Happy leap day everyone! God gave us an extra day this year, hopefully you were able to spend it wisely 🙂 I made good use of my day by sleeping in until 9:30 am. Then Ray picked me up we could go to some recycle shops to look for Q Posket collectibles. He also took me to play at some arcades (I mentioned in a previous entry that recently this was how I prefer to unwind from the work week). We also ran some errands like going grocery shopping and cleaning my house. I was even able to give Ray a haircut and myself a DIY facial once we got home. And now I’m sitting here writing another blog entry while Ray is watching some anime that I don’t know. It may not sound like a very exciting day for some, but I’m very happy because these are things I don’t normally get to do on regular days. These kind of days are extremely rare for me, and I treasure every one of them.
Today was great, but for now let’s take a quick trip back to June 2019 for this entry. June was probably my most stressful month of 2019, but it was also one of my best ones. It was a crucial month for me, PhD-wise, a turning point of some sort. In my past entries I kept mentioning how stressed I was because of a conference I was preparing for. That conference actually took place this month, so all the pressure from the previous months lead up to this moment. On top of that, I was scheduled to give *another* seminar right before my conference (literally the week before my conference). These seminars are done to update our professors and colleagues on the progress of our research. If you recall, my last seminar was around the end of April. After that we had a 10-day break because of Golden Week. This meant that for this seminar, I only had roughly a month’s worth of data, which wasn’t very much considering the many times I failed in my experiments. Fortunately, I was able to pull it off by coming in early and staying late at the lab. I also gave up a few weekends even though I really didn’t want to since Amie was actually in Japan this month as a visiting researcher in Kobe University. I wanted to spend my weekends catching up with her, but a lot of times I didn’t really have a choice. I’ll get to that later, for now let’s get started on this month’s IG posts.
On the first weekend of the month, Amie visited me in Kyoto. Ray and I took her to some famous locations around the area.
Of course we had to show her Fushimi Inari
And Kinkakuji (Golden Pavillon)
(I already took her to see the Bamboo Forest and Kimono Forest in Arashiyama when she visited me in Febraury)
Here’s a nice shot Ray took of me at the view point at Mt. Inari
The following weekend, Amie and I both did overtime work at the lab on Saturday, but she was able to visit me again on Sunday. This time we took her to explore Kawaramachi (downtown Kyoto).
We found this milk tea place while we were walking around. During the time this was taken, there weren’t a lot of milk tea places in Kyoto yet, so we were pretty excited to try it. However, they’ve recently started popping up and I’ve been seeing more of them around. Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to try most of them.
The third week of June was when things started to really heat up. I had my seminar that week, which was a huge success (praise God), however I still wasn’t able to prepare the samples I needed for my conference. This meant I had to work overtime at the lab and I had no choice but to sacrifice part of my weekend again. I don’t have a problem with working on weekends, I’ve done it willingly many times before since I started my PhD, I just really didn’t want to do it this time because I wanted to make the most of Amie’s visit. However, I also knew that this was a crucial period, and sometimes we need to make sacrifices. If only you could graph my emotions that week – you would see two huge spikes : one rising up after my successful presentation, and one pointing down because I was so scared that I wouldn’t be ready for my conference.
If you noticed, in the paragraph above I said I sacrificed only “part of my weekend”. It was a very difficult decision because this was the last weekend before my conference, but it was also the weekend that Amie and I reserved to go to Universal Studios. We thought of cancelling because my conference was in 3 days, but this was our last chance, since my year pass would expire that weekend. In the end we decided to push through with our plans. I made up for it by staying super late at the lab on Friday night, and even coming in to finish my experiments after we returned from USJ on Saturday night. And of course I worked all Sunday, only leaving the lab for a short period to attend our church’s Sunday service. I probably got a total of 9 hours of sleep that entire weekend. (All of us actually … since Ray and Amie stayed with me at my building while I finished up my experiments. I told them to go home and rest so they would have energy for our USJ adventure, but of course being the supportive friends that they are, they didn’t want me to be alone in my suffering.) My body hated me during this time, but it was worth it in the end because we all had a great time at USJ.
