Winter Storm

Hard to believe it is already February first.  Where do the days go?  It has been getting warming in Charleston recently, and despite the winter storm blowing though, it will only get warmer.  Hopefully then I’ll be able to take the family out for exploring downtown Charleston and all it has to offer.

I’ve been busy cooking away recently, particularly on the grill.  Winter is the best season to grill because you can keep warm in front of the flames while you cook a good hearty meal. Nothing like coming in from the cold after grilling to a warm home and a hot meal, eh? I’ve grilled a few steaks, some home-made cheeseburgers, and a new favorite, miso-marinated chicken.  Aichi-ken will just not let go of me, I have to get my miso fix from time to time. Speaking of Japanese food…

Daikon at the supermarket – the picture doesn’t show it well, but it is much smaller than the daikon in Japan, and more expensive too.  Of course when it comes to aubergines, they are tiny in Japan and gigantic in the USA.  Could it be an analogy on a standardized test?  Daikon : Japan :: Aubergine : United States

So I finally saw the Avatar 3D IMAX film after hearing everyone rave about it since late December.  While the story ended a little bit too happy for my tastes, the 3D effects and the virtual world they created for the film completely blew me away.  I had no idea that computer graphics had progressed this far.  The 3D was really interesting too, it makes you feel like you are so much more apart of what is going on.  I can see the film industry splitting in two in the future, however.  One will do classic film, perhaps the big name stars who refused to be computerized, as well as the art-nouveau types.  Then there will be the Hollywood blockbusters and animated features that go to 3D filming. Apparently 3D television sets are due on the market soon too…anyway.  Even if you’re not into science fiction at any level, go see this film just to enjoy the visual world they’ve created.  It is fabulous on the big screen!

I was back in Charlotte just in time for a big winter storm.  Snow was dumped all over the mid-Atlantic, and while many people groaned and whined about the winter storm, it made my year.  I wish it snowed every year!  The white snow blanketed the ground and made everything look nice and clean once again.

How can you not like this?

I’ve seen my snow for 2010, so I can try to be a better sport about the intense summer coming up in a few months.

So what is up with Toyota?  As the proud–yet now rather embarrassed–owner of a Toyota RAV4 that will need to be recalled, I wonder if it was worth the extra money to buy from Toyota.  Though visually the RAV4 looks better than the mini-SUV from Hyundai, the prices and warranties from Hyundai are much better.  I bought the Toyota for the company’s reputation for quality and safety, but in trying to top GM for the #1 in sales spot, Toyota seems to have lost their magic.  All they had to do was wait for GM to go bust again.  My fingers are crossed that my gas pedal doesn’t get stuck anytime soon.  CTS Corp. and Toyota…work overtime to build the new part and ship it to the dealers ASAP! C’mon!

State of the Union Address

I just finished watching the State of Union Address to the Joint Sesssion of Congress.  I must say that it was nice to be able to pause the program while I put the little one in the bath and then get back to where I was–the extra money for the DVR is worth it.

So I watched the address on C-SPAN as there was no way I was going to watch it on CNN or some other news network with a bunch of talking-head pundits offering their opinions and pollution.  I never really paid attention to such these big political speeches in the past, but a lot happened this past year.  I never noticed how the congressmen and senators stand-up or remain seated due to how they feel about what the President says.

So some observations:

• Obama came out strong and gave Congress the good public slap in the face it needed.
• Obama is dreaming if he thinks this country can ever be a leading and export-driving nation in Green Energy.  Especially not when the Green Energy businesses currently in the US are looking to move to China to–wait for it–reduce manufacturing costs.
• It was nice to see Obama address the budget issue, particularly, pointing out how much the budget deficit grew from 2000 (a surplus) to 2008 (huge hole).  He is unfairly blamed for much of the deficit by the Republican party, yet they didn’t vote it against the spending in 2000-2008.
• I enjoyed watching the body language between Obama and Congressman John Boehner–I guess they both know they have a fight coming…
• Three year spending freeze…yeah right!

Sometimes it just works?

I bought a new printer today because I have grown tired of having to pay the office supply store $15 to fax a twelve page document or pay $0.15 per page for photocopying, which really does add up.  I bought the Brother MFC-225CW, a machine with fax/copy/scan/print, all controllable by the computer over the wireless home network.

As I unboxed the machine I started to feel the dread coming over me–how many hours would it take me to get this machine working?  To my surprise, after following the quick-start guide step-by-step, I was able to get the printer configured and connected to the wireless network, and I even was able to print a document while sitting in another room.  It all worked in one go!  Just thought I’d share my moment of bliss, it probably won’t ever happen again.

