I was editing an paper about coronary artery disease for one of the doctors today, when I found this passage.
"As you know, there are many biomarkers and thus related papers regarding acute coronary syndrome and vulnerable plaque. I am disgusted and confused about that!"
I concur! What could be more disgusting than biomarkers and vulnerable plaque??
...
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Reasons I Would Make a Terrible Wife: Vol. III*
One of the many perks of teaching English in Ehime is that Ehime is famous for mikan, little mandarin oranges, and when mikan are in season, my students give me grocery bags full of them literally every day. Mmmm.... Sometimes I even eat them for dinner if I don't feel like fixing something a little more substantial. Perhaps this is not the most nutritionally sound diet, but I tell myself that at least I don't have to worry about getting scurvy.
Last week was a particularly fruitful one. At one point, I think I had at least two dozen mikan in bags on top of my refrigerator, so before I left last Thursday on a little five-day trip to Kyoto, I went on a mikan eating frenzy -- must have eaten four or five mikan per day -- and finally, on Thursday night, I departed for Kyoto, having successfully depleted my rather large hoard of fruit.
Or so I thought....
When I came back to my apartment this morning, I noticed an odd smell emanating from behind the refrigerator. I wandered around my apartment for a few minutes unpacking and thinking all the while, It smells like oranges in here. Oranges...and....and...easter egg dye?? Impossible, no one dyes easter eggs here...But it definitely smells like oranges. Oranges...and....and dirty socks???
I finally decided that the strange odor required proper investigation, and peered behind the refrigerator to find that a paper sack of oranges had fallen into the crack between the fridge and the wall. I attempted to pull the sack out, but it disintegrated in my hands. The mikan fell to the ground with a nasty squelch, and an enormous cloud of green dusty mold billowed out across my kitchen. When the green dust finally settled, I ran to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and found that I looked like the Wicked Witch of West's slightly paler sister.** I washed off the green ick and then proceeded to de-mold the rest of my kitchen.
By then, the smell was much worse, and I could just imagine all of the mold particles still floating around in the air and turning my lungs green. If the mold could annihilate those mikan in a matter of days, how long would it take for the mold to eat me alive too???
Anyway, my kitchen is much cleaner now and I am still alive, so all appears to be right in the world. I guess I should find a different place to store the mikan from now on, though...
* Vol. I and II can be found in previous posts for your further (懐かしい) reading enjoyment.
**Minus the pointy hat and warts.
Last week was a particularly fruitful one. At one point, I think I had at least two dozen mikan in bags on top of my refrigerator, so before I left last Thursday on a little five-day trip to Kyoto, I went on a mikan eating frenzy -- must have eaten four or five mikan per day -- and finally, on Thursday night, I departed for Kyoto, having successfully depleted my rather large hoard of fruit.
Or so I thought....
When I came back to my apartment this morning, I noticed an odd smell emanating from behind the refrigerator. I wandered around my apartment for a few minutes unpacking and thinking all the while, It smells like oranges in here. Oranges...and....and...easter egg dye?? Impossible, no one dyes easter eggs here...But it definitely smells like oranges. Oranges...and....and dirty socks???
I finally decided that the strange odor required proper investigation, and peered behind the refrigerator to find that a paper sack of oranges had fallen into the crack between the fridge and the wall. I attempted to pull the sack out, but it disintegrated in my hands. The mikan fell to the ground with a nasty squelch, and an enormous cloud of green dusty mold billowed out across my kitchen. When the green dust finally settled, I ran to the bathroom, looked in the mirror and found that I looked like the Wicked Witch of West's slightly paler sister.** I washed off the green ick and then proceeded to de-mold the rest of my kitchen.
By then, the smell was much worse, and I could just imagine all of the mold particles still floating around in the air and turning my lungs green. If the mold could annihilate those mikan in a matter of days, how long would it take for the mold to eat me alive too???
Anyway, my kitchen is much cleaner now and I am still alive, so all appears to be right in the world. I guess I should find a different place to store the mikan from now on, though...
* Vol. I and II can be found in previous posts for your further (懐かしい) reading enjoyment.
**Minus the pointy hat and warts.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Run that by me again?
Yesterday, the leaders of the big band I'm in posted the set list for our next concert. The second tune on the list?
BRIDE OVER TROUBLED WATERS
I'd really like to hear the lyrics to this version... ;)
BRIDE OVER TROUBLED WATERS
I'd really like to hear the lyrics to this version... ;)
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Snakes on a Plane
I was searching the internet to see if I could bring a real python-skin sanshin back to the US* when I came across this article:
"A young woman has been cautioned at Scotland's Glasgow Airport after attempting to smuggle a live snake on a journey from America** to the Netherlands.
