Author: aegoncoffee

Human female. Multi-racial, mostly vegan foodie. Science-lover. Photographer, both alt-process wet darkroom AND digital. Fluent in legalese. Use a French press with enthusiasm. Bibliophile. Cephalopodaphile. Taught swimming, trained as an architect, teach users on legal software and legal/compliance topics.
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Language Study: Hiragana

Shaky, completed Hiragana practice sheet (from japanese-lesson.com, which is not currently a secure website)with a Tombow Fudenosuke brush pen.
There are small children looking at this and taking pride in how much better they are at this than I am right now. I applaud you, capable young people!

I had to ice my arm, but I do think starting over beginner-level practice in writing hiragana (one of the Japanese phonetic alphabets) will help me with my language study.

My recent studies remind me too much of what I do NOT remember, while I disregard things that I recall as ‘easy.’ (Yes, I am a terrible self-critic.) Yes, I do want to get back to a ‘decent tourist who can read a little’ skillset!! And perhaps even to have my niche art supply vocabulary back, which has served me so well in museums during my other travels.

It is exciting to have a trip planned to Japan. It’s also fun to speak regularly with the colleague who encouraged/coerced me into booking my trip. Our meetings on other topics eventually (or immediately) turn to sharing what he most liked during his recent visit, and I share what I plan to see and do during my upcoming 3rd visit to the country. The venn diagram of these things are two minimally overlapping circles, but the differences sound fun, so we are each developing lists of things to do on our NEXT trip. We are basically providing each other an encouraging feedback loop of fun things, and I joke that we will each have to go annually to cover all of this delight.

I could see that being a happy habit!

But meanwhile, I’ll study fiendishly.

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Tea: Almond Milk Matcha Latte

image looking down into the bubbles of a recently blended matcha latte
Bubbles at the top of a blended and stirred almond milk matcha latte. I heart ceremonial-grade match.

I stayed in bed until after 9am, and I’m still astounded at how it feels to be RESTED.

I’m also a little concerned that this feeling is so novel.

And how quickly lunchtime arrived…

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Writing: Postscript to Fountain Pens (Chemical Rainbow Theme)

I want to show off the silvery sheen of this ink a little more, from when I wrote another letter earlier this morning:

Three image collage of writing with Monteverde Lightning ink in black. A silver sheen is plainly visible in the writing samples.
The sheen is more visible in this example: there are silver particles dispersed throughout each letter. (The stationery is from a recent business trip to Chicago. You can see four photos from inside this hotel on my phone photo blog here.)

The letter (in German) is about ordinary moments of joy: laughing with friends, enjoying the quiet of a Sunday morning, drinking fancy espresso drinks with my commute girlfriends…

I note that I enjoy such ordinary moments while I travel also, and that a favorite moment from a trip to Japan was appreciating a lovingly drawn carrot with luxuriant greens. Someone spent real time on drawing and painting it in their sketchbook (not as a final wall painting to impress others, but just a lightly colored sketch in their own sketchbook for themselves). It was made with such affectionate attention that I remain moved by the memory of it to this day. Anyone who chooses to invest hours in drawing the little lateral dimples and soft irregular greens of a fresh carrot is living life deeply in the present moment, and I can learn from that.

I like this ink, and if I let the pen sit for a bit, I can also achieve ombre effects over a page, as my writing gradually turns from black to silver. That’s nice.

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Writing: Fountain Pens (Chemical Rainbow Theme)

Collage showing writing sample (about autumn in San Francisco, and fondness for the gingko trees of Mission Creek) made with Monteverde Lightning fountain pen, Monteverde Lightning blank ink; the stub nib of the pen; the pearliness of the ink; and the pen in its gift box.
A slightly shaky page from a letter to a pen pal about my fondness for San Francisco’s local version of autumn, and fondly remembering the gingko trees near my temporary apartment on Mission Creek; the pearly metallic black ink that came with the pen; the stub nib I chose; the ink in the bottle; the pen in its box.

