A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

September seems like an appropriate time to go back to Sri Lanka for a visit. It's unfortunate that the peace process seems to be falling apart. We did travel to the north and the east during the 2004 visit. Retracing those steps would've been an unlikely occurrence for this fall's trip.

Still, the country needs stability in order to do well economically. Sri Lanka is so ripe for a boom. It's got an educated workforce with near 90% literacy. It's got skilled manpower and a nearly adequate infrastructure. It has opened and liberalized its economic regulations. Development will continue but everyone would benefit from being able to, for once and for all, finish more than 20 years of uncertainty. The island nation really does have the potential to be a paradise.



Rather than taking Singapore Airlines, we'd rather fly on Cathay Pacific. That would allow a four or five day stopover in Hong Kong on the return segment. Air fares have increased substantially in the last couple of years.

Labels: Sri Lanka 2006

Monday

OK another day is almost finished. School was usual. TRON.
the movie, came today and it's a good copy. There were no letters
that arrived.

I had to go get my picture taken as my passport will run
out during the Haj vacation. Bill has said that can go down (to
the US Embassy in Jeddah) this Wednesday rather than teaching.
Delbert will take my class and I shall take a company car.
I'll write about that at a later time.

Update: No contract news. Weather Report: Fine with a high
in the 80's F. I have reserved a ticket to Italy today but
without Jay.

Nothing else, now. Just a waste of disk space. DSH

---

Yesterday's old image prompted me to look on my archive CD. Back in 90's I copied junk from 360, 720, and 1440 floppy disks in order to store the data more permanently. As I was searching through the folders, I stumbled across the journal entry above. It was written in Taif, Saudi Arabia on my first PC. It was saved in WordStar format, so I had to do a bit of editing to the copy pasted above.

Although I've not reached the three year mark in blogging, I once created daily journal files twenty years ago.

Oh my.

Labels: Saudi Arabia

I like history, especially my own. I also like attempting to clean up old images. In addition, I rather enjoy mysteries.

The photo above was from an old Ektachrome slide. The original wasn't rectangular, so I assume it was shot with an Kodak Instamatic 126 camera. It was in a shoe box of old memorabilia that my dad sent me, so I'd venture that it was from my childhood. It looks like a desert scene, so most probably it was from a road trip to the American southwest. Yet there are places in British Columbia that look like this and we drove an ancient VW-camper from New Hamsphire to Alaska when I was about 6 years old. Might this be from that trip?

The scene is too blurry to really make out anything. Is it just a dirt road? My mom usually took the photos. What was it that prompted her to shoot this scene?

Labels: camera, Mother

Okay, I will admit it; I carry around a bit of cultural baggage. Although I've lived in places with differing expectations about time, I returned to North America with those from my youth intact. There is honestly very little that bothers me more than missing an appointment. I organize my entire existence so I'm not late for anything. An appointment is an agreement between parties. I fulfill my end of the bargain by arriving a few minutes early and I expect to find someone else who's ready. I can be a bit anal about all this.

Although, I pride myself on my easy-going attitude, I don't have much patience when it comes to having to wait. In fact, I will be looking for a new dentist now. Let me tell you why.

Yesterday, I rushed home from work. I found myself with very little time but managed to jump into the shower, throw on a clean shirt and make it to my dental appointment with about two minutes to spare. I was just going in for basic hygiene. I was welcomed immediately but then ushered to an empty room. I sat in the chair staring at the ceiling TV for much too long. Still nobody came.

As soon as my cell phone showed that I'd been there 30 minutes, I got up and went to receptionist. "It's rude to keep me waiting after I rushed to make sure to be here on time and this isn't the first time it has happened." I continued by saying, "I understand how a schedule can slip but this proves to me you have a scheduling problem. I do not wish to re-schedule this appointment and will not be doing so in the future." I left.

I get dental coverage from work and this means we are worth a great deal to the practice. Still, to me, customer happiness is paramount and there is no monopoly on dental services. Consequently, I'll be moving elsewhere.

Labels: complaints, dentist

Okay, I am a little late to this party.



I had heard of the television program called Lost. Since we didn't start watching from the start, I didn't want to start tuning in mid-season. Then, without seeing the first season there wasn't much sense in catching the second.

Thankfully, I noticed that our library had Season One on DVD. We watched the two pilots and first two episodes on the first disk last week. Yesterday, we burned through much of the next two disks. The program is brilliant with excellent production value!

Viewing TV on DVD is actually quite an improvement. First, one cannot miss an episode even if the network switches around the schedule. Furthermore, the picture is true 16 X 9 format and the sound real 5.1 Dolby Digital. Most importantly, there's no skipping through idiotic commercials.

Labels: television

I usually giggle a bit about the unrelenting hype over the supposed evils of genetically-modified crops. Since the dawn of civilization, man has been continuously cultivating new varieties of fruit and vegetables. In fact, the very notion of planting is a type of environmental disruption. Before we knew much about genes, it took generations of unsuccessful attempts before a combination produced useful new characteristics. Much of the fruit we eat, even organically-grown, bears as much resemblance to the original species as a poodle does to a wolf.



Yesterday, we got vegetables at a Kin's Market in the mall in uptown New Westminster. I was walking around thinking about how there is a much larger variety of produce than when I was growing up in New Hampshire. Remember when peppers came only in green? Can you recall the first time you saw a kiwi? At Kin's I even witnessed yellow and orange cut watermelon as well as the more traditional red.

I also thought I spotted something new yesterday. It was labelled a plumcot. I was about to say, "What will they think of next?" Then, I read about Luther Burbank on Wikipedia. Not only did he create the nectarine and many other plant and fruit varieties but did so about a hundred years ago!

Labels: errands, New Westminster, Royal City Mall

The near cloudless skies continue.

Blue is such a nice colour. On earth we take it for granted but I'm sure as far as planets go, it's the exception.

Earlier in the week, I went into detail about how I noticed how beautiful the area is.

If the weather was always like this I probably wouldn't have commented.

I've also blogged in the past about how I welcome the change in seasons.

Some places where I've lived don't have seasons.

Maybe there can be no high unless there've been a few lows.

Posted by: Dennis S Hurd / 9:40 AM 0 comments