Yesterday, I dropped by the Asian Festival. According to its website, last year more than 120,000 people visited the festival. That’s a lot of people! It’s a great festival, but whenever I go, I’m a little disappointed, because the Japan booth is always the least interesting booth out of all the booths representing the various countries. All the Japan booth has are a few fliers for travel specials, while the other booths have a bunch of cultural items. This is surprising, since Columbus has a pretty large Japanese community. While I was at the festival, I had some food from the Philippines. Don’t ask me to remember what it was called, but it was pretty good. Also, I’m currently reading the book Dishwasher by Pete Jordan.

Tags: Asian Festival, Book, Books, Dishwasher, Pete Jordan

Over the weekend I saw the movie An Unreasonable Man, a documentary about the life of Ralph Nadar. I don’t have any special feelings about Ralph Nadar one way or the other—the film just looked interesting. After the movie was finished, a video conference was set up right there in the movie theatre with Ralph Nadar, himself—I had no idea they were going to do this. Ralph Nadar was right up there on the movie screen, and he took questions from members of the audience. It’s amazing how far the technology has come—there were no delays or caching issues or anything like that. It was like he was right there in the same room with us.

Tags: An Unreasonable Man, Ralph Nadar

Now that the 2007 Boston Marathon is over, what do I do next? I haven’t yet decided on any fall marathon plans, but even though I’m not formally training for anything right now, I am still running with the Premier Sports Marathoner in Training (MIT) group. We won’t be running anything more than twelve miles until July, so I have plenty of time to decide if I want to run a fall marathon. If I do decide to run a fall marathon, then I have another decision to make—that is, at what level do I want to run the marathon? I don’t feel like I have to run a 3:12 again like I did in Columbus last year. In Boston, we ran eight-minute miles the whole way, and I finished in 3:30—it was very pleasant. Maybe I’ll just do that again in the fall—I’m not sure yet.

Tags: marathon, marathons, Boston Marathon, Columbus Marathon, running

I recently read this update on the movie Spirit of the Marathon (formerly known as Land of the Gods). It says that the editing is complete, but that it won’t be released until September 28th in Chicago. Hopefully, it will come to Columbus, but if not, it will be released on DVD in the first quarter of 2008. I usually don’t buy DVD’s, but I would strongly consider this one. Also, I’m currently reading the novel Girl in a Box by Sujata Massey. It’s a cheesy mystery novel, which I normally wouldn’t read, but it has a Japan theme, and ever since I read the first book in the series (The Salaryman’s Wife) on a trip to Japan about five years ago, I’ve been hooked, and I’ve read every subsequent book in the series.

Tags: Spirit of the Marathon, Book, Books, Girl in a Box, The Salaryman’s Wife, Sujata Massey

The person I’m writing mathematics problems for just had a big project come in. Apparently, there’s enough work to keep everyone who’s working for him busy for a long time to come—we’re talking years, not months. He’s looking to hire some more mathematics writers to help cover the load, so if anyone reading this knows of anyone who’s interested, please e-mail me at timtrowbridge@hotmail.com. This work requires a degree in mathematics or mathematics education, so please keep this requirement in mind—it’s firm. The people working for him can be located anywhere, since all work is sent and received electronically. Also, don’t worry about taking work away from me—apparently, there’s more than enough to go around.

Tags: Math, Mathematics

Two movies I’ve seen recently are The Hoax and The Namesake. The Namesake is about Indian immigrants to the United States and their children and is the best movie I’ve seen in a long time—definitely the best movie I’ve seen since I started this blog. I highly recommend it.

Also, I’m continuing to do some mathematics work. Lately, I’ve been writing what are called Enrichment Worksheets for a high-school algebra textbook. Basically, they’re just supplementary exercises that extend the mathematics or relate the mathematics to some aspect of everyday life. I’ve also been doing some answer-checking—that is, I’ve been making sure that the answers in the answer keys to mathematics problems are correct. It’s not quite as fun as actually writing the problems, but it’s a living.

Tags: The Hoax, The Namesake, Math, Mathematics