I’ve been waiting to enjoy this special pen for a day when my writing arm isn’t sore. That day hasn’t come, so I decided to stop waiting and write anyway, with soothing ice pack breaks relieving my arm of its internal swelling.

My writing sample isn’t the best here – I’ve waited weeks to hold a real pen again – but this Monteverde “Innova Formula M Fountain Pen – Lightning (Limited Edition)” pen provides a smooth, pleasant writing experience. The ink’s silvery sheen is pleasant. It has some special wetting agents that made it feather on my usual papers (and I thought nothing could feather on Tomoe River!), but works well on ordinary paper. I like the softness of this black. It makes me think of my well-washed, favorite black denim jeans, but more metallic. (This gives me ideas of special effects I might like in my denim if this didn’t make them less soft...)

As the writing sample notes, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this time of year, especially for food reasons, but also because of the delivery of dramatic skies. Oh, how I love them – they make mornings so moody, and sunsets so colorful…

I look forward to using this pen-ink combination on other papers for long writing sessions.

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Music: Theme Music For Godzilla and/or Giant Robot Fights

While trying to choose other theme music for myself, while pondering whether Amon Tobin‘s Slowly describes me specifically enough or merely described the way the bay looked on this particular morning, I listened to Four Ton Mantis (on the album Supermodified (2000, Ninja Tune)).

Oh my gosh.

I once wrote a screenplay for a wordless film for this song. About Godzilla. Waking up, and then destroying a city. And settling in for a nap, after having a butterfly land on his nose. There were timestamps for various scenes, aligned with the music. (I posted this work to the writing group section of a dating site (!!), and my posts there somehow led to a fun, four-year relationship with another writer, though this is not an obvious outcome to such writing. [muffled question] What? [muffled question off camera] No, he wasn’t scared away by this. [muffled sound off camera] Well, “normal” people can be a bit dull…)

Anyway, it’s a great song. If I were to put on a robot suit and stage a fight with another woman (who is also in a robot suit) in a scale model of NeoTokyo, this could be the soundtrack to that fight. Or we could wear giant robot suits and fight in actual NeoTokyo, if that would be easier to film, but I don’t think we could get insurance. (Yes, I am thinking of Iczer One, and no, you can’t stop me.)

(I would link to media of Four Ton Mantis, but it isn’t visible on the iTunes version of the album currently available (even though it is on my phone), and the album version isn’t available on YouTube. The remixes give the song a different character entirely, though they are also fun – they just have less of a giant-robot-suit-fight-music character.)

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Music: Theme Music of the Moment

I assigned theme music to a stranger a few months back*. This was a first for me, and I realized I should choose my own theme music before assigning songs to others.

Theme music isn’t a new idea. I worked at a company with a professional events team, and if you walked on stage, you were allowed to choose the music that would play during your walk-on. So, making this kind of choice has occurred to me before. (For people without events teams: It’s like the walk-on music for evening shows, but chosen by you rather than, say, Questlove, who has made some fantastic, context-based choices (only some of which he has regretted), making the song apply on a few levels).

I listen to a surprising amount of instrumental music. La cittá nuda by The Dining Rooms stands out for me as a gliding energetically through a lively city evening, so I’ll put it on my theme list:

*You had to be there, it was a “vibe” – the weather was fantastic, I finished work , SF bay was serene, this person was relaxing in front of me, Massive Attack was in my headphones – it was just a perfect moment.

