Parent

I don’t normally see parenthood in my friends. I’ve seen some yearn for it and some dismiss it. Some have come into it, and once there I see them as parents. But it’s startling to witness someone be a parent, before they are one or have to be one. It isn’t just ‘being good with kids’ and it’s unexpected to behold someone take to it with such knack. On the other hand, maybe I just come from a world of being afraid of kids.

Tasks

I’ve given a bunch of both online and paper-based organization systems a try — none of them have quite worked out. The tickler file was my latest and best-paper-based attempt to organize, but in my eyes its limitations are thus: (1) it works very well for certain kinds of tasks but not for others, such as day-to-day, and (2) if you don’t have a volume of such tickler-suited tasks, the whole system falls into disuse.

It works great for anything that involves paperwork, documents, or supporting evidence or research and is time sensitive or on a schedule — like preparing documents for a meeting, remembering to check finances or paying bills, reminders for renewing/returning library books (just put the receipt in the tickler!). I can easily see how law offices in the ’20s may have worked with this, and it even helps me be more thorough with such tasks because I can collect task-related documents in one place.

The tickler would see more action if my office work were remotely of substance or I was running a small business. Without that kind of consistent volume of time-sensitive tasks though, the tickler doesn’t tickle. And it’s kinda stuck in my office file drawer, inaccessible from anywhere else.

With both paper and paperless systems, I tend to overload the tasks and maybe I’m not following the “next action” creed the way I should, but I just fall into the habit to pushing back tasks to the point where that’s all I do with an organization system and I don’t remember what the point of the task is anyway. Eventually I stop using the organization system for a while, and try rebooting with another one a couple months later — a dishevelling cycle.

So now I’m about to give Gmail Labs’s Tasks a try. The major pro is that it’s in Gmail, which I use nearly religiously each day anyway. And I really make great use of Google Calendar, so in theory a task organization system that plays well with two systems I already use routinely may stick better.

But mind you, this is just a pre-game report. The cloud of disallusionment with organization web apps usually obscures my RSS reader from Gmail Task literature. I haven’t the faintest clue of how it works yet, but I do like how Gmail’s blog does a run-down of the pros and cons of paper:

Paper has a number of popular features:

• Easy editing. Cross out with pen and write something new.
• Works offline. You can read paper even when your PC is not connected to the internet.
• Mobile. Fold paper and stick in pocket.
• Instant boot up. Just pull paper out of pocket — don’t have to wait for it to load.

However, paper does have some limitations:

• Limited availability. You don’t always have a pad of paper with you to write new things.
• Not ubiquitous. If you leave a piece of paper in one pair of jeans, you can’t access it from the other jeans you’re currently wearing.
• Difficult to organize. Eventually turns into a giant mess on your desk.

And after that somewhat playful comparison (italics mine), the Gmail blog goes on about iPhone and Android integration. Well, I’m not getting a new phone anytime soon, but I’ve used Google Calendar with a dumbphone (hybrid of paper and auto-texted reminders) with some sucess. So either Tasks can be done without the $70+ a month for data services, too, or I can add it to my list of failed attempts to organize.

Nail Biter

I’m watching the Senate race, and 60-40 are numbers to bite nails to. Senate cloture rules give a minority of no less than 41 members a lot of leverage to moderate (filibuster) legislation they oppose, so having 60 or 41 votes in the Senate is the best thing a majority or minority party, respectively, can have — besides the White House.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., explains 41 to the Wall Street Journal:

When I woke up after the election in November 2006, I realized I was going to be the Republican leader and not the majority leader. That was the bad news. The good news is that 49 is not a bad number in a body that requires 60. The United States Senate is the only legislative body in the world where a majority is not enough.

My goal from the very beginning… is to use the power of 41 — or more — to do one of two things: either to stop things that are totally awful…or more frequently, to use the power of 41 to shape. Really bad ideas die in the Senate, and in that sense it has protected America from extremes throughout our history.

Methinks advancing Dems have to take one of the tossup states in the South (Georgia, Kentucky, or Mississippi) and all the others elsewhere whereas defending Republicans have to hold on to at least three tossup states. The odds favor the GOP losing ground yet maintaining 41, however, any ratio nearing 60-40, factoring in moderates, mavericks, and independents, alters the game.

