valerie
January 25, 2022 - continuing the series of ‘things I found at Half Price’, here is a Japanese book of English expressions and idioms. Don’t know if I’m too young or if the authors went all-out to find all the (strangest) phrases possible. Anyway, I hope everyone goes whole hog on all their future endeavors
January 24, 2022 - Today I learned that Chinese has a 4th tā! tā is a pronoun which means “he, she, it”. The interesting thing about tā is that it is written using three separate characters depending on which a person is referring to; there’s a separate character for “he” (他), “she” (她) and “it” (它). However, they are all pronounced the same way (yes, even the same tone). So in speaking, the exact tā one is using can be ambiguous unless there’s extra context. The tā (祂) pictured that I found refers to a ‘divine being’ or ‘deity’. I imagine this tā isn’t used very often as this is my first time seeing it, but I’m not a native speaker nor do I use Mandarin on a daily basis. I also don’t use Mandarin in religious contexts. Also, I’m not surprised that I never saw it in Mainland China, where the government is very suspicious of religion as a whole…anyways, I learned about this tā because I saw it on a book at a Half Price Books
January 23, 2022 - I always imagine that if I created a place where viewers could “buy me a coffee”, I would replace the word “coffee” with “milk tea”, whether that be a Thai tea (pictured) or, my favorite, 珍珠奶茶 (bubble tea). Definitely my current vice
January 19, 2022 - finished And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, so next I read this book: When the Moon is Low, by Nadia Hashimi. This was a sad story, especially knowing that the characters in the book were in a comparatively fortunate position and situation most of the time
January 14, 2022 - obviously I know you’re supposed to mix the noodles into the broth…I just thought the noodles looked funny like this 😅 from Pho in the Box in Keller, Texas. The only thing better than a good pho place is a good pho place with a drive-thru!
January 13, 2022 - reading And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini. I really enjoyed The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, so looking forward to see how this story progresses
January 9, 2022 - berries on a plant in my parent’s yard. Based on a conversation with my dad, I think the plant could be nandina, also known as heavenly bamboo. Apparently it is considered to be an invasive species in the US
January 4, 2022 - wish I could have gotten a better picture of the plant, but it was hard since my phone was only focusing on a small portion of the view
January 2, 2022 - I think people here would call this a ‘daddy longlegs’, but apparently that is a name which is used for several creatures. I think my friend is likely this, which means that it is not technically a spider
