you don't have to read

This Blog Is Closed

2007-08-21T09:11:00.001-07:00

Thanks for reading, everyone! This blog is now closed; no new posts will be added. However, it will remain available for your viewing pleasure. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do it soon, before I close comments.

Please click over to my new blog, you don't have to read II (and if you have an suggestions for a better title, I'm listening). There, you will find the vast majority of the posts from you don't have to read and China Trippin', as well as all the new posts from my new life in Shanghai, China. This new blog will be easier for me to work with in China.

Home Sweet Home

2007-08-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

So landing in the US was kind of a trip. They showed some practical joke show on the plane right before landing, which eliminated landing anxiety for most people, but I hate practical joke shows; I manually turned my screen to black and looked out the window, to find we were already at treetop level and descending.

Passport control asked me why I was in China and what I was doing there. Not really much of a thing. Then, waiting for my bags, one of the Homeland Security Agents whose job it is to size up and intimidate the recent arrivals saw me waiting for my bag to come down the carrousel, and asked to see my passport and arrival document. Fine, man, I'm woose.No 'good morning,' no 'sir,' no 'please' or 'thank you,' DHS is too busy protecting us from terrorists to bother with pleasantries.

HSD: Can I see your passport and arrival document?
me: Sure. HSD: Where did you go? me: China
HSD: How long were you there?
me: Six weeks.
HSD: What were you there for?
me: Studying Chinese.
HSD: So you speak Chinese now?me: Better than I did six weeks ago.
HSD: Shay shay?
me: Ok, you're welcome... (are you kidingme?)...
HSD: (studying my response)
me: ... You said, "thank you."HSD: Yah, ok I'm workin' here.

He looked at my documents for a few more seconds and I watched the bags come down the ramp. He handed my papers back to me with an "ok" and went to look for the next adult male who looked like he was traveling alone. Two minutes later, another agent, buffer and with a military haircut, came and asked me the same questions, only without the language quiz.

Once I got my bags, I stopped at last check point... and was diverted to agricultural inspection. My bags were scanned another time, and an older, more professional looking agent with better social skills confiscated my beef jerky candies, warned me about the $300 fine. After that, I walked out of the security area.

They took my bags a second time, and I walked out to claim them on the other side. My sister met me at the main baggage claim. Once I got home, it was gifts, shower, nap, lunch (Chinese food!) and then we went out to see the Simpsons' movie.

Tomorrow: unpack, go to the office and clean up my desk, shop for a new computer.

Back In Town

2007-08-19T19:34:00.001-07:00

This post appears both at China Trippin' and 'you don't have to read.'

Hello from Seoul, Korea. I will be back in the big 206 about 24 hours from now.

I hope you all have been enjoying my China Trippin' posts over the last few months. In case you haven't heard the big news, I have resigned my job at the Jesuit high school, where I've taught for the past eight years. I have accepted an offer from Praxis Language in Shanghai, China to be an academic content director at SpanishSense.com. I'm very excited about the job, and happy I get to be in China to continue working on Mandarin.

So I have decided to put both 'you don't have to read' and China Trippin' to bed, and start a new blog as I start a new chapter in my life. I'm especially sad to let go of 'you don't have to read', but alas, the Chinese government blocks blogspot blogs, so I figure that this is as good a time as any to start over with a new platform.

Of course, the new blog needs a new name. Here are some of my thoughts, let me know in the comments if you like one in particular, or if you have any other suggestions.

Shanghai Pie

Deng yi xia! (Just a second!)

Kuai yi dian er! (Hurry up!)

Zhili hao. (Here's good.)

JP's Adventures in Grammar

Ex-patria, Unum

There will be more suggestions: I gotta go. Someone is vaccuming and I can't concentrate on thinking of new names.

I'm on a break!

2007-07-11T05:29:00.001-07:00

I'm in China now, I won't be updating this blog for a few more weeks.

If you want to see how I'm doing, please go to my G-rated, not semi-anonymous blog at:

h t t p :/ / jp goes to china . blogspot . com

No spaces of course. I'll be back in August.

Classes Start Tomorrow

2007-07-08T04:18:00.001-07:00

Today we had our last orientation, which means no more English until mid August. I wonder how long I'll last. We students have a system of spelling English words to get around the language pledge. Spelling is irritating enough to not become a habit, but it gets us through a conversation. Many of our Chinese roommates know a lot of English vocab.

They brought us Subway for lunch, which was nice, but it was Chinese Subway, which is not American Subway. Then E and I struck out without Chinese people this time and took the 12 Bus. First we went to the wrong bus station, then E figured it out and we walked to the right one. It was freakishly hot.

Getting Lost, At Last!

We got on the 12 South to find 文三楼口 because E needs a new camera charger. As usual, we didn't know where to get off, so we totally missed our stop. We eventually got off at the West Lake, right at the teahouse that I had tea in with the three others a day earlier. It wasn't our objective, but since we were there, I showed E where the Carrefour (all the French megastores are here), and bought myself some emergency blood sugar peanuts that are GOOD.

E and I had a plan to take the 12 a little farther south, walk east to the central highway, and catch another bus back. Didn't happen, missed the stop. We ended up at the Silk Museum, way south... Got off the bus and started walking across the street for the return bus, but then decided what the hell... We went into the Silk Museum and it turned out to be both free and air-conditioned. NICE.

At around 3:30 we took the 12 all the way back campus. I looked out for 文三楼口 but didn't see it.

Getting lost on the 12 with E was exactly the thing I needed to do today. I needed to get lost and find my way back, and rely on our own smarts, and not our Chinese roommates or the GroupThink that happens when more than three Americans strike out to see the town. I like the 12 a lot now!

Laundry

I did my laundry today. Did I already write about this? It's lame to wear something different every day and then wash it on the weekend. I have decided I'm going to have a three day rotation; wash my outfit every night, and then hang it out on the line to dry. There is no reason in the world to use a dryer here, and there is just not enough space on my clothesline to hang out a week's worth of clothes. Maybe if I was skinnier....

By the way, I wish I had more polyester guayaveras. I only brought one. Cotton absorbs my sweat and then holds the moisture against my skin. Not comfortable. I have a whole stack of shirts I don't really want to wear now. Oh well.

So to avoid wrinkles, I'm hanging out my clothes without wringing out the water. I just rinse it out and hang it up. The weight of the water weighs down the shirt as it drys, so there are less wrinkles. Came up with that one myself.

Some backlogged posts...

2007-07-06T17:08:00.001-07:00

Hello, from Hangzhou, China!

It's 4:30 in the morning, and I can't sleep anymore. My roommate is sleeping, and the room is an echo chamber, so I've brought a chair and my laptop out to the balcony, and I'm typing into word. I will past it into the blogs later.

So I landed at Hangzhou International Airport around 2:30. Breezed through immigration, and by the time I got to baggage claim, my bags were halfway down the belt. I was relieved to see them, since back in Seoul, the lady at the counter who had given me my boarding pass and checked in my bags said, "Please wait five minutes for your bags to be inspected" as my bags rolled down the belt into an inspection room.

"Wait where? here?" I had never heard of this before.

"Over there," she said, vaguely gesturing to the right. It just looked like more ticketing to me.

So I went over to the right and waited, and then went over to a seating area and waited, and then looked at the clock and decided five minutes was up, so I waited a little bit longer.... and then I went through security. Was somebody supposed to tell me my bags were ok?

Anyway, so I was glad to see my bags once I got to Hangzhou.

It's funny to me that Hangzhou is a city of six million, which is the population of the entire state of Washington, and that such a big city is considered a medium-sized city here. The airport is relatively small.

So anyway, I found myself alone at the airport around 3pm, and the airport rendez-vous wasn't until 5:30. Here I was stuck at this smallish airport with not much to do. I pulled my gear over to a window ledge—there is very little seating on the concourse—and waited.

And then I thought, I'm an adult, I shouldn't sit here and wait dutifully for two and a half hours. What am I afraid of?

So I stood up and went to the taxi line.

Before I left my hotel in Seoul, I went to the internet and scribbled down the hanzi of where our school was. I was in a hurry, so I just copied the hanzi, not the pinyin pronunciation. And what I scribbled down was not the actual address; roughly, it said 'Zhejian University of Technology, back entrance on some street street, Building 11.'

So I went up to a Mercedes taxi driver and pointed to my scribbles (since I don't remember how to pronounce them). and he shook his head and pointed me to a green taxis, which were lined up behind him. Just then a whole flock of people came out of the terminal, walked in front of me to claim the next seven cabs. This is a good thing; I need to see how it's done before I make an idiot of myself.

So when I decided it was my "turn" I showed my scribbled note to the cab driver, who looked puzzled, but helped me put my gear in the trunk. When we were on our way, he asked me an important question, which I responded "I don't understand." He told me he was going to make a phone call, and asked for my note again, and then yelled angrily at whoever was on the phone. I didn't understand it, but it sounded like, "SOME FREAK HANDED ME A PIECE OF PAPER AND I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL HE'S GOING, WHERE THE HELL IS THE BACK GATE OF ZUT? AM I JUST SUPPOSED TO GO THERE AND ASK PEOPLE WHERE THE BACK GATE IS? SHIT!"

When he got off the phone, I managed to ask if he know where we were going. He said, yah. So then I said, "Sorry, I don't speak Chinese well." And that started our conversation. He asked if I was meeting a friend there? (no.) He asked why I was going there (to study Mandarin). He asked where I was from (USA, Seattle). I was fine doing all the small talk. I asked him a few other questions; has he been to the US, does he take a lot of foreigners in his cab, etc. It was pleasant enough.

Now's the part in the story where I say, "Chinese people don't know how to drive!" and talk about all the crazy stuff that was happening on the road during our pleasant Day One in China conversation.

I am not going to say that Chinese people don't know how to drive; I'm going to say that they have a different driving culture, with different rules and expectations than Americans do. Chinese drivers are totally in control of their cars, and know exactly what the car can and can't do. They are also hyper-aware of everything that is going on around them, what other cars are doing and what they want to do, what bikes and pedestrians are doing and how not to hit them.

So I'm saying that Chinese drivers are a) more aware of their vehicles' capabilities and limitations, and b) more aware of other vehicles are doing. And I honestly don't notice a lot of dents in the cars all around me.

So now that I've said all that, it's hard to explain all the stuff my driver was doing. Darting and out of lanes, making a lane where there is no lane, driving right up to the back corner of a semi and matching its acceleration, turning into a bike lane and going against most of the traffic, turning against the light and crossing a bike lane, where the bikes just keep coming. Driving up onto sidewalks, backing around a corner on a sidewalk so to avoid the 'do not enter' restriction on a one way road. All of these situations would have been illegal in the US and in all probability deadly, due to Americans' love affair with their traffic conventions, and how we use conventions as a substitution for creativity and awareness.

I'm trying to sound tolerant of Chinese drivers, and I really did not worry about all the danger I was perceiving... but I will say that I will never drive in this country, and I hope I don't have to take another cab ride.

Anyway, we got to the back gate, and I gave the driver my 300Y. He said the price was 550Y and he pointed me to a cash machine. When that didn't work, he marched in and asked how I could get money; they directed us to a Bank of China. So back in the cab, I apologized and he got me as close as he could to the cash machine; I crossed the street, took out 1000Y and got back in the cab. He found my building, stopping every block or so and asking "Friend! Back entrance, how do I find it!" So we got to the building, I gave him 300Y more, and I took my bags inside Building 11.

I helped a lady find my name on a list; it said I was in 404. However, she couldn't find my key, so she sent me up to meet the RD in 109. We didn't speak English until I got to his office, at which point he told me that the cab driver totally ripped me off, that it should have been 110Y, and did I ask for a receipt. Ha. Whatever, I was just glad to be here, and honestly, I don't know how much 600Y is yet, because I haven't done the math.

So he helped me walk my bags up to 404, told me I didn't have much luggage (eh?!) and asked me, in Chinese, how my French was. I find it really hard to understand people in echo-ey staircases, so I'm sure my answer was not intelligent.

Found my way to my room, unpacked, found a note from my Chinese roommate. He showed up later with a friend, introduced himself, and asked me if I was hungry. I thought, aw that's nice! changed my shoes, and followed him to the cantina. There were six or seven stations of food; I chose a turo-turo; one meat, two vegetables, help yourself to rice. I chose chicken katzu, salty cucumber salad, and some chinese greens. My roommate (I'll introduce him later) gave me a small scoop of rice and I stopped him before he could give me more. He put his meal card on top of the squat cash register and jiggled it until he could see that 550Y had been deducted from his account. I went to find a seat, and he went to get me a drink.

He wasn't eating, because he said he had just eaten, but I finished my plate and told him next time I was buying, which he insisted wasn't necessary. Asians!

Then we went back up to the room, I showed him some of my stuff, including the Inconvenient Truth book I had brought for him, and he was writing down new vocab words for me, both in hanzi and in pinyin pronunciation. I told him George W Bush was 250, which is the strongest insult I could come up with. Finally, our water was delivered (which we had been waiting for) and then we went to the store. I bought a universal power strip, a coffee mug, some toothpaste (am I not supposed to use toothpaste from China?) a billiard-ball key chain (I chose the number 12; my lucky number 4 rhymes with 'death' and is considered very buwisit), a big tabu (which I don't know how to say in English), a notebook..... all of it from the on-campus grocery store . 80Y.

My roommate met his friends outside the store; I said goodbye and found my way back to the dorm. I went to bed before 9pm.

Woke up at 4pm, lay there for half an hour until I got bored, then I came to the balcony and blogged. It's now 5:30 and daylight. I will introduce my roommate in my next post; hopefully with photos!

Here's a list of stuff I want to buy:

light bulbs
ash tray for coins
emergency snack (peanuts)
laundry detergent/container
dry erase board
pocket notebook
clothes pins
razor

Today I think we do that activity where the program leader gives us a rendez-vous in the city, and we have to get there and back using the bus. It's an all day activity. I will meet the other Americans... and not speak English to them. Not sure if my roommate is coming; he has a big exam today.

_______

Orientation meeting. The orientation was held in English, it lasted from 8 to noon. Slide show, language pledge, pressing questions (eh?), how to use the buses.... After all that English, I feel like I've forgotten my Chinese already.

We met our Chinese roommates back at the ranch, and then it was lunch in the same cantina. This time I had some fried noodles. Next time I will get steamed noodles.

I'm thinking about not going on the hike tomorrow.
Three roommates had to go take an exam, so now I'm waiting for two other Americans to go get to know the bus system. We'll see how that goes.
______

Today went in a group of four to Carrefour. If I'm going to succeed here, I need to learn to read and speak Chinese. Sheesh. We had a bus activity, but we got off at the wrong spot, and up walking in the heat to our destination. Which is not bad, but it's not learning the bus system either. I told the director I wanted to skip the hike on Friday and do the bus thing again instead. By myself this time.

It is hot here. We had a lecture about the AC being bad for you, and needing "fresh" air. Whatever. Once we found our original bus stop, we sat in McDonalds as J ate his ice cream cone. We sat and sat until we had cooled off, despite hearing some Chinese hip hop in the speakers booming directly above me. We went down to Carrefour, and I bought a bunch of stuff; floor mats, clothespins, hangers, more shampoo, another tabu, a dry erase board, pens and pencils..

Before coming home, we sat in a famous tea shop and did nothing but relax and drink tea for maybe three hours. On the way out, we looked at Xi Hu, and then I said we should go back. Xi Hu is nice... it will be there tomorrow.

medicine: missed another day. didn't miss today; fbg was 112. two days ago when i showed roommate my testing gear and did a demonstration 154. not bad! I will definitely lose weight in China.

I'm here, I'm here, I'm ok.

2007-07-06T06:51:00.001-07:00

So I just this minute (an hour ago) got my internet hooked up, thanks to my roommate, who I will introduce to you properly in a future post.

So I'm checking email, posting this blogs, seeing which sites are blocked and which are not. A bigger post is yet to come.

Time To Check Out

2007-07-03T18:40:00.001-07:00

I'm about to go check out of my hotel room and take the free shuttle to the airport. After breakfast I took another walk in the neighborhood, but it started to rain so I went back. My camera battery is dying, anyway.

