music, not podcasts. But listening to trashy music is sometimes good for me, as it gives me energy to draw later in the day. And I did just that, I came home and drew some of my visual novel girls. This time, I was focused on the guitar girl. While I was walking, my earbuds broke as they got stuck in my pocket, and I was a bit dismayed, as I usually listen to podcasts while walking. Now I just have to listen to my inner thoughts and the sound of rain. Which isn’t bad, but I overthink. But then I resolved to practice more “environmental awareness.” During the walk, I tried to make more observations. A common thing is just reading signs and identifying buildings. I suppose a new one I identified was a nursing home that I regularly passed by. I think that is just something weird that I strangely have to put a lot of effort into doing, sometimes if I am in the city I just walk around with Pleco out looking up the characters and words I cannot read on buildings and shops and identifying what they do.

“I am around Family Mart…”

“Two more minutes until they arrive..”

I can slowly understand more of the snippets of conversations around me. When I reached a certain number of steps, I decided to call a ride so I could go home and listen to podcasts with my headphones while looping the track field. The driver called me, and I had my usual communication issues: he was trying to explain to me that he was coming from too far of a location, like 10 km away, I guess he wanted me to cancel, maybe, but I was kind of like, I don’t mind, take your time and arrive!! When he arrived, I think I tried my best to communicate, Sorry I didn’t cancel, it is just, it’s raining so I am afraid I cannot find another ride after, and I think it was okay… I was very apologetic.. I was like thank you for coming all the way to get me and take me home and he was nice.

Then I continued my looping of the track field. Some of the that, I continued wasting my time listening to trashy music. Then, I finished my podcasts. One was about a guy who went to Myanmar and my guess is that he fought in the war there. The next one is about a woman who got pregnant… and maybe she didn’t want her mom to know?

I was reading a blog of someone who studied similar target languages as me: Japanese, Chinese and Korean. On their blog, they firmly said that they have anxiety and only intend to read in the languages. And read, they can, there is an astonishing list of completed CJK books and authors that make my “reading list’ dwarf in comparison. I think about how I could have become something like that, but I’m trying my best with the other skills. I try to record myself talking in Chinese, and listen to it. Maybe I can do a think where I come up with little prompts and “free talk” in my strange usage of the language. It is hard for me to find blogs of other people or Anglophones who study all of the CJKV to fruition, though… so maybe that gives insight on what I am doing is… extremely.. hard..

The current story I am reading in Chinese is pretty short, so maybe I can finish it tomorrow and write on it. It is a bit more difficult than the recent ones I read, as it is associated with adult affairs, like deciding on a chairman, and contributing to the anti-Japanese resistance.

I was doing a bit of Linear Algebra, but they are just examples discussing concepts such as zero or no solutions. I tried a first practice example in the textbook; it asked me to predict the next step to solve the matrix of linear equations. I think I figured it out when I checked the solutions… so I at least have a bit of logic.. I feel like doing one problem a day might not be enough. Maybe things like reading and doing math are best done in huge chunks of focused time, earlier in the day, and this method that I am employing in my diaries is insufficient; but my sister skimmed this blog and laughed as she read about me hopping around hobbies and she is like, it is like my ADHD; my thoughts are like this!! So at least my written words are representative of how scattered my brain is. I don't know in terms of productivity though. Maybe it is working but baby steps? Well; one thing that I noticed from doing math again is I get to listen to music while doing math. Since I started listening to podcasts and reading, I try to minimize my music listening. But at least I have an excuse to do it more again.

Good night!

