happylife

A boiler

This is a picture of the boiler which is set underground of my apartment. It provides hot water to more than 200 rooms in the building so that we can heat our rooms, take a hot shower, and wash dishes. In the same way as most apartments in Vancouver, the cost of this boiler facility is included in my room rent and I can use hot water as much as I want. That is to say, I don't have to pay extra for heating in winters and I don't have to take care of heating cost. I am very happy because I know my friend living in Hokkaido, the north part of Japan, pays $300 a month for heating from October to April. Anyway the controller in my room is out of order and I can't completely stop the heating even in warm days. My room is always like a tropical island and I live here in only one T-shirt.

Flight plan

I'm now preparing for the 150NM long cross-country flight tomorrow. It is the last big job before the flight test. I have to do everything for the flight by myself; checking the weather, drawing lines on charts, estimating flight time and fuel consumption, and opening the flight plan by telephone to FSS, Flight Service Station. The designated flight course is Boundary Bay - Chilliwak - Hope - Chilliwak - Pit Meadows - Abbotsford - Boundary Bay. I'm supposed to fly zigzag over the east of Vancouver area. Unfortunately or Fortunately, the weather is bad and the tomorrow flight would be postponed, so I have enough time to make a more detailed plan.

Cantaloupe

A melon with mesh used to be a super expensive and valuable fruit in Japan when I was a child. It was a special fruit, which was so expensive that we could have it only when we got sick seriously. Fortunately for these past years, owing to the invention of new kinds of melons, the price of meshed melons has been getting down. Today I got this small meshed melon, a cantaloupe exactly, whose price was only 79 cents each. It was so cheap that I suspected it was rotten, and of course it wasn't. I divided it into two and one of them I enjoyed after supper. It was a forty-cent, gorgeous desert. Any way, older people sometimes say that bananas used to be super expensive fruit which are now one of the cheapest fruits. I think younger generation would someday say, "I can't believe melons used to be a precious fruit."

The sun and clouds

Fortunately it has been good weather these days in Vancouver, and I can see spectacular sun sets every day. Today's sunset was gorgeous owing to the clouds. We usually think that clouds deteriorate the sun set, however, a few clouds add variety to the sun set scene. Although the sun is behind the clouds in this picture, the bottom of the clouds are lightened by the reflected sunlight from the land and the sea. The clouds look more vivid and solid. It was such a beautiful sunset that I stopped my car to watch it for a while on the way back from the airport in Delta.

Framer

I found an interesting framing service in the Internet. It is a free service in which we can add a customized frame to any pictures in the Internet. I got this Canadian stamp image from my original picture using this framing service. I feel definitely this kind of service, I mean which is offered in the Internet for free or very low price, is increasing day by day. It's super convenient because we don't have to purchase software packages, and we don't even install them in our computers. Owing to the increase of the Internet speed and the spread of new software technology, we can do almost anything we want with only one computer with no application software except web browser.

Shot by a policewoman

Last night, on the way back from the airport, I was shot by a policewoman with her speed gun. She stopped me and showed me the number on the speed gun display which was "96km/h." She taught me that the speed limit in Vancouver was 50km/h and my excessive speed was 46km. I was charged $368 at first and then she reduced the price to $196. I don't know exactly the reason of this discount. I guess she felt pity for me because I pretended to be a new comer to Vancouver. Anyway, I have to be more careful not to drive so fast and not to be caught again. I'm going to the driving license center in 30 days to pay the fine so as to be reduced another $25.

Different colors

When I got up and look out of the window early in this morning, I saw this strange scene. The sea was separated in two colors very clearly. It is so called "the juncture of the two currents." It is caused by two kinds of sea water different in the temperature, the concentration of salt, and the biological content like plankton. I have seen this border from three angle, that is from the sky, on the water, and in the water. When I fly over it, it looks like geometric patterns. When I sail on it, it is like a garbage accumulation place. Lots of logs, branches, seaweeds, and sometimes bottles are accumulated on the boundary and it is dangerous to run motors of boats because they could be caught. When I dove into the sea in southern countries, and swam across the border which was not a line but a face in the sea, it was shimmering like a heat haze and I felt an abrupt change of the temperature. It was an amazing experience.

Analyzing radio voice

Radio call is the biggest obstacle for me before getting the flight license. In order to overcome my difficulties in listening English, I decided to count on technology including an MP3 voice recorder and sound analyzing software. Recording all the radio calls during my flight and listening to the obscure parts again and again until they make sense, that is my new training which looks like a detective job. Using this voice analyzing software I can listen to just the phrase which is not clear repeatedly and at slow speed. It's a great software but I still have lots of unclear parts in the recorded radio voice. Today I asked my friend for help about this voice analyzing job. He is a native English speaker who has recently got the flight license. Surprisingly he couldn't recognize the phrase after listening to it several times. What I understood was that focusing just to the radio voice is not a good idea because we can use any other information while flying such as the flight course, requested procedure, and visual information. Anyway I have to get used to it as early as possible.

Someone broke in?

Do you think someone broke into my room? No, it's only filthy. My room is usually filthy and it is now ultimately filthy for some reasons. I had back pain last week and couldn't clean my room at all, but it doesn't explain everything because I have had no back pain for couple of these days. The more filthy, the less comfortable. This law is usually true, but when the filthiness surpasses a level the opposite rule applies; the more filthy the room, the more cozy and the more comfortable. My room has surpassed the level and it is very cozy. Do you agree with this idea? If you do, your room must be dirty like mine. Anyway I don't care about my room. That's a small problem, but my large problem is that my brain is in a state of disorder with a lot of to-do things just like my room.

Rhubarb pie

The other day I got this rhubarb pie at a supermarket. Although I didn't know "rhubarb" but I remembered that one of the instructor in my flight school had said "Rhubarb pie at the cafe in Chilliwack airport is the number one." The pie I got this time was actually "rhubarb strawberry pie" and the taste of strawberry was so strong that I couldn't make it sure which was exactly the taste of rhubarb. My dictionary was not my help about this word because there is no rhubarb in Japan. It says that rhubarb is rhubarb, that's it! I had been feeling in the fog about rhubarb these days, however, today I happened to see real rhubarb in the vegetable corner of a supermarket. It was red and just like huge celery. I ate a small piece of the vegetable but it had no taste. The real taste of rhubarb is still in the fog for me.