Kona Coffee cafe

Went to a Hawaiian-themed cafe!  The ukulele music, tropical plants, and the colorful interior all reminded me of the paradise island!  

Eggs Benedict with gilled shrimp!  Yum~

Fluffy pancakes!

 

Family Halloween party!

We had a Halloween party with my uncle, aunt, my parents, and my sister's family.  My aunt made a lot of delicious food!  She is a very good cook and loves cooking.  It's my dream to host a home party like this and prepare dishes!

 

Viva pasta

Had a delicious pasta with my mum..  Italian dishes can be made really tasty with good qualit ingredients! 

Crab and sea urchin creme

fish roe and squid oil sauce

Diploma arrived!! 学位記来た！！

いやーーはるばる日本まで来た。よかった！

学位記には8/19/2021修了と書いていて、へ～～となった。でも博士論文最終締め切りは8/25で、24に提出したんだけどな。まあいいけど。

そういえば、「学位記が発送されました！」メールには、郵便追跡があって、見てみたら「現在Jamaica」と書いてあって驚愕したのだった。まさか、学位記発送先の住所入力の際に、国名選択でJapan から一個ずれて Jamaica としてしまったのか？！と血の気が引いた。本当に一回間違えかけたことがあったので…気を付けていたのだが…。もし本当にジャマイカに着いていたらおそらく取り戻すことは不可能だろう。誰も日本の住所だなんてわからないし、分かっても返送するオプションがついているかどうか？

しかし気にしないようにしていた（てか忘れてた）。こういうのって、最後まで分からないからだ。追跡が間違っているかもしれないし。米国生活でトラブルには慣れた。

しかし、やはり学位記を受け取れて本当に良かった。届いた筒の送り状にはやはり「Japan」とあり、私の入力は間違っていなかった。とすれば……もう一度追跡情報を見ると、「Jamaica, NY」とあるではないか！！　ニューヨーク州の地名か！！！　紛らわしい～～～～～！！　何で国名と同じ名前をつけるんだ……　こういうことがあるからトラブルが起こるのでは！　しかし納得だった。

考えてみれば、英語表記の住所の一発目に国名は来ない。それを忘れていたけど、NYの後に国名がなかったし、「Jamaica」の文字を見れば以前の間違い未遂事件も頭をよぎって国名だと思ってしまう！

はーーー　大騒ぎしなくてよかった…。騒いだところで、Jamaicaの郵便局に連絡して見つけてもらえる可能性がどれくらいか、測るすべもないが。。

そんなこんなで無事に学位記を受け取りました…。

届いていなかったとしても、電子版をダウンロードできるので博士号の証明自体はできるのだけど。それにしても電子版とは便利なものだ。$12 請求されることを除けば…。相変わらず商売上手。

Kyoto trip and found an apartment!

I took a short trip to Kyoto last Thu-Friday to look for an apartment!  On day 1, it wasn't very efficient of me to meet with different real estate firms.  Different firms have the same apt information and they can show any unit listed. So I could have picked just one firm, stick with it, and tour around more efficiently by car. 

But I didn't know that.. I thought one apartment is managed by one company!

I ended up walking a lot around the neighbourhood south of Kyoto station, and I was dehydrated and tired.  I almost had heat stroke, in hindsight.  It was sunny and humid for October.

But it was kinda fun to meet with various agents with various personalities.  One was cheerful, one seemed like an expert (indeed, he is a manager!), and one was a polite newbie.  I ended up with touring around with the newbie to see the most apartments I had in mind, so his advisor was also there, which is great; two people are better than one doing the job.  They gave me kind words when I was feeling unwell.  They also gave me helpful advice on which apartment may be good for me.

After all, I picked a very good one that I liked!  It's new, spacious, clean, and modern.  It's on the top floor, so I won't have noise from above.  I was only looking at a unit on the 2nd floor, but later I found that one on the 3rd floor was also available!!  It was very kind of them to change my application to the top floor unit with ease.  It makes a very big difference!  I hope my application will be approved smoothly.

   

Revision finished!!!!

I finally finished revising my last manuscript based on reviewers' comments and sent it to my advisor!! Hopefully she'll say it's OK and it will be re-submitted and accepted. 

It was a looooong process, DNA sequencing in summer 2018, bioinformatics in 2018-2019, more data collection in 2019, and data analysis, re-analysis through 2020-2021.  Many many revisions!!  This paper will be the base one to describe the diversity panel, so I wanted to make sure everything is correct...   

It's hard to believe that only 3 more months to go for 2021!!  At least I will have 2 papers published for this year.

A next project will be starting soon on food informatics!!

And Agbiodata working group project as well...? 

A little sribble of Twisted Wonderland characters

Long article finished and played ukulele

Our Albizia tree bears fluffy balls similar to dandelion fluff. 

I had to finish wirting an article for Acarik about writing research papers in english.  I ended up writing 7000 characters!!  It was a lot of work to do.  I knew it would take a long time but I procrastinated and was working on my paper revision... It's nice to see my articles published though.  I really like it.  The next article will be shorter, I think!!

Ukulele is a lot of fun to play.  It's easy!!  You can play many famous songs with just four chords.  It's suited for busy adults because it requires only a bit of effort and gives pleasure of playing songs faily easily.