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a penguin of very little brain
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| 但我会用自己翅膀 |
[May. 4th, 2008|03:25 pm] |
- If I'm writing in Chinese, turning the capslock on allows me to write in English. I am quite excited by this discovery! It means swapping between English and Mandarin is suddenly much faster and easier.
- A newish blog: Penang - My Everlasting Love, a daily photo blog. Bercinta <333
- I had no idea that Nanyang Technological University looked so awesome. One of the really great things about Singapore is that a lot of the big buildings really do look quite awesome, like all the architects have been given free reign and gone mad in a really cool way.
- This is my new favourite photo blog: One Love Photo, she does a lot of weddings but I love the lighting she uses and some of the ideas she has. She also has some engagement sets, and, as an aside, engagement photos are things that I don't really understand.
- Article: Penguin's wetsuit puts him back in the swim of things.
- Other article: Naked cop surprises NZ car thief.
- The weather is getting cold, and I'm turning more back to curries and cookies and things that heat the kitchen up, misting the windows and warming my toes. I will miss this kitchen when we are gone from here.
- I miss salads, but they just don't feel the same when I'm wearing a heavy jumper.
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| life is peachy without me |
[Oct. 23rd, 2007|08:39 pm] |
I am unsure (as yet) how suggestions for panels works for next SwanCon, but theoretically, if someone who shall remain me was thinking of proposing a panel provisionally titled A Giant CoC(k) Up: Characters of Colour in Speculative Fiction, would anyone be interested in joining me at the front of the room? The title of the panel is totally going to change, though the theme as suggested by this one will remain the same.
**
In other news, instead of working on my Enviro essay (a case study of the sustainable water future of one Australian state) I have been watching the music videos of my favourite S.H.E. songs. I think my favourite so far is 不想长大, though whatever the hell is going on with the half-dressed people from about the 02:40 mark is unknown to me. |
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| movie: the home song stories |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|09:12 pm] |
I spent some time today at the movies, with my mother. We saw The Home Song Stories, a story that is sort of about being Chinese in Australia (in the 70s), and sort of about the Chinese diaspora, and also about being unhappy and stuck and trying so hard to live.
I was intrigued going in, at the idea of an Australian movie, set in Australia, but in English, Mandarin and Cantonese. Unlike many other multi-language movies I have seen recently, the English was used as the modifier, rather than the Mandarin or the Cantonese, which was interesting. Watching it was also an interesting experience for us. As the movie opened in Hong Kong, there was singing, and my mother laughed. "That was the song, when I was growing up," she whispered, and what she meant that it was very, very popular, but now she cannot even recall its title. It starts 忘不了， which sounds like it could be a song title, so. Later, my mother said, "her Cantonese was not very good;" I laughed, and said, "it's okay, her mother was clearly not a peasant, so they're even." (they were supposed to live rural, but her mother spoke with a strong Beijing accent)
I loved Tom, the main character, an adorable eleven year old boy, ethnically Chinese but having spent the majority of his childhood in Australia. I love this story of how they found the actor: they placed an ad in The Age, and at the end of the day that the ad ran, he called, and in a little voice said that he'd heard they were looking for an eleven year old Chinese boy, and he was an eleven year old Chinese boy. That's an adorable story, and I love the character and the way he played him, quiet and observant and so unconfident but still kind of sure.
It's a difficult film, very harsh and bleak and as such, the ending feels a bit out of place but overall it's a very strong, compelling movie. My mother kept reaching for her tissues, though I will be scolded soundly for saying that, and I was really struck by the style of storytelling.
Also, I loved how "Australia in the 70s" it all was, so clearly identifiable. At one point Tom was sleeping on sheets identical to ones I slept on for years, which caused me a lot of glee.
I'm not very good at reviews, I know, but I'm really glad that I saw this film.
For a better review, you can see David and Margaret's one here. Margaret gave it four stars and David gave it three and a half, and you would never doubt them, surely. |
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| bring life to frozen ground |
[Aug. 5th, 2007|11:56 am] |
These are some of the things that make up my life.
