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'Grow old along with me--' 'Haff we a choice, bach?'
I've been fretting that it takes me longer and longer to read manga. I can't believe that my Japanese is worse than it was a dozen years back, when I'd polish off a book over breakfast. A leisurely breakfast, but still. It's been the rare manga these last years that's taken less than an hour to read: some Saiyuki, some Akino, one Kou Josei (which astonished me: manga with Chinese in them take forever.) Hell, I can't read English manga in less than an hour.
I may have stumbled on the solution.
Unsettled weather, incipient Frosh flu, malign astrological configurations- something at any rate saw me wide awake at 5 am after an unsettled night. Went downstairs, drank some warm milk, weighed myself as is my morning reflex (and discovered that those four pounds I'd shed two days ago are back) and picked a sure-fire put me to sleep book off the kitchen bookshelf: Motohashi Keiko's Daisan no Teikoku, the Third Reich, a series I thought I wanted to read but have found oddly difficult in practice. Of course I wasn't wearing my contacts: my lovely bifocal contacts that usually let me read without reading glasses if the light is strong enough etc etc, because I fully intended to go back to bed eventually. I had my glasses on- my lousy bifocal glasses that cost the earth and are useless for reading with unless I hold my head at an angle that induces an immediate crick in the neck. (My advice to you, young padawan, is to eschew bifocal glasses when you come of years: they are a snare and a delusion and a scam.) Presbyopia (the tendency to become long-sighted with age) has altered my short-sightedness to such an extent that I can now read without glasses at all, even though I tend to close one eye to do it.
But that's changed too, because there I was curled up on the sofa reading with both eyes and positively tearing through volume 2. And a good thing too, because fluff doesn't repay slow reading.
In sum, however- To read manga it helps to be able to see the text clearly. Note this for future reference.
I do wonder how long Daisan no Teikoku can keep up this trope of 'all the lovely boys who are after your heart are assassins who are after your life, and you know it and I know it' before it palls. I mean, it's palling as of vol 2 and there are eight more books to go. OTOH the sight of our underage super assassin with the ribbons binding his luxuriant bum-length locks still has its special and totally unlikely delights. But I still want her current series 黒孩子 to come out in tank.
And yes I did go back to bed and to sleep and dreamed about babies, I believe, because I always dream about babies. Got up at 10:30 and on a hunch weighed myself again. Four pounds lighter than at 5 am. You don't drop weight overnight, you drop it after 6 am.
I may have stumbled on the solution.
Unsettled weather, incipient Frosh flu, malign astrological configurations- something at any rate saw me wide awake at 5 am after an unsettled night. Went downstairs, drank some warm milk, weighed myself as is my morning reflex (and discovered that those four pounds I'd shed two days ago are back) and picked a sure-fire put me to sleep book off the kitchen bookshelf: Motohashi Keiko's Daisan no Teikoku, the Third Reich, a series I thought I wanted to read but have found oddly difficult in practice. Of course I wasn't wearing my contacts: my lovely bifocal contacts that usually let me read without reading glasses if the light is strong enough etc etc, because I fully intended to go back to bed eventually. I had my glasses on- my lousy bifocal glasses that cost the earth and are useless for reading with unless I hold my head at an angle that induces an immediate crick in the neck. (My advice to you, young padawan, is to eschew bifocal glasses when you come of years: they are a snare and a delusion and a scam.) Presbyopia (the tendency to become long-sighted with age) has altered my short-sightedness to such an extent that I can now read without glasses at all, even though I tend to close one eye to do it.
But that's changed too, because there I was curled up on the sofa reading with both eyes and positively tearing through volume 2. And a good thing too, because fluff doesn't repay slow reading.
In sum, however- To read manga it helps to be able to see the text clearly. Note this for future reference.
I do wonder how long Daisan no Teikoku can keep up this trope of 'all the lovely boys who are after your heart are assassins who are after your life, and you know it and I know it' before it palls. I mean, it's palling as of vol 2 and there are eight more books to go. OTOH the sight of our underage super assassin with the ribbons binding his luxuriant bum-length locks still has its special and totally unlikely delights. But I still want her current series 黒孩子 to come out in tank.
And yes I did go back to bed and to sleep and dreamed about babies, I believe, because I always dream about babies. Got up at 10:30 and on a hunch weighed myself again. Four pounds lighter than at 5 am. You don't drop weight overnight, you drop it after 6 am.
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I also find those few pounds like to play hide and seek.
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Ahahaha!...
Also thank you for the advice on the glasses issue. You might think it's too early for me to think about such things but being of the shortsighted variety as well I can now do close work reading, pc typing etc, without glasses. However I have found the magnifying glass I thieved from my mother useful for trying to decipher that kanji in font which sometimes makes it undefine-able.
Still tired eyes are tired eyes and glasses or no, tearing happens to me too. It gets worse when sunlight is too bright, or there's too much dust, or if there's too much incense burning or pollen. Basically I'm rubbish with allergies, have been since young! Grr!
One of the reasons I could never go back to England to live is that summers kill me and winters do too! Thankfully hubby has become more Singaporean than me and will therefore also never entertain any such ideas!
Can someone suggest me a nice place to live! ^___^
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Magnifying glasses were what I used for furigana when I was your age. Now- well, reading glasses on top of those hydrophilic bifocals generally do the trick.
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Plus as you say it isn't a permanent thing either! Aparently Singapore has one of the highest (if not the highest) rates of myopia in the world. And astig affects quite a number of the population as well, me included! *sigh*
In Asia, you hear of people doing it on the cheap and the consequent horror stories that come along with it! Those 'Have a holiday in Phuket AND get your Laser surgery done' packages....very scary indeed.
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And I was always put in the back row because of my height. The fact that I couldn't see the blackboard never seems to have bothered me through four grades...
Does laser surgery correct astigmatism? If it weren't so squicky, as you say, and uncertain, as zan says, it might be worth it- or have been worth it, whatever. Not that my astigmatism has ever bothered me greatly. In practice it just means that I can't tell whether my pictures are hung straight.
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