May Day; No Pain, No Gain 2

Hello May, hello spring, hello good weather.  Well actually I underestimated the cold and wore not enough layers of clothes and it felt cold in the morning.  But not so cold; the past few days I didn't have to wear gloves or a scarf or a beanie/tuque/bonnet.  Daytime high today was 23 degrees.  That's like a Manila evening in December/January/February.  Daytime low is 12 degrees; currently - it's 9:40pm here - it's still 18 degrees.  Just like an air-conditioned room.

Anyways, today I was late to school, but I did cook my rice for my two meals today, and ate the food I bought yesterday for lunch - 12 pieces of siomai (Chinese dimsum, with pork filling I think) and a handful of mixed veggies.  For dinner I ate my imported can of Century Corned Tuna and another handful of mixed veggies.  Guess what.  I didn't spend a cent/yen today!  Yay!  But my projection though stays the same; my cash is just enough until June 18, assuming I don't make too many trips, buy anything, and stick to maybe a maximum of $8 (800 yen) per meal.  I did get a break though - one of my basketball "buddies" treated me to a bottle of Pocari Sweat.  Yum.  Oh, and I played basketball again today.

I was feeling the muscle pains today, and I thought I should take a break from basketball.  But what the heck, I love basketball, played for about 2 hours maybe...  And now I feel great.  I guess the pain will just haunt me again tomorrow... :-D  But overall, I think this is good.  "No pain, no gain" again comes to mind. :-D

Today there was a seminar, a professor from Italy.  His field is in hydraulics - not wind engineering - although of course hazard assessment and fluid dynamics are two common areas between the two fields.  The first one though was a little difficult to digest all at once, or not for me being into structural wind engineering; he was talking about algae and stuff.  The second topic he discussed was about climate change - which was a little bit interesting.

I learned how to use my washing machine.  This is how it goes: press on, press start, and voila!  That's it!  It'll determine the weight of the laundry and the necessary amount of water and probably the length of time it needs to do the washing, and rinsing, and spin-drying.  Great!  Oh, of course I have to put the clothes and detergent in.  I haven't bought fabric softener yet...  Yikes!  Let's see what will happen. :-D

And that's about it.  Short day.  Tomorrow is Laundry day.  And mass in Tokyo.  And go around a bit in Tokyo.  And meet up with a friend who's also a graduate student.  And maybe get a Japanese mobile phone so that I can make emergency calls (but I hope I don't have to make emergency calls!).  I still don't know if they charge for incoming calls...  I hope not!

Ja ne!