C M W

“My Life In…”

2011-02-18T14:50:00.001+10:00

I met up with a good friend the other day, who had just returned from a trip to China. We spoke about the effect that life in China has on foreigners. She described a family of missionaries who have grown arrogant and condescending towards to Chinese people over the course of years spent living in Beijing.

I know what she meant. I’ve seen this effect amongst the diplomat and corporate families of Beijing, as well as the English teacher population, and it’s not pretty. Even exchange students aren’t immune from it (though it’s manifested more as a type of solipsism). I guess it’s a bit like what a colonialist attitude would have been like. Brendan wrote a good post years ago which mentioned that people in Shunyi would describe a trip to inner Beijing as “going to China”.

It got me thinking, how do different countries affect expatriates in different ways (compare China with, say, Italy)? How do different countries draw different types of people? And obviously you can then try to spot similarities within expatriate communities of whichever country you live in.

What I think happens is that if the expatriate community is sufficiently small, the members start to construct a reality in which they take on roles in some television drama or film. You can often see this in play if you observe the international students at your university cafeteria; the interpersonal dynamics are not real, but modeled and acted out.

In some ways it might be a healthy change from the anomie which affects us when we live in big cities, likely in far larger populations than our brain is equipped to deal with. But it turns ugly when it results in the local population of a country being treated as no more than authentic looking extras in some Hollywood production.

Understanding a Foreign Language

2010-11-22T15:56:00.003+10:00

I sometimes get asked what it's like to understand a foreign language.

It just occurred to me that the process is something like listening to familiar music on better and better quality headphones- progressively you hear things that you didn't even know were there before. And then you finally understand the lyrics, and can't quite imagine the time when you didn't understand them.

That's the best way I can describe it.

The Way of the Future

2010-11-19T20:37:00.005+10:00

Away with printed words. Or at least, words printed with ink on hundreds of pages.

I have a Kindle now, and it is awesome. It looks so much like paper that you will find it hard to believe at first. I thought someone had stuck a piece of paper on the screen at first. And if you read longer titles it will also be lighter to hold, very good for lounging with. In fact, superior to paper-backs for lounging. And it allows you to keep one hand free to...hold a coffee cup, of course.

The selection of Kindle titles is not as complete as I'd like (quality fiction seems most lacking) but this will only get better with time. Browsing titles, thinking "Hey, I'd really like to read that", and then having a copy of the book 5-10 seconds later is an amazing experience. And after, say, 10-15 books it pays for itself. I already bought 12 titles for it...

Anyway, go get one. It's the way of the future. The way of the future.

The way of the future...

The Biggest Problem With The Internet

2010-11-16T13:16:00.007+10:00

The comments sections in TED videos and the more serious Youtube videos are often full of weirdos. Neurotic, abusive, weirdos. It's probably the biggest problem with the internet. Related to, but separate from, the uncivilized manner in which people interact with each other.

It really makes me wonder, are 90 percent of people in the world like this, with the self-control to retain composure in public? Or does the internet just get filled with the shouting of a vocal minority?

I'm going to be optimistic and say that it's the latter...

Though I often feel it's the former.

The Mistakes Can Help

2010-11-16T11:03:00.002+10:00

I've been reviewing mathematics and logic recently, because I'm planning on returning to university next year to study those subjects more. It may seem an odd step, but I personally find it odd that more philosophy students don't get drawn in by maths after they discover most of philosophy to be pretentious douchebags building theories and arguments from mist. But I probably feel this way because the way I was first introduced to philosophy was as a logic student in highschool, so it is perhaps more a return to a first love than anything else.

Anyway.

It strikes me that while answer sections in the back of the books are helpful, it can actually be beneficial for say, 2-3 percent of those answers to be mistakes. It not only keeps you thinking, it's also a reminder of the room for human error, and it also allows you the exhilaration of feeling that you got one up on the author of the textbook.

On a related note, Wolfram Alpha is a great way of settling the debate of whether your answer is right or the textbook's.

Riffing on The 13th Floor v The Matrix

2010-11-15T17:12:00.005+10:00

*I assume here, kind reader, that you've at least seen The Matrix, so if you have not...then there may be a spoiler here. I won't spoil any important details for The 13th Floor though as few people have seen it...

So I recently watched The 13th Floor again, since first seeing it probably 10 years ago (I'd heard it mentioned in a brilliant podcast that I listen to). And though I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen The Matrix, the most recent time was probably a few months ago when it was on tv. Both films were released in 1999, by competing film houses, and both explore the concept of virtual worlds. It's interesting to compare how each film has fared now that over a decade has passed.

Surprisingly, even though The Matrix had a budget of 63 million, as opposed to 16 million for The 13th Floor, it's the latter film that has stood the test of time visually. The CGI in The Matrix- which was very ambitious at the time- looks really obvious now, whereas the more subtle effects used in The 13th Floor haven't really dated at all.

Most of the acting in The 13th Floor is better than The Matrix too. Both of the protagonists are computer programmers, though these days the rich, successful Douglas Hall from The 13th Floor seems more realistic than the genius-level-programmer-working-at-mundane-cubicle described by Thomas Anderson in The Matrix. Craig Bierko's classical/musical training shows when you contrast it with Keanu Reeves' monotone. As for supporting roles both films are a mixed bag- Armin Mueller-Stahl (Shine, The Game, Eastern Promises) is wonderful as the brilliant A.I researcher Hannon Fuller, but Dennis Haysbert (the grill chef from Heat) wasn't able to convince in his role as detective McBain.

The thing about the two films though is that The Matrix is really just an awesome action movie with a backdrop that happens to be kind of philosophically interesting. The 13th Floor is more a pure sci-fi film which uses a murder-mystery plot device to keep the story going. As a result, on a scene-by-scene basis The 13th Floor doesn't have anything as memorable as the excellently choreographed fight-scenes and shoot-outs of The Matrix. What The 13th Floor does have though is a series of very interesting question throughout the film- can consciousness emerge digitally? Would we have ethical obligations to digital forms of consciousness? If we talk about levels of reality, then is one more real than the other? How would you know whether you were living in a simulation?

Whereas The Matrix asks the question "could your world be an illusion?" and then proceeds to answer by judo-chopping you in the throat. I like both films plenty, but after revisiting them both I have to say that The 13th Floor is my preferred film when it comes to making me think, and I suspect it'd be the best coffee-shop, hand-waving material as well.

Funnily enough, the closest analogy for the differences between these films that I can think of occured just a year before they were released- I'm talking about when Saving Private Ryan and The Thin Red Line came out in 1998.
Both are war films, but whereas Spielberg's film was more about the visual horror of war, Terry Malick's masterpiece delved deeper into the nature of man.

By the way, whilst I suspect that we might be able to produce photo-realistic graphics that are rendered in real-time within the next 10-20 years, actually having an interface that interacts with your brain in such a way as to convince you that you're in that environment is something I can't see happening for a real long time, as it's more in the real of neuroscience than computer science. And neuroscientists don't seem to enjoy the same speed of progress as computer scientists.

It's Not the Size That Counts...

2010-11-12T18:30:00.005+10:00

...it's how you use it.

It seems like every day I have to read about how China is or is going to be the worlds largest whatever. Largest economy. Largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Largest collection of genius I.Qs. Largest buyer of cars. Largest internet user base. Largest collection of elite university professors. Largest space station. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Firstly, there is just far too much uncertainty in this world for any of these predictions to be reliable. I was just reading about the halting problem the other day (not there, but in Seth Lloyd's book). Likewise here, the only way we'll know what's going to happen is by waiting and seeing. I was watching Working Girl yesterday - great movie by the way- and a running theme through it was corporate takeover by Japanese firms. Yeah. I think Daikyo's had its day.

And yet every day we have to hear some whimpering politician talking about China taking its "rightful place", "ruling the world", that its "China's century". The repetition of these bromides really tries one's patience. Even if I was to put some faith in these predictions, I think to myself, who does this really affect? And what should we make of this?

Well, take things as they already are. China has a much bigger GDP than, say, Norway. It has bigger everything, probably.

But where would you rather be a local citizen? Oslo or Shanghai? I mean born and raised, not the expat lifestyle.

Listening to my Norwegian friends talk about growing up, and comparing it with what my Shanghainese friends tell me, at this stage Oslo sounds like a better choice. It might not be that way in the future- maybe Shanghai will be the envy of the world with regard to quality of life. Norway was very poor in the past. But my point here is that being the biggest really isn't something that would affect my decision in the slightest.

The Social Network

2010-11-09T14:41:00.003+10:00

I had thought that Animal Kingdom wouldn't be topped as film of the year.

It has now, at the very least, come to a photo-finish between that and The Social Network.

The last film adaptation of a Ben Mezrich book I saw was 21/Bringing Down the House. And that movie was...well let's just say that seeing Kevin Spacey in such a celluloid-shitfest was like watching your favourite uncle get piglet-squeal-raped on a canoeing holiday (as was the case with Superman Returns too, but I digress- although I note that Spacey was executive producer of The Social Network).

I haven't read any of Mezrich's stuff so I don't know whether he's a good writer who got poorly adapted in 21, or whether Aaron Sorkin was very liberal when he wrote The Social Network.

In any case, the film had me hooked throughout. It moves very fast, and the dialogue really requires full attention to be appreciated. I suspect this is why I've heard a lot of negative things about the film from morons. Now, I don't mean to suggest that not liking this film means that you're a moron. But I must admit, the only negative comments from the film I've heard so far seem to be coming from moronic circles.

I only say this because I suspect some people might be put off the film, thinking that it's written to appeal to the 'Facebook generation', whatever that might mean. But it's most definitely not- and in fact all of those moronic circles I speak of are part of that very generation. Anyway...

As with any David Fincher film it is head and shoulders above everything else in terms of its technical refinement- perfectly shot, innovative yet fitting music from Trent Reznor, awesome editing. And the performances are uniformly excellent- Jessie Eisenberg has now overtaken the Juno guy as the A-list nerd-every-nerd-can-relate-to actor of Hollywood.

The only negative about the film is overly-eager cgi work on what I believe the Norwegians call froskrit, that foggy mist stuff that comes out of your mouth when you're breathing in a sub-zero climate. It was kind of like a 'more cowbell' moment from the effects artists.

Well, I guess that means Animal Kingdom is still the best film of the year.

Future proof

2010-11-02T14:45:00.000+10:00

“Employers are seeking adaptable graduates who can respond quickly and creatively to the challenges of both the domestic and international workplaces.”

“Employers look for graduates with generalist skills like learning ability, the potential to grow within their organisational structure, and the adaptability and flexibility to move across and up into different job roles. Employers increasingly recognise that generalist degree graduates have welldeveloped communication, analytical and problem-solving skills.”

This is taken from UQ’s website. Can you guess which faculty boasts about this? Here’s a hint: one with “welldeveloped” communication skills. If you guessed “Faculty of Arts”, you would be correct! They are trying to entice people to take an Arts degree by arguing that it is somehow future proof. It should be a familiar line to anyone who has ever flicked through the higher education section of a newspaper, or careers, or whatever (I myself never do this voluntarily, but have been told to do so occasionally by various friends/family who wanted my opinion).

There was in fact a time when I thought there was something to be said about the idea that “welldeveloped communication, analytical and problem-solving skills” were the things an Arts degree conferred, and that they would be important and valuable non-tangibles.

Although I still think that the ability to write well and to possess a sharp analytical mind are vital, I no longer think an Arts degree confers these traits to any significant measure (and I am myself the unhappy holder of such a degree, as Taleb said of his MBA).

I don’t think I need to provide any further argument as to why a university who can’t proofread correctly is not in any position to teach communication skills. And with regard to analytical and problem solving skills, most of the people I took classes were terrible in both. The post-modern philosophy that dominates almost all of the humanities is more a rejection of analytical processes. There is certainly no problem solving going on anywhere in that field.

In fact, the best response to any university boasting about their ability to grant you “welldeveloped communication” skills is that line from Good Will Hunting:

“you dropped 150 grand on a f***in’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.”

The amount might be closer to 5 grand in Australia but the point remains the same.

Done

2010-08-16T14:11:00.002+10:00

I went back to Cairns last week to see the renovations. There was a letter for me from the university, containing my degree. A Bachelor of Arts majoring in Chinese and Philosophy.

It's taken a while to complete-four and a half years-and it didn't sink in at all. It was like finding an old birthday card that you'd forgotten about. This is probably because I didn't go to the ceremony, and for that there is a slightly longer story about how I thought I might stay for an honours year, and my dislike of ceremony in general.

So now what? Applications for the Taiwan programs don't really open until early next year. That gives me a couple of months more or less to myself. I'm going to focus on my Classical Chinese, since that's something that has pretty much been entirely neglected in my Chinese all this time. And I've been tarrying with Cantonese for a few months now, with some considerable progress, so I'll keep that up, and hopefully make a trip to HK, China and Taiwan before too long.

I'll probably write on here some more, too, keeping updates on good books and films. Speaking of which...

The Secret in Their Eyes is a brilliant film. It hit a range of emotions, and the actors brought a real depth to all of their roles.

Inception is also one I'd highly recommend. I saw it three times in two days.

Animal Kingdom should take a place amongst the very of Australian cinema. I saw it twice, the second time to gauge reactions from my friends. They all told me they'd never been so tense for such a long period in a film; this is consistent with my first viewing of it.

Where to Think and Read

2010-06-02T18:44:00.004+10:00

I wrote a little message on facebook about how infuriating it is to be around people whispering in a library. Maybe more annoying than people talking at a normal volume. I've actually been thinking about thinking environments and reading for a little while. My thinking is something like this.

Libraries, dead quiet ones, mostly make me quite tired and bored. At least university libraries do, because they're generally populated by tired and bored students, who contribute to an ambiance of tired boredom. This is occasionally interspersed with whispering, which as I say sends me into a rage. Maybe it's because we can't help but try to pick up on what's being said.
On the other hand I had a really good time spending all day reading at the city-hall library in Hong Kong, and the National Library of Taiwan is brilliant. I should also spend more time at the State Library here in Brisbane.

A cafe can be good for thinking and reading non-fiction, stuff like Malcolm Gladwell or Nassim Taleb. I recently finished Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, and I've been dipping into What the Dog Saw. Cafes can be noisy, but so long as the noise is a hum of conversation, I find it stimulating rather than distracting. A good place where you can come across an interesting idea, then put down the book for a minute or two to digest it.

I can only read novels at home when it's quiet. Even music can be distracting, as it may be of a different mood to the scene in the novel. It's the same with philosophy, at least the more lyrical stuff.

