| |
| June 8, 2007 |
What
the World Eats is a slideshow from the new
Peter Menzel
project, Hungry Planet. His previous
Material World featured family portraits from
thirty countries, each with all of their possesions,
arranged just outside their houses. This new one shows
families in the kitchen or dining room, along with all
of their food, for a week. Note the central pile of
brotchen
in the
final
image, from Germany -- so thankful now for
Esther's
Bakery, a local source with no
storefront -- instead, I must arrive early at
the Saturday morning
Sunnyvale
Farmers Market to score these rolls, which are one
of the best things about Europe -- now, fresh,
and in California. A miracle!
Three blogs I've been into recently, unrelated:
- Jeffrey Friedl,
who lives in Kyoto -- photoblog, friend of a classmate.
- Love
from California posts entries in both English and
her native Japanese. She was in my conversation class
(in the photo, next to Yuke).
- Evan
Dorkin -- been reading his comic book "Dork" again
since there's a new 'ish' out now, #11, after a five
year interval.
Also, Geoff's now doing
a
comic strip.
|
| June 4, 2007 |
Inside a stall of a public restroom at my school's
office, one observes this unusual prohibition. It's to
prevent what's known in the Ladies as "hovering" but
you may not be aware that some of our more recent imports
are standing on the seats, being familiar only with squat
toilets (or due to fears of disease). I can only wonder
why it's also posted in the Mens; I've always thought
Cecil's column,
What
diseases can you catch from toilet seats? to be the
last word on that subject. It suggests that the tissue
paper 'ass gasket' is useless. And how do you like those
who arrange their paper boundary just so and then, as a
courtesy, leave it in place for the next consumer?
- Also at the Straight Dope, a current column,
Why
are the bees disappearing? Or are they? Something
I noted in his report was it's only affecting European
honeybees -- and just recently, I heard a beekeeper expressing
his pleasure with the results from his colonies of African
(yes, the more aggresive and so-called killer) bees.
- How
I Spent the War -- Günter Grass' experiences
as a recruit in the Waffen SS. He was drafted in the
last months, and never fired a shot.
- In Business Week,
Japan's
Lost Generation.
|
| June 1, 2007 |
My afternoon class. Many of us have known each other since January, very
sorry to see them go. This photo was presented to me in a
very nice frame, quite
touching. Some of the people pictured here will continue
on, in my summer school class, which will be a whole new
deal -- actually there'll be two of them, or 1.5, since
I'll be splitting the AM session's time with another teacher.
But for now, a short break.
|
| May 31, 2007 |
|
The end of this busy time with school is finally in sight,
hours away instead of days. Unfortunately, the situation now
complicated with illness -- I've come down with a bug many
call the 'stomache flu' but I'm preferring the term abbreviated
from gastroenteritis, which sounds like one of the
Marx Bros: "Gastro."
|
| May 25, 2007 (link corrected) |
Another group photo, with teacher. This is my morning
class, just conversation except for their final project,
which is to give a presentation lasting at least three
minutes. At the far left are my two favorite students,
Yuka and Yuke. The former is from Kobe (where she lost
friends in the '95 earthquake), and the latter is from
Beijing -- she's the one I characterized previously as
"shrill" and in the usual way, the person I initially
find the most off-putting turns out to be the one I
like best. Today, Yuka was one of the presenters, and
she blew us all away with her violin discussion and
virtuoso performance -- she's been playing since age 3.
Unfortunately missing from this picture is my exuberant
young African, who's from Cameroon -- she was off
failing her driving test the day of this photo-op.
From the class where I'm a student, you can see my
cool Japanese teacher performing both roles in a
video
he made us where he simulates a telephone dialog
between him and the police, investigating a robbery
which occurred at the Y, while he was swimming there.
|
| May 23, 2007 |
- The MetaFilter crew addresses the perenial question
about the toilet paper roll:
Over
or Under?
- And it may have been discussed there, I didn't
check; but elsewhere, good answers to
What's
the difference between a Sport Coat, a Blazer, and a Suit Jacket?
(Here's
more
about that for you well-dressed men.)
