CCTV Never Fails to Fail Me
July 3, 2008
Up at 12:30am with a cranky baby, sitting on the couch trying to rock him to sleep, I realize the remote control is within reach. I flip on the TV and immediately stab the mute button, not wanting the results of my hours of rocking and soothing torn asunder by three seconds of Beijing Opera. Knowing that Chinese TV — even with sound — isn’t the most entertaining, I decide to head for an old standby that, through years of insomnia, has never let me down — sports.
Flipping to CCTV-5, or CCTV Olympics as it’s called now, I’m treated to a rousing match of…
Go.
Goddamn it.
1 comment
cctv, personal, sports, will
Willy - Day Three
June 25, 2008
Changes
June 24, 2008
In no particular order:
- 2.5 hours of sleep is starting to feel like it’s enough
- I now know exactly how far to put the bottle’s nipple into Will’s mouth to facilitate optimum feeding
- The terror of picking him up has subsided
- My hands constantly smell like wet wipes
- I know the difference between “something’s wrong and I’m uncomfortable” crying and “come here and pick me up you heartless bastard” crying
This being a dad thing is going to work out just fine.
1 comment
parenting, personal, will
It’s a boy
June 21, 2008
At just a little after 6am this morning (after just three hours of labor!) my wife gave birth to our first child, William Jeffrey Biesnecker (王毅博), a 2.95kg (6.5lb) baby boy. While we weren’t expecting him to pop out quite so soon (the due date was July 13), both baby and mommy are doing fine. The nurses say he’s an eater — he goes through those 20ml milk meals like they were appetizers for the main course — and he’s barely cried even once (though we’ll see how he does tonight).
The delivery went smoothly, and my wife is expecting to stay in the hospital until Monday or maybe Tuesday. Her parents are staying with her during the day, and I’m going to be there at night.
The photo is of Will taken about 3 hours after delivery — he takes after his mom which, I think we can all agree, is a good thing given the options 
Thanks to everyone for their e-mailed, twittered, SMSed, and Facebooked well-wishes!
8 comments
kexia, personal, will
Flashcards, Flickr, and Italian
June 12, 2008
ItalianPod launched yesterday, joining ChinesePod, SpanishPod, and FrenchPod in the Praxis Language family of language products. Catherine and Marco have been a joy to work with, and their energy comes through in the podcasts (check out their first lesson, You Need a Girlfriend — it’s fantastic).
Having them around is enough to make me want to learn at least a little Italian, so I have been, working their lessons into my study. After reading this post on All Japanese All the Time and doing some research into how Rosetta Stone works (and has become successful) for work, I wanted to try incorporating images into my Anki flashcards to see how it affected recall, and decided to start with Italian. My cards look like these:
The images come from Flickr. I search for the term or concept that is being presented in the sentence, and then find the most interesting and vivid image possible to represent that.
So far I’m enjoying the addition — while it is time consuming, I think combining mediums is important when learning, and it certainly makes reviewing my flashcards more enjoyable (I crack up every time I see that poor cat). I’m adding photos to all (or at least most — some concepts just don’t lend themselves well to being represented by images) of my flashcards, and I should know in a few months whether or not it improves recall enough to offset the time it takes to create the cards (my gut says it does, though).
2 comments
anki, flickr, italian, italianpod, languages, learning, rosetta stone
Downpour
June 8, 2008
Yesterday it rained hard, twice (once in the afternoon and again at night), the sort of rain that punctuates every Central Florida afternoon but is seldom seen in Shanghai. We were thankfully inside during both, and were able to enjoy the thunder and lightning without any of the side effects.
Today it’s wet and muggy, the rain seeming to have none of the cleansing effect that rain should by all rights have.
