Category: Uncategorized

I was watching a video of my son Max’s choir group back home in WA performing “Rose, Rose, Rose” (a kind song known as a round, where one group starts off and the next group start to sing the same song a bit later, like “Row Row, Row Your Boat”), when a certain line hit me: ” Still, I will be merry…. “

I was suddenly transported 25 years back in time, back to one of countless nights spent around a bonfire in the cold hours before sunrise, high up in the mountains of Japan. My friends had taught me a Japanese folk song, a round with a catchy part about being cheerful even though you have nothing to eat and no place to stay…

Which sounds a lot like:

Meat, nor drink, nor money have I none
Still, I will be merry….

Western BBS-style digging on Rose Rose Rose: Origins: Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose (Traditional) and ‘Rose, Rose’ round: More verses?

Japanese BBS-style digging on Watashi ha Yadonashi de: https://oshiete.goo.ne.jp/qa/353621.html

Jean Ritchie’s Peace Round:

A Nightcore remix (!!) of Emilie Autumn’s electric violin rendering of Rose Red

And here’s the non-Nightcore version: Rose Red – Emilie Autumn (with lyrics)

Hunting for videos of the Japanese version of the song (Watashi ha Yadonashi de) is where it gets really weird. The original version of the song by Masami Mizuno is not to be found anywhere, which is not really surprising since dinosaur music companies in Japan tend to threaten everyone for sharing even ancient recordings. So the closest we have are computer synthesized recordings utilizing Sinsy:

The second noteworthy video I found of Yadonashi contains synthesized verses in both Japanese and English! Perfect!!

A Japanese illustrator recently wrote an interesting comic strip/blog post about this owari nai uta (neverending songs): https://www.arakawalove.com/archives/20190826

It took me a long time to figure this out because the support documentation sucks. This is for the error where the desktop notification icon is gray and Dropbox won’t connect after you try and sign in.

NOTE: This happened on a laptop running Windows 10 64-bit

Anyways, try turning off your antivirus, check that Dropbox isn’t blocked in your firewall or connection settings, and run an advanced uninstall: How to run an advanced reinstall

I’ve taken a screen capture of the page in case it gets lost:

On the long road home, we came across this at DMK…

By the way, Don Muang International is now the best airport in Thailand as far as I know. All the amenities and nowhere near the madness or scale of Suvarnabhumi.

You lookin’ at my mudflaps, boy?

Hells yeah.

History of the Toyota Crown

Mine is first year (1971; pre-facelift) fourth generation, and was an abject market failure because it was too strange-looking for its time. Of course, that’s why it looks so cool now.

This week was quite an eventful one. We found possibly the best restaurant in Issan, Max threw up in a bubble room, and we had a couple exceptional meals.

I wrote the post a couple weeks ago, but WordPress had a brainfart until today. Oh, well.

Just centered this bad boy with a tire iron and a cop came to ask me if he could borrow some tools to fix his motorcycle… He wasn’t a very good mechanic, and I ended up adjusting his carb with the mixture and idle adjustment screws.

The kids are still at TKD…. I feel like a soccer mom waiting for them to finish. A soccer mom in a lowered, black 1971 Kujira Crown.

This photo was taken when I was cruising down the highway in the old Crown to meet Max, Mina, and Nam, who were at a friend’s second house out in the countryside.

Sometimes the sky here is really awesome. I watched a thunderstorm last week off in the direction of Roi-et that had the most regular lightning I’ve ever seen.