| 我愛老大哥！ |
[12 Jun 2009|10:53pm] |
Today, what I thought would never happen again, inexplicably happened: I was carded while buying my booze at the oppressive government wine monopoly. Yes, despite the balding head, despite the beard stubble, the hint of a few wrinkles appearing, someone saw me for the lively, handsome youth I truly am – even younger and handsomer, presumably, than the 16-year-old me who adorns my ID. The only thing that put a dampener on the joy was when the cashier confessed to having carded someone 11 years my senior earlier in the day.
It was then I knew it – I loved Big Brother.
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| 千里之行，始于足下 |
[13 Mar 2009|07:57am] |
The years sure fly by, don't they? A year and nine months ago, I set out to become literate in Chinese characters, and on the morning of March 2nd, the last one of them finally popped up on my screen. Finally. It's a fun and worthwhile hobby to have, but boy, has it taken long.
Now all that's left is to repeat everything until it sticks. See you all in another year, then?
Since last time I've also begun studying computer science after an old friend gave me the idea. Here's the product of my mandatory assignment #3:
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| 誰是約翰·高爾特？ |
[29 Mar 2008|01:14am] |
Among the latest books to find their way to my shelf, and among the most unique, is Atlas Shrugged, a political novel of considerable length written by the author and philosopher Ayn Rand, who would later conceive the philosophy of Objectivism. Having learned of the book through mentions by supporters and detractors on the Internet, I decided to read for myself the book that's introduced many to Rand's ideas.
The book opens with the question of "Who is John Galt?" and then sets about to answer that question by an elaborate story that takes us through the end of an era in modern society and into the beginning of another. The main plot revolves around the lives of several vibrant, free-thinking individuals who each in their own way strives to excel in their particular discipline, only to find that the society and people around them are holding them back. Fighting not to conform to an ideal of mediocrity, they start to question the society that simultaneously expects them to provide it with the products of their efforts, while at the same time seeking to hinder them each time they rise an inch above the rest. We also meet the family, business partners and other members of society whose views are in diametrical opposition: How, they ask, can one person be permitted to indulge in selfishness and greed at the expense of those around them?
Together with the events that take place, a series of monologues and dialogues intertwined with the story serve to give an outline of a philosophical system aimed at providing the objective truth about how man ought to live in order to survive and attain happiness. Says Rand, "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." Atlas Shrugged is on the surface a novel depicting political turmoil, moral battles, personal struggles, drama and romance, but it's also a unique contribution to the realm of philosophy and ethics. It's an interesting and thought-provoking book that anyone who loves reading might consider taking a look at.
http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451191145/ (Original version)
http://www.bokklubben.no/SamboWeb/produkt.do?produktId=119119&rom=AK (Norwegian)
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| 白人看不懂 |
[22 Mar 2008|02:52am] |
Chinese romanization systems are crazy. Invented by the ancient sages as a way of subduing difficult prisoners as well as keeping foreign barbarians from learning Chinese state secrets, romanized Chinese is aimed at preserving the difficulty of the Chinese writing system even while appearing to be using the Roman alphabet. For this reason, there is of course more than one, meaning Chinese names are liable to change into the unrecognizable every so often, and none of them even remotely preserve either the pronunciation or the phonetic structure of the language in any consistent or logical way.
That's why today I'm challenging you to decipher the impossible: Of the following six romanization systems, which, if any, do you think make(s) any sense?
Listen to the following MP3: http://static.unilang.org/resources/pronscript/sonidos/soundfiles/sonido_zh.mp3
Listen to it as many times as necessary and select as many as you'd like from the examples below. Which of the following texts, if any, accurately reflect(s) what the man is saying?
(Audio clip and text courtesy of Unilang, see http://home.unilang.org/main/license.en.html for details)
1:
Hai! Perng yeou .men!
Huan yng lai daw jey geh jiaw tzuoh "Shyh jieh jy sheng" .de UNILANG shin jih huah. Jeh geh jih huah bau harn .le nii jenq tzay ting .je .de doan wen luh in, chyi juu yaw .de muh dih shyh cherng shiann meei joong yeu yan .de sheng in geei shyue shyi yeu yan .de shyue sheng .men, in wey woo .men jian shinn jenq chiueh .de fa in shyh kee yii bang juh daw i joong way yeu .de lian shih. Yee sheu nii huey fa jyue daw jeh lii .de sheng in her nii suoo shyue .de yeou suoo cha yih. Dann chian wann bye dan shin, jeh shyh in wey meei joong yeu yan dou bey chyi fang yan yiing sheang .je. Neng gow ting daw jenq toong .de fa in dang ran shyh tzuey hao .de, bwu shyh .ma? Woo .men shi wanq jey geh jih huah duey nii .de shyue shyi huey yeou bang juh.