Strangely enough, none of the above seems to apply when I'm reading something in Chinese, possibly because it requires so much concentration that it seems to block out everything else around me.

And thinking, for me, is still best done whilst going for a walk. I wonder if these things apply to most people?

Colour Blindness, Critical Reasoning and the Hard Problems of Consciousness

2009-06-19T17:39:00.002+10:00

You might have noticed from the previous email that I went and got my eyes tested.
The good news: I don’t need glasses yet.
The bad news: I got told to sit further away from the computer monitor or else. I think ‘or else’ is going to occur, because I have this urge to lean in whenever I’m playing computer games and watching films on my computer; I think it’s the effect of immersion, or maybe one required condition for immersion is me leaning in close to the screen. Either way, I’m not giving up computer games and films just so I don’t have to wear glasses some day.
So yeah, that was the 20/20 part of the test. Not really funny, exactly, but mildly interesting.
But the other part of the test was fascinating. The colour blindness test. I already knew I was colour blind, and there is in fact a great story behind that, which I’ll tell first.
I started in 2007 when I got the medical test needed for my Chinese visa (I was still in Brisbane at the time). The nurse giving me the colour blindness test laughed her head off while I kept on failing to see the numbers I should have been able to see. Everything was going according to the standard type of colour blindness until the last two pictures. I couldn’t see anything, but apparently normal colour blind people can see those last two. Me and the nurse just shrugged it off as a little weird.

Later, another significant event occured while I was studying in Beijing. In between classes me and my friends would meet in the corridor and joke around. My friend Haakon from Norway turned up wearing an interesting shirt. It was just a plain black t-shirt with some cool patterning in the shapes of circles of various green colours and some red circles too. I’m writing this from my perspective at the time, naturally.
I strongly believe that my friends were telling me the truth about what follows. They have never lied to me before. What happened was they started giggling as though I’d made an odd comment. They stared at me quizzically. And then Haakon asked me the question which gave birth to my growing suspicion of empiricism.
“You can read it, right?”
“Read what?”
There was a moment’s pause, and then my friends all broke into uproarious laughter.
“What?”
They were laughing at what was written on the t-shirt. I couldn’t read it so I didn’t realize what was funny. It was this t-shirt:

Now, my recent test:
The optometrist was cool and collected for the majority of my negative answers. But when we got to the last two, she sounded irritated. What she was about to say blew my mind and made me burst into laughter. I’m sure she didn’t like that. But I couldn’t help it; what she said ranks quite highly on my mental list of contradictory quotes which I’ve had the pleasure of hearing within my lifetime.
“Look closer. If you are really colour blind, you should be able to see something there.”
But let’s put the surface absurdity of the statement aside for a moment… Should? Based on what? There are two possibilities here.
A. I can see the answer
B. I can’t see the answer
If it is A, then I’m lying when I say B. Surely there is nothing to be gained from lying to her. There is no draft that might send me to an overseas military conflict. There are no financial aids given out to the colour blind. All factors are equal, and given that she doesn’t know what the likelihood of me telling a lie is (i.e she has no record of the truth/falsity values of every statement I’ve ever made which could suggest a tendency to lie), how can she assume that I “should be able to see something there”? There is some probability for B according to the small amount of reading I’ve done on the subject; there is a type of colour blindness with a much lower presence in the population than other varieties.
Now, here’s my question (and please do answer in the comments if you have an opinion, or especially if I have gotten something wrong factually):
Is it something to be concerned about that a philosophy student can (apparently) have a better grasp of critical reasoning than someone who told me a contemptuous tone that she was “more scientific [than people who are enrolled in non-science courses]”?

There's something else really interesting at work here though. We seem to be running into an epistemic barrier in a situation like this. My optometrist can't actually see the world the way I see it, no matter how hard she wants to. And I can't see the world the way she does. This is starting to scratch the surface of what the Australian philosopher David Chalmers talks of when he uses the phrase "hard problems". Although I think some of his arguments are quite weak, I think he's right to speak of the hard problems. I’m really curious as to what condition I actually have, so I have requested to go back for another appointment. We’ll see what happens.

Multi-Lingualism in Australia

2009-06-17T11:10:00.003+10:00

My friend sent me a link to an article in the Australian. This one. Have a read, it is interesting for all the wrong reasons.

I sent the following reply:

Ah, the classic ivory tower attitude to languages! Blame the students for not taking the subject seriously enough! I'm surprised he's not a Latin professor! But then again I guess French is the closest thing these days.

And you know, in typical 'French scholar' fashion, he completely misses the point. Notice how actual language competence wasn't mentioned once throughout the article? And how he blames people not taking foreign languages seriously enough? In fact it didn't actually mention the current rate of bilingualism in Australia, and whether it's higher or lower than in the past.

My answer to him would be, if you had a program which worked, and was fun, then people would do it. Maybe the real reason for drops in enrollment is that people are finding out that there are better ways to study languages, and that it's a massive waste of university credit (and, by extension, money) to take uni language classes. I would point out to him how I will never take another university language class again, and indeed failed at Russian, yet my Chinese is pretty good. Not perfect but good enough to take university subjects for native-speakers of the language, write essays, and generally understand everything a native speaker would (films, the news, etc). And I'm in the process of acquiring Cantonese. Yet people double-majoring in Chinese, with high distinctions, still can't order a coke in a restaurant without repeating themselves five times and gesticulating like an orangutan.

Or maybe mention the possibility that since it IS a fact that the Anglo-Saxon population of Australia is declining, people don't feel the need to take courses in a second language because they already speak one. Or more than one!
I mean, for example, sure Indonesian enrollments may be lower. But maybe that's because Indonesian native-speakers form a larger part of the student population, whilst the English-only percentage drops. Seriously, when I walk around UQ campus, the last thought on my mind is "these people need to learn a language other than English". On the contray, it's unusual if I do hear a conversation in English! I would in fact put my money on genuine 'polyglottery' being on the increase in Australia- which is a fantastic thing. But it certainly wouldn't be reflected by higher enrollment rates in langauge courses in universities.

He also, being a French scholar and all, should have mentioned Canada's 'French Immersion' system. I read about it with great interest. Except of course he wouldn't mention it, because that program- in spite of it's huge net of enrolment- fails to produce even 1% of graduates who have a proper command of French!

ARRGGHHHHHH IT MAKES ME SO MAAAAD

On a more positive note, I've got an appointment at Clarity optometrists this afternoon, so I may be joining the hallowed ranks of the bespectacled.

Warmly,
Cooper

May All Your Wishes Come True

2009-06-15T15:20:00.006+10:00

I have this history exam tomorrow, which I thought was going to be the day after tomorrow. If I had known it was going to be so last minute I might not have gone in to uni today to hang out, but I'm kind of glad I went anyway. It's cold and rainy at the moment, which I actually quite like. This is probably because it is good weather for books, video games and films. And beef noodle soups from the Half-Time cafe in Sunnybank.

But I digress. It was raining when I was planning on walking back home from uni, so I took the ferry instead. They have some banal television program on for people who don't want to look at the awesome view of the river, and as my eyes were passing contemptuously over the screen I saw "Words of Wisdom" in large comic-book letters next to a broadly drawn tree. And then the following faded in to the center of the screen:

"May all your wishes come true." (Ancient Chinese Curse)

This sounds off to me. The only way I know of saying something like this in Chinese is 万事如意 wanshiruyi, and I'm pretty sure it's never used as a curse.

I mean, seriously. I could be totally wrong, but...what kind of Fu Manchu bullshit are they trying to pull here? Even if this was an ancient Chinese curse, it would still be stupid. Can you imagine the bearded villain wriggling his fingers whilst uttering some incantation, to harness the forces of darkness so that the hero... loses some weight, meets a nice girl, gets the kid through college, becomes an astronaught and dies peacefully surrounded by family and friends?

It's moronic, is what it is. "You might not know the entire consequences that would follow from a particular set of conditions" or "If you could see the entire chain of events, you would not wish for it" seems to be the point they're trying to make. Which is actually quite different from getting everything that you wish for.

Let's assume that there really is a curse you can make, which will bring about the actualisation of all of someone's wishes. Firstly, you can't wish for something that you have no conception of. That's not what wishing is. Now, say that drinking a beer would entail stumbling across the street which would entail getting hit by a bus. Unless I harbour a deathwish, it's unlikely that getting hit by a bus is one of my wishes. In fact, I probably would wish for the non-occurence of that event.

Now assume that I didn't know about the causal necessity which would bring about my flattening, and we've established that you can't wish for something unknown. So suppose I wish to have a beer, and I wish that I don't get hit by a bus. If some asshole has put a curse on me so that all of my wishes come true, he clearly hasn't thought it through very well. I will drink the beer. And I will not get hit by a bus; non-contradiction ensures this.

At which point, I like to think that the prick who cursed me has a Cronenberg moment, looking something like this:

In fact, if that curse existed, I would want someone to try it on me. Because one of my wishes is that those dropkicks who try and justify ridiculous ideas by claiming that the idea is ancient and Chinese will have their heads explode. Not to mention all the other awesome states which would be brought about.

Not such an ingenius curse now, is it? My points here are that a) most 'ancient Chinese' stuff is not that ancient, not that Chinese, or just plain fabrication, and b) rationality doesn't discriminate.

Exotic Tattoos

2009-06-06T08:54:00.002+10:00

Once I was sitting in a Cairns cafe with my then-girlfriend, who was literate in Chinese. She burst out laughing in the midst of our breakfast and I turned around to see what was up. I saw a tough looking bloke in a singlet, who had a Chinese character tattooed on his shoulder. Here's what must have happened:

***

This bloke goes into the tattoo parlor and asks the artist, "Give me the Chinese character for 'man'"
The artist looks up his folder for the correct character. There it is, man. And so the shoulder goes under the knife, ink goes in, and all is as it should be.

Or is it?

See, the thing was that it was not the character that means man, but the character that was pronounced man. With the fourth tone. Written: 慢

And that word means slow.

A Most Brilliant Apparatus

2009-05-06T09:50:00.004+10:00

My flatmate recently lent me a spare reading stand. It's strange how such a seemingly small thing can be so marvelous in its operation. For the first time ever I can sit down with a drink in one hand, relaxed, head leaning on my other hand, whilst still being able to read a book held upright. Particularly if you're reading a physically heavy book- like the textbook in the photo- it makes life much more pleasant.

It might be implicit in this posting, or the gap between this and the last post: nothing too exciting has been happening for the past month or so, though I have been reading more than I think I ever have before at any time in my life. I'll probably write a bit about that soon, but I'd like to make sure I have something to say before I do.

One thing that has been on my mind, that I'm quite sure of, is the way in which philosophy these days is often treated as not much more than an extension of fashion, and taken not much more seriously (maybe less seriously) than any other type of fashion. There is a view that there is no 'correct' philosophy, that each viewpoint is just as valid as the other. Now, this might be true of clothes, but I don't think we should be so casual when dealing with how we live our lives.

If I can figure out a way of writing about this in a non-academic, straightforward manner, I might start doing more posts on the subject. Because I feel that it is certain philosophical trends that are quite prevalent within academia who are responsible for philosophy's nosedive into unbearable pretentiousness and irrelevance.

Looking Back On It

2009-04-05T23:14:00.010+10:00

Blindness is an excellent film, I went to see it on Tuesday. It was only showing at the Portside cinema, which meant an hour on the ferry. I got on at five in the afternoon, which must be the perfect time for riding ferries, with no glare, a slight breeze, and sky of shifting colours. I looked back out onto the river and had time to think about the workshop in Suzhou.

***

The middle of an undergraduate semester doesn't seem like an obvious time to be travelling to China, but the majority of my trips there are in fact mid-semester. I've always been nervous when going on sponsored trips, worrying about whether I'm qualified or whether I'll know anyone there. The last two trips- Grandad Wen's delegation, and Hanyu Qiao- ended up being far cooler than I had imagined would be possible, and a good number of my friends are people I met through those trips. So, though harboring self-doubt as always, this time I also had some feeling that it would be worth the worrying.

And it really was.

***

I had an early start, waking up before four am for the Brisbane to Sydney, then Sydney to Shanghai flight. I was on the same flight as Australian author Julia Leigh, who was going to have her novel The Hunter translated into Chinese. Julia was the first person I met involved with the workshop, and she was totally cool and very friendly. Our flight was delayed for an hour or so because of some torrential rain, during which time I asked lots of questions about the process of creative writing. On the plane I watched In Bruges which I really liked, and two other films which clearly didn't have much of an effect on me since I can't remember them. Oh, one was a Chinese film called Mi Guo, apparently called Lost, Indulgence in English which sounds a bit too similar to Lust, Caution in my view, Lost and Caution going together and Lust, Indulgence also quite similar.

***

As we walked out to the arrival hall in Shanghai there was a driver with a Penguin sign waiting for us, which was damn cool. To get off the plane and have a people-mover reader with driver and tea and water inside, that's the best way to arrive in Shanghai. I think it was about two hours drive to the hotel in Suzhou, the first time I've done that drive at night. There were nice rural houses along the way with candles burning in the yards. We arrived exhausted at about eleven, which is one in the morning on Australian time, which meant I think twenty one hours after I had woken up. You'd think I'd have gone straight to sleep but after I had put my bags down I felt a surge of excitement at being back in China, and the airline food hadn't sat that well, so I hit the street nearby to get a late-night meal. After a bit of walking I found a Sichuan restaurant where I sat by the window with a novel, ate Kung-Pao Chicken and Tomato-Egg Soup and rice, and the waiter came over and chatted to me about why I was in Suzhou and so on. It was nice to be there for a reason. Some North-Eastern guys were head-rollingly drunk at the table nearby, and given the naming arrangements of "Second Brother" and so on I got the feeling they might be hoodlums. I hoped so anyway. There was much swearing. I went back at one am China time and slept well.

***

I had been told that I had to register downstairs between 10 and 4, and I woke up at seven with a lot of energy. I had a good breakfast of congee and warm soymilk, and went out to see what the city was like. There was a wonderful street just nearby, a Historical Street in fact.

It was really lively when I walked down it mid-morning, in search of a phone-card. I walked the length of the historic street without finding any of the newspaper-phone-beverage-internet-sage carts so common outside the fourth ring road in Beijing. After I crossed a busy road I spoke to an approachable looking guy who had kittens in with the eggs he was selling.

