yuzu, jabara, apple, plum
Feb. 20th, 2024 01:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiI’ve been, still am, ridiculously busy—among other things a huge job that is way out of my wheelhouse and also boring, which I only took when I could get it into writing that any client complaints would be the agency’s problem, not mine. So I should be either working or sleeping right now, not catching up on DW, but you know how it is.
This particular job involves contracts, ugh ugh ugh—I did get a momentary smile out of it when I hit the verb at the end of a given sentence and realized I needed to use “must,” not “shall,” thus reminding myself of Kira’s dilemma in The Stolen Law.
Also an entirely different job for which I couldn’t remember the English word for a common gardening task, and tried not to write “debugging plants.” I mean, that’s what it is!
Y had dealings lately with an accordion shop (who knew there still was such a thing) in town, and I tagged along: lots of elegant squeezeboxes of all sizes and shapes, presided over by an enthusiastic lady who chattered about the efficiency of the button system, under the supervision of an extremely friendly, customer-service-oriented cat, see below. An orgy of suri-suri. The shop also had a tiny café, which absolutely delighted me by serving ジャバラ茶 or tea flavored with jabara, one of the many untranslatable Japanese citrus fruits. The thing is that jabara also means “bellows,” as in what’s inside an accordion…
Because the Meiji Restoration looms so large in everything on senzenwomen so far—and will keep on doing so until the twin dislocation of WWII starts to cast a longer shadow—I’ve been thinking about writing fiction focusing on this kind of huge societal change, or rather not on the large-scale sociopolitics etc. but the way it’s always there in the background even when the foreground is focused in everyday life. Obviously this is, like, a major literary theme anyway, but I’m trying to think of SFF examples—Ursula Le Guin’s Orsinia for one?
I sneaked a little bit of that into the “reforms” in my ZXC fic, which is pure worldbuilding with nothing to back it up in the drama that I know of--I wanted something in Haixing that might have been history-textbook stuff for Zhao Yunlan’s generation but would have been foundational for his father’s. I’m not even sure anyone noticed it, but it was fun to play with.
Would somebody please invent apples that don’t shrink? Six HUGE apples I chopped up for applesauce, and they produced maybe three smallish servings. (How on earth did my dad make this with Macintoshes, back in the day? He must have bought them by the bushel.)
Lunch with a former student—he’s now the age I was when I first taught him, which, oh dear. You’re not supposed to have favorites but he was always one of mine, a smart, practical, artistic, obsessive kid who would come in after classes when he was in high school to ask me a list of English grammar and idiom questions as long as his arm, staying truculently on my case until I could explain everything to his satisfaction. I am incredibly proud of him, he’s worked really hard, made the most of all his talents and grown up capable and likable and thriving; it was so nice to get to sit down as adults together and talk.
Photos: three shots of Yuzu, the owner of the accordion shop, and two of a vegetarian tiger; more plums and some other things that caught my eye.
Be safe and well.
This particular job involves contracts, ugh ugh ugh—I did get a momentary smile out of it when I hit the verb at the end of a given sentence and realized I needed to use “must,” not “shall,” thus reminding myself of Kira’s dilemma in The Stolen Law.
Also an entirely different job for which I couldn’t remember the English word for a common gardening task, and tried not to write “debugging plants.” I mean, that’s what it is!
Y had dealings lately with an accordion shop (who knew there still was such a thing) in town, and I tagged along: lots of elegant squeezeboxes of all sizes and shapes, presided over by an enthusiastic lady who chattered about the efficiency of the button system, under the supervision of an extremely friendly, customer-service-oriented cat, see below. An orgy of suri-suri. The shop also had a tiny café, which absolutely delighted me by serving ジャバラ茶 or tea flavored with jabara, one of the many untranslatable Japanese citrus fruits. The thing is that jabara also means “bellows,” as in what’s inside an accordion…
Because the Meiji Restoration looms so large in everything on senzenwomen so far—and will keep on doing so until the twin dislocation of WWII starts to cast a longer shadow—I’ve been thinking about writing fiction focusing on this kind of huge societal change, or rather not on the large-scale sociopolitics etc. but the way it’s always there in the background even when the foreground is focused in everyday life. Obviously this is, like, a major literary theme anyway, but I’m trying to think of SFF examples—Ursula Le Guin’s Orsinia for one?
