Archive for May, 2009

About a few years ago, there was a guy who kept calling me on my phone. A stranger whom, perhaps I have never met before. He called me up sometimes more than 10 times a day. So much so, every time my phone rang, I got worried. So I stopped answering my phone to the annoyance of my friends who wanted to contact me. I knew the person’s number yet I could not trace that number to know the identity of the caller or where he is calling from. Thus, in the end I changed my phone number.

My story is not something that I alone may have experienced. Hence the  Free Phone Lookup service came about. If you have any annoying callers who keep giving you unwanted calls and you really wanted to know who and where the calls were made from you can actually trace that phone number. Try it at tracethatnumber.com.

The basic service is free. You will see the location where the calls were made from. But to know in details like the owner’s name for example, you may need to pay a small fee. If you really need to know, it is indeed worth the money in return for peace of mind.

After a week of waiting, I finally got the Japanese language text book I’ve ordered last week from Amazon. I bought  Japanese from Zero! 1. Selling for about $16 on Amazon right now.

They have about 5 books in this series and I got the first one. The first day, I managed to finish nearly half of the book. I am a beginner yet not a total beginner so the first part of the book was quite easy. I just flew through.

Although they do teach the japanese writings (Hiragana/Katakana/Kanji) but on the 1st book you will only find romaji and Hiragana. They teach you step by step. At first you will see only romaji, once you’ve learnt  a few set of Hiraganas, they will slowly replace the romaji with Hiragana. Then teach another new set of Hiragana and later replacing the romaji again with the new set you’ve just learnt. Once you’ve learnt all the Hiragana characters, you will only see words written in Hiragana.

Learning a new language in itself is not easy,  to learn a new set of foreign letters does make foreign language learning much more overwhelming. So Trombley’s (the author) approach of replacing the romaji with Hiragana slowly does make it  less scary for a beginner.

Another thing I like about this book is that, at every chapter you will learn to add more ways to make a sentence. For example, after 2-3 lessons you’d be able to say: Kore wa watashino okaasan no kuruma desu = This is my mother’s car. A couple more lessons after that you would be able to form sentence like : Watashi no okaasan wa pinku kuruma ga suki desu = My mother likes a pink car.  Few more lessons after that you’d be able to form more complicated  sentences.

A couple of drawbacks though : no audio aid for those who wants to know how some words are pronounced, secondly it may be a bit too slow for some people. Not a problem for me though. I really like to book so far and already thinking of ordering the second book, so I won’t have to wait once I am finished with this book.

You can check the limited preview of this book here on google book.

Over the years that I have been playing around in the internet world, I have met all sorts of people from all over the world. The internet is indeed a world without any borders. Some of the friendships were short lived some I still hold up to this day.

One thing that the internet has made things a lot convenient when it comes to searching for a suitable relationship is that, you get to find those people who share the same interest and even belief as you have easily. Especially if the interest or belief you profess is something few people in your community shares. Something like Paganism.

Although, Paganism is an age old belief older than Christianity, it is not everyday you can find a Pagan believer. To be honest the only pagan I know is one blogger, whose blog I frequent sometimes.

Now websites like paganchatcity.com hosts free pagan chat rooms that  gives the opportunity for a pagan to find other pagans from within their area or city. Well, if you can find Christian chat rooms, Hindu chat rooms, etc, why not pagan chat rooms, right?

I think it is also a chance for me to know about paganism, a belief which is rather foreign to me. Perhaps chatting into one of those pagan chat rooms I would be able to find somebody who can explain to me more about it.

A brother-in-law of mine creates ceramic products by hand for a hobby.  Things like plates, mugs, cups, saucers, ornaments, etc. He does join craft events where he’d try to sell his merchandise. Unfortunately, although his merchandise are pretty good yet he didn’t have the know how of getting customers even to get near his stand.Well, he is just a small time amateur business person, so it is not too bad for him perhaps.

However, for  a real business, giving a good first impression to potential clients or customers is fundamental.They need to make a good investment on giving successful trade show exhibits. A successful trade event means potential clients and businesses.

Now, it is good to know that you can actually find all the tools and equipments you may need to run a successful trade event all under one roof at Camelback Displays, Inc.™.

You can find anything you may need there like table top display, banner stands, director chairs, trade show booths, exhibit graphics, presentation tools, truss products, table covers and more.

Being a customer myself, I would definitely check out a trade show booth if the displays are attractive. First impression is always important.

Myself, being a coffee drinker that I am, and also a person who loves personalized items, a monogrammed coffee sleeve seems like a pretty good idea for a gift.

I saw these at posylane.com -  An online store that take  offers monogrammed or embroidered items.

Coming back to the coffee sleeves, you can choose from 39 unique  patterns and then choose the intial that you require to be embroidered onto the sleeve.

I think these would make great gifts for those who always drink coffee not only because a coffee cup sleeve looks pretty and nice but also it serve 2 purposes. For one, it would be easier to hold the cup when its very hot. Secondly, obviously, it’s easier to recognize which one is your cup. Remember times when there were many cups on the table and you clean forgot which one was yours?

If you are looking for a simple unique gift for yourself or anyone else, you’d like these.

I have learnt both Hiragana and Katagana. But in order to practice them I found a fun way, using my DS. Got a DS game – Anpaman Toasobo A-I-U-E-O kyoushitsu.

The game is targeted for young Japanese children (perhaps kindergarteners). I find the game a great way to practice the Japanese writings, reading and also learn some Japanese vocabularies for beginners like myself.

Plenty of minigames – fill in the missing hiragana, add the dakuten, read the words (use the microphone), choose the card, and much more.

I am still looking for more games like these. The more fun it is to learn Japanese, the better.

I’ve read some comments on Swine Flu by people from all over the globe today. Some people take it rather seriously, some people taking it coolly and saying that the way governments, medical experts and the media are publicizing the flu is simply overdone.

For me personally, I believe that they are doing a good thing to let people know what we are facing here. We should stay calm and at the same time take measures in preventing the disease.

Watch the video to learn about the symptoms of Swine Flu. Who knows, knowledge of the symptoms may save lives later.

I am currently still at the beginners level of my Japanese language studies.  I bought myself ‘Let’s Learn Japanese Picture dictionary‘ which is targeted for children but can also be suitable for those learning Japanese and would like to increase their Japanese vocabulary. It comes with romaji, and Kana.

Looking through the book, I find it rather easy to memorize many words especially for those who speaks English. Reason is because there are so many English borrowed words in Japanese language.

Guess what is bed in Japanese? Beddo. Loudspeaker? supiika. Toilet? Toire. Television? terebijon. Night table? Naito teburu. Shower? Shawa. And the list goes on.

I couldn’t help myself but to chuckle at times when I read some words. Well, at least it is somewhat of a compensation for the tough writing system they have. I still haven’t touched Kanji yet. Have to learn at least 2000 commonly used Kanji to be able to read a Japanese newspaper. We need only 26 alphabets to be able to read anything! By the way alphabet in Japanese is arufabetto.

I’m having so much fun going through the book.