From a gal whose brain cells work faster than her fingers. (Sometimes.)
RomaCittaEterna on Thoughts from a slee...
InMyLife on Thoughts from a slee...
All Music
Alohalani's Philoblogsophy
Apostrophe Protection Society
As I Was Passing
Astro Pic of the Day
Banzai Descent
BBC
Blibber Blabber
Cartoon Yourself
Do you speak Engrish?
Eye Candy Blog
Fidlmath
Got Time to Waste?
Landmark Theatres
Makeup Alley
Olivia's London Dispatches
Omniglot
Religious Tolerance
Reverse "Engrish"
Ripple
SETI@home
The Best Imitation of Myself
The Jia Li Diaries
Two Ladies & Their TVs
Waiter Rant
Wikipedia
WWDN
beliefs
blogging
childhood
cultural differences
daily grind
environment
eye candy
family
friends
immigration
languages
listening
living
oh no you didnt
pep talk to self
politicking
quizzes & frou frou
reading
shop til i drop
social consciousness
technology
thats entertainment
travels
tutti mangia
vanity
watching
world of cinema
today
June 2008
March 2008
November 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
perused *loading* x
©2003-2007
Of all the nights to have a tornado watch/warning and power outage, it has to be the night when the Ambiguously Gay Duo host "Saturday Night Live." TV Funhouse is one of a handful of reasons why I even bother watching SNL.
Boo.
Taking a quick time-out for my lunch/chocolate fix break, and I see this: UK pro-gamers are lamenting the loss of a tournament in 2006 because many are "wondering how to make their lifestyle pay."
Jonathan Wendel, a.k.a. Fatal1ty, who is apparently a top player in the world, amassed $231,000 during last year's tournament.
$231,000?! Hot damn. I'm in the wrong field.
One down, three more to go. High on caffeine but not sickly jittery. The sound of the keys on my keyboard being pressed seems especially bouncy and crisp after having earplugs in for 2 hours. Ever notice that? Is this what happens when my brain is on drugs and lacking sleep?
An observation of a trend - more and more people are now not pronouncing Hs. The guy behind the proliferation of Starbucks was on "60 Minutes" last night, and he kept pronouncing "humans" (HEW-mans, which is how I've learned to say it ) as "umans" (YEW-mans). Same with "humanity" becomine "umanity."
For some reason, that really drives me up the wall. When have we become the French with our non-aspirating Hs? The silence of haricots verts rolls off the tongue, but YEW-mans is just...yick. It's as if someone has a permanent cold and the nose is too stopped up to allow one to breathe the H.
A lady I used to work with did it all the time - YEW-mans. I thought it might've had something to do with the fact she's Greek, but I guess not. The Starbucks guy isn't Greek.
Funny thing is, you don't ever hear a native (American) English speaker pronounce "hand" as "and." Or "happy" as "appy." That'd probably cause too much confusion, or just make one sound like an accented foreigner, though the lack of confusion (maybe) on the part of "umans" is no excuse to make it sound so, uh, YEW.
I just have to ask: What the heck is happening to the English that I've learned?!
Oh, the (h)umanity!
This public service announcement has been brought to you by merserene, half of a glazed donut, a two-hour exam that was way too short to answer all questions, and her Earl Grey tea.
EDIT: Apparently I'm not the only one who is a bit puzzled by the H phenomenon. Here's an Aussie's POV on 'umans and 'erbs. Be sure to check out his pronounciation page, too, because I almost spit out my tea several times while reading it.
Also, someone did a survey on pronouncing Hs. It seems too spread out to qualify as a "dialect," but is rather a choice. A 2% minority, at that. I've probably met about 50% of them!
Herb with the H is, at the very least, the shortened version of someone's name, so herb without the H (as in the spice) is still ok IMHO, to distinguish. YEW-mans though? I hope the YEW-mans who say it can answer why.
I turned in my paper 5 minutes late, and the professor was already waiting there. Eek. He's a good guy, so he was nice about it, but it was sure embarassing.
I swore in undergrad that I'd never do this again - managed not to do it last semester, at least - but I did it again. Really must stop the bad habit of editing up until the last minute.
I. I. I. I miss the working life. Even with long hours, at least it was compartmentalized.
Coming down to the wire. Too much to do, too little time, too many things. If only I didn't need food, sleep, or showers.
Today is a holy day for a lot of people. I hope today passes by in peace, though it looks like some parts of the world never sees that reprieve.
Religion is a very, very odd concept. Growing up, we learn to offer incense to our ancesters twice a day on a daily basis. On special occasions, we may offer it three times, in addition to offering food and using special incense. We went to the temples from time to time to offer incense, particularly at times of significant undertakings - a family member about to embark on an overseas trip, and we want him/her to arrive safely, or a child is about to start the school year, and we want him/her to do well. We worship idols, figures embodying the wise and the noble who came long before us, hoping they'd hear our prayers and help us wade through our mortal lives, if only a little bit more successfully. Those were simply the things that we did, and other people did too - to give thanks to your ancestors, for without them, you wouldn't be here, and to send good thoughts and hope that the good thoughts will come to fruition.