FiveThirtyEight.com gave a 60-seat majority odds of 1 out of 4 a week ago and is now calling 1 out of 3. With less than three weeks left, this is the stretch that’s more like sports than anything else.

Amtrak between NYC and Montréal

Photo credit: Adam E. Moreira, via Wikipedia

If you’re considering the train between NYC and Montréal, think again. It’s probably not for you. I took the train both ways this past month, and here’s my report (Adirondack trains #68 and 69, daily service both ways between NYC and Montreal, circa summer 2008).

Time, Schedule, and Customs

The ride is pleasant, but as long as you’re not in a hurry and can hold up for a long time with naps, books, mags, audio, or movies on a laptop (AC provided). What is six hours by car or bus (not including customs) takes twelve by train (not including customs).

Customs takes maybe an hour or two, and if you board this train, expect this delay. Amtrak puts this little matter in fine print, which means that many people are unaware and quite irritated during the process. My train going south was without incident, but going north customs were obviously checking to see if your name was on a list. A couple people were seemingly randomly questioned, one person turned away due to a criminal record (DUI), and all this holds up the entire train.

If your train is late before getting to the border, customs will take even longer, as it did for me. A Canadian customs officer explained that a late train throws the entire procedure even more off schedule.

My theory on customs is thus: customs on the train are lengthy because everyone on board must be processed before the rolling stock moves forward again. On bus or car the passengers are fewer so the delay may be smaller and affects fewer. By airplane, passengers are processed individually upon arrival, so random interrogations or riffraff don’t hold up the entire cabin.

If you’re thinking about taking the train, and you can’t handle the prospect of delays two hours or more, don’t take it.

Amenities

• Skip the cafe car unless you’re a fan of bagged chips, canned sodas and beers, and microwaved sandwiches. Bring your own food if possible.
• AC outlets are below the window, but the power goes out occasionally when the train is idle. (No on-board internet access.)
• Cell phone reception comes in and goes out as you travel away from civilization.
• Bathrooms on trains, in buses, at road stops — ALWAYS GROSS.

View

The view westward, especially around sunset, is nice but repetitive — body of water after body of water with many docked boats in upstate New York, plains and farmland in Québec. I didn’t experience the view east and frankly I didn’t see much on the west going north because my seat was between windows and I slept most the way.

If view is important to you, you might want to queue early and aggressively for prime seat choice. The same goes if you’re not riding alone and want to sit together when the train is sold out. Going south, left is east, right is west. Going north, left is west, right is east.

Recommendation

I would take the train again if it fit my schedule, which is to say when I don’t mind not knowing when I arrive. The bus is marginally less comfortable, and I get headaches if I read whereas on the train I’m fine. The train is marginally cheaper, but that’s hardly a factor after other differences. I’ve heard the overnight bus is a nightmare with twilight transfers and customs procedures.

But I recommend bringing your own:

• snacks and beverage;
• ear plugs (as long as you don’t have to worry about missing your station);
• neck pillow, inflatable or otherwise, maybe a sleep mask if you really want to get your nap on;
• blanket or long-sleeved or long-panted comfortware (because the train is AC cold and/or drafty);
• laptop with movies (but alas, no internet);
• plenty of stuff to read and write while you have half a day to do nothing else;
• expectation of untimeliness; and
• companion who you don’t mind napping, talking, or not talking with for 12 hours.

Transliteration Misunderestimated

The yen has at times beguiled me and I finally gleamed the answer from the ever-wise sometimes-wrong Wikipedia:

In standard Japanese, the yen is pronounced “en” but the spelling and pronunciation of “yen” is standard in English, due to a historical Portuguese transliteration. The inclusion of the letter y is based on romanization of an obsolete writing of the word which included the kana ゑ (ye/we), examples of which can also be found in such words as Yebisu, Iyeyasu, and Yedo (it was still pronounced, however, as e). Like the spellings of names of people outside Japan, the romanization of yen has become a permanent feature.

