I’m Jen. I’m a gadget freak and so is my husband — we’re those folks who have no furniture but each of us has 3-computers in our shared office space (mess) and at least 2 iPod products apiece (one for the car, one for the gym, one for the home office, one for work … and so on — somebody help us). Yep, I’m a gamer and hand-in-hand with that I’m into anime and the like. I sorta feel like I’m experiencing the childhood I never had because I spent 6th grade through grad school in the pursuit of a 4.0+ GPA (yes, this is what happens to a lot of those children that were pushed hard to do well … that is if they don’t burn-out and become “Domestic Gods” or “Goddesses”.). I have a little brother who chose childhood over school and I have a feeling that within a few years he’ll overtake me in professional success. He concentrated on learning about people and maintaining relationships — he’s a naturally likeable guy and he’s got the entrapeneurial spirit. We’re mutually jealous of each other, but I imagine he would never imagine that I envy his ease and likeability. He really looks up to big sister, but he has no idea that I look up to him … silly boy! So … I’m starting my 7th quarter of Japanese at UCSD extension. I’ve decided that I aspire to be an anime fansubber. To each his own I suppose. I have the full support of my husband who has me translating manga for him. I just translated my first manga this week. It took me several hours over 5 days. In these 5-days, I have learned to use a kanji dictionary and increased my vocabulary and grammar skills a little bit. I’m quite proud of myself. I’ve began my second manga a couple of days ago. It’s even more challenging than the first since there’s no furigana to help me with the Kanji’s I don’t know. As usual I can understand most of what is being said to me in Japanese (if common conversational words are used) and I can translate text pretty well with the aid of dictionaries, but I have lots of trouble getting it out of my mouth. Everything feels like a tongue twister — chotto hen na no … (I also learned Spanish and understand quite a bit, but I can’t get it out of my mouth either.) Translating text is actually a lot of fun. I find it stimulating because it’s like unscrambling riddles. Sometimes there isn’t a direct translation to English, so a lot adjectives are used to describe an object or a feeling — it’s kinda poetic. Anyhow, my neck hurts from hours of hunching over my dictionaries. I now lose big chunks of the evening and the weekends to translating, which isn’t so bad since my husband has joined WOW. We do these activities in the same space so we have a lot of funny side conversations about what WOW foolishness my husband has involved himself in and I share the Japanese “riddles.” It’s becoming a secret language — it like it :)! Anyhow, that’s enough for today … I’ll try to write something weekly in this blog and we’ll see how it goes :).