Technology Spotlight

I've been neglecting blogging lately. I think the main reason has been how focused I am on learning Kinyarwanda. But here's some pieces of technology that I've had a strong appreciation for lately.


I love mopeds.

100 miles to the gallon. The tank is 1 1/3 gallons. When I rented a moped, he asked that I not return it empty but would instead put in $1.00 of gas for the next person.

Hawaii's laws are awesome. I don't need a motorcycle license to drive one. My moped was limited to 37 mph. So on highways, I drive in the bicycle lane. Which is a huge plus when there's traffic.



Polymers.

Metal water bottles really suck. They expand with temperature and get scratched easily. The grooves got worn down enough that the cap wouldn't stay on and I couldn't carry it around like I normally do. It was really frustrating.

So I got a Nalgene! It's awesome. It holds 750 mL. I don't have to take off the top to drink from it. And it's easy to clip on to my belt during construction.



Artificial sweeteners.

I did an experiment the other day. I got two little styrofoam cups of coffee. I put a pack of sugar into one and a pack of sweetener into the other. The one with the sweetener was so much sweeter. I had no idea they'd be that different. I liked it.



The Internets. (A Series of Tubes)

I'm probably spending an hour a day learning Kinyarwanda on the Internet. Spanish divides nouns into masculine and feminine, and adjectives are conjugated accordingly. Kinyarwanda has 12 divisions of nouns, and every word in the sentence is conjugated (more correctly, inflected, which includes conjugation and declension) accordingly. I'm learning to say a lot, but my listening comprehension is really lagging because I'm still really slow at it. I have a list of 80 verbs that I'm memorizing, and it's a bit frustrating sometimes, because there's some words that I look at that I can't remember, even though I've looked at them 10 times. And when I read my Kinyarwanda Bible, I can't understand most of the words I read. It's a tiny bit overwhelming, but I'm pushing through. I can't get any sympathy about this here.




One thing I love about blogging is that when I have a rather witty cultural reference, I can just put the link in so that people can brush up on the reference and get it (e.g. The Internets and A Series of Tubes). Because there's so many girls here that give other girls a bad name by not getting anything I say unless it's not subtle at all.