happylife

Recycling of an old PC

My laptop PC has been out of order for more than one year. It suddenly fails because of too much heat. I had been using it with additional cooling fans, but they were a little bit noisy, and I hadn't turned on this computer switch for several months. As I felt it wasteful, I decided to recycle the PC as a file and print server. I reinstalled WindowsXP on this machine and set it not to work too hard to produce excessive heat. His job is only connecting to a USB hard drive and printing one page of paper a day. Fortunately he is working well for now without failing down.

Crosswind landing attempt of A321

Thanks to the spread of the high-speed Internet, it is getting popular to enjoy video on the Internet. When I was zapping Google Video, I stumbled across this exciting landing scene of Airbus 321. In the extremely strong crosswind condition, this pilot is trying to land crabbing the Airbus 321. The huge body of the A321 is dancing violently just tens feet above the runway. It must have suffered from a wind shear and ground effect. It is interesting to see the fact that the A321 motion is almost the same as any other small airplane including the Cessna152. All the airplanes will be so small in front of Nature.

video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2367849993821094040

VISA extension

I'm now trapped in Canada as my student visa expired last month. It never means that I'm illegally staying in Canada because I applied for the visa extension by mail and am waiting for the updated visa arrives. As long as I stay here in Vancouver, it is no problem, but I can't go out of Canada because I can't re-enter Canada without any visa. The only inconvenient thing for me for now is that I have to purchase the expensive gas in Canada in stead of Pt. Roberts. It was more than one month before the expiry date that I sent a series of documents including the application fee to the immigration office, but I have not received any letter. Some of my friends say that they had to wait for more than two months before receiving their extended visa. The government process, especially the immigration related matters, is really slow in Canada.

Special Japanese sake

I brought special Japanese sake from Japan and enjoyed it at a sushi restaurant with my Japanese friends. It has special keywords "Junmai Daiginjo" on the label of the bottle. "Junmai" means pure rice, and Daiginjo means that the rice is polished until the weight reduces less than half of its original weight. Most people believe that sake is made from rice, but it is not true. More than 95 percent of sake made in Japan now contains sugar cane alcohol. In the worst case scenario in sake, it is diluted with sugar cane alcohol three times as much and is flavored with glucose to compensate for the thinned taste. It can't be called sake any more. I hear that this terrible drink appeared in the World War II, when rice was very precious, but now in Japan, rice is produced so much that rice fields are reduced by Japanese government, and this drink is still produced everyday because it makes more money for sake brewers. Anyway, this "Junmai Daiginjo" was very good with a fragrance of sweet fruit and a fresh taste.

Bureaucratic bungling

When I was cycling around Stanley Park yesterday after a long break, I stumbled across this sign board beside the cycling road. It says that the seawall is to be closed from yesterday until late May this year! I can't understand why they have to do their repair work now, because the best season for cycling and walking has just begun. As you know, Vancouver has no snow in winter and they could repair the road in the off season. I think they should have repaired it by now before the best season starts. This is nothing but a kind of bureaucratic bungling which exists in any countries. I have to say that the government work needs more consideration in Canada as well as in Japan.

Taro buns

Taro is a kind of potatoes with a little bit sweet taste, which is popular in Vancouver. I'm not sure where it has originally come from. I'm only certain that it hasn't come from Japan and Canada, because one of my Canadian friend didn't know taro. I guess it might have come from China or Southeast Asian countries. It is often used in Japanese tempura in Vancouver, but I have never seen such a dish in Japan. It is a kind of Vancouver's original menu. I sometimes get this taro bun at Chinese bakery. Taro jam is roughly kneaded into the dough with a texture of marble. It tastes and smells slightly sweet. As it suits to Japanese appetite it would sell well in Japan.

A red eye

I'm sorry to show you a zoomed photo of my grotesque red eye. I found half of my left eye was bleeding when I looked into the mirror this morning. As I had just the same symptom in my eye a few years ago, and as it doesn't hurt at all, I wasn't shocked so much, but it is true that my eye looks very strange and scary. The last time I had this red eye in Japan, of course I saw an eye doctor in Tokyo, but he told me there was no problem in my eye. My eye recovered in a week with the color from red to yellow, and yellow to white; in the way as he told me, therefore this time, I'm not worrying about it. As I know this red eye is turning into yellow, I thought about a funny thing; that is to say, if my right half part of my left eye bled in a week, and I wore a blue-colored contact lens, my left eye would look like a traffic signal with three colors!

Tiresome jobs

We crossed the border between PST and DST last night. 3:00 DST came next to 1:59 PST. Whenever summertime starts and ends, we have to adjust every clock in our room. As you know, a lot of home ware and daily sundries have a clock inside, such as a telephone, microwave, rice cooker, radio, and so on. Except for highly intelligent machines such as PC and PDA, which adjust the clock by itself, we have to adjust manually one by one. I did this tiresome jobs last midnight. It took about twenty minutes to adjust every items except for one device. It was the rice cooker that I couldn't adjust the clock without its handbook. I had to be looking for it for thirty minutes at midnight. I keep here the memo about how to adjust the rice cooker clock. "Push the HOUR or MINUTE button for more than one second until a clock mark starts blinking. Then click the HOUR or MINUTE button until it shows the correct time. The clock mark disappears automatically if you don't touch any buttons for more than three seconds."

Night rating

It was my first night flight last night. I flew the Cessna152 over Pt.Roberts and did the instrumental flight training with my instructor. As I had taken a two-month break, I've forgotten a lot of things, and my flight was terrible. Sure my flight was bad, but the night flight was great itself. The night view was spectacular and the airspace was calm. It was totally different from the busy and noisy situation under the daylight. I'll be loving night flying. After my first night lesson, I got a back seat of another student and took this picture. The trapezoid space surrounded by green, white, and red lights is the runway. Landing on the illuminated runway is cool.

The stronger the better

I've purchased a new vacuum cleaner at last. It was sold for C$59 at Canadian Tire, whose regular price was C$79. I was attracted by the words on the flyer, "SAME SUCTION as a typical FULL-SIZE VAC." I had learned from my old and compact-size vacuum cleaner that the most important thing for cleaners is power. I tried the new machine as soon as I got back home, and it worked much better than I had expected. The 1200W suction power was great! It swallowed all the dust in my room with a pleasant crackling sound. It was so pleasant that I was vacuuming my room for more than one hour until the brand new bag got full. It has four attachments and each of them worked great too. I couldn't help laughing when the brush attachment removed white dust from my black and nylon bag. The turbine attachment has a small rolling brush in it, which spins at a super high speed and agitate sticky dust in a carpet. I've changed my mind that I will clean my room once a week not a year.