My New Gadgets

Today I received the new set of Bluetooth keyboard and mouse that I ordered a while ago. I wanted to get a new set of keyboard and mouse for my laptop computer because I became more ergonomically conscious. Working on a laptop computer all the time (8 to 10 hours a day in my case) is ergonomically VERY bad. And, why Bluetooth? Well, like everyone says, wireless is the way to go.

But, boy, I had difficulty connecting these new devices to my laptop because of the software that came with them. The Connection Wizard seemed to be running forever, so I interrupted it. That wasn't a smart move. The result was, of course, that the Bluetooth receiver didn't detect the devices. My new mouse and keyboard were not responding. Sigh....

Luckily, though, the Connection Wizard appeared again when I rebooted my machine. The mighty Wizard continued its attempt to detect the devices. After that, everything went cool.

Suddenly Alain Delon （突然アラン・ドロン）

We've been watching a lot of movies on DVD since we signed up for Netflix in January. I'm interested in the latest Hollywood movies while Gil wants to see foreign films. Some of the foreign films we've watched lately are Alain Delon movies. Alain Delon was one of the most popular good-looking foreign movie stars in Japan when I was a child. We watched his 1972 film Un Flic (“A Cop”) a week or so ago, and that was my first time to see him almost in two decades!

One thing that I realized about Alain Delon while watching his movies is—he's not my type!

1月に Netflix のメンバーになって以来、DVD で映画を観ることが多いです。私はハリウッドの最新映画に興味があるのですが、ジルは外国映画を観たいとのこと。最近観た外国映画のいくつかに、アラン・ドロンの作品があります。アラン・ドロンは、私が子供のときに日本でハンサムな外国人映画スターとして人気がありました。1週間ぐらい前に1972年制作のUn Flic （直訳だと「おまわり」って感じなのですが、邦題は『リスボン特急』だそうです）を観たのですが、アラン・ドロンを見たのは20年ぶりぐらいでした！

アラン・ドロンの映画を観て1つ気が付いたのは・・・アラン・ドロンは私のタイプではないということです！

Sandwich Fear

[Fiction]

My main job is to translate Japanese to English, and vice versa, but there is not as much demand here as I wish, not enough to feed myself. I may have more opportunities if I work hard to market myself, but I've just been caught up with daily business and whatnot and simply don't have time. So, for now, I have another job to maintain my middle-class life. I go to a local software company to help localizing computer programs three days a week. Today was such a day.

     One of the duties assigned to me today was to set up an office-wide, sandwich lunch meeting. It was on the occasion of a visit by two high-ranking officers of the company from its headquarters. Setting up office meals, especially sandwich deals, is one of those tasks that does not greatly thrill me. I didn't have a choice today, though, because I have been the acting office manager while the original has been gone on a three-week vacation. The reason why I am not fond of the job is because taking sandwich orders can be very tricky. There are simply too many options for sandwiches, God only knows how many. What kind of bread would you like, white or wheat? Meat? Roast beef, chicken, ham, turkey or tuna, or whatnot? Would you like to put all the veggies, including lettuce, tomato, onion or avocado, or would you like to leave something out? What kind of cheese would you like, American or Swiss? Would you like mustard or mayonnaise, or both? And so on. So, if you are responsible for a sandwich meal for the entire office, you need to talk to each individual, explain to him or her what are the options and take what he or she wants. Then, you need to place an order with a deli, most likely over the phone. This whole process can be stressful. The worst fear is that an employee, who is about to bite her lunch, says, "Hey, this has onions. I said I liked mine without onions. I am allergic to onions and even can't smell them. I don't want it anymore." That'd be disastrous. You can't make a mistake. Too much pressure.

     Lucky me, though; today we went an easier way. There were too many people, close to thirty heads (or mouths), so we decided to order sandwich platters, including many different tastes altogether, plus some salad. Happily, I went down to the deli, but only to find that it was going to be a big deal: five colossal platters and a five-pound macaroni salad. I squeezed the food inside my small Toyota with help from the deli's employee, placing three platters on the passenger's seat and the rest and the salad container on the floor of the passenger's side. I carefully operated the car, but every time I turned a curve, the macaroni container slid back and forth. After a few more blocks, four or five macaronis finally popped out from the gap between the lid and the container, finishing on the passenger's floor. I pulled over in a hectic way and placed the macaroni container on the rear seat.

     Despite all the adversity I'd experienced, the lunch meeting itself went very well. The employees, however, were probably a little bit nervous, having important company figures, although it was supposed to be a casual meeting. That resulted in twenty sandwich leftovers out of sixty prepared. To follow the office's tradition, I put the leftovers on the kitchen table, encouraging people to participate in the cleanup.

     When I was wiping the table, a junior programmer came to the kitchen. She has been widowed for three years and works very hard to raise her two teenage kids since her husband's death. Everybody knows that she is always struggling to find time for housework while having a full-time job. I pointed to the sandwiches and suggested, "Why don't you take some for your kids? We have to finish them up pretty soon anyway."

