Indian Summer

Well, it's been glorious weather in New York for the most part over the last week or so...it's almost been approaching what we laughingly call summer in England, at least today anyway. Unfortunately I'm too busy to really enjoy it, as I rarely seem to venture outside of the Starr East Asia Library at the moment. I'm trying to get my two term papers done as soon as possible, basically, as I have to use one of them as a writing sample for my PhD applications this autumn, and they will also be key in deciding whether or not I am able to stay at Columbia, so I want to make them as good as possible.

Still, needs must. In other news, I booked a flight home last week, so I will be popping off back to Blighty over Xmas to enjoy a few of the home comforts, and also the Ashes DVD as well no doubt. England seem to be carrying on where they left off in Pakistan, but I imagine that's all Greek to the majority of you, so I'll leave that one by the wayside.

We (a bunch of Japanese-oriented grad students) did go out for karaoke and izakaya on the East side on Friday night, though, come to think of it. It was a pretty good night all things considered, the izakaya fare was authentic enough and the prices surprisingly reasonable, though I still ended up spending a packet. Karaoke wasn't bad either, although the machine was a piece of shit and took forever to load. Still, you can't expect perfect J-karaoke every time I suppose.

Apart from that, I didn't emerge from the library until late Sunday night. My skin's turning pale - well, paler than it was before, anyway - you have to remember where I'm from. There are some parts of the UK that don't even know we have a sun, after all.