I. Must. Travel. To. Europe.
Why? Copenhagen.
Copenhagen is also the only city I’ve ever been in where office girls come out at lunchtime to sunbathe topless in the city parks. This alone earns it my vote for European city of Culture for any year you care to mention. (p.107, Bryson.)
Copenhagen, Denmark
Something sad happened recently.
Tara McAvoy on news.google.com
Tara McAvoy was an 18 years old who got hit by the train and died. She was recently selected as Miss Deaf Texas and would go to Palm Desert in California this summer.
With some investigation, it was discovered that Tara McAvoy was pre-occupied typing on her Sidekick. Sidekick is a mobile device that is very popular among Deaf users. Since there are a lot of tracks, she’d become used to having trains pass her, even a few feet away. But one particular train was carrying a large snow plow that extended over the deck. So, you can imagine what happened.
What can we learn from this is to be alert and pay attention instead of having our eyes glued on our precious sidekicks. It’s not worth your life.
I realize I enjoy reading quotes so I’m starting a collection of my own. Here’s for the starter.
“You wouldn’t be impressed with my skill if you knew how hard I had to work to achieve my mastery.†– Michaelangelo
“Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.” –anonymous
If there could be one thing I’m envious of hearing people, other than being able to talk on phone and enjoy music, it’s to eavesdrop other people’s conversations. Like when I’m in the airport, waiting for my flight in a hub, I get curious what they are saying. Or at a bookstore and I’d pretend I’m reading a book but actually eavesdropping someone’s conversation. I suspect this is how hearing people become well-versed in English while we deaf people have to rely on a lot of reading to catch up.
Today, I went to Barnes and Noble bookstore to use up my giftcard someone gave me for my birthday. I bought this book titled “Neither here and there.” by Bill Bryson, about his travel experience in Europe. Wow, I really want to go to Europe so badly. Bill Byson is definitely my favorite author; something about his writing that totally captivates me and how much I can relate to his thoughts. As I was reading, I froze upon this paragraph and made me wonder that perhaps it’s not so bad I cannot eavesdrop people’s conversations.
“When I told friends in London that I was going to travel around Europe and write a book about it, they said, “Oh, you must speak a lot of languages.”
“Why, no,” I would reply with a certain pride, “only English,” and they would look at me as if I were foolish or crazy. But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”
Except mine is a lifetime on a series of interesting guesses. :-)
Wanted to post this for Jason as I feel he deserves more attention to his works. Speaking of being at the right time at the right place, Jason happened to see one police officer riding on top of the police cruiser’s hood. That’s right, on top of the hood, as if it was a roller coaster or something. Immediately, he took his camera out and snapped some photos and put them up on his blog. With the series of photos in his hand after shooting his camera in a burst mode, he was able to figure out the timing and determined that the police cruiser was moving at 26 mph. Then, that next day, he woke up to the knocking of a NBC news reporter and a cameraman. He later found out that, according to his older brother, they had been waiting 5 hours before he finally answered the door. I’ll stop at this point and let you read his blogs. He has such a way of writing that cracks me up. Very vivid writing!
http://jasonlamberton.com/blog.htm
http://www.nbc4.com/news/6224845/detail.html
His experience with the police actually made to the front story on the NBC News channel. But they sensationalized the story by saying that the cruiser went 26 mph above the speed limit, which would be crazily 52 mph and went on to call Jason a math whiz for calculating the speed. Crazy media.
After reading about his experience, I now understood how the media can really hype up or spin a story. Jason only thought it would be cool if he could snap pics of the cop surfing on a hood ‘cuz it’s not everyday you see that happens. He had no intentions of getting the cop suspended (six cops involved in the incident got one month without pay and two of them lost rank) but the media captured his story, put up on the TV, and soon thereafter, someone posted a threatening comment on dcist.com.
All for a few snapshots on his digital camera and this whole thing reminded him of his old friend who once did the same thing, got himself hurt, and his skull partially fractured and suffered a minor amnesia. Jason’s wish was not to see the cop get hurt but instead, he got a threatening letter and he really really wanted to obtain a firearm (a shotgun is legal in DC) to protect him from the blacks surrounding his home, not just because of the letter but the police would take forever to come to his rescue and the only thing they will find in his house is blood being splattered all over and his two cats sniffing around his body.
It’s funny because the other day Jason and I was having a chat, discussing how much things have changed since we first met in 1996, how we’re using our blogs to “document” our life because once we leave this world, all they have are our ideas, feelings, thoughts, experience being stored on some hard disks and possibly papers if they decided to print what we have typed. Well, Jason, you certainly got some.
