Christopher Suh's Blog

I've decided that I'd like to try and learn German.  It's actually been something that I've wanted to try for quite a while.  The problem is that I believe that I am seriously linguistically challenged.  I've taken French, Latin, Chinese, and Korean in the past, and French is the only language which I've retained a reasonable modicum of proficiency. 

German is also not a very useful language.  One is not likely to bump into alot of people speaking in German in the US.  And German isn't like Japanese, with tons of amusing and readily available movies and anime cartoons to practice the language with.

Both Andrew and Matthew are taking German, however.  So I guess I could talk to them.  Undoubtedly, they will learn at a much quicker rate than me, because they will have structured classes in the subject.

I think that alot of language is actually more about cultural familiarity than actual likelihood of pragmatic use.  If we taught the languages which would be most useful in life to students, they would probably learn languages like Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic.  Languages like French and German are of limited real life application, unless you are planning a trip to those countries.  Why do we end up teaching less useful languages over more useful languages?  I think it's because we want Americans to think culturally more like French and Germans.

Something similar might be said about traditional English literature as part of a liberal arts background.  If one spends years learning all of the Shakespeare history plays, and then have trouble finding a job, one cannot escape the feeling that perhaps an opportunity cost was paid.  That liberal arts student might have been better off (at least financially) learning accounting or law first right from the start, if that is what he or she is going to end up doing anyway for the majority of his or her life. 

I suppose that society gains cohesion as a result of more individuals studying English literature.  The more people who can quote Shakespeare, the stronger the core Anglo-Saxon culture is.  That culture can tie individuals to it regardless of their ethnic background, geographic location, or era that they live in.

In my case, being an English major in college, who studied French and now am thinking about taking German, I have to wonder if it is not the cultural assimilation aspect of these subjects that is the real appeal to me. 

 

So, the weekend was monumentally uneventful.  I basically hung around the house, and surfed the Chelsea website (http://www.chelseafc.com).  I only went out once, to go to the YMCA with Susan.  I suppose that the highlight of the weekend, now that I think of it was helping Matthew on his homework.  The only problem is that his teachers gave him assignments that seem more busy work than actual learning to me.

The first assignment was to figure out how many feet it was from his school to his home.  Apparently, the teacher said that the students are not supposed to use mapquest.  Instead, what the teacher had in mind was for each of the parents to drive the children to the school and back, check the odometer for the distance, and then convert the amount of the miles travelled into feet.  I can see the part about learning how to convert miles into feet, but doesn't making all the parents drive back and forth to school seem like a needless waste of time?  Hey, we have a gas shortage going on, after all.

The second assignment also seemed kind of silly.  The teacher gave each student a list of about 50 different forms of numbers (ie, things like "percentage", "tv channel", "temperature", "height", "weight", "time", etc.).  He then told each child to go looking through magazines and cut out an example of each item that he had listed.  So, for example, if the item was "temperature", we might go through Matt's aquarium magazine, and cut out the words "72 degrees".  Finding all this stuff isn't as easy as it might seem.  Once we found all of the items, what did the teacher want us to do?  Glue all the items onto a piece of colored construction paper, so that it formed to word "MATH" in big letters.   

Huh.  It's fun to help Matt with his work, but one does have to kind of privately scratch your head at these assignments.  How are they anything but busy work?  No wonder I suppose that the Germans are kicking our butts when it comes to the sciences.

Anyway, last thursday was opening night for the Patriots, which was great.  Susan made her special chili and we drank our Patron tequilas.   That evening I learned two things: 1) It takes 40 minutes to brown onions for chili, in order to make them sweet, and 2) Patron is extremely smooth, and goes down like water. 

The Pats looked good by the way - no noticeable drop off from last year.  They will be a Superbowl contending team, IMHO.  I'm thinking of asking Susan's boys if they might like to do a football pool.  With the point spread, it should give everyone a chance to win.  They'll be bribery involved of course.  I'll probably give the winner of the pool $15 or so and the runner up $5 the first week, just to try and get them interested.   