Hung out in my hotel room, checked out some k-pop, watched a documentary of South Koreans who go to a river on the China-North Korean border and wave at their relatives. Watched some ESL programs in Korean.

I finished the last of my beef jerky, which was my emergency blood sugar snack for the trip.

There is no tipping in Korea or in China. It's like Spain. Ahh, Spain...

I'm out of here in 20 minutes. My next post will be from my dorm room in Hangzhou.

It's The Future

2007-07-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

So I'm in my hotel room, repacking my bags and lazily adjusting to the time zone.

My hotel key is a card. I swipe it and walk into the room, and stick the card in a reader that's on the wall. Once the card is inserted into the wall, all the lights come up, and my tv powers on. Once inside, I control tv, lights, and air conditioning with the remote next to my bed. It's the future, baby.

It is amazing how many variety shoes that Koreans produce. Yes, there's dramas and dubbed movies on tv too, as well as news and shopping network, but the real story are the variety shows, broadcast from huge, auditoriums. If they're not singing, they're doing a skit. Or a game show segment. When is the last time I saw a variety show? Carol Burnett? Osmonds? The Mandrells?

There's also an infomercial of a mosquito tent, that folds into a 55 cm circle like those magic shades for your windshield. I kind of want one. Only 29,999 Korean Won!

It's 7:20 am. Time to get some Korean breakfast and take pictures of the neighborhood. Shuttle to the airport in four hours.

Happy Fourth!

2007-07-03T11:47:00.001-07:00

Happy Independence Day, from my hotel room in Seoul!

Internet Exporer keeps crashing, so this post will be brief.

The flight was uneventful. It was my first flight in a 777, which was really nice; tall ceilings, wide cabin. The service on Asiana was great. For dinner I had the choice of steak and bibimbap, and I chose steak ONLY because the bibimbap description on the menu they handed out didn't seem to include any meat. Of course there was meat it in! But oh well, the steak was ok.

The service included hot towels, two snacks, and apparently as many drinks as possible. The flight attendants would not stop offering us juice, water, coffee, tea... There was one lady who kept wanting me to put my seat back up for every meal, she would say "excuse me!" and then grab the button, pull my seatback up, saying "seat backs please, seat backs." And then everyone would put up their seatbacks. At the beginning of the flight, the flight attendants went to their spots and at the beginning of the flight safety video, they all did a deep bow in perfect unison. And then, that was it, the rest of the safety speech was the video, which, by the way, was computer animation.

When I got to Seoul, I saw an Asiana counter inside security and asked them to book me on a flight for today, since they canceled the one I had booked. Then, the lady noticed my baggage claim tickets, and asked me if I had liquids in my bags. She had to repeat the word "liquid" a couple times, because I wasn't expecting it. Finally, I realized that once I claimed my bags, I wouldn't be able to re-enter the security area, where my hotel is. So I just went through customs and found the hotel desk outside of the security area.

I got a $90 room in a place called Airport Town Square a few minutes from Incheon. The room is fine. I walked around the neighborhood to find something to eat. I didn't want sit on the floor at a low table, and many of the other restaruants looked like they were for groups. Finally I found a cafe looking restaurant with a small table free, but the lady waved me off when I asked for a table.

So forget it! I went back to the hotel and ate at the restaraurant, with my 20% off cupon. It was empty except for a couple of Spaniards. I ordered bulgogi and a beer.

I slept for maybe eight hours. It's now quarter to 4am, and I'm up. I will finish adjusting to local time tomorrow; it's much easier to adjust when you travel to the west, because you just make a couple days longer in order to catch up. Traveling east is a killer because it's hard to make your day shorter, your body doesn't want to sleep early. My back is a little sore, I will invent some yoga to stretch it.

I made it to Seoul

2007-07-03T03:50:00.000-07:00

Hello from lovely Korea. I am chillin in my hotel room.

Last Lazy Day of Summer

2007-07-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a chance to review my Chinese as much as I wanted (I'm on Chapter 7 of 15), but I'm sure I'll get up to speed soon enough. I'm actually a little reluctant about leaving now that the weather in Seattle has become so nice. There's still a few things I have to pack, still a few things I have to do to close up my house for the summer, but for the most part, I'm ready.

Tomorrow, I'll pick up some stuff at the pharmacy and then zip up my bags. I'm worried about my sleep schedule already, which was thrown off last week when I got up early last Thursday to take A to the airport.

Still to do today:

dishes
last load of laundry
dump the fridge
take out and re-line the garbage cans
pack up electronics, books, and shaving kit
find a gift for my chinese roommate
clean out and park my car

It's cherry season right now; I was considering bringing over a pound of cherries for the chinese roommates, but I probably won't.

What I want most right now is to take a nap....

Be Quiet!

2007-07-01T11:45:00.001-07:00

The other night I dreamt that the parish I grew up in, St. Michael's, had been sold and converted into a mainline Protestant mega-church, complete with sound engineers, wide-screen monitors, theater lighting, and stadium seating.

For some reason, the entire school was there, and I was sitting with a section full of freshmen and sophomores who I don't know. The faculty was spread really thin; I was supervising about 100 kids. And they wouldn't shut up! Be quiet! I ejected several students from my section.

Lazy European Vacation Day

2007-06-30T17:54:00.000-07:00

I took the bus this morning and met Michaela at Rachel the Pig this morning. We went to Le Pichet and had des olives, deux chipolatas grillees avec des frites, assiette de fromages and a san pelligrino. They gave us a sliced ficelle with a little cup of butter, which would never happen in France, but the butter came in handy when we were eating the roquefort. Try it: butter your bread before spreading a good blue cheese on your bread. My French host mom taught me that trick.

We decided we would have a Lazy European Vacation Day, as if we were a couple of tourists in some European capital, with nothing to do but shop, walk, and eat. So we shopped for a roomate gift; didn't find anything; walked all the way up to the Ex Officio store on Vine, then back to Westlake Center for a free cup of water. We sat on the balcony and watched people give money to the kid who was trying to raise tuition money by standing in a kiddie pool with some swim gear, and occasionaly flex for the tourists.

We walked over to Pacific Place to buy tickets to Ratatouille, which is not playing there... Oh well, we saw a whole bunch of Pigs on Parade. We walked over to Meridian 16, bought our tickets, and then back to Westlake to check out Daiso. On the way, we saw that 7th Ave was filled with cops, who had parked their thirty-plus motorcyles parked all in rows on both sides of the road. They were the escort team for Roh Moo-hyun. By then, I was starting to lose steam, so we walked back to the Market and parked at Jack's Fish Spot for some shrimp cocktail, a bowl of mussles and clams, and a half dozen raw oysters. Some woman sitting at the counter was trying to take my oysters, when he called JP, she said they were hers. I reached right over her and said, "I'm JP." Do not stand between me and my oysters, woman.

Michaela bought a sandwich for 老虎, and I bought us a dozen cinnamon doughnuts, and we hopped into 老虎's waiting car and drove to my place. We sat around, I took a mini nap, those two went off to Costco. Now I'm going to go meet them to see the movie.

I love lazy European vacation day. We should do that more often.

I Heard You

2007-06-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

One of the joys of being a linguist (*cough* former linguist) is that you're constantly surrounded by data. Turn on the tv, and you hear language. Call your mama on the phone, and you hear language. Somebody's rude to you in the supermarket... you get the picture. We are constantly surrounded by data for a potential linguistics paper.

Yes, we're analyzing everything you say. At least I do. And so does the Linguistic Mystic. All the time. Acutely.

I know immediatly some people are going to read this and assume we're constantly listening for grammatical errors, and judging people for their non-standard speech. We're not. Standard speech for linguists is both a) a myth, and b) a giant snore-fest.

What we listen for is variety. I listen particulary for dialect, both in terms of phonology and lexicon. Once, in grad school, I told my friend that her husband's dialect reminded me of someone I knew from Ephrata, Washington... He then explained that he grew up in Moses Lake, Washington, just 15 miles down the road, and everyone was filled with wonder. I'm sure that British or Italian people, who are much more dialect conscious, would think that 15 miles is a huge margin of error, but for rural Washington, where homogeneity is an expectation, that 15 miles is pretty good.

I have always analyzed language, since I was a kid. I remember sitting in the garage, in the back seat of my parents' VW Dasher, waiting for my parents to come drive me somewhere, and thinking about conditional sentence structure. For example, "If I had known you were coming, I would have gotten ready." I remember thinking about the grammatical words "had" and were" and "would have," and the grammatical meaning that they conveyed in the sentence. I think I was seven.

Also, in first grade, Ms. Slosson was teaching us reading with phonics (which is stupid by the way, English spelling is not phonetic, not even phonemic) and she asked me to spell the word "milk."

Fine, I said, M-E-L-K.

And she said, no, listen: miiiihhhhlk, miiihhhlk.

And I remember consiously thinking, ok, why is she mispronouncing that word? Obviously she wants me to spell it with an I... but nobody talks like that! Nobody say's [mIlk], we all pronounce [mElk].

So fine, I spelled it with an "i" for her, and she thought I was dumb for trying to spell it phonetically. She was a bitch anyway, I hated that Ms. Slosson, and she hated me.

I can't tell this to people, because they all insist they don't pronounce it [mElk] but let me tell you, anyone who learned English in the 1970s in Olympia, Washington has [I] and [E] in free variation. You will hear my generation and older making no contrast between pin/pen, windy/Wendy, milk/mElk, vanilla/vanElla...

I told this story to my mama and sister, and they insisted that they do not say [mElk], that [mElk] sounds dumb, that they always say [mIlk]. And then they demonstrate it for me, [mIlk], [mIlk], [mIlk]! Like I'm stupid! But then, when they're not consciously thinking about it, just talking about diary, they'll go and pronounce it [mElk]. Yes. YES.

______

One time, in Italy, we were watching tv at dinner, as we always do, and my host brother turned to me and asked me why "Singin' in the Rain" was spelled like that, what happened to the "g" on Singing?

I told him, oh, Americans don't pronounce "-ing" in casual speech.

And the other American sitting next to me, who was WHITE, said "what? I always pronounce the '-ing.'

So of course, my Italian host family watched the white American correct the pronounciation habits of the brown American who HAPPENS TO BE A LINGUIST. How do you tell Italians, sorry, I know more about his language than he does....

So only a few minutes later, he turns to me and says, "Ok, I'm gettin' tired, I think I'm goin' to bed."

So I was like, "Aha! You said, GETTIN' and GOIN'!"

And of course, he was like, yah, so what? It was totally out of his mind, he had moved on. So of course I had to explain it to him that he told the Italians that I had given them incorrect information about English, but that actually I was correct, and he was ignorant about his own pronunciation. It's like he wasn't even in the room.

Oh, he says, I guess I did. Huh.

And that was the end of it. But it didn't matter, because by the Italians thought I spoke some degenerate form of English.... me and Gene Kelly...

______

Anyway, the point is that people are not conscious of their linguistic performance. But I am totally listening. To everything. And so is the Linguistic Mystic. We're not listening for mistakes, we're listening for variation. And we can't really stop either, unless you stop talking. Asking us not to hear language variation is like asking you not to see the difference between orange and blue.

You don't have to feel self conscious about it. The only thing I ask is that when you ask us what we heard, and we tell you, don't correct us. We're right. We've been listening to you. And you haven't.

Grandkids, Then and Now

2007-06-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Michaela found this picture at our parents' house, and took a scan of it. That's our Grandma R. Judging from my glasses, I would say this is around 1984 or 1985. There is a hook-rug in the background of some geese flying low over a calm lake.

Here we all are in 2007. Grandma R is with the Lord now, so joining us for the photo are some significant others. I am back row, left.

Thanks, cowsins for taking me to dinner at Ipanema Grill, one of my favorite restaurants. Brazilians make the world a better place. I was a little embarassed that it was more expensive than I suspected, but then they insisted on treating me... that's ok, they're making the big bucks now!

I think I actually prefer lunch there to dinner. There is an eye-popping variety at dinner, moreso than at lunch, but for some reason everything at lunch time seemed fresher; the meat, the salads.... and much less expensive.

Lunch!, T-minus Five Days, Conversation Topics, Three-Way Sex, and SCOTUS vs. Diversity

2007-06-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

I met some friends for lunch at Jade Garden, it was delicious! It's the reigning champ of dimsum in Seattle. No, I've never been to O'Asian, but look at the name, children, it's a non starter. They might as well call it No Asian. (I've never been, so who knows. Maybe it's full of Chinese people. The critics like it... but the critics also like Seven Stars Pepper over 老四川 Sichuanese cuisine... in a pinch, follow the Chinese people...)

I bought me a cheap, new microphone that works well, so expect to see some more videoblogs over at my travel blog: jp goes to china (dot) blogspot (dot) com. Yesterday I posted a my first videoblog, but I think I fell short of fullfilling the spirit of the assignment: I only stuck to very basic Lesson 1 items that I know I can do well. Maybe tomorrow I will try to talk about something more substantial, so you can *really* see how much work I have to do on my Mandarin.

So the RD of the program in Hangzhou has been sending us emails, what/what not to bring, what to expect from the language pledge, etc. One of his recommendations was to equip yourself with a PDA and PlecoDict, which IS SO COOL. It's two dictionaries on your PDA, and it breezes between listing and recognizing your English, your pinyin, or your hanzi! All students of Mandarin should equip themselves with this tool. All.

So right now I'm brainstorming some vocabulary for conversations that I know I'll have. Some topics I thought of are:

I have diabetes. (vocab: diabetes, blood sugar, blood test, sharps container, carbohydrates, walking...)

Leave Asian Americans alone! (vocab: cultural blindspot, not intuitive, ignorant ethnic majority, lack of compassion, refusing to assimilate, children of immigrants...)

Bush is a moron! (vocab: I did not vote for him, blue state, dishonest, un-constitutional, un-American, totally incompetent, liar, shameless, dumb cowboy...)

I'm not White people! (vocab: Filipino, fighting over milk, removing shoes at the door, fear of Spam, crimes against rice, stand-around-holding-a-beer parties, I'm not responsible for your stereotype...)

If you can think of any other topics, or any other vocab that I should prepare for the topics listed above, please let me know.

On another note, there is a Kia ad, both in radio and on tv, where a couple talks nervously about finding a Kia as if it were THREE-WAY SEX. Yes! Why am I the only one getting bruised by the subtext hitting me over the head? Look at the way they are talking about the Kia, for pete's sake! Am I the only one that thinks this? Obviously, OBVIOUSLY this is intentional.

And, finally, if you want to read about the bullshit SCOTUS decision that diversity is not an academic and social advantage, read what Dr. B has to say. I don't even want to think about it.

To think, I once had faith in this country.

My New Travel Blog

2007-06-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

So, I've set up my new travel blog. For now, it's called China Trippin', but if you have a cooler name suggestion, let me know.

I will be sharing China Trippin' with students and colleagues, so I'm not going to link to it directly from you don't have to read. If you want to see my new site, please type in this url (no spaces):

jp goes to china (dot) blog spot (dot) com

Feel free to pin the guest map, play with the panda bear, etc. Micaela had the brilliant idea that I should record myself speaking Chinese before I go, so that I can see the difference at the end of the program. I'll try to post a videoblog up there before midnight.

If you're looking for charming stories about growing up in Sto. Tomás, La Unión in the late 50s, early 60s, you should check out Myna Bird Chatters.

help me think of a new blog title!

2007-06-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided to start a new blog, one that will be my travel journal for this summer in China. I want to be able to have my coworkers and students read about my experiences, so this new blog will NOT point back to you don't have to read, although you don't have to read will point to it.

So what should I call it?

Here are some of my ideas.... vote for one, or add your own in the comments section.

the china syndrome
hangin’ out in hangzhou
JP’s travels
The Orientator
Hungry in Hangzhou
Salt and Pepper Blog
Look Ma, I’m in China!
JP’s noodle and grammar journal
jiping de boke!
donde esta el xixshoujin?
zen me shuo....
Do your gong ke!
People’s Republic of Grammar
Must.... study.... hanzi....
JP; Live! from Hangzhou
Orient Expressions
Maybe You Have Bird Flu...
Ciao, Young Fat!
Coolieing off
Learning The New Spanish
Mandarino
To You, Hanyu, Hanyu-u
bù yòng kàn ā!
China Trippin' with JP

Soul Burger!!!