- Interesting discussion about postage and
inflation, in Slate --
Should
I Invest in "Forever" Stamps? Of course, the
"no" argument pertains only to those whose asset
values and incomes are regularly adjusted upwards,
in step with inflation; if yours aren't, laying in
a supply of these æsthetically unappealing
Liberty Bells is a good idea, 'specially given the
USPS' recent penchant for ever-more-frequent rate
increases.
|
| May 19, 2007 |
- Although I was a big fan of "Star Trek" in the late
1960s, when it was new, and afterwards, "The Next
Generation" didn't trigger much interest until it'd
been on a couple years, and even then its hinkier
elements prevented full-on enthusiasm. A
TNG
Endings YouTube compiles the last ten seconds of
each first season episode, where you can get
a taste of what I mean. The IMDb has trivia lists for both TOS
(The
Original Series) as well as
TNG,
where we learn that Geordi's
Visual Instrument and Sensory Organ Replacement
(VISOR) was improvised on the first day of shooting
using chiefly an automobile air filter,
confirming a long-time hunch I've had.
- Since I've been havin trouble with Wikipedia (not)
loading over my slowww dial-up, I've been seeking out
alternatives to their main page. Seems that
a
wide variety is available -- I'm now using either the
Simple
Search or the
text-only,
until I figure out how to add their search
form to my links page.
|
| May 16, 2007 |
- Just watched the 2-hour version of "Shogun" which
provoked some online research, discovering an
out-of-print book called
Learning
From Shogun. It's a reaction to the novel, and
the entire text is available there as a PDF. Fascinating
stuff, if you're curious about the history behind
the story, and/or Western perceptions of the Oriental
Other.
- First class postage went up 2¢ Monday -- and
that's not all.
Size
matters, as does shape, under new postal rates.
- Finally, because I was listening to an audiobook of
Farmer in the Sky during last month's road-trip
to LA, an essay on the
Heinlein
Juveniles by C.W. Sullivan.
|
| May 10, 2007 |
In the News:
- Microwave
Popcorn Flavoring Suspected in Illness. Don't know
if this 'diacetyl' pseudo-butter flavoring is the reason,
but I find the odor of that stuff annoying, disagreeable,
unpleasant, nauseating -- almost as bad as that black-tar
roofer smell. Thankfully I liberated myself from the
office environment, where that foul stench lingers in
the hallways.
- Tomorrow's Pioneers: Militant
'Mickey Mouse' pulled off the air, in Palestine.
- Photos of the
Griffith
Park fire, on flickr. The observatory is one of my favorite
places, for the view at night, looking down upon the lights
of LA.
- Finally, I don't have a link, but the radio said GM's
profits are down 90%. That's gotta hurt, but just from a
visual POV, given the Big Three's offerings today, if I
had to take one I'd get a Chrysler. Or a new Mustang.
|
| May 8, 2007 |
And how did my field trip go, you may be wondering? All who
made it had a great time, but I probably won't take a class
there again since parking's problematic. (The only hitch was
one of the women got a $35 parking ticket -- next time,
she'll read the sign!) This museum has been featured previously,
in these pages -- scroll down on
this '99 journal entry
for more info. (And click the thumbnail to see us all posing with
The Thinker.)
|
| May 2, 2007 |
|
Frustration this morning: a last-minute classroom
change, in the rain, and then in the afternoon, a
fire drill. Plus I hollered at our doofus of a
sysadmin -- a tiring day, made longer due to an
hour-long test review tacked onto my last class.
Tomorrow, my first field trip -- we're going to
the Stanford Art Museum (and I'm somehow reminded
of Randle McMurphy's fishing trip in One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).
|
| April 27, 2007 |
|
Busy times, and nothing to post. Yesterday, had
to return to work in the evening, to do Testing,
the first time I'd been unable to avoid this
part of my new job. Candidates with varying
levels of English proficiency assemble for a
preliminary test and interview, in order
for placement at the proper level. This
happens monthly, followed by fresh faces
appearing in my classes -- it's sort of
nerve-wracking, but a prime modus of
our operation -- students come and go regularly.
So anyway there I was, at the head of
a large, institutional roomful of immigrants,
slowly working their way forward to the few
bureauocrats, sitting at folding tables,
filling out forms. After taking their tests
they'd queue up in a line of folding
chairs along the wall, awaiting my non-verbal
gesture to approach. Even with all the ambient
chatter the proceedings were rather quiet,
muffled, so I stifled my urge to bellow out
"Next!" After each brief interogation,
I'd judge and then dismiss them. After
awhile, I kinda got into it.
|
| April 20, 2007 (link updated) |
|
|
| April 18, 2007 (link corrected) |
Whenever I go back to LA, part of the journey's about
revisiting my old haunts. Among other places, I hit
the following, this time.
