Entries this day: Ayse's_mom's_birthday Istanbul Paid_rent Voice_recording akiko

Ayse's mom's birthday

9:27am JST Thursday 8 May 2008 (day 13924)

Ayse is collecting 60 cards from around the world for her mom's 60th birthday. That's a pretty sweet idea. I quickly wrote one and even think I wrote the correct dots and marks around the Turkish "happy birthday" thanks to good ol' Google.

Istanbul

9:17am JST Thursday 8 May 2008 (day 13924)

Confronted my post office nemesis when sending the card to Ayse's mom. I made the mistake of thinking there was kanji for the Japanese word for Turkey. So I didn't write it on the card; I was just going to ask them the kanji and write it down.

So when she saw the card, she was like blah blah blah, meaning "where is this going?"

And I go 「トルコ」

And she goes, 「東京？」(*)

Um, no. 「トルコ。」and I tried some other variants that couldn't be right, and then was like, 「英語で"Turkey"」

And she was like, "______" with a blank look, so I came from a different angle.

イッスタンブルと言う町のくにはなんとういう？」

More blank looks, but she turned around and asked the group, who also didn't know.

One of them did think of it and was like, 「トルコ」

And I was like, 「あぁ、だからトルコと言ってた。」

She looked it up in the book and I saw the カタカナ. Dammit. There's no kanji; it's just トルコ。

(*) I can appreciate on one level that she at least understood I might be saying Tokyo.

Paid rent

4:41pm JST Thursday 8 May 2008 (day 13924)

I had paid my rent way in advance (3 months?), and it was going to run out on 15 May, so I just paid again, but only through 15 June. My computer purchase at the end of last month stretched my plan a bit, but no worries for now.

Voice recording

7:38pm JST Thursday 8 May 2008 (day 13924)

I just did 20+ minutes of narration for HSBC; they're introducing some new technologies that I doubt are sooper secret cause nobody mentioned nothin'. Basically ATM cards with RFID to track customers/preferences, and an automagical cash processing thing, I guess like what I saw in the US at a WaMu branch.

akiko

12:20am JST Friday 9 May 2008 (day 13925)

Hung out with Akiko after meeting Hideo about his website. Akiko was bummed about being but a pawn in the corporate game, and now has two jobs as she's being shifted around. I happy to chat with her and thankful that she contacted me when feeling blue.

She showed me some kanji and corrected my Japanese postcard that I wrote her not so long ago.