一頓合法的晚餐

晚上跟Miguel和其他人到Legal Seafoods吃飯,因為住在德洲的Paco因公幹來了波士頓看我們。自從上一年,我已没見過他,所以决定今晚一定要見面。他那當軍的兒子在兩個月前於伊拉克殉職,那發生以後,我一直都有點担心他。不過今晚看過他後,看來他已經没事了。對於過世了的兒子,他今晚並沒說很多。

吃晚餐時,Miguel,Paco和其他人都在講西班牙文。我雖然聽得懂一大半,但此终難於起齒。話說不出來,只好獨個兒坐着,细心聽別人的話。坐旁邊的Ben更慘,一句都聽不懂,也好好地坐着聽。我聽得懂的時候,感覺就像中了獎的一樣。

自小已對語言感興趣。長大了,發現可能是起發於小時候到國際學校裏讀書時,對是混血兒的同學特别感興趣的缘故,所以特別愛上了學語言。因為那就是我唯一能變得像那些來自異地的同學的辦法吧。

到了現在,我以學會了5個國家的語言。在美國,一般人都會以為我是本地人了吧。講中文的時候,無論是普通話或廣東話甚至於閩南話,也當然很輕鬆。說法文,雖不能像本地人的一樣,但應該能流暢地談話吧。日文雖然還是新學,但算得是開始能談得上了。

但是,究竟有用嗎?我真的能用這個能力而變得更國際化嗎?住了在外國多年的我,是否已變成了一個兩頭不到岸,無處能成家的人呢?

西班牙文我也學過了一點,懂了法文後學西班牙文並不困難。但是今晚他們說的是關於拉丁美洲的音樂的話。他們談拉丁美洲的人和事,我就算是把字都聽懂了,意思還是不明白。

回家後,我去了下載現在香港流行曲

今天晚上在家裏找到了一個家在挪威的香港人的blog。慢慢地看他的照片,從香港的小吃台北的夜市,一邊看,一邊懷念着老地方和熟識的味道。

來了美國這麼多年了,自己的生活反而覺得有點平凡,悶。認識的店子來來去去的只有幾家,比起那些照片裏的故事,没趣多了。何况,我對香港的事也再知不多了。

還有一年我就快畢業了,因為這兒已有工作,還會多留幾年吧。到了那時候,25歲的我,要回香港嗎?還是到别的地方去呢?那時我還可以能為一個有品味的國際嘻皮士嗎?

成為一個有品味的國際嘻皮士,那就是我目前的指標。

Visual Studio Beta2 fixed

寫中文

有時候,會突然心血來潮想寫中文。總覺得有時候,有一些情绪用中文來表達的話,會比用別的語言更貼切,更富情感。

上星期自星期三開始,一直都留在家裏,足不出戶地病了好幾天。一個人在家裏,本來以為可以好好地讀一讀書,但最後也只是讀了那短短的幾頁。家裏堆滿了Amazon.com買來的書,有永遠都不會看完的感覺。

對現在的我來說,寫中文有着一定的困難。由於不太會用拼音,再加上没有一套完整的繁体輸入法,到了現在還是不能軽易地把口裏能說出來的字寫下來。有時候,我寧可用日文輸入法來寫漢字,因為要我用漢語拼音來寫的話實在太慢了。要是我能抛開對繁体字的執着,我可以舒服地繼續地寫,但這自小培養的執着是改不了的。

今天下午,找到的一個香港人的網頁,我很羡慕她能用中文來寫下自己每天的思想。

最近,跟幾個不同的朋友分别地談了一下作為中國人的定義。我並沒有受過深厚的愛國教育,但我對自己是中國人的身份一直都沒有懷疑。來到了美國,告訴別人我是個來自香港的中國人是理所當然的。香港人和台灣人兩個名詞,跟北京人和上海人並沒有分别,只是用來表明自己的出身地。香港和台灣,兩岸三地雖然有着不同的語言和文化上的差别,但是基本上都是共同和互同的。

今天太累了,明天再寫。

Honey Roasted Peanut Butter

The fresh Honey Roasted Peanut Butter from Whole Foods is awesome. It’s not something available everyday, they make it fresh at the store. I used to get the small container before, when they had it; today, when I saw that there were only 2 boxes left, I took one of the big containers without blinking an eye.

I spent this evening at my linguistics professor’s Janet’s house, we had an end-of-year BBQ for the linguistics students. After I got home, I found out that my lovely container of peanut butter got sqooshed in my backpack, but thankfully my bag is unharmed because the peanut buffer was inside a plastic bag. For 5 minutes, for the love of peanut butter, I salvaged all that I can out of that plastic bag and back into the container.

This peanut butter is that good. Every scoop is worth the effort.

Here’s evidence from some other people:

“Honey Roasted Peanut Butter”がお薦めなのだそうです。

The honey roasted peanut butter that comes out of the machine at Whole Foods is [...] heavenly.

I also discovered the best peanut butter at WHole Foods–freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter–which when smothered on a banana is soooooooooooooo tasty.

My favorite way of eating this tastiness is spreading it on slices of green Granny Smith apples. I once tried it with strawberries, it didn’t work as well as it did with apples. The Japanese page above says that it’s possible to make the same peanut butter at home and it’s cheaper. I’m gonna investigate into it, cuz I’m starting to get addicted to this stuff…. yum….