Customs officers in Glasgow were carrying out a routine check on the woman when they noticed that her snakeskin belt was in fact a live snake. The harmless reptile had been chilled prior to the flight to keep it in a comatose state but it came to life in the warmth of the airport terminal.
The snake was confiscated and the woman was allowed to catch her flight after being given a warning, according to Scottish newspaper The Herald. "
-- Courtesy of Airline Industry Information, Feb. 18, 2002
Genius.
When I mentioned this story to one of my private lesson students the other day, he came up with a brilliant idea of his own.
Ryu: Hey, didn't you say you're going to have give your goldfish away before you go back to America?
Me: Yeah, the softball team wants to FedEx them back to Seattle for me, but I don't think that'll work so well....
Ryu: You should find a piece of opaque plastic piping, fill it with water, put the goldfish inside, and wear it as a belt on the plane!
It might be worth a try. I'd sure feel bad if my poor goldfish suffocated, though. I suppose every once in a while, I could sneak into the bathroom, take the belt off, and blow bubbles into it....
*Apparently pythons are an endangered species, and it's illegal to bring products made from endangered species into the US, so I settled for a synthetic snakeskin sanshin instead.
** Does this mean that she had already smuggled the snake on a plane once when she flew from the US to Glasgow??? Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to get the sanshin through customs after all....
"A young woman has been cautioned at Scotland's Glasgow Airport after attempting to smuggle a live snake on a journey from America** to the Netherlands.
Customs officers in Glasgow were carrying out a routine check on the woman when they noticed that her snakeskin belt was in fact a live snake. The harmless reptile had been chilled prior to the flight to keep it in a comatose state but it came to life in the warmth of the airport terminal.
The snake was confiscated and the woman was allowed to catch her flight after being given a warning, according to Scottish newspaper The Herald. "
-- Courtesy of Airline Industry Information, Feb. 18, 2002
Genius.
When I mentioned this story to one of my private lesson students the other day, he came up with a brilliant idea of his own.
Ryu: Hey, didn't you say you're going to have give your goldfish away before you go back to America?
Me: Yeah, the softball team wants to FedEx them back to Seattle for me, but I don't think that'll work so well....
Ryu: You should find a piece of opaque plastic piping, fill it with water, put the goldfish inside, and wear it as a belt on the plane!
It might be worth a try. I'd sure feel bad if my poor goldfish suffocated, though. I suppose every once in a while, I could sneak into the bathroom, take the belt off, and blow bubbles into it....
*Apparently pythons are an endangered species, and it's illegal to bring products made from endangered species into the US, so I settled for a synthetic snakeskin sanshin instead.
** Does this mean that she had already smuggled the snake on a plane once when she flew from the US to Glasgow??? Maybe it wouldn't be so hard to get the sanshin through customs after all....
Monday, March 03, 2008
嬉しいこといっぱい (Too Much of a Good Thing??)
For the last couple months, business has been booming at the medical school -- I think I've gained four or five private lessons just lately. This makes at least four one-hour lessons everyday, and that's not including the university classes and the free tutoring sessions I do for the medical students. If you add in prep time and the proofreading work I do for doctors at the medical school, I'm basically at school from 9 AM to 9 PM every day.
In a way, this is a good thing. I like my job, and I certainly don't want to be sitting around with nothing to do. As long as I'm living by myself in the middle of the Japanese countryside, it's best to keep busy.
On the other hand, all of these new lessons mean that I literally have no time to eat dinner until at least 9 at night Monday through Saturday....although on the bright side, once I come back to the states, I'll probably be a lot thinner.* Maybe I can become a super model.**
* Or fatter?? Isn't eating right before you go to bed supposed to make you gain weight? Or maybe my occasional late night snacking will be canceled out by the fact that sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the floor without eating anything at all.
** Shoot..forgot that I'm not over six feet tall...
Anyway, suffice it to say that with the sudden deluge of work since the first of the year, I haven't been able to write too many blog posts lately. :( But as usual, there's been plenty of stuff to write about. Here's a quick rundown of the most exciting non-work related events of the past few weeks:
Since I went to Okinawa last year, I've been a bit obsessed with the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo-ish instrument that people play there. It's a little hard to describe what it sounds like, but people play it at festivals and dance to it, so it's rhythmical and fun...maybe you could call it Okinawan-style hoe-down music??
Anyway, in Okinawa, I bought a really cheap sanshin for practice, and figured that if I ever got good at it, I could switch to a better one. Real sanshin are made from wood and covered with python skin, but my cheap one was made from a tin can. (After the bombing in World War II, Okinawa was completely devastated, and there were no materials to make sanshin, so people made them out of whatever they could find -- mostly scraps of wood and empty cans. Now the cheapest sanshin in souvenir shops are still made that way.)