I sneaked a little bit of that into the “reforms” in my ZXC fic, which is pure worldbuilding with nothing to back it up in the drama that I know of--I wanted something in Haixing that might have been history-textbook stuff for Zhao Yunlan’s generation but would have been foundational for his father’s. I’m not even sure anyone noticed it, but it was fun to play with.
Would somebody please invent apples that don’t shrink? Six HUGE apples I chopped up for applesauce, and they produced maybe three smallish servings. (How on earth did my dad make this with Macintoshes, back in the day? He must have bought them by the bushel.)
Lunch with a former student—he’s now the age I was when I first taught him, which, oh dear. You’re not supposed to have favorites but he was always one of mine, a smart, practical, artistic, obsessive kid who would come in after classes when he was in high school to ask me a list of English grammar and idiom questions as long as his arm, staying truculently on my case until I could explain everything to his satisfaction. I am incredibly proud of him, he’s worked really hard, made the most of all his talents and grown up capable and likable and thriving; it was so nice to get to sit down as adults together and talk.
Photos: three shots of Yuzu, the owner of the accordion shop, and two of a vegetarian tiger; more plums and some other things that caught my eye.
Be safe and well.
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Date: 2024-02-19 04:13 pm (UTC)It is! I vote we call it that from now on: :D
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-19 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-21 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-20 01:19 am (UTC)That sounds like a very good call.
The thing is that jabara also means “bellows,” as in what’s inside an accordion…
Hee! That's wonderful! ^_^
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:41 pm (UTC)Yeah--this is my least favorite client in terms of how they are to interact with, but they also send me a lot of work which is often more interesting than what I get from other agencies, so I'm doing my best to find compromises that won't get me in trouble... .
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Date: 2024-02-20 01:48 am (UTC)I got some Yuzu-scented Japanese hand cream recently and I ♥ the scent so much!
I always enjoy your photos! Your kitty pix really showcase their personalities. The last photo, with the wild and irregular reddish-pink blossoms introducing chaos to the very straight and orderly fence/wall, is my favorite. :-)
Lunch with a former student—he’s now the age I was when I first taught him, which, oh dear. *nodnod* But it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it? ♥ Although I confess it really made me feel my age a few years ago when TODS and I each had a former student return to our university, brand-new Ph.D. in hand, for one-year posts as Visiting Assistant Professors. We felt so gosh-darned proud! And yeah, very ... mature. :-)
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:42 pm (UTC)Same re yours :)
The last photo, with the wild and irregular reddish-pink blossoms introducing chaos to the very straight and orderly fence/wall,
What a good description! Those are plum blossoms.
We felt so gosh-darned proud! And yeah, very ... mature. :-)
Oh yeah, that's absolutely it (and what a coincidence to have two at once, wow!).
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Date: 2024-02-20 01:50 am (UTC)You know, I'm not sure I actually have any idea what one does call this in English. Not that I know what to call it in any other language, either, but like, I know what you mean and I can't think of a word for it!
(I do find it inconvenient how often trying to translate words seems to make me forget the English, though. :P Interpreters who translate in real time are amazing. I have no idea how they do it.)
Love the cats. :D
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:49 pm (UTC)I know! (In some cases I would do a deep dive into, like, gardening sites, but not this time.) I think I said something like "removing bugs" or "getting rid of insects."
Interpreters who translate in real time are amazing. I have no idea how they do it.
Me neither. I've been told that most of the UN simultaneous interpreters are natural bilinguals, but even so! (Among the many books I wish I had time to translate are a novel and some essays by Yonehara Mari (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mari_Yonehara), who was a Japanese-Russian interpreter for many years and wrote very funny thoughtful stuff about languages and living between them.)
