Re: "Saturday again and I am just about numb from all the terrible things in the news such as Global Warming, worse hurricanes on the way, assurance that Los Angeles will experience a bad earthquake, no end to the drought but maybe an end to water, war in Iraq getting worse, Iran building Nukes, North Korea testing intercontinental missiles, and now my newspaper points out that the number of close friends that Americans have has shrunken drastically."
I just realized one advantage to working too much lately - I haven't had time to find out what's happening in the news lately! All I know is what's happening in my own apartment and somewhat at the company I'm working at....
Re: "And that's true, I recall childhood and youth when TV hadn't come along, and people were not so busy. We had friends. Visiting was our entertainment. Now with the Internet, we have friends across the ocean and don't know the name of the people next door. And NOBODY anymore ever drops in for an evening of talking."
Now you mention it, I remember reading how people are skipping having a living room at all and instead using the space for a home office. I remember my parents entertaining people from time to time, but - come to think of it - I very rarely do the same. Actually, Tokyo makes it hard anyway, since most people are living in small apartments for one thing, and often lives hours away from each other on top of that, so get-togethers, when they happen, tend to occur in restaurants, coffee shops, and drinking places - generally in a middle ground between where the people meeting live.
Re: "You are correct when you ask, why can't people have both money and time? Yes, I'm afraid that having enough money to live, and maybe even enjoy some of the good things, requires all our best time and energy at some job we learn to hate. The unlucky man will eventually grow feeble and sick and unable to work and so dies a very poor man. The lucky dog however simply drops dead while at work."
I laughed when I read that. I'm definitely spending more time working right now than I would like to, but it has enabled me to recently get a new camera (a Ricoh GR-Digital), so at least I'm having some fun taking pictures with that. The only irritant being that work ties up most of the day, so I end up with too many night pictures.
Re: "Sounds like the bad news on CNN has me depressed, but not so. I find time for comical films of all kinds and a few drinks... and talking with you (via the Internet of course!). Tell me about your work these days."
Work is going okay, but the projects I've been assigned have been delayed, so I've been filling up the time with reading about past projects and trying to find out the definitions of the very large number of acronyms the company uses! Some of them are international, some of them are specific to Japan, some of them are specific to that company, and some of them are even specific to engineers within the company!! It's incredible, but there I am right there under the same roof as the authors of material I'm reading and many of the acronyms seem to be unknown to everyone! And they still use them!!! I've begun to irritate some of the foreigners I'm working with regarding my quest for acronym definitions, so I guess I better be more quiet about it, but I do strongly feel that you can't really write properly when much of the vocabulary is in code that no one can explain! Rather than "XYZ" and "MNO", they might as well assign their special codes numbers "Attach the 729 to the 503", etc. On the other hand, one of the old-timers who's been in the translation and technical writing business here for several decades has talked with me and told me how he fully understands where I'm coming from and he's given me some database material he's built up while working on projects for the company....
Oh - incidentally, I have a few new pages at my website. Two that were uploaded today are:
Nenogongen Mountain Area
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/i_i_v/s/NennoG1/pg1.htm
- and here:
Tenryuji Temple (Tokyo)
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/i_i_v/s/Tenryuji1/pg1.htm
Those were taken with the same camera on the same day (a Pentax, in May of this year).
This page was taken with my newest camera - the Ricoh GR-Digital:
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/i_i_v/s/HigYukiG01/pg1.htm
4:11 a.m., and the sky is growing light. It gets dark at 7:30 p.m.! When the sun comes up at 4:15 a.m. and sets at 7:30 p.m. - you are (Tokyo!) in the wrong time zone!!!
Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/
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