i've been putting in all the unknown words from class worksheets (we get 4+ a day) into memrise, studying on the bus back and forth to school or whenever i just happen to be bored. you can get a freaking LOT of words memorized throughout the week this way even though the bus trip's only like 20 minutes!! the only problem with this is, it takes me hours and hours to type in all the words and get their definitions, so i need to start just doing "a little bit" every day instead of letting it all pile up.

i bought ebook versions of the entire harry potter series, removed the furigana and illustrations, replaced certain hiragana words (ex. "owl, uncle") with kanji to make it harder for myself (the original was a bit too easy to read and didn't make me feel like i was practicing / learning so much), put them on my 3DS and have been reading them. i really needed to start reading japanese "novels" but all the novels were too difficult, whether because of the vocab or because the font size was too small. harry potter is readable if you're around JLPT N3 level, I'm N2 so it's super easy for the most part. the words i don't know are usually just descriptive words that aren't actually necessary to understand the sentence.

when the book is fairly easy and it's a "story", reading is... get this... FUN!! i just read 3 chapters in one day!! it's one of those "you forget that this is technically studying" things.

the part-time job guys are super disorganized and not really giving out info, and among other things it might be really hard for me to get shifts in the beginning. the good news is, it pays 900 an hour and shifts are 3 hours; everywhere else i've seen pays 800 an hour and shifts are at least 4 hours. so if i can just get enough shifts it'll be a superior job, and if not then i'll get a second job.

seems like my uncle died in his sleep a couple days ago. he had had AIDS/HIV for at least 15 years, in the past few years went crazy & was super angry all the time, stopped taking his medicine, turned into a hoarder and all that, according to my mom. basically the same thing (crazy + anger + hoarder) happened with my mom's sister when she was dying of cancer a few years ago, and for all we know she was skipping her medicine there too. anyway, i never knew him all that well to begin with but the whole thing was sort of to be expected (same as my great-grandparents who, while they're still alive now at age 90-something each, i've known since 15 years ago that "they could die any day so be prepared"). i haven't seen or talked to him in 7 years, i tried sending him a facebook message once a few years ago about how a study showed that good diet "cures" AIDS but he never responded.

i dunno, i don't feel sad. it's kind of like he was already dead to begin with, i guess...? it's not like he ever called me or like we ever hung out or anything. the problem is you can't really say that because everyone else in your family will get pissed and think you're crazy : / but in general this is the first death of someone in my family that i personally ever knew to some degree. i dunno, instead of thinking about him i'm thinking more about, would i get really sad if my parents / wife suddenly died? or would it be like this, where i immediately go "okay time to move on"?

the other thing is, if anyone wants me to go to his funeral i don't mind but i literally do NOT have the money, i can't afford plane tickets to the USA. for some reason my family tends to think not visiting is my "choice" despite that i've told them before that i don't have a job etc (their reasoning is like, you're living "somehow" so you must be able to save money too - i guess. though i'm living on student loan money).

sooo now that i've been reading harry potter as an adult for the first time (and after having gone through a lot of emotional abuse and crazy people lol), i'm suddenly struck by how i can understand what the hell harry's aunt and uncle were thinking and why they were acting that way with him.

1. they got a letter with a baby saying "your relatives were murdered, harry was almost murdered, their house was completely destroyed, the murderer will probably try to kill harry again so keep him safe". not only would harry be killed but so would the dursleys.

2. when they went out to the grocery store etc random weird strangers would greet harry by name and so on. to the dursleys, these guys might as well be in cahoots with the murderer. meaning, taking harry outside = dangerous. showing harry to the neighbours = dangerous. thus, keep him locked up all the time and don't let anyone know he lives with them.

3. petunia's sister was treated really specially because she was a witch; petunia was overlooked. so, now petunia spoils dudly a ton because "she never got attention herself". on top of that, dudly is a "normal boy, not a wizard" so "thank god you won't drag us into crazy, dangerous shit: just live normally" thinking.

4. refusing all kind of "fantasy, strange" stuff was just their way of trying to stop harry from realizing his magic powers and becoming a wizard. since they don't know exactly how it works they thought maybe they could stop/suppress it. again, this wasn't "just to be mean", it was to protect the whole family including harry himself.

5. when the hogwarts letter came, to the dursleys it signalled that someone (maybe related to the murderer) had been spying on their house for a long time. and that that person was crazy for sending so many letters and in so many ways etc. initiating him into the wizarding world = into the world where you get murdered. if the dursleys actually didn't "like" harry, they would have just let the crazy people take him and be done with it; instead they actually took him with them and tried to stop hagrid and everyone else from taking him into that world. in the same vein, in order to "protect" him mentally they said his parents died in a car crash (= random accident) and not y'know were brutally murdered (even without magic = closer to the truth).

harry didn't have a library card, computer, etc. with that kind of stuff you can be tracked by the outside world (ex. library card = your name and address are registered).

the book mentions that ex. it'd been years since he ate chocolate cake, not that he had "never" eaten it. so in general i think this stuff slowly got stricter and stranger as the dursley's paranoia about people finding him slowly grew. also stuff like, he got dudly's hand-me-downs: so that the dursleys weren't seen buying ex. new clothing that *wouldn't have fit dudley* or birthday items when it *wasn't dudley's birthday* (again, paranoia) so people wouldn't think they had another kid living with them.

well anyway that was my thought as i read this time. i doubt J.K. Rowling put all that much thought into it but eh