Definitions of "tolerate"

1. allowing people to do, say, or believe something without criticizing or punishing them
2. to be able to accept something unpleasant unpleasant or difficult, even though you do not like it

Example sentence: President Bush vowed earlier this year that he would never tolerate a nuclear North Korea.

Is it possible that in recent months (while Saddam was being dealt with-to ensure he never realized any nuclear capabilities), North Korea has produced one, two , or as many as eight nuclear weapons? I wonder how Mr. Bush defines tolerate?

But more importantly, this doesn't mean I have to put off my planned vacation in Pyongyang, does it?

Soggy Sound-boards and Dreams of Flying

Every day I return to my Taipei home, I am greeted by the sight of Soggy Shubert, the piano. It brings back memories of piano and ballet lessons where I received the same criticism... if only you could learn to count! I CAN count and I could then, too! However, I remember how fun it was to just play without thinking/counting, dance without memorizing steps... it felt like flying!

When I see Shubert, I remember how I could lose myself and my stress in the music and think I should start playing again... but every time I sit down with Shubert, he laughs at me. His former owner, my landlady, left him several humid summers with no air conditioner, no dehumidifier and his sound-board got wet. Now, even after tuning, it is only a matter of weeks before the pegs loosen and... well you can imagine. It is less like flying and more like crawling through...

Anyway, instead of playing the piano, I go dancing at salsa clubs. Well, unfortunately, the Taiwanese way is to take lessons, memorize steps and count in my ear. I'd rather feel the music have "sweet nothings" whispered in my ear (even if I dance badly), but whatever... at least I can leave the counting /memorizing to someone else.

Babel Fish - Spanish, but no Serbian

I am just keeping it short today because I am busy wasting time in other ways! One of my online hobbies (for both personal and professional use) is checking/editing/translating using online dictionaries and translation tools.

My favorite translation site is Babel Fish. You can translate from several languages into several other languages. I tried this one with Korean first. I typed in simple phrases and the translations were almost always nearly perfect... even deleting subject pronouns as Korean speakers would... Complicated sentences are another story, however.

Now I use it for other languages, too... languages new to me like Spanish. Unfortunately, not all languages are represented. If you want to translate Serbian, you are out of luck! However, there are always ways around this. Just email me with your Serbian language needs and I will send them to Slovenian friend and translator extraordinaire (I hear she also does Croatian, Italian, German... ) or sign up for on-line Serbian lessons! This one is fun as you can drag your cursor over the word and hear the meaning... or click the speech bubble to hear the phrase spoken...

Click below to translate this page!

Double Ten Day

On October 10th, 1911, the Manchu government was overthrown and the Republic of China was born (in other words-Taiwan). This is a significant holiday here... and lucky for me, due to the fact that my office is kitty-corner to the presidential office (where the festivities and parades are held), the whole building is closed from the evening of the 9th until after the festivities. Unfortunatly I will miss the double ten day events as I don't want to go to my work neighborhood on a day off... particularly not when there will be crowds of people and traffic jams. Today, however, I got to see the soldiers and police out in full force and various martial arts and other local dance groups practicing for the big day!

Inverse and causal relationships: Stress and Procrastination

As much as I LOVE my job-I mean I must love it seeing as I am still here after more than two years of overwork and stress- I sometimes want to pack it all up and leave the country. In particularly, during busy periods (like now) I occasionally stop and take time to ponder, Why is it that the more I have to do, the more I stress and the more I stress, the more I procrastinate? This is truly perverse as procrastination doesn''t solve the problem of "Will I ever finish?" and results in there being even more to stress about.

I will be sure to put "procrastinate" on my WHAT NOT TO DO IN MY NEXT LIFE list!

Transience and a Shrinking World

Why is it that as as soon as you get "settled" into a new place, either you or your friends move to a new locale and the whole adjusting process starts again? While it is difficult to constantly be saying goodbye, the negative is balanced somewhat by the happy thought that the world shrinks just a little more as the number of places where you have friends grows.

I moved to Taiwan in the winter of 2001. The first person I met was a fellow Canadian waiting for the airport bus into Taipei. We sat together on the airport bus and I discovered she had just transfered to Taipei and was working in the field I was coming here to explore. Who'd have thought 6 months later, I would be working at the same company? Funnier still is that a month into the job, she received a letter from a friend she met on one of her many travels. This friend said that her neighbor's daughter was also working in Taipei and that the neighbor said her daughter was the most responsible, hard-working, blah blah blah girl you'd ever want to meet! How embarrassing it is that it turned out to be MY MOTHER! It's truly already a small world!

Now that friend is living in Vancouver. Ironically enough, I moved here from Vanouver, but almost none of my University friends remain there anymore and most of the people I know that live in "Vancouver proper" are all people I met in Taiwan! My former Vancouver friends/family are now in LA, London, Toronto, Barbados, etc.

This makes it hard to just call up one of my old (longer-term) friends and meet up for coffee... but it makes planning vacations more interesting. Since one (or more) party will have to travel anyway, we can pick some exotic destination neither has as yet visited. I think it was the Dalai Lama that said that one should try to visit a place one has never been to occasionally... I probably it in one of those annoying PowerPoint chain-mail slide shows that people keep circulating. Hmmm...