We bought an oven.   I was a bit concerned when I finally managed to translate the instructions.  The maximum time setting is 90 minutes.  I have memories of cooking things for much longer than that.  I then thought it might be a fan assisted oven, which significantly reduces cooking time, but it’s not.  I gave the booklet to my Japanese teacher in case I had misunderstood and that there was a way to use it without setting the timer.  She looked at me and asked what on earth I would be cooking that would take longer than 90 minutes.

The oven isn’t very big.  It is a 31 Litre oven, which means absolutely nothing to me.  It’s not like I’m planning on filling it with bottles of mineral water, or that you can completely fill an entire oven and still use it.  But after staring into it for a while I realised I wouldn’t be able to cook a whole turkey in it.  I might not even be able to fit some turkey crowns in it.  I actually can’t think of anything that would fit in it that’s going to take more than 90 minutes to cook.  My memories are all of large roasts and turkeys.  Things that are meant to feed 10 people coming for dinner.  Here I spend most of my time cooking for two.  Sometimes, we get really wild and I cook for four.

I just cooked a Shepherd’s Pie and I’m incredibly happy.

I’ve been using the Wii Fit for quite a while now to track my weight.  We had friends over recently who were talking about their weight and BMI and we thought it would be fun to use the Wii to do this.  One of the measurements we needed to put in was height, which led to a discussion on our heights.

In the U.K. height is measured in feet and inches.  In Japan they use centimetres.  It turns out that I didn’t know how to accurately convert between the two.  In school I had been taught that 30 centimetres was one foot.  This made me believe that 5 feet was 150 centimetres but it’s actually 152.4 centimetres.  I hadn’t realised that in school I was being taught an approximation based on the standard size of ruler we used to use.

This means that I’m actually about 3 centimetres taller than I thought.  Pity I’m not actually taller, the problem was just converting between the units.  Though updating the Wii with my real height does improve my BMI.

My little sister is sixteen today.  Happy birthday Sarah!

It’s been one of those days when time just seems to get eaten up.  It’s nearly 7pm and my todo list is growing instead of getting smaller.

I’ve spent a few hours today contacting people about TPF’s participation in this year’s Google Summer of Code.  The deadlines for this project are so tight.  Students only have from March 29th to April 9th to apply.  Now if this was something that was worked on full-time it might not feel like such a rush but it’s a lot of work for the volunteers involved.  I’m really impressed with the dedication given to this project by Jonathan and his team.

I’ve been trying to get my email under control.  It’s hard to believe that only two weeks ago I managed to get my inbox to zero.  I have gotten much better at managing this but I still haven’t found a good way to deal with the emails that contain difficult or time consuming issues.

I’ve also wasted quite a bit of time waiting on my laptop to catch up with my brain and fingers.  I think the time has come to buy something faster.  It’s not just the time spent waiting on it that causes me problems, it also makes me feel agitated. This change in my mood makes me less productive and more likely to sound irritated when I am responding to something.  When it comes to machines patience is a virtue I lack.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science.  Since I am involved with the Perl community it seemed natural for me to begin there when trying to decide who to write about.  I found it quite difficult to pick one woman.  At times we bemoan the small number of women in the community but every one that I have met has been impressive in some way.

Last year I met Jacinta Richardson at YAPC::EU.  I had heard of Jacinta’s work.  I knew that she had been awarded a White Camel award, I knew that she was a successful Perl trainer, and I knew that she wrote Perl Tips.  Last year I got to see that she is also a great conference speaker, and to see first hand why she was given a White Camel.  Not only is she technically brilliant but she also has a desire to bring out the potential in other people.  She really wants to see improvement in the Perl community and is willing to work hard to see that happen.

Even though I have only known her for a short time Jacinta’s impact on the Perl community has affected me.  Without Jacinta’s support and encouragement I would never have been a keynote speaker at OSDC Australia last year.  Being given that opportunity is making it easier for me to prepare for this year’s conference season.  Thank you, Jacinta.  I look forward to seeing your future achievements.

I wasn’t able to find the right leaves to wrap the beef bulgogi in. I ended up buying a large salad cabbage. It seemed to work well though I think Marty got a bit carried away…

I try to read some Japanese everyday.  Today I was reading Daisuke’s post about his todo list for the Japan Perl Association.  While reading about volunteers and administration I came across a word that I couldn’t understand. It was in katakana so I could sound out the word – buresuto  (ブレスト).  And since it was in katakana it’s probably a word borrowed from a language like English.  The only word I could come up with was “breast” and why on earth would he be talking about that?  So, I asked my friend, what is ブレスト?  And she said, “oh that would be breast”.

I told her that really it couldn’t be because it made no sense.  She came and read the whole sentence and still looked completely confused.  She asked me if it could be a technical term related to Perl, but nothing that sounds like that came to mind.  I looked it up in my dictionary and it told me that the word was “breast”.

I went and got a better dictionary.  The word means “brain storming”.  There are times when the Japanese create words from English words by taking the start of each word and joining them together.  So, for example, “pasucon” is a shortened form of “personal computer”.   And it seems that “buresuto” joins the start of brain and storm.

Today is White Day, the day when men in Japan buy gifts for women. This is to balance out Valentine’s Day, when women buy gifts for men.  Although Marty doesn’t like these commercial holidays he still bought me some beautiful white roses.

I got email this morning reminding me that Script Frenzy starts in April.  The challenge is to write a 100 page script in a month.  This doesn’t interest me as much as the novel writing challenge NaNoWriMo did.  I’ve no idea what I would do with a script if I wrote one.  Mind you that’s not a particularly good reason not to try; after all it’s not like I let anyone read the novel I wrote in November.  I then thought that it might not interest me because I’ve never written a script before.  But the more I thought about it the more scripts I remembered writing.

I wrote my first script for a play when I was 10 years old.  I have no idea what it was about but I can remember the rehearsals with the members of my primary school class.  After that I wrote sketches for the drama team I was part of, and I can remember quite a few of those.  I continued to do this until around my third year as an undergraduate.   I realise now that I stopped doing quite a few creative things at that point.  I stopped sewing clothes, knitting, playing the clarinet, and writing.  I suppose I had to focus on my science degree and getting qualifications so that I could find a job.  Or maybe I just changed the focus of my creative energy, as it was at that time I started to learn to program.  I did continue to compose music until my mid-twenties but at some point I stopped doing that as well.

In the past year my desire to be creative has led me to knit, sew, write, sing, and play.   The odd thing has been the reactions of other people.  When I told one friend that I liked to knit in the evenings they started to talk about how I could maybe sell the things I make.  When I said I wanted to write I was asked if I wanted to get a book published.  When I sing I’m asked if I want to get a job singing somewhere, or heaven forfend, if I want to audition for something like the X-factor. And last week when I was altering clothes I was asked if I was considering becoming a clothes designer!

Is there only value if there is money involved?  Why can’t I write for the sheer pleasure of seeing words form on the page.  Or knit so I can admire the material and the patterns I can make?

I made a faux pas last night.  I was eating roast chicken in an American Brasserie near Roppongi Hills.  Normally in a Japanese restaurant you are given a towel to wash your hands before eating.  But since this was an American style restaurant they didn’t do this.  After I had finished eating my dinner I picked at the chicken with my fingers while chatting.  I was interrupted by a waitress who rushed over with a towel.  At first I thought she was giving this to me so I could wipe my hands once I had finished eating the chicken. But she took the towel out of its wrapper and wanted me to wipe my fingers before I continued eating.  I like eating with my fingers, and I forget that in certain circumstances it will horrify the people around me.