Last night at the bar, several friends and I were chatting till we fell onto this topic: Audism. For those who never heard the word before, it means a notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or behave in the manner of one who hears. It also means implying stereotyping that deaf people cannot be successful or cannot drive a car. We had a great discussion and I feel like I want to do something so I went to the wikipedia to see if there was an article on audism. There was one but it needed some work and editing so I worked on it.
If you feel something is missing or need to be added, please feel free to contribute!!
Wow, I’ve been living here for 25 years. It seems only yesterday that I made this post, then somehow, Time fast-forwarded one year later and I’m 25 today. Yikes.
Ever since I was in elementary school, I knew I had the same birthday with George Washington, the first President of the US, so I was curious who else has the same birthday.
Michael Chang – famous tennis player
Drew Barrymore – actress
Vijay Singh – #2 world rank golfer
Julius “Dr. J” Erving – probably the only NBA player with a Phd
Robert Baden-Powell – founder of Boy Scouts
Steve Irwin – Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet channel
I believe Chelsea Clinton’s birthday is tmw too. So I share the same birthday with cool people. :-) Ofc, Michael Jordan and Abraham Lincoln (my fave president, Bill Clinton is second) were also born in this month.
I remember when I was growing up, I was worried whether my birthday was authentic or not because I was adopted and I know some adopted friends whose birthdays were guessed. So that means I could be one year older, or one year younger till I found my family in Korea and one of the first questions I had was my birthday. They told me that it was the right one so I was relieved to know that my birthday is accurate and authentic. I even found out what exact time I was born, at 3 o’clock afternoon. It’s also nice to know that we all are two years apart—my sister’s 29, my bro’s 27.
Now, I’m thinking about trading my car for an S2000.
*drooools*
Saw this in the discussion thread on shopping for a car.
“If you want to bargain really hard, come to the dealership on
Saturday, 2-3 hours before it is supposed to close, take it for a test
drive, come back and bargain with your checkbook in hand. It can take
until 9 pm, but salesman’s “manager” will go home, and people that are
left will be willing to go home much more than you.”
“Even better, do this on the last day of the month. Car Dealerships are
taxed based upon the number of cars on the lot on the 1st of each month.
They have an added incentive to see you drive away in that new vehicle
before the 1st.
Also, leave the check book at home. If they think your going to finance,
they’ll cut a deal on the vehicle thinking they can make up the profits on
the loan. Just make sure there’s no early repayment penalty and pay it off
the following day.”
http://ask.yahoo.com/20060215.html
So it seems some police departments have quotas, and some don’t. As for when you’re most likely to get a ticket, we recommend doing as we do with our Dodge Stratus: Drive carefully at the end of anything — shift, day, week, or month.
I am 90% postive that they DO have quotas, no matter what they say. They know 9 out of 10 drivers speed, so all they have to do is to pick a spot that is hard to see, like hiding under the bridge, or on the turn that you can’t see them till right to the last minute. I’ve had a fair share of driving, like driving 21 hours in two days and have driven to Rochester and DC countless times (six hours drive one way). I have come to the fact that if you got pulled over, it wasn’t because you were being a bad driver for speeding. You just got caught at the wrong time and in the wrong place. My secret for speeding is simply hiding behind a car, not necessarily following them but to use them as a sheild from the cop’s radar gun. It’s hard to singularly pick up a car at two or three miles away if the car is right next/behind a car. Not only that, a cop cannot pull over both cars; he has to pick one unless he’s sure that both cars are “racing” at 100 mph or faster, then he’ll call for a backup and nail the other car. The chance decreases with more cars speeding like bikers in a peloton. If your car is the only car out in the middle of nowhere, DO NOT SPEED. You are as vulnerable as a gazelle prancing out in the field and the lion is ready to nail you down. Slow down, put 5 mph over the speed limit and set it to a cruise, turn on some music, enjoy sightseeing, talk to yourself till you have some car company coming up on you.
There are some factors to think about like congested traffic is less likely to have cops out, bad weather, time of the day, and where you are. It helps to know what is the state’s budget on police enforcement like NY state has more budget than PA or MD, thus, NY has more police, so ease off the pedal if you find yourself in NY. Also, cops are looking for cars that speed more than 80 mph because it means higher fine, just like a bigger deer to kill. So it’s not worth it to speed at 100 mph, 80 mph is good enough and u have a chance to slow down 10 mph back to 70, which is pretty harmless, to the 65 mph speed limit.
Happy speeding and safely. =)
The idea of becoming the next Darth Vader is one step closer.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero_pr.html
I find this article enlightening not because the guy could enjoy music again, with the upgrade of 121 channels in his cochlear implant but this one paragraph that explains it all, of what my current hearing is. Let me explain a bit.