2007-06-26T16:39:00.001-07:00

Lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, cheese, bacon, and a hotlink.

You can only get this at the lovely, locally owned Silver Fork.

Local is better. You cannot get it at Applebee's. I don't even like Applebee's.

I guess that makes me a food snob. Maybe Laura will pat my head and talk about her poop.

Here's something for you to think about: corporate hegemony is ethnic hegemony. Discuss.

Man Vs. Wild

2007-06-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

I'm slightly obsessed with this show, Man Vs. Wild.

The presenter is a British survivalist who's name is Bear, but he doesn't look grizzley; in fact, I think the little gear he does have with him is pretty high tech and expensive, from his knife, to his watch, to his high tech microfiber clothes.

He's always talking about the culturally appropriate survival techniques of the indiginous people, as well as the plants and animals of a certain region. Which means he's done his homework.

He is always wet and dirty, and I think I just saw him eat a live frog. I definitely saw him roast a turtle on a four-point Seminole fire, beat hypothermia by soaking in a pool he created when he dammed up a run-off stream of geothermally boiling water, and find clean drinking water in an underground lava tube. I'm pretty sure he also took off his shirt and showered himself with coconut milk, which if you ask me was slightly gratuitous, but I myself have always wanted to taste like Thai food....

Here's what I want to know: his camara man has to do all the same crazy stuff Bear has to do in order to get the shots; i.e., swimming in alligator infested waters, dropping out of an airplane onto a glacier and a lava field, scaling clffs... does the camera crew have to do all of that? Do they all have to sleep on a platform in the Everglades and get eaten alive by mosquitos? Or share an ice cave? Or eat a live frog? Do they help him when he almost freezes to death in a frozen river?

What I really want to know is how much this guy gets paid. I bet it's a lot.

The Drug House

2007-06-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

So if I look straight out my front door, I see what the neighbors used to call "the drug house." I guess it was really bad in the 90s; the boys of that house ruled our little neighborhood, and the neighborhood was the most dangerous in the city.

The drug family has since moved away, and they're building skinny townhouses on my street, filled with white people who drive up my property value.

So when the ice cream truck comes to the neighborhood, I only hear it for a minute, anymore.

Not like when the drug family was there. When the drug family was there, the ice cream truck would show up and PARK in front of the drug house, for hours at a time, with the damn Turkey In The Straw song playing CONTINUOUSLY.

Selling *ice cream?* No.

And to boot, it's that stupid version with the hand claps.

(one) TWO! THREE! (four, one) TWO! THREE! (four, one) TWO! (three) FOUR! (one) TWO! THREE!....

Does the hand clapping make us enjoy that damn song more?

Anyway, the drug family is gone, so the ice cream truck doesn't park in front of the drug house anymore.

I'm so glad they're gone.

1988 called. It wants its song back.

2007-06-25T12:49:00.001-07:00

I had forgotten how much I loved this song.

Maps of Spanish Verb Tenses

2007-06-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

So I'm seeing a lot of people click over to and email links to my Map of the Present Tense, and its companion Map of the Preterit Tense.

How funny! Who knew such a wonkish post would be so popular....

So here are my questions for you all...

How did you find my site? Did someone point it out to you, or did you stumble across it?
Are you studying Spanish? Teaching it? How do you plan to use the maps?
Do you want to see more of my materials? I have other verb tenses, as well as materials for the subjunctive mood, if you're interested.

Hope to hear from you!

Go to hell, Michelle Malkin

2007-06-25T00:52:00.000-07:00

"Those who would give up essential liberty
to purchase a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin

A Little Bit?

2007-06-24T17:22:00.000-07:00

I saw Gordon Brown on tv and thought he looked a little like Mr. Bean.

A little? No?

Sunday Afternoon Notes

2007-06-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

Just a few days until my big adventure, so I've been reading sites on packing (including one dude that packs really light) and street scams.

I'm pretty excited that Myna Bird has started a blog; I hope she tells a lot of stories!

Me, I'm thinking about my first day in France... I may blog it up. I don't remember much about the flight, except that it was SAS and therefore awesome. What I do remember:

the guys across from us rolling a doobie, teaching us vocab
language failure at the train station
jet lag crash in the hotel room
pushing a guy into a pile of garbage

Right now I'm getting hungry.

Mosquito Bites

2007-06-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

I have a home remedy for mosquito bites.

First of all, I'm very tasty. To mosquitoes, I look like a buffet.

Second, once that mosquito has bitten me, if I so much as look at the spot on my body where I've been bitten, an itchy red hive will start to swell up on that spot. Usually, they stay around the size of a quarter, but they've been known to spread into the size of a coaster, especially where the skin is tighter. And then my nose starts running. No joke.

When I was a kid, I used to just scratch them and suffer. In high school, I tried to ignore them, which totally worked... until the bites were inadvertently grazed by, say, my clothing... or when my friend B reached over and scratched them for me. That made them itch, and pretty soon, I was scratching and blowing my nose...

I have been eaten by mosquitoes in the Philippines, Mexico, and the US. However, in my trips to Central America and Europe, I've been smart enough to remember a home remedy that I think I heard on the radio somewhere.

The remedy is very specific: it is antiperspirant roll-on. Yes, the kind you used to roll under you armpits in high school.

And it has to be antiperspirant; it can't just be deodorant. And it has to be roll-on, it can't be a stick or gel. Here's why:

When you apply it to your mosquito bite, the alcohol dries the skin immediately.

The antiperspirant then keeps your skin from sweating.

If the skin is dry and not sweating, it doesn't itch.

If it doesn't itch, you don't scratch it.

If you don't scratch it, you don't spread the mosquito's saliva to the surrounding tissue.

If you don't irritate the surrounding tissue, you don't get the itchy red hive.

If you don't get the itchy hive, your body doesn't release histamines.

So, no itchy hive, no runny nose; you forget about the bite, and in 48 hours your skin has handled the toxins and healed up.

I LOVE this remedy, it has made my life better. And yes, as a kid I tried all the stupid non-remedies (ice cubes, meat tenderizer, pressing an X into your hive with your thumbnail....) but antiperspirant really, really works. The only thing is that people who see me do it think I'm a total idiot for putting roll-on on a bug bite.

And what's worse: both antiperspirants and roll-ons are way out of style, so they're not easy to find in the drug store anymore. Compound that with the TSA restrictions on liquids in your carry-on, as well as a total lack of these products in China, and well... I've got myself an interesting situation.

I think I'll make it my mission today to find some roll-on. It will have to go in my checked luggage, along with the Skin-So-Soft, which I also have to find.

Just in case you didn't know, Skin-So-Soft is an Avon moisturizing lotion that apparently repels bugs. People prefer it to the scary-smelling repellents like Off! I'm down with that, but now I have to find me an Avon lady...

Brand New Bags

2007-06-23T19:49:00.000-07:00

So... I wanted a new suitcase. I usually don't check any bags when I travel... but I'll be in China for six weeks, I will need one nice outfit for a job interview and some formal occasions, more than one pair of shoes, and a bottle of Skin-So-Soft that just won't be allowed in my carry-on. So I bought the suitcase.

Then I bought a matching carry-on. No, I don't need another carry-on... but they were matching. And in the three or four total hours I'll actually be seen moving with my bags, it's important to look put-together, right?

Don't worry, they were cheap.

Map of the Preterit Tense

2007-06-23T17:09:00.000-07:00

So my Map of the Present Tense was so highly acclaimed (one positive comment) that I decided to post my map of el tiempo pretérito. Use this tense for simple, single-actions in the past.

Regulars: As always, the regulars are in the east, where everything is orderly and predictable. Comer: comí comiste comió comimos comisteis comieron. Vomitar: vomité vomitaste vomitó vomitamos vomitasteis vomitaron. Study these endings.

JP, do we have to learn the vosotros
form?

Yes.

But how are we....

Just stick an "-is" on the tú form, for
goodness sakes.

Irregulars. In the wild west, you see there are exactly four irregulars. There are no more.

So that French TA in college, who poo-pooed Spanish because there were too many irregulars to fit her brain around, to her I say, il n'y en a que quatre, mademoiselle, que quatre.

Ir and ser have the same forms: fui fuiste fue fuimos fuisteis fueron. So learn two verbs for the price of one. Dar and ver are not terribly irregular; dar has a little bit of an identity crisis... it thinks it's an -ir verb. The only "irregular" thing about ver is that it doesn't wear any accent marks. In fact, none of the verbs living in the wild west wear accents; they are all naked.

The Stem Change (tm) verbs live in the north, just as in the Map of the Present Tense. But notice that in the preterit, only the -ir verbs get stemchang-ified. In fact, it's the same damn -ir verbs in the preterit as in the present.

Finally, the Minority Verbs live in the south. I coined this term because although they might not look regular compared to the verbs in the east, they are, in fact, totally regular within their own culture. That is to say, they have a separate set of endings, which they use regularly. Tener: tuve tuviste tuvo tuvimos tuvisteis tuvieron. Notice that all of these forms are naked (i.e., no accent marks).

Also notice that these preterit forms use alternate stems. Of course they do, they're minorities. We expect their roots to be different, for them to have slightly different cultural backgrounds. Do you have a problem with that? Just because they're different?

There are four kinds of alternate stems, so you might as well memorize them according to their groups: the ones whose vowels change to -i-, the ones whose vowels change to -u-, the ones that get -uv-, and the few that gain a -j-. There are 14 total, and they're all listed on the map.

My students like to put them in a certain order and then create a mnemonic sentence out of the first initials. Fine, kids, do what you gotta do. Remember, when it comes to mnemonics, the raunchier the better; just keep it to yourself.

Is that it? Is that all there is to forming all the verbs in the the
preterit tense?

Yes.

The Countdown.

2007-06-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

The countdown has begun.

I have socks, underwear, tshirts, shorts, shirts, one pair of slacks, two pairs of shorts, two pairs of shoes (bring a third?), sandles, flip flops, a hat, and a travel umbrella.

I might buy another pair of shorts, and a pair of gym shorts.

I've requested the unlock code for my phone; I still have to call and get my cable/internet suspended... unless anyone wants to use it....

What else is there? Oh, learn to speak Mandarin...

Family Portrait 2007

2007-06-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

我可以在北京工作吗？

2007-06-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm surfing the net too much; today I discovered this job posting, for a language specialist job in Beijing. Of course I covet it. Sigh.

It's summer break in Seattle; I love sitting in my clean townhouse with the breeze blowing in through open windows... it makes me wonder why I'm looking to China.

Ultimately, the answer is the money. No, it's the personal growth, right?

The money? That's good too.

Map of the Present Tense in Spanish

2007-06-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Click the image for a larger view. There's also a Map of the Preterit Tense, if you're interested. Other materials (more tenses, subjunctive, etc.) will be posted by request.

The mental map above is of the Present Tense in Spanish. Don't freak out now if you don't just understand it at first glance.

One of the problems my American high school students have when learning how to generate Spanish verb forms is that it's presented sequentially. Of course, that's probably the best way to do it, but many students never see the big picture. If verb forms are presented sequentially, the way a freight train goes down the tracks sequentially, they get discouraged from their perspective because a) they try to keep it sequential in their brains; or b) because they don't see the beginning or end of the train from where they're standing; they don't know that when or if the train of different forms will ever stop coming. Very discouraging.

Well I'm here to tell you, folks, that when you're learning the present tense, there are exactly four categories of present tense verbs. There are no more than four. The regulars, the five irregulars, the yo-baby verbs, and the Stem Change (tm) verbs.

Four! That's all. You can remember four kinds, can't you?

The Regulars. These are the vast majority of Spanish verbs. I put them on the right (in the East) because they are kind of conservative, very reliable. To conjugate a regular verb, you replace the infinitive ending with the appropriate suffix, depending on the person/number. So, for example, my favorite -er verb would be:

comer
yo como
tú comes
ella/el/Usted come
nosotras/nosotros comemos
vosotras/vosotros coméis
ellas/ellos/ustedes comen

Piece of cake, right? Let me know if you need an explanation on how to conjugate regular -ar and -ir verbs, but for now I'm going to assume you know how.

JP, do we have to learn the vosotros form?

Yes.
The Irregulars. There are exactly five irregulars (if you find more, we can put them on the map). You'll notice I've put them on on the liberal left, in the Wild West. They are crazy! The good news is there are only five irregulars, and they are super high frequency, so you have no problem learning them. Being irregular, they are a little unpredictable, so you have to memorize them: ser, estar, ver, haber, ir. Look them up if you want to see them!

The only reason ver is listed among them is because third person singular is ve, which the regular rules don't predict. Otherwise, ver is pretty much predictable. You can remember that, can't you? (Ask me later about written accents)

The Stem Change (tm) verbs. These verbs live in the industrial North on the map. There is a trademark sign there to remind you that this is a specific brand of verbs. Some people think that when anything outside of regular happens to a verb, that it must be a stem change. Uh, no.

According to the Appellation d'Origine Controlée, Stem Change (tm) verbs are very specific. The -ar and -er verbs have one of three changes:

-e- changes to -ie- (pensar/ella piensa; sentar, recomendar, etc.)

-o- changes to -ue- (poder/ella puede; mostrar, etc. I put jugar in this category, even though it's a u and not an o.

The -ir verbs have two categories:

-e- changes to -ie- (sentir, herir, etc.)

-e- changes to -i- (pedir, ella pide; servir, etc.)

-o- changes to -ue- (morir, etc.)

If it's not one of the changes listed above, it's not a Stem Change (tm) verb.

The -ir's here are separated from the others because they behave as a group in the preterit tense so I might as well set them apart here.

Remember, these Stem Change (tm) changes only happen "in the boot".... ask me later if you don't know what that means.

The Yo-Babys. It's called "yo" because the changes only happen in the "yo" form. The "baby" part is purely mnemonic. If you're too mature for that, you may call them "the verbs in which only the first person singular form is not regular." I put the Yo-Baby verbs in the south, where the climate is a little warmer and the culture is more laid-back.

the Yo-G's. The yo form has a g in it (hacer, hago. poner, pongo. etc.)

the Yo-ZC's. Conocer, conozco. Conducir, conduzco.

the Yo-E's. Saber, sé. Caber, quepo

the Yo-Oy's. Dar, doy.

That's it. All Spanish verbs live somewhere on this map. There are no other kinds of present tense variations. Most verbs live in the regular region; only those five listed live in the irregular region. Some verbs, like tener and venir are very rich, so they live both in the Stem Change (tm) north and in the swanky Yo-G south.

So this map is a review tool; it doesn't make much sense to you if you haven't studied Spanish before, but people who have taken a couple years of sequential presentation tend to enjoy this map a lot.

When I teach this map in my Advanced Grammar class, there's always relief at the big-picture perspective. I don't test the map, they don't have to memorize it. Of course, when I teach the map, I have them brainstorm all the verbs they know that live in a certain region. Then, when they have a question about how a verb is conjugated in the present tense, I ask them "where does it live on the map?"

I would say they get the general category right almost all the time; most of the time they can zero in on the specific branch. Even though I don't test the map, the kids like to study the crap out of it for some reason.

Home Alone

2007-06-21T05:43:00.000-07:00

So mama and I watched Children Of Heaven last night. I love that movie!

Today mama knocked on my door at 3:35 am, and she, my dad, and the dog loaded up the car and left on their long drive home. After they left, I sat down and watched tv. It's about 10 minutes to six am now, my belly is full of breakfast (fried egg, toasted dinner roll, hot italian sausage), and I'm a little sleepy. Of course, today is the solstice, so it's totally daylight, so I may not get back to sleep.

Not sure what I'm going to do today; I have 11 days left before my program, and not much to do. The house is mostly clean, I'm kind of broke until payday, I don't have to go into the office until, well, August...

