Captcha

I was reading my soup of internet randomness the other day and came across an article about CAPTCHA - the little squiggly letters that help websites determine your humanness. Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I assumed them to be a necessary evil - leaning a little more to evil. But, I had no idea the real purpose and benefit.

As someone who really marvels at magnitude of human creative and intellectual production, that someone (or ones) had the idea for this is pretty freakin' awesome. The squiggly letters used in reCAPTCHA are actually contributing to the betterment of the whole human race. All those annoyingly difficult to decipher letters are really parts of old manuscripts that you are helping to digitize. 200 million of these are solved each day contributing way more man hours than any organization could conceivably as they attempt to digitize and preserve books that were written before the digital era. Computers often have difficulty discerning old typefaces and handwriting while your human eye does not. Two birds, one stone and preservation for posterity!

Language Lessons

One of the reasons why I chose my current apartment is for the potential improvement in my learning Vietnamese. The (I think they are nannies to the families in the building) have decided to come and get English help while helping me with Vietnamese. So far, I think it's working. I know more than some of the people who have been here for a year. They also take the time to help with me pronounce things well. I can't even tell you how difficult it is to say things. My ears are also not attuned to the tones yet. Am getting better at parroting, but not quite deciphering the relationship of the sounds to the spellings.

I feel a bit bad for the ladies because English is so arbitrary in writing and pronunciation. Just at Vietnamese has all these tones I have no hopes of really pronouncing correctly, English has lots of consonant sounds they have difficulty with. One of the ladies is from the north of the country and one from the south. I can pick up the regional differences a bit. It seems that the north doesn't have an "f" sound and she has such a hard time. She can seems to only produce a "p".

Unlike in English, where you can puzzle out a wonky pronunciation, the Vietnamese tones aren't so forgiving. Miss (as in girl) and no are spelled the same but with an accent over the vowel to denote radically different pronunciation. Slow and steady . . .

1st Post Viet Nam!

Been a couple of years of adventure and pure laziness in updating this blog. Am turning over a new leaf (so many leaves have been turned to no avail) and will attempt to post regularly.

Today, I went to Binh Thanh market - the place for touristy kitsch in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Had a nice time walking around trying to avoid buying stuff. It was my first time there and my eyes were repeatedly caught by shiny, shiny pretty things. It's also a market that locals use, mostly for foodstuff. I bargained this lady down to 50% and she could not wait to see the back of me. I kinda felt bad. A nice thing about this market is that they have people with fixed prices as well. I am guessing that these are the official government employees as they wear uniforms. After a while, it was a relief to go to them since I would have to haggle over prices. Years in the states and Romania have atrophied my bargaining muscles. Gotta give them a work out.

I returned home and went to a local restaurant to eat (almost everything is open air). I seriously have five people come to (ostensively) help me order (they weren't much help). Though, I think it was more likely to stare at the foreigner and practice their English. They kept coming back to try and chat. I was just trying to eat my meal and read my book. Sometimes it is really hard work. One asked me if I was delicious. I didn't want to laugh and make a lewd comment. After I figured out the pronunciation, I realized she was asking after the enjoyment of the meal.

Fun times. I have got to find some language courses right quick.