For all my life, my friends weren’t the only one who give me a funny look whenever I turn on my mini ipod and start listening. Their expressions say “Huh? I thought you’re deaf.” or “Give me a break, you can’t hear! Stop trying to look cool or be like hearing people.” As I try to explain my hearing, only to realize they weren’t only one that were baffled or puzzled. I was too.
That’s till I read this paragraph.
“Music depends on low frequencies for its richness and mellowness. The lowest-pitched string on a guitar vibrates at 83 hertz, but my Hi-Res software, like the eight-channel model, bottoms out at 250 hertz. I do hear something when I pluck a string, but it’s not actually an 83-hertz sound. Even though the string is vibrating at 83 times per second, portions of it are vibrating faster, giving rise to higher-frequency notes called harmonics….
….The engineers haven’t gone below 250 hertz because the world’s low-pitched sounds – air conditioners, engine rumbles – interfere with speech perception. Furthermore, increasing the total frequency range means decreasing resolution, because each channel has to accommodate more frequencies. Since speech perception has been the main goal during decades of research, the engineers haven’t given much thought to representing low frequencies.”
That’s it! That explains why I could hear low sounds better than higher pitches like vowels and consonants, why I have more RB songs than rock metallic songs on my ipod. I can understand the vowels fairly well but become lost with some consonants, like C, D, N, and T.
One reason why I was aback of getting a cochlear implant in the first place is because of its limited 22 channels, which is being vividly expressed by this: “When the device was turned on a month after surgery, the first sentence I heard sounded like “Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?” My brain gradually learned how to interpret the alien signal. Before long, “Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?” became “What did you have for breakfast?” After months of practice, I could use the telephone again, even converse in loud bars and cafeterias. In many ways, my hearing was better than it had ever been. Except when I listened to music.”
I feel it was not worth the implant to get only 22 channels because that is like only 10% of what a human is capable of hearing. I want to be able to hear what a person hears, not like “Zzzzz szz” or that alien-like language. Now, the latest cochlear implant can process more than 100 channels, giving much more range in the ability to hear.
Don’t get me wrong. I was born deaf so I will always be the Deaf person that I have come to know. I view this as a way of tool to communicate with people, like you would buy a Sidekick to keep in touch with ur friends. But never to change my identity as a Deaf person.
Check this link out.
http://www.medgadget.com/archives/2006/02/new_cochlear_im_1.html
I’m kinda speechless because the new technology in the chip has leap-frogged from between 16 and 22 to 128 sites, giving a much needed “greater tonal range and better frequency perception.”
The pic
You know, a lot of youngsters dream of becoming a professional baseball player, basketball, football, or even a fireman but for me, the day I sat behind a steering wheel for the first time ever, I wanted to be a race car driver. Fast-forward a few years later, a few tickets/car crashes later, I’m still nowhere close to being a race car driver. So, the least I can do for myself is to buy these:
I can’t wait to play tomorrow! :-D
The weekend’s about to end…never mind, it has already ended. Just when I thought I have nothing filled over the weekend, events began to pop up and when I look back, I did pretty a lot. Last Fri, I worked late as I was trying to finish a project (it didn’t quite get finished but when is it ever a finished project?), and then had to clean out my work queue. Even there’s still some things to do when I get back on Monday, doh. Got home, rest, thinking abt what I want to do with my limited free time. It went like this.
Saturday: got the day going by doing errands first before meeting Luke at the golf course to play a 18 holes. =) My driving was definitely rusty; dunno what the heck happened to it. Did I lose my core strength in swinging the driver? I think perhaps I was trying to swing it too hard; I always want to hit the ball hard but I know it’s the opposite. Let the driver does it job. Gotta remember that. But my short game has improved a lot; putting a touch on my putting and chipping. I got a 87, with mulligans, of course. After the golf, went to Gallaudet to watch the men’s basketball game. Damn, that was a good game, seeing the Bisons beat the Catholics for the first time since 1996. The Catholics are leading the CAC conference. In sum, that was a great upset to witness. =)
Later that night, went to a bar called the Irish Times. It was the first time I went there and while it looked small, it had a dancing floor downstairs in the underground and upstairs, there was a one-man live band signing whatever he was saying. One thing that I thought was cool is they had beer bottles out in a big metal ice-filled cooler and you just pick the beer up and give three george washingtons to the guy behind the coolers. Simple. No need telling the bartender what you want and you still got the wrong one anyway. Oh yeah, there were two birthday boys–Marlon and Ian, 21st and 22nd respectfully, so we partied through midnight to make it like killing two birds with one stone. ;-)
Sunday: slept in late but my hangover wasn’t too bad. Got an email from my uncle Bud, giving me the address to watch my cousin swim in a synchrozied meet. It was my first time going to one. I realize it’s just like figure skating but with water instead of ice. There were solos and team competitions. Interesting. Watching those girls swim, I know I’d choke on water as soon as I do a back rotation or whatever that move was called. =) Good job, Nina!
