Author / Sixer

by Sixer

Burrito in a Box

It’s bad form to gush over food, to eat in front of people when you have no plans of sharing, and to pat yourself on the back.

I’m going to do all three.

This is the lunch I packed for myself last week. It’s really simple: leftover rice (I made extra on purpose the day before), black olives,  a layer of boiled egg, a layer of chopped tomato (salted and peppered), and crumbled bacon. The white tube is a rolled up tortilla, which turned out not to be big enough for all of my goodies. In the orange cup (isn’t it just too cute?) there’s chipotle mayonnaise. Do not ask me why this was in the fridge. All I know is it was there and it was good. It helped my ingredients stick together and, if you’ll excuse the expression, kicked the rice up a notch.

This picture has been modified to fit you perception of the world

Though I intended this bento to be a burrito, because alliteration tastes better, I ended up eating it like a salad.  I ate most of it too, even though there was a lot more rice in this than proportionally necessary. I would make this again, but I would like to try avocado slices soaked in lemon juice instead of the mayonnaise. Oh, that green with the red and yellow . . . it’s enough to make anyone hungry.

Now, regarding the photos: I know I was using the wrong lens. I had the big, long one on and I should have switched it with the short one. That’s why all my shots have weird angles to them, I’m not tall enough take an overhead photo with a lens a foot long. I’m actually really bad at photography, because, in a strange reversal of the Thermian transporter system, photography is more science than art. Exposure time, aperture, lighting – it’s all beyond me. Not to mention my dad’s camera has more options than a Starfleet ship panel.
I do know that this kitchen is extremely hard to take photos in because it’s so warm. Warm counters, warm lights. Taking these photos only an hour after the crack of dawn on a cloudy day didn’t help much either. But lighting issues are only something to work around. They force you to confront a fact about picture taking that people in good lighting can blissfully ignore. So, in the great tradition of the List-People, my personal photography goal is to take one bright, colorful bento picture before summer ends completely. One worthy of the new Willy Wonka, only more appetizing.

Which brings me to my closing thought, which is namely this, you know starfleet isn’t all that bad when their replicators pay just as much attention to arranging the food on the plates as they do to making who-knows-what taste just-like-mother-used-to-make. How would you even begin to tell a computer about garnishing dishes? And what invention do you think marks a civilization as, well, civilized?

by Sixer

Letter to a Linguist – The alphabet thickens

Ah! It’s that time of the month. You know, when the fresh air seems to blow away all the chains of reason and experience, and your ideas start frolicking in the sunshine of new beginnings. 

It’s my favorite time of the year, and not just because it’s pops up more often than the weeds in your garden. I like it becuase I feel more alive when I’m full of hope. I like it because I think more, and think deeper, without having to necessarily do anything deep or thoughtful. It’s like stepping out of gray into the after effects of a nights rain. Even the cracked sidewalks are flecked with rainbows.   
 
My enabler today was my mom. She took me to Office Depot and  I bought card stock and this cute little flash card holder. And yes, these are related to my Language study. It’s actually an idea I had a long time ago, when I was learning Japanese. I’d thought I’d compile my own dictionary out of the flash cards I was alrady making. It didn’t workout becuase at tha time the binders were still not index card sized. Some really intlligent market research has apparently taken place since then, and you can buy binders in every size and shape that can be contained in four sides. And rings.
 
 I love me some flash card rings.
 
My flash cards, naturally, will have to be updated to match the inherent awesomeness of their eventual home. I’m aiming for a little dictionary of cards, with each card featuring a word, it’s various forms, and some example sentences. This, of course, will mean I’ll have to take my knowledge of Korean verb construction from 0% to at least, say, 15%. 
 
Up to this point I have been using only Talk to Me in Korean, which is great. But listening, even when backed with work books, isn’t enough. It’s time to outsource for some structure. I’m going to be using wikibooks to add the necessary grain to my others light load. Wikibooks is great because it can 1) be read (and we all know I love reading), 2) it contains actual rules, and 3) it has examples for you to practice on, complete with answer key. 
 
In other news, my Hangul has already improved. I’m still cheating on impulse by reading the romanji first without even thinking about it, but at least when I do force my eyes on the jamo that make up this wonderful puzzle of an alphabet, I can sound them out with a child’s accuracy. The hardest part for me so far is the ㅈ,ㅅ,ㅊ group set. Conventionaly these are transliterated as J/S/Ch, but I find this confusing when you get combinations like 죄, or  시, both of which can sound pretty hard to my ears depending on whose saying them, and yet neither use the “Ch” jamo, . 아이고. 
 
