Friday Farewells, Yotsuba&! and more

Yesterday was quite a long day. I didn't even do very much, or be particularly productive for that matter.

Went to uni, had a chat with one of the students in the office about their work, and DSC results, and explained to them some of the intricacies of the modulated DSC and the differences between regular and modulated since they had not be aware of the modes that they were running their experiments in. After that I fudged a little bit in the lab cleaning up some of my crystallised sugar stuff and cleaned up some lactose glassware I had left on the bench to dry out. Wasn't particularly exciting or anything like that.

I went downtown with some friends to try and find a going-home present for a friend of ours from Kendo. She finished her studies and was heading hom to Indoneasia soon. The idea was to get a nice photo album and put in some photos from her time with Kendo club people. The problem was finding a nice photo album to put the polaroid style pictures that one of the guys had developed for the purpose.

After legging it around town down the uni end for a little, we ended up going to Myers opposite the old Gowings store location (now a Supre, gah) and up to the fifth floor, where they had a entire section for photo albums. The selection was quite wide, and there were actually some really nice photo frames there, though most of the really nice ones were wedding album material haha. We eventually picked a scrapbooking photo album, and because they were having their stocktake sale, it was even cheaper too. Picked out a carry bag (paper) to go with it, and we were done.

We had quite a bit of time to kill, so I went to Kinokunya to read some manga. One that I saw on the shelf that I picked up to read is called Yotsuba&! I had read some of it before, but I knew I hadn't read much of it. One of the reasons why I saw this one was because the wall of manga at Kinokunya in Sydney CBD is in a corridor and it gets rather crowded with all the people standing there, so I generally stay out of that corridor and look at the other shelving units of manga. Anyway, they had book three to six of Yotsuba&! (the Japanese actually says Yotsubato!, but 'to' in Japanese is the particle for 'and' thus the ampersand '&' in english). This is the cover for volume one.

The author as you can see is Azuma Kiyohiko, which is the same author as the rather well know series of Azumanga Daioh. As a matter of fact, if you know of Azumanga Daioh, you can see how Yotsuba kind of resembles a little Chiyo....

I love this manga, it is brilliantly simple, but so heartwarming and touching. The manga follows the 'daily life' of Yotsuba who is a six year-old girl living with her dad. Her youthfulness, naievity, innocence, boundless energies, fantasies of the world and childhood is amazing. Either Azuma has a wonderful heart and mind to stay the inner child or he has done a lot of work and research to produce such a touching work, it shows. Just reading a few chapters of this really cheered my up and brightened my mood. One chapter, which I will stick up here, or at least a few pages of, is an example of what I mean. I'm sure that it won't appeal to everyone, but that is always just a matter of personal taste.







It's really cute. ^^
I'm not sure where you can find it online anymore because it's been published by some company in English so some of the scanlation groups may have stopped carrying it.... But I would say it is well worth the purchase (which I would if I had the cash and place to put it) because you can re-read it easily and it would still bring smiles to your face, at least I think so.

Then we met up for dinner. I saw someone else that I knew who was going back home, to Korea, via China (she won a trip there from a speaking contest) so I said hello and goodbye before she left to meet other friends. We hung around the Golden Tree in Chinatown before going to the Red Chilli Szechuan resteraunt in one of the small lanes in Chinatown, and squeezed in thirteen people around the table. The food was quite nice, and it wasn't as hot as I thought it would be, but then again, the dishes were picked out so everyone could have something, since there were people who couldn't eat hot stuff there LOL. The bill came to $260 in the end, so it was about $22/person and that was alright.

Post dinner, we walked through World Square to pick up some nibblies and drinks and crashed the Indo girls apartment in the city, and started to watch this movie called Too Beautiful To Lie (Geunyeoreul midji maseyo). We didn't finish watching it before our generous host was really tired and she fell asleep, so we decided to leave to let her sleep. I was watching the movie and the lead female seemed really really familiar, and then it struck me that I had seen her before I thought. Thinking on it while watching it some more, I realised that it was the same person that played Oh Seung Ah in On Air, the k-drama I just finished watching a few days back..... The film was 2004, so it was probably finished in 2003? meaning five years ago, so she did look slightly differently, but her head tilt, the smile, the voice and manner of speaking was very much the same. So, when I got home, I looked up the movie and yup, her name is Ha-Neul Kim (apaprently Ha-Neul means Sky in Korean) and she plays Oh Seung Ah. Cool huh? =P

I decided to go home because it was starting to get late, and if I didn't, I would have to suffer waiting for trains that come once a hour.... As it was, when I said my farewells to friends who were staying in the city, and got to Central Station, I waited seventeeen minutes for a train, and had I missed it, I would have had to wait another forty-four minutes for the next one.... Being late at night, they are all-stations trains so I got home just past midnight..... And that was my Friday night.