だし巻きの日

だし巻き卵、和食レシピを活用。

白ごはん.com だし巻き卵の作り方

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sirogohan.com/sp/recipe/dasimaki/amp/

卵 4個

だし汁　大さじ４

グルテンフリーしょうゆ、みりん　各大さじ半分

砂糖　小さじ半分

だし汁はほんだし、湯300 ml +　小さじ 2/3 .

家事スイッチが入り、味噌炒めも。

蓋をしないで、よく混ぜながら炒めるのがコツ！

にんにくみじん切りを強火で油で炒めて香りを出す。なす、ピーマンを足す。みそ　大さじ２くらい、ほんだし少々、しょうゆ少々（味見しながら）。濃い味にしておいて豆腐を加える。普通に持ち寄りこれでよかったじゃん、という説…！

料理やカフェなど

ひき肉、人参、さやいんげん、キノコ、トマトでカレーを作ったつもりが、トマト煮のカレー風味になってしまった。水分が多い。トマト缶は水を切るべきだったのか…？

カフェChapelure at Heights Eastwood　に行って友達とおしゃべり＆宿題のインタビュー。ポーランドのことをたくさん知れて、楽しかった！　関連して世界史を読んでいて、まあ人類の行いの惨いこと惨いこと……私の周りは平和だし恵まれているけど、世界には紛争地域もあり、なんでこうなんでしょう、と嘆かざるを得ない。はあ。

おしゃれなインテリアだった。昼の一時でデカフェは売り切れていた…　デニッシュ、ケーキ、サンドイッチが充実。あと、ラテもいろんな種類があった。

白いんげんを大量にもらったのでローストしてみた。

会議室にいる巨大くまちゃん。実は大学Tシャツを着ている。院生会議は人が多かったのでモニターの裏に隠れてもらいましたが、普段は椅子にでん！と座っていて、しかもおしりがやや椅子からはみ出していて…存在感マックス。手触りも最高。

A look-back of this week

- Greenhouse access suddenly deactivated! We needed to hand our training certificate that we took back in May to the greenhouse office, but we weren't aware of it. You can take basic training anywhere to work at university facilities, but we need a site-specific training at every facility where you work. Hmm, didn't know that, but it makes sense. One thing that I don't understand is that you cannot go into the office without access to the greenhouse, obviously. But you need to go in in order to take the training and get access. It's chicken or egg, and it's illegal to follow someone to come in, but it was the only thing I could do. I told this to the staff, but he just shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Well.." Some things don't make sense, but we just leave them as they are.

To make it even stranger, my labmate's paperwork was dropped off by our lab staff, but mine was not. I don't know what was going on because I took the same training with her and signed the paperwork at the same time. I spent a good 40 min in there figuring out what to do to regain access. It is really true that in the US, you frequently encounter events at which you want to shout "Whaaaat??" Anything can happen. It's just the way things are here. So preventative measures almost don't work as well as they would in Japan. Crazy things happen, and you just cannot foresee it to be prepared for it. Then here comes the attitude of "deal with the problem when it arises". I first thought it was inefficient, but this mindset may be the fittest and the most logical one.

- Can opening went alright, had to drive in the snow but it wasn't too bad. The problem was that we couldn't park the van anywhere when we got back at 10:30! There are more people looking for parking nowadays due to extreme weather. We had to park in a lot that's 10 minutes away from our building to take a 5 min ride to the venue. Whatever..

- Midterm exam was a good brain training to prevent ageing. I know I'm not getting any younger, but it's surprising how less memory I have now. Long-term memory (24 hours or more) was affected first, but then short-term, too. I cannot remember things on the slides I just saw!! The exam questions were a bit like asking some finite details of random things. They may be important to some extent, but what we think out of them is more important. I guess it's a course to learn basic knowledge, which we will then use to do scientific research.

- My new earring hole on my left ear was getting red and hurt for a few days, while the other one on my left didn't have any problem. Now I make sure I disinfect and clean the holes daily, it seems the problem subsided. I'm relieved. I shouldn't forget to clean them, but again it just slips out from my memory so easily.