One thing I have been doing with Talk to Me in Korean that I really like is listening to their day of the week while writing out the example sentences. This obviously helps my pronunciation and listening skills, which in turn gives me a foundation for spelling, but it also has the side benefit of increasing my vocabulary and giving me hints at verb conjugation that I’m sure will come in handy while reading Wikibooks.
 
In other news, I’ve discovered that I’m losing my grasp on Hiragana. *Sigh* As if one language wasn’t enough.
by Sixer

Missed me?

I’m Baaaaack!

I’ve been gone for three weeks, housesitting for my pastor’s family. It’s been a lot of fun and, quite naturally, a learning experience. For instance, I’ve discovered I’m not really a cat person. This means that those three months I spent researching cats and cat breeds as a teen, so I could convince my parents to get me a kitten, are pretty much wasted.

Now I need I new retort for dog people.

Okay, oddest moment of the whole she-bang: having a cat jump up on my puzzle and start to eat it.

Best moment: coming “home” on thursdays to a quiet house and a bag of fresh veggies dropped off by some garden fairy.

Tips for when I actually move out: put hot pink sheets on the guest bed. That’ll make them wonder.

The house I stayed at was in a neighborhood that puts San Fransisco to shame. It’s the hills. It reminded me a lot of the streets of Japan, narrow and twisted, with intersections at impossible angles. Of course, in Japan they have orange mirrors placed in all the really dangerous spots (and in many not so a dangerous spots). These past few weeks, as I’ve been driving more and more, have made me really long for a good intersection mirror. But I digress.

The house is down a bit from its cul-de-sac by about four steps, placed randomly on the leafy path as if dropped there on the way to the door. In the back of the house, looking out the glass doors to the raised deck, you can see these tall, ivy wrapped columns just rising out of nowhere and going up, up past your field of vision. It’s gorgeous and makes you feel like you’re in a tree house in some exotic local. So I loved the back of the house. But I think I’d like a bit more sunlight, and having the front built into a hill, and then surrounding it by monstrous trees, doesn’t really allow for that.

Every time I go off by myself I’m always shocked to learn that I can eat just about anything. Usually when I say this I mean I’m not picky, but here I mean that I’m lazy. Popcorn, and the olive oil and salt that that implies, was pretty much the staple meal for me. I made bentos at first to take to work, but by last Wednesday they had deteriorated into cheese sandwiches. If  I don’t cook dinner then I don’t have exciting leftovers, which means I have to put the same old into a box. If I’m going to eat the same old thing, my lazy mind reasons, why not spend two minutes on it instead of thirty? I’d like to think that a rice cooker with a timer would fix this problem, but guns are only effective in the hands of people who know how to use them.

That might have been a jump.

My brain is trying to get me to write about Montpelier, which I visited weeks and weeks ago, my job, which I’ve had for two months now, and all the books I’ve been reading. But I’m going to “leave those for another post” as it were, and log of now. I’ve happy, happy news about my progress with Hangul, so hopefully my next post will be of a more learned variety.

じゃ、またねえ。

by Sixer

From the Desk of S. – Re: the Fax

It feels weird to say it, but’s it’s been almost a month now. Almost a month since I started my new job. My first “real,” “9-to-5,” “hard day’s night,” job. It’s been fun and scary and an adventure. Now that I’m a little more comfortable I find my mind sometimes . . . . drifting. Listening to the electronic operators asking me to leave a message, trying to figure out if “Lewis-Kent” goes after or with “Lewis,” standing in front of the fax. . . . .

Ah, the Fax and I.

I knew from the first time I heard his beep of greeting that we were destined to rankle each other’s souls. I’ll admit I was intrigued, I had never met someone like him before. I didn’t know what he was like. I thought he would help me connect with other people. But soon after I heard his dialing tone, like an electronic goose clearing his throat after swallowing bagpipes, I began to suspect otherwise. Soon the very mention of his name caused me to roll my inner eye. We differed on practically everything, bickered in a manner barely professional, and even grew to argue outright.

Through this process I could hardly help but get to know him, that Fax machine. I learned what buttons it was safe to press and which I should just let be. Suddenly, I found myself holding my breath when I heard him preparing a response for me, the sound of him printing seemed breath enough. The world seemed set on giving me excuses to visit him, and when he helped me get through, when we communicated together – I’ve never known such a beautiful sense of satisfaction. His simplest, most routine OK could make my heart soar. I began to notice a new tone in his messages. They seemed at times like a warm blanket to my sometimes weary soul. I  discovered – quite by accident, and yet inevitably, considering how often we were together – that he had a warm side. Hidden, but strong.