Tzay huey!
2:
Hai! Peng you men!
Huan ying lai dao zhei ge jiao zuo "Shi jie zhi sheng" de UNILANG xin ji hua. Zhe ge ji hua bao han le ni zheng zai ting zhe de duan wen lu yin, qi zhu yao de mu di shi cheng xian mei zhong yu yan de sheng yin gei xue xi yu yan de xue sheng men, yin wei wo men jian xin zheng que de fa yin shi ke yi bang zhu dao yi zhong wai yu de lian xi. Ye xu ni hui fa jue dao zhe li de sheng yin he ni suo xue de you suo cha yi. Dan qian wan bie dan xin, zhe shi yin wei mei zhong yu yan dou bei qi fang yan ying xiang zhe. Neng gou ting dao zheng tong de fa yin dang ran shi zui hao de, bu shi ma? Wo men xi wang zhei ge ji hua dui ni de xue xi hui you bang zhu.
Zai hui!
3:
Hai! Peng you men!
Huan ying lai dau jei ge jiau tzuo "Shr jie jr sheng" de UNILANG shin ji hua. Je ge ji hua bau han le ni jeng tzai ting je de duan wen lu yin, chi ju yau de mu di shr cheng shian mei jung yu yan de sheng yin gei shiue shi yu yan de shiue sheng men, yin wei wo men jian shin jeng chiue de fa yin shr ke yi bang ju dau yi jung wai yu de lian shi. Ye shiu ni huei fa jiue dau je li de sheng yin he ni suo shiue de you suo cha yi. Dan chian wan bie dan shin, je shr yin wei mei jung yu yan dou bei chi fang yan ying shiang je. Neng gou ting dau jeng tong de fa yin dang ran shi tzuei hau de, bu shr ma? Wo men shi wang jei ge ji hua duei ni de shiue shi huei you bang ju.
Tzai huei!
4:
Hai! Peng you men!
Huan ying lai dao jhei ge jiao zuo "Shih jie jhih sheng" de UNILANG sin ji hua. Jhe ge ji hua bao han le ni jheng zai ting jhe de duan wun lu yin, ci jhu yao de mu di shih cheng sian mei jhong yu yan de sheng yin gei syue si yu yan de syue sheng men, yin wei wo men jian sin jheng cyue de fa yin shih ke yi bang jhu dao yi jhong wai yu de lian si. Ye syu ni huei fa jyue dao jhe li de sheng yin he ni suo syue de you suo cha yi. Dan cian wan bie dan sin, jhe shih yin wei mei jhong yu yan dou bei ci fang yan ying siang jhe. Neng gou ting dao jheng tong de fa yin dang ran shih zuei hao de, bu shih ma? Wo men si wang jhei ge ji hua duei ni de syue si huei you bang jhu.
Zai huei!
5:
Hai! P'eng yu men!
Huan ying lai tao chei ke chiao tso "Shih chieh chih sheng" te UNILANG hsin chi hua. Che ke chi hua pao han le ni cheng tsai t'ing che te tuan wen lu yin, ch'i chu yao te mu ti shih ch'eng hsien mei chung yü yen te sheng yin kei hsüeh hsi yü yen te hsüeh sheng men, yin wei wo men chien hsin cheng ch'üeh te fa yin shih k'e i pang chu tao i chung wai yü te lien hsi. Yeh hsü ni hui fa chüeh tao che li te sheng yin he ni so hsüeh te yu so ch'a i. Tan ch'ien wan pieh tan hsin, che shih yin wei mei chung yü yen tou pei ch'i fang yen ying hsiang che. Neng kou t'ing tao cheng t'ung te fa yin tang jan shih tsui hao te, pu shih ma? Wo men hsi wang chei ke chi hua tui ni te hsüeh hsi hui yu pang chu.
Tsai hui!
6:
Hai! Peng you men!
Hwan ying lai dau jei ge jyau dzwo "Shr jye jr sheng" de UNILANG syin ji hwa. Je ge ji hwa bau han le ni jeng dzai ting je de dwan wen lu yin, chi ju yau de mu di shr cheng syan mei jung yu yan de sheng yin gei sywe syi yu yan de sywe sheng men, yin wei wo men jyan syin jeng chywe de fa yin shr ke yi bang ju dau yi jung wai yu de lyan syi. Ye syu ni hwei fa jywe dau je li de sheng yin he ni swo sywe de you swo cha yi. Dan chyan wan bye dan syin, je shr yin wei mei jung yu yan dou bei chi fang yan ying syang je. Neng gou ting dau jeng tung de fa yin dang ran shr dzwei hau de, bu shr ma? Wo men syi wang jei ge ji hwa dwei ni de sywe syi hwei you bang ju.
