Hi, about 5 weeks ago, DOTmed members welcomed an intern from Japan, Naoko Yamazaki. She just finished her internship life here in NYC and went back to Tokyo last week. At work, she mostly spent time doing some research for the sales department, which was helpful. She really enjoyed hanging out with her "host family."

As you see, time flew so fast that many of us didn't realize it was time to say good-bye to Naoko last week... We liked her cheerfulness and hope to see her again. Good luck, Naoko!

Changing the topic, my friend took me to the opera - Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" by New York City Opera at Lincoln Center. First of all, I was impressed the theater, especially the gorgeous interior!
About the story, to be honest with you, I hardly understood whole thing because of my poor English. (If I can make an excuse, I must say I am not familiar with old British English...) Actually, there was a big screen that showed us the subtitles, yet unfortunately, we sat all the way back and couldn't read them clearly. So I took a look the plot in the brochure during the intermission and asked my friend to give me more details. Although it was still difficult to follow up the story, I appreciated the music of the fantastic orchestra and the dance at least.

By the way, what do you think is the difference between an opera and a musical? Both of them consist of dance and music, right? According to my dictionary (Longman American Dictionary), OPERA is a musical play in which the words are sung rather than spoken, and MUSICAL is a play or movie that uses singing and dancing to tell a story.

Well, not 100% clear, isn't it? Someone says that the only difference is where it's played: Opera is in opera houses (with an opera audience) and a musical is in theatres (with theatrical audiences). Do you agree? I think that is an easy answer. So how do you define them?

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