Alive and Kickin'

First matter of business, happy birthday to me! Twenty four years ago today, in a little yellow house on 11th street, I came screaming and red-faced into the world. And not much has changed since!

Today has really been great. It started out with a delicious cup of Starbucks Via Cinnamon Spice instant coffee, my for-immediate-consumption birthday gift sent from Jarrod's mom. Okay, delicious. I'm sorry. I don't like cinnamon flavored coffee normally, but this was just fall in a cup, really. Just so, so wonderful.

In the morning, Jarrod and I went to Dakshinapan, a government emporium with shops from each state in India that sell goods from their respective states. It's a really great, quiet place, away from the crowds and noise of Kolkata, with the shops arranged around a large courtyard area. Kind of hard to explain, but nice to explore. The shopkeepers aren't too pushy, and the prices are fixed (I think!)

We had been once before, but went back with a goal in mind: to visit the Kashmir store for a purse for me, a few painted wooden boxes for our apartment, and two shawls for the coming winter. After a successful trip and some wandering around the shops, we took a cab back home so we wouldn't be late for our lesson.

This evening, then, we went out to one of our favorite restaurants, The Banana Leaf, with our friend Jordan and two of his friends, a Bengali girl and a guy from Bangladesh. It was great fun. When they found out it was my birthday they sang to me and made me blow out Jordan's lighter.

Anyway, here's some news from around here. Last Saturday, Sujitra came to cook for us as usual, but was complaining of back pain and looked all-around miserable. We told her, "Please--go!" but she insisted on cooking a vegetable and some rice for us before she left.

She hasn't been back since, even though she normally comes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I was beginning to get worried. So tonight when we ran into Poulami, another Fulbrighter who lives in our building, on our way out to supper, I asked her what was going on with Sujitra. Yeah--apparently, she has dengue. So, tomorrow I'm washing the dishes and doing laundry, because I don't know when she's going to be back with us.

Then I asked about the doorman, who had also been absent for about a week or two. Apparently he has malaria. So, um, yeah. I'm definitely going to be taking my pill and bathing myself in mosquito repellent.

Finally, I have to say. I've been delinquent in writing, but it's not even because I've been so busy with NaNoWriMo that I couldn't write, because NaNo definitely got shelved too (we had guests is my new answer). So I'm trying to catch up. Yesterday morning I had about 6,000 words. This evening I have 15,050 words. It's been crazy, I tell you, but fun.

No more slacking! Expect to hear more from me from now on.

If You Want to Study Bangla With Me...

Okay, let's forget about the fact that you most likely have no idea how to read the Bangla script. Let's also forget about the fact that there's no way you would use Bangla in everyday life.

You now have the ability to study Bangla along with me!

Since I have nothing exciting to write about--seriously, my life is boring--I thought I would type off a bit about my work on SuperMemo.net.

I first discovered SuperMemo when I was doing a research paper senior year in college about the Ubermann sleep schedule, that is, sleeping for thirty minutes every four hours with a grand total of three hours of sleep every 24 hours. You gain five hours! Turns out it's pretty much a crock, but competitive sailors, like the man who came up with SuperMemo, use sleep schedules like this to maximize time awake and therefore win races.

Anyway, that's off topic. SuperMemo is an online program (or a software program, purchasable for only $50) that uses some sort of complex algorithm to maximize learning by controlling how long you go between question repetitions. Make sense? No? Oh well.

All I know is that I learned all the capitals of the world this summer by using this delightful program.

There's an option online to create your own course, and since there was--surprise, surprise--no Bengali Vocabulary course, I decided to create my own. It's been tedious. It's been hair-pulling. Crabbiness has abounded. But in the end, it's a pretty intuitive program, so I've slowly begun to put in the vocabulary that I know.

Here's the site if you want to check it out. My course is under "Other Languages". It's alright.

A Misunder-fan-ding

I woke up last night just dying of heat, thinking that the power had gone out because the fan was off. It occurred to me that I should check to see that the fan switch was turned on, but it seemed like a bad idea, because we always keep the fan on at night, and the probability that Jarrod had gotten up and turned it off was low, especially after he woke up and asked, "Is the power out?"

So I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, which was difficult, because the fan also acts as a white noise producer, drowning out the sounds of honking cars and fighting dogs. I had a headache, and the yips coming from the distance didn't help, let alone the oppressive heat.

In the morning I woke up, still surprised that the power was out. Usually power cuts last for a half hour or less. Then I got out of bed and flicked the fan switch to on. So...yeah.