A flash of an old memory

Randomly surfing through local street names and places for both work and pleasure, and I hit up a few walking tours. One of them talks about red lanterns, which is a hoity kind of euphemism for the old, long-gone prostitution areas near Chinatown, but I clicked on it anyway and it listed the sites -

The Street of the Dead, it listed. It made me stop for a little while because no one calls it that - or, at least, I don't remember ever having been introduced to the street in English. I hear it in Cantonese in my head, sae yan gaei, which is far more damning - Dead Man's Street. They left sick people in those shophouses there to die, way back when.*

I don't remember why I remember these things. My country sneak attacks me! Does anyone else's country sneak attack them? ♥


[edit] *AND BECAUSE I AM WHO I AM this story actually comes with a crucial bit of hilarity. The word "street" and "chicken" in Cantonese are so tonally similar to my ears that I can't differentiate the two most of the time. There's meant to be more of a vowel-sound inflection on one of them - "gAI" as opposed to "gaEi" - but I can never get them right, and my parents think it is hilarious. I mean, Dead Man Chicken. DRAMATIQUE!!

Star Trek XI: To The Enterprise: of Warp Barriers, Captains, and Other Scary Things (Chekov, &c.)

For bessemerprocess's prompt: Star Trek Reboot, The Crew, what tradition does Star Fleet have for crew members crossing the warp speed barrier for the first time? How does this get celebrated on the Enterprise?

To The Enterprise: of Warp Barriers, Captains, and Other Scary Things

Fandom: Star Trek 2009
Rating: PG
Characters: Chekov, Scotty, Kirk, Spock
Summary: Mr. Spock's eyes flick towards the blatantly huge and complicated (and exciting) and blatantly huge mathematical and engineering schematics on the console screen. Chekov can practically see the cogs in Mr. Spock's mind whirr - he is very, very fast at telemetry, which means there is probably no getting around the fact that what they have here is a plan to break the current warp speed record into many small pieces. Pavel wonders if that is the only thing that will be broken.

2734 words and lots of fail!invented!maths. 8D

( Mr. Spock clears his throat. 'Mr. Sulu, Mr. Chekov,' he intones, and Chekov feels his spine try to straighten itself in a fit of biological self-preservation. 'How long more before we clear the Farmonion Corridor and re-enter established Federation space?' )