He pointed me in the right direction where I spoke to a woman who had one phone-card left. I wanted another one for Julia so I went off walking in the opposite direction and found an official China Mobile store. It's actually less convenient buying the legitimate phone-cards, and I sat there as people argued about whether my drivers license was acceptable to use as identification.
I had some dumplings for an early lunch, and the place was packed. When I got back to the hotel, registration had opened. As I signed my name I saw two familiar names- Brendan and Jim, from Beijing. Then on the elevator up I met Nicky, who contributes to Paper Republic, and whose posts I've always enjoyed. The world suddenly felt much smaller and friendlier.

I spent the remaining hours before the opening ceremonies reading my excerpt of Wang Gang's The Curse of Forbes (which I would actually say as "The Forbes Curse" but that's just me). After some confusion I found the room where I had to be, meeting Duncan along the way, a very funny and friendly guy with a BBC voice. The talks kicked off with simultaneous interpreting, followed by dinner, followed by readings from the authors. All very cool, and the Chinese authors in particular were very entertaining not just in their readings but in what they said preceding. By this stage I'd met fellow Australian Paul, as well as Alice and Skye. I knew by now that it was going to be an awesome week.

***

We tried different paces in the translation sessions. For the first day we didn't get past the first two sentences. Eric had told me that there'd be a lot of discussion- argument, even- over how to express a sentence, but I didn't realise it would be to that extent. Such talks were invaluable though, to revealing the limitless ways a sentence could be understood and expressed. We later split up into groups, which was faster, though we still had to explain our choices, which is something you don't often do when you're translating by yourself. There was a great session on film subtitling- I ended up having breakfast with the director of the documentary the next morning- and my group managed to slip some Northern English phrases into the clip. Oh aye.
In the evenings we'd head down the historic street to the Bookworm cafe, which had a pretty good selection of beers. I think we drank them out of Boddingtons and Leffe.

***

And so the week- days translating fiction, interspersed with buffet lunches and dinners, and drinks in the evening by the canal- went, and I look back at it, and it has an odd temporal distortion. It doesn't quite feel like a week, but more like a montage in a film. It's rare when a period of time is composed solely of curiosity, friends, learning, relaxation, but that's what the week was.

Off Again

2009-03-12T21:00:00.002+10:00

I'm lucky enough to be traveling to China again on Saturday. I'll be attending the Penguin Publishing Chinese-English Literary Translation workshop for a week in Suzhou.

I've only ever been in Suzhou for a day-trip before, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. More than anything, though, I'm looking forward to meeting and learning from some fantastic, experienced translators.

Lust and Caution

2009-02-27T10:22:00.003+10:00

When I was taking formal classes of Chinese as a second language, the approach to a new text of any sort was usually one of caution. It seems to me that it's because the use of 'strategies' in the classroom. It invariably involved a person by person recitation of the text, and since it's often hard (especially as a beginner) to get the reading right of a new Sinograph, there was a tense atmosphere during the process. Who was going to be the unlucky person who got dealt a new character that they didn't have the time to find out how to pronounce? Conversely, you felt lucky when you could recite a paragraph which consisted of no unknown words, or at least unknown pronounciations.

There's two big problems that result out of this pedagogy. Firstly, unfamiliar Sinographs become associated with tension and embarrasment. Some might argue that this will encourage people to 'know their shit' in order to avoid getting caught out, just like doing your homework well might have saved you from the cane. I disagree. In my own experience, when I had that mindset it meant that I'd avoid doing extra reading where possible, because the more I read the more foolish I felt. This of course meant that my reading didn't get much better, and so I felt even worse about it. (-This is a period from when I started learning Chinese in mid 2004 to some time towards the end of 2007 when I changed the way I thought about literacy-)

The second problem is that since the focus is purely on pronouncing properly, it is likely that people will pay less attention to what the actual meaning is of the text, and become more concerned with having the proper pinyin annotation. This arises in a false sense of what understanding really is, thinking that so long as all the characters are individually pronouncable then the flowers of imagery that grow out of comprehension will shoot-up with no further nurturing. What is more likely is that people will fail to see where the various words and phrases are seperate, and what they are really describing, since the concentration is consumed with not screwing up, rather than appreciating whatever is being read.

As a slight digression, I think this is why foreign learners of English often overestimate their reading level- they can pronounce all the words, and conflate ability to pronounce a word with understanding its meaning (apologies in advance to my Dad, who hates the word conflate). This was made clear to me recently reading Anthony Burgess' autobiography: I had no trouble mouthing any of the words, but often I found myself at a loss to specific meaning, and so had to consult a dictionary about once per page (Burgess writes with an archaic, though mellifluous, vocabulary).

My thinking changed, as is often the case, outside the classroom, when I was thinking more about film than about Chinese. In particular, I was reading the few English interviews with a personal hero of mine, Christopher Doyle. Out of curiosity I entered his Chinese name 杜可風 into Google (I believe this was the first Chinese web search that I ever did). Up came many, many more interviews and articles than existed in English. I clicked on the first. My reading ability was really bad at that stage, but using an online dictionary I persisted through the whole interview. In fact, persist isn't quite the right word. The dictionary was more like a spoon I was using to get honey out of a jar. You don't persist your way through a jar of honey. I wanted to know everything that was being said. If there was a phrase that I didn't know, and Christopher Doyle was saying it in Chinese, then I wasn't intimidated. I had to know it. Just like how I will finish off every last molecule of a creme-brule, I was interested in absorbing every single word or turn of phrase in that interview.

It's no surprise that the first topic I was ever able to speak articulately about in Chinese was the lustful cinematography of Wong Kar-Wai's films. If we are, to use David Hawkes' felicitous expression, interested in more than just 'speaking to people on trains', then literacy is vital. And the best way to get there is through lust, not caution.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

2009-02-21T03:34:00.007+10:00

Phil and I took the jieyun to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Station. I asked Phil’s aunt about what the difference between the ditie and the jieyun was, which I understood as mass transit system and subway, respectively, and which I can’t really distinguish in English. The ditie is the ditie, and the jieyun is the jieyun, she said. It’s a station which has interest for various people, since it also leads to the national library, and maybe that’s why there was often a busker of considerable talent in the hallways of the station.

It would have been about 7pm when we arrived, and it had just been raining lightly. It was an odd journey into Liberty Square, because we didn’t arrive head on, the way you would in a tourist commercial or the establishing-shot of a film. Rather, we came in from the side of one of the large imitation Qing structures, which didn’t reveal anything except groups of young people practicing synchronized hip-hop dancing with the backing of a boombox. I don’t remember seeing anything like that at the Forbidden City, though I could be wrong. Apart from these groups there were very few people around. Then we came before the glittering ocean of cement with the enormous marble-white gate off to the far left, and the gigantic steps leading up to a ghostly statue on the right. It was not particularly well-lit, but the neon coming from the surrounding skyscrapers illuminated the low-hanging remnants of rainclouds, such that it felt like an abandoned stadium. We walked slowly in the middle and Phil remarked that you’d think more people would come here, since it’s so quiet and the massive space lets you vent all that’s pent up. I agreed with him; I really felt much more relaxed and tranquil than I had at any time during the past couple of days. The way to the statue was flanked by the occasional lamp-post which at first I mistook for crucifixes. When we got up the long set of stairs the view was very good, though we didn’t get to see the statue up close. Just as we’d gotten to the top step- joking and taking our sweet time- the massive doors to the statue room began to swing closed, just like a scene from Indiana Jones. So we stood there looking around us, and took a photo for a Korean tourist.

What came next is something I don’t think I could have ever foreseen. We were walking back between the superstructures of the square, with the only other humans in sight being two or three couples walking down the darker sections, arms interlocked. We were, as I think I’ve established by now, really enjoying the feeling of the enormous open-space, and perhaps a little bit dizzy with the flood of relaxation. I say that because I really don’t know where the two junior-high kids came from who suddenly asked me if I had a minute to help them with some homework. I was immediately interested and was not suspicious like I normally might be. Instead of pretending to be interested in where I was from or asking to be my friend within seconds of meeting me, they were just open about what they were after. Sure, I said, I had a minute. Phil was born in Taiwan so I guess they didn’t think he’d be able to help them with an English assignment, although Phil probably speaks English better than I do. Lucky Phil. I got handed a print-out of English, which I thought was either poetry or lyrics, I couldn’t tell as I was unfamiliar with it. Then I got to the third page and saw the title “Last Christmas”. What an evil English teacher these young lads must have: they were tasked with cornering some foreigner and videoing a trio-performance of an a cappella rendition of Last Christmas. I don’t really like singing, though I have had some formal training and have sung in front of audiences before. I just can’t take it very seriously and treat it more like a comedy performance than anything else. So it was with this particular performance; it was too ridiculous to get embarrassed about, so after I had read over the lyrics and hummed out something resembling the song in my memory, Phil took up the lads’ camera and we sang the whole song in a tunnel lined with Japanese vending machines.

My Infected Throat

2009-02-11T15:16:00.007+10:00

My throat started causing me massive pain on Sunday afternoon, and it’s been getting worse since. I thought some gargle would have done the trick, but I also started getting feverish and aching all over, and sweating profusely. Walking up a hill required all the energy I had. So this afternoon I made a trip to the doctors and found out I have a throat infection. 10 days on a course of antibiotics will solve the problem, said the doctor. Not too bad I thought, but it was even better when I found out that symptoms should clear up after 2 days.

As I lurched out of the chemist I felt a burning need for fruit, since I was really thirsty and a little hungry but had no way of stomaching a cooked meal (it’s like something pinches my throat real bad each time I need to swallow something, it really hurts). I stocked up on pears, strawberries, bananas, oranges and grapes at the Fruit n Veg, then decided I needed something like Gatorade to accompany the fruit (as you can see I am a bon-vivant).

There’s a store down the end of my street which I’d never been into, so on my way back I stopped by there. As I was browsing the various flavors of Gatorade- Blue Bolt, Fierce Grape, all very manly names- I heard the mellifluous tones of Northern accented Chinese emanating from the corner of the store (or rather, the corner of the corner-store, to be specific). It turned out to be the store owner and his wife. I waited until all the customers in the store had been served and then approached him, and had a really good chat in Chinese. His family emigrated from Tianjin, which is a city I’m really fond of, partly because there’s a lot of Xiangsheng performers from there, and I really love the accent. I told him this, and in return he remarked that I didn’t speak Standard Chinese, I spoke Beijing dialect. Flattery, to be sure, but it’s much better to hear than what people used to tell me: that I spoke like I was from Taiwan.

So, anyway, that’s all kind of why I haven’t finished the next post in my series on Taiwan yet (it will be about the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall).

Breakfast at Lao Ma’s

2009-02-06T19:42:00.003+10:00

My friend and I would always eat out for breakfast, around 9.30-10am. Taibei doesn’t really seem to wake up much before that so it’s quite good for sleeping in, and in any case you’ll probably need the sleeping-in with all the late-night adventures that’ll take place. The attendance of my friend was particularly impressive, since he is still deceiving all of his relatives into thinking he is a vegetarian, so would first eat breakfast at his place, then meet me for a second breakfast less than half an hour later.

I guess the craving for meat is just that strong. And besides, I don’t blame him, because the breakfasts were truly delicious. Bacon pancakes, cheese pancakes, ham pancakes, all served with a sort of BBQ-sauce, and doujiang to wash it down with. In fact I’m getting hungry just thinking about it (though, it has been about 7 hours since I last ate).

Other times, if we missed the breakfasts (there was some serious sleeping-in taking place) we’d usually go for xiaolongtangbao soup dumplings, and possibly some noodles to go with (I like zhajiangmian, a Beijing dish which I theorize to be the basis for spaghetti bolognaise).

After breakfast we’d often stroll down a few stalls to the comic-store (more accurately a private comic-library) and read us some manga for an hour or two, before deciding what to do for the day…

Homeless in Taiwan

2009-02-03T21:49:00.002+10:00

One of the peculiarly charming things I first noticed in Taibei was the dogs roaming the streets, casually swaggering alongside bipedal pedestrians. These are not known as wild dogs; my friend told me the term is homeless dogs. They sleep on the stoops of storefronts, and wander around the alley. It seemed to me that some hospitable food-stalls fed some of the dogs, which is a nice thought.

There was, however, I cat whining in the backstreet outside my hotel window. Now that was annoying, and I would have appreciated my canine friends doing something to shut that cat up.

Possibly Controversial

2009-02-01T06:39:00.002+10:00

I got back from Taiwan on Friday having slept about 5 hours out of the previous 48, so I’ve been catching up on sleep since. I plan to write about it in some depth in a series of posts, but I’d like to generalise first.

Taiwan, or rather Taipei, is the China that you know from strolling around China-town, when you try to imagine a whole city with narrow streets filled to the brim with people, lined by neon-signs and food-stalls. It is, at the same time, a trying impersonation of Japan in cuisine (Japanese food often seems to outnumber Chinese food), in cuteness (you will want to brick the fake-baby-voiced young women and soap-opera inflected young men) and in high-technology (home of the leading motherboard and video-card companies, which is awesome…in fact this is not so much an impersonation of Japan, come to think of it).

What I’m trying to say is, it’s a shua-shua hotpot of Orientalist cliché. But as I hope to explain, I don’t find that to be an entirely bad thing.

Setting Off

2009-01-01T22:11:00.003+10:00

I don't about you, but I tend to get more excited the night before a journey than pretty much any other time. Christmas eve is cool, but it's not really a prelude to adventure in the same way that travel is. Maybe it helps when you're going somewhere you haven't been before.

I tend to get so overcome with nervous energy that I find it hard to enjoy things like reading a book, and get easily distracted by things like that massive howling wind outside (Brisbane seems to be getting more storms lately than it's had in quite a few years, and they're really violent).

I've tried to think about what I'm hoping to do on this trip, but the things I come up with are quite a scattered bunch. Here's the rough draft which is bouncing around in my head, first for Taiwan:

-Learn something of the Southern Fujian dialect spoken by my friend's family.

-Visit shrines and temples to see how more commonplace religion is in Taiwan, and hopefully find out something more of Buddhist texts. I've read the Dao De Jing but nothing of Buddhism.

-Grab some political propaganda for the Nationalist Party.

-Buy some novels written by Taiwanese authors.

-Buy some works on Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest (hopefully some works written by Ricci as well)

And then in Beijing...

-Visit the Summer Palace in snow

-Make my way to Qianmen

-Visit the old Observatory

-Walk around Zhongnanhai

-Check out the zoo

And that's what I have so far. The last one was probably inspired by Wang Xiaofeng's New Year's Resolutions. Anyway, see how the Beijing ideas are quite clear whereas the Taipei ideas are quite vague, or otherwise just retail-oriented? That's because I don't know what the actual city is like, at all. Which leads me nicely to the final point I'd like to make.

