nara's world

record store

Unknown — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

today i had the second part of my midterm exam, which was the listening portion . i did fine, i think 86%, with most of the mistakes being on the single-sentence questions . it was fine . we do this thing where we take the exams very early in the morning, around 8:30am, and then get our results back around lunch time, when we go to our teachers to discuss them .

the cups at the sandwich shop had creatures from the classic of mountains and seas on them, which was very cute</figcaption> </figure>

after i was done discussing my progress, which included telling me i need to respond with more than one sentence at a time, i went to meet my friend . a 20 minute cycle ride turned into 30 because the maps app i used turned me back on myself for some reason . this put me not in the best of moods, which i felt bad about, but my friend didn't seem to mind . we went into dongcheng to get some sandwiches and go to a few record stores -- i ended up buying five records to take home . i'm super happy about it . we got drinks at a bar afterwards, and split a pint of tanghulu cider, which tasted like liquid jam, and shared a plate of fried enoki mushrooms .

i am tired, but i had a good day again . i need to begin thinking about how to get my belongings back to the uk soon

exam

Unknown — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

i finally got an appointment for my root canal .

today i had my oral exam . it went really badly . i was able to remember the narrative of the thing, the order things should be said in, but for some reason just completely forgot all of my grammar points and key words from the textbook, and just used other ones i knew . the teacher pulled out the textbook halfway through to try and goad me into using them, but eventually gave up, saying it was unfair on the other students . i don't know what happened . then in my next class, the teacher accused me of using machine translation for my answers, but no, i just write like that

photo from my new phone</figcaption> </figure>

i was feeling kind of bad, but a friend invited me to her campus, so i went on over . we ended up sitting on the green talking for a few hours . i ordered a drink . it was really good, the weather was nice and the conversation was good . afterwards, we cycled down into the main shopping area and went to a nice pasta place . we got an apple pie for dessert and it wasn't great .

tomorrow is my final listening exam, then i will have five days off for labour day . i am really looking forward to it . i think i need a break .

more napping

Unknown — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

i only just missed getting an appointment at the hospital today . there were two left but i didn't click on time, because i didn't know what day of the week it was . my tooth is really beginning to bother me . i need a root canal . i've studied ahead of time -- 疼、根管治疗、麻、maybe 麻醉……？ i don't know . a few weeks ago, when i was in guangzhou, i went to the hospital about a stye, and because i didn't really know what the doctor was telling me, ended up having her lay me down, turn my eyelid inside out, and slice it open . i kept telling her it hurt a lot, and she'd just reply, 'it hurts a little' . i didn't even know what she had done until i took a photo of the bill, put the image into google translated, and then again into claude chat

i have a three minute oral exam tomorrow, as part of my chinese mideterm, but i haven't finished writing the speech for it yet, nor begun to memorise it . i have instead been reading articles on my computer . i read about walter ong, and what was going on in donbas fifteen to ten years ago, and scrolled up and down some papers about several other subjects . i read a bit about illiteracy, and how people can't read anymore, not because they don't know what the words are, but because they don't really know what they mean, and how i am afraid i am in this camp, because i only read a few books a year nowadays . i am afraid my english is getting worse, but my chinese is also not getting much better . i hope i will be cured of this once i return to london .

napping

Unknown — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

i have been waking up before 7am recently because i have been trying to book an appointment to get a root canal done at a local hospital, and appointments are released then . i have yet to be successful . i didn't prepare well for class today, and my teacher told me i need to, and that she will set extra homework from now on . the thing is, i checked, and i had studied the content, i had just somehow completely forgotten it in the two hours between my last review and turning up . it was as if i'd never seen the hanzi before, which was strange, as usually it's that i remember its meaning or its pinyin, but i really couldn't even recognise them . i returned to my dorm, realised i'd lost my headphones somewhere on my ten minute cycle ride, and lay on top of my bedsheets . i checked on my laptop whether i had studied the hanzi i forgot -- i had . i sent some voice messages to a friend about an operating system i no longer use, and to another about her reinvigorated interest in academia, and accidentally slept for almost three hours . i need to work on a speech for my midterm in two days . i will probably write it about an interview i watched on c-span whilst i ate my pasta for dinner

the arch

Unknown — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

today i woke up late, because i still hadn't worked out how to use my new alarm clock . after fiddling around with it for a bit, i realised that the 'alarm' button, when in a depressed state, will not ring at the next set time; it must be released in order to do so . but when i found this out, and released the button, it wouldn't stop ringing, even though the alarm was set for several hours prior, so i gave up and pushed it down again . pressing and releasing the button, watching it go up and down, is very satisfying, kinetically, aurally, visually .

i spent a few hours in the morning working on this site, which meant i almost missed the film i had bought tickets to see with friends, the arch (zw: 董夫人) . i enjoyed it a lot . afterwards, we ate pizza and pasta at some fancy western place in a park; we couldn't work out why the woman had killed the chicken .

after i went home, i avoided working on my chinese homework to instead work on this site . i wrote a list of things i still need to do . i thought about some things i need to plan, and avoided doing so . i thought about how i need to send several rolls of film off for processing, and order some summer clothing . i sent off some messages, and replied to a few emails from my backlog, and will try to get to the rest of them over the next few days .

about

Unknown — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000