Category: Random

Amazing how few people visit your blog when you don’t post anything for over two weeks.  Sorry-I was cranky last time I was in the city, and cranky isn’t a good way to blog.  Friends don’t let friends blog crabby. 

Then I was swamped for a week back north where I live, then trekked BACK down south to continue playing the car paperwork game which is getting to be really, really fun.  Especially when I’m looking forward to blogging and then the internet doesn’t work for 3 days.  Driving 1200 kilometers every 10 days to chase down paperwork is getting old. At least I have some good music to listen to in the truck…

Wherever I am overseas, my love for Coke is legendary.  Which is funny because my true love is Dr. Pepper, and Coke a mere substitute.

The picture is of some of the  materials I used when I led a workshop last month.  One of the facilitators thought the prominent large glass of Coke was funny.  How many Cokes can you find in the picture?  Click on the picture for a larger view.

A few months ago, the president came campaigning to the little town (2 or 3,000 people) that I live in.  Here’s his helicopter flying over MY house.  It was very exciting.  The big blue gate is mine, and you can just see the top of my little red house.  It’s actually terra cotta…Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Click on this guy for a better look at him.  Pretty cool camo, isn’t it?

Living in another culture, I pretty much always feel like I don’t know much.  Don’t know much language, don’t know much about how to behave, don’t know much about how things work.  It’s not as bad as it sounds, just a fact of life here.  Culture stress, I guess.

Tonight I helped a friend set up some linguistics software on her computer.  She’s not a linguist, she just wants to be able to organize the words she’s learning into a little dictionary for herself.  The software is pretty cool, check it out here:  http://www.wesay.org/ 

As she was setting the program up, she needed my help-and I knew the answers right away!  POS means part of speech, Sem Dom is short for semantic domains, v must be for vernacular…for a little while there I was back in my comfort zone where I actually knew something.  It was nice.

I’ve been playing a new game.  It’s a quest kind of game which is made up of several smaller challenges which can only be completed once certain hidden objects have been located.  It’s called Getting on the Road.  The main quest is to drive one’s new vehicle to one’s home.  The first challenge is to get all the paperwork in order.  To get the paperwork, there’s a technical visit.  To pass the technical visit, you have to have a first aid kit, emergency triangles, and a fire extinguisher in the car.  There’s a twist-before you can drive to the technical visit, you have to do a treasure hunt to buy a gas can, make sure it doesn’t leak, and fill it with diesel, since there are 2 liters of fuel in your truck when it’s delivered.

Another side challenge is to keep the car from getting filthy on the inside, as it was delivered with very light gray cloth seats rather than the vinyl seats that were ordered.  This challenge entails finding a store that sells stretch denim fabric and someone who makes seat covers for cars.  After these two conditions are met, a mini quest to find the upholsterer’s workshop completes this challenge.  I should pass that level of the game tomorrow.

So, please excuse me for spending too much time playing games and not enough time blogging.  Once the vehicle is driven home, the game is pretty much over.  So, once I finish the quest, I should be able to tear myself away from gaming and blog more.  Until the first expansion pack is released, that is…