Thursday, March 15, 2012

pi day yesterday, travel day tomorrow

Yesterday, being March 14, or 3/14 or 3.14 was pi day. If you didn't get a fancy t-shirt to commemorate the event, then that's a darn shame. Of course, the notion of pi day seems oddly American because most places write the date dd.mm.yyyy but in the U.S. it is standard to write the month first like mm.dd.yyyy which is of course silly since it confounds any ordering by date. The only time you should write the month before the day is if you are also writing the year before the month like yyyy.mm.dd. That's also the best way to label files that have a date component so that you can sort by title and get them in chronological order. To avoid all ambiguity, I have taken to dating documents which I sign in a year-month-day format but I use a three letter version of the month. Hence, if I sign something, I write 2012/Mar/15 as opposed to 2012/03/15 because the all-number form can still be misinterpreted if it is the 12th day of the month or earlier. Why am I spending time writing this? Frankly, I have no idea, but I just felt like sharing one of the many reasons I cannot sleep at night: my terrible fear that someone will misinterpret another person's date and then miss a meeting or get together or some grand soiree.

Anyway, the time is rapidly approaching for me to head to the airport. The airport with the four bag x-rays and three metal detectors. This time, I will be traveling with a bag within a bag. Due to what I brought out here last time for other people, I took two suitcases. Now, I have nested one inside the other like those Russian nesting dolls since I only travel with a couple days worth of clothes and whatever clothing I have determined I do not need here. This time, I'm bringing back socks. Why I had 20 pair here is a mystery I cannot fathom so the great sock reduction has taken place.

You're still reading this? There is no great insight in this post or witty commentary about Turkmenistan. Well, maybe a little bit. After Chinese food two nights ago, we had sushi last night. Seriously, sushi. I'll give them an E for effort, but it was clear that the fish, while not spoiled, was also not fresh. It lacked the color and crisp flavor and freshness that truly fresh fish has. I'm no fish/seafood expert, but I'd venture to guess that most of what we had was previously frozen which is somewhat understandable given the fact that Turkmenistan does not border an ocean. Also, I've been giving a lot of thought to what the Republican primary says about the U.S. Anyway, off the the airport soon. Goodnight.

1 comment:

Buickguy said...

Wow; the Republican primary says a lot about the USA, mostly not good things except we are free to make fools of ourselves. I'm sure you can put some meat onto that bone so I will look forward to your arrival here in the land of the Republican primary!