Code Switching

2007-06-19T23:24:00.000-07:00

My cowsin C and I have always been very linguistically aware kids. She was always better at understanding Tagalog than I was, given that her parents spoke Tagalog to each other. My parents spoke Pangasinan to each other, but they used it as a secret language; it wasn't until my late 20s that I started picking up on the gist of their conversations. When both H and I were both studying Tagalog, we all decided to speak Tagalog once in the car. It lasted for a few minutes, but after a while it sounded so... artificial... to hear us all speaking Tagalog with each other, we had to stop. We might as well all have been speaking French.

Ilocano was the most secret of all languages; we heard it only in certain contexts. If you ask any of my parents their ethnicity, they will claim to be Ilocano. One time C told Grandma R that she didn't like Ilocano; Grandma R slapped her!

However, the ones that grew up in Sto. Tomas are linguistically Pangasinan. Sto. Tomas was originally in the Pangasinan province, but the border was redrawn, and they were lumped in with the Ilocanos. I think a lot of my ancestors actually moved to Sto. Tomas from Ilocos Sur.

My parents usually speak Pangasinan to each other, and fellow Tomasinos, which I always look forward to hearing. But sometimes, they will switch into English or Tagalog, often to clarify or to be extra emphatic. And other times, they will just plain speak English or Tagalog, out of habit. A couple times, I have asked them, "Why aren't you speaking Pangasinan?" Usually, they don't know why.

Auntie R sometimes talks to little-ol'-me in Pangasinan, which I like; it makes me feel like a country kid, or like I'm hearing a secret. The Manila relatives often don't know anything about Pangasinan, not even relational titles (e.g., "there's no such thing as 'kuyang.'")

Anyway, my parents' generation has been using languages all our lives to include us, exclude us, bring us closer, and alienate us in a very fascinating way, and it's very second-nature to us, all of us. It's funny, some of my co-workers are very conscious about switching to a common language as soon as someone new enters a room, as a courtesy... Me? I neither switch to include, nor do I care if other people switch. I actually feel the opposite; it feels a little shady to me to always compulsively include everyone, unless they are actually joining the conversation.

Which brings me to a point: I once asked, "Why aren't you speaking Pangasinan?" And the answer was, "Because your Auntie X is here, and she doesn't speak Pangasinan." So they are total courtesy switchers.

Now, I'm being honest when I tell you that it has NEVER in my life occurred to me that I would say, "So, I'm here, I don't speak Tagalog, why don't you switch to English." I have always preferred to listen, catch the gist, and when important, to pretend to understand. I have asked for translation, but I have never asked for them to switch to English. I don't recall any of my cowsins ever asking our parents to switch to English, either. Why not?

And why would they automatically switch to Tagalog to include Auntie X but not switch to English to include me or my cowsins? It can only be a kind of multilingual family sociopolitical explanation.

So me, I don't courtesy switch, and I have no expectation that anyone will do a courtesy switch on my behalf. I've also been known talk to people in languages I know they don't speak... usually just a greeting, sometimes an urgent imperative... because I know they're going to understand from the context. And some of them get flustered, but usually, they do get it. Because communication is 80% paralinguistic anyway. (Did I just make up that statistic?)

Anyway, the reason I started writing this epic post is because I just found a list of language games on wikipedia. When cowsin C and I spoke Pig Latin to each other, our parents were totally baffled! As Filipino English speakers, they had zero comprehension of Pig Latin, which delighted us, but pissed them off. That was hilarious. We both got really good at Pig Latin, but eventually we stopped because it made them uncomfortable.

When H became a Spanish speaker, we started speaking Spanish to each other, and my dad actually told us not to speak Spanish, because we could be telling secrets. Of course, H and I were like, ha ha yah right, but it was fascinating to me that both in this case and in the case of Pig Latin that some multilinguals could have the same irrational insecurities as the English-Only monolinguals.

Basically, we are only allowed to speak a language they understand.

So it's funny to me that my cowsins might be more linguistically progressive than my parents' generation, even though we were much less linguistically versatile.

Ambiguity isn't all bad.

2007-06-19T22:52:00.000-07:00

Part of me wants to know what this is about.

But another part of me thinks that a little strategic ambiguity is not all that bad.

Stop Singing that Song!

2007-06-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

So H has taken to singing the chorus of "Knute, kleine Eisbär. Too bad she doesn't speak German...

Lunch today at the Tamarind Tree. Later tonight I'm going to a despedida for M, J, and J. They're leaving for good tomorrow, will eventually end up in Shanghai. I should see them in August!

Anyway, dad said it wasn't a "despedida" because I told them it wasn't all about food. So I guess it's just a "going away party."

I've spent most of the afternoon snoozing on the couch. I love summer break. Love it!

Lord, Have Mercy

2007-06-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

My parents have a new habit of leaving the tv on when they walk away.

I'm on the couch, and the remote is across the room.

I just watched Martha Stewart show pictures of a CAT BIRTHDAY PARTY to her audience, who all applauded. The cats were wearing party hats and had names like "Vivaldi, Verdi, Motzart." There were 2-tiered cat birthday cakes, impeccably decorated, made of chopped liver, fresh salmon....

In a second, I'm going to get up and change the channel.

I hung up a retractible clothesline on my little porch, and I've clipped up some of my wet placemats out there to dry in the sun. It kind of looks like a tibetian prayer flag.

Can't Sleep

2007-06-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

Had dinner with the family at a place called "All You Can Eat Sushi" on Spring Mountain. Dad swears they're Japanese. Looking at the place from the parking lot, I said, " they are certainly Korean." I heard them speaking Korean while we were eating (we all got bentos, no all-you-can-eat), and finally, I said 'thank you" in Korean, which the waitress was delighted to repeat back to me. I knew it was Korean, dad! His reply: "some of them are Japanese."

Doubt it!

Breezed through security. Got back into Seattle on Saturday a little past midnight. T$ picked us up.

I spent the next couple days cleaning the house, adding tags to my old posts, and correcting all the misspellings I can find (sorry, orange tangerine).

I had my phone interview with the company in Shanghai. I think it went really well, and my interviewer seemed interested in me... although I had the disadvantage of hearing my own echo very loud a couple seconds after I spoke... very maddening.

The next step is to meet them when I go to Shanghai. We'll see how it goes. It would be a big pay cut, so I will have to see if it will be worth it.... Anyway, I know for sure by next month.

I ordered take out from 老四川饭店 Sichuanese cuisine as my parents rolled into town. The house is clean, and I think as of right now, all my laundry is clean. How long will that last....

Me, Optimistic and Skinny

2007-06-15T00:58:00.000-07:00

That's right, I was skinny once! This is one of my senior pictures, I took when I was 17 back in 1990. Funny!

My sister and I spend the day going through old boxes and photos. Of course we found awesome stuff, including this proof that I was once skinny. Check out more of my teenage splendor here.

Dinner Time!

2007-06-14T21:08:00.000-07:00

For dinner tonight we had grilled mackeral, grilled asparagus and onions, sliced tomatoes, grilled sweet corn on the cob, and a rice blend.

The rice blend we had was Mogami 8 Blended Whole Grain Rice, which is a blend of short grain, long grain, brown rice, black rice, maple rice, red rice, red wheat, and barley.

So if I don't want to spend the big bucks to buy this pre-packaged mix, where do I go in Seattle to buy a cup of each of these grains bulk, so I can mix it myself?

Notes from Vegas

2007-06-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

It's a blazing afternoon in the City that Stays In Vegas. So far I've eating some delicious pork roast, that mama had cooking during breakfast. It's too hot here to cook during the day. The pork roast was nice and chilled when we ate it with some baby yukon golds. We bought some asparagus, brocolini, corn on the cob, and chayote to grill for dinner with some mackeral.

My parents continue to crack me up, sometimes with old stories, sometimes with new ones. Later I'll blog about what durian smells like...

______

So the Seattle's Only Paper, the Stranger, sent 31 staffers to church. Funny! I like the idea of those angst-ridden, post-punk, liberal assasins sitting in on the christians for a day. Of course, I read the articles of the two staffers who went to Catholic Mass. The one that went to St. James kept referring to his memories at O'Dea and the Jesuits.... whoops, there are no Jesuits neither at St. James (cathedral church of the archdiocese) nor at O'Dea (Christian Brothers). The other one went to St. Joe's the only Jesuit parish in Seattle, and managed to not mention the Jesuits. Oh well, I read the Stranger for attitude, not for accuracy.
______

Mama doesn't like my new template, she says it's plain and boring.
______

Blogger doesn't work in China. While I'm in Hangzhou, I can continue to post via email, but photos, etc. will be tricker. If it comes to pass that I move to Shanghai (ask me later), I may have to get a new blog platform. Hopefully I'll be able to import this blog into the new platform, but if not, the days of 'you don't have to read' may be numbered.

Postcard from Vegas

2007-06-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in Vegas now, with my sister, parents, and the dog.

It's triple-digit heat, we're all broke, and my sister and I have imposed a moritorium on casinos and buffets.

Still, I'm not complaining. I got up around seven this morning, and mama had the bbq going... grilled sausages, dried fish, giant pork roast... I went and sat on the patio with her as she caught me up on family news, and she kept asking, "should I cook the turkey now?" and other awesome things that will be good to eat, but no, mama, not right now at seven in the morning, when you already have grilled sausages, dried fish, and a giant pork roast.

Last night she grilled eggplants; we mashed them with diced tomatoes and sweet onions. I seasoned mine with sea salt, while H prefers the Korean version of agamang.

(photo from delicious biting's kimchi post)

And my blood sugar when I got up this morning? 102. That's right, suckkaz!

Anyway, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Less than four hours. Right before I went to bed, I got an email from a company in China that wants to interview me, so I stayed up for hours fantasizing about quitting my job and moving to China in September.... I'll let you know how that goes.

In the meantime, I really have to go to the drug store, to buy all those dangerous liquids and gels that TSA doesn't let us bring on the plane anymore. There is no dust in my mama's house, but I've already irrigated my sinuses three times this morning. I don't know if it's an allergy to something in Seattle, something here in Vegas, or just a reaction to the desert air...

OH NO YOU DIDN'T!

2007-06-12T23:45:00.000-07:00

OH NO YOU DIDN'T, ASIANA AIRLINES!

Tell me you did NOT just try to give me an extra day in Seoul, making me a) pay for another night in the hotel, and b) arrive a day late for my program.

(the picture is borrowed from prodigalsun).

I'm about to "modify somebody's itinerary" up in here! There's gonna be a fight!

Update: I called Asiana this morning, they found me an Air China flight to Hangzhou on the 4th. However, they want me to go to Seoul, go to their counter, get a stamp, then go to the Air China counter.... does it sound like I don't have a seat on the Air China flight?

So I asked if I could handle this now, she said, no, only the day of travel. So I asked if I could do it in Seattle, and she said yes. Great, Air China. Smoking and 75 degree cabins.

Sigh; I'm imagining the different ways they're going to screw me over on this one. What the hell is going to happen to my checked bags? Maybe I won't check a bag...

Like a Jerk!

2007-06-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

Joshua Trujillo of the P-I took this; it's on a closed-off overpass on 520 in the Arboretum. Who is Gina? It's a mystery.

______

So you know how I hate flashcards? Well, I'm doing some flashcards.

After my Mandarin summer intensive last year, I knew about 200 characters. Now I gotta get them all back, and more. I've been spending my days reading blogs from people doing study abroad in China, and one blogger reported that in my program they give them 50 new characters per day, with dictation the next day to quiz them.

That's right... dictation. Son of a bitch! What is it, the 50s? Should I bring my cassette recorder, for goodness sakes?

Man! But I can't change China, so I'm studying flashcards. Like a jerk!

Will flashcards help me do dictation? No. Doing flashcards will help me to do one thing well, and that is... flashcards. You know what will help me do dictation? Being able to speak Mandarin, that's what.

Sigh. But for now, I'm going to do my flashcards, and write sentences for the characters I don't know well.

Like a jerk!

Brand New Look

2007-06-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

I thought it was time for a clean, new look. Of course, it's just one of the templates, but it has taken me an hour or two to get it just right. I decided I liked the lightbox look after reading Michael's blog, looking for some insights on life in Hangzhou. I considered making the header green, just so Michael doesn't accuse me of being a total copy cat, but I didn't like it. So go ahead and accuse me.

I'm pretty sure I'll change it while I'm in China, out of boredom, but I like the way it looks at this point. Please let me know in the comments what you think, especially if you have suggestions.

Don't worry, I walked it off.

2007-06-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

I know this mean looks awfuly carby for a big fat diabetic, but remember, my glucose levels have been consistently low, and I walked a lot today to burn off the extra glucose.

So we're talking 北方水饺 and 冷面。I went to 老四川饭店。 I was hungry for some zhong guo cai after a 马马虎虎 meetup. It began with a lot of promise, but by the end, the conversation became dominated by some networkers who kept speaking English. I suggested there be two tables next time; one for people who want to speak Chinese, and another for people who want to talk about China in English.

Anyway, it was fine. Before that, we tried to go see Daps and Blue Scholars at Pagdiriwang, but they were sound checking FOREVER.

Before that, 小猪 bought sushi at Sushiland.

Last night, I went to a graduation party. My friend J's sister had just graduated from the UW, so he hosted the party in the 6th floor terrace of the the Vine Building in Bell Town. Nice; I could have bought a condo there. It would have been small, but cool views lots of amenities.

What in the Hell?

2007-06-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

I think I just saw Paula Deen boil omelets in freezer bags. This site should tell you all you need to know. God help us all.

I am now done with the 2006-2007 school year. On Monday I'll go in for a training, but that's technically for next year. It's raining in Seattle, kind of a September rain. I'll be in Las Vegas later this week, and I'm sure the desert heat will annoy me.

Fed Ex delivered my passport yesterday, with it's shiny new 90 day visa from the Chinese government neatly pressed inside. I've been reading some blogs whose authors are studying in China (Michael, Shum, Sarah, Jameson, Waigou Girl...)

I plan on cramming as much Mandarin as possible into my head in the next three weeks, so I won't be totally embarrassed when I show up to my intermediate level language program. Tomorrow I'll go to a meetup.

I heard on some drive-time radio show yesterday morning somebody flying to the defense of Paris Hilton, saying "why should she be punished just because she's rich?" Who the hell changed my station?

I am so sick of the war. I wonder what it will take for Americans to start taking to the streets.

Finally, I'm still trying to understand the anti-amnesty people when it comes to immigration. They don't want to reward people who break their precious law, choosing to recognize a useless, arbitrary law rather than the economic and social reality. Then they shriek "national security!" knowing full well that the 9/11 gang were all here legally, the Oklahoma City bombers were all whiteys, and the border can't even stop a dude with TB.

How can you NOT say that the anti-immigration people are really anti-Latino? I mean, why do they even bother pretending not to be racist?

Dammit Ding

2007-06-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

So ding links us here today.

I have other needs you know. Breakfast, for example, shower.... I will NOT spend my summer break on this site.

Just a few more minutes.

Invierno en junio.

2007-06-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

Uno no adivinaría que es verano por el tiempo que hace, pero sí lo es. Hoy hacía unos 64 grados con cielos nublados y a veces caía gotitas de lluvia.

Y así me gusta.

No me malentiendas; prefiero que haga un poco más calor, con cielos azules y una brisa, pero solo cuando yo no tengo que trabajar. Como la mayoría de los seattltecos, cuando hace buen tiempo me es imposible trabajar en la oficina. Cuando sale el sol por allí, los empleados de todos niveles solemos decir cualquiera mentira para que sus jefes nos deje escapar; la hora de las citas tan fastidiosamente escritas en el calendario viene y va sin que nadie se de cuenta. Y no hay que dar pretextos. Cuando hace sol en Seattle, todos nos cambiamos de idea a favor de pasar tiempo afuera.

Entonces, como yo tengo que presentarme a la oficina, mejor que no haga buenísimo tiempo. Yo he podido cumplir muchísimos deberes al trabajo, así que no tendré que pensar en esos asuntos cuando me vaya para estudiar en China.