十月23

I was feeling a bit let down about the job search because none of the schools I applied to replied. But a school did reach out to interview me, it seems like a good school, but there are just other little things, like it is in a country wherein I do not speak the language. I guess a fantasy I had, upon becoming a nomad, was being a traveler like Kino from Kino’s Journey, but she can easily just go on motorbike to different countries and everyone spoke Japanese like her. I guess I can do a side quest, learn this new language and check out the harsh noise scene in this tropical(or urban?)land, it would be very cool! These are fantasies I have, but they exhaust me because a barrier I am always afraid of is languages. Mostly because I am burnt out from learning languages, even though I get obsessed and manic about it from time to time and I will explain next that I did pick up ancient Greek... A part of this anxiety that will fill my diary entries comes from the uncertainty of applying for jobs. In the lands of my target language, some of the work hours are insidious, one that I will apply to has six days a week… and I get nightmares from that. But I was researching the school and they had a Classics department and taught Latin. Not like I am a student attending there (as much as I fantasize about the mental health facilities up in the mountain in Norwegian Woods, where Reiko said that the doctors and patients mixed together as students and teachers; teaching each other… how nice would that be…), but I can at least fantasize about taking the class and being “close” to a Latin learning environment while working six days a week.

When I was in high school, I was in a Varsity Quiz team which was kind of like jeopardy and we would beep in and answer questions and my mom would come to support us, and used to joke around: “I just go to your games, and just watch you lose.” Which is true, as we got steamrolled by all of the other schools. I remember one of the matches being stationed in one of the top magnet schools in our city, and we had a match in a Latin classroom, on chalkboards, and there was Latin just surrounding us. I found it nice…

I watched my friend’s vlog a few days ago, and she was going through a book haul, where she was gifted thirty books. I will talk about the ones that stood out to me. First was Han Kang’s Greek Lessons. And then she opened up and flipped through Heraclitus, and it had Ancient Greek on it. Because of that, I was interested in learning Ancient Greek; also my website has ancient Greek and so does my visual novel title (this is because I do this thing where I rob words from philosophical works) so I was a bit perplexed (I will talk about how I conceived of this one day, but I am appropriating the language in my website and visual novel; so I might as well learn it. I was excited to find a Great Course and anki deck and will work through it!). The synopsis of Greek Lessons given by my friend – –makes it seem like it’d be funny to use as a motivator to learn Korean as well. I have no idea what book I want to read as my first Korean book, and this seems like it can be “It”. It can kind of be like why I learned Chinese, which was to eventually read the Three-Body Problem. I can learn Korean and Ancient Greek to read Greek Lessons, but along the way I never read either as I get distracted by other things.

I am now grading lab reports. I am re-listening to Melt-Banana’s Scratch or Stitch because I think I was too tired yesterday to process it. I think it’s because the album starts by assaulting you with Yasuko in Plot In a Pot at the beginning. But I would imagine that this album would be the funnest to see live, I can imagine the crowd going crazy. Some stand out songs: IGUANA in Trouble, BuZZer #P, Back to the WomB are still good.

Next up is the Cactuses Come In Flocks album and I like the song Interval…. Just noise/glitch and And then like a trumpet sound and the cool guitar at the beginning of Ketchup-Mess. And Bored Elephant because it also has some more rando noise like the crunchy metallic rubbing noises that I like. And there is also I Hate It! I like Crayfish song even if it is like a 30 second long song. I wonder if they have bass for this album; sometimes they have a bassist, sometimes they don’t, same with the drummer.

Finally one more Melt-Banana album: Speak Squeak Creak. I like the song “Smell the Medicine” Switch, Cook Cool Kyau Kuru,and Chicken Headed Raccoon Dog. and Blandished Hatman and Cut Off. I felt that this album was a bit more poppy, punky and and rocky. P-Pop-Slop.

I am not sure if that is the whole discography. When I go on Youtube, I get recommended cool MELT-BANANA songs like “Sweeper” but I do not know where it comes from.

I think I am really tired from a week of work but I have finished most of the lab reports; I do have more but will leave them for next week. I can be more efficient with them, as they all have the same information, (maybe because the students use AI) but always treat them with such care, carefully writing comments on each of them, regardless. I achieved less than I wanted but I think I am a bit excited to go home and do my hobbies.

I was taking a walk around the track field, as usual, listening to podcasts.. The first one is about a woman working as a masseur in America, but the story is filled with some race politics, maybe because it is during the time of Covid and discrimination was rampant. She described some things like getting married, that I didn’t catch the details of, and relationships between masseurs and their clients. The second podcast was harder to understand, despite sounding simple in language. I re-listened three times, and found out that maybe it is hard because there are many different familial members, and I get confused about the paternal granmother, 表叔, etc. I can only guess the content from reading the description, which is named “Third Name.” I guess from the emotions of the voices and the music in the background, and some clips, the main narrator was abused by his original parents as a child and raised by others, and has many names or something, and then later on it detailed a marriage of some sort, so I can only wonder, was the podcast tracking his name change.

