So, Nic and Bekah convinced me that rather than leaving this blog fallow, I could just blog about my life. Like how blogging was originally intended. (blog is shorted from “weblog”, which apparently started off as an online diary) Yes, I am a bit dense at times.

Anyway, I’ve been in school, which is very much of the same-old same-old. Highlights from my week include:

Handing in the International Business group report! We were supposed to report on a foreign company we thought succeeded in Japan, and my group chose Aflac. I didn’t know most of the members, so working together was a pretty fun experience.

Dinner with a new friend!

I was in the canteen last week when someone asked me “Excuse me, are you Singaporean?” After I got over the shock (because I’ve basically been speaking in Japanese the whole day and the question was in English), I started chatting, and became friends with Ben, an exchange student from NUS. Basically, I was wearing my MGS shirt and forgot it. I wonder what will happen if I wear an AC shirt to school – I’ve still got Jame’s “Just did IB” shirt.

And since Kouta (one of my zemi friends) works at an Izakaya, we decided to go there for dinner on Thursday. It was really fun, and delicious. Ben got his Yukata (for really, really cheap), and I got to spend some time not studying.

Because well, exam time is here.

Well, not really. Exams are end of this month, but I’ve already started studying. Lots of tough (but interesting) subjects this term. On the bright side, I don’t have any end of semester exams for 外国書購読（英語経済）, which is supposed to be reading in English, but is more of a Japanese class for me. YAY.

Apart from studying, I’ve also been busy with the translation baito that Charmaine got for me. She finally got the company to give us the exact amount of money we’re getting. Otsukare~

The bad news is that they want the first 50 pages ASAP. And we both have our end of semester exams. For me, I’m sharing the book (we’re translating guide books) with one more person, so it’s not too bad, but Charmaine’s doing hers all by herself. It’s gonna be really tough. This is also why today, instead of going to Nokonoshima for half a day like I wanted to, I stayed home to study and do translation stuff. And ok, it’s also because I looked at my wallet and thought the better of it.

I also had a special lecture from a IT journalist yesterday.

He talked about drones, IoT (apparently, people are conflating IoT with networked devices), wearable technology, deep learning and a whole host of other stuff. It was all really fascinating, if heavy.

And since he’s a zemi guest speaker, we had a nomikai after. As you may know, I’m not very good at nomikai’s. But I talked to people yesterday, which I think is an achievement. The first half was mostly me talking to my classmate from my year, but after a while, I started talking to a 5th year senior. He just came back from a year’s exchange in America (hence, year 5), so we were speaking in English. It was pretty fun. And I talked with one of the OBs that came last night, and two of the year 4 seniors. I was like “wheeee, I’m talking to people” (of course, this was all done inwardly. I was speaking normally on the outside).

Those are basically the highlights of my week. Next week, or more accurately, from tomorrow onwards, I will be:

Buying a suit. My teacher says that when we do presentations at Aomori University, we have to wear something with a collar. And since I have to do shuukatsu anyway, I should get a proper suit. Hmm… that’s a blogpost topic. Assuming that I have enough things to say. I’ll see tomorrow, because I hear you can get suits for reasonable prices at Tenjin.

Prepare presentation slides and a report (on top of regular prepare for classes and study for exams). The slides are due tomorrow, and I still have to do a lot more reading in Chinese. Well, I guess it’s good China is working on Industry 4.0, since it means I have something to present about. And I have the report on the lecture by the IT journalist due on Wednesday, which is also the same day I’m going to Aomori. I’ll probably try to get it done tomorrow or Monday.

Aomori-Tokyo trip. From Wednesday onwards, I’ll be on a zemi trip to Aomori, then Tokyo. We’ll be doing a joint zemi class with Aomori University students, and then heading to Tokyo for some conference. I’m super nervous about this, but it’ll be an interesting experience.

That’s about it, I think. Now, back to work!