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allekhaWell, my first food delivery arrived yesterday, with only a minor hiccup (they got the wrong kind of bread) that didn't matter that much. My free tea samples from the local shop also showed up in the mail. And so then I went out shopping for the rest of my groceries at the local store.
I'd actually had a nightmare the previous night, about how I was forced to go through a maze of stores with impossibly tight shelving, full of people who didn't care much about socially distancing - and at some point I'd lost my mask. It wasn't quite that bad in real life, but there were more people at the store than last time I'd been and I was pretty anxious, especially since there are a few bottlenecks where it's impossible to stay six feet from someone if they don't stop to wait, or where it's hard to tell if someone is coming up behind you.
I also started getting stomach pains on my way there; by the time I got back, they were so bad that I took off my mask, washed my hands while hoping the lightheadedness didn't make me faint, and then went to lie down for an hour in hopes that they'd go away. They kind of did, eventually, at least enough that I could stand to be vertical long enough to put my food away. They were on and off the rest of the evening and to a much lesser extent this morning. I haven't eaten anything unusual, so no idea what caused them. Weird.
Anyway, I had another meeting with my advisor today. He okayed my basic plan, and on one subject of contention, mentioned that he's on my side but that I'm the one who, in the end, has to come up with a justification and put my foot down about it, which is true. Will do my best. (And also funding is pretty fucked after summer, so. Better hurry it up.)
Wednesday reading:
Have read: Textbook about behavioral ecology. It was very interesting and written in an accessible style. Helped me pull together some concepts that I'd encountered separately and put them into one framework.
For more fun reading, I finished reading the scans of Boku Ga Watashi ni Naru Tame Ni, which I've bought in ebook form; it's an essay manga about the author's experience as an MTF woman undergoing SRS in Thailand and what it's like being transgender in Japan, mostly from a procedural standpoint, with a few observations on the nature of gender. The art is cute and the sense of humor is hilarious. There's this one part with a tofu metaphor.... Would've been nice to see a bit more of the author's emotional perspective, but from the author's notes, this wasn't the point of the manga for her, which seems fair.
Also read what's available of Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku. It's about a girl, Hime, who just entered high school alongside her best friend and secret crush, Akira, who is attending school as a girl for the first time. It's partially about Akira's difficulties socially (especially since her parents aren't allowing her to physically transition even as much as growing her hair) and Hime's efforts to defend her, partially about their relationship, which is more fraught than it first appears, and partially about Hime's exploration of identity and her own view of her gender and her social role. The art for this one is also cute and I've enjoyed the various aspects of identity it touches on, and the relationships feel realistic. However, all the side characters, even the other high schoolers, are too capable of spewing wise speeches of advice, which I found tiresome after the fifth or so time, and as of the last few chapters, there's too much love triangle drama going on that I don't find interesting.
Currently reading: An obscure 80s shoujo sports manga (in Japanese - I figured out how to get de-DRM-able Japanese ebooks :D) and Guardian, the cnovel. I'm halfway through the first volume and I... have to say that if I hadn't heard about it from the hype, I would've stopped reading it by now. The story so far is okay but not that interesting, and the translation is supposedly edited but still pretty bad. It's full of comma splices, wrong word choice (anti-social does not mean socially anxious, ffs), incorrectly punctuated dialogue, and tense problems. I know from experience that translation is difficult and these are just fans, but most of the issues are basic English grammar problems. There was also one scene where I had difficulty figuring out what was going on. I'll at least finish the volume, but I'm not sure I'll continue.
To read: Not sure!
I'd actually had a nightmare the previous night, about how I was forced to go through a maze of stores with impossibly tight shelving, full of people who didn't care much about socially distancing - and at some point I'd lost my mask. It wasn't quite that bad in real life, but there were more people at the store than last time I'd been and I was pretty anxious, especially since there are a few bottlenecks where it's impossible to stay six feet from someone if they don't stop to wait, or where it's hard to tell if someone is coming up behind you.
I also started getting stomach pains on my way there; by the time I got back, they were so bad that I took off my mask, washed my hands while hoping the lightheadedness didn't make me faint, and then went to lie down for an hour in hopes that they'd go away. They kind of did, eventually, at least enough that I could stand to be vertical long enough to put my food away. They were on and off the rest of the evening and to a much lesser extent this morning. I haven't eaten anything unusual, so no idea what caused them. Weird.
Anyway, I had another meeting with my advisor today. He okayed my basic plan, and on one subject of contention, mentioned that he's on my side but that I'm the one who, in the end, has to come up with a justification and put my foot down about it, which is true. Will do my best. (And also funding is pretty fucked after summer, so. Better hurry it up.)
Wednesday reading:
Have read: Textbook about behavioral ecology. It was very interesting and written in an accessible style. Helped me pull together some concepts that I'd encountered separately and put them into one framework.
For more fun reading, I finished reading the scans of Boku Ga Watashi ni Naru Tame Ni, which I've bought in ebook form; it's an essay manga about the author's experience as an MTF woman undergoing SRS in Thailand and what it's like being transgender in Japan, mostly from a procedural standpoint, with a few observations on the nature of gender. The art is cute and the sense of humor is hilarious. There's this one part with a tofu metaphor.... Would've been nice to see a bit more of the author's emotional perspective, but from the author's notes, this wasn't the point of the manga for her, which seems fair.
Also read what's available of Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku. It's about a girl, Hime, who just entered high school alongside her best friend and secret crush, Akira, who is attending school as a girl for the first time. It's partially about Akira's difficulties socially (especially since her parents aren't allowing her to physically transition even as much as growing her hair) and Hime's efforts to defend her, partially about their relationship, which is more fraught than it first appears, and partially about Hime's exploration of identity and her own view of her gender and her social role. The art for this one is also cute and I've enjoyed the various aspects of identity it touches on, and the relationships feel realistic. However, all the side characters, even the other high schoolers, are too capable of spewing wise speeches of advice, which I found tiresome after the fifth or so time, and as of the last few chapters, there's too much love triangle drama going on that I don't find interesting.
Currently reading: An obscure 80s shoujo sports manga (in Japanese - I figured out how to get de-DRM-able Japanese ebooks :D) and Guardian, the cnovel. I'm halfway through the first volume and I... have to say that if I hadn't heard about it from the hype, I would've stopped reading it by now. The story so far is okay but not that interesting, and the translation is supposedly edited but still pretty bad. It's full of comma splices, wrong word choice (anti-social does not mean socially anxious, ffs), incorrectly punctuated dialogue, and tense problems. I know from experience that translation is difficult and these are just fans, but most of the issues are basic English grammar problems. There was also one scene where I had difficulty figuring out what was going on. I'll at least finish the volume, but I'm not sure I'll continue.
To read: Not sure!