As I walked, it was raining and the rain gradually got more torrential. I went briefly back to my apartment to change my soaked socks and shoes, but then went back out and they got soaked again. I saw a frog hop out of the rectangle of grass, and a white cat darted across it, seeking cover from the rain. The usual, unassuming square of grass was a bit more chaotic than usual, as I tried to navigate around growing puddles of water, and I wondered if there was a scene like this in Kafka on the Shore, where it was raining animals or something. My school library has it in Japanese, and I can read it to investigate whether the scene of raining animals is real or just a figment of my imagination, but I do want to read other authors – rather than reading Haruki Murakami forever and ever and ever.

Some students passed by me, there was an event where they were sleeping over night. “That building next to us is a mental institution!” she said,” and slips off into the darkness. I’m pretty sure it is just a hospital but I thought about how information feels so much more diffuse since living here.

When I came home, I practiced guitar, and found that even if the amp didn’t work, I can practice the same song and practice singing. Maybe it is better that the amp is not connected so I can better hear the metronome and my voice (This song is intended to be acoustic, but I just have an electric guitar). Ame by Clammbon is always the perfect song to play and sing to when it is raining; so I just play to have fun. I have been learning this song everyday for a long time, maybe since there was a typhoon here. I remembered reading a blog post of a Clammbon fan, and they were looking forward to seeing them live in Japan, but there was a freak accident that happened the day of, I forgot what, like their sink was leaking and their apartment was flooding, so they could not go and missed the concert after anticipating it. I hope that they eventually got to see Clammbon live!

I sat down to do my daily Linear Algebra, and tried to redo the problem from yesterday. And then I pondered, maybe the Great Course had a lesson on this? I looked it up and jumped to solving linear equations. The video was great. Dr. Su really contextualized the steps I was working on yesterday.. It’s called Gaussian elimination or row reduction, I like how he contextualized it with images of intersections of planes, how there can be 1, zero or infinite solutions depending on how the planes overlap or intersect. What I didn’t understand yesterday, was, why are we adding multiples of a row to change the row, but Dr. Su said that doing so will not change a set of solutions. Honestly, I still don’t completely get it; if I add more of something to an equation, doesn’t that fundamentally change it. (Unless they are equivalent on both sides) But do the thing that I usually do, and trust his words. This is something I guess that I will have to ponder on continuously to understand. I reflect on it, imagining three intersecting planes… maybe adding multiples of another row just extends the length of the plane or something like that, and the intersection point is still the same?

I am excited to do more math because it excites me and gives me things to think about that is separate from the memorization game I usually play with languages…

Reading, I am almost done with Coin Locker Babies. I think I will try to finish it this weekend! It is not a bad book, but it is different from the “usual” Murakami I read. Spoilers, I think there was a pivotal scene where Hachi kills Eva but I do not understand why he has to kill her to hear this “sound: of the ocean that they have been looking for.

I like this theme of searching for a sound. In the anime Mushishi, my favorite episode was when the kid had a mushi in his ears and he was cupping it. Ginko initially thought that he was trying to block his ears off from noise caused by the mushi, but it was reversed, he was trying to hear something, anything, to stave off the unbearable silence. It was a scene that moved me so much, out of all anime, how his mom was doing the same thing, cupping her ears, when she was infected with the mushi, but not because of noise, but because she wanted to hear the vibrations of the muscles in her palms, and it reminded her of hearing lava flow, it cuts to a scene of her watching it with her husband.. When the kid remembered this, the mushi went POP and gushed out of his ears.

