Time Flies

Well that week certainly happened.

It went by very fast and I forgot to write stuff down. Partially out of how busy I was and partially because nothing really happened.

Look, let me give you an example.

Monday - Did Reading exam and Writing exam.

Tuesday - Graded exams

Wednesday - Graded exams

Thursday - Graded exams

Friday - Finished grading exams

Saturday - Went to Japanese class, tried to collect Apothecary Diaries stamps.

Sunday - Tidied the flat, painted, wrote my blog.

Riveting stuff I’m sure you can agree.

I’m a procrastinator, I admit it. I’m not sure I ever denied it, and it has meant this week has been a little bit boring to talk about. I can try and focus as much as I can on the fun stuff.

But first, let’s get it out of the way, grading assessment’s sucks and there’no way to make it less boring or drain less of my will to live so the weekdays were an absolute pain. I missed out on sleep and survived on a lot of Monster energy and coffee and still ended up procrastinating and focusing on less-important tasks or even video games and painting (telling myself they were a “break”). But eventually it got done! Hooray!

On Friday me and a colleague also set out on a mission. I mentioned that we were using Mausritter in a research project a few weeks ago. We have completed all of our game sessions and all of our surveys and now we just need to write it up! We got together on Friday and shared a few articles to read and review and set ourselves a deadline for when we want the paper finished and ready to publish. We also set a few subgoals to keep ourselves following some kind of framework. This week we’re just reading the articles and making some notes for our lit review.

So the next few days are going to involve a fair chunk of reading academic papers. I've got my highlighters ready, I should be able to survive.

Saturday is where things get a little more interesting. Anna hates valentines day, I had a few plans for something silly but stress and overwork meant they didn’t happen. Saturday wad just (mostly) a normal Saturday. I went into town for Japanese class and then I hit up the lantern festival again. I had a target in mind.

This year the Nagasaki Lantern Festival is doing a promotion with the anime, The Apothecary Diaries. (Go watch it by the way, it's one of the best shows I've seen in a while and one of the first anime to really grab me in about 15 years). They did it last year as well but I missed out on it.

They’re also doing a stamp-rally where you can buy a map and go around and collect stamps of the main characters. So, map in hand I headed out on my journey. I’d already collected the stamp of the show’s logo and Shisui (albeit on a separate piece of paper) when we went last week, so this week I headed out to get the stamps of the other characters which were, thankfully, away from the bulk of the festival.

Maomao was in Hamanomachi arcade inside a shopping mall inside the covered shopping mall. I got to practice my Japanese when I noticed people walking around trying to find it.

Next up was everyone’s favourite manwhore eunuch prince in hiding whatever the Hell Jinshi is. This one took me a while. I went down the wrong street. Twice. But eventually found him outside a post office.

The Xiaolan stamp was next and that’s where my energy ran out. The stamp would not stamp! Which was a shame as she’s probably my favourite character in the show.

I collected a few faded copies of her and then felt a little bit defeated. I also needed to go back into the festival for any more stamps so I decided home was the best option.

Then Sunday happened. We have a friend coming round on Monday so it’s time to tidy tidy tidy! But of course … I’m a procrastinator.

Which is why I’m sitting here at 22:46, with a living room to tidy, an office to rearrange and two loads of laundry to complete.

Ugh, wish me luck, I’m going back to coffee and energy drinks.