I'm always interested at how, when you first arrive in a foreign city, each little corner and landmark seems ephemeral, and doesn't settle down in the mind. So you feel lost at first. But once you're familiar with a place- a process that you can't seem to affect, but willl nevertheless occur- it's really hard to imagine not being familiar with it. Like how when you learn a foreign language and it's odd and exotic at first, and then later you can't not understand it. Or how it's impossible to recreate the feeling that you get the first time you listen to an album.

I'm looking forward to that feeling.

Awesome

2008-12-27T01:53:00.003+10:00

I went to use Adsotrans recently and was surprised to find something entirely new, something entirely awesome.

Popup Chinese.

That post I wrote about Adsotrans is still valid- the website has that sweet web 2.0 dictionary. But they're also now producing podcasts. These podcasts have a real personality to them and they're totally Beijing-centric. They have a brilliant, eclectic range of content up so far, ranging from KTV to literature. I don't really listen to language-podcasts for Chinese much anymore, I've been sticking to the Chinese news podcasts from the ABC and BBC recently. But this is definitely the most impressive podcast I've ever heard. It's often really hard to strike a balance between practical and fun. These guys have found it.

Peaceful Night

2008-12-25T01:30:00.004+10:00

Well then, Merry Christmas!

I'm off to Taiwan next week which should be exciting. I'm not really sure what to expect; Mum bought me the Lonely Planet, but I don't really have any faith in those, and this one is pretty underwhelming. I mean it sounds good in the guide, but the guide doesn't really paint a vivid picture. But I'm going with a good friend of mine who was born in Taiwan, and I'm also planning on taking a week to visit my friends in Beijing. I'm really, really looking forward to it.

Christmas last year, in Beijing, was the best I've had. Funny thing that, because it's not really much of a big deal there. But that's just the thing: instead of hysteria, impossible-bookings and last-minute-rush, I just got together with my friends and ate turkey in Guomao. It was brilliant.

This year it's a hot one. Of course, my parent's house in Cairns is totally air-conditioned, so if you're watching a Christmas film or listening to the music, it's easy to imagine that it's chilly outside. But it really, really isn't.

Cairns is weird at Christmas time. Our neighbour got egged this evening.
"With an egg?" is what my Mum asked. I don't think we've been egged.

Anyway I hope everyone has a lovely couple of days. I've been lucky in that I've already been on holidays for about 7 weeks now, but for those of you who work long hard hour jobs, enjoy the break. And thanks for not egging us.

Trav'lin'

2008-11-03T19:46:00.003+10:00

The end of the semester has almost arrived, and I've only got one essay left (maybe more regular blogging will resume?)

I'll have just over 3 months off, and I don't plan on spending it all in Cairns, or Brisbane. I'm thinking of taking a holiday but I'm not exactly sure where to go. The Australian dollar is pretty awful at the moment so I'll be taking that into consideration. I don't really feel the need to go back to mainland China for the time being, but I'm considering Taiwan as an option. Also Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia all sound nice. And I had a friend recently go to Argentina who raved about the place.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate some feedback.

In the meantime, I've finally got time (which I've probably had all along, but...) to get back to the East Asian section of the library so I might be able to do some write-ups on some Chinese novels I've been having a go at.

Eyebrow Reviews

2008-10-13T00:30:00.003+10:00

My best friend Steven has a blog he only just told me about, and it's hilarious.

He reviews, um, eyebrows from various films. And he's a brilliant writer. I loved this sentence:

"Yes, you can probably do wonders with your eyebrows if you’ve had enough acid that you spend your afternoons chasing purple elephants with Commerce degrees and a summer homes in Malibu."

This thing will be huge soon, I feel, so get in before it gets too crowded.

This is his blog.

有话好好说 - Keep Cool - Film Review

2008-09-20T16:30:00.006+10:00

I've got a blurry view of Zhang Yimou. I can't quite figure out what his style is, and I'm not sure whether he's a good director who occasionally makes crap films, or a crap director who occasionally makes good films. The truth is probably just too complex for a simple view like either of those to hold.

I haven't seen his films in any chronological order, and that doesn't help. I first saw Hero and 'Surrounded' (aka House of Flying Daggers); fun, anodyne f ilms lacking much substance. Then I saw Happy Times, which I really liked. It had a soul and a sense of humour. Then I saw Raise the Red Lantern, which was burningly haunting.

And then I saw 'City of Golden Armour', aka 'Curse of the Golden Flower', aka 'Curse of the Golden Breasts'.

Keep Cool is probably closest to Happy Times, which is to say, it's one of Zhang's films which I really liked. The pace and feel of the film is almost reminscent of early Wong Kar-Wai films like Chungking Express and Fallen Angels. This is probably because of the on-location shooting, and the largely handheld, constantly dancing cinematography.

And in the same way that Chungking Express seems, to me at least, to capture something of Hong Kong, Keep Cool is quite an accurate depiction of Beijing. The dialogue is chock-full of Beijing dialect (or rather, they speak in Beijing dialect throughout the whole film), our main character played by Jiang Wen (from Green Tea) is somewhat of a hooligan, and it relies on the distinctly Beijing sense of humour, or at least North Eastern brand of humour. The scene with Zhao Benshan (who was also in Happy Times) reading poetry outside the apartment is particularly hilarious.

With any luck, Zhang's next film will be more along these lines, and not some epic, craptacular.

Little Hong Kong

2008-09-18T21:07:00.002+10:00

Last night my friend and I went to Sunnybank, as usual, and this time tried out a place called Little Hong Kong. I had the BBQ Pork Rice, 叉燒飯，which as a dish is probably one of my favourites of all time. It wasn't bad at Little Hong Kong, wasn't bad at all, and they also have an appropriate menu of drinks like Hong Kong style tea, 港式奶茶. I recommend that one.

There was no toilet humour this time, but something was a bit off. My friend and I ordered in Mandarin, which was understood. But when I tried to say thanks in Cantonese, (no idea how to input the characters but pronounced something like m'goi), I got a blank response. Then I explain in Mandarin that I'm saying thanks in Cantonese, and the waitress replies "I don't speak Cantonese".

In a restaurant called Little Hong Kong? Seriously?

Thankfully they are open until 1am so at least they got the opening times rather authentic.

Toilet Humour

2008-09-07T20:00:00.003+10:00

On Wednesday a friend and I went to Sunnybank for some Chinese food. Our conversation (we catch up each week) usually goes something like this:

P: "So, where do you wanna go?"
C: "I'm easy, what did you have in mind?"
P: "Um...how about Sunnybank?"
C: "Sounds good"

We often go to Little Taipei, 小台北, but this time we went to a place called "Malaysian Corner", if I remember its English name correctly. It could be slightly different, but what stood out was the fact that it bore no resemblance to the Chinese name, 旺角餐廳, i.e The Mongkok Diner. The menu was partly Malaysian, but only partly. I'm guessing it's modeled on Chinese restaurants within Malaysia, making the assumption here that there is a large Cantonese population which settled a while ago in Malaysia (I'm pretty sure this is true).

Anyway, I got a dish of Kungpao Chicken, 宮保雞丁or 宮爆雞丁depending on where you go, which was tasty but had nothing on what I used to get at the cafeteria of my apartment in Beijing.

Given that the food was nothing to blog about by itself, and that I'm in need of interesting things to blog about since returning from China, at least the toilet didn't disappoint. There was a sign which read:

請勿蹲在廁板上如廁
please do not squat on top of the toilet seat whilst using the toilet.

I found it particularly funny to find such a sign in Brisbane. I've never seen a sign like it in China before, and didn't see any in Hong Kong that I can remember. I have had annecdotal evidence from female friends which suggests that such a sign is certainly justified at certain McDonalds within China as people adjust to a seated toilet as opposed to a squatted toilet.

I guess that it's overseas Chinese (especially overseas Cantonese) condescension at their 'cousins from the country' which provokes them to put up such a sign in a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane.

Anyway, I'd only give The Mongkok Diner 2/5 for it's Kungpao Chicken, but the toilet adornments made the trip worthwhile.

Beijing, Hong Kong and Brisbane Days

2008-08-22T23:11:00.005+10:00

I did leave my camera in my hotel room in Hong Kong, but thanks to the awesome staff of The Cosmopolitan (now officially the best hotel ever, as far as I'm concerned), I'm now back in possession of my camera. Thanks guys!

Finally I can put up the quick photo journey I've been wanting to do for a while.

The first view is that from my Beijing apartment. This was the morning of my last day in Beijing. It wasn't raining.

This, by contrast, is the view out of the hotel window, on my first morning in Hong Kong.

And this is the view out of the flat I'm staying at in Brisbane. It rained this afternoon.

Such Hospitality

2008-08-13T21:08:00.006+10:00

I've just read a rather extreme example of 'hospitality' in the Three Kingdoms, and thought I'd give a quick, rough translation. There's actually an odd sort of moral ambiguity here (even, or especially, in the Chinese, I think), and I wonder about the significance of this little part of the story. The plight of women in the Han dynasty was certainly pretty horrid. As always any corrections are welcome.

一日，到一家投宿，其家一少年出拜，问其姓名，乃猎户刘安也。当下刘安闻豫州牧至，欲寻野味供食，一时不能得，乃杀其妻以食之。玄值曰：“此何肉也？”安曰：“乃狼肉也。”玄德不疑，乃饱食了一顿，天晚就宿。至晓将去，往后院取马，忽见一妇人杀于厨下，臂上肉已都割去。玄德惊问，方知昨夜食者，乃其妻之肉也。玄德不胜伤感，洒泪上马。刘安告玄德曰：“本欲相随使君，因老母在堂，未敢远行。”玄德称谢而别…

One day, Liu Bei went to stay overnight at a house and was met by the young man living there, a hunter named Liu An. Upon learning that Liu Bei was governor of Yu, Liu An wanted to provide a meaty meal for all; unable to find any meat, he killed his wife and cooked her.

“What kind of meat is this?” asked Liu Bei.

“It’s wolf,” replied Liu An. Thus satisfied, Liu Bei went on to eat until he was full, and then stayed the night. At dawn, Liu Bei went behind the house to get his horse, when suddenly he saw the corpse of a woman inside the kitchen, with the flesh on her arms scraped away. Liu Bei, shocked, asked Liu An, and only then found out that last night’s meat had been that of his wife. Liu Bei was so moved he couldn’t help crying as he mounted his horse.

“I’d love to come along, but while Mum’s alive I don’t dare venture out far,” said Liu An.

Liu Bei thanked him and left…

Junkie

2008-08-10T23:02:00.007+10:00

I must be building up a tolerance. 250 grams used to last days. Now I'm doing 500 grams in an evening yet still thirst for more.

My name's Cooper, and I'm a strawb addict. Perhaps it was not eating a single strawb for a whole year, or perhaps this winter has produced a particularly fine, juicy, succulent bunch of strawbs. Either way, I'm hooked. It's probably the best thing about being in Brisbane right now.

So the word for strawberry in Chinese, 草莓 caomei, is literally straw berry. This is a bit much to be sheer coincidence, so I figured that strawberries probably aren't native to China. Seeking a China-centric answer, I looked up Chinese Wikipedia. I found out in Cantonese it is 士多啤梨, which I found out is pronounced sih do be leih, a transliteration from the English without meaning, as such, but does finish with the character for pear.

It was a good way to learn a bunch of words I'd never learn otherwise (which I'll probably forget in a few hours, but if I look up enough entries on fruit after a while...I'll be fluent in er, fruity language...ba-doom-tish). Apparently the part we eat is not actually strawberry fruit, but a part of the outer floral envelope created after the pollen has disseminated. The real strawberries are the little yellow things covering the surface of the strawberry. Or something like that.

I need another hit, but my supply is running low...

BBC Chinese Unblocked - Translated Comments

2008-08-04T23:49:00.005+10:00

The BBC's Chinese website is, apparently, now unblocked in mainland China. I was browsing through the interactive section of the website and found a comments section with the title: BBC Chinese Unblocked - Your Experiences.

Anyway, I'm just taking a break from the reading I'm doing for university, and thought I'd give my shot at translating some of the comments- original post first, followed by translation. I might return and do some more later:

BBC 又在搞他那臭名昭著的小把戏了：花钱雇佣中国的小贱民（或称被雇佣的网上反华分子）来此污染中国人的大脑了！西方搞数十年的对国民的洗脑很成功啊，倒是中国共产党半途而废啦，不过我们是中国人，不会听你继续骗人和攻击中国，因为你BBC只有一个目的，就是让中国变得衰弱，你英国白人殖民者可心理平衡也可继续瓜分中国！做梦吧你。

F--KBBC F--KBBC BEIJING 中国

The BBC is up to it's notorious filthy tricks yet again: Hiring the underclass of China (or you might say 'the hired online Sinophobes') to come and pollute the brains of the Chinese! The West's decades long brainwashing of the citizens has really succeeded, whereas the Communist Party gave up half way through, but we're Chinese, we won't listen as you continue to deceive and attack China, because the BBC only has one goal, which is to weaken China, it doesn't bother you white British colonizers to keep carving up China! You're dreaming, you are.

F--KBBC F--KBBC BEIJING, CHINA

中国什么时候才能文明? 才能理性?
愚昧地抵制别人,到最后只能是自己被全世界孤立!!!

80后 北京

When will China finally be civilized? Finally be rational? The ignorant boycotting of others will only lead to being isolated by the world.

Post-80's Beijing

开放言论与思想是文明的基础。中国不仅需要经济发展，也需要政治进步。希望这种开禁是长期的，不是暂时的。

PLA China

Freedom of speech and thought are the foundations of civilization. China doesn't just need economic development, it also needs political progress. I hope this kind of unblocking is long term, not temporary.

PLA China

开通BBC，实在太高兴了，不过这肯定是中共的应景之举，奥运一过，就不会如此。中共独裁专制政党什么丧心病狂的事都能做得出来！不过“解封”一天也好啊！

求实　江苏

The BBC is opened up, I'm over the moon, but this tactic is definitely a temporary one from the CCP, after the Olympics, it won't be like this. No tactic is too depraved for that CCP dictatorship! But one day of 'unblockage' is still good!
Truth Seeker Jiangsu

能从中国国内浏览BBC网，网速很快!感觉很好。这种开放很有意义!看到你们让人马上想起你们的祖先来我国贩卖鸦片烟,火烧圆明园的事了!但愿你们不要象你们父辈那样在网上放毒,来毒害我们!