I think Coin Locker Babies kind of reminds me of that but it is more Oedipal (is that the term?), I’m not sure if that is the right way to explain it, but I tend to like things like that, like in 1Q84… In short, it just feels very anime, I will talk about it more, but I think it is because 90% of my knowledge of the world and fiction comes from anime, haha, and I kept on imagining the characters as Promised Neverland boys and when there is the girl named Anemone with the gator, I think of of the pink haired Anemone from my favorite mecha anime called Eureka 7…

I digressed, but my friend originally said that she loved Ryuu Murakami because he is eroguro, and maybe he is, because there are descriptions of nasty stuff, I think, but they do not stand out to me, maybe due to language, I hardly remember the sex scenes.

I tried to read some Hegel, but fell shortly asleep after a page. I should read more, if I don’t it would be a funny situation where I read a page a day and write about how I am tortured by it for exactly a year… reading a page a day…

十月22

I actually was able to read a bit today; since work started, I haven’t been able to do my daily readings in the morning, but I achieved that after many weeks, months. As I logged my reading, I noted that the website that I use to log my language learning updated the profile page so there are “daily averages” and I averaged 30 points a day. I felt a bit conflicted, and somehow, just from seeing something like a number. I enjoyed the habit of reading/listening and logging it on this website to see little squares fill up day by day. I guess if I read a lot, like over the summer, I can log enough to make the square a darker color. But now, I can see a number to see how much I am logging on average. The number is, relativistic, there is some scaling system for different mediums: Books, comics, whatever, condensed podcasts, characters. Even with characters the amount of information packed into a block varies immensely per language- especially between Chinese and Japanese. But regardless, I see the number. It is meaningless, apart of this gamification system produced by this website, but like Steven Jay Gould would say, maybe, I guess I come from a Platonic heritage and feel mentally compelled to reify the Average; and forget about all of the little feelings and emotions that comprised the experience of learning up until this point.

It reminds me of how data driven my motivation is; how “augmented” and inauthentic my learning and pursuit for knowledge is. This is a huge sore point for me. I guess there are people who do Duolingo everyday, and get equally nowhere, but I used tools like SRS and I still feel a bit upset about it. I wish I was not like a rat, motivated by increasing numbers, or in need of technology, to do something. Because when I think of it, I would not be able to learn languages, if it wasn’t for technology. But the argument can be made for a lot of people. So why am I feeling so upset?

I had to do a lot of unlearning how to learn, which was from doing flashcards, but now it is to “listen to podcasts” and “read” but that basically becomes a way to accrue more dopamine points too from me watching my squares fill up. I guess that is why I wanted to start writing so… so maybe I can do something that is a bit more than just filling out squares… I can type words in different arrangements as I write about my impressions and feelings about what I read and experience. I would say that I do extract something phenomenological from reading in second languages, but when I feel upset, I can’t help but wonder if it is just thousands of hours wasted in futility, and I do not know enough to discuss the book as much as someone who just reads it translated in English, or their first language, as it is a blurry qualia that I cannot express; the joy I feel from reading characters feels like hugging a cloud of fog, it is indistinct, fleeting, it transforms reading into this weird dream-like experience and talking about books feel like talking about dreams, I am just gesturing at all of these feelings, guessing about scenes in plots, BUT, now that I reflect on it, in the long run, memory of the real world, and of and textbooks and books read in English too, all become like that too, and dissolve away.

So maybe I am overthinking again. Up until now, I was always just “doing my own thing” and I hope to continue that.

… I think reading that singular sentence from Hegel yesterday… made me moody!!!! I think about how there may be no revolutionary synthesis or all-encompassing system in what I am doing. Whatever I am doing, is more akin to just piecing together a jigsaw puzzle that was originally premade, but now taken apart for the player. But… When I was little, I really did love doing jigsaw puzzles for fun!!! I would buy those 1000 piece ones, of colorful birds, pastel colored cottages and flowers, and vibrant, rainbow marine and reef ecosystems, and spend my whole summer working on them. I think language learning is just a logical progression of that – a puzzle to solve to kill time, and when I learn a new word or character, it does feel a lot like joining a jigsaw piece in its rightful place.

