After about three weeks of pretty good weather, it is raining again in Tokyo. I have a love-hate relationship with the rain, which includes much more hate than love, actually :-/. Walking out on the rain, with an umbrella over my head, makes all those blue, depressing feelings and thoughts assault me. I can’t really go by bike, so I have to take the train (and spend money), or walk all the way to school, and get my feed wet and my socks ruined. The only time I like the rain, and at those times I really like it, is when I can afford to stay at home, reading a book, enjoying the sound and smell of the rain outside from the safety of my roof.

By the way, yesterday I finished reading “Salt: A World History”. It is a good book, full of interesting information. But even as a non-fiction book, I felt it could have used a “conclusion”, “summary” or something – the end of the book just came really abruptly.

Anyway, today I cannot afford to stay at home and read. I have to go to the university to help fixing the study space of the new Post Doc student. Which is about the only thing that I really need to be at uni to do – most everything else I can download to my laptop and do here, but I’m not really feeling like studying at home today – maybe because of the rain, or because my home is a mess.

Of the stuff I could download and do here at home, I have the translation of the Robotic Science survey paper – the person I’m collaborating with asked me again today when I’m gonna finish it, and in fact, it has stopped for at least three weeks now :-( I’m kinda losing my hopes with this one – maybe I’ll have to pull the plug on it. I also have to port my recently submitted paper to a smaller format to a japanese conference. I have a bunch of experiments to start for the next leg of my research. My professor asked me also to find a new application for my methodology. I have two journal papers to review. And last but not least, my mid-term thesis defense is still sitting in its corner in my desk, eyeing me hungrily.

Gah. :-(