I set up my new webcam this morning and tested it in MSN Messenger with my friend Cathy. She said the picture quality was very good. Thanks, CBC!

"[Writing] stretches you...[and] makes you stay in touch with yourself...It's like going under water for me, the danger. Yet I'm certain I'm going to come up."
- Toni Morrison

This morning I received a Fed Ex delivery at home. It was a high-quality webcam (Logitech QuickPro 4000) that I won for being one of the top 300 members of the

www.zed.cbc.ca

website. There are more than 25,000 members. The "Top 300" have also been invited to be part of a special interactive episode of the "ZeD" TV program on CBC on March 5, using our webcams across the country. It should be fun!

By the way, I'm currently rated as #17. You can move up in the rating system on the website by uploading content (ex. photos and writing) to the site, having people rate your content highly, rating other people's content, and participating in discussion groups (NOT chatrooms) about various topics (ex. visual art).

My member name on the website is donaldb.

"To play it safe is not to play." - Robert Altman

I had a wonderful experience today.

A young Indonesian man (Ahmad) whom I met at an English as a Second Language conference in Swift Current last May phoned me because he and his wife are in Saskatoon for a couple of days. I had lunch and coffee with him, which gave me a chance to practise my limited Indonesian.

Before I met him last year, I hadn't spoken more than a few words of Indonesian for ten years. I've been to Indonesia twice: 1986 and 1993. Although I made lots of mistakes and had to consult my Indonesian/English dictionary sometimes--as well as switching to English often--I was amazed at how much came back to me.

I've often been told that I have an "ear" for languages and language in general. I guess that ties into my love of teaching English as a Second of Language (ESL), writing and acting.

The most interesting part of our time together today was when I introduced
Ahmad to a Japanese co-worker at the Saskatoon Open Door Society. I spoke Indonesian to him, Japanese to her, and then English to both of them. What a mental workout! Also, I kept thinking of words in Japanese when I was speaking Indonesian with him because I've lived in Japan. I even had a Spanish word leap into my brain, which is very strange because I know only a few words in that language.

Ah, the fascinating mysteries of the brain and of language!


[NOTE: For those of you who don't know, Swift Current is a small city in Saskatchewan.]

Here are some great quotations that fellow "ZeD" (a CBC website connected to a TV show) members recently sent me:


* "Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire."

- Stephen Wright


* "Maybe the best thing to do is to hope to end up with the right regrets."

- Arthur Miller


* "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

(NOTE: That's always been one of my favourite Oscar Wilde quotations.)

"Early in life I was sick to the very pit of my stomach with order that cuts off the lobster's feelers in order to fit it into a box." - William Carlos Williams

Check out the CBC website www.zed.cbc.ca and type donaldb in the search box to find photos and writing that I've uploaded.

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Solomon Short

American historian and philosopher Henry Adams was born on this day in 1838. What he said about most Americans that he met still applies to many of them (as well as to a lot of Canadians):

" [Americans] had no time for thought; they saw, and could see, nothing beyond their day's work; their attitude to the universe outside them was that of the deep-sea fish."

It seems appropriate that David and I celebrated Valentine's Day by going to see a play. We really enjoyed Dreamsurf Theatre's production of "Seascape" (a thoughtful comedy by Edward Albee) at the Refinery. Although it's a British theatre company, two of the actors in this production are Canadian, including Saskatoon's John Huston. The only thing wrong with the evening was the small audience (numbers, not size!). However, everyone who was there laughed heartily, sounding like a much larger audience.