Now I ought to buckle down on the income tax forms…

Taking things into my own hands

This year I have a couple of things I’d like to learn to do on my computer.  The first is that I’d like to figure out how to edit home videos and create DVDs from the videos.  The second task is that I’d like to create better language learning materials from podcasts and old cassettes. The latter seems much easier, so I decided to give it a shot today.

While I find listening to podcasts or recorded audio for language learning is fun and interesting the first time, when I want to review the core material, I don’t want to fiddle with rewind/fast-forward, and I certainly don’t want to hear the hosts’ banter and idle chit-chat.  What I want is repetition so I can practice getting the flow of the language.  Unfortunately, many podcasts and many language learning materials don’t offer the repetition that I’d like, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I found a free tool, Audacity, which offers the ability to chop up audio data into pieces visually on your PC or MAC. This tool is very easy to use–you do not have to be an audiophile or a computer expert to make use of it.  I first played around with recording my voice from the mic, and seeing what I’d get on the screen.  After fiddling with the settings, I saw that the tool can also use a PC or Mac built-in audio input jack to read an input signal.  This is the same jack you might use for a hands-free headset or an external mic.

I got out my old copy of  Communicate in Cantonese, which is a great little Cantonese course that comes with an audio tape containing the dialogues, vocabulary banks, and audio exercises.  While I don’t want the exercises for review, I would like to separate the vocabulary banks and dialogues into separate audio files so that I can listen to them for review whenever I’d like.

The Audacity GUI – while it might look technical, it is quite intuitive and user-friendly

Working with Audacity was very simple, and the following was my basic work-flow:

1. I connected my cassette player’s headphone jack to my Mac’s input jack with a stereo patch cable.  This will work whether you have an old walk-man (you didn’t throw yours out, did you?) or a cassette deck in your component stereo system.
2. I clicked the record button in Audacity, and then hit the play button on the walk-man.
3. After I had a few minutes of input, I stopped both.
4. Using the play, pause and stop buttons in the software, I found the sections of the recorded input that I wanted to isolate, and I selected a section by clicking on the start position and holding the mouse down, not releasing it until I came to the end position of the section.
5. Using the copy/paste options from Audacity’s Edit menu, I copied the selected audio data
6. From Audacity’s File menu, I created a new window, and in this window I pasted the previously selected data.  For the dialogs, I pasted the selected data ten times, each time moving the cursor to the end of the previous paste-action such that the next “paste” would be appended.
7. Once I was satisfied, from the file menu, I exported the contents of the new window to MP3, and voila, I was in business.

Skip this paragraph if you’re not interesting in the technical details, but for the curious: Audacity reads from a built-in mic or input jack and saves the data in pulse code modulated (PCM) format to a temporary file, which is simply the amplitudes of the input signal recorded serially in time.  From this format, it is possible to export to many different audio formats, such as the ubiquitous WAV on Windows(and Mac) or AIFF for Mac.  With the proper free plug-ins, it is also possible to save your files in MP3 or AAC encodings for your iPod, or any other popular encodings such as WMA or OGG.

While the process is very straight-forward, here are a few suggestions:

• input jack gain – in the GUI the gain is set rather low, and I recommend that you don’t increase the gain over 0.5.  Increasing the gain causes more “hissing” and white noise in your audio data
• cassette player volume – if the input volume is too small, try increasing your cassette player volume to the max volume.  This avoids the “hissing” noise that comes from increasing input gain on the audio input jack, but increases the level of your input signal
• When trying to copy/paste audio data, make sure the original data has been “stopped.”  When I tried to do so with the original data “paused,” the copy/paste actions were greyed out and unavailable
• If you export MP3s, for music, audiophiles will want a 256 kbps bit-rate, but for  language tapes, a bit-rate of 128 kbps is fine and it keeps the file size smaller
• for language learners – if you’re very patient, you can try inserting gaps between sentences in a dialog so that you can repeat the previous utterance, or perhaps take a stab at answering the question in the previous utterance before the actual answer comes.

While it does take time away from your study to make custom learning materials, I believe that we gain more from the ability to focus on the areas that of interest to us.  While I’m commuting to work or even sitting at my desk and doing my job, I can listen to the dialogs passively as I won’t be distracting trying to rewind or fast-forward my language learning materials.  Hopefully this will help make me more productive with my language studies this year.