Lo triste de este estación es las tantas despedidas que tenemos que hacer... sí, a los pocos alumnos que nos caen bien, pero sobretodo a los colegas que se van a otro parte. Al MJo le despedimos en una fiestita en la casa de KJo. Juntaron los miembros de la academia, todos con una comida all-American que el pobre no va a poder conseguir en Shanghai. Yo traje unos deviled eggs.

Me quedé dos horas, y entonces tuve que escapar para encontrar los colegas en Ototo Sushi para la despedida de Bde. Yo pedí el plato de sashimi y una sopa miso. Toda era de buena calidad, menos el servicio del mesero. No tan mal como en Vancouver, pero me sentía invisible. Como éramos tantos en la mesa, la casa nos cobró una propina obligatoria del 18%. Un poco exagerado.

Mañana tengo que presentarme tempranito para hacer la oración de la mañana en el altavoz. Después una hora tranquila, y entonces voy a dar el examen por Bde. Y después de eso, se van los alumnos, y los profesores se reunen para la misa. Entonces, el almuerzo, y entonces el parque para fumar el cigarillo anual. Y en este momento, quiero que haga sol. Pero no antes.

Is it a...? What are they...?

2007-06-05T23:14:00.000-07:00

I don't know what possessed me to follow a link to an instructional video on how to fold an origami vagina (not even link worthy) but in the "related videos" section I noticed Snappy Dance Theater's Vagina (The Dance!). Mesmerizing.

For some reason, I feel like eating a taco...

This buffalo is delicious.

2007-06-05T18:11:00.000-07:00

Why am I not blogging more? What am I doing?

Answer: nothing. So I found this over at unfogged. Watch the whole thing. Yes, the whole thing.

I could probably finish blogging about Vancouver. Or bacalaureate/graduation. We'll see.

Nothin' but blue skies

2007-06-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

I turned in grades on Friday; Baccalaureate Mass was yesterday. Graduation is tomorrow, followed by the Ministry of Asian American Outreach, Department of Karaoke.

The rest of the week, I have meetings and cleaning the office. I'll proctor a final on Friday, then the Faculty Mass, end of the year banquet, and then a secret tradition to end the year.

I'll try to take the bus to work tomorrow.

That's it! Summer, baby! After that, it's just a matter of one scheduled training session, work on my plans for next year, clean the casita for my parents' visit. My sister and I will visit them in Vegas for a few days, and then they will come up here to hang out. After that, it's off to 杭州 for six weeks.

I hardly know what to do with myself.

Maybe I'll come up with band names.

the Particles
the Cheese Monkeys
Squeal
the Barnstormers
Secret Hug of Frog
Othehumanity
Our New Alien Overlords
the Frankly-My-Dears
Bomba*Star
Jenny and the Jeffs
Jeff and the Jackets
Trainwreck!
Cheesefire
the Big BLGs
Tipper and the Champs
the Red Cards
the Wait, What?s
the stR8-uPs.
the Swas-tickles.
the Incidents
OceanTide
Creamstick
the Reverbs
the Warmstrech
the pUncH-pAcKErS

Weekend wrap up (part 1)

2007-05-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

I hate slow talk.

So Ken Carroll of chinesepod.com linked to my post where I said I hated slow input. We discussed it a little on chinesepod.com's discussion section.

I respect his opinion, and I know that most people think they need slow input.

I personally think slow input is a placebo.

Why? Because if you don't know a word's meaning, saying it slowly doesn't help you with the meaning. It also distorts the natural intonation of an utterance, so forget trying to use any paralinguistic strategies involving context.

When we say "input" we mean, technically speaking, the initial presentation of vocabulary and/or grammar to the learner. Those of us who claim to use the 'communicative method' use real communication to present input. Our pronunciation may be a little careful, and slower than, say, a teenager, but as a rule, we present input in context; i.e., in a real sentence, with a real message that is relevant to the student.

I believe slow language is totally inappropriate for input. Slow language is ok for clarification, for pronunciation practice, but input? No.

But JP, some people talk too fast for me to understand!

First of all, this situation is usually not input.

Second, speed is probably not the real problem. Usually, if you don't understand something, it's because they are talking too much, not too fast. That's assuming you're capable of understanding their words. If you don't know the words they're saying, no amount of slow is going to help you understand.

If someone is talking too much at you, interrupt them. Ask for clarification, try repeating what you did hear, whether you understood it or not. Take a wild guess at what you think the person is saying, and say it back to them as a question.

Saying "talk slower please" might get you good results when you don't understand someone in your own language. However, more often than not, if you ask a European to talk slower, chaaaaaaanceeeeees. Aaaaaarrrrrrreee. Thhhhhhheeeeeeeyyy. Wiiiiiiillllll. Taaaaaaaallllk. in a way that is slow, detached, distorted, and ultimately not helpful.

Anyway, whatever. Not important to most people.

Vancouver customer service

Far be it from be to draw sweeping conclusions based on a few experiences. I'll just tell you what my sister and I experienced.

She called to confirm our hotel room, the guy on the phone said, "yah, we have you're reservation." Period. There was an awkward pause, and then she realized she had to ask him to actually confirm the details (number/size of beds? length of stay?). Hello!
The waiters at Guu served us some delicious food, but seriously, three of them asked us for our drink orders, and one of the dishes we ordered never came. We asked twice, and finally told them to cancel it after we got tired of being there.
We stopped at a computer store; they didn't have the part we were looking for, and wouldn't tell us where we could find it. Laughed, actually, that we would ask him.
Went to another computer store; receptionist told us to follow a passing employee, who did not stop to acknowledge us. Hello?
Teenage cashiers too busy talking to each other to notice us waiting to buy our kitchen utensils. Manager scolds them in front of us. Smoooooth.
We were totally ignored in a number of stores on Robson Street.
Greek restaurant we went to for breakfast only had a few tables, but the one waitress was totally slammed, as she let the few customers sit as far apart as possible. When customers came in, she told them "hope you find a clean table."

To be fair, we got good customer service at La Bodega for tapas, and also at Ecco Shoes and Abruzzo. We tried to draw a generalization that it was white people giving us bad service, and asians giving us good service, but then some asians gave us bad service....

Theoretically Speaking

2007-05-31T19:49:00.000-07:00

If you were a fan of Spanish class lip-sync videos, and if, theoretically speaking, you would like to see the best video from the Spanish Class Music Video festival which may or may not have taken place in a certain Spanish class, I recommend you go to youtube and check out this video .

I'm sure their teacher is very proud of their work.

"Look at this! This is a sin!"

2007-05-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

My mama texted me this picture; her message was "Look at this! This is a sin!"

I texted her back "Did you eat it?"

Her answer was, "that was your dad's burglar (sic.) two months ago. i took a picture because it was almost disgusting. of course he ate it!"

Funny!

Sorry I haven't been blogging in a while. My grades are due tomorrow, and of course I'm in grading hell. Actually, all the actual grading is done, now I have to put everything in the gradebook and finalize them.

So of course, instead of doing that, I'm writing this post.

I will have plenty to blog about once these grades are done. Hold tight!

Back From Vancouver

2007-05-27T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm back from Vancouver.

Here's what I'm going to write about after my nap.

Ken Carroll and the not-so-great slow input debate.
Multi-tasking vs. goal-orientation.
Customer service anecdotes
Thai massage and the boat to Granville Island
'Skytrain' or 'Death to the Monorail haters'
Home again, jiggety jigg.

Meet me at Fort Benning

2007-05-21T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm going to the Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice this year, to protest that piece-of-shit School of the Americas, which takes my federal tax money and turns it into human rights abuses and instability in Latin America.

Sometimes being Catholic is gross. The promise of eternal salvation is about as exciting to me as doing dishes.

But an event like the IFT and the challenge to cross the line at Fort Benning makes me glad that there are people of faith who stand up to injustice. In fact, if it wasn't for the theology of peace and social justice, I would have given up on being Catholic long ago. It's time to proclaim the good news to the poor and broken-hearted; proclaim that the blind shall have sight, that the bound shall be set free; proclaim relief to those oppressed and afflicted.

Some Christians need to stop fixating on eternal damnation and start realizing that we make hell for each other here on earth, and we do it with our ignorance, our complacency, and with our putangina' federal tax money.

So next November we're going to try to take some students to tag along with Seattle University's delegation. We take a red-eye to Atlanta, eat at a waffle house, visit the Dr. King center, and then drive a couple hours to Columbus to participate in the teach in for the rest of the weekend.

My biggest problem will be schedule. I'm sure I'll be slammed in October and November, and I have a minor ambition of spending Thanksgiving Break in Montreal or Mexico. So we'll see.

It's been less then a generation since the Civil Rights movement, but I don't think high school students are learning about Non Violent Direct Action. I think that people remember that Dr. King was a great leader and that the movement desegregated the South, but they don't remember how. They're not studying Ghandi, and the only thing they learn about Jesus is that the conservatives use him to keep themselves rich and in charge.

Note to self: try to teach the kids some elementary civics, so they can elect someone to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," hopefully someone who doesn't think that the Constitution is just a "goddamn piece of paper."

Vergüenza.

2007-05-21T18:22:00.000-07:00

What can I throw my money at?

2007-05-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

So I get this question all the time: What book/CD/online service can I use to boost my language learning?

The smart answer is this: All of them, if that's what gives you confidence. The easiest and best way to learn a language is to use it daily in real communication, let your language instinct kick in. The second best way is to get a tutor and/or take a class. It's a distant second, but it's been known to work occasionally, when both teacher and student emphasize daily practice and real communication.

In general, all the other stuff is a pile of crap; flash cards will get you through a vocab quiz, but that's about it. The vast majority of everything else is basically just glorified flash cards. Berlitz: glorified flash cards. Rosetta Stone: electronic, glorified flash cards, with an added bonus of operant conditioning.

If that helps you, makes you more confident, then by all means throw your money at Rosetta Stone. Seriously. For many people from predominantly monolingual countries, confidence is a big problem, since they associate an inability to express yourself verbally as mental retardation. When I was in Michigan, one insult I often heard was "Uh, she can't even speak ENGLISH." As if knowledge of a certain language was a minimum for intelligence. Well, the people with this attitude tend to have issues when they're in a second language classroom, struggling; that they're stupid for not being able to express themselves. These are the people that should throw money at confidence builders like flash cards and Rosetta Stone.

Otherwise? Save your money!

However, there are three programs that receive my stamp of approval as supplements. They are not meant to be the primary means of language instruction; they are something you can do in addition to being immersed in the target language and/or taking a good class.

Pimsleur. Native speakers speaking at almost normal speed. The student gets a chance to supply the answer before it's given. Caveats: you have to do a half an hour a day, every day, repeating lessons until you master them. You have to answer out loud and hear yourself; you can't just *think* your answers. Borrow the CDs from the library; don't buy them at Barnes & Noble. Limitations: it's all oral. You won't learn how to read or write. If you have a bad ear for foreign sounds, it won't stop and help you.

Bilingual Book's 10 Minutes a Day series. They make books, audio materials, etc. to help jumpstart your language study. My Chinese in 10 Minutes a Day came with sticky vocab labels, flash cards, a menu guide, and a take-along Pocket Pal. It was written in a way that is not totally useless as a language learning supplement, like some of the other programs on the language learning bookshelf. One annoying thing is that they provide gringo-spelling approximations for target language words.

Finally, chinesepod.com has nice bite-sized, functionally realistic dialog analysis. It's not going to help your spoken Mandarin, but do it enough and it might help you with your listening and reading comprehension. Aspiring Polyglot reviews chinesepod's sister podcast, SpanishSense.com which doesn't look bad. Remember, this might help you with listening and reading comprehension, but it won't necessarily raise your Spanish grade.

One very annoying thing about both chinesepod and spanish sense is that in the beginner levels, the dialogues are super artifical: words are read slowly and haltingly, with ridiculous artificial inflection.

Listen to me: slow input does NOT help you learn language. No! NO NO NO. At best, slow input helps you learn SLOW LANGUAGE. (Ken, I was just being facetious!) Whenever you get mad at someone for "talking too fast," you need to remind yourself that you don't speak that language, and no amount of SLOW is going to help you understand.

Counter-intuitive? Remember when you learned to ride a bike, and you found that it was easier to balance when you had a little speed? Remember when you first learned to drive, and you realized you had more control with a little speed?

Same with language. Slow speech doesn't help your memory. You don't need every word in a sentence in sequence in order to understand what someone is saying.

Besides, that's not how your brain listens to your own native language, anyway. Your brain listens for semantic landmarks and then fills in the information in between. You need to learn to do that in your second language. Slow speech levels semantic landmarks, and over-emphasizes the non-content words that hold sentences together.

So don't bother with slow speech. Negotiate with the speaker. Make the speaker say less, maybe pause for a second. Ask the speaker to repeat. Ask the speaker to explain. Ask the speaker to write. Ask the speaker to show you. Anything, ANYTHING but slow speech.

So chinesepod and spanishsense? You can listen to the crazy slow speech if you want. The good stuff is in the intermediate and advanced levels, when people start talking normal speed.

Update: Ken from chinesepod.com just found this post and linked to it! He called me wholly misguided. I guess it's the wrong time to tell him I'm his secret admirer. So now that serious language learners might be reading, I should clarify....

No, I don't actually think that slow input begets slow output. What I think is that slow input, while catering to the emotional needs of many target language learners, doesn't necessarily help comprehension in the wild.

And the reason I created this hypothesis? Because I fucking HATE it when people slow talk me. Language learning is my passion, teaching language is my profession, and I only ever use slow talk (rarely!) for clarification, never NEVER for input.

For the record, I do use chinesepod.com every day, I know that slowtalk is what customers want and expect from a beginner level, I know that those elementary dialogs are not "language in the wild" situations, and yes, I do have a slight man-crush on Ken. Is that so wrong?

It's not about them.

2007-05-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

I found this video over at unfogged. Pretty cheerful.

Are you going to say it, or do I have to?

Maybe the reason there are no brown people in this video is because they all didn't want to stay after work for the shoot. The Asians had to go practice violin. It's New York City, right? Maybe they've all gone incog-negro, invisible amongst all the t-shirt wearing white kids with expensive haircuts.

Over about 8Asians I read a while ago how Asian Americans raised on the East Coast are stunned by the level that Asian Americans have integrated into West Coast society. They're stunned to see older generation Asian Americans with jobs that are not restaurant/grocery/dry cleaning. They're surprised when they see older generation Asian Americans speaking American English.

So while Law & Order makes me think of New York City as a gritty, vertical jungle where people of all races and colors come together to deliver frantic monologues and commit and solve horrible murders, the video above reminds me that it's still possible somewhere in America to have a dot.com entirely devoid of dark skin.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised; prime time sitcoms tell me that it's perfectly normal to go an hour or half hour without seeing the part of society that I live in.

Ok, readers, I know some of you are thinking that I'm victimizing the poor, innocent white people of that cheerful video above. You know what? They're gonna be fine. They're young, they're creative, they're attractive, they're white, and their dry cleaning is going to be ready on time. Nobody is suggesting they're a bunch of Asian-hating nazis....

But you noticed. Didn't you?

No, JP, I don't see whiteness, I just see NORMAL people.

Well, there you go. No brown people = normal.

So Funny

2007-05-20T01:58:00.000-07:00

I miss college. Don't you?

When I first moved into the dorms, my mama gave me a lecture that I remember now so fondly. She said that this is such a good time in my life, when I have so few responsiblilities. Your only job is to study. That's it. Study and take care of yourself. After college you have to get a job, and you have to worry about money and raising a family and all kinds of things, but in college all you have to do is study. You're so lucky, she told me.

I don't roll my eyes at my mama, but I didn't fully understand what she was saying at the time. She was so right. I wish I could go back to college now, and do it over again with the understanding this time that my only job is to study. All that 'experimenting with independence' stuff that seems so obligatory in college looks like total bullshit in retrospect.

Not that I did a whole lot of 'experimenting with independence.' Just learning how to stay afloat in a mostly white world was hard enough for me... experimenting was a waste of time and money.

A lot of people seem surprised that I was in a white fraternity in college. I wanted to save my parents some money, be part of a social scene, and frankly, I had a streak of fascism and conformity that still needed to be spent. I spent the peak of the Grunge Era in Seattle's UDistrict.

