At work, we are hosting two guests from NY and India.  And my days have been crazy these days. After this coming week, I will enjoy a few weeks of resting period, which I can hardly wait.
It’s been busy but at the same time it’s been great.  The Indian guest, who happens to be reading this blog (avidly, thank you), and I became good friends.  I must admit that I had never spoken to an Indian person who lives in India.  I knew some Indian American people, but they are a bit different.  In my graduate school, there was a doctoral degree candidate from Pakistan, but he always kept to himself and didn’t really talked to us, I must say I did not have a good impression on him nor his country.
Anyway, while I still have lots to say, let me be brief today, for I am exhausted on Sunday evening.
I wanted to show my new friend some good parts of Tokyo, the parts that I like, so I took him around Aoyama/Omotesando/Roppongi area.  There is a famous street with 4 rows of huge Ginkgo trees near Aoyama area.  Since the autumn leaves festival was still ongoing, we went there, only to find most of the leaves were already on the ground.  But it was quite nice.

He gave me two books of his choice as souvenirs. One is a book about Indian culture by Amartya Sen, the other a collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri.  Both look great, so I am looking forward to start reading them. 
But what fascinated me more was the bag that came with the books.  I think it’s quite amazing – all of these 3 people look like themselves, but look quite Indian at the same time.  The artist is pretty good, don’t you think?

 
Since I haven’t done much other than working and planning for my short vacation, I really don’t have much to tell you.  But I did bake a plate of quiche from scratch, all by myself.  I became accustomed to bake tarts these days.
 
 Below, I bought several skeins of new yarn.  The yarn called SHELTER, a sort of a designer yarn that just came out a few months ago.  A carismatic knitter/designer who lives in Brooklyn started his own yarn brand with American wool with a local yarn mill in New Hampshire.  It’s a wonderful concept.  Wish I can do something like that in Japan, too.
I am knitting a Guensey patterned scarf with the gray yarn.