林则徐 北京

Browing the BBC from inside China, the connection is really fast! Feels good. This type of easing of control is really significant! Seeing you lot reminds me of the fact that your ancestors came to our country peddling opium, and burned down the old Summer Palace! But I hope you lot aren't so like your forefathers that you'd spread poisonous ideas on the internet to harm us!

Lin Ze Xu Beijing (note: Wenlin has a listing for Lin Ze Xu 1785-1850, 'a Canton viceroy who tried to halt the opium trade')

-----------
PS: I couldn't figure out a good way of translating: 解封 unblock in the context as it was used here, thus we have 'unblockage'.

Cantonese and the Three Kingdoms

2008-08-03T23:51:00.004+10:00

So I finally have a concrete example of a way in which Cantonese is more 'old school' than Mandarin. On my couple of trips to Hong Kong, I'd sort of figured out that shi (to be) in Cantonese was hai. I'd assumed it was their way of pronouncing the word written 是.

But it's not! They actually use the really old word 系 xi, which you can still find in old texts (like the Three Kingdoms). Can mean the same as shi in certain contexts. Like the phrase I just read:

融曰：“我系李相通家。” Rong said "I'm a relative of Minister Li"

This piece of the puzzle just clicked now when I found the Cantonese word in the Wenlin definition. So that's why it popped up all the time in those HK gangsters films I've been watching.

I've just started dipping my toe into Cantonese properly by the amazingly awesome website designed for mainland Mandarin speakers learning Cantonese, 520hai. Something tells me it may not be entirely legitimate, as there are expensively produced videos up there entirely for free...but hey, their lessons are really useful. I'm still at the stage where I'm gaping at the fact that there's 9 tones, and trying to get my ears and eyes linking up to the new pinyin system.

Well, you know that saying, I think it's something like 千里之行，始于一步 (the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- let me know if I have that wrong). Or maybe something like 九声之语，始于阴平 in this case. (a language of nine tones begins with the first tone- my classical Chinese sucks do please point out if that's wrong, anyone- Jeremiah? Sunny? Laurie?)

Anyway, I hope someone finds the 520hai link useful- I'm amazed such a site exists.

Shanghai Gloaming

2008-08-02T15:20:00.002+10:00

There was a really good documentary on SBS just now, called Shanghai Gloaming. It was made by FLY Films, and follows the photographer Greg Girad around the more interesting areas of Shanghai. My favourite thing to do in Shanghai is to stroll through the northern Bund area, and I was lucky enough on one of my trips to visit a friend's old home in the area. It was built in the shikumen style (石库门), and it was fascinating taking a look inside.

The documentary was made in 2005, and gives quite a gloomy outlook as to the future of these unique architectural styles, suggesting that they're going to be torn down in the near future. That's probably true, though there's still plenty standing today, so it's still worth exploring. I didn't have my camera then, but in any event there's better examples of it at Greg Girad's website. In particular, in the places section, see photo #3 "North Bund Rooftops".

I also saw that Girad has done some good work capturing the Walled City which used to exist in Kowloon.

Floating Along

2008-07-31T22:53:00.003+10:00

I was in the library this evening, and at 7.30 decided that I'd best be off soon. I'd just read a few more minutes and then head to the bus station. By the time I put the book down, an hour and a half had past. I had to run to the bus station, otherwise it'd be another half hour until the next bus. I just made it, but by that stage it was packed and I had to stand at the front, by the driver.

I'd never ever had that view before. The road is presented in front like a wide-screen presentation, and the slow, rolling, bouncing motion of the bus makes it feel almost as though you're gliding along the road. Try it sometime.

On the way back home I heard a Taiwanese on her mobile discussing university matters, and she inserted the English phrase "international finance management". It made me think how people choose to use foreign expressions for things that they could say in their own language. In this case it seemed particularly odd, because it was actually harder to say in English than Chinese. In English you'd have 10-11 syllables, as opposed to six in Chinese (国际金融管理, guoji jinrong guanli).

As I counted out the syllables and realised this weirdness, I considered asking her why she said it. But I figured she wouldn't appreciate it.

To Sinicize the Games

2008-07-27T23:29:00.003+10:00

Before going to China, I'd never put much thought into what it meant to localize a video game. Now I see why this process would be costly and lengthy. It means, in this context, to subtitle or dub over all the text in a video game. English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese- these languages seem to be prime for localization teams, probably because of the video game playing populaces of nations speaking those languages.

In China, I found that many games were not localized. A game might have a Chinese package, and a Chinese name, but the game itself was entirely in English more often than not. I suspect this is why the majority of video game magazines at the newsagents were of the 'strategy guide' variety, which is fancy way of saying "how to beat this game step by step."

One game which is localized, or Sinicized rather, is World of Warcraft, and it's now a massive source of income for Blizzard (which should be Blizzard Activision now, for budding stock traders). It's probably not a coincidence that it's a game which can't be pirated. It can only be played with an account kept on official servers, so there seems to be no way of getting it for free. Apart from WoW, Chinese gamers are relatively ignored; I'm not even sure if games made within China, such as the recent Splinter Cell game by Ubisoft Shanghai, get Sinicized.

What's interesting though is that Chinese netizens have taken the matter into their own hands, and release 汉化 (han4 hua4, 'Sinicized') versions of the games for free on the internet. It's probably the case that because of the rampant media piracy in China, the software developers/publishers/distributers don't feel it's worth the investment to Sinicize their products. But the lack of official Chinese language software is no doubt part of the problem now, and those in charge would be better off with a carrot rather than a stick approach to solving it.

And on top of that, I'd like to add, that playing video games in Chinese is one of my favourite ways of learning the language. There's nothing like having to solve an interactive puzzle in Chinese. Anyway, enough nerd-speak for now...

Brisbane is a Taiwanese Mecca

2008-07-26T23:08:00.003+10:00

My friend once told me that Brisbane has the largest Taiwanese population in Australia. I haven't bothered to veryify that, but it's plausible enough. The Chinese department at my university is almost entirely run by that rogue state. Some of the best Chinese restaurants in Brisbane are located in the suburb of Sunnybank, where lots of Taiwanese reside. And in my Three Kingdoms class, I've had my first taste of a truly 'dia' accented Chinese in a while(嗲, dia is third tone, for budding Sinophones out there).

If you haven't heard of this word, I'll offer now my understanding of it. Wenlin gives the translation 'childish, coy'. The 'dia' accent occurs when a young woman (or not so young) speaks as though imitating a four year old girl. Some people find it infuriating, but I just find it strange. Well, strange and maybe a bit annoying. And whilst it's sort of spreading throughout mainland China, Taiwan is apparently the place to get a fix of it. Or Brisbane, for that matter.

I was having a coffee with friends this evening in South Bank and there was a pair of girls behind us speaking some weird dialect, which at times sounded like Shanghainese, but I'm pretty sure wasn't. They certainly had that dia way of speaking though. Weirder still, was going to the bathroom and seeing a guy dressed up as Robin. As in, Batman and Robin. He was leaning on the sink bench, furiously scribbling down notes in a book. I left without saying a word. I guess that doesn't relate to Taiwan, but I had to mention it; it was just too strange not to.

Anyway, I haven't been to Taiwan before, but sometimes feel like I might be living in Taiwan-town. More investigation is needed.

In The Deep End (And A Request)

2008-07-18T02:05:00.003+10:00

It's about 2 am and I'm taking a break from some reading I need to get done for university. Stuff I need to get done before the first lecture begins. Not light reading, I'm afraid; more like, the hardest reading I've ever put myself through. I'm only doing one Chinese course this semester but I think it's more than enough: Reading the Three Kingdoms. You may know this as a really long historical novel, and the basis for many martial arts films, including that one recently with Andy Lau and Sammo Hung. And you'd be right. Other than that I've got some philosophy of science courses, but that's another flavour of quark.

It's hard reading for a few reasons, the first being the language used. Sure, I've read (and I'm reading) sections from The Art of War, The Dao De Jing, and the Zhuangzi, which show Classical Chinese in varying difficulties. But they all come with a modern Chinese translation, so an English example would be that it's kind of like reading Shakespeare with each paragraph paraphrased by Hemingway. Because of that modern translation, I'm able to get through relatively painlessly in those otherwise difficult works.

However, whilst the language in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is more...colloquial?... (people with proper knowledge of Chinese linguistics will hate me for my ignorance!)..the problem is the version I'm reading has no modern translation. Oh sure, it has an English translation, but it sucks. There's been a few times when I've gone to the English to try and check my understanding, only to find that very section hasn't even found its way into the translation. Nice. I put the lack of a modern translation down to the fact that it almost is modern in some ways, it just uses a totally different set of words (no doubt I'll sound like a twit when I start using these archaic words in conversation). I'm reading it online -for free, at the recommendation of our lecturer- so I can use Wenlin to help me read it.

This is a double edged sword. There are times when Wenlin (or the ABC dictionary, I guess) will recognize as a phrase something which isn't supposed to be a phrase, or will try to translate something which would be better given as a Chinese synonym (like 就是 for 乃). It can be quite confusing, though it's not really the fault of the software, just a limitation. The result is I sort of alternate between reading on my laptop and checking the English definitions for the unknown words, then consulting my portable electronic Chinese-Chinese dictionary for stuff that makes no sense in Wenlin.

So my request is thus: Some smart software engineer should design an addon for Wenlin which adds in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary (but keeping the pinyin). Or, if anyone knows of software like that, let me know.

I've calculated I'll have to read something like 2 chapters a day if I'm to finish on time. The novel is very enjoyable and I'd be lying to say I'm not drawn in, which is quite a feat given the amount of frigging about I have to do with said dictionaries.

The other life-jacket in this deep end is that we're allowed to do the assessment for the subject in English. The lectures though, I'm told, are in Chinese. I'm not sure if it's irony, but I'm sure there's something odd about taking on harder Chinese courses in Australia than in China.

Being Back

2008-07-16T00:24:00.002+10:00

I've been back exactly a week now. It's both good and bad, and strange and familiar. I was right about appreciating the weather: Cairns in winter is like a Romantic poet's realization of the ideal summer. This was really pronounced when my family and I went up to the tablelands (Yungaburra, specifically) for an overnight at a bed and breakfast (Eden House, specifically) last week. It was a Great Leap away from Beijing, in the best way. Eden House may do the best hot chocolate in the world; a slight tipple of cognac and lots of melted, really good chocolate, it's worth taking the trip up just to taste it, and see chocolate congeal on the edge of your glass whilst you're drinking. Just superb. I've never had a more peaceful night's sleep, nor had thicker slices of bacon for breakfast.

Then on the weekend we went up to Palm Cove, which, along with Yungaburra, is just about the best place to cure 'China Syndrome' that I can think of (nod to Paul). Without sounding like a singles advertisement, I enjoyed long walks on the beach, good wines, delectable cuisine (Nunu's may be the best restaurant I've ever been to, hot chocolates aside), and lying around reading Spence's "To Change China" (more on that another time) it was all just what I needed. These things make it good to be back.

"Pretty soon it'll feel like you never left" said one of Mum's friends.

I dunno about that. My last few days in China were quite memorable. Everyone in the apartment left a few days before my flight to Hong Kong, and I wasn't quite ready. So for a few lonesome days I had the city (and the apartment) to myself. I had the farewell dinners, looked at some places for the last time, even visited Stone Boat for the first time, which I loved. Then I had to get the apartment ready for the landlord and bond collection, which was a whole lot easier than I'd thought, thankfully. I was afraid she'd get annoyed about things like massive scratches along her wall (my bad, with a stray suitcase), or massive amounts of dust (that's the crappy air), or food stains (two males of university student age, ok?), but it turned out she was just concerned that we might have tried to steal her television sets or her air conditioners. Right.

That bond collection was at 8am of the 4th of July, the same day as my graduation ceremony, at 9am, and my flight to Hong Kong at 1.30pm. So I arrived at the ceremony hall (the literal Chinese name for which is the "Study Dilligently Hall"), with my luggage and a giants helping of anxiety. After an hour of pleasantries and official-babble on behalf of the various heads of department, I was able to get my certificate, say all the goodbyes, and then grab a cab to the airport.

After what seems now to be an obligatory delay at the Beijing airport of 2 hours, at terminal 3 (very impressive terminal that one), I was off and out of the smog. And I arrived into a Hong Kong clearer than I'd ever remembered seeing it.
I'd put up photos but I can't find my camera; I think I left it in the hotel room in Hong Kong. It's a shame because I took two great photos contrasting the difference in pollution between the two cities.

Anyway, the best way I can describe it is as follows:
It was like all of Beijing had been some drawn as a sketchy background in an early black and white cartoon, whilst in Hong Kong the sky, the grass, the mountains and the ocean were all rendered in stunning 3D colour, like Toy Story or Finding Nemo. It actually seemed too colourful at first.

I had the best time in Hong Kong, as I always do, caught up with some very good friends, and then all-too-soon had to take the train back to the airport for an 18 hour hell-haul back to Cairns, via Brisbane, via Singapore.

And now I'm happy to be comfortable for the time being, though university begins exactly one week from now.

What I'll Miss and What I Won't

2008-07-02T23:37:00.002+10:00

I'm leaving Beijing on Friday, and going back to Australia on Monday. I thought now would be a good time to explain what's going through my mind. Most importantly, what will I miss, and won't I miss?

I'll miss my friends most of all. Some of my friends are Australians studying in China, and they're returning back too, so that's not so bad. On the other hand, some of my friends are Chinese uni students, and it's doubtful that they'll be heading to Australia any time soon. So it'll probably be a while till I get to see them again. It's a good thing we have email.

I'll miss walking into a bookstore and getting almost dizzy with all the books I haven't read, and want to read. Ditto for DVD shopping...

I've always enjoyed walking down the street and feeling surrounded by historical archicture, down to the street itself, and walking down a Hutong to get a delicious meal. And I'm really going to miss those jiabingr, they are the breakfast of champions....

It'll be a shame not to be surrounded by the melodious and often slightly humourous banter of Beijingers, and I'll miss all the funny, peculiar phrases exclusive to the Beijing topolect. And joining with Beijingers in insulting the various non-Beijing speakers of Mandarin and their girly pronounciation.

And there is just a certain feeling you get in Beijing, of being in the midst of something great, exciting and important. That will be sorely missed; I suspect it'll make seem Brisbane seem positively dull.

