Author Archives: AllisonChang

My family gets together for dinner every Thursday, and we take turns being in charge; last night was my parents’ turn.  My dad made egg salad sandwiches and my mom made burgers… her burgers were super cute!  She knows I actually have a pretty small appetite (even though I always want to be able to eat lots), so she made her burgers tiny so I’d be able to eat both the burger and the egg salad — they were so eensy that she used dinner rolls for the buns.  😀

　毎週木曜日、私の家族は一緒に夕食を食べます。交代で準備をします。昨夜は両親の当番でした。父は、エッグサラダ　サンドイッチを、母は、バーガーを作りました。母の作ったバーガーは凄く可愛い！　母は私が、（たとえ、いつもたくさん食べたいと思っていても）、実は少食で、少ししか食べられないことをよく知っていますから、母の作ったものと父の作ったもの、両方食べられるように、とっても小さなバーガーを作りました。バーガーのパンは３インチぐらいでした。：D   

Continue reading →

When I first moved into my new place, my mom told me that I should introduce myself to our neighbors.  I know it’s a good idea, but I’m kind of shy so I put it off.  Now it’s been a month and I still haven’t met my neighbors!

　新居に引越しする時、母は、ご近所の人達に挨拶に行くことを勧めてくれました。良い考えだと思いますが、私は照れ屋なので伸ばし伸ばしにしました。１ヶ月たった今でも、まだご近所への挨拶回りはしていません！

Continue reading →

It´s fun buying stuff for my new house, but I have to resist the temptation to buy junk-quality things that I need just because they´re in front of me.  For instance, I need sauce dishes (for shoyu with Japanese food and mustard with Chinese food), and I keep wanting to buy them when I´m at Longs just because they´re there, so I have to remind myself that I should wait till I find really cute ones at Swap Shop or some other neat store.

新居のための必需品を買うのは楽しいことです。私がよく行く便利なお店で、目の前にある必要な物をいろいろと買いたくなります。しかし、その物の品質はちょっと悪いですので、やめたほうがいいと思います。

 例えば、小皿が必要だと思っている時、たまたまLongsにいたら、小皿を見て、「あ！これが必要です！」と思ってしまいます。でも、「Swap Shopや他の面白いお店でもっと可愛い小皿が見付かるまで待ちなさい！」と、もう一人の私が私にそっとつぶやきます。

Continue reading →

Mike and I just watched the first episode of 電車男 because Michiko-san recommended it, and we really liked it!  Mike couldn’t stop watching, even though he got really uncomfortable and mad at the people who were being mean.  😀

• 　Michikoさんに勧められて、「電車男」というドラマを見ました。

Continue reading →

Michiko-san told me about a great little secondhand store (it’s called Swap Shop), and I got furniture for my new townhouse there! I got a dining set and a living room table, and they were both great bargains.

Here’s my dining set:

… and here’s the living room table:

You can also see a little bit of the living room curtains I made — our townhouse association has a rule that all window coverings have to look white or neutral from the outside, so I made these with muslin on the outside and the blue fabric on the inside. At nighttime, if our lights are on, the curtains look a little blueish from the outside, but hopefully we won’t get in trouble. 😀 Continue reading →

In Hawaii, people like to get places they move into blessed — it’s not so much a religious thing as a cultural thing, since the places get blessed by kupunas.

So remember how I had to move into a different office for the project I got assigned to at work?  My coworkers kept asking the project leader to get the office blessed, but he didn’t, and then we had a run of bad luck, so my coworkers like to say it’s because the office hasn’t been blessed yet.  😀

Since October, our run of bad luck has included:

• One person fell off his Razor (skateboard with a handle thingum) going from our normal parking lot to the project office, and he had to get stitches because he cut his chin inside and out
• One woman tripped while walking from our parking lot to the office and got cuts on the bridge of her nose
• The man who fell off his Razor later pulled his calf muscle so badly that he couldn’t walk
• … And people are constantly sick in our office, although I think that’s because my coworkers don’t stay home and get well — they come to work sick and then spread it all over

I’m sick right now, and for the first time in my life, my cold has spread to my eyes, and they’ve been puffy, red, and icky for the past two days.  There’s a plague on our house!  😀 Continue reading →

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month — people who participate will try to write a 50,000 word novel completely within November! Good luck! Continue reading →

I love lifehacker! It points me to fun apps that I would never have found myself — today it linked to Line Rider, which is a flash toy that lets you draw (curvy) lines, and then you can watch a little person sled down your line! 😀 Continue reading →

I found this list today: 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which I think is from a recently-published reference book. It’s never a good idea to take book lists too seriously since everyone has different tastes (Justine is on this list, and there’s no way in heck I’m ever going to read that), but I’m a sucker for lists, so…

I printed out the list and checked off the ones I’ve read. I love checking things off lists! I’ve read only 48 books on the list, and of those, 13 were for school. Thank goodness for school! There were about 7 books (not included in the 48) that I suspect I’ve read, but can’t remember for sure. I’d better get cracking on (most of) the rest of the list! 😀 Continue reading →

I once read an essay that had a neat idea — that there are two types of book lovers: courtly lovers and… another kind that I forget what they called.  But!

Both kinds of book lovers adore books, obviously, but they go about it in different ways.

Courtly book lovers adore their books’ forms.  They’ll buy a particular edition because it’s pretty, and they’ll go to great lengths to make sure the book remains pristine.

The other kind of book lovers love their books’ essence.  They’ll embrace the spirit of a book (its story), but they don’t particularly care about its form — one example the essay’s author gave was of someone who ripped chunks of pages out of a book and threw them away as he read it in order to save luggage space.

Isn’t that a neat idea?  Usually courtly book lovers will look down on the other kind of book lover, but since both kinds really do love reading, they’re equal, don’t you think?  🙂 Continue reading →