Dzai hwei!
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| 能者爲，不能者爲師。 |
[05 Nov 2007|05:37pm] |
After having worked for a couple of months as an assistant at a primary school, I got to try my hand at teaching English today. I was rather nervous and half expected it to degrade into complete chaos within the first hour, but the class I was sent to was actually extremely well-behaved, and most participated actively in the assigned tasks. The topic for today was Guy Fawke's day, which is today, November 5th, and we also briefly discussed V for Vendetta, since Guy Fawke's day is an important theme in that movie as well.
It was a nice break, being able to try teaching a language after having studied them all this time. Perhaps this is what the future holds?
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| 半途而廢 |
[15 Sep 2007|07:30pm] |
Learning 10 000 characters was beginning to take its toll, and as I rounded 1 700, having learned such gems as 吢 "qìn"—"vomiting of a dog", and 杵 "chǔ"—"pestle; baton used beat clothes", I decided enough was enough and that the selection could easily be halved without losing much in the way of useful characters. And halve it I did; There are now three files in all, the largest of which contains a total of 4755 characters, a jolly mixture of characters common in Japanese, in traditional Chinese and in the Hong Kong school system. The files are thusly named:
• Jouyou Panic Flash cards for the 1945 Jōyō characters, for use with jMemorize
• Hanzi Horror Flash cards for various Chinese characters
• Total Torment A combined file containing both
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| 冰凍三尺，非一日之寒 |
[11 Aug 2007|05:26am] |
During the summer I've been working on some flash cards which attempt to help the user memorize Chinese characters in a systematic way. Besides listing all the relevant readings next to each other, the cards are sorted by the number of strokes, so that simpler characters will appear before more complex ones which may contain them as components. This should save considerable time. In fact, it had better save some time, because the file wound up containing more than 10 000 characters! Wish me luck on that one...
For those who might be interested, here is the file, and here is the program to parse it.
In other news, after 24 years of laborious effort, I've finally understood why some rolls of toiler paper (Norwegian has two wonderful words for those, "dorull" and "dassrull", by the way) seem to have the layers improperly aligned, making it difficult to tear the paper cleanly off. The phenomenon turned out to be due to simple user error: When one first uses the offending rolls, one may on occasion tear off just the top layer by accident, causing that layer to travel a full round before again coming into contact with the bottom layer. This consequently leads to the unfortunate misalignment.
So with newfound knowledge of both Chinese characters and toilet paper, I now approach the fall of 2007.
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| 自食其力 |
[07 Jul 2007|11:19pm] |
Another school year has come to an end, and it's certainly been an interesting year. After getting my BA in languages and getting ready to go out into the world and search for work, I was Shanghaied into pursuing an MA degree in East Asian linguistics. I didn't meet with great sucess, and around Christmas I found a job as a telephone interviewer for a company doing market research. Thus, after four years which I vainly hoped would last forever, it seems as if my time as a student may finally be coming to an end.
However, I had the great fortune of being able to take classes in classical Chinese and classical Japanese as well as Japanese literature, which was a great source of inspiration. Hopefully, I'll be able to continue my studies on my own from now on—Studying something that keeps changing is, after all, an endless task.
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[20 May 2006|04:23pm] |
Wow. If you haven't watched the Eurovision song contest before, be sure to watch it now. Besides the mandatory "rehashes from last year" entries, the Finnish are performing hard rock dressed in Orc costumes, Lithuania will be singing a song called "We are the winners", and Romania have come up with what seems like a techno song of some sort and are entering that into the finals.
If you haven't stocked up on the necessary snacks and beverages, do so now. Remember, it's not just our sense of European unity that's at stake, but our very reputation of being flamboyantly camp.
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| Flashbacks |
[21 Apr 2006|01:10am] |
There's a time for procrastination, and there's another time which is for studying desperately day and night in the hope that in five weeks' time, you'll pass your exams. In 5 weeks and 1881 vocabulary flashcards, I hope to sit here prepared for two language exams and for another year of state-funded feasting and merrymaking at the University of Oslo. Failing that, however, a career in toilet-cleaning, telephone marketing or the local supermarket awaits. Fear, and especially fear of work, can be a great motivator.
Looking back at these past 8 months, it seems almost unreal considering how fast they've gone by. One's outlook on life has changed, people have come and gone, lessons have been learned, and yet it seems as if it's happened in no time at all. I guess if one keeps oneself busy enough, one's entire sense of time disappears.