After Work:
On Thursday, after work, I: ventured down to Broadway Pizza to pick up delicious pizza; ate pizza; baked a cake and twelve cup cakes; watched Children of Dune (part two) for about the millionth time; edited an erotic fiction novel.
It was an excellent evening.
Adventures in Perth:
I spent an excellent hour in the Good Sammy's on the West end of Hay Street on Friday night, purchasing dorky pants and a lovely skirt and hating the large amount of skirts that were either too big or too small for me. I found a copy of Twilight Watch (not this edition) in Dymocks, which Davyd has since spent the entire weekend on the couch reading.
Following this, I wandered on across to the Brass Monkey, where I spent a delightful couple of hours chatting with friends and drinking alcohol provided by WAIA for WAIX's tenth birthday.
Later, we ran through the city to catch the 24, only to discover its last run is the one that leaves East Perth about 21:00, which is UNACCEPTABLE, TRANSPERTH. The 102 being our next option, we ventured to the busport. One minute it was empty, the next, it was filled with emos. Our conclusion is that emos must be home by eleven.
Peter Combe Watch:
After losing a game of rock, paper, scissors to (not)Dr Zanchey, I am now in charge of watchingPeter Combe's myspace to find out when he comes to Perth. So far, he's not coming before October, which is ages away (plus side: we don't have to worry about it clashing with Msh and Susie's wedding?).
Chinese class:
Chinese this semester is moving along. I'm really enjoying class, and our homework is usually a perfect mix of relearning and new learning and research, which is the type of homework I enjoy the most. This week I have to write about an Australian publisher for my literature class, and it's kind of difficult, sometimes, to work out which publishers are Australian and which are global but huge in Australia, so I decided to go small press. It's really short because it only has to be 100-200 characters but ALSO it's really short because I can't find much out about them, which, what? Incidentally, does anyone know how to say "Fremantle Arts Centre Press" in Chinese?
"Fremantle Arts Centre Press" 建立1976。它的重要目标发展最大西澳大利亚书写人的听闻。现在，澳大利亚的最大自主的出版社之一。后来3月2007年，叫"Fremantle Press". 它出版小说，历史，孩子的小说，烹调大全，自传，等等。它有多著名的书写人。虽然它地方的出版社，它们书卖全国通过企鹅出版社。这是给它们最大听闻，最大广告宣传。
Below the cut are the lyrics to 菊花台 by 周杰伦. I had to use baidu.com to find them. This was something that just I and another person had to do, because we foolishly talked about our love for Jay Chou in class, but I think the point was to prove we can successfully use Chinese search engines.
( 菊花台 )
And now I'm about to begin cooking dahl and roti for lunch. Mmmmmdahl. |
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| there's a lesson to be learned |
[Mar. 15th, 2007|09:09 pm] |
Things I learnt at Chinese yesterday:
Internet 带给我们的不仅仅是巨大的诱惑，还有对我们生活方方面面的冲击。
The above sentence can be translated to: the internet not only brings to us tremendous temptation, it also attacks every aspect of our lives. Isn't that an awesome sentence? In a newspaper article, guys.
At the moment we're reading a lot of newspaper articles, coming to terms with phrases common in newspapers that you wouldn't encounter in other media, and increasing our general character vocabularies. The articles our lecturer selects appear to be mostly at random and unrelated, which is both incredibly difficult (every week is a dozen new challenges, so many new characters and combinations) and really satisfying from a learning point of view. And Chinese is such a fascinating language, especially in the character composition/combinations, that everything is always worth learning, even these new words:
天花 - smallpox
丝虫病 - filariasis
血吸虫病 - schistosomiasis
脊灰 - polio
麻风 - leprosy
大骨节病 - Kaschin-Beck disease
I had to look half of those up in English. And due to the construction of Mandarin, 天花 (small pox) is constructed from 天 "heaven/sky" and 花 "flower," and if you add 板 “board" to the end it becomes "ceiling."
