Fun with photoshop

i am still getting cheap thrills out of turning my picture from this.....

to this!!!
i seriously LOVE this effect. last week after i lamented how Spring is nowhere to be found in Berkeley, flowers like these started blooming at certain spots on campus. i believe they are some kind of cherry blossoms... so... armed with my digicam days later i set off to record their transient bloom... hehe. traces of the week-long rain can be seen on the petals.... :)

my 'cute cute meimei' (that's what she calls herself!) asked if i wanted to be her piano accompanist (if there's such a word) for her violin exam this September.... i felt so touched that i was asked! (considering how lan4 i prob am now) i am SO rusty now that i fear i might wreck her exam.... hehe. perhaps it will motivate me to pick up piano all over again when i get home. =)

decided to take walk home today since weather was unusually good. finally one sunny day after weeks of rain! and i was rewarded with an Epicurean discovery- this new gourmet take-out place along Shattuck. i had the most delicious eggplant socca from Socca Oven, even though i dun particularly fancy eggplants =P (i learnt this when deciding whether or not to try a socca- it's a Provencal chickpea flour flat bread cooked in a very hot oven and the place i got it from sells a variety of soccas with toppings like cod, chicken, lamb and even scallops!) will definitely be back to try other non-vegetarian flavors.... but i'll have to spend a couple more bucks. it feels like a very yuppie kinda place... there's also gelato, tea, sushi and gourmet choc! i'm adding it to the list of food places i can bring my parents to =)

Japanese classes are getting more and more interesting-- mainly because conversations we read deal a lot more with Japanese culture. this week's conversations talk about unequal gender treatment in Japan; how many women get stuck in OL-type (office lady) clerical jobs... how it's very common for husbands to not come home for dinner after work... how male students get more opportunities to voice their own opinions.... Senseis remind us that our textbook was written in 1994 and so things are probably different today but it appears that Japan is still pretty patriachal... the OL issue reminds me of all the Jap dramas... Aki in Pride was an OL; i remb the funny GA 2 show about gung-ho office ladies... i really want to see for myself what it's really like!

sent off my Japanese homestay application yesterday.... i really hope i get it! then i'll be able to judge for myself. but Shibahara sensei also says that homestay families are usually more progressive (having received many foreigners in their homes) and so they are prob diff from the more conservative ppl in the countryside... hmm. sigh. the horrible weather makes me want to stay under my comforter all day... but Japanese is enjoyable enough to make me get out of bed. i wished i could spend more time on it though =(

Where is Spring?

i guess ppl can interpret this in any way they want... i feel like i'm asking this question wrt a variety of contexts also... more literally, browsing through my DC pictures (i was just being random) made me feel somewhat nostalgic. i do miss those pretty cherry blossoms. (so picked one and ran funny photoshop effect on it, and ta-da... you get the pic on the left. i love how they aren't individual flowers anymore, but diff shades of pretty pink. you can click on it to enlarge it! =P) daylight savings has just deprived me an hour of sleep without giving me the clear blue skies that Spring is supposed to bring. horrible rainy weather at Berkeley seems to be perpetual...

Green tea obsession

this probably marks the 'height' of my "love affair" with green tea and so i decided to document my green tea posessions at the moment. hehe i believe it shall wear off soon and i shall get tired of eating all things green tea. but who knows? =P anyway, from the right foreground (in anticlockwise direction) i have green tea powder for baking from shu; the green tea pocky box; Maeda-En Green Tea Ice Cream from Yaoya San Jap Supermart; green tea milk candies i got from Ranch; and sticks of pocky biscuits coated with green tea mousse... hehe.

shi min has been a pretty good girl all week. i REALLY tried my best to do work. amidst haircuts, jap dramas, jap homestay application essays, dinner meetings and falling asleep. and i mean i accomplished quite a bit, but there's still SO MUCH more to be done for thesis. that makes me somewhat sad. =(