There are a great many things I have been called. Thankfully, not all of them are derogative adjectives bent on my destruction; some of them are actually quite bearable (spot the pun!). A summer soon six years in the past, my current alias ("Kumadude" for those members of the audience who just can't seem to pay attention) was coined on a distant rooftop by someone who's last name was a slightly idiosyncratic version of the Swedish word for "rose". Doesn't that just have a lovely hint of promise in it, like there's some sort of back story there, possibly leading up to several quick cuts back and forth to people doing fun things with weird hairstyles and way too much makeup? In the 80's? Maybe not.
So yeah, Kumadude's been around for a while. However, at work on chill March morning, a Japanese colleague of mine couldn't really be bothered with the added burden that is -dude, and promptly declared in front of a whole meeting of his peers what he and "The Kuma" had been working very hard this morning. His grasp of English may not have been the best, or perhaps that's exactly what it was. In that case, I take it as a compliment. This is my first time being a "the", and I think I like it. And I'll just have to sue the ever-lovin' crap out of AMD for this.
Pause for a bit of flower-porn. It will be explained below. Possibly far below.But you can't let too long pass without getting yourself a new name. It just wouldn't do, you see. So a week or so ago, I got a letter in the mail. It told me I had a letter to pick up. I love it how the Post Office, bless it, tries every little thing to increase the volume of mail. However! On that not-so-chill April not-so-morning-but-rather-afternoon, I went and humored the P.O. by picking it up. And I was rewarded by a piece of paper instructing me to stand that little bit straighter when I look in the mirror in the morning. Because, as I am about to announce to the entire internets, I am now a Master. Yes, I realize it would have been better to combine it with the above to make me "the" Master, but one step at a time.
So you see, I have now officially graduated university. Took me long enough, but at least I got there in the end. And the dinner I was treated to (by someone completely unrelated to the university, but still) was certainly good enough to make up for my six years of... slacking off, with a final or two thrown in there at arbitrary intervals. Given the deliciousness of the dinner, I would graduate more often. If only it didn't involve so much actual work. At least that's over now.
Yet more flower-porn! What the h's going on here?!---
And now, a slight excursion to soften the segue into the whole mess with the flowers. A one-paragraph perfectly pretentious post-within-a-post I like to call:
It's amazing how giant fusion reactors in the sky can almost kill you.
No, I'm not talking about some random thought experiment of the Sun blowing up now, or possibly mad scientist types... doing mad science? No, I'm talking about how actually seeing the night sky riding my impossibly trusty and equally old bike home from a friend's place the other night very nearly made me run into a lamp post. It's frightening. I mean, when was the last time you saw the night sky, for realz? Having spent much of the past whatever of my life in either large cities or at least places where there's light at night, actually seeing the stars was almost... Well, it was nice. This despite the fact that there were some party-crashing lamp-posts, lamps included, working and everything. Did I mention I almost ran into one? Either way, I wholeheartedly recommend it - the stargazing, not the lamp-into-running - to anyone with an accurate enough sense of balance. But yeah, the last time I was that moved by the simple act of tilting your head back and not allowing your eyelids to close for a short while was quite a while ago. Senior year of high school, in Lithuania, if you'll believe it. Escha, you know of what it is I speak. No, not the vomit comet or the rowing to Russia, the other thing.
Final bit of flower-porn, right there!And now, at the very end, the rationale for all the pretty pretty flowers. It's a 2003-promise to someone who really wanted to watch the Sakura bloom in Japan but couldn't hang around long enough to watch it actually happen. Also: I needed filler to make it seem like I wrote a lot. So anyway, sure, she might be biking around NZ right now, but I'm sure the GPS on her bike gets this blog. And quite possibly Soviet-era UHF-transmissions too, but that's a story for another day.
Be sure to tune in next time as I will have completed a long road trip with two people who know an awful lot about kitchens!
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