Though we still disagree, still end most of our meetings with him clamming up stubbornly and I stomping away to my desk, we can no longer pretend we hate each other. I can no longer pretend. He is no longer “That Fax” in my mind. Perhaps he isn’t “my Fax” yet, maybe he never will be. Fate seems to have other plans for us. And yet, we now belong, in a strange and crazy way, to each other.

I and the Fax.

The Fax and I.

by Sixer

Letter to a Linguist

Dear Theo,

I know I told you a while ago that I was studying Korean.

I lied.

I was actually doing something diametrically opposed to the very idea of studying, but since that something involved hearing hours and hours of colloquial Korean, I felt the term “studying” was justified.

Not that I didn’t study at all, of course. I looked up how to read Hangul (한글) a few months ago. It was kind of a mistake, because I found out that words I’d been hearing as “kamsamnida” and “bian,” were actually, when using a strict romanji system, spelled “gamsahapnida” and “mian”  (감사핲니다 – thank you, 미안 – sorry). Not being able to differentiate the k/g, ch/j, b/m sounds really threw me off. You know I have problems enunciating in English, I don’t need another language’s issues thrown in. It seemed obvious that Hangul would require actual study to be able to read or write it properly.

Actual study was what I was avoiding.

But fast forward a couple of months to the present and I still spend countless hours loafing around while listening to Korean being thrown back and forth am exposed to the quirky character of the Korean tongue every now and then.  I can no longer point to the measly fifteen words I know and say, “See, I am doing something edifying.” The moment of truth has come. Either I must actually study, thereby justifying my intake, or give up all things Korean.

Except the food. We must draw the line somewhere.

In all honesty, the moment of truth came a few weeks ago, but my inbox was full so I didn’t get it right away. After I did get it, I made a quick pro/con sheet:

Con: involves actual work;  sucess, as unlikely as it is, means eventually admitting you can do work to people you’d rather have think of you as a bum; failure is inevitable unless redefined; it has no benefits but the “joy of learning” because, though knowledge is power, scientist have yet to figure out how to use it to fuel a car

Pros: You get an excuse to say “buooyol!” (뭬예요 – what,  Romanji – mwoyeyo); you get a chance to learn why all the M’s sound like B’s; You’ve been looking for a good excuse to exercise your researching skills; It’s the only way you can make “well rounded” sound like a virtue.

It was your fairly typical tie, the kind that makes you wonder if your subconcious is just using you as some kind of behavorial experiment, when I realized that starting a new project would mean making a new binder. You know I’ve never passed by a chance to make a binder, and it seemed rather late in the game to stop now. “Besides,” I threw out the infinity decision making, “I can always stop when I want to.”

So, since Thursday, I’ve completed my research and have started using Talk to Me in Korean, which is a completely free site with podcasts, pdfs and (swoon) workbooks. The podcasts are just what you’d expect after listening to JapanesePod 101, only I feel I’m learning more from them. Probably because I know less, but still, it’s an encouraging feeling. I’ve listened to the first ten lessons of level one a few times and am preparing to go through the corrosponding workbook before moving on. I’m stalling because I haven’t practiced my spelling at all as much as I should have, so I don’t really know how to write half the words I’ve learned. I’m loving these podcasts because they help me understand what I’ve been hearing these past six months. Not necessarily the meaing of the words, that’s a given, but the logic of the sounds. I’m pretty used to listening to Korean, so it no longer sounds strange to me – it’s no longer indistinguishable from a Mediterranean language, you could say – but that doesn’t mean it makes sense. The podcast takes all the niggling little observations that the incurable scholar in me has made and ties them all together into a neat little bow. And then attaches the bow to a present. I’m dying to open the present, even though I’m pretty sure there’s no chocolate inside, but I get the feeling it’ll need a few more bows before it’s complete.

Anyway, Crazy,  I know you love languages so I thought I’d keep you up to date about my studies. Sometimes I learn something that’s so small it’s barely even worth mentioning  but it causes me to geek out in the worst possible way. And then there’s the long-winded, introspective looks at my own native tongue which I could hardly share with the World at Large. So yeah, you’ll be hearing from me again shortly. Don’t leave town.

Love,

B. Sixer

P.S. If your name was Shirley, I’d say you’re Shirley mine ^_- My New Job is filling my head with bad, bad puns. “Bi”-yane.