Small World
Small World
It is a small world and I am not referring to the Walt Disney song or the ride at any of the Magic Kingdoms.
Last month, I got picked up by a new chat acquaintance from China. Like the majority of the Chinese who have wanted to chat with me over the years, Emily is a student who wanted to practice her English language skills in a static online sort of way. It is easy to be friendly so I participate in the exchanges.
I offer to chat with them and correct or rather suggest better ways to say something. The students learn text book English which is fine except that it is not recognized by most English speakers. Emily, for example, used the term ‘salary earners’ which was correct in her context. I suggested that she consider using the term ‘workers’ since that word was more commonly used in every day English.
Emily asked me if I could help her with her master’s thesis project that will be on American health insurance programs. I won’t write her paper. I will offer her explanations of our health insurance programs and look up information for her and locate appropriate web sites for her to go to on her own and discover the answers to her research. I have sent Emily about 7MB of material that I had on my hard drive so far.
Emily lives in a dormitory at her university with three other women. One of her roommates also wants my help with her thesis project on the American retirement system. Fortunately for me, there is an overlap on the subject matter so the work I do to find articles is reduced.
Last night, I was chatting with Emily and her roommate Sunny at the same time about their research projects. This was the first time in my ten years of dinking around ICQ where I have had multiple conversations when the other parties have been in the same room.
I thought this was fascinating. Alternatively, I have a very low threshold of intellectual excitement.
My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon and I talked for about an hour and a half over the weekend. Sharon had lots of questions about an issue she ran into at work.
I try to be helpful and friendly to all so I tried to answer her questions.
Unfortunately, Sharon did not have all of the most useful, and therefore the most helpful, information available to her when we spoke. Answering questions without all of the information is like working in a vacuum. The answers are valid and correct under a very limited set of conditions and circumstances.
Sharon wanted to know why I kept changing my answers.
I said I changed my answers because you provided me with new information and therefore changed the factual set of conditions. In the end, I think I helped her to understand the answers.
There are the unanswered questions of why the program was allowed to go forward, what were the objectives, and why were the objectives set so low?
Doug
Doug’s cancelled meeting from last week was rescheduled for this morning. He stopped by my flat for lunch on his way to school. Since we went to El Gringo last week, we went to Fatburger today.
We had Kingburgers with cheese and fat fries for lunch. One of the first things I noticed when we walked in was the price increases, up about 20% or so from the last time I was there. It took for what seemed like an eternity to cook and prepare the meals. I think we were waiting for close to twenty minutes which was much longer than what I have experienced normally.
The longer than usual wait can be attributed to two areas. The staff is not very efficient or the number of orders was just too much for the staff of four to process effectively. I have seen other work groups in the local Fatburger who were much more organized and effective.
All of this leads me to a gnawing question, where will Doug and I eat on Friday when he comes out to help me move some heavy furniture around? Fatburger is out since we went there today. That leaves us with El Gringo, always a sound and spicy choice, and an In n Out Hamburgers store, another good choice.
I will leave the food venue selection up to Doug.
Cleaning
I did some cleaning around the flat today. I took two large boxes of books out to my storage unit and that made my bedroom seem less crowded. I also tossed a bunch of old and no longer needed papers in the recycle bin.
Doug and I will get rid of some old furniture on Friday and that will be nice. Of course, once you get rid of the furniture, you do have to replace it so that will be something of a chore but the furniture store will deliver the new stuff in their big truck that will be driven by a crew of workers with the proper handling equipment.
Woman of the Moment
The remaining Oksana Mazurovsky photos are of her in bikinis or similar attire.
I mentioned this to Doug at lunch. He looked up from his Kingburger said, “And your point would be what Dad?” That does make a great deal of sense to me. It certainly is not our fault that Oksana chose to be photographed in bikinis a lot of the time.
Be well and stay happy.
It is a small world and I am not referring to the Walt Disney song or the ride at any of the Magic Kingdoms.
Last month, I got picked up by a new chat acquaintance from China. Like the majority of the Chinese who have wanted to chat with me over the years, Emily is a student who wanted to practice her English language skills in a static online sort of way. It is easy to be friendly so I participate in the exchanges.
I offer to chat with them and correct or rather suggest better ways to say something. The students learn text book English which is fine except that it is not recognized by most English speakers. Emily, for example, used the term ‘salary earners’ which was correct in her context. I suggested that she consider using the term ‘workers’ since that word was more commonly used in every day English.
Emily asked me if I could help her with her master’s thesis project that will be on American health insurance programs. I won’t write her paper. I will offer her explanations of our health insurance programs and look up information for her and locate appropriate web sites for her to go to on her own and discover the answers to her research. I have sent Emily about 7MB of material that I had on my hard drive so far.
Emily lives in a dormitory at her university with three other women. One of her roommates also wants my help with her thesis project on the American retirement system. Fortunately for me, there is an overlap on the subject matter so the work I do to find articles is reduced.
Last night, I was chatting with Emily and her roommate Sunny at the same time about their research projects. This was the first time in my ten years of dinking around ICQ where I have had multiple conversations when the other parties have been in the same room.
I thought this was fascinating. Alternatively, I have a very low threshold of intellectual excitement.
My Friend Sharon
My friend Sharon and I talked for about an hour and a half over the weekend. Sharon had lots of questions about an issue she ran into at work.
I try to be helpful and friendly to all so I tried to answer her questions.
Unfortunately, Sharon did not have all of the most useful, and therefore the most helpful, information available to her when we spoke. Answering questions without all of the information is like working in a vacuum. The answers are valid and correct under a very limited set of conditions and circumstances.
Sharon wanted to know why I kept changing my answers.
I said I changed my answers because you provided me with new information and therefore changed the factual set of conditions. In the end, I think I helped her to understand the answers.
There are the unanswered questions of why the program was allowed to go forward, what were the objectives, and why were the objectives set so low?
Doug
Doug’s cancelled meeting from last week was rescheduled for this morning. He stopped by my flat for lunch on his way to school. Since we went to El Gringo last week, we went to Fatburger today.
We had Kingburgers with cheese and fat fries for lunch. One of the first things I noticed when we walked in was the price increases, up about 20% or so from the last time I was there. It took for what seemed like an eternity to cook and prepare the meals. I think we were waiting for close to twenty minutes which was much longer than what I have experienced normally.
The longer than usual wait can be attributed to two areas. The staff is not very efficient or the number of orders was just too much for the staff of four to process effectively. I have seen other work groups in the local Fatburger who were much more organized and effective.
All of this leads me to a gnawing question, where will Doug and I eat on Friday when he comes out to help me move some heavy furniture around? Fatburger is out since we went there today. That leaves us with El Gringo, always a sound and spicy choice, and an In n Out Hamburgers store, another good choice.
I will leave the food venue selection up to Doug.
Cleaning
I did some cleaning around the flat today. I took two large boxes of books out to my storage unit and that made my bedroom seem less crowded. I also tossed a bunch of old and no longer needed papers in the recycle bin.
Doug and I will get rid of some old furniture on Friday and that will be nice. Of course, once you get rid of the furniture, you do have to replace it so that will be something of a chore but the furniture store will deliver the new stuff in their big truck that will be driven by a crew of workers with the proper handling equipment.
Woman of the Moment
The remaining Oksana Mazurovsky photos are of her in bikinis or similar attire.
I mentioned this to Doug at lunch. He looked up from his Kingburger said, “And your point would be what Dad?” That does make a great deal of sense to me. It certainly is not our fault that Oksana chose to be photographed in bikinis a lot of the time.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 3:53 PM
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