I think learning languages, or just learning anything in my “hobbies” section is a bit redundant, as there are plenty of speakers and experts already. If I actually become good at something, it just comes out to verifying something that has already been verified. I think, though, that Thomas Kuhn, in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, would argue that this form of verification is still meaningful, at least, for his definition of science (I am speaking of him because when I read that book, I was falling asleep, but when I reached the end and he was using the puzzle analogy for describing what scientists are doing – they are just verifying current theories within a paradigm, I had a Whoaaa!! moment) and not meaningless, as I often feel, and that gives me hope. But then I know Hegel would detest this, this is not Wissenschaft, I am engaging in something that superficially seems like knowledge-seeking and building, but is not, it merely gives the illusion of it, and I am just engaging in a fancy repetitive activity, or whatever, instead of creating real, or meaningful, philosophy or art. And I think society might look at me, and get frustrated, as it is something I am capable of, something of so much more, I can take two different ideas and violently combine them and maybe make something new and beautiful and original. But what I am doing is not Hegelian in that sense, it is just mundane: piecing puzzles together and then taking a step back, looking at it. But why do I sometimes feel like it is lifeless, like the skeletons and boxes that Hegel just described? As I write this, I feel a bit trapped, and at the same time, I feel a bit lifeless and empty, feeling like a body that is being kept alive just on life support.

In the book I read this morning, I finished 手 by 萧红 Xiao Hong. She is another female writer and I'm excited to read more of her stories. I especially liked Hand because when I was explaining it to a friend, how a girl was getting ostracized because she has black hands, and she was asking, why were her hands black – is she a minority? I didn’t really know why, until later, it was revealed that she was dyeing clothes to support her family. I like these simple characters, who are bullied, and ostracized by others; everyone refused to sleep next to her in the beds (I am imagining it is a boarding school?), saying that she is diseased and stinky, so she sleeps on this chair out in the corridor by herself. I enjoyed the short story because she is still positive, and is trying her best to learn English. In doing what I am doing, I feel a bit less alone, but I think this is a false comparison that I am generating, as I am something unnatural, augmented by technology and privileges of modernity. And everyone is super nice to me. So I have no right to say I am anything close to this character.

I think I try to be more like the girl, Ya Ming, with black hands, and I try to stay positive and continue learning Chinese, just as Ya Ming tried to sound out words in English…

Okay I will resume grading lab reports and listening to Melt-Banana now.

I am listening to the album “Teeny Shiny”

This album is hard for me to describe, but I want to say that there is a lot of noise and “pew” “pew” sounds in the songs, but I feel like they always have the zappy laser gun-like songs. I think I like how, it is a bit more unpleasantly noisy, unlike the other albums, which had poppy songs, I felt like the second song of this album was kind of assaulting my senses, and the high frequency was creating a pressure in my forehead, indicating it was a bit uncomfortable to listen to. I guess, what my brain was noticing was that there are higher frequency pew pew noises, and the drums seem to be more bonk bonk bonk. Maybe the drums sound a bit more jazzy, I cannot find the right words for this. But I like the song Bright Splat (Red Point,) (maybe the song and album does sound like just splatting paint on a canvas) and Moon Flavor. Moon Flavor was a weird style that stood out from the whole discography yesterday. I don’t know, it is kind of free style jazzy, or punky, but isn’t the whole discography supposed to be punky?

I am now listening to their album “Charlie.” This might be my favorite album. I listened to a track that sounded really cool, it is called Spathic! And like the reverby noise at the end of the track, Yasuko sounded so cute when see goes, eeee おきた! There are just some unique noises, like in Section Eight, there is a lot where the guitar sounds like a crazy metallic crunchy noise. I like how the song Yasuko is doing some weird call and response thing with the guitar when she sings; it reminded me of my siblings playing Rhythm Heaven Fever.

The last album I will listen to is now Scratch or Stitch. I feel like this is more like their original sound, Yasuko’s yelping is the usual.. But there were some unique sounds, like record scratching, Yasuko is just yelping a lot. I liked the song It’s In the PillCaSe and Back to the WomB, Eye-Q trader.

I find that today I am a lot sleepier, so it will be my first challenge, to complete all my dailies with less sleep. I was a lot slower with grading lab reports and will have to get them all done tomorrow, hopefully. Now I will go home and do my usual walk around the track while listening to a podcast.

