Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Author: fish1964

  • Welcoming Refugees

    Canada has a slightly different approach:

    Welcome to Canada.

    Ahlan wa sahlan.

    You’re with family now.

    And your presence among us makes our Christmas season of peace and joy just that much brighter.

    And while you’ll find plenty of folks who speak Arabic, we have our own dialect that you may hear on the streets. Our city, Toronto, is pronounced Tronna. The hockey team is the Leafs (or Buds), not the Maple Leaves. The Red Rocket is our transit system. The local term for a loser is hoser. We’re cheezed when someone annoys us. We make aTimmy’s run to buy a coffee. And we end every sentence with, eh.

    So that’s pretty much it for now, eh.

    Welcome home.

    I just want to know how the guy got an Indiana University sweatshirt. Go IU…

  • 4 on Top, 2 on the Side

    About 20 years ago I read a story about an American couple in Japan. They wanted to go from one city to another and went to a travel agent. They asked how much the flight cost. The travel agent said the train is much cheaper. They said they wanted to fly. The travel agent said the train was very scenic. They said they wanted to fly. The travel agent said the train was very fast. The couple got frustrated and walked out.

    They later learned there was no flight between the two cities.

    This highlighted a key element of Japanese culture that Americans do not get. The Japanese do not like to say no. Anyone with any clue of Japanese culture would have realized that the travel agent was doing his best to say, “dude, there’s no flight, take the train”.

    It would have helped me if I had read that story a few years early. I spent 9 months in Japan in the early nineties with Ringling Brothers. We were in Osaka, where English speakers (at least back then) were not so common. I had found a place to get a haircut with a young guy who spoke some English. When you work with the circus, days off are few and far between so one there was one day I needed to get a haircut. The place was quiet with only one woman working there. She didn’t speak English. I did the universal two finger sign language for haircut. She didn’t seem to understand. Being American, I simply tried again. She waved me into a barber chair and cut my hair.

    It was a total butcher job. I had to go back to the place the next day and get my regular guy to fix it (resulting in the shortest haircut of my life).

    If you are paying attention, you’ve probably figured out what happened. She wasn’t a barber. The place was closed and she was cleaning. But she couldn’t say no to me.

    I haven’t thought of this story in many years, but today I walked into my regular barber shop, which is primarily Russian. And when I sat down and explained my very simple haircut, she looked confused and called out in Russian.

    Thankfully, she was really a barber and her boss clarified what I said. My haircut was fine…

  • Jehovah’s Witnesses About to Make Big Bucks

    The Jehovah’s Witnesses have long owned several large buildings in DUMBO Brooklyn. They decided to start selling them off a couple of years ago (one building went for $375 million).

    The headquarters building just went on the market (plus two other sites) and they aren’t even listing a price (as they say, if you have to ask…). They will just take offers. Brownstoner:

    The iconic HQ of the Jehovah’s Witnesses at 25-30 Columbia Heights has just hit the market, along with two other Witness-owned sites in Dumbo and Brooklyn Heights. “These kinds of properties are once-in-a-generation in Brooklyn,” Watchtower spokesman Richard Devine told Brownstoner. “Because of their location and size, we expect considerable interest.”

    Yes, we can practically hear the developers salivating.

  • Geeking Out At Its FInest

  • Thanksgiving 2015

    I have no good pictures this year, it was a pretty low key (in a nice way) Thanksgiving.

    My teenage daughter doesn’t like pictures anymore:

    DSC05660

    But she can do the 5×5 Rubik’s Cube…

  • Birthday Sunset

    We had Victoria’s birthday party at the relatively new Prospect Park ice skating rink.

    It was a great party and everyone had fun. But it was topped off with a freakishly good sunset. The pictures don’t do it justice.

    DSC05653DSC05654DSC05655DSC05656

  • Michigan State Craziness

    https://twitter.com/McMurphyESPN/status/668215153444409344

  • Dr. Seuss Still Rules

    Here’s an interesting analysis of the dominance of children’s book sales by Dr. Seuss.

    I knew the story about how Green Eggs and Ham started on a bet that he couldn’t write a book using no more than 50 distinct words. But I didn’t realize that Cat in the Hat was based on a challenge to write a book using only the 348 words a first grader should know.

    Another example of how constraints can spur creativity.

  • Gambling Hypocrites

    https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/664220329867403264

  • Brooklyn Skyscrapers

    For a long time Brooklyn did not really have skyscrapers. Prior to 2009 the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower was the tallest at 42 stories.

    Since 2010 two taller high-rise buildings were built with the tallest 51 floors (590 feet). Tall, but not by Manhattan standards.

    That is apparently changing.

    Right next to Junior’s cheesecake (less than a half mile from our place), a 1,000 foot tower is planned.

    Holy crap.