Autumn

Sorry, I know, October is turning out to be a particularly sparse month for blogs from this part of the world. In my previous post I alluded to some of the reasons for that, but I don't think I quite emphasized how sweet-holy-mother-of-divine-Jesus-they'll-be-lowering-me-into-the-ground-before-I-finish-this, time consuming Ph feckin D.

Not that ya'll care, as it should be.

So less of the self pity and more of the adrenaline soaked photos you have to come to expect. Yes!!

So here, in all its Sam Peckinpah-like visceral, bloody splendor, is autumn in Muroran...

Drying carrots in the sun .... after they had they had been gunned down...in slow motion...

And the leaves, yes the leaves...massacred ... in slow, slow motion...

Taking cover while all this is going on...

And the wind blew ... omniously....omonoulsy...omnoso, feck it...weirdly

Yeah, well leaves, c'mon, you want to take on this, big, bad, milk-drinking foreign motherf****?!

Catching up

Good Lord, the middle of October already and I am only getting around to my first post of the month. There are two good (?) reasons for this. The first is my PhD research, or, to be more exact, my lack of PhD research. Part of the process involves submitting a qualifying report to prove that you are basically not making the whole thing up as you go along. Said report was due in by Sept. 22^nd, yet it still remains a work in progress.

Albeit, a shiny beautiful work in progress.

My supervisor has started to get all Mexican on me, demanding it now or various family members will get to celebrate Dia de los Muertos. So my advice to all you aspiring academics out there (and let’s face it, who else reads this blog), write early and write often, kids.

The second reason is my annual application to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for ‘Grant-in-Aid Research’. And yes, it is as enticingly sexy as it sounds.

The application is a job requirement rather than a first step towards the Nobel Prize. If I don’t submit an application, then I don’t receive any research funding from my university in the next academic year. Said funding enables me to travel to interesting places like Beijing and Hong Kong, sorry, disseminate my valuable research findings at major international conferences that just happen to be hosted in exotic, foreign locales.

I should point out that my funding from the university is separate from that awarded by the JSPS and is not actually dependent on me getting a ‘Grant-in-Aid’. Which is a good thing as (a) there is no way I would ever be awarded a grant given the quality of my submissions (“Seanchoi and the oral tradition in Japan: a connection?”); and (b) I don’t want the funding as it an administrative nightmare to process.

No, all I have to do is go through the process of submitting an application and I will receive research funds from the university. There are a range of grants you can apply for, but as becomes the man, I always go for the ‘Challenging and Novel Research’ category. Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Applications to this category should demonstrate “In what way does the current research have novel ideas and a challenging nature?”.

Let me just count the ways...

Thus my application emphasizes that my proposal is ‘ground breaking’, that is, when it’s not ‘breaking new ground’. Indeed, the main aim of my research is to ‘ramp up my ground breaking’ in order to ‘break new ground’, and thus ‘push out the envelope on the frontier of new ground breaking research’.

Then I have a break for a cup of hot cocoa and try and grab some more mixed metaphors floating by.