I walked around, the first podcast had three narrators talking about finding someone in their house. I understood the first narrator after three listens, it was funny like the guy robbed a bank and was wearing the narrator’s underwear but the interaction was funny. The other two, I nodded off and didn’t really catch what their deal was, but I relistened later when I showered; one guy was working as a Bao an (guard) and he met someone who couldn’t pay car fines late at night, the other was a woman who was a reseracher and she helped an old man cross a street at night. Somehow I cannot focus enough to get more details, I don’t know why, I think it is how the narrators are talking, the relaxed cadence and slurring of their voices. The second podcast was again about education, there is a world about filling up a kid’s schedule. I think I am a bit worn out from hearing stories about these, but it was pretty easy to get, I guess, but by now I heard so many podcasts about education and people’s and I think too much about it. I suppose I have to write about it eventually to get it out.

I wanted to do some linear algebra at home, and downloaded a textbook! It is Linear Algebra and it Its Applications 5th Edition by David Lay. I tried out one problem which is solving a matrix linear system and I was quite tired. At the beginning, I was like, how the hell did I do any math in my college days, but I think I understood the logic and mental math after a bit. But it is late, and I guess a difference was also, when I was in college, I wasn’t working, so I am just plain tired now. I just followed along with one worked example.. I will try more tomorrow, hopefully.

I tried to practice guitar!! But my guitar’s output jack BROKE! I tested other cables, not working, but then I plugged it into my old dummy guitar and the amp worked. So that means the issue is the output jack on the guitar. So I was a bit upset, I really went face first into the bed and moped for a bit. But I looked it up, I can DIY fix it by soldering, except, I can’t solder, and the last time I did I took apart my mom’s buddha box and couldn’t fix it by soldering. So, I guess I will have to take the guitar into the city to fix it. I was feeling a bit unwilling to do that, but if I look at it from the positive side, it will give me a reason to go into the city and get out of the house a bit this weekend. I did eventually force myself to play a bit, I just played through the same song and practiced scales with the metronome.

After, I read some Coin Locker Babies. I think I understand what is happening again, because Kiku was in prison, but maybe him and all the prisoners were on a boat, and they are trying to escape, and police came, and Kiku is probably handing it to them with his hand gun again.

Then, I read the few pages of Phenomenology of Spirit. I think in these sections, he is just reiterating the process of sublation, (reflection and inversion into itself, negation, becoming a moment of the whole) but there are some new concepts.. Well, there is still the “concept” which I have no clue what is: 53. Science may organize itself only through the proper life of the concept. There are some new terms, that stood out to be, such as “self-equality” which seems to allow for fixed existences, thought, Nous, simplicity, or determinateness. Hegel mentions Anaxagoras and I get curious, did he know Greek and Latin too, I looked it up, and he did, so I go hmm..

As I read Hegel, I notice he uses a lot of the really long sentences, dashes, and semicolons. I noticed my writing has a bunch of inappropriate commas, dashes, and semicolons, and I wonder if it is from reading Hegel.

Just remembered, for the first time they served tea eggs in the canteen today. When I saw them, I reflexively thought of hột vịt lộn which are these fertilized duck eggs I grew up eating a lot. Since it pretty much had a chick inside, I would get scared of seeing a dead whole bird, so... I would brutally smash it up in the egg with a spoon before eating it -- transforming it into a soup of feathers, meat, bones. While eating lunch, eating the normal tea eggs, I thought of an anime I used to watch with my brother, called Hana Saku Iroha, and one of the girls had a crush on a dude who was a chef, and he would tease her and call her hobiron, ホビロン. My brother was like, it's the same word! I just was thinking about that while eating. I thought of butterfly soup, how catterpillers become a butterfly soup before they become a butterfly. but what if I instead, have to become hobiron soup, breaking all my bones and and mashing it into my flesh? Good night~

十月21

… I found that since I began reading a bit more this year, I try to be a bit more aware of the world I live in and in my short walk to work today, I was looking at the plants, and for the first time, in maybe decades, I looked at a plant and thought, “Oh, are these dewdrops?” I am not sure if they are dewdrops, though, they are just water hanging from the buds of a plant on a tree. I would suppose dewdrops are something that are more befitting to, say, grass?