Unfortunately, my sanshin was a little too cheap (or maybe I am stronger than I thought.) I was tuning it one day, turned one of the wooden tuning pegs a little too hard, and broke the peg in half. I glued the peg back together with wood glue, but it was never quite the same. :( Lamenting the loss of my sanshin, I mentioned to my parents that I wished I had a real one, and they surprised me and ordered me one for Christmas. And two weeks ago, my new sanshin finally came to the medical school. The new one is beautiful, and the sound is sooo much better than the tin can. :D
The day after my sanshin came, I checked the mail again and found a postcard with results from the Japanese proficiency test I had taken last December. (The test is for foreigners who are studying Japanese, and there are four levels depending on how long you've been studying. For my level, I had to know ~2000 Japanese characters and ~10,000 vocabulary words, so all November and December, I was studying characters like a crazy person.) My postcard was kind of small, and since a small envelope usually means bad news, I figured I must have failed the test, but I opened it anyway and found that I had actually passed! I hope no one was watching me because I was so surprised that I kind of did a little jig up the stairs to my apartment.
The following day, the postman brought me yet another surprise -- another postcard from Nodo Jiman (the American Idol-ish TV show) inviting me to audition for the TV show again. The audition was last weekend, and I decided to sing an Okinawan song and play my sanshin.
Unfortunately, this time around, I didn't sing terribly well and didn't make it on TV, so there's no videotape, but here's a still of me and my beautiful sanshin:
Just like last time, the rest of the auditionees (250 people total) were very entertaining, so despite the fact that I wasn't able to make much progress in my quest to become a Japanese pop star, I was glad to have gone to the audition.
My English student's sister came to hear me sing, and after the audition was over, she invited me to spend the night at her apartment instead of taking the hour and a half long bus ride back home.
In case you're wondering how I know my English student's sister, I suppose I'd better catch you up on a little background information. Last fall, my English student, Yumi, took me to see a big festival in her hometown and introduced me to her whole family. Here's me, Yumi, and her sister, Hitomi, next to one of the festival floats:
See that gigantic pole I'm leaning on? At the festival, the men put the poles on their shoulders and carry the float and bounce it up and down. About five minutes after this picture was taken, the manly men from the float next door decided they wanted to have a fight with our float and started charging towards us. Fortunately for me, Yumi and Hitomi realized that we were about to be sandwiched between two enormous pieces of wood and we all ran to safety in the nick of time.
...but I digress....
Here's Yumi, me, and Hitomi's five year old son, Yuuto, at a little safer distance from the action:
Yuuto is absolutely hysterical. When I first met him last fall, he was really scared of me because he had never seen a foreigner before. (For the first hour or so of the festival, he kept saying, "I don't like foreigners. I hate people who speak English!!") But after a bit, his curiosity got the better of him and we became pretty good buddies:
During dinner, he kept running over to sit on my lap and ask me questions like, "What does your grandpa look like?" and "Are there dogs in America?"
Ok, so back to Nodo Jiman day... After my audition, Yuuto was apparently really excited that I was coming to stay at his apartment. When I walked in the door, he pulled me inside and immediately gave me the grand tour, saying, "I've been cleaning house all day to get ready for you. Doesn't it just sparkle??" And then we played and played all night long...with board games and play money and video games and picture books...it was the first time I had played that much in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. :D
Later that night, we went out to dinner, where Yuuto told me the whole story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and then to the public bath. Yuuto insisted on coming into the women's side to play with me, and then almost dragged me into the men's side too when he decided to look for his dad later on. (笑)
When it was time for me to go home the next afternoon, we did one more jigsaw puzzle and then sadly parted. Yuuto told me to come back next Sunday and he would be sure to clean the house for me. I think I'm in love. <3 <3
In a way, this is a good thing. I like my job, and I certainly don't want to be sitting around with nothing to do. As long as I'm living by myself in the middle of the Japanese countryside, it's best to keep busy.
On the other hand, all of these new lessons mean that I literally have no time to eat dinner until at least 9 at night Monday through Saturday....although on the bright side, once I come back to the states, I'll probably be a lot thinner.* Maybe I can become a super model.**
* Or fatter?? Isn't eating right before you go to bed supposed to make you gain weight? Or maybe my occasional late night snacking will be canceled out by the fact that sometimes I fall asleep in the middle of the floor without eating anything at all.