However, I won't miss having to use a proxy browser to read the BBC news. I won't miss an hours commute necessary to go and buy some deoderent. I won't miss blowing my nose and leaving behind a black streak of coal dust. I won't miss the endless advertising for the Olympics, and 'staunch unity'.
I won't miss having the power cut in my apartment without warning, the internet cut without reason, or the hot water in the shower not working without turning on three other taps.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say I'm looking forward to being able to see clear, all the way to the horizon, every day. Hopefully that won't get old too soon, but in any event, I'll be back sooner rather than later, no doubt. That's the natural result of a degree in philosophy and Chinese; those philosophy jobs are just too hard to come by. The real question is, which city in China, or the Chinese diaspora, will I go to next?

A Problematic Education

2008-06-23T02:03:00.002+10:00

It's almost exam time, and I'm in a bad mood about that, which is nothing new. What is new is that I know exactly what is wrong with this batch of exams, or more broadly, the system they're a part of. Perhaps if I recount what I'll be tested on, the reader may begin to deduce a pattern.

My exams are for newspaper reading (where we have yet to read an actual newspaper), focused reading (where we read about pandas and compassion and disabilities), oral Chinese (where we talk about repairing bikes, ordering food, and virus protection software), 'reading' reading (where we read selected opinion pieces from newspaper textbooks), listening (where we are tested on 5-10 second dialogue snippets filled with peculiar oddities from the Beijing topolect, and 5-10 minute vignettes about ordering virus protection software, repairing pandas, and compassionate disabilities), and audio-visual class (where we will be tested on 5-10 minute dialogues from films, with a focus on the Beijing topolect).

My biggest complaint is that preparing and passing the above exams is extremely time-consuming, and yet seems to produce very little advancement in language profiency. I think that's most likely because the context is so boring that it's rather forgettable, ba-doom-tish.
On the other hand when I'm just reading BBC articles, Lao She's Cat Country, The True Story of Ah Q, video game magazines, and so on, I find that I'm able to recall all the new stuff I learn without really having to review the stuff. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that the reviewing happens naturally.

My conclusion, reached at after a year studying in China, is that I'm never taking any more specialised 'language classes', be it in Australia or overseas. I was discussing all this with my friend Plato this evening and in the process, I showed him some of the articles I'd written for class. He checked them with great interest, and noted that many of the 'corrections' made by my teacher were in fact unnecessary; I'd written something in an idiomatic, natural way, only to have it simplified or made into something unnatural. Furthermore, I showed Plato our textbooks and he was disgusted with the fact that they were in fact full of grammatical errors or improper usage of words.

So I ask the question, what the hell is up with the 'Chinese for Foreigners' education system in China? Who writes these things, what are their qualifications, and what are their real goals? This is probably overly paranoid of me, but I partly suspect the more official programs (such as the universities) don't really want their foreign students to get too proficient, especially in the more political vocabulary. After all, an incisive critical essay can be quite effective.

Though, they shouldn't worry about that with me, not just yet anyway. I've got about all the literay finesse in Chinese of a steroid-raging lemur attempting the 8 legged essay in the midst of a mardi gras parade. Or something like that. And, as the comments in a recent philosophy essay I just recieved pointed out, my English writing skills aren't that good either.

Ah well, always good to be humbled and what not.

Fireworks Because...

2008-06-13T23:41:00.003+10:00

There's been fireworks going all evening, and I'm not really sure why.

I was doing some leisurely browsing of China blogs, though, and came across something interesting at the Granite Studio.

According to the article (which is according to a report from Tianjin), this might be an attempt to scare away evil spirits. That's pretty likely, since fireworks are usually employed for that reason in China.

I'll hopefully remember to ask a Chinese friend about this in the coming days.

New Sinology

2008-06-08T19:06:00.002+10:00

There's a really good article which Laurie put me onto, called "On New Sinology", by Geremie Barme.

There are two parts that really stood out for me which I'd like to point out:

'New Sinology' can thus also be described as an unrelenting attentiveness to Sinophone ways of speaking, writing, and seeing, and to the different forces that have shaped the evolution of Sinophone texts and images, as well as Sinophone ways of sense-making. Textually, the interests of a New Sinology range from the specificities of canonical and authoritative formulations in both the classical language (or rather the languages of the pre-dynastic and dynastic eras) and the modern vernacular to the many inventive bylines that have emerged more recently in our media-saturated times.

And,

Indeed, if we fail to insist on linguistic competence in Chinese as a necessary requirement for precise and rigorous engagement with Sinophone texts and images, our students may ultimately fail to make their own sense of what it means to be studying China.

That's so true. Without that competence, we're just restricted to whatever is available in translation, which by nature is going to be a bit behind the times.

In another sense, I suppose the New Sinology contrasts the 'Old' type insofar as there were guys who could read classical texts and produce scholarly translations- which is extremely impressive, especially given the resources of the times- but wouldn't be able to sit down and watch a film.

Ma Jiang

2008-06-06T13:52:00.002+10:00

I saw another film by Edward Yang called Ma Jiang. On the DVD I have it also gives the English name as Couples, but I'm not sure if that's right.

The last film of his I saw was A One and a Two, which I really liked. Ma Jiang is quite a different film- certainly a much more disturbing film- but also well worth seeing.

One of the odd things about the film is the performances by the foreign actors. It's not that they're poorly acted roles, but rather just a bit odd. The easiest way to describe it might be as though they delivered the lines as though they were acting in a David Lynch or Peter Greenaway film; very deliberately, very slowly. I'm not sure if it was intentional on behalf of the director, but the result is the film takes on a sort of surreal quality.

It turns out to be a good mixture though, especially since the film starts off relatively innocently and slowly twists and descends.

I'll have to keep my eye out for more Edward Yang films, especially one he did with Christopher Doyle, That Day on the Beach.

My Dad Has a Blog

2008-06-06T06:11:00.003+10:00

My Dad is starting a blog, about art and magic. There aren't any articles on there yet but I'm sure it'll be interesting. Dad is a really good writer, painter and getting pretty good at magic too, so I'm sure it'll be interesting.

It's called The Tricks of Art and the Art of Tricks.

Reading versus Writing

2008-06-02T15:50:00.005+10:00

John has a good post you should all read, called Pinyin VS Hard Work (yeah, all three of you who read this blog).

Don't run off yet, this isn't just a post linking to a post linking to a post; I'm going to actually give my view on something here. But a warning: remember that this is my blog, not an academic journal, and I'm not really that good at Chinese, so you should probably listen to the links here more than me, even when I disagree with them- they are real Tongs.

So basically John talks about a post where Victor Mair basically says how he basically learned to read and write Chinese, more or less, is about the gist of it. And his method is pretty straightfoward: he reckons it's a good idea to "learn like a baby", and without beating around the bush, he goes on to say that insofar as literacy is concerned, this means reading a Chinese newspaper annotated with pinyin (or bopomopho, or whatever).

Having seen lots of Beijing babies chilling with a coffee and reading the newspaper, I can attest to the efficacy of this method.

No, really, I actually think it's a really good idea, and considering how much of a pain it is when you just want to sit down and chill with the Nanfang Zhoumo but find yourself pulling out the e-dictionary just to read an oddball character in a headline...it would be a nice addition to any newsagent, to say the least. I didn't start learning characters properly until I started university, by which time I'd done about 2 years of night classes coupled with a month in China studying at an intensive short course. In the night classes we just did pinyin really, so I think Mair probably has a good point about not killing the fun of learning a language by forcing the characters on too soon.

But there's this line, "Slowly, with practice, I also became capable of writing in characters as well." That's a lot like what various Chinese professors (ethnic Chinese and not) whom I've met have told me, and I'm sure it's correct, but it's horribly vague.

Well, I guess his article is about reading after all, and not writing. But still, I have lots of friends, especially overseas Chinese, who can read Chinese really well, but can't write more than a handful of characters, so I think Mair owes a bit of an explanation for that aside.

Anyway, my real complaint with the article (which is not, really, a complaint after all, but just somethin I'd like to add) is that he misses an opportunity to inform everyone about a modern alternative, which I think is actually better than an annotated paper text.

Annotated texts are nice to some extent, but all that pinyin can be distracting; I think pinyin works best on a fleeting, need-to-know basis, not an omnipresent sort of thing. Friends, I give you.....ADSOTRANS!

Paste in the text with the hard characters, wait a minute or so, and then...well, I won't spoil it for you, but I assure you the result is awesome. Awesome to the max.

The best thing about something like it (and there are retail alternatives like Wenlin and Clavis Sinica, but a mass collaborative project like Adsotrans is so much cooler and will dominate those products before long, mark my words!) is that you can read whatever you want. Well, anything on the internetz, anyway, and that's a lot of choice. Much better choice than whatever a newspaper chooses to handout, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, and by coincidence, Mair does talk about the sneeze thing in there too. But I repeat, there's nothing 'devilishy difficult' about those two characters, if you have a mnemonic method in place.

I'm going to write another entry soon about what I would actually think of as a better way to learn to write, namely the mnemonic method of Matteo Ricii and Heisig, so check back soon(ish). It'll be fun, and I've just found an article by J. Marshall Unger which looks like good reading...

Some more related reading, and quick word on each, in the meantime.

David "Whiner" Moser - Why Chinese is So Damn Hard
This guy apparently has awesome Chinese, and it's not really meant to be taken seriously- it's pretty damn funny. But anyway, it's an article where he complains about characters being hard to learn, and textbooks being boring. Big, big agreement from me on the second point. Almost all textbooks I've used suck more arse than some experimental Japanese bidet. But that is why we have....ADSOTRANS! And mnemonics...

Victor Mair -Illiteracy in China
This is another article where I think characters get a harder time than they deserve. He hazards some pretty wild guesses, which he readily admits. Like this one, having a swipe at the statement "College graduates are tested on 7,000 characters or more."

"A pipedream!!! I doubt whether even a hundredth of one percent of the Chinese population can write 7,000 characters; probably no more than 2-3% could recognize that many."

Now, I'm not a mathematician, or a genius. Far from it, I can assure you. But according to the always reliable *cough* Baidu, the total amount of Chinese university students as a percentage of the total population is 5 percent, so, I dunno, it doesn't seem that unlikely. Interesting question though.

Victor Mair -Awkward Sneeze
Ok, so maybe I should have attributed the sneeze thing to Mr Mair instead of John B? Anyway, it's a good article, and it's interesting that Singapore is allowing e-dictionaries in their Chinese exams. Would be nice if the HSK had a similar slackening of the rules...

Revenge of the Sneeze

2008-05-28T20:22:00.003+10:00

note: When I write something in italics, assume that it's said in Chinese (except this, obviously. Just trying to get some workable device going here, bear with me, I might use some pinyin as well, at least until we get the formula right)

"It's too hot!"
"It's stinking hot!"
"It's disgustingly hot!"
"It's like an oven in here!"
"I'm sweating like a pig!"

Such were the example sentences I wrote on the blackboard today to try and arm the kids with some vocabulary relevant to the day.

"Ok, can you read this out please?" I said.

"It's too hot! It means, the weather's too hot, right?" said Tammy.

"Yes, that's what it means. Now could you read the second one please?"

"Teacher, the t you wrote is missing the stroke through it. It's wrong! We're not reading it!"

"What? I didn't write it wrong...it's just, handwriting."

"Teacher wrote it wrong!"

I pondered my options for a moment. Tammy is one of the better students but she's also really arrogant, stubborn and whiney. I could insist that I was right, being a native speaker of English and all- "Whatever I do is perfect, geddit? Just imitate me!"- but I'd tried that before and it didn't stop their criticism. And they'd use it against me in future.

"Hey, just wondering, do you guys know the word sneeze?"

"What?"

"Sneeze. Penti."

"Oh, sneeze."

"Yeah...hey...how is sneeze written again? Could someone come and write it please?"

I wrote the English word, and left space for the two characters to be written next to it.

There was first massive squealing over who would get to write it first, followed by a sudden silence of about 2 seconds as people realised that they in fact maybe didn't know how to write it. JJ came up and triumphantly wrote the first character, correctly，喷。 Then The Mental Blank hit her, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a 3 wheeled truck speeding from Shunyi to Beijing.

"It's the 3 stroke water radical...then..." someone began to call out.

"WRONG!" I shouted in response, like an impatient businessman in a cheap restaurant.

JJ returned to her seat, struck by The Blank. By this stage the class was transfixed. Tammy swaggered her way up and wrote the second character: 涕 .

So it was her who had called out before. Fortunately, it was the wrong character; she had written the ti character forming the part of snot, not of sneeze.

"WRONG! IT'S NOT THE SNOT TI! I'LL TEACH YOU ALL SOME CHINESE! THIS IS HOW IT'S WRITTEN!"

I proceeded to write the correct character: 嚏

Silence. And then Tammy started up: "It's not that one! It's the one I wrote!"

"Check your dictionaries," I said, my voice quivering with excitement, "in fact, I'll show you on my mobile phone right now. THERE, SEE!"

As people frantically flicked through dictionaries and shot back wide eyes, I showed Tammy the soul crushing truth.

"I WIN, YOU GUYS LOSE! I FINALLY HAVE MY REVENGE!" I bellowed, like a victorious Spartan (the latter being a phrase I picked up watching the animated Tin-Tin series). The kids erupted into a laughing frenzy.

*******************

I wish I could say I'd shown them once and for all, but things have a way of coming back and biting one on the arse.

In this case, I managed to sour the victory by a small, innocent mistake, in the worst possible context.

We were going through the pronunciation of stinking, thinking and sinking, and I had just tried to tell the semi-bi-lingual version of the whole "We're sinking!" "What are you sinking about?" joke of the English and German submarines (though I used ships, not knowing the word for submarine).

The th sound wasn't coming through with some of the kids, so I wanted to make a suggestion.

"Like, put the tongue under the teeth," I said. At least, that's what I thought I said. Teeth, yatou, right?

Wrong. Some of the kids started giggling.

"Teacher..you mean teeth, yachi."

"Oh...right..." What had I said? Oh, crap.

Yatou. Woman... put the tongue under the woman.

Oh. My. God.

I did find a way of saving a tiny little bit of face, by using a phrase I had just learned today.

"Well, I'm off to go sleep on brushwood and eat gall then." A way of saying you'll spend some serious time thinking about your mistakes, I think. This got a laugh out of them in any event.

In any event, I put it down to the confusion between tongue shetou and teeth, yachi, ending up in the yatou caffufle. But, seriously.

Thank Christ they aren't teenagers.

*******************

I should mention here, I owe the advice about sneeze to two awesome bloggers, which I'll update by blogroll to list since I've been reading them so much recently.

They are:

John B.

and

Brendan.