I was an officer in the fraternity by my sophomore year, and I wielded the gavel like a weapon. I learned a lot about white people, especially dudes. For a while, that was my job, and studying was something I did on the side. Stupid. Four years goes by so fast, and there is so much to learn about in the classroom.

Oh well.

Some of the awsome house culture we had was whenever we took a vote, people had to say "Nay" or "Aye," we'd say "Aye" and somebody would say "pendejo." Cracks me up every time.

I also had a game called "Put stuff on the floor." I would get a bunch of guys together, and we'd all go into Malane's room, take stuff off the shelves, desks, etc., and put them on the floor of of his room. He HATED it. We would just smile cheerfully and explain we were putting stuff on the floor! It's a game!

After we had done this to him a number of times, he had a carefrontation with me. I hate it when you play 'put stuff on the ground!'

me: Malane, it's not called "Put stuff on the ground." It's called "Put stuff on the FLOOR." And you like it when we do that, remember?

him: NO. NO I DO NOT LIKE IT.

me: (smiling cheerfully) Come on, Malane, yes you do.

him: NO DON'T DO IT ANYMORE. Last time you guys did that, I was missing two... things.

me: Malane, we didn't take anything, we just put it all on the floor!

him: I'M MISSING TWO... THINGS!

me: Oh? What are you missing, Malane? Two... things?

Then Malane stomped of in frustration. He was a stomper.

We also used to answer any "where" question with "up your butt." So, the answer to "Where are my keys?" would invariably be "up your butt." So funny!

Here's how it would go:

a: I'm going to kill Malane!

b: Why?

a: He told me he was going to finish my dish duty!

b: Oh yah, he said he'd be right back...

a: Well where the hell did he go?

b: . . . up your butt.

a: d'oh!

Pure comedy! We would do this when speaking Spanish as well... "... en tu culo." French was the best though, because the best translation we could come up with was "il a grimpé dans ton cul," which means "it has climbed into your ass." Subject, verb... it's a complete sentence, so much more satisfying!

The best part was when I came back after a quarter in France, Swabbie asked me where something was.... of course I answered "...up your butt." And he yelled OH NO. NO. When you went to France, everybody stopped saying that. We are NOT saying that anymore, that shit is OVER.

Within just a couple days of Swabbie's admonition, the entire house was back to saying it again, especially to Swabbie.

Sigh. I miss torturing those guys.

Lame, Not Lame

2007-05-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Lame:

I put my spare key in a lockbox on my door for the contractors; when I got home today, I found the code already dialed in, and the lockbox unlocked. Lame. Who knows how long it had been like that.
They replaced the gutter, but the new gutter blocks my steel security door from opening all the way (see picture above). I have just enough room to squeeze through. Lame. I'm hoping they'll come back and fix that.
The contractors planted new flowers and put down bark on some of the green spaces in our complex, as a gift for all the damage they did during the construction; not lame! But they didn't fix the three green spaces around my front door. Lame.

Not Lame:

I live blocks away from an awesome tacobus. I went there just now for a snacky snack; had two chicken tacos, a tamal, and a bottle of water.

Mmm... cheese....

2007-05-15T22:17:00.000-07:00

I want to meet the Cheese Nun. Don't you?

Actually, Dr. Mother Cheese... Nun.

Where the Russian kids hang out.

2007-05-14T23:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to Alki Point to sit in a cafe and go over leadership applications. It used to be that Sunday night was a great time to go to Alki; no traffic, plenty of parking...

I'm not sure if it's a new trend or if it's just another sign of spring in Seattle, but Alki was full of Russian kids!

You can tell they were not the regular wonderbread kids because they were dressed warmly. The girls all had ballarina hair and wore puffy jackets, and the dudes wore shirts with collars, sweaters, and leather jackets. On the sidewalk, they showed some immigrant herding behavior that you see exhibited by Filipino kids from out of town, or when the French kids are in town on their exchange.

Inside the cafe, it was as loud as the school cafeteria, with Russian kids flirting, cooing about the lap dog, etc. Due to my policy of eavesdropping, I eavesdropped on them; their conversation reminded me of my that generation of my uncles who immigrated in the 1970s. The girls all sat in the armchairs, but moved when Alpha and came over and said, "Hey, what is this! You are not princesses here," chuckling, sounding very slightly like a wild and crazy guy.

I used to know a lot more Russian kids when I taught community colllege in the south end. Now I hardly know any. There are huge communties of immigrants that my current school just does not serve.

******

Those new Dairy Queen ads with soft serve on waffle cones with strawberries and chocolate are making me insane. Where is my 24 hour Dairy Queen?

Sweet Dreams

2007-05-14T16:25:00.000-07:00

So last night I dreamt that I was driving on a curvy bridge over the water... and I lost control and the car splashed into the water. I reached for the door handle with my right hand (was I driving a British car?) but I didn't get the door open in time... damn, I would have to wait until the car was full of water, so that the pressure could equalize....

.... fade to black...

Seconds later, I was driving my British future car over a curvy bridge over the water... the universe had given me a second chance... and I lost control and the car spashed into the water. But this time, I opened the door right away, and was able to get to shore.

I went home to my big new house, where my sister was there, only she was EVIL. I don't remember much else about her....

I do remember getting into the shower, the walls of which were painted purple. I looked down and realized I still had my jeans on.

Cool Picture.

2007-05-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

I just love this image from 1986 People Power Revolution. I found it here.

"Sister insane as well." and "Diabetes vs. doughnuts."

2007-05-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

So mama put the dog in the fridge and took a picture. I assume that's how it went.

Now my sister has made the dog a myspace page.

What's next, a dog blog? Damn you, google.

So today I went on a glucose assignment. This morning my blood sugar was 111 before breakfast; I wanted to see what blueberry pancakes with a little bit of syrup would do to it. 200.

Yikes. I walked it off (which helps) and took a nap (which does not help). I got hungry around 2 pm, and checked... 88.

Yikes. I mean, that's a good, but it means I crashed pretty hard. My insane sister flaked on our plans for tofu soup, so I decided to give myself an assignment: baked potato.

So I tried to think of some place where I could get a steak and a baked potato, without going to far out of town, or succumbing to the gross corporate diners. I decided on Pike Place Grill, where there were plenty of white tourists saying "Pike's Market" and tying their sweaters around their waists.

When I get there, the waiter says sorry, no baked potatoes until 5 pm, when dinner service starts. Hmph. So instead I got fries. Don't worry, I didn't eat them all.

What I did eat all of was my 1/2 dozen cinnamon doughnuts from Daily Dozen. That's right. I ate six doughnuts covered in sugar. For those of you pitiful souls who don't know the joy of Daily Dozen, they are freshly fried mini dougnuts. Since there are no churros in this town, the Daily Dozen cinnamon version is the closest thing. Cakier than beignets, softer than churros.... The line went into the next building, but the cashier is fast and puts on a good show. He snaps the bag open against his thigh, making the tourist kids all jump, because it sounds like a gunshot. A delicious gunshot. Then BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM he tongs five hot little doughnutcitos into your bag. The last one he flips up into the air above his head, and catches it in the bag. A torrent of cinnamon sugar goes into the bag, he gives it a shakey shakey, and two dollars later the first one is in your mouth. Warm, fresh, sugary, crispy on the outside, hot and cakey on the inside....

I ate them all. I ATE THEM ALL. And then came home immediately and got on the exercise machine. Blood sugar was 143: doughnuts must not have hit the system yet.

(thanks for the video, Kim and Jason).

Mama, you is so crazy....

2007-05-13T12:18:00.000-07:00

Mama sent this picture to my sister's cell, who forward it to me. Mama's note was "see her collar."

Ok, everyone's looking at her collar, right? Is anyone looking at the fact that THE DOG IS IN THE FRIDGE?

Mama done lost her mind.

I asked her over text why the dog is in the fridge.... Her explanation was: "probably just wanted to cool off."

Happy Mama's Day

2007-05-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Happy Mama's Day, especially to my favorite mama.

We'll see you in a month, Ma!

Here's a Happy Slip's Mother's Day video. If you haven't discovered Happy Slip yet (thanks Tita) then you should go watch! I recommend Mixed Nuts and the Peelings.

Happy Slip's family humor is pretty obvious to my sister and I. And since we are filipino, 'obvious' is still funny. Her accents sound much more Tagalog than the country-fried Ilocano accents we have in our family, especially the Auntie, who is super magat.

To compare my own mother to Happy Slip's, I think my mama likes flowers. I would never presume to buy her an outfit, though... or maybe it's that I would never shop. If I wrote my mama a song, I'm absolutely sure that either my she or my dad would get up and answer the phone, due to my parents' fascinating ability to only pay attention to me when I am watching a movie.

Finally, I cook for them sometimes, but it is guaranteed that as soon as we sit down, my dad will be late to the table, and then spend ten minutes getting some leftover tomatoes from the fridge, even if there's tomatoes on the table. He's done this since I was little, so by then, I'm screaming at him, so forget cooking a special meal for mama.

Anyway, words are the best. They are sincere, least likely to be sabotaged by dad, and involve zero minutes of shopping.

Life is short! I love you, Mama, every day! Happy Mama's Day!

Colbert vs. 비

2007-05-12T10:23:00.001-07:00

Why You Fail at Language Learning

2007-05-11T20:42:00.000-07:00

Some of you are experts at failing to learn language. Often, you make up totally stupid reasons, like "I'm bad at languages" or "I'm past my critical period." Bullshit.

You fail because you're doing it wrong. Here are some of the reasons why you fail. A couple of them are the teacher's fault, but the vast majority are your own fault.

1. Your unbelief. When I tell you a feature of the language, whether it's pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar, you are skeptical. You find the target language illogical, inefficient, or somehow unreasonable. You believe a dictionary more than you believe me, the instructor. Example: people who think the French "R" is too unreasonable. People who don't understand why there are so many "redundant" object pronouns in Spanish.

2. Your shyness. It's ok to be an introvert in life. However, if you can't talk to other people, you're going to learn less.

3. Your fear of making mistakes. If you can't make mistakes, you can't learn from your mistakes. When you get called on in class, your jaw locks up, tears come to your eyes, you hesitate. You look around. Your name. I asked you to say your damn name. Are you so scared you don't know you're own name?

4. Your fixation on English. You ask what stuff means in English, and you only want to hear the answer in English. You blurt out English translation when you figure something out. When I ask you a question in the target language, you try to get confirmation in English before answering. STUPID. I speak English, I don't need your translation, jackass.

5. You give up so easy. You resent the fact that I give you grammar rules, so instead of concentrating on the rules, you just try to do what you think sounds right, i.e., total uneducated guessing. When that strategy doesn't work, you decide it's too damn hard and you exclaim "this is hard" and then you hate it. You will do everything except for FOLLOW THE RULES I just gave you.

6. You do your homework to finish instead of to learn. You don't know or care about the grammar the homework is trying to get you to practice. You try to do your homework as efficiently as possible, rather than practicing the material. You bemoan the busy work. News flash: language is busy work. You want grammar to go into muscle memory, you have to do the drills, kid.

7. You don't use target language enough. You learn to ride a bike by getting on a bike. You learn to drive a car by getting behind the wheel. You learn to play a song on the piano by playing it on the piano. You learn to use chopsticks by using chopsticks. If you don't use the target language, you won't learn the target language. It's not something you can get good at by reading about it.

8. Your teacher doesn't use target language enough. Perhaps your teacher is more interested in communicating with you than forcing you to learn. Sucks for you. You should complain. This is why I didn't learn Filipino: my teachers only spoke it 30% of the time, they didn't actually us it to communicate with us. You'd think that all the Filipinos I know would be sympathetic, but Filipinos are so bilingual that they will look at you straight in the eye and say "Ok, now I am speaking to you in Tagalog," IN ENGLISH. It's maddening. And when they finally do manage to speak to you in Filipino, they rarely do it in a way that is helpful to 2nd language learners; i.e., they don't offer options, they don't help you negotiate for meaning, they don't rephrase or repeat... they just give up and tell you in English. If you want to learn, both you and the person speaking to you must tolerate the temporary and minor discomfort of the vocabulary gap. If either of you just go around it by speaking English, you will never learn. NEVER.

9. Your teacher is too error oriented. Your teacher loves to catch you on the exceptions, the irregulars. You never get to see the big picture. Newsflash, teacher: error correction is ineffective. The learner only learns from mistakes with internal motivation.

10. Your curriculum is based on theoretical completeness, rather than communicative proficiency. This is a big one, especially when it comes to French. Your French book wants to teach you the subjunctive, first by teaching you the regulars, then by teaching you the non regulars, then by drilling you to death on all the exceptions. There are plenty of Americans who NEVER LEARN the French subjunctive, they get along in their lives just fine. Is it worth learning? Absolutely yes; French people are much more impressed when they don't hear awkward grammar mistakes. However, they are much LESS impressed by people who know the grammar rules but can't talk. If your instructor is teaching you grammar rather than how to talk, you should a) learn as much as you can from that teacher, and then b) make sure your next teacher emphasizes communicative proficiency.

10. You've "moved on" from the basics. Language learning is cumulative. Period.

11. You don't have enough strategies. Do you circumlocute? Do you negotiate for meaning? Do you use new items in generative contexts? Do you look for patterns and opposites?

12. You're not being intuitive. Sometimes, you have to put two and two together by yourself. Seriously, use your head.

13. You ask the wrong questions. Instead of asking for the one word in the sentence you didn't understand, you say "What?" When I ask you what it was you didn't understand, you say "the whole thing." Bullshit. Usually, it's just a one word vocabulary gap.

My French host brother once asked me "Tu veux encore du pain?" Because of his regional accent, I didn't understand the last word. "Do you want more bread?" It was the word "bread" that I didn't understand.

But instead of saying "Sorry, do I want more what?" I said, "uh, what? I don't understand."

He said, in French "Doooooooooooooooo youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu......"

"waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnt mooooooooooooooooore........."

Dammit! I undersand all of that! All I want to know was what the last word was!

"BREAD" he said quickly, and by this time he was laughing, so of course I didn't understand it.

So in this case, "uh what? I don't understand" was a FREAKING STUPID question on my part.

Italians are different. If you say "uh, what? I don't understand" to an Italian, he will immediately rephrase the question and restate it slowly in a way that is totally baffling. You have to ask Italians specifically, "please repeat?" if you want another chance at that word.

14. You make stuff up. I thought you couldn't have two verbs in the same sentence! I thought it's subjunctive whenever you have "que"! I thought all adverbs end in "-ly!" No, children. Only memorize the grammatical rules I tell you. Don't memorize the ones you invent while you are drunk.

15. You don't take notes or pay attention. Children, if after a year of high school Spanish you still think "ustedes" means "they," you need to slap yourself on the face with a shoe. If you don't write down new words that you learn on the fly, you deserve it when I ridicule you for not knowing it only 10 seconds later. If you just asked the same question that two other people just asked, you are not taking your education seriously enough.

Five Pounds Later

2007-05-10T20:10:00.000-07:00

First of all, please send good vibes to 安玛丽 and 姐尼, whose mother Mary Jane passed away this week. Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul rest in peace, Amen.

******

I had an appointment with my diabetes RN today; she said my levels were good, and she encouraged me to experiment; eat carbs, and see how my body handles them. Say no more.

It seems I have lost five pounds in the last week. The nurse was a little annoyed at such a dramatic loss in one week, but I totally haven't been trying; I've just been eating better and walking a little. Funny.

My sister and I are going out of town on Memorial Day Weekend. I first thought we might go to Vancouver, but then I remembered I sent my passport to the Chinese consulate for a Visa. Is the passport requirement in place yet? If so, we're either going to Portland or the ocean. We'll see.

Rest in Peace, Howard

2007-05-08T16:31:00.000-07:00

Seattlest notes the passing of Howard Bulson, a jazz piano player who made a creepy dive like Sorry Charlie's the classiest place in town.

I sang with him twice; I think I sang "My Romance," "If I Only Had a Brain," and then probably "The Look of Love." He just said, "what do you want to sing?" and I told him. And then we did the songs. Awesome. For "My Romance" he asked if I wanted it in the normal key. I said, sure... maybe a whole step lower. Ok, he said, and then he started the intro. Awesome.