I was getting stressed out with work because I have so many lab reports to grade. But maybe I will listen to some music to make it go by easier. The circumstances I have are ideal: Normally, the students go on these crazy excursion trips, but I was not sent off to supervise them this year. Instead, I am staying in school for some “incursions" so I technically have the whole day to just grade,, yesterday, supervising students collecting data for their various science investigations, but I felt quite distracted and stressed out due to my swinging mood. Today, one of my robotics students came in and I am supervising her as I write this, she will just be building the whole day.

I will now resume grading my lab reports…

I decided to listen to Melt-Banana’s discography, as I never really did carefully, in spite of seeing them live once before and really liking them. All of their songs usually blend together, but maybe I can practice writing about music with them. While grading the lab reports, I listened to four albums:

“3 + 5”
I think my favorite tracks are “Code” at the beginning because it is noisy with some cool guitar shredding, and at the end I really like “Seeds” because it is more poppy and has a fun ticking noise. The background of Seeds reminded me of some Hatsune Minku songs I liked as a kid. I was going to just listen to this album once, but it looped back to Code and I ended up listening to it twice; I think the songs in the middle, such as Scar, Flipside, Hex and Whisperer are all catchy and energetic too.

Fetch
I feel like I really love the drums on this album, and The Hive has some beepy noises that I really like.. I especially like “Infection Defection”’s introduction, the guitar is so fast that it sounds like a shiny noise, as if I am looking at the surface of water, and its glistening.The song that is mostly poppy, in the style I like at the end, and that is the song “Zero.”

Cell-scape.
I think this is my brother’s favorite album, I think mostly because it has the cutest album cover, with the Clione on it. There are some good songs, like “Chain-Shot to have some fun” though. And I like the screaming in the intro of “Like a White Bat in a Box, Dead Matters Goes On”

Finally, I am listening to Bambi’s dilemma. I guess “The Call of the Vague” stands out to me. Because like some of the other songs, it just has a normal “rock” intro, but then the guitar gets more experimental later on, like in T for Tone. I think this album stands out for more of those rocklike riffs, but there were some cool experimental and noisey guitar, as in “One Drop, One Life”

...

After work, I took my usual walk around the school field while listening to my podcasts. It is getting cooler, so I had to wear my slightly thicker sweater. I didn't really understand the podcast I am listening to, even after two relistens, so I checked the description and looked up a new word, it is 鸡娃, which according to Pleco means arranging intensive activities for a child's education. Then the podcast began making sense, like the narrators were talking about their experiences with education and cram classes. I still had trouble listening, though, as I drifted into my own thoughts and feelings about education, or my lack of. The next podcast, I had a hard time understanding, as I was mostly drawing the headers of this website will listing to it, but I am guessing it is about someone who lives in the countryside and received educational opportunities with 支教 but later struggled with depression. I will probably re-listen to more in the morning, when my head is clearer.

After, I made this website~ my first post~

Then, I played some guitar. I have been learning Clammbon's 雨 sung by Ichiko Aoba, for months now. It is really slow, the bpm is about 60, so maybe this is a song I should have learned ages ago. I finally got around to playing through the whole song with a metronome, I think my next goal should be memorize it and then singing it. Currently, I am learning how to sing it; I rarely sing because I am usually ashamed of my voice and inability to sing, but since it goes so slow, I thought this might be a good chance to finally try it. I can sing ちはやふる chorus part, as it is just quarter notes; the singing and the notes are both quarter notes, as of yesterday. But today I tried singing the first few bars and struggled. It's hard to think of my voice as an instrument. I tried several tactics, like singing with the metronome, before adding in the guitar, but then I get so confused, as I want to start playing guitar and singing at the same time, but the singing is like a quarter note or eigth note before. So that was frustrating, but I figured if my singing is off by a note or so, that isn't bad, what is bad is if my guitar is off with the metronome. So maybe I will practice that, just playing the guitar, and singing randomly over it, tomorrow. I did see some progress with the first few bars, but I feel like I am not using the right strategy, my mind began thinking, Oh, I start this bar after I sing ちょっと or something, but I feel like the basis of comparison should always be the metronome, not the voice to the guitar to the metronome. It should be the voice and guitar to the metronome. Otherwise it adds in like three steps to my thinking process which is inefficient and has my playing all implode. Sigh I will worry about it more tomorrow...