I love Chinese, it's so complex and challenging to learn, but it's a good challenge, and it's interesting, and sometimes, I wish I'd studied linguistics. |
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| 看电影 |
[Jun. 24th, 2006|04:42 pm] |
On Thursday I watched 我的父亲母亲 without subtitles in my Chinese class, and it was so beautiful and really sad and difficult to understand, not because I had no English aid, but because of the situation it was trying to convey. I'm not even sure I can describe it, but I am going to try. The movie is nominally about a young man who returns to the village of his youth because his father is very sick, only to be told by the village elders that his father has died. His mother is distraught, and insists that his father be carried home from the hospital on the shoulders of people, rather than in a truck. This isn't possible, because all the young people have left the village for work in the cities. The story diverges here, and becomes partly about the young man's attempts to have his father carried home, but mostly it becomes a flashback to the love story of his father and his mother. Zhao Di (the young man's mother) was very devoted to the man who would later become her husband. When Luo had to travel away from the village (he was called back for Cultural Revolution reasons), she would stand out on the hill, overlooking the road to the village, every day. She became very sick, and everyone became very concerned for her, especially as there was no official attachment between the two. Because this story takes place in a Northern village, and it's just on the cusp of the CR, they village elders are clearly worried about her because this was still a time of matchmakers rather than "love matches," so her behaviour was not only inappropriate but also unusual and worrying.
It's a movie sort of about the Cultural Revolution, but also about life in China at that period of time, and it's completely different to anything that I have ever experienced, which is why I struggled to understand her motivation and her actions.
Anyway, I've totally not explained the movie in any sort of clear way, but whatever. It was very sad and very beautiful and quite interesting, and I am going to try and see if I can purchase a copy for myself (and then force many people to watch it). Another movie that I want to see because I have been told that it is very beautiful is 2046. I saw it for sale in Borders last week, but it is unfortunately expensive and I am unfortunately broke, so I did not purchase it. But I shall! Perhaps after my birthday. 2046 stars Wang Fei, whom I have never seen act but whose singing I adore, and also stars Zhang Ziyi.
Oh! I wanted to mention that 我的父亲母亲 is known as "The Road Home" in English, which is a reference to the road along which Zhao Di wants her husband to be carried from the hospital to the village, and is significant because he first came to the village as the new teacher, the hope of the village teaching the children, and he did so much for the village and that's why it's important, hokay. However, "我的父亲母亲" doesn't translate to "the road home." A literal translation of that is "my father my mother," which also makes sense and sounds lovely in Mandarin, but is a bit too prosaic in English. |
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[Jun. 16th, 2006|01:36 pm] |
What a sanctimonious shit, and what a waste of my time: Why Chinese is So Damn Hard. Not that he's wrong - it is difficult, and it will take you years longer than it would to learn a Romance language, but seriously, what a wanker. |
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| a brief rant about tattoos |
[Dec. 10th, 2004|02:03 pm] |
For what reason would anyone choose to do this to themselves?
For those who cannot be bothered clicking on the link, let me briefly describe it. A tattoo of three characters, running down the side of the calf, each character about eight centimetres in height/length/whatever. The characters, after a quick head scritch and a consultation with my dictionary, are the characters for 'evil' (歹)， 'grease' (or possibly, and given the context - that is, someone's leg and the previous character, 'rogue') (脂), and something that sort of means 'female' (雌), but you don't usually use it alone. So at a guess, what they're going for here is for a sort of "hard bitch" effect, but damn.
For those of you who don't know, tattoos = bad things (generally) in Chinese culture. As a teenager, my mother would threaten to disown me (and don't think she wouldn't) if I ever came home with a tattoo. The only reason, she said, that I would have a tattoo, would be if I were a member of the Chinese mafia, and that was not to be tolerated.
Also, the tattoo that this person has is aesthetically displeasing to me.
Anyway, that's your rant for the day. |
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[Nov. 10th, 2004|03:16 pm] |
The very worst bit about translating, is the words that have entered the language since you were last fluent, and no-one thought to inform you. Or the dictionaries. |
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