Golden Week 2008

In Japan, "Golden Week" comprises Shōwa Day (昭和の日) on 29 Apr, Constitution Memorial Day (憲法記念日) on 3 May, Nature Day (みどりの日) on 4 May and Children's Day (こどもの日) on 5 May. It is the longest stretch of consecutive public holidays here..

(Un)fortunately this year, 3rd and 4th May fall on a Saturday and Sunday, so only 1 day (on 6 May) was given as a replacement holiday. Thus instead of a long stretch of holidays, it was kinda "broken" into 2 short parts: 29 Apr (1 day) and then 3 - 6 May (4 days including weekends). For many schools and companies, this year's Golden Week is only 2 (week-)day long... Most people still need to work from 30 Apr to 02 May... :(

However, my graduate school has declared those 3 days (30 Apr to 2 May) as holidays, so no Masters classes from 29 Apr to 6 May but there will be make-up lessons later.. :( Frankly, I would rather have classes on those days since other departments/faculties within the University were business as usual.. I had initially thought that the whole University was closed from 29 Apr to 6 May and had planned out how to utilise these holidays.. Luckily, I chatted online with one of my classmates, Chua-san, and found out that the Japanese classes are still on between 30 Apr and 2 May!! If not, I would have missed my Japanese classes twice in a roll, after I was KO-ed by flu the week before..

Here are some of the things I had accomplished during this Golden Week:

1. Rearranged my room.
With a smoker for my (new) neighbour, I can't help but smell the cigarette smoke every time she opens her window to smoke.. So I shifted my bed away from the window and put my study table there instead. Also with the almost weekly weekend karaoke/party sessions by the PNs in my floor, I need to move my study desk away from the door to minimize the noise level when I am studying..

So now I am no longer sleeping parallel to the cooking stoves in the kitchen next door, but I have "created" many other not-so-good Fengshui arrangements (an overhead shelf over my head, the ceiling lights hanging over my legs, etc). However, I would gladly take a chance against these unseen "bad-vibes" versus those irritating noise and smell..


2. Read Economics.
So far, I had managed to read until Chapter 23 of one of the required text books. I have 16 more chapters to go.. Hopefully I could finish it in 2 weeks and then start on another required text book. Unlike fictions or non-fictions, these texts require full concentration as everything is linked. If I don't understand section 1, I will not understand section 2.. so I could only read about 3-4 chapters a day.. maybe as time goes by, with more practice and increased understanding, I could increase the number of chapters covered per day. Gambatte!! :)


3. Visited Ryogoku Kokugikan (両国国技館) and Edo-Tokyo Museum.
Did this last Saturday (3 May) with a group of Malaysians. Will write about this in a separate blog entry.


Some of the things that I had hope to accomplish but with only 1 more day left, it is going to be tough..
1. Revise my Japanese.
Need to do some serious revision if I hope to maintain my grades for them.. Am still unable to string a grammatically coherent long sentence.. :( :(

2. Read 2 books.
One of them is The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong and the other is Reading Freud by Tony Thwaites.. Hopefully, I can complete them by end of this month...

3. Draft out the outline for my theme research for this semester.
I need to hand in a 10-15 page report by end of this semester, but I am still unable to decide what topic to research on.. Need to, at least, a rough idea what I wanna do and start my research and not wait till the last minute, making a mad rush for the dateline. And this semester, the professor that is going to grade my report is known to be very strict and demanding, so I can BS my way through as before... stress... stress..


There will not be any more public holidays till end of July, so I need to somehow get all these reading and studying done.. for this semester there will be many more exams (midterms and finals) than the previous one, while the number of reports required more or less remains the same.. thus I think once I get through this semester, the following 2 semesters would be much easier and freer.. I hope.. 加油啦！