- Hi De Ho
Comics in Santa Monica
- Record
Surplus, the "last record store"
- The Book Baron
in Anaheim, and
- For a meal on the go, on my way out, half a
Zankou
Chicken from the branch in the Valley (which
I delayed feasting upon until a scenic Pacific
overlook past Santa Barbara, where the 101 runs
right along the ocean). Wasn't until this trip
that I realized the LA-only chain of Zankou is
Armenien.
- And this last was new, only the second time I've
been to a Penzey's
Spices, although I'm a long-time mail-order
customer. Their only California store (so far) is
located in Torrance, across from Del Amo, and unlike
the St Louis branch, each spice display features
a handy wide-mouth sample bottle, so you can smell
them all -- an olfactory trip.
Note to my back-East readers -- their latest
store just opened on Rockville Pike.
|
| April 17, 2007 |
Just returned from a quick weekend loop through the
Southland where I spotted this mural on the side of
a big Goodwill facility in a sketchy part of east
Long Beach:
(click fer bigger)
|
| April 10, 2007 |
A first for me at the dentist today -- replacement of
a crown is indicated, so he removed the old, by
cutting it off. I've got five gold teeth
now, four the end phase of root canals; and this one,
my first, has always been suspect. I think of the guy
who made it as Dr. Quack -- should've backed out
immediately I spotted all that tacky Redskin
paraphernalia decorating his office. This was shortly
after I'd moved back to the DC area in the mid-90s and
a few months later I ended up having a different (and
exceptionally competent) dentist tap off this crown
(using a hammer and chisel!), doing the necessary root
canal underneath, then gluing Dr Quack's crown back
into position. My LA dentist didn't approve of that
crown, because it had an ill-fitting 'ledge' which has
led to the problems my NoCal dentist is correcting now,
13 years later.
Also today, first session of the next Japanese class.
Instead of the native women I've had previously, this
time the teacher's a young American guy who parks his
bicycle in the front corner of the classroom. Born and
spent his first 18 years there and then came back to
New York, so he's bilingual. Only been here a couple
years.
Some YouTube video:
|
| April 7, 2007 |
Incredibly, my records show today's the ten-year
anniversary of operating this, my first (and still "driven
daily") computer, the
Monorail 7245
running the original Windows95. Although I've been ready
for years to transfer primary operation to the Tecra
(running Win98), the ol' original keeps plugging away so why switch? All I use it for now is
temporary storage and website uploads, plus email and
occasionally, Internet News for Usenet access, those tools
being the main reason I resist upgrade. The mail program,
bundled with Win95 and so fundamental its name is simply
"Internet Mail," has fatally crashed my machine thrice now,
requiring a total rebuild (the mailbox queues get
unexpectedly large is my guess, and then other memory
gets stepped on). I keep expecting the Monorail's decade-old
1 gigabyte disk to fail, but so far, only the floppy
does, rarely, unseriously. And I give that hardware
a real workout, using the swivel-chair interface for data
transfer.
But its time to get serious about a new laptop
and retire the ol' Monorail (which has been with me
right from the start, my first month back in California,
living in the Oakwood; meaning I'm ten years in
Silicon Valley now, as well.
|
| April 5, 2007 |
A recent scan of an old photo Jeff unearthed
somewhere. 'Tis I, at two months.
|
| March 30, 2007 |
|
The other of my classes which just ended was the
Japanese, very positive experience compared to the
previous AdultEd situation (described 3-16-6) which
had homework but no tests. The community college,
actually a satellite campus formerly a high scool,
has an unexpected benefit of great internet in a
student lab&lounge which and is more convenient
(and adjacent to a Peets). Only drawback is it's
closed Friday-Sunday and always now, during the break
between winter and spring quarters which unfortunately
isn't in sync with my teaching schedule, or I'd
leave town. Also, there's some question as to whether
the next class in the sequence will be offered, maybe
not enough students... stay tuned.
|
| March 29, 2007 |
The old morning class gone, a new one takes its place.