They know Chinese really well, they write really well and they write about China really well. They're frequently informative, and sometimes hilarious. What more do you want?

HSK

2008-05-27T22:59:00.003+10:00

HSK results came out yesterday, and I was actually quite interested to see how I'd go this time.

I got a 6 on listening, an 8 on grammar, an 8 on reading and a 7 on synthesis.

The overal score was a 7, which I'm pretty happy with. It means I can enroll for any course at a Chinese university (you know, with Chinese students and all). Too bad I didn't get that result last semester, because the current classes are dipping into new lows of boredom.

I found out why our conversation class sucks the most: the teacher the Communist Party Representative for our faculty. So thats why we never talk about current events critical of China! In fact we never talk about anything apart from the topics of the pathetic textbook.

I guess it also explains why she always seemed to laugh very uncomfortably at my jokes about the Dalai Lama, class struggle and class enemies.

Aftershock

2008-05-21T15:57:00.003+10:00

Once a week we write an essay in class, and this weeks topic was the earthquake. I wrote about my experience of it, and then gave some of my thoughts on the Wanke scandal (the real estate group has been accused of not donating enough money). I might post it here later on.

In it I also noted that almost every single channel on television, and almost every frequency on radio, seems to be on 24 hour earthquake coverage. It's weird to flick through over 30 channels (even the cartoon channel) all broadcasting the same 3 or 4 different versions of coverage. There is, though, semi-regular programming on the children's channel 少儿.

There is a good account of a candlelight-vigil which John at Sinosplice attended, though it is getting criticised by some people.

Earthquake, and the Three Bigs of Chinese Speaking Foreigners.

2008-05-12T21:45:00.004+10:00

My earthquake story is kind of bland; I was lying on my bed waking up from an afternoon nap and then started getting that feeling like the room was spinning. “Weird,” I thought, “haven’t had anything to drink for 2 days”. Then I realized that the room was not spinning, but my building was swaying. Then I went down to get some lunch and noticed everyone was standing outside in the courtyard, and I heard everyone speaking about an earthquake.

There is something else I’d like to mention though. I was in the elevator the other day, and just before the doors close I hear the pattering sound of someone in a hurry. I press the ‘open door’ button and a haggard woman approaches pushing a bicycle, which despite my efforts still gets crushed by the closing doors as she enters.

“Which floor?” I ask.

“Oh, thank you, 28^th, thank you”

“It’s nothing”. There was a short pause here and I thought for a moment we’d just ride the elevator up like normal folk.

“Your Chinese is really good-“

“No, no-“ Really, I’m thinking, I’ve said all of four words, and she’s complimenting me?

“-you could be like Dashan if you stay in China a while. This is your talent.”

“No no no”

At this point I arrived, and most curiously of all she called out in an odd, mystic tone,

“Goodbye, baby!”

***********************

It’s been said lots elsewhere, and it’s true. Regardless of whether you speak a little or a lot of Chinese, get ready for the Dashan comparison. I went to Tianjin on the weekend, and on the train one of my mates made a good point.

“Chinese is so competitive man. Every new foreigner you meet, you rate their Chinese. It wouldn’t happen with Spanish or something, why Chinese?”

I reckon he has a very good point. People seem to bestow a massive amount of awesomeness on non-Chinese (especially non-Asian) Chinese-speakers. Now, I admit, I also admire people who have put in the large effort required to get good. But I actually don’t really admire Dashan, Daniu, or Zhulian that much*. That is, 大山 (big mountain)，大牛 (big cow) and 朱力安， who for the consistency of this blog could be called 大朱(big red) or even 大猪 (big pig- homonym, you see). I don’t really admire them that much because I don’t think being a professional crosstalk performer is a particularly cool thing (I have had to perform a joke once for a competition; it was very painful). Ah, you say, but they’re smart, look at their ability to make witty jokes.

Look, Dave Chappelle is funny. And in Chinese, I think Stephen Chow is funny, as is the Chinese dub of GTO that I watch (those crazy Japanese). But Dashan merely has a few clever jokes, Daniu is just up himself and has perfected his 'audience gaze' (hard to explain but it's infuriating), and Dazhu is not really that funny nor witty- he just speaks with a flawless accent.

On the other hand, I have lots of respect for some guys who write their blogs in Chinese. Such as: Brendan O’Kane, Alaric, John, and so on. I think there's just something cooler or more authentic about writing essays than performing stand-up.

Oh, and if we include Kevin Rudd in the Bigs, then he’d be 大陆- the motherland.

*In my eyes, the three most famous Laowai in Beijing, though the last two are more recent additions.

Anti-protest Protesters?

2008-04-14T03:13:00.002+10:00

So I was just proxy-browsing the BBC Chinese news, and the headline there was "Thousands of Chinese Hold Peaceful Protests in Sydney".

Funnily enough I hadn't read anything about this in the actual Australian online news-sources, and then in the end of that BBC story that actually point out that this has been under-reported in Australia (getting only 10 seconds airtime on a local tv station apparently).

The article says there was about 5000 protestors, more than the 1000 which were expected when they organised the gig with the police. So it seems pretty newsworthy.

Weird. I trust the BBC to be accurate on this, as much as Chinese language reporting can be accurate (or media in any language, for that matter).

Oh, and as the title says, according to the BBC article they were protesting about what they perceive as unfair treatment that China has been getting over Tibet, and criticising the Tibetans for the violence in their protests.

The Magic School

2008-04-13T02:19:00.002+10:00

After a sort of hard hitting night at D22, I figured I'd take it easy today. I was planning to just grab some dumplings and some Beijing style noodles for brunch but at the last minute I changed path for the subway and went to the American Cafe. Anyway, after that I figured I was on a bit of a roll, and after chuckling over some of the stories from the Evening News (one in three high level Russian military officers are overweight- the West have nothing to fear) I headed down to Xidan to look for Chain Lightning after reading Joel Martinsen's review of it.

They didn't have it, and they didn't have the comic series GTO either. I didn't want to feel like I'd wasted my trip so I picked up Kevin Rudd's biography (in the best selling area), which I'll check out. It should give me something to blab on about on cab rides at least, when they ask about Rudd.

I was feeling (amazingly) a little hungry after my brunch only an hour or two ago, so I strolled around looking for a cinema (not sure why I did this, there doesn't seem to be a causal connection). I ended up in the..um...place with the movie screen on the outside of it (大悦场 possibly...can't remember the name very well)

Not surprisingly there wasn't much on that interested me, so I headed downstairs to the food court on the 8F, to find...a magic school. I'm quite a sucker for magic- I've been watching the Chinese dub of The Prestige over and over lately in fact- and the guy wasn't bad. Seemed to be a pretty simple trick but the idea is that they teach them to you for a fee.

300 kuai gets you like 12 tricks I think. I didn't have that much on me (and I'm pretty poor in any event) but it seems like a pretty cool idea. I think I might head back there. After watching The Prestige so much, I at least have the vocabulary for it.

Rudd Speaks at Beijing University!

2008-04-11T19:16:00.002+10:00

But I can't watch the Youtube video, because it's blocked.

Tried using a proxy to no avail.

Well, at least fast, reliable internet is something I can look forward to when I leave the P.R.C.

This is another thing I'd add to my reasoning for studying somewhere like Hong Kong, Taiwan or Singapore as opposed to Beijing (for the time being anyway).

The Tomb Sweeping Long Weekend

2008-04-06T16:26:00.005+10:00

It was the Tomb Sweeping Festival on Friday, and we had a day off university.

There was a friend I hadn't caught up with in a while, and he has encyclopaedic knoweldge of Chinese history, so I thought it'd be an apt time to go an visit Matteo Ricci's tomb.

Got off at Fuchengmen and asked directions for a while, and finally turned up at a governmental office which looked more like a university campus. It was quiet, and you wouldn't know that there was a graveyard there, hidden behind the drab main building. But there is; Ricci died about 400 years ago so it's quite amazing that it's still standing.

There was a small group of Chinese Christians there when we arrived, standing by Ricci's tomb snapping photos while doing peace symbols. I thought that was a bit odd, but then again there's something a bit odd about Christianity in China anyway*.

Anyway, I took a photo as well, though more for the sake of reading the inscription later on.

There a lot of other graves there as well, all missionaries.

Anyway, I got a message from my parents saying they were driving around St Vincents Gulf in South Australia, and had just lunched at the Star of Greece.

I suspect the weather there would be slightly better than that in Beijing today (taken from my balcony):

All part of the deal I guess, though it certainly makes one consider finding a prettier city to study in! I just saw an ad for Dalian on t.v. Looks very nice there.

Time, Flying

2008-03-29T19:43:00.002+10:00

The new semester has started, and it's like last semester except slightly better with the computer class being replaced by a film/tv class (this is not as hard as it sounds, it's just watching films with a vocabulary list in front of you).

The worst is the Spoken Chinese class, as it's more of a Reciting Textbook class in actuality. This seems to be a method which is held in great esteem by my university, evidenced by the scores of students reciting their textbooks every morning in the campus gardens.

Fortunately we have some good classes, the Intensive Reading and Newspaper ones, where we talk about current events, and actually spend more time conversing than we do in the Spoken class.

The HSK is coming up next month, and as usual I'm refusing to do any specific preparation for it.
Perhaps it's laziness, but I just find the materials too boring to engage with for any useful length of time. I'd much rather just read Chinese books, magazines and newspapers, and watch films and tv shows.

We'll see how it goes. It's all flying by very fast.

A Counter-Intuitive Chinese Language Environment

2008-02-10T03:36:00.000+10:00

It's generally considered that it's best to study Chinese in-country. I see the logic, but I've come to realise there are some other considerations, and that there may be another proposition which is better. It depends to some extent on the level you have going in, and where you want to get.

My trip to Hong Kong recently motivated me to learn more Chinese than all of my time in Beijing. This goes against the grain.

There are two reasons that I can discern.

Firstly it was the information environment. I could walk into a bookstore and find volumes critical of Mao, find various violent or erotic novels, find cutting-edge science books, I could find all manner of books I have difficulty finding in Beijing.

And, what the language students learns at a certain point (or what I feel, anyway), is that advanced language profiency doesn't come through lots of speaking. It comes through lots of reading.

When I speak, I have my tones corrected, my grammar corrected, and occasionally learn a new word or two. That's good and useful, but when you stop making grammar mistakes and stop making tone errors, you're only left with learning a new word or two.

Much better to spend an hour reading a book and come away with a list of 20 or 30 or however many words you've learned.

I'm reading two books in Chinese at the moment:
Brothers, by Yu Hua, and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

I did in fact buy these books in Beijing, but I saw many more books I'd rather be reading in Hong Kong.

Brothers was recommended to me by a good Chinese friend, and The Tipping Point is a book I should have read ages ago but have never gotten around to it. Of course I will want to test the usage of the words I learn from these books in a conversation. But to accumulate them in the first place, I'd say it'd be much faster to see them on a page rather than wait until the pop up in conversation.

Secondly, as we've established that you should converse to communicate, then if I wanted to communicate with my Hong Kong friends in Chinese, I'd better have a very good vocabulary to not come off like a moron. So in this counter-intuitive way it can be better being around people who speak good English- it should encourage you to get that good in Chinese.

If you only hang around mono-lingual friends, then I think the over-praise will get to your head, and you'll slow down.

The idea here is not to get good enough to have Chinese people praise you on your Chinese. The idea is to get good enough not to have them praise you.

Finding a New Blogspace?

2008-02-01T03:01:00.000+10:00

I've been spending some of the university holidays here in Hong Kong, and it has been brilliant to get away from Beijing. The air quality here is so much better than Beijing- that's how bad the Beijing air is.

It's been a frustrating couple of months since I've been writing heaps but had no where to post it all. I might consider a new blog. We'll see.

But in any event, I've definitely come across lots of stuff which I hope to share at some stage in the near future.

More is More

2007-10-22T15:56:00.000+10:00

I was, for some reason, expecting to find a lot of moderation being exercised in China. And I was, as it turns out, completely wrong. So far the underlying principle in many things seems to be more is more.

On my way to the subway the other day, and I see the campus gardener, or rose cultivator (is there a specialist name for this?), giving the roses a good drink. A bit different to how I was taught as a kid, though. This was the equivalent of giving the roses a beer-bong. I wonder how they will respond to this. Definitely a more is more approach to rose cultivation, in any event.

The underlying principle behind education is definitely more is more. More homework, more textbooks, more studying! A lot of the domestic students here study really long hours, from recitals before breakfast and then all afternoon after classes! Of course, the international students don't have this problem, generally. I personally prefer to study in shorter, more intense blocks, and then to take a nice break.

A more balanced approach, in other words. And Beijing provides nicely for that balance. Nightlife here is certainly a more is more approach....

Blogspot back in Beijing

2007-10-17T14:33:00.000+10:00

Well, this is weird, but my blog and all others on Blogspot have just made themselves available here in Beijing. Perhaps this was decided at the 17th National Congress?

Whatever the case, it's cool.

And given that I'm stil having problems getting that other blog up and running here's a brief overview of life here.

It's good. The university is more 'Griffith' than 'UQ', but this means it's unpretentious. If anything the vibe is more like a highschool. The classes are quite intense. The difficulty is about that of what I was doing last semester in Brisbane, but instead of 5 hours a week it's 20 hours a week. Another difference is that the teachers can't resort to English to explain anything, because my class is almost entirely Korean and Japanese, and because the teachers can't really speak any English (our focused reading teacher does speak fluent French, though).

Theres some great friends, some whom I already knew from Australia, and we make a killer Mandarin speaking (and reading) crew when we hit the streets. It's great fun.

A photo would probably paint the rest of it much better than I could, such as the view from my room (have sinced moved rooms but its more or less the same). More to come on another day when the net here isn't snail-crawlingly slow.

Moving

2007-08-14T23:12:00.000+10:00

Man, that trip was awesome. Going to be a struggle to describe it faithfully and justly.

Anyway, I did some experimenting there and Wordpress is, for now, unblocked in China. So I'll move this blog there, to coincide with my own move.

Off for 2 Weeks

2007-07-31T20:21:00.000+10:00

I have that nervous energy that comes the night before a trip. I'll be away till the 13th for this Chinese competition, and blogging will be impossible in that time.

Brisbane-Sydney, Sydney-Beijing, Beijing-Changchun, and back again.

The competition will be broadcast on CCTV, apparently. The standard is supposed to be very high though, so my anxiety levels are likewise rather high.

The Australian - total n00b rag

2007-07-31T11:15:00.000+10:00

I usually find The Australian to be pretty good, but this changes everything.

