Alina Ibragimova is undoubtedly one of the most endearing violinists in the world. A while ago, I'd been fascinated by her recordings of Schubert's sonatas. Even now, I often put on the CD at home. Tonight, she has been in Tokyo and played Ysaye in Toppan Hall at Iidabashi. In fact, I don't like the hall because it's far away from the station and its seats are stiff. On top of that, there I smell smoke every time. But this time I had no choice but to have bought a ticket to enjoy her playing sonatas for solo violin by Ysaye.

The performance was really nice. I've never experienced such a bright tone in Ysaye. Especially, the second and fifth were so attractive. For instance, at the very beginning of the second sonata, her abrupt but not rude pause after the short passage of Bach's third sonata took my breath away. It almost looked like she was pretending to play the passage by error. Of course it wasn't. Having expected some anger or grief at the pause, I felt a funny surprise. I hope these feathery impression won't change to be more serious and heavier one in her future recordings of this masterpieces.

I went drinking with one of my best drinking pals yesterday. For me, he is the only friend from college days. These days we are always talking about our children, despite many common interests in a broad range of areas. That's good because I can respect his attitude toward life as well as on parental interests, and hopefully he also seems to be gratified by my way of thoughts. But it means that we drink and eat so much every getting together, and naturally, we regretted having eaten a bowl of ramen after bottles of wine yesterday.

It has turned out nice these two days. We went to the zoo on Saturday, and today we attended a local community event. Both two days, my daughter was made so many fuss by passing strangers that I was a little bit embarrassed. I think it was because of the baby coach. It's really cute. The elder brother, who was also brought up with the coach and now pushes it in a proud manner, is cute too.

When I waited with our baby sleeping in the coach, a girl who said that she was studying photography in a university asked me if she could take picture of the coach and baby. I let her do that, of course. However, it was her film camera that attracted my attention. I used to take B&W photos like her. I could even develop films myself. In fact, I still have gears and chemicals to develop films, though they are unlikely to be used again.

I played cards with my son after the diner. He was inevitably defeated and burst into tears. I know what he felt but he needs to get used to that.

The morning air was neither hot nor cold, so I went to the office by walk. The townscape has changed a lot since the days I used to run through by bicycle. Especially, there are more food related shops than before. I was intrigued by a venerable traditional sweets shop and their new dorayaki-tasting soft cream. I'll try it the other day.

I often say to my son that he should be careful in doing something. That's not because I'm careful but actually the very opposite. In fact, I carelessly sent an email to a wrong address. I hope my son not to become like me.

When I listen to somebody talking in English, I think I somehow manage to recognize each words. But I still can't grasp the meaning of what they say before constructing the sentence from these words in my head.

I seem to have caught a cold from my son who had been coughing and snorting for the whole last week. He might been have over-excited about his new environment. No fever, fortunately, so he had gone to the school everyday. And then, on Sunday, he said that, he felt so tired that he didn't want to go out with us and stayed at home alone for the first time. So the rest of us three went out for an hour.

I ate ramen for dinner with my son on the way home from the dentist. My son seemed to be tired. Obviously, it's because his new days at the elementary school. I'm slightly jealous with him though. Being tired is the same for me, but he is absolutely, through these hectic days, cultivating a sense of humanity, learning ability, and everything!

It was a bit hot today. Someone left the emergency door and the windows of the office open in order to let in the fresh Spring air. It means the pollen which causes my allergy broke in to around my desk all the afternoon. Being too polite to shut the door and the windows, I've been enduring with the mask but was exhausted unnecessarily.

I talked in English within my dream the last night. Oddly enough, I managed to tell Jackie Chan, Hong-Kong movie actor, that I had a terrible ache in my eyes. He said OK and magically eased the pain by just pressing a acupuncture point near my eyebrow. Wow. The press also alleviated the stiffness of my shoulders at the same time. But then he started to press the back of my knees, and it was so acute that I woke up to the reality.

