Well, I just got back from a short business trip to Oakland, CA. I stayed at the Marriott on 11th and Broadway, just a block away from Oakland City Center, and across the street from Verbena and the 12th St BART station. The training, itself, was held at Preservation Park. I flew Southwest Airlines both ways, and noticed that the peanuts on the flights were provided by Kings Delicious Nuts.

I didn't get frisked at the airport on the way there because I learned my lesson the last time - remove my belt and shoes and send them through the X-ray machine along with my carry-on, jacket, and pocket contents. It was always the belt and shoes that beeped me before. I did, however, get accosted on the return trip because my boarding pass had the 'checkerboard' pattern on it.   =(

In the movie 'Shrek', Shrek at one point says the phrase "Hapaya, hapaya!" (according to the subtitles). I looked it up, but couldn't find much. Apparently, 'hepaya' (spelled slightly differently) means "restaurant" in the artificial language 'Sona'. 'Hapaya', however, is not translatable at Babelfish, nor recognized by Merriam-Webster or Dictionary.com. Further documentation is available at these sites: DreamWorks SKG Fansite, and Shrek Script.

Apparently, the term 'hapaya' might be a Sri Lankan (Sinhala) word that has something to do with chewing betel. It might also be a Russian word (or name), but not likely. I'm still looking into this one.

I find it hilarious that the movie '10 Things I Hate About You' contains so much post-secondary vocabulary (seeing as how it's a high school movie). Uncommon terms found in the film but not in most peoples' vocabularies include: vapid, rampallian, turgid, tumescent, repartee, genre, defeatist, misogynist, and a few others.