Only after I came to this country did I find out that religion is spelled with a capital R, and it's serious with a capital S. I had never seen a country so obsessed with religion and its rituals. Getting baptized, going to services, Easter, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, confirmation, converting, rejecting religion, being born again...these are really momentus events. I had never seen anything quite like it; even after living in this country for so long, I am still trying to wrap my mind around these things and ask: Why?
Where I grew up, vocabulary differences aside, the concepts I mentioned just aren't that big of a deal. One of my cousins converted to Christianity upon marrying her husband. She just did. Not even sure they had a church wedding. No controversy in my family. We know they go to church, and we still go to our temples. We never secretly pray for her or her family to convert back to Buddhism. When we gave my grandfather a Buddhist funeral two years ago, she, her husband, and their kids came to participate. They never took the incense but held their palms together in respect, just as we would do if we didn't have incense in our hands, and bowed at my grandfather's portrait and read the Buddhist scriptures just as we all did during the ceremony.
Here, in many people's eyes, they're probably bad Christians and broke all sorts of rules, but all they did was pay respects to a relative.
Another cousin of mine, on my mom's side, converted to Christianity several years ago after battling with depression. He met some friends who happened to be Christians and who helped him out of it. My cousin now works with his church, I think. My uncle and aunt have no problems with it. His siblings have no problems with it. They're all living in the same house, a house where there is an altar to the deceased ancestors on my mom's side, including my maternal grandmother. As long as my cousin is happy and hasn't joined some odd cult, said my aunt and uncle, they're happy that he's happy.
So you did, and you don't now, or you didn't, but you do now. No questions involved, no fuss, no hang ups, no rude awakenings, no "recovering so-and-so," no nothing.
Maybe it's just the way we were brought up, maybe it's just a different culture, maybe it's a different mindset altogether. Maybe it's the fact that nothing was ever drilled into our heads as if it's some immutable truth, so no one ever had to struggle to reconcile inconsistencies. Having a religion is simply not as important as living life as a good person. Pretty much no one judges you by how many times you went to the temple this month or how much you donated to it. No one requires you to pull out all the stops to worship and to make offerings if you're simply busy and don't have the time. No one ever expects you to be able to recite scriptures because that's the monks' job, or what you do in your own home (in fact, people look at you weirdly if you do start quoting scripture), and really, it's irrelevant to how you actually behave yourself. No one ever judges you by the religion with which you identify, or the lack thereof. But, people do judge you by how hard you work, how well you do in school, whether you respect your elders, and whether you choose to be a productive member of society or a criminal. You don't ever hear things like, "She's a bad < insert religion > because she doesn't believe there are 18 levels of hell," but you do hear things like, "He's a bad person because he kept borrowing money from his relatives for gambling and never paid it back."
All I've seen in my years is that the more rigid the dogma, the more likely there is trouble, for both oneself and for others.
Maybe it's the definition of a "good person" with which people seem to have problems. It's not difficult, though. Just look at the world around us; it is easy to extract common traits from all cultures and beliefs. They usually revolve around one or maybe two things.
There is a saying in Chinese, 舉頭三尺有神明 (there is divine essence three feet above the head). It is used as a cautionary phrase, but very matter-of-factly, as in, if you're thinking about doing something, remember that there is a deity watching closely. Or maybe for the less divinely-inclined, it's just your conscience. You know what you're doing, even if no one else knows, and you have only yourself to answer to.
As the Dalai Lama says, "This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."
I think this is all one really needs.
LotR: The Two Towers is on right now. So is The Ten Commandments.
Sorry Moses, the hobbits win.
I'm being a little OCD/ADD today, but so be it.
Stark warning over climate change - an excerpt:
The Earth is likely to experience a temperature rise of at least 3C, the UK government's chief scientist says.
Professor Sir David King warned this would happen because world governments were failing to agree on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. ...
A recent report called Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, produced by the Hadley Centre, one of the top world centres for projecting future climate, modelled the likely effects of a 3C rise.
It warned the situation could wreck half the world's wildlife reserves, destroy major forest systems, and put 400 million more people at risk of hunger.
Notice the last 2 paragraphs:
So far, the US, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been unwilling to debate a CO2 threshold.
President Bush's chief climate adviser, James Connaughton, said he did not believe anyone could forecast a safe level and cutting greenhouse gas emissions could harm the world economy.
2 words: Que idiota.
If the world goes to hell in a handbasket, which it is on the verge of doing, there'll be no such thing as a "world economy" to worry about. Do people just not understand that you can't be cautious enough when it comes to the health of our planet? Is this really a legacy we'd want to leave?
Two things in life are certain: Death, and taxes.
I just spent about 2 hours doing both of my federal and state taxes. Neither did I have to pay taxes, nor did I get a refund - better not, with this non-existence income that I have - but even with minimum forms/assets/whatever it still took me that long. Yick.