He knew the book, the whole book, and his touch on the piano was as soft as a fuzzy sweater.

Rest in peace, Howard.

While you're reading Seattlest, you should check out the blind leading the clueless.

How to make Tamago

2007-05-06T23:12:00.000-07:00

It's nice to have a rectangular pan, but I did mine in a round pan, and it worked just fine. Yes, it looked fine. Just cram the folded part into the curve, and un-bend it when you roll it over. No big deal.

I didn't have any dashi so I used chicken stock and salt. It wasn't salty enough. Next time, I will use patis. Unless I find some dashi.

I must say, the my favorite tamago is eggy and salty and delicious, and it can only be found at Takohachi. I don't like the sweet, cold, flavorless cakey stuff that I get at most sushi places.

This to me is much more entertaining than thinking about what the banlieu are like now that Sarkozy has been elected. I have no doubt the business community is excited. How can the son of a Hungarian immigrant be so clueless about the plight of immigrants? Let's say it together: it's 'cause they're Muslim.

No more fooling around

2007-05-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here's what my Spanish classes are going to translate this week. No more fooling around.

No, it's not a translation class. Sue me. We've done all the grammar. It's time for them to put it together.

What money?! The money (that) my girlfriend gave you to give me. The money (that) you had promised to give me! Gimme it now!
The truth!? Don’t tell (it to) her. Let me tell (it to) her. If you tell it to her, she will be sad that we (had) lied to her.
That song, you all! Sing it to us again! Sing it so that we will be happy, like when you all sang it the night of the wedding, after the mean people finally left.
Chinese? Let’s all learn it before we lose the opportunity. Our parents will be glad that we’re learning something useful, and if we speak it well, we can hang out with our Chinese friends in Tiananmen Square.
Mmm, tacos! Chop me some onions, we can go buy fresh tortillas after my mom gets home. If you can’t wait, we’ll go to the taco bus on Rainier Ave. Then we can eat us some tacos.
As soon as the teacher shows up, tell us “quiet.” We will hide ourselves,; Billy should turn off the lights. As soon as he enters the room, Billy should turn them on again, and then everyone should yell (at him) “Thief! Liar!”
I can’t believe it! What an idiot! If he doesn't apologize to us for it, I am going to write a letter to his boss. Let the boss know everything! I’m sick of that idiot always coming around here and saying stupid things to us!
Oysters? Buy them small. Let them not be too big. It’s not easy to eat the big ones. Wait a moment, let me open it for you. Eat it up as soon as I open it.
Teenagers! If I had had the opportunity to study Japanese painting as a student, I would have done it seriously. They’re not going to have another opportunity! But don’t waste your time telling it to them; they don’t listen to adults!
I hate to wash dishes. I hate that nobody washes my dishes. Please wash them for me, you all. If I paid you all a hundred dollars, would you wash them for me?

Diabetic Neuropathy... NOT.

2007-05-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

So all week, I've been tingling. It's hard to describe; my nerves have been pulsing and tracing.

You know how you can go to your "settings" and change your mouse arrow so that it leaves an extended tail? That's why my sense of touch was like, all over my body. I thought, this must be what "rolling" on ecstasy feels like, except totally scary.

So I've been preparing to tell my doctor that I have diabetic neuropathy. Right? My blood sugar levels are way too low to indicate neuropathy, but what else can explain it? Then I thought, maybe my doctor won't clear me to go to China this summer, maybe my latest escape plan is in the toilet because no one wants to hire a 34 year old health disaster that I'm becoming.

So all week, I have limited my carbs. I haven't been doing Atkins-level carb avoiding, but my carb intake has been lower than normal. During the school week, the only carbs in my body were from a couple tapioca spring roll wrappers. The result? Blood sugar levels in the normal range. Yay! So why are my nerves tingling?

On Thursday, the tingling finally went away, after book club dinner. There was some sugar in the salad dressing, carbs in the croutons, and then a sweet fruit salad. On Friday I had a pastrami wrap with a big flour tortilla, and then chicken tacos with corn tortillas. No tingling. Yesterday, I had half and English muffin for breakfast; no carbs at Ipanema for lunch, but then in the evening, I ate a bag of popcorn. No tingling!

A little bit of good carbs = no tingling.

So I'm going to ease up on my carb restrictions. My blood sugar is so close to normal; I don't have to avoid carbs as much as I thought. I'll still avoid the dangerous ones: steamed white rice, birthday cake, etc. But I think there is some whole wheat toast in my future. Maybe even a pancake.

By the way, I tested at 104 this morning at 9 am, after 12 hours of fasting. That's just five little points above normal.

If your wondering how long this blog is going to remain all blood sugar, all the time, ease your mind. I myself am growing weary of the diabetes posts, so it might be time to start paying attention to the world again.

For example, L.A. Jane is the Master of Shit and has a job interview! Somebody high-five that woman!

Yah, Right.

2007-05-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

I want to eat popcorn. I'm not supposed to, right?

I googled "popcorn" and "diabetes and found this page, which seems to say that it's good for me.... In that case, extra butter and salt!

That's a neat trick! Now I am going to google "pizza" and "diabetes".... somebody out there is going to say that pizza lowers glucose levels in the blood....

Next: liqueur-soaked cake with fruit covered with a sugary puree.....

Screw diabetes! I want dessert!

2007-05-05T16:57:00.000-07:00

It's 5 pm now, I just took my blood sugar, it's 104.

That's right, 104. After a big lunch at Ipanema only 3 hours ago.

However, when I wake up tomorrow morning after fasting all night, my blood sugar is going to be 115.

Raise your hand if you're confused.

I feel like going out and having cake, caked soaked in liqueur, topped with fruit in a sugary sauce. Coffee with two sugars. And a cigarette.

I've made a decision: I don't have diabetes! Not during the day, at least. I have what's called nocturnal mystery diabetes. And it is widely know that people with nocturnal mystery diabetes can eat all the sugary desserts they want.

Maybe I should stop watching cooking shows.

SAM opening.

2007-05-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

Wood burning pizza oven, on a trailer!

I didn't catch what restaurant they were from; I think it began with a V. They were parked underneath the Hamering Man.

There was also a giraffe woman, the electronic drummer guy who is usually on 6th and Pike, a juggling white kid, and a dude that wore a harmonica collar and did tricks with his guitar.

And there were these people, who were painting the flower smiles in the street.

小猪，老虎 and I went to lunch at Ipanema Brazilian Grill. Dammit, I love that place. Some old people at the next table ordered off the menu. Whatever, man! Rodizo! My nutritionist can bite herself. Yes, I had a large meal, but I had plenty of veggies and no sugar or starchy starches.

I saw two former colleagues today, one at a memorial service we held at school for an alumnus who had ended his struggle with addiction and depression with a revolver. The other former colleague I passed on the street outside of the SAM, he asked if I had been in to the museum yet, and I said, yah, I went last week. That's right, baby. I'm a VIP.

I can't wait to go to China.

******

Last night I went to see Spiderman 3 with 小猪 and 老虎. I was expecting a stinker, but I was throroughly entertained. Of course, if I was the director I would have made cut some more tasteful choices. There was enough plot for two movies, and a lot of retconning. The characters have to try hard to fail at having emotional restraint because there's no time between all the plot points for character development to reveal itself.

The biggest problem with the choices in this movie is that Americans want to admire their hero, they want to see the best of themselves in him. It's ok if he is a nerd, as long as he mades the correct moral, rhythmic, and fashion choices. Peter Parker's nerdiness in this movie went past the point of being charming, and into the realm of alienating the American audience.

******

I got home at midnight after the movie, and tested my blood sugar: 109. I tested it again when I woke up at 8:30 am.... 115. What? I must be eating some time released glucose in the evening.

The Badness of it All

2007-05-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

Book group was last night. We talked about the book and ate grilled sausages. I brought a caesar salad. When I got home, I cooked a bunch of diced chicken for our Cuatro de Mayo language department party.

In my class today I gave a "pop fun" on mandatos; the Spanish imperative. The students have a hard time with a) the verb forms and b) all the different permutations of pronominalization. Do I teach it correctly? Of course I do; communicative method, etc. But the students don't follow. They guess, and get it wrong. Then they guess again, and get it wrong. Then they give up. Then they fail a quiz and blame me.

So then I re-teach it to them, the old fashioned grammar way. And then drill them until they whimper.

So much time is wasted because students don't believe to begin with. There's always a "guessing" stage, and only when you convince them that doesn't work do they bother to even look at the rules. It's not trial and error; it's error-trial-error.

I had a meeting with a parent after that class, and then putzed around until the end of the day, when our department threw a Cuatro de Mayo party. I reheated the chicken using a hot plate and piled it onto little tortillitas, which I warmed on a pancake griddle. I chopped way too many onions and cilantro... gringos don't pile them on like mexicans do.

I also served some of that salad that book club didn't finish. My latest theory: any faculty party, whether there are 8 people or 80, will eat one bowl of salad. I had been counting on refilling the salad bowl both at book club and at Cuatro de Mayo, but it didn't happen. Perhaps culturally we have developed a salad proportioning instinct.

Tonight 小猪 got us tickets to Spiderman 3. Students who saw it last night were disgusted, and told me to get my money back. A colleague who went to a preview at Cinerama said people walked out. She seemed entertained at least by the badness of it all. I think she compared it to the Phantom Menace. You know, the one with Jar Jar Binks....

Today in diabetes: pre breakfast 129, post Cuatro de Mayo 127, after eating carbycarbs like corn and flour tortillas. I wonder if my liver is releasing blood sugar in the middle of the night.

What an odd day

2007-05-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a nice bowl of spicy tofu soup with seafood, some kimchi, some bean sprouts, and some zucchini as panchan. I checked my blood sugar about an hour later; it was 117.

Not bad. Actually, that's in the normal zone.

I did some mild exercise. Later that night, I snuck a bite of broccoli and chicken, and a few pieces of finger jello. This was around 9 pm.

I got up this morning, and my fasting blood sugar was 116. What? Come on! Again, not terrible, but it should be under 100!

Anyway, I had two boiled eggs for breakfast. For lunch I made two salad rolls (mache, bean sprouts, chicken, in a tapioca spring roll skin) and had a few pieces of finger jello. Blood sugar at 4:30 pm: 106.

Why the hell is my afternoon blood sugar lowerthan my fasting? Did I get up in the middle of the night and eat?

Hmph!

A parent had some catered lunches; she bought me a salad, which I brought home to eat for dinner. It was a cob salad (yum!) but I threw out the thousand island dressing and dressed it with vinegar and oil. I also threw out the gooey caramel brownie and the roll. Sigh! I did not throw out the apple, in fact I'm eating it RIGHT NOW. I'll check blood sugar again later to see what kind of damage an apple does.

It's a small apple! Not as small as the plastic apple that the fracking nutritionist showed me.

I will not eat past 8pm tonight; maybe tomorrow morning I will be under 100.

I told the dean about my plan to go to China in the fall of 2008; she was annoyed. She said she'd write me a bad recommendation, so that I wouldn't leave! Ha ha.

I asked the Hangzhou program people twice now if I could pay most of the program fee now, and another $1000 after my May paycheck, two weeks after the payment deadline. They haven't answered either email, so I'm assuming that's their passive-aggressive way of saying "no."

I would appreciate it so much more if they just said "no," rather than giving me the silent treatment.

Mass with the Archbishop tomorrow. I think I'm going to go buy some pants.

There is a half-cup of artificially sweetened mint chocolate chip ice cream in my future tonight.

UPDATE: I didn't end up buying pants. Or shoes. Not sure what I'll wear tomorrow.

Nobody noticed my haircut today.

Whose results are those?

2007-04-30T20:55:00.000-07:00

So I met with the RN today, and my meeting with her was less demoralizing than with the nutritionist.

First of all, we didn't talk about gross American health food. Second, my blood pressure was 102/64. How the heck did it get that good?

Also, I got my sexy new glucose monitor, I tried it out, and scored 103 at 4:30 in the afternoon!

My breakfast? A hard boiled egg and a packet of sugar-free oatmeal.

My lunch? Two salad rolls: chicken breast and seasoned bean sprouts, wrapped in some mâche and a tapioca wrapper. Some roasted chinese broccoli, another boiled egg, and some sugar free finger jello.
103, baby.

And then for dinner: a little bit of roast porkloin, some more bean sprouts, some more roast chinese broccoli, and some more jello. Plus one corn tortilla with a little bit of guacamole.

I might have a cup of tea before bed. I'm not that hungry, just bored.

Announcing JP's Grand Tour: Western Europe

2007-04-29T10:08:00.000-07:00

Who woudn't want to tour Western Europe with me? That's what I thought.

That's why I'm proud to announce my Grand Tour of Western Europe. I hope you'll sign up to come along. Dates are to-be-announced, and since it's probably never going to happen, it's FREE to participate.

Here are the terms and conditions:

Pack light! One day bag, one rolling suitcase. You will be lugging your own gear.
Prepare! Read your guide books, plan your days. Don't rely on me to explain everything to you.
Get over your jet lag in the first few days! Jet lagged people are toxic. From Day One, you gotta get up on time, eat on time.

Just so you know, I will plan my own days around meals, to control my blood sugar. I plan on staying in two star hotels, and I only plan on taking trains, subways, and city buses.

Here's the itinerary:

Paris, France (5 days) The goal of Paris is to get over jet lag, walk a lot, see some sites, get familiar with public transit. Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Tour Eiffel, Bateau Mouche, Musee de 'Art Moderne, Musee du Monde Arabe, Champs Elysees....

Provence (5 nights) Based in Aix, Nimes, or Arles. Avignon, Les Beaux, the Camargues, les Saintes Maires de la Mer.

Marseilles (1 night) Vieux Port, bouillabaisse, pizza, island

Cote d'Azure (3 nights) Based in Nice. Promenade des Anglais, the old city, Matisse museum; day trips to Cannes, Monte Carlo.

Firenze, Italia (3 nights) Duomo, Uffizi, day trip to into Sienna, Assisi.

Roma, Italia (5 nights) Ancient Rome, St. Peter's and the Vatican, Ostia Antica, general hanging out.

Napoli, Italia (2 nights) Explore the town, eat pizza, Paestum, Herculanium, Pompeii.

Capri and/or Costa Amalfitana (3 nights) La dolce vita.

Bordeaux, France (2 nights) Day trip to St. Emilion, maybe Arcachon.

Barcelona, España (3 nights) Ramblas, Sagrada Familia, Gaudi Museum,

Madrid, España (5 nights) Prado, what else? Day trips to Salamanca, Toledo

Sevilla, España (3 nights) ?

Lisboa, Portugal (5 nights) ?

Ok, where else should we go? What else should we do? You're coming, aren't you? I'll need help planning Spain, since I haven't traveled a lot there. Anyone want to go to London?

Baoninato! Diabetes and my latest escape plan.

2007-04-28T13:22:00.000-07:00

So now I have diabetes. Baoninato! I told my sister I was "hyperglycemic," which sounds more annoying than scary. I told my mama the D-word, which made her really sad, which in turn made me sad. I had been angry at myself all week (and hungry) since the test result, but telling my mama made me want to cry.

So whatever, I went to see the nutritionist, who was ok with my current eating habits, except for three things: 1) eat out less, 2) no more orange juice, 3) count carbs.

She also told me to exercise, which was like, duh, but ever since then, I've set aside an hour a day. I'm actually less irritated by having to exercise than by having to wash my damn dishes all the time, since I have to stop eating out.

She gave me a bunch of pamphlets and showed me with some rubber food how to control my portions. Of course, it was baked chicken breast, a scoop of potatoes, and a pile of American broccoli, so immediately I loathe her skinny white ass. I need to find an Asian nutritionist. Or at least one that's not telling me about white American food. Sorry, white people; as an ethnicity, you have the most demoralizing health food.

I want me a Japanese nutritionist. Or a Lebanese nutritionist. I know that Italians and Koreans have nutritionists, will you talk to me? Can I go to Greece and talk to a nutritionist? or Brazil?

Or maybe I just have to contact the people that make rubber food....