     "That'll be a good idea. Then I don't have to make dinner tonight," she replied, her face animated.

     Another employee, a highly paid project director, showed up. While packing a few sandwiches, the widowed programmer said to him, "Would you like to take some home? Your wife will be released from the dinner making task tonight."

     "Not a bad idea. I'll do that. Thanks," he said and started packing some sandwiches as well.

     I couldn't help saying to myself, "I think you've got already enough!" Well, I wasn't upset. I just said it in my mind.

     Of course, I also took some for myself. Honestly, it'd be a help for my tight budget.

     Writing this just reminded me that I'd forgotten to pick up the macaronis from the passenger floor of my car. (In order to throw them away, of course!) I guess I'll see dried macaronis tomorrow....

Freebees

Everybody loves freebees. People love to receive things while not paying for them. You appreciate it more especially when the item is something that you really needed.

On the other hand, free stuff sometimes makes your life more complicated for the following reasons:

(1) As a result of receiving a freebee, you’ve become a member of something or signed up for a new credit card. Now you have more bills to watch, more payments to make and more plastics to squeeze into your wallet;

(2) There are always some kinds of catches. You may have to buy something later. Or, you will be soon bombarded with sales calls because your personal information has been sold for “marketing purposes” in exchange for a free gift. Never trust things that sound too good to be true;

(3) Even though you can get away from these catches, you may feel obligated by the thing you’ve just received for free. Suppose you won a cheap brand of camera from a sweepstake. Maybe you’ve already had a nicer model, so you don’t really need another one. Besides, it’s such a cheap camera that you wouldn’t trust it when you had to take important pictures. What would you do with it, then? You may decide to give it away on an occasion like Christmas. Well, maybe it’s too tacky for your friend. But you just don’t want to throw it away. Well, it’s still too nice to be laid on a shelf at a thrift store yet. And so on. Anyway, you could waste your time by pondering how you are going to deal with it; and

(4) In certain cultures, you may feel more obligated with gift receiving in general. When you receive a gift from someone you know, such as a friend, a co-worker, or a relative, you are expected to give the person something in return on a similar occasion. I had trouble in Japan when I didn’t understand this....

Beach in March

[Fiction]

I guess I sometimes trick myself. Today I was determined to start my tax returns. Although I have a part-time job outside and a side business inside (which I hope becomes my main job someday), my tax matters remain quite simple. So, I started with payment stubs and receipts. Like other people, I keep such documents in shoeboxes, a classic way to stay organized. Well, that's what I'd believed. I'd believed that I had all the important papers in the most current box, but I couldn't find two particular ones that I desperately needed. I looked, looked, and looked, but I couldn't locate them. I must have put them in a secure place so that I wouldn't lose it. I guess it was so secure that even I didn't remember where it was.

That brought me to spend the next half-hour conducting a major investigation. I wandered around my apartment and looked into every possible place, turning things upside down and inside out, as if I were a bear, trying to find her lunch between tree bark. To avoid forgetting what I was looking for, I sometimes muttered the names of the documents like a spell. I also made occasional murmurs of "Come on," "Hello," "Please," and so on. Since I am neat by nature, I tried to put everything away in a meticulous manner right after I finished examining each item.

Despite all my painstaking activities, I had no clue as to where these documents had gone. "Enough," I finally said to myself. I needed something reviving before I became mental. Maybe a refreshing breeze from the ocean would work. So, I decided to drive up to Playa del Pacifico, one of the popular beaches in the city.

Although it was a weekend, the beach town wasn't very crowded. Luckily, I found a parking spot on the main street after driving there for a few minutes. I neatly squeezed my little Toyota from the rear side. My parallel parking wasn't bad, I thought. I just love my compact car. When I got out of the car, I realized that I'd parked in front of a tattoo shop. There, a few people were anxiously waiting for artwork despite the sharp pain. I couldn't imagine my body wanting that stuff.

I walked toward the pier. It wasn't the warmest day of March in Southern California; the icy wind from the shore made me shiver, so I tucked myself into my jacket. Still, there were some energetic people with T-shirts and shorts, jogging along the beach walk.

A moderately prestigious resort hotel occupied the near half of the pier. I entered the pier through the gate of the hotel. Before reaching open space, small boxy cottages for the hotel guests, maybe fifteen to twenty cottages, came into my sight. All were painted in light blue and white and each had a theme icon on its door, such as "ship" and "anchor." It must be fun to stay at one of them, but wind and wave didn't seem very cooperative today. It probably isn't a great idea to stay there tonight if you want to seek tranquillity.

As I proceeded, there was a coffee stand in the middle of the pier. A couple who appeared to be Europeans were enjoying espresso, talking to the stand tender. I thought I detected a German accent, but I wasn't sure. Ahead, there was a guy in his early twenties, directing his camera downward and taking some pictures. His objects appeared to be his surfer friends who were waiting for decent waves in the chilly Pacific. I looked at the water surface closely; to my surprise, there were a fair number of people in the white bubbles. They were mostly young people and all wore dark wet suits. Whenever there was an indication of a good wave, they slid their bodies on the board and paddled hard toward the wave. At an occasional bigger wave, some successfully sat on the top of the world (well, at least they want to think so) while some failed. They seemed fairly skilled, I thought.