Initially, twice the size of its predecessor, which was
overwhelmingly Chinese -- this one's more mixed. Only
three guys: an amusing old codger from Shanghai plus
two Korean engineers, one of whom worked Jesus into his
introductory remark. The rest: a couple of Koreans, two
engineers from Beijing, two (maybe three) women from
India, same number from Kanzai, and another Japanese
who's a veterinarian but not licensed here yet; a dentist
from Mexico, same status; from a remote Chinese village
a PhD in Statistics, and finally, a stylish girl from
Taiwan. One of the Beijing engineers wouldn't shut up
about her specialty, heat transfer -- she's got a shrill
nature which I find, shall we say, challenging.
- If you've forgotten how to fold the origami crane, Evil
Mad Scientist Lab demonstrates the technique with
wonton
wrappers (then cooked into a nummy treat!)
- Brand New reports on the
new
DQ logo.
- In the News, yesterday (moved up due to a format problem):
Puppies
for Peace.
|
| March 25, 2007 |
- Excellent "This American Life" last week,
What
I Learned from TV. Their site's just undegone a
major re-do; worth exploring. I haven't seen most of the
TV show but don't miss the segment animated by Chris Ware,
archived
elsewhere.
- Images
of the Soviet Union. Also their
huge
trucks to transport ICBMs, even mobile
missle-launchers. Thrilling Wonders may get
a spot on my blogroll.
- Incredible
graffiti in Queens, all over a five-story cube
of an abandoned industrial building.
- Five
common exercises you should never do. At some point
I've incorporated all but the second into my routines,
but not recently, having learned better. The safe
alternatives of the third -- preacher curls, or the E-Z
Bar -- are actually the hardest thing I'm doing
at the gym now. Y'all oughta hear me grunt,
during. Or probably not
|
| March 22, 2007 |
- This is my morning class, and tomorrow is our last
session -- next week I'll be getting a new batch. The
women were all great (especially the old one, who had
some fascinating stories from her youth in Red China and
just the sweetest disposition) but I won't be sorry to
see the last of those three guys from Taiwan, each of
whom had annoying mannerisms. The fourth man, Andy, is
a rather amusing Korean, and we traded places as you can
see in the bigger image
here.
- At Neatorama, the
Ten
Most Magnificent Trees in the World.
|
| March 20, 2007 |
- Not
So Punk -- Jen theorizes about why some of 'em are
jerks.
|
| March 18, 2007 |
|
On "le Show" this morning Harry Shearer read of some
group's ideas to reverse climate change by reflecting away
or blocking a small percentage of the sun's radiation, via
large-scale "geo-engineering" -- some were interplanetary
(installing a shade at the LaGrange Point) but there
was a more down-to-earth notion of increasing the planet's
albedo
by sprinkling somethng shiny in the air, across the
earth surface -- or maybe, scattering something white
on the ocean. I'm visualizing ocean swells covered with
styrofoam packing material -- could it be possible to
litter our way out of global warming?
|
| March 16, 2007 |
- Snapped this seasonal cherry tree last week; now, its petals
have fallen. Life is fleeting, Grasshopper. One of the first words
of Japanese I ever knew, from the tiresome song... in an evening
musical performance in the 7th grade (this would've been early '67),
Allen and I were tasked with providing the chime-like accompaniment,
ringing out the song's two chords with triplets of individual
glockenspiel bells, while a chorus of our peers sang along. Now when
I sing about cherry blossoms, I prefer replacing 'Mosura' with that
word while doing the musical theme of
Mothra -- the
tribal, Island version, with its Malay lyrics:
Sakura ya Sakura
Dongan kasakuyan Indo moo
Rusuto uiraadoa, hanba hanbamuyan...
Seems the original's out of print -- many thanks to whoever taped it
for me off cable, back during the first Bush administration.
- Giant
Pool of Water Ice at Mars' South Pole -- I'm reminded of William
Mulholland's words of November 5, 1913, at the opening ceremony of the
Los Angeles Aqueduct in the San Fernando Valley: "There it is. Take it."
- Pseudo
Sushi update -- some scoff at this, and it is ultimately futile; but
as one who's been forced to endure bad 'Japanese' food I'm all for this
labeling.
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