** Shoot..forgot that I'm not over six feet tall...
Anyway, suffice it to say that with the sudden deluge of work since the first of the year, I haven't been able to write too many blog posts lately. :( But as usual, there's been plenty of stuff to write about. Here's a quick rundown of the most exciting non-work related events of the past few weeks:
Since I went to Okinawa last year, I've been a bit obsessed with the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo-ish instrument that people play there. It's a little hard to describe what it sounds like, but people play it at festivals and dance to it, so it's rhythmical and fun...maybe you could call it Okinawan-style hoe-down music??
Anyway, in Okinawa, I bought a really cheap sanshin for practice, and figured that if I ever got good at it, I could switch to a better one. Real sanshin are made from wood and covered with python skin, but my cheap one was made from a tin can. (After the bombing in World War II, Okinawa was completely devastated, and there were no materials to make sanshin, so people made them out of whatever they could find -- mostly scraps of wood and empty cans. Now the cheapest sanshin in souvenir shops are still made that way.)
Unfortunately, my sanshin was a little too cheap (or maybe I am stronger than I thought.) I was tuning it one day, turned one of the wooden tuning pegs a little too hard, and broke the peg in half. I glued the peg back together with wood glue, but it was never quite the same. :( Lamenting the loss of my sanshin, I mentioned to my parents that I wished I had a real one, and they surprised me and ordered me one for Christmas. And two weeks ago, my new sanshin finally came to the medical school. The new one is beautiful, and the sound is sooo much better than the tin can. :D
The day after my sanshin came, I checked the mail again and found a postcard with results from the Japanese proficiency test I had taken last December. (The test is for foreigners who are studying Japanese, and there are four levels depending on how long you've been studying. For my level, I had to know ~2000 Japanese characters and ~10,000 vocabulary words, so all November and December, I was studying characters like a crazy person.) My postcard was kind of small, and since a small envelope usually means bad news, I figured I must have failed the test, but I opened it anyway and found that I had actually passed! I hope no one was watching me because I was so surprised that I kind of did a little jig up the stairs to my apartment.
The following day, the postman brought me yet another surprise -- another postcard from Nodo Jiman (the American Idol-ish TV show) inviting me to audition for the TV show again. The audition was last weekend, and I decided to sing an Okinawan song and play my sanshin.
Unfortunately, this time around, I didn't sing terribly well and didn't make it on TV, so there's no videotape, but here's a still of me and my beautiful sanshin:
Just like last time, the rest of the auditionees (250 people total) were very entertaining, so despite the fact that I wasn't able to make much progress in my quest to become a Japanese pop star, I was glad to have gone to the audition.
My English student's sister came to hear me sing, and after the audition was over, she invited me to spend the night at her apartment instead of taking the hour and a half long bus ride back home.
In case you're wondering how I know my English student's sister, I suppose I'd better catch you up on a little background information. Last fall, my English student, Yumi, took me to see a big festival in her hometown and introduced me to her whole family. Here's me, Yumi, and her sister, Hitomi, next to one of the festival floats:
See that gigantic pole I'm leaning on? At the festival, the men put the poles on their shoulders and carry the float and bounce it up and down. About five minutes after this picture was taken, the manly men from the float next door decided they wanted to have a fight with our float and started charging towards us. Fortunately for me, Yumi and Hitomi realized that we were about to be sandwiched between two enormous pieces of wood and we all ran to safety in the nick of time.
...but I digress....
Here's Yumi, me, and Hitomi's five year old son, Yuuto, at a little safer distance from the action:
Yuuto is absolutely hysterical. When I first met him last fall, he was really scared of me because he had never seen a foreigner before. (For the first hour or so of the festival, he kept saying, "I don't like foreigners. I hate people who speak English!!") But after a bit, his curiosity got the better of him and we became pretty good buddies:
During dinner, he kept running over to sit on my lap and ask me questions like, "What does your grandpa look like?" and "Are there dogs in America?"
Ok, so back to Nodo Jiman day... After my audition, Yuuto was apparently really excited that I was coming to stay at his apartment. When I walked in the door, he pulled me inside and immediately gave me the grand tour, saying, "I've been cleaning house all day to get ready for you. Doesn't it just sparkle??" And then we played and played all night long...with board games and play money and video games and picture books...it was the first time I had played that much in a long time, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. :D
Later that night, we went out to dinner, where Yuuto told me the whole story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and then to the public bath. Yuuto insisted on coming into the women's side to play with me, and then almost dragged me into the men's side too when he decided to look for his dad later on. (笑)
When it was time for me to go home the next afternoon, we did one more jigsaw puzzle and then sadly parted. Yuuto told me to come back next Sunday and he would be sure to clean the house for me. I think I'm in love. <3 <3
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