Happy New Year

It’s New Year’s Day and I’m writing this with a perfect cup of Dong Ding Oolong Tea (凍頂烏龍茶) here in “Chas” where the high is 11 and the low is 8 degrees.  I was hoping for a walk outdoors today, but the New Year has not chased away the “monsoon”–it is raining…again.  The rain has been highly oppressive, and from the beginning of November the weather has been cool enough to really enjoy the outdoors, yet the rain never ceases.  Some days the rain is so heavy that the streets flood.  Other days the rain is off and on in short, heavy bursts.  I’m told this is life in a sub-tropical climate.  I always thought I’d like to live in Seattle, but if Seattle has this type of rain, I am seriously rethinking the city.

Notice the ground is wet…the rain did more to take the leaves from the trees than anything else

Autumn came and went in about three weeks, but the colors were spectacular

Enough talk of the weather though, I complain too much.  So 2009 has come and then gone, what a fast year!  Last year at this time I was enjoying Osechi Ryori (お節料理), the traditional Japanese meal on New Year’s Day, but my head was spinning due to politics and trouble at work, with doubts about my abilities and career prospects turning in my head. 2009 turned out to be a rather good year though, as I watched my son grow from an underweight infant to a healthy one-year old busy-body. I left a high-stress job I didn’t enjoy in Hachioji and am now working in a challenging and interesting work environment with a balanced work/home life-style and lots of potential for growth.

This skyline reminded me of the rolling, open skies of the Saitama prefecture plains

Japan feels so distant, almost like a another lifetime.  The next time I visit Japan I’m not sure what I am going to feel.  I’ll be a tourist and not a resident, and I hope that will bring back that feeling of interest and curiosity.  I still miss the urban lifestyle, and being able to walk and jump a train to anywhere–I’m already sick of my car.

I sure as hell miss the miso (味噌) ramen!

I miss the small shops you find when wondering around a neighborhood anywhere in Japan, such urban exploring is not really possible in most US cities.  I very much miss the mountains always sitting on the horizon and the rice fields of Sakado and they change through the seasons…  I really wish I would have taken a picture of the rice paddies once a month for at least a year, I regret never getting around to that.

Well, it is time to look forward though, and not to the past.  It is time for New Year resolutions, and if you’re the type that tries to be superior and says, “Oh, I don’t bother with them,” then bugger off you Scrooge!

Christmas went by quickly too, but we managed to put up a tree this year.  I don’t think Liam knew what to make of Christmas yet.

For 2010, my goals:

1. Jogging, three times a week – I’m coming up on the two-nine this year, and it won’t be long before the big three-zero.  I say it every year, but I really must get into a good aerobic habit.  My brother gave me the Nike+iPod receiver unit for my iPod, and I’m interested in getting out there and collecting stats–never give an engineer a data collection device.  I hope the community aspect will help keep me motivated too.
2. Explore – I may not be that impressed with “ol’ Boot” (South Carolina), but the state has a strong identity and a lot of history.  I hope to try to get out more this year and find some interesting sites, historical or simply natural.  I would also like to take a few weekend trips during the course of the year.  “Hotlanta” (Atlanta) is just four hours away and it seems to be the center of the Japanese community in the Southeast.  I know my wife would enjoy visiting the groceries, book stores and the restaurants there.  Savannah is just a little over two hours away and it has a small historic district like Charleston.  On a longer weekend, Northern coastal Florida is not out of the question, perhaps there is something interesting?
3. Improve my Mandarin – I may try to hire a tutor to correct my writing and with whom I can practice speaking.  For sure though I will work on my reading skills.  I won’t worry about language tests, my Japanese never improved by studying for Japanese proficiency tests.  I’m also going to look for a new listening practice method.  I’ve kind of fallen out with podcasts, there is just too much English, and not enough repetition of the core dialogue.  For reviewing, I want the dialogues only, I don’t want the banter and chit-chat from the hosts.  Or maybe I just need to learn how to chop up mp3s into parts…

Playing with the hats at the baby goods shop in Charlotte

Well, that’s it for now.  Happy New Year, world.  Let’s hope it will be a good one.  Please take away this rotten rain!

Watching the ice drift down the St. Lawrence River – I’d like to go back to Quebec again some day…

Thanksgiving Day

November has been extremely wet, with sudden showers and even heavy rains.  In the beginning of the month I thought that maybe Charleston even had a monsoon.  After bringing it up at work, a coworker reminded me I’m in a sub-tropical climate and that this is the rain season.  Besides the rain and grey skies though, the leaves are starting to change color and fall to the ground, and the air is comfortably cool at night.  Yes, autumn is *finally* upon us.

