‘So far, so good’ is probably the best manner to summarize my first two months at the MA programme New Media and Digital Culture. While still having problems in finding certain buildings of certain lectures in Utrecht, I fortunately had less difficulties with the programme itself. Both courses, digital visualization and game studies, really were thought-provoking and eye-openers, especially after having spent three years on the traditional subjects of Japanese Studies. For this courses, I did research on the remediation of traditional Japanese art styles in Ôkami and the consideration of Japanese dating sim LovePlus as a serious game, respectively. Next course, I’ll be following Digital Music Cultures, which won’t be much of a surprise if you know my background.
Only one course, you ask? Yes. Whereas I was rather anxious regarding the internship, all of a sudden I managed to find an institution that exactly matches my (academic) interests. Actually, as a regular participant of MEARC’s (short for ‘Modern East Asian Research Centre’) lectures, I was well aware of its existence, but it never struck me that I could work there. Upon contacting its manager, it became clear they have never offered an internship before, but were willing to provide me one nevertheless. Consider me happily relieved. As the internship, however, will start early December, it overlaps with two university quamesters (is that a word?). Therefore I had to drop one course now and I have to follow another one from February onwards.
As a final note, I have joined the New Media Studies editorial textboard a few weeks ago. Not much productivity from my hands yet, but that will certainly change in the upcoming weeks, as we’ll be working hard on the fifth issue of the journal. And once we’re done, my internship starts. I must admit, though: I have been missing Japan Studies’ crazy pressure of workload.
Other tidbits:
- I had finally found a part-time job. After one month, I had only worked three hours, so I found that a jolly good reason to quit. Actually, I yet have to.
- Our apartment is finally done. Fortunately, every friend or family member who drops by is pleasantly surprised by how it turned out, so I guess my girlfriend and I did a good job. However,…
- As of today, we still have no internet connection. The first provider concluded upon closer inspection that it would be impossible to provide an internet connection in our apartment, yet they expected me to pay connection fee - which I obviously didn’t and now they’re considering sending a Huissier de justice (yes, I had to google that). The second provider is working on a solution for two weeks now and send me a dongle to meet my wishes. However, the dongle’s box says it’s a prepaid dongle while the software it installed claims it’s subscription based. The customer service didn’t know anything about it either, so after having used it for three days, I decided it’d be better to put it back in its box.