In case you need photo proof:
The three of us at Hogsmeade
Amie and I at Minion Park
We tried to dress up as minions too
Can you tell from these photos that we got only about 2 hours of sleep the night before?
Of course during these times my experiments kept popping into my head, but I did my best to chase them out so I could focus on enjoying my day. I was already outside, no sense in ruining the mood by feeling guilty, right? XD
And in case I wasn’t already stressed enough from the lack of sleep and the huge pressure I had from my upcoming conference, I actually ended up losing my wallet that day. Of course my initial thought was “God is punishing me for being irresponsible and escaping from my experiments”, and this was shortly followed by “OMIGOSH! MY STUDENT ID IS IN MY WALLET! HOW AM I GOING TO GET INTO MY BUILDING TONIGHT TO FINISH MY EXPERIMENTS?!?!?!?!?” At that point I didn’t care about the money or anything else in my wallet, I just knew I needed my student ID because losing it would mean that I wouldn’t be able to enter my building until 8am on Monday, which was definitely too late because I needed to show my results to my sensei by Monday afternoon. Fortunately, this is Japan and people are really honest. After reporting it to the park’s Lost and Found, it was very quickly returned to me. Phew~ Thank you Lord! I can do experiments again!
Okay, back to our day of fun
We were very lucky that day because for some reason the lines weren’t extremely long (there were times we went where we had to wait 3 hours for one ride), so we were able to go on a lot of attractions
It was a great way to end our USJ year pass. I’m so happy that we decided to go in the end, despite all the suffering we had to go through. We made a lot of great memories that day.
Amie even managed to capture one of my favorite pictures of Ray and me at the park’s entrance. This was when we were on our way to the parking lot as we were leaving. We actually wanted to stay for the night parade, but believe it or not my parents were arriving from the Philippines on this day and we had to leave early to pick them up from the airport. (Did I mention that this day was the perfect mixture of stressful and fun). Of course I was super happy that my parents came to visit me, unfortunately, since it coincided with my conference I couldn’t spend a lot of time with them, which explains why there are no photos of them in this entry. (But we did manage to go out together in July, so you’ll be seeing them in my next post for sure.)
Anyway, like I mentioned earlier, after our USJ trip and after picking up my parents from the airport, I rushed back to the lab to continue working. I went home to sleep for a few hours and continued my experiments the following day (and the day after that). I felt like dying, but it was all worth it in the end because I was able to finish all my samples in time, phew~
My first conference as a PhD student, yay! Preparing for this made me miserable for a while but I’m so thankful I was able to participate in this event. Suffering is part of growth after all, right?
This was the second day of the conference. My presentation was on the first day so I was already so relaxed and celebrating in my head for surviving the past few months. Thank you Lord!
That photo ends my IG posts for the month of June. I actually did a lot of fun things after my conference, like going hiking in Kobe with APhy friends, but for some reason I didn’t post any of that on my feed. I think I was just so happy to be free from my conference that I just also wanted to take a break from social media. However, I continued to post on my IG stories so you can find out what I did there if you’re interested.
June 2019 was a month full of fun and torture. I spent so many early mornings and late nights at the lab, but I’m so thankful that I managed to squeeze in my experiments while trying to enjoy the company of the people around me. There were a few days when I only got 2-3 hours of sleep (which I heard is normal for a grad student, but not for me – I need at least 8 to function properly). Fortunately I survived and the hard work paid off. I learned a lot, discovered I’m capable of more than I initially thought, and I’m left with many fond memories from June. As much as I want to say I hated this month, I really can’t, because even though it was horrible, it was equally wonderful.
As usual my IG stories are compiled in the video below if you want to see them:
What I have shown you is reality ... 
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