Part of it was trying to figure out of which state I'm a resident. I used to think that you are a resident of the state in which you have your driver's license, which is either a prerequisite or corequisite of being able to vote in that state. But now, I'm not so sure, since each state's definition of "resident" is different. Gotta love federalism.
Plus, my current state of domicile tells me nothing about its own requirements. I suppose I live here - ok, I do live here, and have been for the past 2.5 years - but I have never considered myself a resident of this state. My license isn't from here, and my loyalties definitely do not lie here. I have no desire to associate myself with a state that has consistently placed at or near the bottom of every standard of life, health, education, safety, etc. rankings out there.
It's all relative, though. Some people (like from around here) wouldn't be caught dead having Hillary Clinton as a senator or be governed by the Governator.
What kind of a blogger are you? Someone tries to put it into psychological terms. See April 11, 2006 posting at Concurring Opinions.
Bipolar / manic-depressive. This is the blogger who posts five items and changes his template three times in four hours, then neglects his blog completely for a week and a half. Rinse and repeat.
Schizophrenic. This blogger-commenter maintains multiple personalities in different venues, i.e. a liberal at one, libertarian at another. (Variation: This diagnosis also applies to someone who is not just a commenter but blogs at various blogs himself, and who displays multiple blogging personalities across them).
Passive Aggressive. "Dan, I doubt you'll respond to this post, but I think that ____. " Then, get mad when Dan doesn't respond.
Tourette's. This is the blogger who drops unnecessary bursts of profanity into otherwise innocuous posts. No shit, Sherlock.
OCD. I must check my blog. I must moderate comments. I must clean out the spam folder. In ten minutes, I will do this all again.
ADD / ADHD. This blogger writes several posts per day. None of them are more than a few lines long; none of them contain more than half of one coherent . . .
Blog bulimic. Blog blog blog blog blog. Delete delete delete delete delete.
Sociopath. Doesn't comply with social norms; deceitful; aggressive; lack of remorse -- and all those terms really out of the (real) DSM*! Clearly, this is the category for comment trolls.
Delusional. Bloggers who exhibit any of the following symptoms: Belief that blogging counts as actual scholarship; belief that blogging makes them sexy or desirable; belief that blogging is an acceptable substitute for a social life. Surefire diagnosis: Bloggers observed making repeated, insistent statements that "blogging is not a waste of time."
I've been all-of-the-above except schizo, passive-aggressive, bulimic, and sociopath. Thank goodness?
* Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
When someone is having a pretty bad day and tells you as much, if you consider the person a friend, please have the courtesy of emailing back a few words of sympathy. Even if you're feigning.
Yesterday, when I vented to someone in an email string about my unresponsive officers, how they only answer emails at the last minute when nothing can be changed, and about dishonest people breaking contracts with me, all she replied back was, "I found out today I'm getting published. Woohoo!"
Please don't mind that I have a virtual image of the palm of my hand somehow quickly coming into contact with your face. Woohoo!
Really. Use a little discretion. Common sense? EQ? Obviously negative.
Even if you pretended to feel bad, I would know you cared at least enough to type out sympathetic words and to acknowledge you've read mine. (Strictly speaking of the incident I had, of course.)
Although, I did find out that I passed the ethics portion of the bar. Now I am officially "ethical."
There. That's my feeble attempt to end the post on a positive note!
I've often posted about Engrish, but have you seen reverse Engrish → Hanzi Smatter?
This article pretty much sums up the relationship between the two...and how important it is to get things right, beyond a purely aesthetic matter.
Let's say I found myself laughing out loud so many times while reading Hanzi Smatter that I began to feel sorry for some of the folks featured on there...
While we were evacuating last year, my friends and I stopped off at Target to buy clothes, operating under the assumption that our houses were probably gone and we needed to replace our wardrobes. There was a slew of graphic t-shirts, some with Chinese characters on them. My friend C picked one up, but not before she consulted me on what it meant.
"It just says 'love'," I told her.
"Ok, good. I just wanted to make sure it doesn't say something like 'skank' on it!" she said.
Question is, would she have bought it if no one could tell her? It was a good thing she asked me; even if I wasn't there, she was lucky that the character was harmless. How many people do you think would've bought and worn something that might have said "fat pig" in Chinese without knowing what it meant first?
Sadly, according to Hanzi Smatter, people have actually tattooed all sorts of crazy characters on themselves before asking people who know what they mean. Those are harder to remove than a simple t-shirt, you know.
Think Chinese characters are just pretty? Think again. How would you react if someone walked down the street in this Engrish shirt? (Warning: If you're easily offended by foul language, please do not click on it.)
So, if you're considering buying something with Chinese characters on it just for the heck of it, remember that there are around 1.5 billion people in this world who are probably going to point and laugh at you. For your sake, please check with a fluent person first!
Conversely, if you're not a native English speaker, please check with someone who is or is near fluent before buying something that's equally embarassing! (Though, if your English is good enough to be reading and understanding this, then you probably won't have a problem...)