So tomorrow (thursday) is opening day for the Patriots.  I got the boys Patriots sweatshirts, and Susan a small bottle of Patron tequila for margaritas.  Then I had quite a hard time getting home.  Normally, I take the Green line from Arlington to North Station, and then take the orange line from North Station to Community College.  You can also catch the orange line at Haymarket, the stop before North Station on the Green line.  Anyway, I was on the green line at Haymarket, and all of a sudden the guy next to me jumps up in a panic and leaves the train.  I can't figure it out, until we reach North Station.  Then when I get off, an enormous woman in a bright orange MBTA jumpsuit is there barring the platform.  "IF YOU WANT TO RIDE THE ORANGE LINE YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO HAYMARKET!" she bellows.

Fig to that I think.  So I start off walking to Charlestown, carrying with me two sweatshirts and a bottle of tequila.  It's not that long of a walk really, all things considered.  But then when I get to my apartment, negative circumstance #2 rears its ugly head.  Apparently, I've forgotten my keys at work.

At this time, there are three doors barring me from my apartment.  Door #1 is the front gate to the courtyard.  Door #2 is the entranceway to the building.  Door #3 is the door to my apartment.

Door #1 is a piece of cake.  It's a gate made of iron bars.  The knob to the gate is locked from the outside, but can be turned freely from the inside.  So what does the smart thief do?  Stick his hand through the bars of the gate, and turn the knob from the inside.

Door #2 is not that hard either.  In essence all this requires is sitting by the door looking sad until someone comes by and takes pity on you.  In this case, I waited about 5 minutes before a guy taking his weird fuzzy dog came by and let me in.  I suppose it may have also worked to have pushed all of the buzzers to the apartment until someone released the lock on the door.

Door #3 was the hard one.  The sill covers up a portion of the door.  I sat there for about 10 minutes jabbing at the sill with my credit card without much hope before by chance I heard a little click.  Then I knew that my credit card strategy had at least a slight chance of success, and which made me redouble my efforts.  I suppose if it didn't work, I would have to either call my friend Sheraz to see if he had a couch, or go all the way back to backbay to pick up the keys. 

Anyway it did work, and so here I am at the computer - a little relieved to be home again, and a little disturbed to know how easily I could have robbed myself. 

We went up to Maine for labor day weekend, to Susan's condo at Sunday River.  One might ask what there is to do up at a ski resort in Maine when there is no snow, but actually there are many beautiful natural waterfalls and pools around the area.  The water was brisk, but not as cold as one might think.  The scary thing though being up there was that every now and then one would see a tree crinkling around the edges with leaves turning orange and red.

In the evening Susan and I went to an English pub called Briar Lea in Bethel.  I would definitely recommend it to anyone in the area.  The owners had obviously put a great deal of effort to give it a real English feel, and everything shined like polished wood and brass.  I had a taste of Laphroaig, a single malt scotch with a very distictive smokey taste to it.  I think with my recent interest in English premiership soccer, I'm going through an anglophile phase.

On Monday night, we stopped by Brown's Lobster Pool in Seabrook.  The people working there were recent immigrants from Europe.  While I sat there waiting for my lobster, I watched this guy go up to the counter with a puzzled look on his face.  He asked the server waiting there why the heck everyone working there was Swedish.  Not Swedish, Czech, the server explained.  Apparently alot of Czech people have been moving into New England in recent years.  A large number of them, so I've been told, end up working at Dunkin' Donuts. 

Anyway, Brown's Lobster Pool was right across the street from the Seabrook Nuclear Plant.  I'm not sure if it's still active or not.  The lobsters didn't seem to be mutated or glow in the dark or anything, so I'm sure it was okay. 

Today, two new associates started at work.  One is named Kate.  She's a tall slender woman who was clerking at the probate courts the past year, and who is getting married in October.  The second is a Korean girl named Carolyn.  She's pretty upbeat, and apparently spent her bar trip visiting Tokyo and Belize.  They both seem like pretty nice people, which is very important in a small office.

Tomorrow is Andrew and Matthew's first day at school.