- Ultimately it's your choice. What others do is none of your business.

- Student symposium this coming December is getting even bigger, a two-day event with participants from outside the university. It's amazing to see the students' vitality, aspiration to make things more interesting, more engaging. I was only thinking about following the previous year's example and just have it done. I think this continuous willingness to improve is what keeps the US an energetic and vigorous society. People think with their own mind with their own view and exercise their freedom to start up new things, business, conference, club activities etc. Not everything will succeed, but they can improve it and try again. It's encouraging to see them being strong, resilient, and independent (in a sense that they don't mind what others' think of them), and I learn a lot from them.

- People volunteer, and are not afraid of take leadership because it leads to good evaluation. It's a very practical system. Interesting to see everything. Once you know this mentality of freedom and logic, you won't be able to go back. 




  

Week full of work

I was hesitant to admit it, but it's a super busy week with lots of things happening at the same time.

Cooking 3 times a week, 

3 can opening evaluations, 

planting the F1 seeds, 

a midterm exam, and 

fellowship application. 

Just going through everything as they appear. It's very difficult to juggle things. Hopefully it's the last time I have to do this. 

Bizarre foods in Japan were presented in class today by US students. It was quite intriguing. They showed sea urchin, whale meat, and horse meat. According to them, sea urchin is enjoyed in chawanmushi or pasta sauce. That's well researched. One of them had it before, and she felt it was creamy but tasted just like the ocean with not much flavor. I can relate to that... it's not my favourite seafood either. It's indeed a bizarre food if I think of it. There's a lot more unusual foods in Japan, and same in the US, too!

カリフラワー、豚肉のトマト煮。

たまには豚肉で栄養を。

カリフラワー、めちゃ大きいけどかさが減る。荷崩れを防ぎたい…。

トマト煮たまに食べると美味しい。

Accuracy and personality - how the two very different things are related

Lab meeting presentaion done! It was a hectic week with lots of meetings, studying, and analyses. I should have started earlier! I always feel so, but I don't learn the lesson because I somehow manage to get it done... The good thing about giving a presentatioin is that you can omit information that you don't fully understand or too much detail. You can decide what the highlight is. That's good! After that, I spent a good 3-4 hours in the greenhouse starting to plant our F1 seeds. There are total 1200+ seeds, and We will need 400 pots. We are going to have the nightmare of tangled, out-of-control plants again for the next few months....

Also coming up the next few months are:

• Midterm exam, presentation topic, term paper interview for the food science class;
• Write paper of bean paste;
• Genotype, diversity analysis for conference presentation;
• Image analysis using computational approach;

There's this much time a day, this much time a week; I really need to think carefully how I spend my time. Time is life. There's only so much time and prioritisation is key.

In that sense, it makes sense that people just stay at work till 5 and rush home afterwords, however much work is remaining, because their time dedicated to work is just 8 hours. It's not about the quality, and it's not a norm that you would need to stay however long until you finish. It's about how much you can do within the limited amount of time, and if you cannot wait till tomorrow, you will need to hire another person. I have a mixed feeling about that attitude because I think quality of work is important. If you rush to finish and not check your job, then your work will not be of acceptable quality.

But who is going to check the quality of your work? Because checking will take another person's time. Unless they are hired to do that, nobody won't. Maybe a lot of data generated here are questionable. So many people are involved at one or more points of data collection, and it's not surprising if an error occurs at any point.

It was surprigng to hear that error is possible, and how one does his/her job is a personality thing and cannot be changed. Isn't it possible to do a line of tasks without an error, if you check each time before proceeding to the next? It will require a good setup and easy-to-follow system to do that, but it's possible. I think this is where personality comes into play. Even if there is a system, some people follow it, others don't - they just go with whatever THEY are comfortable. Isn't how a job is done something that is taught and trained? There's no room for personality there. You just follow the steps so that you will get the best result with a minimum error rate. What's more efficient than that??