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Date: 2024-02-20 02:56 am (UTC)That is brilliant! I love the pictures of Yuzu and the shop. What a find!
"Debugging plants" should be what it's called -- it's the perfect phrase.
Perhaps because I read them recently, so they're much in my mind, but Katharine Addison's sequels to The Goblin Emperor gave me similar feelings to Le Guin's Orsinian tales: foregrounding day-to-day life. (The Goblin Emperor being more about the sociopolitical change itself.)
Lovely photos! I love the pink blossoms, and especially the multihued leaves in the middle bottom row. And such a beautiful tiger! :D
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:50 pm (UTC)Yes! Yuzu is apparently quite famous, so we were honored ;)
I'll keep in mind the Goblin Emperor sequels, thanks. (I read The Goblin Emperor itself quite a while ago and didn't have very strong feelings about it either way, but the sequels might work better for me, I like slice-of-life stuff better...)
<3 <3 <3
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Date: 2024-02-20 05:07 pm (UTC)thank you so much for all the pictures and the updates -- it's so sweet to hear about your student and the pictures are so pretty and restful, and I hope things calm down for you!
Obviously this is, like, a major literary theme anyway, but I’m trying to think of SFF examples—Ursula Le Guin’s Orsinia for one?
Five Ways to Forgiveness, also by Ursula Le Guin! I think this is the theme of Voices, too (iirc) -- one of the YA magic books she wrote. I think Ishiguro does this -- Klara and the Sun (though it's very very background); Remains of the Day is definitely a non SFF example, and The Buried Giant is post-grappling-with-large-political-change and the consequences of forgetting. Also, hmm, would you count something like Parable of the Sower, where it's very much about surviving the sociopolitical change, but the MC does have an impact on things?
Guy Gavriel Kay I have extremely mixed feelings about, but he does this (and will explicitly tell you that he's doing this xD) -- The Lions of Al-Rassan about the fall of Cordoba, and while there are some important political figures caught up in it, they really don't matter. A Brightness Long Ago has people doing their onwn politics during the not!Ottoman invasion of not!Constantinople. I think there's another one about not!Justinian and not!Theodora and a mosaicist caught up in all that?
I think Carol Berg's Collegia Magica kind of does this, a little, in that it's essentially about the Renaissance and the reconciling of magic and science. Lots of intrigue and weird magic bullshit, and it's not really people living their everyday lives, but I thought that especially in the first couple of books, it had a sense of something larger in the world -- innovations in science, and a couple of characters being very much in awe of that (and other characters trying to grapple with the science bit), and also the sense of a bunch of sociopolitical change having happened with a powerful king having taken the throne a while ago. The renaissance portion is actually one of my favorite parts of the books, though it gets all buried in necromancy and drama and murder mysteries and whump. xD
(This makes me realize how much I love that theme too! xD)
Would somebody please invent apples that don’t shrink? Six HUGE apples I chopped up for applesauce, and they produced maybe three smallish servings
Perhaps this can be another use for debugging plants? :)
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Date: 2024-02-21 01:53 pm (UTC)Yup, everything in the store is clearly first and foremost For Cat Sitting On Purposes and thereafter for any other functions :)
Thank you for all the book recommendations! Much much appreciated. I'll see what I can get hold of and report back eventually :) The Collegia Magica books sound especially interesting.
<3 <3 <3
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Date: 2024-02-25 11:47 am (UTC)A very dignified shop owner, that. :D
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Date: 2024-02-27 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-03-08 08:49 pm (UTC)Ha! That can be so confronting. How does time go so fast?
I hope the contract job is going well or (even better) over and done!
Love the cat photos. <3
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Date: 2024-03-09 02:29 pm (UTC)Seriously! I do like it that my students (the few I'm still in regular touch with) have gotten old enough that we can relate as fellow-adult friends as well as teacher-student, though.
I hope the contract job is going well or (even better) over and done!
Well, it's going! Thanks for good wishes and kind words. <3