So I woke up around 10 AM on Thursday, feeling somewhat rested after a short yet busy week at work.  I knew I had to be back in the office on Friday, so I wanted to make the best of the day and enjoy it however possible.  The skies were blue and the morning air was pleasantly brisk and it felt like grand autumn day.  What a beautiful day for Thanksgiving!  By noon, however, it was up to 20 degrees while I was on the balcony staining my desk and I caught myself stumbling into a fowl mood.  I decided that I really just needed to take a walk and get a break from all of chores and what not.  So the three of us headed out for a walk around the area.  I brought my camera this time!

Presenting…the bog!

Now that the weather is cool in the mornings, we get a lot of fog.  I must make a real effort to get out and walk around the trails in the fog.  How eerily beautiful it must be!

Trees, tropical flora, Spanish moss, and the marsh grass–I really love the Spanish moss on the trees, it adds so much to the environment.

Out of the forest now and the sun light is now visible, though rapidly fading to the west

The marsh grasses, saltgrass or sweetgrass, I have no idea which, probably the former.  Wouldn’t want to venture out into it though.  Not only would you sink waist-deep and perhaps get stuck, you might also come across the fiendish cottonmouth or the nearly identical but non-venomous brown water snake.

Towards the end of the trail is the tennis club.  Lessons start at $60 and hour, and the optional membership is $700 for the individual. There are a few tournaments here during the year, and the pros even come through from time to time on the circuit.  I can dream about a membership and private lessons, right?

Nobody plays on Thanksgiving.  I guess they’re glued to the football games on TV or busy preparing for the big feast…so tempting to just climb the fence!

Speaking of the big feast, due to having to work the next day we stayed in town and I tried to cook a small Thanksgiving dinner.  A traditional dinner would consist of turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes or yams, green beans, and of course pumpkin pie.  With just two of us though, I wasn’t going to bother with something like that.  I picked up a Long Island-style duckling at the super market, and I also found a nicely-sized butternut squash.  It’s close enough to a pumpkin, eh?

So our menu was roast duck with an orange-peach glaze, butternut squash bisque, sweet potato wedges, and a plain ol’ salad.  Not very traditional, but still very “autumn.”  If you’ve never tried butternut squash bisque, I highly recommend it.  It takes about two hours to prep but its well worth it.

Ingredients (for 5~6):
• 2 lb. butternut squash
• a pint or more of soup stock (I used chicken stock)
• a cup of heavy cream
• a small onion
• olive oil
• peppercorns, salt, and any other spices you like

The first step is to separate the butternut squash “meat” from the skin.  To do this, split the squash in two, clean out the insides, and place the halves face up in an oven pan with about a centimeter of water in the bottom at 175 degrees C for an hour.  Add more water if the level starts to get low as the water evaporates.

After about an hour, take the squash out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes.  The skin should peel easily from the flesh of the squash with the help of a decent knife.  After you got the flesh out, cut it into small pieces so that when we boil them down it doesn’t take too long.  While you’re at it, dice the small onion finely and set it aside.

In a deep enough pot (4 qt.), add some olive oil and the diced onions and let the water seep out of the onions in the pot.  Add your chopped up butternut squash, and add enough soup stock to cover the butternut squash completely.  Cover, and let it come to a boil on medium-high.  Stir occasionally, smashing up big chunks of the squash if you have the opportunity.  As time goes buy the squash will break down and the any lumps will be small enough to become “character” in the soup.  You may need to add more stock depending on how thin you like your soup and how well broken down the squash is.  Don’t add too much though as we still need to add the cream near the end.  When you’ve gotten the soup to a texture that you like, turn the heat to a very low setting and continue stirring.  Add any spices, salt, peppercorns or what not now so that it can be absorbed by the soup.  I like to leave it at this stage for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

When you’re ready to serve, add the cream and stir it into the soup.  Stir occasionally for a few minutes, and then serve.  A 2 lb. butternut squash should produce enough bisque to feed at least six, and you can always save it and heat it up later.

The final product–a taste of autumn with a sprinkle of crushed rainbow peppercorns on top

The duck came out well too, though the appearance was not as nice as I’d hoped for.  I followed The Hungry Mouse’s recipe, but I made my own glaze with Shoyu, Mirin, and peach jam rather than honey and molasses.

Not too shabby for our first Thanksgiving in the USA.

The sweet potato wedges were great too.  I first tried them back in September on a job interview in Connecticut.  The sweetness of the sweet potato combined with a bit of salt and pepper is a great combination.

To all of those celebrating Thanksgiving, hope you had a good one!

Pretzels!