People are selling time to their empolyer. They do their best, but there's no gold standard of what is good. Some folks just don't care or don't notice small details as much. Team work is tricky because there are various kinds of people in a team with different personalities and strengths. Those who notice little things the most will have to take the leadership, and that is why leadership is so valued here. If you can lead a team, you have a good idea of what is going on and you know what you are doing. If you are a mere teammate, nobody knows if you are diligent, hard-working, detail oriented and accurate, or careless, prone to erros and passive. How do you deal with those who are less careful and have little intention to improve themselves? And how difficult is it to tell the careful from the not careful? A recommendation letter won't help at all because it just says beautiful things. It's more of a formality and it only shows that they worked there. It doesn't say how they did it..

 

Unusual experience under -14F／マイナス25℃体験記

• Feels like a magician by exhaling air. It creates beautiful white smoke and you can control it. But be careful not to directly inhale the frigidly cold air.
• Cannot breathe normally without covering my mouth. The cold air stings your throat. You should cover your mouth and nose to protect your lungs. Even though I covered my nose, it was bleeding inside. Too dry and too cold.
• Felt like my eyelashes were freezing. The eyeblows absorb a small amount of moisture from my eyes, and they freeze. It was a very strange feeling to have them half-frozen. It caused slight difficulty in re-opening my eyes after blinking. Can you believe it?
• Literally feel that your body heat is escaping to outside.
• Felt frostbite slowly being developed at the tip of your hands and toes.
• The thermostat of the car acted wierd. When I turned it on at night, the coolant temperature was -2F. I let the engine run for a while to warm it up, but after 10 minutes, the coolant was -13F. It decreased somehow!! The following morning, the car did not start... But after the temperature warmed up on the following day, it started like normally. No issues. I think the extreme low temperature made the thermostat mulfunction somehow. Glad I did not have to spend extra for a repair. 
• When the temperature goes up to 18F, it feels so warm that you want to start dancing and walk home. It makes you realize how stiff your body was during the cold blast, and you will feel more relaxed under mid-teens even though it's still below freezing.
• My friend in Canada says "It's cute that it makes the news when it's -14F (-25C) in Chicago. It won't make the news when it's -30C in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada)." How do they survive?

• 白い息をフーーーーっと吐いて、気分はマジシャン。しかし直接冷気を吸い込むのは危険です。
• 口や鼻を何かで覆わないと、呼吸がしづらい。気道や肺が凍傷になる可能性があるので、屋外での深い呼吸は避けるように、などなどの警告メッセージが大学から来た。気づかなかったけど鼻の奥が出血していた。あまりの寒さに血管が凍って破裂したのかも？！　雪が降っていないときは乾燥もすごいし。
• 睫毛が凍っているような感覚？　瞬きの後に若干開けにくいような、妙な感覚。
• 体温が外気と熱交換され、どんどん体表から熱が逃げていくのをリアルに感じる。（バス通学の人が多いから、休校にしたのは英断だった。そんな中実験組んでしまい車が動かないからバスに乗らざるをえなかったという…大人しーく家にいればよかったわ。でも実験進んだから良いけど。）
• じわじわと手足の先が霜焼けになりつつあるのを感じる。時間の問題だった。間一髪！
• あまりの低温に車の冷却液温度が正しく測定されなかった。エンジンをつけたら－2F、10分温めても－13F。下がっとるやん。その時は車動いたけど、翌朝はエンジンがかからなかった…。気温が上がってからは、何事もなかったかのように動いたし冷却液温度も通常になっていたので良かった。
• 気温が18F（－7C）まで上がると、本当にあたたかく感じ、小躍りしたくなり、歩いて帰ろーー♪となる。
• カナダの友達曰く「シカゴで－25℃がニュースになるなんて、かわいいね。エドモントンで－30℃になっても、特にニュースにならないよ」上には上が。いや、下には下が。

The importance of keeping friendship/感謝

Really Really Really Thankful to my valuable friends for your support. I got huge relief. You mean so much to me.


https://www.crohnsandcolitis.com.au/can-help/