Yet again, I'm doing things in a roundabout way. Or at least, planning to do things. At several points over my life I have gotten the notion that I ought to start learning some Chinese characters so I can at least read the signs if I somehow get shanghai'd (Ha! Get it?) and am stranded in China. Well at least if somehow I ended up in Shanghai, I'd be okay because I can sort of speak the dialect...But anywhere else, it'd be hopeless.)

I do remember that back when I was about 6 or 7 years old, I went to a sort of day care place (it was called Little Genius Learning Center, if I remember correctly. Pretty arrogant-sounding name, if you ask me), and there was a nice lady who would go over a beginner's Chinese book with me. She'd point to a line and I was supposed to recite it to her, and at the end of the day she'd give me an apple as a present. Actually, I didn't really know what the words said, I'd just memorize what she'd said when she read it earlier, and then I'd just repeat what I remembered. But it sure looked like I was learning Chinese. Now that I think of it, I was good at fooling people when I was a kid. My grandma made me take a nap every afternoon, so if I didn't fall asleep I'd just fake it when she came in to check on me. Eventually, when enough time had passed, I would get up and she'd give me some ice cream. So actually I never got anything near as much sleep as my parents thought I had, especially in preschool, when I never slept during naptime. (But then again, they know that I'm an insomniac, because when I was a baby it took a really, really long time for me to fall asleep. It's still pretty bad now.)

Now that I'm interested in learning Japanese now, though, I'm starting to regret the fact that I never went to Chinese school or at least made my parents teach me. In fact, I was just the opposite for most of my life - I was adamant that I'd focus on English. I really believed that if I tried to learn Chinese, I'd forget English, because I actually learned to speak Chinese before I learned to speak English. Soon as I went to school and was forced to learn English, though, I pretty much forgot all the Chinese I'd learned and now I almost always speak English at home. And on another note, I actually look a weird, irrational pride in the fact that I was Chinese but did not learn my own language. I guess that was an early sign that I would later try to go against the tide in most aspects of my life, if only just to be different from "everyone else", whom I would refer to with slight contempt. I used to want to just blend into the background, but now I kind of think that fitting in means being boring. (That's not necessarily true, though; I probably just don't get to know people well enough to make an accurate judgment.)

Well, although I tried to memorize Katakana and Hiragana with the help of Quizlet, I am still a very long way from reading Japanese because I don't know enough kanji. Guess what kanji is? Yup, it's Chinese characters. The one thing I insisted on not learning turns out to be really important. So I have to start from scratch now if I ever hope to learn Japanese. I was actually planning to work on that this summer, but now that I have the homework from my classes to do...Well, I let myself get too stressed again and now I'm really not in the mood for the things I was doing earlier this summer. Looks like it's going to be a wasted summer and I'll probably be cursing myself for the rest of high school because I won't get to relax again.

Still, I probably should talk to my parents about it sometime. I know that they're going to be busy, what with work, remodeling, and health problems on both sides of the family (grandma on mother's side had back issues and had to go the hospital; dad and his mother were both very ill not long ago. And I should not neglect to mention that my mom is still limping around, although her toe is recovering considerably). But I guess if I'm going to learn a new language, starting late's better than never. I've gotta get crackin'.

Labels: china, chinese, dialect, different, english, family, foreign language, health, japanese, kanji, languages, late, mandarin, nap, pretend, problems, quizlet, sleep

Well, of course, it should really be spelled "craze", but I felt like using alliteration. :p

Korean pop, or k-pop as it is often called, seems to have become quite popular in the last few years. It also seems to be a trend (even if it is unintentional) for people who were once obsessed with anime to turn their interests to Korean dramas and bands. It's not a bad thing necessarily, though I must say it made me feel both sad and proud. Sad because I felt like the race of otakus was dying out (though actually that's not really true at all, from what I've seen on the Internet lately), and proud that I wasn't following a trend. The second part's funny, considering that I'm probably missing out on a lot of good things because I try not to do what everyone else is doing. (I guess that was part of the reason I picked Weight Training instead of Dance. I didn't want to add to the stereotype that girls take Dance and boys take Weight Training. But then again, I actually do want to try Weight Training.) After getting disappointed by the Twilight series, I lost faith in what's popular with the general public. Though I'm starting to jump back on the bandwagon again, particularly since I've watched a couple of popular anime (Durarara, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica) and found that they were actually quite good.