Over the summer my brother showed me how to make soft pretzels, and I finally gave it a go myself.  I love working with dough, kneading and working it.  Pretzels are just as fun as a loaf of bread, and a lot less work too.  It took about 15 minutes of prep time, followed by about thirty minutes for the rise time, and finally about ten minutes per try to cook in the oven.  The result:

The one on the right is for Liam, without salt of course.  The little man surprised me by taking to croissants a little while back, so I thought I’d make him a small pretzel and see if he’d like it.  Life father like son!  He ate about three-quarters of it, believe it or not, and he might have had at the whole thing except that pretzels being pretzels, they get harder once they cool down.

I am really enjoying having an oven.  I’ve cooked up pizzas just like I did in Hachioji, but I think due to the size of the oven and the amount of heat , the crust comes out so much better than what I could do with the small range oven in Hachioji.  I need to start working on a few bread loaves sooner or later.

After warm pretzels, some play time, and a warm bath, any one would sleep like this.

The Fall of the Wall and Zeiss

This week the world is remembering and once again celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. The BBC World Service has been broadcasting various reports over the week, and last night there was a wonderful piece about Carl Zeiss AG.  The BBC has made the podcast available so download and give it a listen!

Carl Zeiss is one of the premier lens makers in the world.  One can find Carl Zeiss lenses almost anywhere, even in modern Nokia mobile phones.  The audio report covers the history of the company, how it became a global name in optics, and how the company was split into two because of the iron curtain.  It was interesting to learn that the American and Russians, in their push to capture Germany, were strategically planning which towns they wanted to take based on the companies located there and their technologies.

The most interesting part, in my opinion, is the interview with a former Zeiss president who was in change when the wall came down.  While he was happy that Germany would be reunited, he realized the challenges of trying to unify the company once again.  After meetings with the Jena Zeiss, the company in Eastern Germany, he realized that Jena Zeiss had the following problems:

• low productivity
• 60,0000 vs. 18,000 workers, yet with the same turnover
• no knowledge of balance sheets or PNL (profit and loss)
• no knowledge of marketing and selling products
• no business strategies

While it must have been hard to reunite the company, can you imagine how the leaders of Jena Zeiss and its workers must have felt?  They were from a world where the government gave them orders on what and how much to produce.  They were then thrown into a world that they had no clue about, and their skills were not needed by a capitalist organization trying to compete in the beginning of the global economy.

It is hard to believe just twenty years ago Germany was still split in two.  The challenge of reuniting not only the country at the governmental level, but also in the marketplace, must have been extremely challenging and trying.  Someday the challenge may surface again in Korea, and hopefully the Germans will be able to share what they learned in the reunification process.

Dimensional analysis

I decided to start using the mini-gym in the company building.  I ran on the treadmill for thirty minutes today, and I had planned to take it easy and set the speed to 5.0.  After warming up and breaking into a run, after just ninety-second my legs were tightening and I was started to feel a little beat.  ”I’m incredibly out of shape,” I thought to myself.  I did not realize until later that I had set the speed to 5.0 without thinking of the units.  5.0 km/h is a brisk walk or comfortable jogging pace.  5 mph, or 8.0 km/h, while a good workout rate for jogging, is not the best idea to start off with when you haven’t run in almost a year.

I can just hear my my electromagnetics professor spouting off on units and dimensional analysis in his thick Nairobi accent.  I foresee sore legs tomorrow…

The Best Pho in Southeast Virginia

The works: beef pho with tripe, brisket and flank

Though chicken pho, Pho Ga, is very tasty and delicious, my favorite is beef pho.  I’ve tried pho in various parts of the mid-Atlantic, but my favorite shop is Pho 79 in Virginia Beach.  For around $7.00 you get a regular-sized bowl of pho, as pictured above, and for a dollar or two more you can get the larger size, which seems to be quite popular with growing teenage boys.  There are other Vietnamese foods on menu, such as spring rolls, rice vermicelli dishes, and seafood dishes.  They have a fabulous peanut brown sauce for dipping spring rolls.  I wish I knew the Vietnamese name of the sauce!

The atmosphere is very simple–tables and chairs in a large open area, TV in the corner with a news station, and the owners sitting towards the back trimming vegetables and preparing springs rolls and what not.  The walls have some simple art with Chinese floating-world paintings of the bucolic Vietnamese countryside, as well as maps of Vietnam.  All in all it is a nice relaxing atmosphere to enjoy a simple meal like a bowl of pho.

Pho 79
4816 Virginia Beach Blvd.
Virginia Beach, VA 23462