Anyway, the RN is going to show me the joys of checking my glucose on Monday.

The trick is going to be figuring out how to control my blood sugar in China.

Let's talk about China. I'm absolutely going to Hangzhou this summer, I hope I learn hella Mandarin. Six weeks, no English. Then, it's back to Seattle.

I had a talk with my sister; I should follow my friends to Shanghai and get a job at an international school. The pay is better, the housing is free, and personal expenses are less than $400/month. According to my friend.

If that's the case, I would have enough money to invest, feed my retirement, and take my family on fabulous vacations. No mortgage, no rent, no car insurance, no car! I would have a house keeper and I'd speak Chinese every day. Wouldn't that be something?

What would I be leaving behind? First, my sister and my extended family. A few close friends. Beautiful, cosmopolitan, no-transit Seattle. A pretty sweet contract at work, molded around my personal strengths. My cool condo in Columbia City.

My sister is grown, she doesn't need me looking over her shoulder. I will be able to afford to come back to Seattle a few times a year to see family and friends, and hang out in Seattle. In the mean time, I will be having new adventures with a car-less life style, my carbon footprint will be much smaller. I'll probably end up teaching more classes than I want to, that will be a challenge. Finally, when I decide to move back to Seattle, I will be able to afford a place that is even cooler than the place I'm at now.

So that's my latest escape plan. I'll teach one more year in Seattle, and spend it trying to get a position at an international school, preferably where my friends are in Shanghai. Actually, any urban setting in Asia would be fine, but if I can get a job at the school where my friends teach, that would be sweet.

To be realistic, I've had many escape plans over the years, all of which involved periods of poverty; i.e., graduate school. The international school plan is different: it involves making more money, and right away. So this plan is going to work.

This post is going to be a shocker for some of my readers; major health problems and a major career discernment, all in one post. Maybe the next post will be musical.

Dogs Need Sex Toys, Too (Bastos!)

2007-04-24T23:30:00.001-07:00

If you want to read about a sex toy for dogs... male dogs, of course... you better go here.

Thanks a lot, Seattlest. Bastos talaga!

Photos with Unimaginative Captions

2007-04-23T20:55:00.000-07:00

This is what it looks like to wait for your breakfast at Lowell's in the market.

Ooh, look out the window.

If I were a better person, I would reference the title and artist of this work for you. It's at the SAM in an awesome room that has to do with people's struggles with war and opression. This one is made up of shiny dog tags.

View of the lobby of the new SAM.

The view from across the table. From me.

The talented woman who took the photos above.

她是我妹妹。我叫她《小猪》。我跟他一起很喜欢吃早饭。是我的第一个妹妹。没有别的啊！

Run, Don't Walk.

2007-04-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

I didn't take any pictures at the Ipanema Brazilian Grill.

I will next time. It will be soon.

There are some restaurants I like, some that I love, and then some restaurants that I CHERISH. The Ipanema Brazilian Grill makes me want to be a better man.

All-you-can-eat rodizio lunch with mesa de frios is under $15.

The mesa de frios is the like a salad bar, except brazilian and faboulous. The steam trays held two kinds of rice, some magic mashed potatoes, some thick black beans. The buffet tables had dressed tomato slices, some caprese, roast vegetables, salami and cheese, some cold mussels in their shells, fruit, and salad, among other things. There was a brazilian tuna salad, too, that was rockin'. Ok, so vegetarians, you're eating well.

The rodizio is a movable bbq buffet. Today there was tri-tip, top sirloin, filet wrapped in bacon, some kind of chicken, a garlic steak, a pepper steak, linguica sausages.... All cooked on swords by your passador. When your passador likes the way the meat looks, he comes to your table with a knife and either slices off a piece or forks off a chunk for you. Before the slice comes all the way off the sword, you grab it with your tongs; he finishes slicing, and you put it on your plate. Then he goes back to the fire to turn the meat over the spit again.

I think dinner costs $10 more. The drinks are supposed to be good too, but we didn't have any.

******

I went with H, and told her about my plan to go teach in China in the fall of 2008. My friend says he gets paid more, but spends less than $300 a month. The school pays for housing. I'll save a lot of money, be able to afford a comfortable life, take fabulous vacations, and keep socking away money for my retirement. And every day, I'll be able to work on my Mandarin.

Why stay in Seattle? My life is comfortable, and I adore Seattle; it will always be my home. But I feel like I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and my life is getting too stagnant. You know what I hate about being a high school teacher? The students grow up, graduate, and move on, but me? I'll be back next year, teaching the same Spanish grammar to another set of faces.

I've had plenty of get-out-of-Dodge schemes in the last few years; maybe this one will end up like the rest. But this time, it's different. This is the first plan that doesn't involve an inital step of graduate school poverty/overwork.

I'll totally be able to afford to come back to the Seattle and/or Las Vegas a few times a year, or fly my family out to China, or meet them in some place like Hawaii or Mexico. My sister is grown up now, she doesn't need me looking after her anymore. She got a little teary as we walked out of the restauant and up the street in the bright sunshine toward the bus stop.

Sneak Peek: SAM

2007-04-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

Ride KC Metro buses for free today! Woo hoo! I wish I had somewhere to go!

Yesterday, for example, I went to an invitation-only preview of the reopening of the Seattle Art Museum's downtown site. H got an invitation. There were some light snackies, some give aways (buttons, WAMU-sponsored lunch bags), some short speeches from dignitaries.

Anyway, forget about all that. There was a jazz combo from Garfield High School that was largely ignored by the audience, but for my sister and I it was hard to look away. They were AWESOME. So cool, so mature, so talented, so YOUNG. There was a sax, a trumpet, a stand up bass, and a drummer. The level of maturity was absolutely sick. In fact, they were cooler than the museum coordinator who kept flitting over to talk to them during their set.

I guess I'm so used to high school drummers who let their attention drift off and then horn players whose solos go nowhere.

Anyway, afterward H and I went upstairs to see the museum's collection, which was AWESOME. The modern and contemporary exhibition, which had been crammed onto the 4th floor of the old building, was expanded into the new space. I kept finding myself being surprised by the collection.

So yah, it was fun. Now I want to take H and my mama to Paris, to do the museum pilgrimage.

"This shit just got real."

2007-04-21T22:48:00.000-07:00

You haven't gone to see Hot Fuzz yet, have you? Well, I enjoyed it.

One thing (not a spoiler): the theme of gun violence might not be all that funny this week, not even in parody form.

I remember when Independence Day came out; I watched it on a hot, summer's Independence Day in DC. It was the first showing, and the crowd was rowdy. We cheered at the screen to see New York, LA, and DC being obliterated by the alien death ray.

A few years later in 2002, I sat in a theater watching The Sum of All Fears, in which Baltimore gets nuked. This time, there was no cheering, no enthusiasm, just dread. The difference? Why September 11th 2001 was the difference. Spectacular mass destruction was no longer an effect to cheer for; it was something we had all imagined.

Similarly, Hot Fuzz' satire of gun-porn may read a little differently in audiences' minds the post-Blacksburg world. It's too bad, because as a parody of action flicks, Hot Fuzz shows a pretty brilliant analysis of the genre.

Dear Koreans....

2007-04-21T17:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Korean readers,

How do you eat the spicey raw crab that they serve you as panchan?

Do you crunch the shell? Just put it in your mouth and chup-chup the meat? Or do you dig it out with your chopsticks?

I last got this at BCD Tofu house. YUM. Click the link and check out the menu... I want to put the images in my mouth.

One of us.

2007-04-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Claire @ 8Asians, who links us to a commentary by NPR's Robert Siegel about Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho.

Certainly, Cho was a Korean citizen, a detail that national and international media have run with. Just the fact that in the first couple days after the shootings, some were calling him Seung-Hui Cho (American style first name/family name), and others were calling him Cho Seung-Hui (Korean style family name first).

And of course, conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel exposed her instant racism by saying it was probabaly a "Paki" (read about it in Andrew Leonard's article in Salon.com)

Robert Siegel gets it right when he says, "People who don't know this country don't get this country." He was talking about foreign journalists, but he could have just as well been talking about Debbie Schlussel.

First of all, Schlussel should be fired. If Don Imus deserved to be fired (and he did), Schlussel deserves to be fired and slapped in the face with a shoe.

Second, it is not even useful look for some kind of foreign explanation behind Cho's actions. Siegel points out that his insane rants were grounded in American culture, not Korean. The Washington Post referrs to Cho as a local, from Centerville, Virginia.

A local. Cho was one of us. Regardless of his legal nationality, Cho grew up as a kind of American, just like the rest of us. There was no ideological or military training; just public schools and American TV.

Yes, he held a green card. But that doesn't explain anything. Cho was a deranged murderer, an American deranged murderer, like the Columbine kids, the Oklahoma City Bomber, the Unibomber. He's one of us. He's a member of a club that the government is not going to protect us from by fighting 'em "over there."

What an awful tragedy. Pray for the victims, pray for their families, but don't forget to pray for America. Most of all, say a prayer for the people who don't get this country. God help us all.

Ay! Bastos Dolphin!

2007-04-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe I shouldn't post the video here. It's too bastos. Maybe I should just link you to unfogged.

Totally bastos.

Soluble Fiber

2007-04-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

So how does this work? I eat soluble fiber, which forms a gel which scrubs the bile your intestines, which in turn lowers your LDL somehow? What?

Is that right? Well, here's how to get a gram or more of soluble fiber.

The soluble fiber all-stars: Quaker Weight Control Instant Oatmeal (4 grams); any legume, especially lima beans (3.5 grams) and navy beans (3 grams); brussels sprouts (3 grams) and finally ground psyllium seeds, with a whopping 5 grams of soluble fiber per tablespoon.

I must say: I hate lima beans. There doesn't seem to be any information on fava beans. Too bad, because I would eat Egypian falafels every day...

Oh, just go read Seattlest today.

2007-04-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Check this out: Postman on Politics took a picture of the sign taped up to the door of the Senate Republican Caucus Room at the state capitol in Olympia. Thanks, Seattlest.

Democrats may be compared to many things (keystone cops? bumbling idiots? tree-hugging hippies? effeminate urban intellectuals? Mayor Quimby?) but honestly! The 1989 pro-Democracy crackdown? What a joke!

******

Do you love 25 for $25? You know, the 25 restaurants that offer a three course, 25$ prix fixe dinner (and $15 prix fixe lunch!) during March and November? Omg, so do I. Well, you'll be excited to hear about this new restaurant promotion: New Urban Eats. Twenty newish restaurants offering a $30 menu during the month of May (excluding Mothers' Day). Thanks again Seattlest, which hillariously refers to it as NUE, which is to me is vaguely reminiscent of blue and it's high priced French cousin bleu. Of course nue does not mean new; it actually means naked. Tee hee!

******

Finally, I loved the Supersonics. Loved them. Past tense. Now they want a new stadium, and the city of Seattle and the state of Washington are collectively yawning at them and looking at their watches. But hey, of course, there is a (wink) group of activists that wants to keep the team here.... and they're doing activist things, like holding a rally, running a website... Is it just me, or are the graphics a little too polished and fancy? No, nobody is claiming that they are a grass roots movement, but doesn't it look like they spent some good money on design and printing? I mean, doesn't it scream "we're being bankrolled by the millionaire owners of an team with millionaire athletes, telling taxpayers to cough up money or else we'll move our millionaire asses to Oklahoma City?"

Seriously, I'm yawning. And so is everyone else here. And so is Seattlest (thanks again).

There are no words.

2007-04-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

Blacksburg, Virginia

Monday, April 16th, 2007

thanks, rys

Language Goals

2007-04-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

Aspiring Polyglot has inspired me to post my language goals. I've posted my linguistic autobiography before, but there's something to be said for putting your objectives down in writing.

Unlike Aspiring Polyglot, I don't want to be that concerned with government certifications. I don't ever want to be a translator or interpreter, and I live in the US, so I don't really have to specialize.

One drawback to being American, specifically from the Pacific Northwest, is that culturally speaking, we tend to not speak in paragraphs. Not even in English. If you meet someone in Seattle who talks to you in paragraphs, chances are they didn't grow up here. We tend to say a sentence or two, and then ask a question, even if it's just to check for comprehension.

In other cultures, the educated norm is to speak in paragraphs (sometimes pages). So when I'm in speaking Spanish or French, my normal m.o. is to listen quietly for a long time, and then say something thoughtfull when I can get a word in edgewise. This in itself is cultural, since typical French and Italian speakers, especially, both speakers tend to speak simultaneously when they converse.

I might never get to the level of acculuration of simultaneous conversation. It might be a cool trick to learn how to do simultaneous translation, but my bias will probably always be translating into English rather than from it. Old dogs....

Anyway, here are my goals:

Spanish: I want to be able to do stand up comedy in Spanish.

French: It would be cool to be able to watch a movie in French without putting on subltitles. My French could potentially be as strong as my Spanish, but it's a lower priority. Although I can express myself in French without much effort, my listening comprehension could improve considerably. Quebec accent is pretty tough for me, since I'm not used to it.

Italian: As with French, I want to improve my listening comp. I should work on my written skills and do the advanced grammar that I never did. Also, I want to get the killer accent back that I used to have; nowadays when I speak Italian, I hear a Filipino accent. As far as speaking, I need to learn more vocab, so I'm not inventing vocab and grammar by italianizing French or Spanish words that come more easily to me. It's hard to believe that in '94, my Italian was stronger than my French or Spanish put together.

Tagalog: I need to learn conversational vocabulary and drill the crap out of grammar, especially focus constructions. I would love to speak Tagalog well enough to write a textbook, because existing material is all FUNCTIONAL APPROACH, which annoys me.

Mandarin: I started later in life (unlike Sp/Fr/It) and I have no heritage knowledge (unlike Tagalog) , so killer near-native pronunciation is probably going to be out of the question. My goal is to become an advanced speaker and to learn how to read and write. That's all. If I can have an intelligent conversation, read a newspaper, and order Chinese food with no surprises. I don't care if I sound like a laowai. As long as I don't sound like a gringo.

Portuguese: Portuguese makes me laugh, because it's so sexy, the grammar is different in charming ways, and I already understand half of it. If I get to the point where I'm satisfied with my Mandarin (i.e., I have a teaching job) then I'll try to pick up conversational Brazilian Portuguese. Not necessarily for mastery; just as a palate cleanser. I have a minor fantasy of moving my family to Portugal, spending my days eating fish and drinking vinho verde, and getting paid in Euros.

Advanced restaurant proficiency: Korean, Arabic, Greek, Japanese

Probably won't get around to it: Farsi, Pangasinan (my parents' endangered language)

If I were a Starfleet Capitan...

2007-04-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

If I were a Starfleet capitan, I would deal with intruders by beaming them into space.

Once the other team dropped their shields to board, I would have all the engineers use all the the transporters on the ship to lock on to the crew of the attacking ship and beam the intruders into space. I could probably program the computer to do it.

You can call it the JP Maneuver.

It isn't quite cricket, no, and at probably more suited to space pirates than Starflleet. Of course, if I valued humanoid life, I could beam everyone straight into the brig.

Ha ha, a Starship with a Filipino capitan. That would be a blast. I'd issue a standing order to manually the crew to turn off lights when they leave the room. Also, alien races would let me get away with more stuff because Filipinos are the model minority.

Who am I kidding. I would miss Seattle too much.

D'oh!

2007-04-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

So the Long's Drug store down the street is closing. Boo.

The upside is that everything is at least 25% off. I went in yesterday to get myself a tiny slow cooker, so I can have oatmeal in the morning to lower my damn colesterol. Alas, none were left.

I've always just used my cast-iron pan to grill, etc., but one day my sister made me a panino with her George Foreman. So I thought, ok, since they're 25% off....

Anyway, the box sat in my kitchen for 24 hours; finally I got tired of looking at it, so I took it out of its box and put in in the cabinet under the counter, only to find.... ANOTHER GEORGE FOREMAN GRILL. My sister had cursed me with her old one when she moved out.

So now I have two; one brand new, another well used: some of the non-stick coating has flaked off. I believe I'll be giving the used one to Goodwill.