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| Seeing the big picture |
[28 Sep 2005|11:47pm] |
In my infinite wisdom, I decided this would be a good year to study Korean and Chinese. Well, actually it was Korean or Chinese, but the details sort of got worked out later, on the first day of classes that is. The classes are anything but boring: Korean class has thus far consisted largely of desperate crying for more grammar lessons, discussing "what this word means in Japanese" loudly in class, and trying to figure out what on earth the text book is trying to convey, whereas Chinese class is a sort of jolly mixture of improvised standup comedy, Chinese lectures and getting murdered by a nice old lady.
My current curriculum doesn't leave me much time for anything but hanging around the campus and then going home to brood over how terrible life is, but it's very interesting, and yet not too challenging to still be a reasonably attainable goal. If you ever find yourself stranded in Oslo for six months and need something to pass the time, may I recommend learning a language or three?
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[13 Aug 2005|06:17pm] |
Hm, last night... I mean, this morning, was an interesting one. I was invited to join ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) frakk and kerb and two others at a local radio station to further enrich this city's cultural sphere for a period of about 8 hours. Some important lessons were learned right off the bat - Don't let bashing feminism be the first thing you do on a feminist radio station, don't discuss peoples' private lives on air (whoops), and don't bash the program you're actually on, I believe, were the most important ones.
We had an especially eager listener who not only phoned in, but actually contributed to the program via phone (If you're there, Kurt, I mean you), and also discovered that every feminist radio station has a horde of suppressed male listeners who are just itching to call in and shout battle cries and request music. All in all a program that shall be spoken of for generations to come.
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[27 May 2005|05:08pm] |
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It seems that the days have gone by too fast for me to even notice lately. Six months have come and gone, and yet it feels more like a big emptiness than anything else. Classes have ended, my... chair has been mended... meals have been vended... Anyway, here's to hoping that autumn will bring with it a fresh start.
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[07 Jan 2005|12:07am] |
After what seemed like far too short a while, I returned to Norway on the 21st of December last year, to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. Being in Japan was a blast, and in between singing karaoke with a bad cold, sleeping and having morning coffee in a Japanese bar, and scouring Japanese store shelves for traces of licorice (You do get homesick after a while), I don't know what was more fun. We did find Norwegian Ridderost and goat cheese, by the way, the latter of which you can see on the left.
Nevertheless, it's been a fun Christmas and New Year's eve in Norway, and I'm looking forward to resuming classes next week and seeing everyone again. During the holidays I've started taking driving lessons, so for next Christmas I'm getting you all life insurance. Walk safely!
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[24 Dec 2004|10:50am] |
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Merry Christmas everybody!
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| おいしいハインズライス |
[05 Nov 2004|01:08am] |
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From the Japanese foreign student cuisine, we have the exquisite pleasure of bringing you this delicious dish: Heinz Rice. Place 1 cup of "Isinglass 397" or "Dream of a star"-rice and 2 cups of water in a rice cooker and boil. Add 2 gallons or more of premium Heinz ketchup. Enjoy at above room temperature.
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| A slight speets impediment |
[02 Nov 2004|01:31pm] |
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Since coming to Japan, I've started to develop a slight speech impediment when I pronounce the sounds "ch" and "sh", stemming from my short tongue and influence from the somewhat different pronunciation of Japanese. Noone seems to notice at the moment, though I feel that I sound somewhat like a 6 year old girl.
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| Consorting with Kouji and friends |
[31 Oct 2004|10:24pm] |
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The day before yesterday we all went to see Kouji, the guy on the left, shot by ore_sa_ma, play guitar in a mini concert performed by his and three other bands. It was great fun, although I could have done without the nomihoudai (all you can drink) at the after party. The bands were overall pretty good, and hearing Kouji shout out "Skål!" and "Peace and love, pikk og fitte!" added to the whole experience. Most of all it was cool hearing some genuine Japanese rock live.
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| First snow! |
[26 Oct 2004|11:34pm] |
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Just wanted to tell you that the first snow has just fallen here at Hokkaidou Toukai. We're all looking forward to the snowball throwing tomorrow morning!
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| Blow me |
[26 Oct 2004|09:45pm] |
One of the many phenomena you'll notice when living in Japan is the number of Japanese students standing around on buildings and roads playing brass instruments. When I say playing, I don't mean as in actual music; they prefer to stand alone, yet close enough to interfere with each other, on bridges and balconies, practicing scales day in and day out in majestic solitude. What all this practicing is for, we've yet to find out - What we do know is that they like to do it here, and they like to do it a lot.
Why the trombone in particular turned out to be Japan's most popular instrument is probably beyond anyone's comprehension except music teachers and Japanese. My personal theory is that they're all waiting to be picked up by a travelling ska band and whisked off to the US. Though why anyone would want that is a mystery as well, and most likely, the trombone is actually the instrument du jour for facilitating your lone meditation over life's intricacies. Here's to you, trombone.
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