Bujinkan, fic, degrees

Bujinkan tonight was okay. I still have a faint sinus headache from my cold (stupid antibiotics are taking forever) so I was glad everything was lowkey (considering the headache is pretty bad again atm). In normal circumstances, I'd probably have found the class a bit boring... You'd think that moves with names like "catapult wrist" and "catapult finger" would be a bit more interesting. I trained with one of the newbies which made my time rather relaxing except for racking my brains thinking of different ways to explain the same thing. You actually have to be a pretty good teacher eventually at Bujinkan because it's your duty to explain things to people at a lower level than you when you train. And different people definately learn in different ways. You also have to quell the urge to tell them, "Er, yeah, you'll get it in about a year if you keep training." which is very true, but also kinda discouraging *L* I'm kinda amazed myself when we train at these lower levels how easy it is for me. I don't even have to think about moving correctly in a lot of cases which is both cool, and worrying since I don't want to get complacent.

Read the first chapter of Gintama in Shonen Jump this month. It's weird. I have some more downloaded which I'll read eventually so I can give a better opinion.

The new chapter of Silver and Gold is boring me. I've finished all the necessary to the plot parts and the funny parts, which leaves the fill in the blanks parts. They aren't bad, and it's not like they don't move the story forward, but their problem is that Kayaku's mission doesn't pick up until after the second part of the exam so the scenes are almost peaceful compared to what's going on in the exam. I'm also trying to decide who to kill. One character is already marked for death, but I can't decide if I should kill off the other one or not. Since I can write it either way, it's basically a question of parallelism and angst saturation. It's kinda funny that the naruto world lends itself to my favourite type of writing - humour intespersed with fighting and death. Incidently, my brother read chapters 4-5 of Silver and Gold and asked me, "You're just going to keep tormenting Kakashi aren't you?" *L* He may not be able to guess my plots all the time, but he sure knows my mindset.

In real life news, it is possible for me to do my PhD in London at the SOAS, but I need a taught Masters degree first. There's one at SOAS, but it'd save me a lot of money to do it elsewhere in Britain (I'm already wincing at the thought of trying to afford to live in London for three years). But then there's the question of which uni's have departments devoted to the topic and which type of taught MA to take since I can either take one focusing on Japanese art and history, or one focusing on the language. Much as I know it's going to kill me, I need to be able to read Japanese pretty much fluently by the time I reach my PhD. My mother thinks I should stay in the US, but i'm ignoring that idea like I ignore all her stupid ideas. The trouble being she doesn't drop her stupid ideas until I waste time proving that they're stupid ideas. Gah. It all makes my head hurt.

Bujinkan, fic, degrees

Bujinkan tonight was okay. I still have a faint sinus headache from my cold (stupid antibiotics are taking forever) so I was glad everything was lowkey (considering the headache is pretty bad again atm). In normal circumstances, I'd probably have found the class a bit boring... You'd think that moves with names like "catapult wrist" and "catapult finger" would be a bit more interesting. I trained with one of the newbies which made my time rather relaxing except for racking my brains thinking of different ways to explain the same thing. You actually have to be a pretty good teacher eventually at Bujinkan because it's your duty to explain things to people at a lower level than you when you train. And different people definately learn in different ways. You also have to quell the urge to tell them, "Er, yeah, you'll get it in about a year if you keep training." which is very true, but also kinda discouraging *L* I'm kinda amazed myself when we train at these lower levels how easy it is for me. I don't even have to think about moving correctly in a lot of cases which is both cool, and worrying since I don't want to get complacent.

Read the first chapter of Gintama in Shonen Jump this month. It's weird. I have some more downloaded which I'll read eventually so I can give a better opinion.

The new chapter of Silver and Gold is boring me. I've finished all the necessary to the plot parts and the funny parts, which leaves the fill in the blanks parts. They aren't bad, and it's not like they don't move the story forward, but their problem is that Kayaku's mission doesn't pick up until after the second part of the exam so the scenes are almost peaceful compared to what's going on in the exam. I'm also trying to decide who to kill. One character is already marked for death, but I can't decide if I should kill off the other one or not. Since I can write it either way, it's basically a question of parallelism and angst saturation. It's kinda funny that the naruto world lends itself to my favourite type of writing - humour intespersed with fighting and death. Incidently, my brother read chapters 4-5 of Silver and Gold and asked me, "You're just going to keep tormenting Kakashi aren't you?" *L* He may not be able to guess my plots all the time, but he sure knows my mindset.

In real life news, it is possible for me to do my PhD in London at the SOAS, but I need a taught Masters degree first. There's one at SOAS, but it'd save me a lot of money to do it elsewhere in Britain (I'm already wincing at the thought of trying to afford to live in London for three years). But then there's the question of which uni's have departments devoted to the topic and which type of taught MA to take since I can either take one focusing on Japanese art and history, or one focusing on the language. Much as I know it's going to kill me, I need to be able to read Japanese pretty much fluently by the time I reach my PhD. My mother thinks I should stay in the US, but i'm ignoring that idea like I ignore all her stupid ideas. The trouble being she doesn't drop her stupid ideas until I waste time proving that they're stupid ideas. Gah. It all makes my head hurt.