Someone from Jap class knows Lin Yutang!

This will be a hybrid post on my day so far:

I finally went back to Ikoma this morning, after a close-to-6-months break from Japanese class. Felt half jittery; half excited-- jittery because I've totally 荒废ed my language studies this first half of the year and I wasn't sure if I could remember all my kanji pronunciations/ grammar usage; but excited 'cos I could study it all over again. Turns out that I did forget quite a bit of stuff, but I can still understand most of the class... so YAY for me. And I really enjoyed the 2.5-hr lesson. Actually I always wonder why I like taking Japanese lessons so much. And I can never really pinpoint the reason. I guess it's a combination of factors -- my love for the pretty characters (yeah I am mad, but writing the beautiful characters prettily make me happy, eg. the cute little curves); the interesting passages we read (with wide-ranging topics, from psychological experiments to strategies behind supermarket item display to child rearing anecdotes); the explanations for choice of words/images in japanese phrases or idioms... Strange enough, I dun usually get REALLY good at the things I like. One would think that people normally try to master what they like to do, but for me, I just can't get the nitty gritty grammar rules into my head. And so I muddle my way through Japanese, never really bothering to tidy up my imperfect understanding of the finer grammar rules...

So anyway, when class ended and we were all about to leave the classroom, a fellow classmate noticed my copy of Lin Yutang in my bag and shared excitedly that.... her dad was an ardent fan of Mr Lin... to the extent that he would hunt for out-of-print editions of his texts! Er... quite interesting to know that I share similar reading preferences as someone's dad (that someone is like in her late 30s/40s...), but nonetheless pleased to find out that this someone else appreciates his wise, unpretentious words too :P

The third item on my list is a frivolous purchase I made when walking through Borders after class. I really didn't enter Borders with the intention of buying a mug, but this super-cute Mutants Mug by Paperchase (yeah, beats me why they sell mugs too) just caught my eye.

Inaugural mug shot from my Canon 40D :)

PS: Alas, I discovered that 75% of the magic is in the lens...