Back to k-pop. I haven't really listened to too much of it. I've tried, but I'm not usually all that fond of hip hop and dance music (I have the feeling I've misidentified the genres, but whatever). There are a few groups that I do like, such as DBSK (which has, unfortunately, split up, though a few of the members made a new group called JYJ, I think). Maybe I should listen to more of it. The other day, Shiroi showed me a few songs, such as a DBSK acapella, and also, to my surprise, some Japanese songs sang by K-pop groups. It's pretty cool that they can sing in too languages. But then again...have you heard any of those Vocaloid songs which are supposed to be in English, but the lyrics don't make any sense? I heard this Luka song the other day that was saying something about German alcohol, I think. I guess the composer's knowledge of English was a bit...lacking. Maybe it's just because Asian countries seem to enjoy putting English words in their songs and on their products, even if they aren't exactly sure what it means?

As for actual Korean songs by K-pop groups, thefalse-tto introduced me to Pinocchio Danger and Nu Abo by the group F(x). In particular she pointed out the girl Amber, who has now been added to my growing list of women/girls that I admire. For some reason I really like tomboyish girls and girly-looking guys. But besides that, it turns out Amber is actually Taiwanese-American and from California (I assume from around Los Angeles, since that is apparently where she got picked up by SM Entertainment).

Speaking of Los Angeles, I'd sure like to go there - not because I'm planning to audition to become a k-pop singer (though I actually would like to try if I had a larger vocal range), but because of Miku Hatsune's live concert at Anime Expo... Right now all the tickets are sold out, but I really hope there will be more. I'm thinking about going there if more tickets become available. (True, since Miku is a Vocaloid, she's just going to be a hologram and I could probably watch the concert on Youtube later, but I've started to think that a concert is a totally different experience from listening to music by myself. After all, you're surrounded by tons of people who love the same thing that you do.) This is one of the times that I feel frustrated about living in the suburbs. It's rather far from the action sometimes. (But there was a convention a lot closer to where I live, I guess I couldn't gone to that one...The price and the fact that finals were coming up threw me off, though...Still, would've been nice to look at the merchandise and see people perform at the convention.) Oh well. When there's a will, there's a way. I'll have to see about getting to LA.

Labels: amber, anime, anime expo, california, concert, convention, english, f(x), japan, k-pop, korea, languages, los angeles, miku hatsune, music, otaku, trend, vocaloid, weight training

Well, seeing as the more "popular" Vocaloids are from Japan, when someone tries to make them sing in English, it tends to be less than perfect. Sometimes I can understand some of what they're saying.
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Labels: bilingual, blogger, blogskins, english, japanese, kaito, language, layout, luka, megurine, nico nico douga, nicovideo, opinion, suggestions, vocaloid, vocaloids, youtube

Saturday was not such a relaxing day as I had expected. My mom wanted me to come with her to attend a seminar, which would have been okay, except that it was in another city, so it took about fifteen to twenty minutes to get to the seminar location.

Before he started talking, the man speaking in the seminar asked who would be fine with hearing it in Mandarin, and many of the people in the room raised their hands. Then he asked who can only hear it in English, and I was the only person to raise my hand. (Sadly, my grasp of Mandarin is still rather lacking, what with us mainly speaking the Shanghai dialect at home. English, being my main language, is much easier for me to comprehend) I hope that I didn't inconvenience the others there by totally changing the tide. If I hadn't raised my hand then, the seminar would've been conducted in Mandarin, which might be easier for the other people to understand.

After the seminar, since we were in the area, we had ramen for lunch, and then we went to a library. I haven't been to this library for a long time. I used to go when I was younger, when I went with my mom to her workplace. I feel that the town is a peaceful place. It has these buildings (which I believe are probably a school) with murals on them, and I would like to live in one of the townhouses facing the library. The only setback is the odd smell. My parents told me that there is a landfill nearby and that you can smell the trash from the library. Although I don't like such smells, I suppose I could get used to it, if I were to move to that town.

While we were driving, I noticed that there was a large cloud of grey smoke in the sky. Something had probably exploded or a fire had been started. It seems that I see these sorts of things a lot. There was one time years back when I saw orangish smoke coming from the mountains near my home. And when I was in Australia last summer, I saw smoke coming from someplace as well.

Fire is a fearsome thing. I have been burned several times in the past, although it was not from a fire exactly...The first time was when I was in fifth grade, I believe. We were having one of those themed days - probably Colonial Day that time. We were doing some woodburning. But I was holding the little pen-like device the wrong way, so I burned myself immediately. Not a pleasant experience, but I can't remember whether it hurt a lot anymore.

Then, when I took cooking back in seventh grade, I was burned when I accidentally touched a cookie sheet that was still hot. I always seem to get injured doing something ridiculous. Like how I pulled my leg muscles while rolling around in bed. And how I banged my knee when escaping from the door (the doorbell had just been rung, and I usually flee when someone is there, unless I've been expecting a person). I wonder if someday I'll really get in serious trouble through my careless actions.

