in studying foreign languages, i’ve often wondered about learning words based on usage frequency. if your goal is to get up and running with basic conversation, then memorizing the most commonly used 300-500 words would probably be easiest. it would obviously leave lots of gaps, but you would probably have enough of a foundation to [...]

i grew up in the northeast of the united states, a place that can be super cold. i eventually moved to san francisco, los angeles and finally bangkok. i’ve realized that i hate the cold but going back to visit it for a few weeks can be really nice. it hit me recently how the [...]

last post in the series on thai idioms, this one translates คำสุภาษิต which my dictionary translates to mean proverb. i made one change to the previous post, thanks art for pointing it out. it’s interesting to see which animals are used in proverbs from different countries … in english we use foxes (clever as a [...]

i’ve run this blog for over three years now, starting when i first went off to india. i did go through a year of thinking i was a neoluddite and didn’t really post much, but other than that i have posted regularly. when i left for india this most recent time, i decided to do [...]

zak is back from africa, and is finally updating his blog. lots of new things.

it’s interesting to see what other people like. i’ve submitted many photographs to file magazine for publication and never heard back. yesterday i was online looking through their work and noticed that they decided to publish one of mine. what strikes me is that of all the photographs that i’ve submitted, the one the published [...]

i made it to niskayuna, ny which is about 3 hours north of nyc by car. last year there was zero snow, really none at all. this year there has been snow since i arrived. snow can be nice if it doesn’t get in your way. when you can get up whenever, don’t have to [...]

i’ve been at mom’s in niskayuna, ny (that’s in schenectady county, near albany and about three hours north of new york city) for the last week. the house has four bedrooms, two living rooms, two bathrooms, one shower and now only has 8 people staying in it. the first part of the week we had [...]

i feel like i’m finally starting to adjust to this east coast time and now i’m leaving in 24 hours. there has been no real jet lag but what i’ve noticed was that my internal clock had me staying up until 1am or so and then sleeping until 8am … in la, i am almost [...]