Day 146 - Van Gogh Go

Saturday, July 2nd, 2016

Smog

3/3 Mountains

Personified

The hangover declares today null. Drink from last night also seems to have held the door open and insisted on a brief visit from our good friend, the mild cold. Might as well invite these unwanted, annoying guests along for a ride to DQ.

Ice Cream and Evil

Aurora says I owe her ice cream. I don't, but ice cream on a scorcher? Who can complain? Whatever you say. It’s about time to try one of those exotic flavors of blizzards. Green tea and almond. I know Westerners often don't like green tea flavouring, but I dig it, man.

Aurora and Shimou maliciously cut Dexter and me out of conversation by veiling everything in their evil Chinese language. Shimou counters that our occult Chinese is clearly good enough. Hah.

We pop around to visa places for some research. The Chinese folks will have to pay ¥300 per person (roughly $60 CAD) for their Japanese visas. Sucks when compared to American or Canadian Fees. Hint/Reminder: There are none. There's this giant shrine to Van Gogh that was erected next to the mall. I thought it was free. I was wrong. ¥300 per person. Let's... just take some silly pictures and pretend we went..

Placating The Beast

Dexter demanded food. To avoid his righteous anger, I meekly suggested the Chinese canteen, which has filling, if oily, meals. ¥13-19, including a drink - hot damn. 

Originally From BlueChair 

Over dinner, I shock Aurora with how I view Chinese as simple, and lacking depth*. We also cover the comics** I most like, and Aurora's struggle with focusing vs diverse areas of study. I can relate. I tried to help by bringing up the things I mentioned in my post "How to be Smarter.” I argue that now is one of the best times in history to be a jack of all trades. We have all information we could ever want and access to any tools we could need at a click of a button. 

Ink Blot Polyglot

Original Found At GunShow

How does this question rub you: would you rather reach 95% proficiency in one language over 10 years, or 80-90% proficiency in 5-8 languages within the same time frame. I don’t even have to think about it. Polyglot status? Don’t mind if I do!

Wyatt parted ways, telling the girls that he expects them to know what they want to do with their lives the next time they meet, referring to my (over) explanation of existential angst. Mainly because of this amazing, short comic. Seriously, give it a click. This post is over. It's too big to load here, or I'd do it.

*for the sake of reducing intimidation when learning it.
**Scattered throughout this post, and also caused me to have to try and explain "Existential crisis" in a number of ways. Not an easy concept even to explain in English...

Words of the Day

English - Mandarin [pronunciation]

English (language)
yīngyǔ
[ying-you]

Ice Cream
bīng qí lín
[bing-chee-leen]
Evil
xié è de
[she-eh uhh duh]

Editing Music
Dead!
My Chemical Romance