On the way home, my old HTC Desire had no reaction without any warning. So I made it force reboot, but then, out of the blue, some of its core applications, including gmail and even 3G, seemed to disappear. I guessed the phenomenon has got to do with the sd card because I've S-OFFed the device and moved some applications into the sd card using a2sd. So I tried to do "a2sd checkext" from the terminal emulator, which also had to be reinstalled, and narrowly avoided to replace it with a new one. All in all, however, I have to replace it as it's becoming too out-of-date to keep using these days.

A Monday on April is the hardest day for going to the office. Even though I was a full of vigor when leaving home, riding a packed train was so daunting task that I actually got off the train two stops early and headed from there to the office by foot. It was far more comfortable than being almost choked by the cramped posture.

If a baby has been fed with breast milk, it's harder for the father to cradle them. All we can do is to wait them crying themselves to sleep. I dare say every baby should realise this inevitable fact.

Now I studied a bit about the formal way of processing XML trees. I have a vague intuition that the approach I've been practically using in my projects, which I developed without any theoretical background, has partly equivalent with the well-defined formal method. If it's the case, it might be a kind of help for someone who has the same problem as the one I had.

Before I started to open this editing page tonight, I had thought I spent all the day doing nothing special. It's one of the beneficial effects of this diary to remind me of how every single day is irreplaceable.

Today I went to see the doctors for my allergy symptoms as a routine visit once a month. There's always a lot of patients waiting to see them. At the waiting room, we can do nothing except reading comics which are there for the sake of killing our times. I have also been reading a comic for these months. They were a serialized story. Although it's a relatively long series, today I inevitably reached the very last episode currently available. What can I do in the waiting room at the next visit?

In the afternoon, I finally post-processed the photos I took the last Monday at my son's enrollment ceremony to the elementary school. Some of them were well taken, but honestly, I could do better.

These days I'm leaving home in the morning half an hour earlier than used to be. That's because I have to accompany with my son who has started to go to the school since this Tuesday. I merely lead him to the broadest street between our house and the school to see his crossing the street. Although I can then go back home and even sip a cup of coffee before actually go to the office, I'm taking advantage of the responsibility as a father and directly heading to the office in order to go down with the bunch of work. It's rather fun so far.

I reserved a hotel for the TeX conference of this year. It's going to be held at Portland. I hope I can give some presentation there, but I haven't come up with any idea for now.

My son enrolled in the elementary school yesterday. I attended the ceremony and was completely worn out by a lot of excited children all yelping and running around the room after the ceremony. Too tired to write a word here. Although I love my son, I can't help almost screaming when he making a fuss with other children. I know it's a nature of them, though.

Having that said, I was very proud of him having been focused on the ceremony. Becoming a school boy might be a kind of new social title for him that let him take a grown-up attitude yesterday during the ceremony.

Speaking of today, it was his first day of the school and I accompanied him in the morning to the cross near the school. I prefer such an ordinary happiness to a ceremony like the one we had yesterday.

I made noodles this afternoon. I often make them for these years and have been getting better and defter at it.

I attended a party the other party of the company held for welcoming the rookies. I seldom talk with people working for the other department, but really enjoyed talking with them tonight.

Today was so wet that the cherry blossom started to fall. It's still been raining. I didn't imagine it would get worse when I left home. In fact, I almost forgot to bring the umbrella, and worse than that, I left home with my favorite shoes that aren't water proof. It got soaked out by the time I got back home and I had to wash it immediately. By the way, I hadn't known that shoes can be -- even should be -- rinsed with running water.

I went to the English class, but then it turned out that it was not today but yesterday. Feeling a little bit foolish, I redirected my destination to the book shop near the school in order to buy a new text book for the class which will start the week after the next. Again, to my disappointment, it was also wasting my time because the text book I'm going to use was out of stock. There, however, was a funny clerk who asked me about my shirt. He said that he used to have the same shirt as the one I was wearing and that the shirt is hard to get now as the maker discontinued the line. Talking with him, I was aware of the embarrassing fact that I had been wearing the shirt back to front! Everything could be better today.