Labels: burn, careless, chinese, cloud, danger, door, english, foul smell, injury, library, living, mandarin, memories, seminar, smoke, town, trash

A while back, my science teacher started us on an Astronomy Observation Lab. We were to go outside ten times to look at the moon and draw it. We were given a month to do a project. Spring break overlapped with the time given to do the lab.

My teacher said that if you were going on vacation during the spring break, you could just reorient your map while you were there so you could still do your homework. She said that one student had gone to Chicago and came back saying "I couldn't see the moon." But my teacher says that she's been to Chicago, and the moon is still there. "The moon is a big dude," said my teacher.

I wonder what makes people decide the genders of things. The Earth is called Mother Earth, and nature is called Mother Nature. But people say The Man in the Moon. Whose decision is it to determine the genders of things? I mean, all objects have a gender in French, and I'm curious about that too. There is kind of a way to say "it" in French, but mostly you would refer to "he" or "she". But in English we just refer to things as "it" so frequently. I suppose this is a trait that sets English apart?

One of my classmates mentioned something interesting to me. She says that when she reads Chinese, she just thinks of the Chinese words in her head, but when she reads French, she translates it to English in her mind. My mom says that when you practice a lot, you end up understanding automatically and don't need to translate to English. (When my mom was first learning English, she says she would translate it to Chinese in her head first, but now she can just think of the English words) But I, despite being so unskilled in Chinese, do this too. When I see the Chinese word for the number one (one of the only characters I can read! Yeah!) I think of the Chinese word for it, not "one". So is Chinese just different? Are languages spelled with symbols like this in comparison to languages with the same alphabet in English? That means the languages with English letters make me feel smarter, because I can translate it to English automatically in my head. XD

I was told a rather unsettling thing by someone. On my school trip to Yosemite National Park, we stopped at a town called Los Banos. I was told that it actually means something like "The Bathrooms". Imagine if you were saying that you ate in Los Banos and someone who understood Spanish walked by...

In history class, I and some other students had a presentation about Mormons, irrigation, and Mexican food. One of my group's members said the names of various foods in Spanish. The teacher later said that she pronounced them quite well and asked if she spoke Spanish. The girl said, "No." A classmate said, "But don't you take Spanish? So wouldn't you be able to speak it?" And the teacher said, "Taking Spanish class and being able to speak it are different matters."

I think that is true. People may be learning a language in school, but can they really speak it? I have noticed that sometimes students have trouble actually putting words together even if they know what the words mean, and that speaking the language out loud seems harder than writing it. I heard that you could really learn the language faster if you actually lived in the country of the language you wanted to learn. (My French teacher says we could learn a lot more in just a few months in France than what she could teach in a year because we would be "forced" to adapt to the country and learn French) I'd like to move to another country, experience something different, but I don't know when it will happen. (My mom has suggested having me move to France for a while and live with my aunt's family, but I feel it would be rather stressful with her rambunctious children)

Labels: bathroom, chicago, chinese, country, english, experience, foreign, french, gender, language, learning, los banos, moon, school, science, spanish, speaking, symbol, teacher, translation

I was trying to think of a title for today's blog post, and it just wasn't coming to mind. Sometimes I have multiple titles I think of to suit the subject matter I'm starting the post off with, and other times I can't think of anything worthwhile. This is one of those times. (It's ironic, because I already have the title thought out for my very last blog post. I hope I never have to use it, because I don't want this to come to end. It feels like my happiness would come to an end too)

What I mean about the title is related to anime. I was watching an anime called Someday's Dreamers. It's not that recent (I think it was a 2003 anime or something) and it's not really that exciting. But it is nice that there is a dolphin in it. After all, despite the scary dream about dolphins I had once, they are still my favorite animal.

Well, because Someday's Dreamers isn't that recent, probably no one is going to find the Japanese version and make English subtitles for it. I have only been able to find the English dubbed version so far. It's really annoying having to hear it in English because if the voice actors/actresses don't pronounce it well, you can't tell what they're saying. At least with the subtitles you could just read it straight off. But it was funny because one of the characters has a voice actress who speaks with a sort of British accent.

I was also watching an anime called Emma, not that long ago. It was more unique since it's about a time in England, more than a hundred years ago. The main character is a maid. Her name is, rather predictably, Emma. And then she meets a guy called William. Personally I don't like him all that much, but oh well. William is the son of a wealthy businessman, so he's part of the gentry. I don't want to spoil the main theme of the story, so that's as much as I'll say about that.

