Jujubee’s Blog

I’m starting to study Japanese again to prepare for my upcoming vacation. Whenever I study another language I always compare it to English. In the case of Japanese, it’s pronounciation is much simpler than English’s. For instance, I always have difficulty saying ‘rural’. It’s easier to say it by itself but in a sentence, it becomes ‘rrral’. Luckily, all of the times I’ve used this word, I was understood.  Also some words with consonants next to the ‘th’ are hard. Like ’sixth’. Anyway, even though spoken English is sometime hard, writing it is so easy, since we only have 26 letters of our alphabet. Writing Japanese is hard because of the Kanji (Chinese characters). I’ve always wanted to learn to write Japanese though, because it looks so pretty and cool. Haha… I guess it’s a superficial reason to learn a language.

I just finished reading this book called Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff. A friend from work lent it to me. I think it’s labeled as a psychological thriller. Probably the first of it’s kind that I’ve read. Anyway, it was an interesting story and a pretty good read! It really made me think a lot about what was happening, trying to figure out what the reality of it was. I’ve now learned that these kinds of books are fun. I don’t know of any other books or authors like this though.

For both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend, I was on support. I just had to be within 20 minutes of my computer, so that if I get a call to fix a high severity defect, I would be able to get to it quickly. Fortunately, I didn’t get any call this weekend.

I had lunch and dinner with Joseph on Saturday. We had Jenova’s Deli for lunch and Nama Sushi for dinner. Other than that, we didn’t really hang out.

On Sunday, I didn’t have much to do so I spent about 3 hours cleaning my room and bathroom. I even when through and reorganized my clothes. It was a good idea because I found clothes that I didn’t even know I had. I have to remember to either get rid of the multiple boxes in my room, or unfold / flatten them and save them under my bed. The space in my room is already limited as it is.

During the weekdays, my team is working on shifts. So for this week, I’m on the early shift, which is 7am to 4pm. Luckily this isn’t really different from my normal schedule. Next week I’ll be on the 11am to 8pm shift.

I haven’t wrote in a while. This last weekend, Bryant, Kelly, and I went to visit our cousin in Stockton. We spent a lot of time playing with the kids. They are so cute! The weather was pretty nice too and I got a good tan from swimming. Unfortunately, during this weekend, I got to see Nadal losing the US Open Semifinals to Murray. It definitely put a downer on things, but if you look at it this way: Nadal won 2 of the 4 grand slams (more than anyone else) this year, he won the Olympics in Beijing, became #1 overcoming Federer, his season this year was quite good! I’m happy for Federer winning the US Open! Now, that’s the Federer we’re used to seeing. It looks like his game is back to normal, thank goodness. I don’t want him to get back his #1 ranking yet… I want Nadal to enjoy the spotlight a bit. But the rivalry between Federer and Nadal is the best thing ever. I just love to watch them play each other.

Nadal is down 2 sets and the match was suspended during the 3rd set due to rain. I’m worried.. I hope Nadal isn’t injured. I checked the weather in Flushing, NY and it looks like it’s going to rain until tomorrow, so I guess they can’t resume until then. This gives Murray an advantage I think, because he’ll have so much time to rest. One of Nadal’s weapons is to tire out the opponent in long matches, even if he drops a set or two in the beginning. But now that Murray can rest up and resume in the middle of a match, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen. Vamos RAFA!

Around 9PM there was a 4.0 earthquake and the epicenter was really close! It was around Alamo I think. This earthquake was different from the others I’ve felt because it was like BOOM. I seriously thought someone drove into our house. Actually I was enjoying a dinner with Kanako and Madoka when it happened. I was the only one who overreacted.. hehe. Being from Japan, I guess they’re used to earthquakes. It was Madoka’s birthday so we decided to throw a surprise party. It was only me and Kanako surprising her but still it was good! Kanako made Thai curry and cheesecake with a chocolate crust. It was nice.. I had some white zin and plum wine with dinner.