lingqi's Journal: July 7th, 2004

July 7th, 2004 (4:44pm)

I think every japanese kitchen sink comes with a japanese kitchen sink strainer. They are cylindical are sizewise should fit a baseball perfectly. The problem with these is that regardless what kind of cleaner you use, they always end up very nasty after a few monthes, and for its prevention I have began to use a disposable filter that goes inside the strainer, much like those paper coffee filters but with lower flow restriction. Above the strainer is a cover (mine is black rubber), so that things can fall in but you are not greeted by the ugly sight below.

However, these disposable filters becomes clogged VERY fast - incredibly fast, in fact, that you have to wonder if it was a feature to force you to throw them away frequently and therefore need to buy more filters. After only a few uses of the sink, water would begin to become trapped on the bottom of the filter-installed strainer.

A few days ago after eating watermelons, I rinced the seeds down the sink, and they were promptly captured by the sink strainer, and not wanting to throw away the filter just yet (it's *5* yen!), I decided to leave it for a while.

Sometimes later (couple days ago) I was standing at the sink, either eating kiwi or something equally easy to forget, and I noticed that there was two seeds sitting on top of the rubber cover. "Ahh I must have missed these rincing last time" I thought, and proceeded to turn on the water so they can fall to their doom in the bottom of the strainer, awaiting their ultimate fate of going into burnable trash. The problem is that after a few litres of aimed rincing, the seeds just kind of hangs out, not going anywhere, happily staying on the seam between two rubber flaps.

"Darnit they must have dried up and stuck to the rubber cover," I thought, and proceeded to reluctantly perform some mental preparations on picking them up and tossing them out manually. However, while I thought I was picking up just a simple seed, I actually found the seed to be attached to a 10cm sprout! opening the rubber cover, I noticed that about 1/3 of the seeds had sprouted to some various degrees - the two earlier mentioned are simply the more industrial of the bunch, actually managing to extend themselves above the cover, out from the prison where I carelessly had left them.

The first thought I had was that I really ought to entertain the idea of growing some watermelons on the balcony - given their price, growing my own would be an excellent proposition!

And, that life is surprisingly resilient and capable. For this reason I would not be at all surprised if Titan was inhabited.

The other fruity note is that yesterday I did a foolish thing and ate 10 kiwi fruits. Maybe the foolish and frutiness had begun when I bought 30 of them the weekend before. Having to respect the fact that there are not many days left before I leave for Okinawa, I decided to binge on them this few days. Kiwi, though, seems to have a highly acidic content and it does not sit very well with stomaches.