I found it amusing that one of the characters in Emma was a guy called Hakim from India. It's so weird to see an Indian prince in England speaking Japanese. And all the British people speak Japanese too. Well, the manga must be from Japan, and the anime too, so I suppose that's just the way it is.

On to other news, because I am not planning to squander my whole post talking about this. Recently, I had gone to the mall with my parents to a buffet for dinner on my mom's birthday. We spent a short amount of time browsing Macy's, since my mom was looking to buy a coat, preferably a waterproof one. I noticed a desk and some Christmassy themed things around it. There was also a mailbox of sorts (not one of those with flags that people have for their houses, I mean the sort of mailbox that is usually blue that you just dump your letters into if you don't want to go all the way to the post office), and paper and pencils to write a "letter to Santa". I was greatly offended because I AM Santa, and I have never received any of those letters, so Macy's was pretending to be me. So I wrote a letter that said so and put it in the mailbox. Hehehehe.

Sometimes I get the old nostalgia for Applied Arts again. Two of my friends are taking Advanced Applied Arts. They have been making some pretty nice stuff in cooking, like ice cream (though it melted over the course of the day, unfortunately). I miss Woodshop too. I was always allergic to the dust and kept sneezing during clean-up time, but still. After a while even the smell of glue and wood can grow on you. It's not like I don't like French...In fact, I guess I'm glad that my mom suggested I take it. (Sometimes it's okay to let other people decide things for you. Arranged marriages sometimes work out better than "love marriages", because they're more practical, rather than being based on a whim) But that doesn't mean I don't miss things sometimes.

Labels: anime, applied arts, arranged marriage, blog, christmas, dolphin, dubbed, emma, english, ice cream, india, japanese, letter, macy's, santa, someday's dreamers, subtitles, title, woodshop

This is meant to be a play on the song "Leave the Kids Alone" by Pink Floyd. In this case it applies to a fly instead, as la mouche is French for "the fly". I know I talk too much about French class nowadays, but the class has been having problems with mouches.

We usually have at least one fly in our class. The students, including myself, become distracted when the fly is near us. The teacher eventually said that we should leave it alone and not be distracted by it, and she brought out her mouche assassin (apparently one of the words for killer is the same in French as in English, scary!), in other words, a fly swatter. I think she has a total of three fly swatters. We once used two of them to play a game in class to use our vocab. The teacher wrote some French words on the board and two people would stand up there at a time, facing away from the board. The teacher would then call out a word or phrase in English. The two contenders would then try to swat the correct word first. I actually played a similar game in Japanese class in the summertime. I guess this is a universal way to learn languages or something.

Sometimes I have some panic when I forget something in a certain language. It seems like it is important to me and so I get stressed even though it's not a big deal. For instance, I was going over Japanese in my head because I am worried I am losing it. I can't speak it at home since no one understands, I can't write or read it so I can't practice by reading manga, and I haven't been watching much anime lately (except for The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which I already watched - and this is the original season, not the new Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu) and so I have started to forget here and there. I was trying to remember the word for "You're welcome" and I couldn't get it and I was getting mad because I kept thinking of the wrong thing. Eventually I remembered by accident. I was really relieved.

Learning a language such as French, which has relations to English, is easy but at the same time confusing, because sometimes words that mean one thing in English mean something else in French. Examples:
1) In French, collège is high school.
2) Crayon is pencil. (So "crayons de golf" is golf pencils. It's weird since we used golf pencils in cooking last year.)
3) Chat is the word for cat.
4) Singe is the word for monkey. (And singe is an English word that means burn... o_O;; Maybe...it's because monkeys are troublemakers! And they can be found in train stations in India? So I hear)
5) This I found out using Google Translate (I know, not reliable, but oh well)... Apparently "chic type" could be used to describe a prince. XD Though chic type really means more "nice guy" than prince necessarily, as not all princes are nice.

But anyways, the point is, I am wondering, does anyone have those times when they forget the specific word they were trying to think of? This could be in your native tongue (which is English, for me at least). It happens to me often and it's really annoying. I suppose I ought to be glad that I even have enough brains to think, though. My dad said he once heard, "You complain about wanting new shoes? Some people don't even have feet!" It's the kind of phrase that sounds like the reason for Thanksgiving.

Something has been bothering me lately about Blogger. Earlier you could only put ten labels on your posts, I think, instead of the previous twenty? And not only that, but when I start typing a label in, it doesn't automatically come up with a small...window? (dunno what to call it) that shows some possible options based on what you have already used as labels. It's really bugging me and I hope Blogger will return to what it used to be. I am not fond of change in general.

