happylife

IKEA

IKEA is a very popular Swedish furniture store which is now running all over the world including Canada. It was almost three years ago when I came to Vancouver and visited this store for the first time. I bought there the minimum list of furniture which I needed to start my new life in Vancouver. I bought a bed, a desk, a chair, and a book shelf. While I have been living in Vancouver, the number of books were increasing and finally the book shelf got full. The excessive books were piled here and there on the floor, and my room was getting nothing but messy. I decided to get a new book shelf but I wondered if the same type of book shelf was still sold because it is quite natural that every product goes through model changes within a short duration in Japan. I was happy when I found last night, just the same type of book shelf in the store. I think it very important for the maker of daily necessities like furniture or stationery to keep selling just the same type of products for a long time without changing models, because those products are supposed to be used for a long time and replacement is sometimes required. I heard IKEA is going into Japan next spring. I hope this style of business goes well and takes root in Japan where model changes take place almost every week!

SuDoku

SuDoku is an addictive puzzle game like a crossword puzzle. It was originally invented in Japan, however, it is not so popular in the country. After it was introduced in a newspaper in North America, it has won a big market not only in North America but also in Europe. It is so popular that I found a special corner of Su Doku in a bookstore in Vancouver. The name of this puzzle game indicates the rules of it. Su means number and Doku means bachelor in Japanese. There are 9 x 9 grids made of nine 3 x 3 grid boxes, and some of the cells have one digit number from 1 to 9. The object of this game is to fill in all the cells with a number. When you play it, every row, column, and box has to contain all the numbers from 1 to 9. The rule is very simple but in order to solve it, highly logical thinking is required. That is one of the reason of this popularity of this game. They are playing it to prevent senility.

Twilight?

This is the sky which I saw at first soon after waking up this morning. I was happy because the weather seemed to be good after the long rain. Anyway, when I was a high school student, I was taught that the word "twilight" originates from two lights, that is the sun and the moon, however according to my dictionary, it means the faint light after the sun has gone down. If I believe my dictionary, this morning sky was not twilight because it was not after the sun has gone down. Thinking about the origin, the former idea which I was taught in my school and had been believing for years, seems more natural, but not only one dictionary says it is after the sun has gone down. I wonder which is the correct definition of twilight.

CARs

CARs stands for Canadian Aviation Regulations. It is an original text of regulations for pilots in Canada. Whenever we need to know the exact rules or definitions about flight relatives, we can look it up get the correct answer. It is originally provided as huge files of paper documents and now we can get it on the Internet for free. I'm now reading it almost everyday to prepare for the written exam. This is an example sentence in the documents.

When an aircraft is operated in the standard pressure region, each flight crew member who occupies a flight crew member position that is equipped with an altimeter shall immediately before conducting a take-off from an aerodrome, set the altimeter to the altimeter setting of the aerodrome or, if that altimeter setting is not obtainable, to the elevation of the aerodrome.

This sentence is too complex and difficult to understand especially for ESL students like me. Why don't they write it in simpler way so that everybody easily understand it? If I were the writer of Cars, I would write the sentence above like this;

In the standard pressure region, before the take-off, the altimeter should be set to the altimeter setting of the aerodrome. If it is not available, it should be set to the elevation of the aerodrome. This setting should be done by the crew member in front of the altimeter.

Which sentences do you think easier to understand?

Cleaning the desktop

I feel a strong enthusiasm for cleaning only when I am super busy. I know it is a kind of escape from the task I really have to do. Yesterday I cleaned and organized my desktop. This is the picture of my desktop after the cleaning. You might feel it isn't so clean, that is because you don't know the previous, chaotic situation on my desktop. Now that I feel comfortable sitting before the desk and there is nothing which disturbs my work, I should be able to concentrate on my number one priority work. Well, before that, I want to have a cup of coffee with a piece of chocolate which is out of stock in my refrigerator. I have to get it in a supermarket.

Precautionary landing

I'm now exercising precautionary landing. It is different from forced landing in which we have to land as soon as possible in case of emergency to the airplane. In the exercise of precautionary landing, it is assumed that something happened which is not emergent but makes it difficult to continue flying to the destination, such as the passenger getting sick, the weather conditions getting bad, or electrical damage to the airplane, for instance. In the exercise, we have to choose the best field to land considering the obstacles, wind, length, surface, and slope. We fly in a virtual circuit above the chosen field and inspect it from 500 feet above the ground. The surface conditions are assumed by the color of the field; light brown is the best color meaning dry mud field. Light green means low weeds, dark green means tall plants, and dark brown means wet conditions. In the Canadian regulations, we don't actually have to land for the practice and we do overshoot at the minimum height of 500 feet. The most difficult thing in this practice is that we have to control the airplane so as to fly on a virtual rectangle flight course. I need more practice.

Bumpy!

I had a booking for the flight lesson late this afternoon. The weather was not good but not too bad to fly. When my usual instructor came back from the air with her previous student, she felt sick because the air condition was so bumpy. As she couldn't fly any more today, and I didn't like to fly solo in such condition, therefore I flew with another Japanese instructor. The lesson was held in Japanese and I could learn about flying more than usual. Sure the weather was bad, especially the cross-wind was so strong that I had to change the compass heading more than 20 degrees, but I found that I still have a lot of problems about flying which I have to get over before the flight test. The radio communication was not the only problem. I'm just like taking two steps forward and one step backward.

Apple pears

Today I was happy because I found these pears in Safeway. They were labeled "apple pears" or "Asian pears." We call them in Japanese "20seiki" which means "21st century" or "Kosui" which means a "perfume." They are actually a kind of pears but not so sweet as so called the Western pears and they are very juicy. To tell the truth, it was my best fruit in Japan until I got to know the great taste of mangoes in Canada. The winter season in Canada is very cold except Vancouver, and it is getting hard to find Canadian grown fruits in a supermarket, however, lots of foreign fruits are supposed to be imported and compensate for the empty corner for fruits in a supermarket.

No change except the season

Yesterday afternoon, I cycled to Stanley Park after a long break which was almost one month long. It was the clear blue sky which I had been longing for a long time and fortunately or unfortunately, I had no booking for the flight lesson. While I was away from the park, the season has completely changed; the leaves have gotten yellowish, the air was rather cold, and my breath looked white. It was a perfect autumn scenery. Owing to the long rain, the forest looked more vivid and the air was so pleasant that I couldn't help smiling when I took a deep breath. Sure the season has changed, but any other things were still there without any change; seagulls were taking a rest on the beach, the ducks were eating something on the lakeside, people were enjoying cycling, rollerblading and jogging. In the perfectly peaceful situation, I lied down on a bench facing to English Bay and took a nap listening to piano music from a headphone. I was like in the heaven.

The 500th anniversary

I have been keeping this blog almost every day since I first started it last May, and this is the 500th memorial post. Of course I still have a lot of mistakes in my blog, but I feel much more comfortable when I use English. I would say "to use English" rather than "to write English" because writing requires reading skill and improve speaking and listening skill at one time. I think this is an excellent way  to improve practical English skills for most Japanese people who have learned much about English for a long time and who can't still use English like me. The only one problem while keeping English blog was that I often felt uneasy about my English sentences; I wasn't sure whether each English sentence in my blog was correct or not. This is why I made a native correction system which is now running as a commercial service and more than 100 Japanese students have experienced by now. There are a lot of ways to make good use of this simple system. I would share the way I recommend and actually I practice everyday; that is to print out the correction page and check your original sentences with the corrected sentences.