Essentially the unit is pronounced like the letter N. It would help a great deal if their currency symbol integrated that letter instead of the Y. And it’s not like N is hard for non-Japanese to pronounce.

But seriously, can you imagine that throughout the long and glorious history of the land of the sun’s origin* — from Meiji restoration to postbellum economic miracle to today’s mammoth trade surplus con los Estados Unidos — no one bothered to mention, “Please forgive my humble yet selfishly rude interruption even though you weren’t saying anything and were looking bored, but we pronounce it “EN,” not “YEN.”

This is more annoying than the Korean [soon to be former] president and his name that’s spelt Roh Moo-hyun but pronounced “Noh.” Because the ancient (and might I add not the current) pronunciation of the Chinese character in this Korean dude’s name (노) had an R-esque sound (in other words, “the romanization of an obsolete writing of the word”). Yeah, you just didn’t want to be President No.

* “Sun’s origin” is a somewhat more direct translation of the rising sun moniker and thusly bound to confuse, leading to more annoying badly researched blog entries no doubt: 日本 (Nihon, Japan): 日, sun; 本, origin.

[This post is brought to you by a confusing conversation about a movie called "Yen Town" which in some parts of the world may be pronounced N-town.]

Leaf Art

I was thinking of cutting up colored leaves and pasting the fragments like pixels. But that’s a lot of work — I’d have to sketch a scene and color code it. I’m back to the drawing board at the moment. I’m not really finding any particularly pretty leaves for that whole-leaf kind of esthetic.

My friend from L.A. kept commenting about how many trees and green were around when she was here in the summer, and I kind of thought she was an alien or something. (I gather there aren’t deciduous trees in L.A., or so she claims). I was imagining we could start a seasonal exchange program — I’ll send her autumn while it’s plentiful here and, I dunno, she can send me palm trees in the dead of winter.

Gravelly Point

he said, (17 days ago)
If you ever fly to Washington National Airport (Reagan, not Dulles or BWI), then be sure to have a window seat for the River Visual Approach. For landing, be on the left side for the view of downtown D.C. But be sure not to stand up during the approach or you’ll be considered a terrorist.

Oh, at the end of National Airport’s runway is Gravelly Point, which is where you take your date after hours to make out on the river as deafening airplanes land on top of you.

So, Sunday I cycled the [more than] Four Mile Run to Shirlington and from South Arlington up along the river, crossed the Key Bridge into Georgetown, and made my way to Dupont Circle. I took the Mount Vernon Trail around National Airport, and I must say Gravelly Point can be stunning in the day as well:

You pass a small dock and parking lot before you break out into this vast open field that overlooks the Potomac and monumental D.C. on the other bank. Pedal traffic on the trail is brisk and children on the field fill the aural void between landings with their spirited play.

As you round your bend, the aircraft rounds its river run, aligning you both in a sort of post-9/11 catharsis, and you have to brake to avoid collision with awestruck pedestrians paused mid-path with their own premonition of collision. When you’re a pebble’s throw from the safety decal on landing gear still in-flight, do you have the cerebrum to resent the media-frenzied image of your generation?

Half and Half

[In response to a conversation about gender-disproportionate interracial dating patterns:]

I have always thought that it would be cosmetically cute if a hapa dated another hapa in such a circumstance where their mismatched ethnic parentage would magically align. Like when she talks all about her mother, he can relate with his father. And vice versa. Everything he missed out on because he lacked that side of the ethnography, she would fill him in on. And vice versa. At their wedding, the in-laws would alternate the biracial rows down the trans-Pacific aisle (and vice versa) — the matrimony a mock simulation of multi-ethnic purity in a post-Sean Lennon world.

But, uh, when’s the last time you met a hapa who didn’t have a white dad? In my travels the ratio is still overwhelmingly a vestige of U.S. military intervention in postcolonial Asia. The racially-crisscrossed hapa-on-hapa action can’t happen until the ladies even up the score a little and take out the Asian lads.

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i wish i were a hapa said she to he.

youll always be in my target demographic said he.

i only want to be a hapa so we can get married said she.

i only want you to be a hapa for the racy hapa on hapa action said he.

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