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Reading: What I’m Reading Now

  • N.K. Jemison has a collection of short stories, and while many of them are from earlier in her career, they don’t feel like early, learning-the-craft stories – they are absolutely superb. The collection also opens with an essay about what it is like to write science fiction stories with people who are like us ethnically, and how great it feels to envision futures that include us!
  • I Tamed My Ex-Husband’s Mad Dog (graphical fiction) is in chapter 89, and either everyone is going to die, or the main characters will live happily together, or maybe they’ll be happy for a VERY BRIEF TIME before they all die? IT IS SO TENSE! I could barely make it through chapters 87-88, which involved a lot of blood – blood that had belonged to one of the main characters, so they couldn’t make the joke I like so much about it being someone else’s.
  • The Broken Ring: This Marriage Will Fail Anyway (graphical fiction) is at chapter 82, and there is some tension building as the main characters are apart, as one of them figures out who the assassination target was during their vacation, and tries to get information on… something that they shouldn’t be able to remember.
  • Men of the Harem (graphical fiction) has resumed at full speed, and it isn’t completely clear that Empress Latil is the vampire lord that two of her most handsome fans hope she will be. It also isn’t clear why she can punch vampires and send them flying across a room. Also, magic tools allow some characters to wear the faces of other people, a complication I didn’t need!
  • The Remarried Empress (graphical fiction) has also come out of hiatus, and I’m still pleased by how much the art style tightened up over the course of its 187 chapters (so far). While the empress’ remarriage was supposed to be primarily political, her new spouse is so much more fun than her old one! And, because paternity testing science exists, there is a lot of drama in her former palace…
  • US Political and World News. There is SO MUCH OF IT right now. And it is a roller coaster.
  • Letters. Which my hands have hurt too much to respond to prettily. (I think I understand why there were so many searches combining COVID and arthritis….)
  • My Japanese lessons. Oh, the torment of half-remembering a language!

I hope your own reading provides you as much pleasure as mine gives me.

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Music: Recent Playlist for Spinning

Screenshot of recently played songs on my iPhone's Apple Music list from my library. Details in body of post
Screenshot from my Apple Music app on my iPhone.
  • Enter Formless by The Glitch Mob (for warming up)
  • Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
  • Dropkick the Punks by The Faint
  • Line Up by Elastica
  • Hard to Explain by the Strokes
  • Arabella by Arctic Monkeys
  • The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes
  • Reptilia by The Strokes
  • INDUSTRY BABY by Lil Nas and Jack Harlow (I still giggle at “OG so proud of me that he choking up while he making toast)
  • Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand
  • RU Mine? by Arctic Monkeys (often used while speeding up)
  • Finally Moving by Pretty Lights (for cooling down)
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Reading: News Summaries about Science

I make a real effort not to write about my employment (in (a) my specialty, legal operations; now within (b) the biopharma industry, (c) primarily in oncology (cancer medicines)) here, but my work does lead to lots of interesting reading! Especially in the medical/pharmaceutical research area, where the statement ‘it’s a great time to be alive‘ is especially true: many health conditions that were previously immediately fatal can now be managed, and rather than having months left to live, one can often live to one’s nearly normal lifespan.

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is meeting in Barcelona this week, and so lots of new research is being presented there, and will make its way into the news.

Back when I worked at a company that had a drug for melanoma (a type of skin cancer), we all received sunscreen and a presentation on how few patients were still alive five years after their diagnosis. (WE WORE THE SUNSCREEN AFTER THAT!). The article below describes further progress with newer treatments that allow more and more people to live longer, despite this previously-quickly-fatal disease:

Half of advanced melanoma patients live for 10 years with double drug treatment
Experts hail ‘remarkable’ trial results for treatment of a form of skin cancer that once had grim prognosis

I’m not a scientist, and I’m not representing any of my current or past employers when I write about this topic: this is my genuine excitement that science is delivering solid progress for serious medical conditions.

Many people will bemoan the state of the world uniformly, and there certainly is abundant war, strife, exploitation, and [so more other negative human stuff than I have time to detail here, and which you already grasp anyway]. There are also people working hard to help people they don’t even know live long enough to see their little kids graduate from school – and they are succeeding! These improvements in survival have been developed in our lifetime, and provide wonders that our grandparents could not have imagined.

While research about possible cures that are in the earliest stages of basic research (and have not been tested in people) appear to be more thrilling, the stuff that has already been proven to work in people is much more exciting – and close to being available to people you care about.

I’m looking forward to geeking out over more high level, non-specialist summaries about great scientific progress in medicine.

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