It is now night-time, but I am dedicated to my hobbies. I have been wanting to learn Linear Algebra for ages, so I watched a video from Great Courses (If I keep this up with writing this, you will soon learn that my two hobbies are Anki and Great Courses). There is one course on it, Mastering Linear Algebra: An Introduction with Applications. I watched the first video, and it was mostly of things that I did know of, which are vectors, but I appreciate that the professor is discussing applications in real life, like how programmers can identify if a "J" drawn with certain pixels is really a J by taking an average of like 500 different Js, and he uses that to introduce vectors and how to take linear combinations of them. I guess there were some things that I forgot, such as vectors being represented in rows and columns, I will start seeing a lot in my Quantum and Electrodyanmic books. And he does discuss a lot of the Physics notations, such as the î, ĵ, k̂ vectors(I thought these were unit vectors?) but he calls them "Standard basis vectors" but says that the physics notation has its limitations, especially with dealing with more dimensions. I guess it was nice to hear a new definition of vectors aside from what I teach to students, that is, "Anything that can be added or scaled by axioms (I don't know, he has the associative properties of vectors as these "axioms"). And he made connections to adding waveforms in signal processing and then discussed Quantum states and how these are vectror states and physicists will take superpositions of states by scaling them and adding them together with complex numbers. I think this excites me, I was looking through my Electrodynamics book and I had like random notes on the side, about how a lot of the solutions had "real" and "imaginary" components. I had no idea what I was writing about. I don't know if I should be doing simple vector exercises at this point.. this doesn't feel like "real" linear algebra yet. But next time, I will just go into the Comments and download the first Linear algebra textbook I see, but if anyone has a recommendation for a good one, especially for Physics, then let me know!

I will work on my last daily, which is reading philosophy before I sleep. My friend wanted to read the Phenomology of Spirit with me, and we honestly tried, but she got too busy and we are separated by different timezones. So I will continue reading it myself, knowing that I won't understand it the first time, and would probably have to continuously reread it for the rest of my life. The thing is, I don't think Hegel is too hard to understand, and when I try to explain this to others (who have not read Hegel, but instead just regurgitate the words that it is the hardest thing ever), I feel a bit spoken over. He uses edgey analogies, like Nietzsche, and has a style where he is kind of like a bitch towards philosophies/ers. I am still in the Preface, but he uses words like "dead" "flayed" "lifeless" in a lot of his descriptions, I was especially enraptured by this line:

This method, which consists in taking the pair of determinations out of that universal schema and then plastering them onto and then organizing everything in this manner, produces nothing less than a "crystal clear report on the organism of the universe." This "report" is like a tabular chart, which is itself a little bit like the skeleton with small bits of paper stuck all over it, or maybe a bit like the rows of sealed and labeled boxes in a grocer's stall. Either of these makes just as much sense as the other, and, as in the former case, where there are only bones with the flesh and blood stripped off of them, and as in the latter case, where something equally lifeless has been hidden away in the boxes, in this "report" the living essence of what is at stake has been omitted or concealed."

It is clear that his is just criticizing the monotonous formalism of science and math... but he's... EDGEY!! When I write this, I am not saying that Hegel is easy, but maybe I am going from a different vantage point, where I am trying to read books in second languages, and oftentimes, I cannot even understand the most simple texts. This is a translated into English book, so sometimes, I am just relieved to read something in English. On the other hand, I just read Coin Locker Babies and I have no idea what is happening, they are on a boat right now, some commotion is happening, and they are calling for help..

I think I finally did all my dailies. I hope I can keep it up. I had some thoughts on Hegel and what the hell I am actually doing here, but maybe I will write more about that tomorrow.

Good night!