I’m going out to lunch tomorrow with my new Japanese friend (from Nagoya 名古屋)Takushi and this Korean girl Soogee, who are both here in Boston to take English language classes. Soogee said she’ll bring along this other Japanese girl from her language school, Keiko. We planned on having sushi at this place Nori in Coolidge Corner, but I just had sushi last night at Sushi Express, so maybe I can find somewhere else appropriate.

While planning for tomorrow on the phone tonight, I told Takushi that I met Soogee by chance at Harvard Sq this afternoon. On a whim, I used the word わざわざ (wazawaza), but it didn’t feel right so I came home and looked it up on the net. It means “intentionally”. The exact opposite of what I wanted to say.

The correct word is 偶然 (ぐうぜん, guuzen), which is a word I already knew. It’s not even difficult, because I know the exact Chinese cognate for it.

Moments like this that makes me want to give up (learning Japanese), it’s too embarrassing….

休みの一周間

最近、WinMXで「サクサク」をダウンロードできる事を発見しました。

先週は今年の学年の最終週だから、今週から夏休みです。もともと、事務所に行くつもりだけど、「もう少し休めば悪くない」と思ったから、今週は「ひま週」だと決まった。

今日、サクサクのビデオを見て、木村カエラは本当に可愛いだと思う。

Trying to fix my Visual Studio installation

Roberto Garza posted a comment on my earlier post with possible solutions to the bugs I’m experiencing with my Beta-2 install. He said,

  1. What you need to do is reset the vc# user settings. Just go to tools->import export options and check reset all settings.
  2. About the designer package, try repairing the .net framework install from add remove programs, that worked for me.

I followed those two advices, but things are still broken for me. In particular, I couldn’t reset my settings, when I try to load that dialog, I get a error message stating: “Package ‘Visual Studio VsSettings Package’ has failed to load properly.”

But, maybe they will work for some other people. Feedback welcome.

Bugs in Whidbey Beta2

I woke up this morning and saw that Whidbey beta2 finally came out. Got out of bed, brushed my teeth and started a download on my Windows box. It started off slow enough, at 2 KB / sec, but I got Visual C# Express downloaded by the time I came home from brunch.

Update: Before installing Beta-2, I did have Beta-1 installed. I removed Beta-1 (Fx framework, Visual C# Express and MSDN Library Express), but didn’t restart my machine before installing Beta-2.

So far, the release seems a little rough. I think my recollection of beta-1 is that beta-1 felt more polished than this.

Here are the bugs that I’ve encountered so far:

  1. The start page didn’t get distributed. Instead of the welcome screen, the usual IE 404 screen comes up.
  2. There is some loading bug with the “Visual Studio Explorers and Designers Package”. It gets triggered when I try to change my default font.

Screenshot of Visual C# Express

I’ll add more to this list if I find more problems. I’ll also add links to fixes when I see them.

A nice quote from Guy Steele

Maybe Bluetooth could be useful afterall…

I have been using Synergy to share the keyboard and mouse between my Linux desktop and Windows laptop for quite a while. Occasionally, I bring my Linux laptop over and I want to use the shared keyboard with my Linux laptop as well.

I wrote a little ruby script (cuz I can’t really write shell scripts) and bound it to a panel launcher, to use for toggling whether to turn on synergy or not. If I have more time and energy, I guess I can install the Ruby-GNOME bindings and make a little panel applet or tray icon.

But then this idea just hit me.

If I have bluetooth on all my machines, then I can use bluetooth to find out the proximity of my laptop from other devices. If everything is all setup to go, then I should be able to write an event handler to automatically turn on keyboard sharing whenever the machine is n units

away from my desktop and automatically turn it off when I bring my laptop elsewhere.

Wouldn’t that be grand?

Sleep and Song

我聽音樂的時候,會常常不停地聽同一首歌,直到討厭為止。自從幾個星期前,我開始了聽粱詠琪的「沉迷」。一直地沉迷着這一首歌,繼續了好一陣子。但是今天可能找到代替品了。現在,我在聽法國女歌手 Keren Ann 的歌。

Hier soir, j’ai téléchargé des chansons par Keren Ann. Jusqu’à maintenant, le meilleur est “Que n’ai-Je” dans l’album Nolita

.

Je viens de decouvrir que mon amie Cynthia va retourner en France immédiatment aujourd’hui, sans annonce. Ça m’a vraiment éttonné, car je croyais qu’elle resterait encore plus long à Boston, quoique le temps soit horrible. Je la souhaite pour le meilleur à Paris.

Interesting links:

I started using GreaseMonkey with Firefox. It’s a way to add custom extensions (JavaScript + CSS) to existing pages. Of all the customizations possible, the coolest one has to be this extension to GMail.

Some more links about this:

会話の練習相手を募集中

昨日,大学の友人はすぐに日本に戻る事を知りました。この人がいなければ,僕が一緒に会話の練習をできる人がいなくなりますね。毎日コンピュータで日本語を書くんだけど,口を使わなければ,日本語の会話が上手になるわけがない。

睡眠報告

昨日,11時ぐらいに早く眠ったんだけど,電灯を消し忘れたから,夜中の3時にまた起きました。そのまま朝6時まで起きていました。地学のクラスは朝の9時半に始まるんだけど,「眠い!もう少し眠る方がいいなあ〜」と思って,6時半ぐらいもう一度眠った。

結局,(皆,もう分かっているんでしょ)眠りすぎました。起きた時間は午後2時です。

(Update: Dr. Atsushi mades some edits again. It’s getting better. 頑張っています!)