Then my roommie and I hosted a last-minute b-party for Ian, coupling it with a guys’ night. Dang, these charcoals take forever to heat up. Our only female roommie made brownies so we guys used the brownie as a cake and pathetically used a match for a candle, sing-sign the birthday song. Hey it’s the thought that counts and he enjoyed the brownie. =) What can be a guy’s night without playing some poker? So, we played poker and I made a foolish mistake, lost my $20. =( I’m just glad I don’t play it professionally or I’d have to declare bankruptcy. Oh yeah, watched NFL but they weren’t even close, with Pittsburgh handing it to Denver and the same went for Seattle over Carolina. Thought it’d be closer than that. None are my “fave” teams but if I had to pick, it’ll be the Pittsburgh Steelers to become the 60th team to win Super Bowl. But congrats to Seattle Seahawks for entering SB for the first time ever. I still remember how bad they were when they were an expansion team.
Now I’m behind my computer once again, thinking, writing, (and a bit of surfing too), reflecting, remembering, and finally sleeping soon.
Documenting is really important. Trust me.
And shit, I just found out that I have a friend who may be a millionaire himself. o_O
Since last year, as I started to have a steady income by having a real job instead of applying to graduate schools, I decided to read more about finance so I bought some books: the automatic millionaire, smart couples finish rich, and the millionaire next door. Obviously you could tell that I want to be a millionaire and unlike my dad, I can’t become a millionaire by buying those lottery tickets every week.
First of all, please don’t think I have a greedy side that I want to become a millionaire. It’s because I want to be financially independent so that I don’t have to work well into my sixties. Life is way too short for that. Besides, I’m fascinated by this idea that you don’t have to be earning six figures to be able to become a millionaire. You can earn as little as 40k to achieve a million dollars in your savings.
After reading those books, I learned quite a number of things. Most of them are pretty common sense like don’t put yourself in debt. Good thing to know that the only debt I have is my car loan, which I hope to pay off in about 2 years. I learned that being rich and being wealthy aren’t the same. They are two different things. Another thing I learned was to always pay yourself first, which means money goes into your savings immediately after you receive your paycheck. The author, David Bach, suggests that you save 20% of what you earn and you’ll be well on your way to being financially sound. “The Next Door Millionaire” author said he found that what set them (the millionaires) apart from million other people who are in debt more than 10k is because they simply track their money and keep a cash flow spreadsheet of my payday loans. After reading those words, I decided to keep a spreadsheet of my cash flow—how much I earn and how much I spend. It may turn to be the best move I have ever made in my whole life.
In the past, I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my money was going and thought I was doing a pretty good job at saving my money but I was completely wrong. After putting a large sum of my savings on buying a new car, paying off all the outstanding transactions that my college had billed me before they would send me my diploma, and moving into a place far from my hometown, my savings was pretty much blown. It didn’t help much that I was in my “college guy” mode that I thought if I’m going to get a job in the future, I’ll spend this money now and I’ll get it back later when I get a job and put it into savings. Nope, it didn’t exactly work out like that.
So, I started a spreadsheet about a year ago and I thought I would have abandoned it a long ago but thanks to online banking, it was actually easy to track my money and record every transaction in my spreadsheet. A year passed, my spreadsheet begins to look like, well, a spreadsheet, instead of a blank empty white spreadsheet. I could have sworn that it was done by a CPA, not someone like me. Maybe it’s just me but I find it fascinating to look at my spreadsheet and see how much I spent on electronic stuffs, food, gas, clothes, etc. And realizing the mistakes I’ve made, which is a lot.
This is how my 2005 budget looks like:
So, in bank fees, I had to pay $170 and this next one, I’m not very proud of myself, I paid a whopping $825 dollars in parking tickets (lots of them), stupid speed camera tickets, and traffic tickets (for failing to stop completely and among others). I guess that’s what you get for living in DC your first year. That comes to almost one thousand dollars that I could have avoided to pay if I followed the sign, pressed on the brake more, and eased off the gas pedal a bit more. This year, my goal is to pay zero. My right foot, please behave.
Even all with those expenses I had to shell out, I was still able to save 20% of my total earnings in 2005 and I wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for my precious spreadsheet and by paying myself first. Now that year 2006 has started, my goal is to save 30% (large part of that will go toward housing down payment wherever I decide to settle down), pay nothing in “stupid mistakes”, and perhaps reduce my ATM withdrawals but I’ll never ever reduce my food budget. :-)
Anyone up for some sushi?
