The Even Greater Tokyo Region

I have always generally disliked celebrating my birthday. This year, today, is the first birthday of mine in Holland, the first birthday celebrating with my extended family. In Holland, it seems to be a common theme to invite over family and friends to your house and serve everyone beer, wine, coffee, cake, savoury snacks, dinner, coffee, cake and chocolates. Of course, I don't have friends yet, and my student house isn't appropriate to bring all my family over to, so I'm using my Opa's place. In the spirit of Dutch culture, on this, my birthday, instead of feeding you all delicious foods, I want to give you all some entertainment in the form of this posting. Earlier, I promised to write about my education at some point, so considering that the first term is already finished, that's what I'll do. (But considering my student life right now, it will probably be a very short post then, and it probably won't be entertaining... Let's just roll with it...).

The first term is finished. That means, I am technically 1/4 of the way towards my ultimate goal of adding two letters to my name. That's ridiculous. I hope to demonstate this level of ridiculousness by showing you how little I have done so far.

I am taking two classes. Literally. I have two classes per week. Both classes are 2 hours each, but classes in Leiden officially start 15 minutes late. Then, there is a lunch break of fifteen minutes. I feel this is excessive. Fifteen minutes is a toilet break for the constipated, and when they are done, they picnic-time of 15 minutes. A quarter of an hour is a long time. I don't think any breastfeeding mothers there either.

And it's not as if there are strict rules about not eating during class. My word, people carry on the picnic in class. Unwrapping museli bars, bringing hot coffees and hot chocolates before class and after the break, sucking on the nipple of a sports bottle (which could look like something else depending on who you believe), or eating fruit or sandwiches with the crusts cut off and cut diagonally. Why don't we stop pissing around and just put a fondoe set in the middle of the classroom?

I'm sure most of my classmates would like that. Why? Because I'm doing a degree in the liberal arts, which is like modern-day finishing school. (They are mostly girls.) Sorry to stereotype, but I have never heard one of my guy friends say "Dude! We should totally have a fondoe party! That would be awesome!"

I probably shouldn't be so sexist, since this course I am talking about is "Theory of Criticism in Literature and Art", and there is considerable amount of content devoted to feminist studies, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies and something called "Queer Theory". I sometimes can't help myself from thinking in my head after a girl makes an intellegent comment: "that's one smart bitch". of course I don't mean it, I just don't quite understand the relevance to the course and I get impatient. Besides, I thought I was liberal enough, but Holland disagreed.

But the point is, why does everyone have to eat during class? Is everyone a diabetic? Does discussing feminist theory make girls hungry? I really don't know, but it annoys me.

My other course is studying super modern art, based on science, or actually using science. I never knew this all existed, but apparently it does. Here are a few pictures of what we are discussing in class:

It's a a genetically altered bunny rabbit with glow in the dark jellyfish genes.Just some dude with a cloned ear on his arm.

Okay, so yeah. This is not what I expected to be studying, but I need to make up points. This course is actually incredibly interesting, despite/because of the wierd content. This week there was a conference in Amsterdam on this exact topic. Our lecturer is pretty well-connected in this new form of art, so as his students, we went. There was free coffee and free lunch. I was worried that they would serve experimental food products, but I am pretty sure that it was tuna in my sandwiches. Either way, it was delicious.

And on top of that heavy 4 hour per week workload, I am studying toward my end-year thesis. At the moment I am doing mostly background reading, but I will be focusing on some aspect of modern Japanese Art. That means by the end of the year, I will be an expert on Japanese Art. I know, I wouldn't be so naiive to think that I could learn everything about Japanese art within 12 months. (It would take at least 16 months).

So that is my student part of my student-life. Hopefully, I have demonstrated that I am incredibly un-busy, still incredibly immature, studying irrellevant subjects, and enjoying every minute of the quest for those extra two letters.