Vancouver Visit

From my visit to Vancouver, I can say it seems to be a cool place with plenty to do. I definitely want to visit again. Dave, little Miriam, Allie and I drove up from Seattle Saturday morning this past weekend. Dave picked out a great hotel, sep the bed situation was a little strange. The hotel only had two “deluxe double beds” per room available. I’m not sure was a deluxe double bed is, but my guess is that they are somewhat smaller than a queen bed. From sleeping in them, my perception is that they aren’t quite as wide. Anyway, in Vancouver, we headed down to the famous Public Market on Granville Island. It’s a place where one can get tons of fresh food from around the world in the style of a large European market place. We really just walked around; didn’t do any shopping. At the food court, we settled on German style sausages and hotdogs for lunch, with crepes for a dessert. We then walked down to the small ferry launch and took a ferry ride around False Creek. We got of at Yaletown, which (upon close inspection of the stores and inhabitants) seemed to be the gay centric area of Vancouver. We were in this one fancy knickknack boutique that had hella gay-ass photos as samples in the picture frames on sale. It was pretty amusing. I wouldn’t have expected overt stereotypical displays like that, regardless of who the target cliental was to be. Other clues regarding the homosexual friendlessness of the area were many of the guys walking around the area. After exploring the area for a bit, we got back to the ferry and headed back to Granville Island. One thang that Dave and I noticed is that time seemed to be slipping by without notice. We lost track of time several times, realizing each time that it was later than we though it should be. Very strange.
After that minor adventure, we headed back to the main shopping area in the region near our hotel. After getting thangs figured out, we found an area of shops near the Sears. The Sears in Vancouver reminded me more of an upscale dept. store in the U.S. We also checked out this one comic book shop that had a lot of interesting items, and a few other boutiques as well. All the stores in that area began closing around 6 to 7, so we drive on a hunch to find another area. Eventually we found a street where all the shops where open late. There we found the restaurant where we had diner. That’s another story. Anyways, after dinner we did some shopping, and then headed back to the hotel. The next morning, we headed back to Seattle.

Went to Seattle to get away from the Rain.

I went to Seattle to get away from the rain. lol It’s funny cuz it’s kinda true. For my birthday, Allie flew us out to visit Dave and his g/f (little Miriam) in Seattle. On Thursday night we decided to drive up to Vancouver for the weekend.

On Friday, both Dave and his g/f had to work in the morning, so Allie and I got to sleep in. We started the day around 12:30 when Dave got off and picked us up. We headed to Miriam’s job to pick her up. While waiting for her to get off work, we wandered around a Fry’s Electronics near her work. I had to battle off Dave’s attempts to buy me a gift. That will learn me not to go shopping on my birthday with my friends. hehe

Once Miriam got of work, we went for lunch at this one crab restaurant again, where they serve steamed seafood poured out on the table from buckets. Very tasty, as always. Then we headed to the heart of Seattle. The girls went off shopping while Dave and I tried to take in some of the attractions. We tried to check out the underground tour of old Seattle. We missed the last tour of the day. We tried to go to the top of the tallest building, but again missed that day’s cut off for access to that. We ended up just driving around for the most part, figuring out what to explore when everything is open next time. The girls bought some clothes. For dinner, we tried this one kinda hit sushi place. While waiting for a table, we wondered around the area, doing a little window shopping. I found a Nibbler character at this antique place. Although Allie is not a fan of Futurama, she does like that character, so I bought it and surprised her. The sushi place was pretty good. Afterwards, we went back to Dave’s home and watched Crash. It was later than I thought it would be when the movie ended, which kinda sucked for trying to get up early the next day for the 3 hour drive to Vancouver.

Seattle III Trip

 

March 3, 2006 to March 5, 2006, visited Seattle yet again in 2006 with Alice Leung, Miriam Erlichman and David Erlichman.  Also, took a trip to Vancouver, BC.  (Original post/backup link)

If you have any doubt about Bush...

Even when talking about the President, I normally don't use his name...but today I am. If you have any doubt that President Bush is negligent and is not fulfilling the duties of his job, watch this video:

http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2704463

The man needs to be removed from office on this account alone. If you support him in the face of this evident, you are as blood guilty as he is at this point. Yeah, I'm talking to you, that 34 percent of the population that still thinks he's doing a good job. You are as blood guilty as he is now. If you are still a Bush supporter and you think that somehow you are immune to this statement or that this is somehow an overreaction, you are even more blood guilty of those 1300+ deaths in the Gulf Coast. This man has no business being in the oval office any longer. He has proven without a doubt that he is willfully unwilling to fulfill his duties and oath as President of the United States of America.

Moved to Sunnyvale, CA

 
In March 2006, moved to Sunnyvale, CA from San Jose, CA.  (Original post/backup link)

Trouble with English sounds and letters

English is a funny language. According to the American Heritage Book of English Usage,

“English adopted its alphabet, except for the letters j, u, and w, from the one used by the Romans to represent the sounds of Latin, and the fit was not an exact one. English is a Germanic language that has borrowed many words from French, Dutch, and other languages, and the result is a phonological mishmash in which certain letters are pronounced differently depending on the origin of the words they appear in.”

That basically means that our alphabet doesn’t exactly match our spoken sounds. We have 26 letters, but over 40 sounds. Depending on the region, distinctions between vowel sounds may push the number of English sounds over 50. Anyone wanna learn an alphabet with 50 letters? No? Well, it might be easier to spell in English if we did, but then again, it might not.

There’s really no way to fully identify all the vowel sounds and have those recognized worldwide, especially where those sounds are combined with the r. One vowel sound that is completely without a letter though is oo (boot {long sound}, took {short sound}).

The consonant sounds are more predictable. Currently, commonly accepted consonant sounds that do not have their own letters are ch (chat), ng (long), sh (shin), th (thin), th (this), and zh (vision). The hard and soft th sounds can be given to one letter. The ng sound is really two sounds blended closely together, so it doesn’t really need its own letter. Adding these sounds as letters would give the English language a 30 letter alphabet. Adding the oo vowel puts it at 31.

But, there are sounds that aren’t commonly recognized. For example, the sound tt, as in little, is often reduced to a flick of the tongue in a way that sounds just like the Spanish r. Not many people notice they even pronounce the tt in this way. Once recognized, this will add yet another sound to the English language, putting the total alphabet at 32 (so far).

All this put together would produce an alphabet something like this:
Aa Bb Cc CHch Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss SHsh Tt THth TTtt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz ZHzh OOoo

Of course, for easier identification, it might be a good idea to give the new letters their own forms, such as joining line or even custom new shapes.  We could bring back some older letters that fell into disuse for various reasons about the 14th Century.  The letter thorn  (Þ) would be very useful in modern writing.

Additionally, there are consonant and vowel sounds that this new alphabet does not cover. For example, there is a soft and hard y sound (yes {hard}, you {soft}). But this alphabet would at least represent all of the major sounds. Of course, if this would be ever accepted, a respelling of many English words would follow. Experience with English might suggest this would actually worsen the link between English spoken and English written language. Oh well.