At the far end of the pier, two middle-aged men were sitting separately and fishing. The bearded man, who was wearing at least two sweaters of opposite colors, looked very serious about his activity; that may have been the only way for him to attain his dinner tonight. In a metal bucket next to him, his acquisition was constantly opening his mouth, trying to breathe hard without knowing his fate in the near future. The other guy was clean-shaven with neat hair. He was wearing a Gore-Tex jacket and appeared somewhat well-to-do. He had a whimsical and easy-going air. Fishing may have been just one of his expensive hobbies.

"Look there! Dolphins!" somebody said with excitement. I turned around and found a teenage girl extending her right arm toward the water. I followed her finger. About twenty yards offshore, straight from the end of the pier, a couple of glossy black objects were moving north, creating a small layer of white surf. They may have just mated as many dolphins do in spring, I thought. The sleek animals disappeared under the water, and then appeared again in a few minutes. Every time they broke the surface of the water, their streamlined bodies glittered like spangles. Some surfers stopped chasing waves and looked at these marine friends with respect. There seemed to be another pair south of the pier. The dolphins sailed in a swift and playful, yet charismatic way. They came fairly close to the people, but always kept several yards' distance. It seemed as if they were showing the surfers the right way of dealing with water, yet approving the human effort to emulate marine creatures. The dolphins continued heading north. The humans were still trying to catch waves, looking as if they were ants trying to escape the bubbles in a washing machine.

Washing machine? Yeah, that's it. All of a sudden, I remembered where the receipts had gone: I'd washed them with my laundry by mistake, so I'd dried them by placing them between old magazines. Let's go back home and find these papers. I hope I still have these old magazines....

$20.00 Even

I came across a funny thing today. I went to my usual grocery store to get some food. The cashier rang up the items and they came to $20.00 even. Wow. Isn’t that something? I didn’t calculate the total to make it that way. It was just a coincidence. I felt like I won a lottery. Of course, I received nothing for that.

With "the" or without "the"

[I wrote the following article back in 1999.]

Articles--"a" and "the"--always trick me. I believe I am getting better as to how to use them but still need some work. I realized today that I could describe one situation with "the" or without "the." An example is the following two sentences, either of which I've seen before:

(1) Ms. Roberts acted as interpreter for the meeting.
(2) Ms. Roberts acted as the interpreter for the meeting.

The second one has "the" before "interpreter." What's the difference between these two? I asked a native speaker of English, who is a high school English teacher. She gave me a worthwhile answer. According to her, the difference is very subtle: it's up to what the sentence emphasizes. The emphasis of (1) is on the role of "interpreter" whereas that of (2) is on "Ms. Roberts." Very interesting. I didn't know that. I became a little bit wiser today....

The Little Prince - 4

I think the significance of The Little Prince lays in the fox part, which I mentioned in my blog entries dated on March 20 and 21. The ending can be considered as either heart-warming or sad, but either way, it’s beautiful. I don’t think you would call it a “happy ending.” As many Hollywood movies indicate, Americans like happy endings, so the ending of The Little Prince doesn’t seem American. It’s probably very French. I haven’t read much French literature, but that’s what I feel. I used to read Françoise Sagan, including her first novel Bonjour Tristesse, and her works seem different from what American authors would write.

The Little Prince - 3

I finished reading The Little Prince. I cried. I was so moved. I have read this book many times, but I think this was the first time that I truly understood its significance and what it was trying to say.

I was a fourth or fifth grader when one of my cousins first introduced this book to me. (There is a significant age difference between us; she was in her twenties then.) It was the Japanese-translated version, entitled Hoshi no Oujisama, which many school districts had listed among their “recommended books.” I came to like it because there were many pictures with colors between the pages (the author also had drawn these pictures). My first impression about the book after reading it was—well, it was “neat.” As an elementary pupil without much “real life” experience, I simply thought it was a good book, from such intellect and emotion as I had.

As a grown-up, I once used this book as a study pal. In my mid-twenties, while having a full-time job, I was studying English to enter an American graduate school. I wanted to improve my writing skills, so I practiced writing by translating the Japanese version of the book into English. Then I’d check my writing with the English version. I recall that my translations often turned out to be awkward, far from what the English text actually said.

The Little Prince - 2

The little prince then tamed the fox. But the time to be separated has come. At his friend's departure, the fox reasons why the rose the little prince has taken care of in his planet is so special for him:

     And he went back to meet the fox.
     "Goodbye," he said.
     "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
     "What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
     "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
     "It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
     "Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."
     "I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.


Literature Cited:
Saint-Exupery, Antoine de. The Little Prince. Translated by Katherine Woods. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1943, 1971.