young astronauts in love part (3/4)

2008.10.21
Like I twittered the other day, when I write Josh, the American living in Japan I got to visit last March I find myself switching to more Japan-English stylings... I wrote "please enjoy this book" for "I hope you enjoy this book", and in general there's a deference thing going on.

I also like when encountering little bits of India English... today part of our offshore QA team asked me to "Please do the needful" for what an American would write as "Please do what needs to be done". The India version is more concise! Also, my Aunt has mentioned that she's had to learn not mark down the Indian phrase "According to me..." in places where an American would use "in my opinion..."

You wonder which of these things represent differences in outlook, and which are just arbitrary turns of phrase.


Young Astronauts in Love



chapter 3

those were some great times


we figured out how to schedule leave time together


cities look better when you're with someone


something about the bigness, the aspiration, even a medium university / corporate / federation city like this one.


i mean, small change compared to what humanity was aiming for with the ghibal anomaly


but like the old wisdom says, "the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion."


but it's the little things. knowing where to get a good raspberry lime rickey


touching hands at the theater


hanging out with friends as a couple


even the shamelessly goofy stuff. thanks to the anomaly, we were able to watch the sunset every direction at once


still, there was a lot of work to do. the anomaly obverse beckoned!


it was a long drive back. luckily, neither of us needed to actually drive...


time passed. she had to make her rounds, but gamma-222 was really becoming her base-away-from-base.


and my side project was coming along


actually, in retrospect, i think the project helped catch Lydia's eye, the months before


nothing too ground-breaking but I was proud of it...


it was looking to be the most advanced 'bot on GHIBAL 3, all made from my giant pile of parts,


finally it was time for the full AI/body connection and powerup...


something wasn't quite right...


"RUN!" I shouted.


luckily, lydia didn't need to run


back at the minilab there was a universal kill switch


guess i know why fed regs require the cutoff circuit... no one thinks they're building a frankenstein!


later the post-mortem revealed it was "anomalous" radiation and the virtual synapses.


actually, years after that lydia wrote her dissertation on the interaction.


Lovely but drafty stained glass windows by bed. Putting up that taut plastic sheeting... window condoms, basically, with the same +s and -s
(btw, self-medicated earlier with a choco-taco. like 7-11 brand prozac)
Hoftstadter says how the (cognitive) ability for a species to support a concept of Friendship may be a decent measure of soul/consciousness.
"FedEx Kinkos is now FedEx Office"?Aw, man... why would they change from an obscene clown name to sounding like a Microsoft ripoff?
My "Young Astronauts in Love" comic reminded mom of how "space medicine" was her 7th grd career hope(she willed herself not to get carsick!)
So my mom willed herself not to get carsick. And I willed my feet not to be ticklish. Are those pretty typical feats of willpower?
The Fat Boys did one of their "rap remakes" of "Sex Machine"?? And I was amused enough to rate it at >= 3 stars so it got on my iPhone???