Labels: blogger, chic type, crayons, english, flyswatter, forgetful, french, games, grateful, haruhi suzumiya, insects, japanese, la mouche, label, language, monkeys, prince, quote, school

My trip to Australia was pretty good overall (because I like Australia as a place), but there was a string of bad things, as well.

- I became carsick a lot. Apparently BMW sports cars tend to be fast overall so if you're driving on a winding road, it's easy to feel carsick. And sometimes you end up with a reckless driver, for instance, Andrew. Sure, he drives alright, but he tends not to drive within the speed limit. I heard he got so many tickets for speeding that eventually he was told that he can either not drive for a while (three months?) or he has to stay within the speed limit. So he set this thing on his car which makes a noise whenever he drives over 60 km/h. But even then I wonder if he notices it. (No offense to him if he does notice it.)

- We went on a tour of the Sydney Opera House - my family, David, Michael, Meggie, and Andrew. My dad used to live in the suburbs of Sydney, but he never went inside the opera house (back then you needed to see one of the shows to get in...My mom muttered to me that he was a cheapskate and they never spent much money on her). My mom had already called Lily, who works for a travel agency, to book English tours for us. The English tour is longer than the Mandarin tour, and anyhow I can't understand much Mandarin, so it would be pointless for me to take the Mandarin tour. But then Gary, my dad's friend, called Lily. First he said he was Meggie's friend (which confused Lily, who didn't know who Meggie was at that point) and then Gary insisted on having Mandarin tours instead of English. Luckily, it got changed in time for us to take the English tour.

- My camera broke. Aaaaah! This is probably one of the worst, if not the worst. I have a Nikon Coolpix camera which I've been using for quite some time. So it's dear to me... (I have a strange attachment to objects which I've had by my side) It broke while I was in Cairns, having ridden the Rainforest SkyRail (it's like one of those lift things, which are either amusement park rides or used for skiers...) to get to a place where they have animals, like butterflies, koalas, wallabies, and reptiles. Anyhow, maybe I was swinging the camera too much, or it was just really bad luck, because when I tried to turn on the camera, it would say there was a Lens Error and you couldn't turn it off unless you took the camera battery out... I really don't want to buy a new camera (I don't know how to fix it, and I heard getting someone to fix it for me would cost even more) because of the money and also because I'd miss this camera. My parents insist they could buy the same kind of camera, but that seems pointless to me. If you have camera knowledge, please give me some tips here!

- My mom's wristwatch broke. The strap came apart and we can't seem to put it together again (it still tells time, but now since you can't wear it, it's just like a clock). So now she had to switch watches. She figures she's probably going to try and buy a new one - she wants that is durable and which doesn't need its batteries replaced (like a watch which has a solar battery, which is what she was using, or one that you can wind up every day. Omega watches are the wind-up kind, but Omega watches are pricey... So my mom wouldn't want to use that to wash dishes and do laundry and things like that, and people could steal it, if you know what I mean).

There's more, but I'll continue it in a further post... (I suppose that's more than three bad things, huh?)

Labels: australia, bad news, broken, camera, carsick, drivers, english, mandarin, mixup, opera house, speeding, sydney, tour, watch

Nowadays I've been dreaming a lot and mostly I forget it all in the morning but I do remember last night's dream involved me speaking Japanese to people. Sometimes it's real people, in Japan, and sometimes it's fictional characters. It's really strange. I wonder if I've been listening to people in anime speak Japanese too much if it's started to invade my mind.

At least I'm still speaking English to the people around me. That's a comfort. I would be in quite a pickle because most of the people near me don't know Japanese and go "Whaa? What in the world?" Though I would like to learn to effectively speak and read Japanese someday. (But I guess it would be more useful to learn Chinese because there are more people in the world who know Chinese, and Chinese is similar to Japanese anyhow)

I need to spend more time reading books and less time on the computer nowadays, I suppose. I mean, I have three stacks of books to read (They aren't very tall stacks but still stacks nevertheless) and maybe not much time to read them. But it's easier just watching anime because I can multitask and do stuff on the Internet at the same time.

I have piano class at 11:15 today, so I figure I should try to wrap up this post and do something else on the computer while I have the chance. Then in the afternoon I can try to relax. (Or work on my factoring project. Sigh...It's still there even if I try to pretend it's not there.)

I know my posts on the weekend are pretty drab, unless I went somewhere. Sorry about that. It's just I don't see a lot of people or do much interesting on weekends. (Except for yesterday I went to see two new Japanese places that opened. One was a store selling a variety of cheap/useful things. The other was a supermarket that was a little on the expensive side, even though it sells the same products as a different supermarket.)

Labels: anime, books, dream, english, homework, japan, language, piano, shopping

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