Or something. The only person who would get that in-joke doesn’t know enough French to know what it means. Anyway, Yae Rim and I have passed a good day and a half in Montreal–pigging out on foods we cannot eat in Seoul, shopping (we got some books and some winter clothes of a warmth, quality, and price that is unmatchable in Korea), meeting the one friend I got hold of and was available (good old Astrid), and she’s now sleeping. I should be, too, but I promised myself I’d sleep on the plane tomorrow, so I’m not terribly worried. Up …
Category: PERSONAL
Spill it…
Lex tagged anyone who feels like it, so here we go. Five things you may not know about me: I used Ubuntu Linux because I’m a cheap bastard. Okay, also because it basically fulfills my needs, and also excludes the possibility of gaming, which is good for me. But basically, when I bought my laptop, I was considering installing Linux, but I was too lazy. So I ran Windows on it for a while, just the factory-installed default WinXP. After a week, it was collapsing on me, and finally I gave up after several times having to reset to the …
Morning in Nanjing
Went for a walk last night and found my map utterly unreadable, and unhelpful, so I think I’ll be depending on taxis today. Here’s hoping they’re less fickle than the taxis in Shanghai, who refuse rides to places that are a reasonable distance and everything — not too far, not too close, and they still refused! Today’s plan is to see a bunch of Taiping stuff, and then — depending on how things work out with ticketing — either returning to Shanghai tonight, or else flying from Nanjing tomorrow morning, or, maaaaybe, returning to Incheon tonight, if there’s an available …
Crazy Day
The Summer Palace was quite impressive, moreso than The Forbidden City. A lot of “Holy crap!” moments. Tomorrow we’re off to the Great Wall, and then Wednesday morning flying to Shanghai. It’s very cheap to fly there, as a student I know there has booked us air tickets at 70% discount. Now, we’re going to go find a place to sit and have coffee and a pastry, before reading up on the Wall a little more, getting some help from our “hotel” staff in how to get to the right buses. We’re going to try to take in some Beijing …
2006 State of the Bookshelf
Saw a post by a title similar to this on Tina’s site and loved the concept. Decided to copy her (just this once), even though I’m still sure I’ve missed a few books. I’m going to post my book review log for 2007 in a category of its own explicitly to make this easier in the future. In 2006 I read the following books: italics = reread asterisk = new (to me) author (*) bold = my favorites this year exclamation mark = !unfinished strikethrough = never finished, never will Jennifer Government by Max Barry(*) Kabuki 1: Circle of Blood …
Things You Learn From Your Mother, Your Girlfriend, Your Urologist…
It’s funny, the things you learn from a urologist: The left testicle normally hangs lower than the right one, because of the arrangement of the circulatory system. The Chinese word for “not” is “bu”, which is important when you’re in Beijing but not so important in Shanghai, where many people speak English. If you’re getting weird sensations on the left side of your body, including heightened awareness of your circulatory system, it’s probably stress. Meanwhile, my mother and my girlfriend have been recommending green tea to me. Mom says it’s good for maintaining or losing weight, as it supposedly affects …
Recommendations?
Someone I know and care about actually argued to me today that 9-11 was set up by and carried out by the CIA. Anyone know a good, non-hostile book that explains the origin of this myth and why it’s nonsense, without being overly pro-Bush? And if such a book doesn’t exist, why not? Perhaps someone needs to write it.
Two Bald Patches
First I want to say I’m basically happy with the care I’m getting at Yonsei Severance Hospital. So today I headed in to give blood for a test, and to do my treadmill EKG test as well. I did the blood in the morning, so I could eat lunch, and then took in a movie — 조폭 마누라 3 (My Wife is a Gangster 3) — and it probably says something that I understood enough of it to get a fair number of the jokes, in essence if not in detail, despite the fact a lot of it was in …
Sort of Relieved, Hopefully More Relief on the Way
Right, not to raise alarums, but… … for the last while, I’m not sure how long but long enough to know it’s been more than a few weeks, I’ve been rather constantly aware of my heartbeat. It’s not skipping beats. It’s not causing me pain. It’s not speeding up or anything. It’s just there, in my chest. thumping away. Okay, sometimes it feels a little tired. But mostly, it just keeps doing what it’s always (for 32 years, anyway) been doing. Except that a lot of the time, I can feel it, right them, pumping blood. Sometimes, I’d swear, I …
Bloody Argh Against the Topdown Sysadmin, and Nice Furniture
I don’t know which idiot set things up this way, but I cannot even comment on my own bloody website. Whoever set up this little proxy deal on campus — or at least, that’s what I’m told the symptoms look like — is a moron. People can send and recieve email from Korean servers, sure, but I can’t comment on my website. I can’t send email via Gmail unless I login using “https:”. My access to all kinds of other websites is similarly hampered, as I noticed on several Linux forums I tried to access when I thought maybe it …