Yesterday's english speech contest marked the end of my busy period this term. it was...not a disaster, but could have been better. i attribute it to one of the schools not being willing to dedicate more resources/support to make it a bigger event. we are due for an AAR eventually, i think, and depending on how it goes, the contest might become an annual thing, along with the usual japanese speech contest. on my part, the things i could have done better would be better choices of reading passages (duration-wise), giving way more advance notice, pushing for deadlines to be more strictly followed, and establishing clearer judging criteria. nevertheless, i'm grateful that the kids did their best and put up a decent showing. the guest judge (someone from the prefectural board of education) gave the kids advice on how to present better. as befitting a(n ex-?)high school english teacher, his english was really good! and i'm not saying that just to be polite. i realize that all japanese people who are proficient in english have the same accent when speaking it. it's hard to describe, but i think the most distinguishing feature is that the Rs and Ls can be clearly differentiated.

i've been doing some cooking experiments recently. first was a banana chocolate cake. see, i usually make things for the school staff when we go back for events on saturdays. i do it maybe once or twice a term, so it's not that much of an effort. i was running out of ideas, and it so happened that i had some bananas which i'd bought a few days ago. they were getting old, and i just put two and two together. it started out as a simple banana cake, but then, i had the brainwave of "hey, choco-banana is a thing in japan!", so i swirled chocolate through the batter before baking. the bananas provided additional moisture, which was nice. not sure if the chocolate burned; i sampled an edge piece (which didn't have too much chocolate in it) for quality control, and it was fairly good. no complaints from anyone, so i'll take it as a win.

less of a win were the brownies i made for the school band to support their annual concert. because my usual metal baking tin was occupied by the chocolate banana cake, i used a glass baking dish instead. i knew that there was a difference in how things baked in metal vs glass, but i remembered it the wrong way round. the actual difference is that glass retains heat better than metal, so it takes longer to warm up, but also retains the heat for longer. if you bake things in glass, you should probably reduce the temperature, time, or both. genius me went to increase the temperature instead. result was that the whole bottom and some of the sides burnt. lucky i caught on and trimmed the burnt bits off. it meant that the pieces were about 20% thinner, though. that'll teach me to do something unfamiliar with no trial run!

other cooking adventures: caramelized bananas. still need better control on heating the sugar for that one. i'm surprised at how much the bananas retain their flavour even after cooking! in the middle of last week, i made a huge pot of cream soup, which lasted me for 3 days. the original plan was to make soup in a homemade bread bowl, but then i discovered that i didn't have enough flour to make a full-sized loaf. and i had quite a lot of vegetables, so i just decided to put everything in the soup. it was nice! for once, i didn't overdo the garlic. the things i'd do differently would probably be to blend the soup, and to use more cream. i used a 200mL carton for maybe...2 litres of soup? i did taste it, and i think that it did thicken the soup a little, but more wouldn't be amiss, i think. on the other hand, that makes it less healthy too. we'll see next time.

do you have any weird food rules or biases? while i wouldn't tell others how they should enjoy their food, i do have some food-related beliefs that may be odd to some people. first is the "no fruits and nuts in savoury food" belief. i understand that sweet and sour recipes often use pineapple, and nuts/raisins are commonly added to rice in some cultures, but i wouldn't cook my food that way. not that i wouldn't eat it if it was on the menu, by the way. i also believe that "steak should be medium rare or medium at most", and perhaps more oddly, "white chocolate isn't really chocolate". under normal circumstances, i wouldn't buy white chocolate for personal consumption. but i've recently bought a few bars to make into matcha chocolate, and somehow, i ended up eating a few pieces as they were. i have to say that i quite like it! of course, my first choice will always be dark, but white chocolate isn't off the table any more. i'm thinking it might be because the stuff i have here is less sweet and milky.

which leads me to another point, about opinions. people are often praised for sticking to their guns, less so if they change their minds about something. the only exception would probably be if there's scientific proof to support the new point of view, but those don't really exist for subjective things like taste and preference. i don't think it's wrong to change one's mind - it just shows that people are capable of learning and growing. i should be more confident about my opinions. having said that, i don't think i'll be liking well-done steak anytime soon!

another new thing i experienced recently is doing an amazon return. i bought a pull-up bar, the kind that wedges between 2 vertical surfaces. possibly due to the age of the house, i heard wood creaking as i set the bar up. and although the bar was rated to hold up to 200kg, the creaking didn't make me feel safe using it, for fear of personal injury and/or damage to the house. so i arranged a return to amazon. the process was less painful that i thought. apply through the "my orders" page, get a shipping label and barcode, print it out, pack the things up, slap the label on, and send it off. especially because it's in japan, i could drop the package off at the local convenience store. the downside is that the returner is responsible for return postage in the case where the product itself isn't damaged, so i actually got maybe 1800 yen back, out of my 2999 yen refund total. still, some money back is better than nothing...or worse, putting in additional effort to sell it off second-hand.

speaking of amazon, i've also bought a water flosser. it was motivated by a dental health workshop that the kids in school had. i've known for a while that my gums aren't the healthiest, as some dentists have told me. the thing that surprised me was that the water jet was so strong! or maybe it's just my gums are weak. mild pain aside, it's actually quite fun to use! best thing is that it charges by USB, so i can bring it on to my next destination.

not wanting the refund money to sit for too long in my amazon account, i also bought a couple of fountain pens and nibs. metal bodies, snap caps, coloured nibs that match the pen bodies. i'm actually quite excited to get them! and in the event that i don't get along with them, i can give them away to some kids in the schools. i also think that i should start to get rid of some screw-cap pens that i won't be using in the future. unfortunately, that's something i can only do when i'm back in singapore, or long-term in another place. as a reminder to myself, i'm also looking to get the pilot explorer, for a work-appropriate pen. but after JET.

recently, i noticed that there are fewer cars parked in the shared lot outside. the BMW that gave me grief that one time when i'd just moved in is conspicuously missing, as are the 2 cars that are usually parked between me and it. the last time i saw it was...a few weeks ago? makes me think a whole family moved out, especially since one house is now totally dark. considering that i don't interact with them at all, i don't feel particularly affected. but it's interesting to track how a place changes over time.

now that i don't have any more big events on the horizon, it's time i started using up some of my accumulated off-in-lieu. somehow in the last month, i've managed to accumulate 14 hours. i'll probably take the last hour or two off workdays here and there. the goal is to finish using it all by this year.

-random thought of the day: Need to sleep better.-