I’m glad that I decided to go into work today. Even though I skipped yesterday nobody seemed to have noticed. Today was payday, though, and I went in and stamped my pay slip. If I wasn’t around to do that, it would have been pretty conspicuous. Other teachers showed up for that and then disappeared. I stuck around until about 1:30, and then took off.
At lunch time the history noticed that I hadn’t brought a lunch to work, and so he invited me to go out for some lunch. I was hoping to be out of there and heading home for lunch, but he had caught me. I went with him to a chinese food place near Seiyu, and we talked and ate. He only smoked two cigarettes while we were eating, and so I feel like I got off easy.
Today I checked out the vocabulary that I’ve been working on, and I found some interesting statistics. I’ve memorized about 2800 words, but at any given time I retain only 80% of them. What 80% I retain is always shifting around, so words that I thought I knew last week may slip away and need review. There is a solid core of words that I use over and over, and those are the ones that I tend to use in conversations. It’s the more obscure words that I have trouble retaining. Words that are about obscure or intangible things like “moral education” and “prejudice” are tough to keep in my head.
If you could peek into my head you’d see me thinking in English, with Japanese words flying around like tomatoes in a food fight. I can string together nice messy Japanese sentences, tiptoeing around words or themes that I don’t know how to express. Flashcards help me keep things in my head, but at more 2500 words, it gets tough to find time to review them all in a timely manner. I’m using some pretty advanced flashcard software on my old iPAQ PocketPC to rotate through the words that are the toughest for me. So far is has been much more effective than traditional flashcards, but it’s still a challenge to keep all those words.
Now I’m home, and I’ve got some time to myself to clean, do laundry, repot a plant, wash dishes and other fun stuff like that. I’m playing the stereo loud and enjoying some brain relaxation time. Tonight we are going to put the deep fryer back into action and make fried chicken. I’m looking forward to some unhealthy food tonight – I weighed in this morning at 173 pounds. My goal is 167 pounds (76 kilos), so I’ll make it extra tough by eating lots of fried chicken tonight.
My fried food diet