It's a n00b rag. This blog craps all over it. I posted about a similar subject recently, the biggest difference being I know exactly what I'm talking about, and The Australian has no idea.

Sometimes I'm just taken aback at the n00bness of some people. Natalie O'Brien clearly didn't bother to check any of what these moronic interviewers were telling her. And there is not a single mention of Counter-Strike (which is the most obvious target).

Reading 'Virtual Terrorists' (a total n00bfest of an article), I came across this:

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

WTF!? Clearly this n00b hasn't even played WoW.

If you're a n00b like him, let me explain why.

Have a look at the list of weapons on WoW.

According to Zuccato, we should be worried about 'terrorists' turning up to wreak havoc with...a Ballast Maul of the Bear, identical to its real-world armament as you can see.

And the simulated environments...very worrying. It'll be far too easy to plot an attack in a place like this:

What terrorist traning is there to be had in WoW? Honestly, if you haven't seen it in action, try and tell me that Leroy's clan was plotting a real life attack. The only terror caused by WoW is a bit of healthy family wrecking, and Leroy Jenkins-ness.

However, the WoW kid does have a moment of profound insight. In case you missed the link.

"It's not the computer game that's seperating this family, it's what you're reacting to it!"

Well put, kid, well put.

UPDATE:

I am right and the Aus is wrong.

Read the other responses:

Here

Here

and Here.

This last one being particularly important, in showing the true story behind the 'terrorist' plot. Where did O'Brien get the idea that the bombs killed player characters? Virtual-coffins??
Players can't die in Second Life- end of story. O'Brien is writing her own fiction.

Best. Simpsons. Ever.

2007-07-30T21:34:00.000+10:00

Just saw The Simpsons film, and it's brilliant. Weaves together the best wit and social commentary of the old episodes with the laugh out loud slapstick of the new ones. And doesn't succumb to seriousness.

Not much more to say really. Except that Grand Theft Walrus and Spiderpig almost killed me with laughter.

Endless Noodles

2007-07-30T18:06:00.000+10:00

Went to Endless Noodles in Sunnybank last night for dinner with some friends. As far as eating Chinese in Brisbane goes, Sunnybank is certainly the best suburb. It's really the true Chinatown of Brisbane- forget Fortitude Valley, as it's mainly Canton food made to a Western taste (i.e bland).

Endless Noodles, however, (西域拉面，I think, "Western Chinese Handmade Noodles") is genuine, authentic, the good stuff. My favourites are the delicious Xinjiang lamb sticks and the scalding hot pot. Seriously, the hot pot there is hot. I haven't been to Sichuan, but the hot pot of last night was apparently as hot as anything in Sichuan. My lips are still red and raw, and I think I've lost my ability to taste for a month- a good sign.

G is for Greenaway

2007-07-29T22:56:00.001+10:00

Now that I've had some time for reflection, I've made up my mind about Peter Greenaway.

He's brilliant.

You'll not find a more confronting, entertaining, challenging or rewarding filmmaker than Greenaway. He completely manipulates the medium into unchartered territories. Like what Miles Davis did for the trumpet, he makes all feel fresh again. If I had to single out one aspect of his style which is most recognizable, it would be the enormous detail packed into each shot.

Some of the shots are just frame worthy; they practically stand alone as pieces of art. Incredible given that there's 24 in a second. And they are (from mid 90's and before) accompanied by intricate scores from Michael Nyman. The effect is genuinely unique amongst all the films I've watched.

All frames taken from 'Drowning by Numbers'.

Tough Life in Changchun

2007-07-29T21:48:00.000+10:00

Just speaking to a friend from Changchun in Jilin province.

She tells me that in summertime there is no electricity in the university dorm until 5pm each day.

Jeez.

Shut It, Spielberg

2007-07-29T02:33:00.000+10:00

So Spielberg has to live up to the Liberal Hollywood cliche of criticising China, does he Miss Farrow?

Damn it, I'm due to deliver a speech in Changchun very soon for a competition, and a big part of it hinges on the East-West cooperation between Spielberg and Zhang Yi Mou on the Olympics.

If he follows through with public criticism, this will cause huge loss of face for me.

So, kindly shut it, Spielberg.

Cult of the Giant Eggs

2007-07-28T14:21:00.000+10:00

Today was my last in Cairns before I head off to Brisbane, and then fly off to China. So I thought a visit to Rusty's Markets was in order. It's always fun heading down there; an olfactory delight, and a boiling pot of cultures. Some of my favourites there are the fresh ground coffee stalls, the Greek yoghurt stall, Mr Grasso's honey stall, and the Yamagishi egg stall.

This last one, though, is quite interesting. Firstly, they're easily the best eggs one will ever taste. Massive in size, delicious in taste, and with beautiful golden yolks. But what is Yamagishi?

I remember taking a Japanese student who was staying with us on a tour through Rusty's, and made a point to stop at the Yamagishi stall. I inquired about what Yamagishi meant, the student spoke to the hawker, and the mysterious response was "It's just....name."

My brother worked a while in a local cafe which used Yamagishi eggs, and he got talking to the company rep who delivered the eggs. He told him that it's in fact a communal farm. Chickens and people roam free; this freedom is a secret to the quality of the eggs, no doubt.

Further investigation, though, reveals that it's more than just a commune; it's a cult.

Well, all I can say is that unlike Falun Gong, at least this cult contributes something useful to society. Let this be a lesson to other cults.

And if you're in Cairns, make sure you do visit Rusty's Markets.

Kaufmen and Language Learning

2007-07-26T23:52:00.000+10:00

My favourite Kaufman would have to be Charlie. Charlie Kaufman has penned what I consider some of the most entertaining and intelligent films made- Adaptation is one of my favourites. Particularly notable for me was the line "I can be that cool script writer guy who speaks Chinese".
His twin-brother Donald Kaufman was most charming, and we shall miss him dearly*.

Andy Kaufman too was a memorable wag- the Tony Clifton character of his particularly.

But theres a new Kaufman on the block. In fact he one-ups all previous contestants with the addition of an extra 'n'.

I came across Steve Kaufmann whilst checking out the entertaining series on YouTube "Westerners Speaking Cantonese". That series, by the way, is a total monkey-act, no doubt about it. But just like a Russian cat-show, it's worth the price of admission.

And so I stumbled across Kaufmann, having an interview partly in English, and partly in Mandarin. That's here. Hilarious, by the way, is the interviewer, with his unintentional comic timing. But what do you know? Kaufmann's Mandarin is very good. Not as good as Da Shan or Da Niu, to be sure (Kaufmann has a bit of an accent compared to them), but way better than mine, and Kaufmann apparently speaks 8 languages in addition. Very impressive.

Anyway, he offers his opinion on language-learning, and some of them I find quite agreeable.

In particular:

It's probably a waste of time to ask why. As in, asking "Why do Chinese people say this?" This used to happen a lot in my Chinese classes, particularly in the introductory level. It hardly ever happens, though, in the advanced conversational classes, because by now we've just accepted the obvious and unchangeable. And most of those who asked 'why' all the time dropped Chinese out of frustration. It probably only rears its head again at the linguistic level, and that's cool then. But if your goal is to learn the language (as opposed to learning about the language), all that effort is probably better spent remembering what they say rather than why they say it, at least while you're still learning.
Reading and listening are really important yet often overlooked. In particular, reading something that you find interesting, and something that isn't too hard. For me, I love to read interviews with Christopher Doyle. His Chinese is very, very good, but not so native-like as Da Shan whereby he speaks only in obscure idioms and such. And most importantly, I'm really interested in what Doyle has to say.
Consistency seems to be more effective than pure volume. Take me as an example: This semester most of my time spent on Russian was on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. Tuesday was getting all the homework done at the last minute, and Wednesday was 4 hours of class. Other than that, I didn't do much. And I tanked Russian last semester! Yet my Chinese workload was spread out so that I was doing a bit each day, and I've been quite a spot more successful with it.
Learn contextually, and don't get anxious. If you're worried about getting the sentence right, you won't. And since you're prone to get it wrong anyway, why worry about it? Just relax, speak, and the native speaker will tell you what you're doing wrong. This is also much more memorable (for me at least) than reading the line out of a textbook. Most of the words that I have in my long-term memory I learned contextually, either from watching a film, reading an interview, or chatting with a friend. Not from studying a word list.

Kaufmann writes a blog, too.

So some qualifying statements. I don't want to downplay the importance of linguistics. For an excellent example of applied linguistics which is useful to a language learner, look no further than John Pasden's excellent article on pronouncing Chinese. Linguistics is also a fascinating area, and I'd be lying if I said I don't admire socio-linguists for the insights they give to a language, which as an added extra can also aid greatly in memorizing Chinese characters, for example. But, in the earlier stages, I'm not convinced one needs to know a whole lot about it.

Also, I don't want to downplay the importance of textbooks and grammar patterns. There are times when you just need to know how a word functions. Good textbooks provide patterns which are easy to follow, and things progress in a logical fashion. And at a translation level, I would think that you do need to know exactly what a word implies and what the closest thing to an equivalent is.

So far there is just one point of contention I might have with Kaufmann, when he states that vocabulary is far more important than grammar. I suppose that depends upon what he means by grammar. If he means those big, nasty books of pure grammar, then I wholeheartedly agree. But there's a difference between that, and knowing the basic cogs of a language. Like knowing the order involved in basic sentence construction. Or knowing what a verb is, what an adjective is, and so on. And I don't see a lot of use in knowing a whole bunch of words in say, Russian, and having no idea of how to conjugate them. You just won't be understood.

But regardless, his point is a pertinent one- spend lots of time working on your vocabulary!

Finally, a question I think is worth asking. Would you rather speak two or (if you're lucky) three languages with native fluency, or 9 languages pretty damn fluently? I don't have the proper answer to that, except to say that I'm focusing on Chinese for the foreseeable future, and any Russian I can come to terms with along the way is a bonus.

*Yes, I'm kidding about Donald.

iBlog

2007-07-26T14:15:00.001+10:00

iBlog is looking like a possible alternative to the dreaded MSN spaces. There seems to be a massive amount of Chinese blogs hosted there.

Anyway, had some follow up injections today (3 of them) and now I'm off to meet up with a friend to explain some of the more confusing lines of Chinese poetry I've come across.

Blogging from China

2007-07-26T00:52:00.000+10:00

When writing a China blog, one is not only concerned with the title, but also which blog service to use.

I'm still in Australia now, so I've got a bit of time to figure this out.

The question is: which services are, shall we say, available in China? Blogger, Blog-City, Blogsome, Wordpress, LiveJournal and Xanga are apparently not too good in this regard.
Which leaves MSN Spaces- the truly horrid, baron wasteland of the blogging world.

Surely there must be a better option.

The Good People of the 3 Gorges Dam

2007-07-25T00:03:00.000+10:00

I finally got around to seeing 'Still Life', by Jia Zhang Ke. It's an excellent film indeed, wholly deserving of the Golden Lion it won at the Venice Film Festival last year. Although, I can't say I really know any of the contenders for that prize, so I've no idea really. But this is a very, very good film.

The film is about the villagers of Fengjie , in Sichuan province. Or is it now under control of Chongqing? Anyway, one of the special things about the film is that the amazing location of the villages, right on the banks of the Yangtze (长江）. It's special because we can't visit these places anymore; they've been completely submerged since 2006. I'm sorry to say I've never been to this part of China before so I'll never know what it was like up close, but this film does offer a beautiful visual record of it.

Upon some reflection, a primary theme throughout the film seems to be about loss. There are two lead characters who both are involved in broken marriages, and have become loveless. And then there is the loss of the village itself.

I'm not sure that it's my favourite film by Jia, I think I still prefer The World. But this is nevertheless another brilliant piece of cinema from him, and I can't wait to see what he films next. Certainly something that does seem to be becoming a trait of Jia is the occasional juxtaposition of surrealism in what are otherwise hyper-realistic films. I first noticed it with the cartoon sequences in The World, and in Still Life he takes it further by using some impressive computer-generated imagery. I quite like the effect.

Oh, and a note about the title. 'Still Life' is the English name, but the original Chinese name 三峡好人 translates to The Good People of the 3 Gorges Dam (well that's my translation). A bit of a mouthful from a marketing perspective. It does, however, have relevance to the film, as there is a scene where a young man remarks "There are no good people here!". Whilst on topic, I should add that some (most) of the dialects in the film are nigh impenetrable to me.

I Want To Smash It

2007-07-21T23:17:00.000+10:00

Another crushing defeat for Australia. I remember reading an article, probably around this time last year or so, in TIME magazine, regarding football. The idea in the article was that perhaps the rules of the game should be changed so as to lower post-game fury.

The author had a point.

Since the scorecard is usually so low, the entire game is often decided by a single goal. As it was tonight with the penalty shootout. Whilst similar situations can and do occur in rugby and in cricket, it does seem so much more common in football, and also harder hitting to the spectator. It's much easier to concede a loss when each side has racked up a large score. But if it's 1-0 or 2-1, the margin is that much more absolute, and that suddenness of it all is probably what inspires football hooliganism.

Even here, watching T.V in the lounge-room, to a relatively unenthusiastic spectator such as myself, the reaction upon losing was clear. Put enough alcohol in me, and I'd dare say I'd be out putting chairs through glass.

Perforated

2007-07-19T15:22:00.000+10:00

The trip to the Doctors was eventful, as far as such trips go.

I had expected perhaps a Hep B shot, but I was treated to a veritable smörgåsbord of vaccines.

Six injections! To quote Ron Burgandy, "I can barely lift my right arm".

The 'highlight' was getting the Rabies vaccination, though I must say Japanese Encephalitis is quite underrated too. I hear it can cause death in some 30 percent of cases.

I'm headed back next week for some more. I'm told it's much better to get injections done here, however, as there are apparently issues over needle re-usage in certain parts of China.

Deus Ex Machina

2007-07-19T01:41:00.000+10:00

Robo-dog Messiah? Well, it could be, or it could be a hoax. Not sure on the reliability of Slashdot as the article was recommended to me by a friend.

As that same friend pointed out- anyone know the process to extract water from wine?

The China Blog

2007-07-17T17:12:00.000+10:00

I was going to write a lengthy post about the recent government intervention over Haneef, but I I've said most of it over in the comments at Sir Hall's post. Besides, why write about boring Australian politics when there's a new China blog on the block?

Not the most original name for a blog, but The China Blog from TIME seems pretty good so far.
It does have a US-centric focus, but it is at least a well researched and argued angle that the contributors adopt.

And I'm still thinking of names for the coming China blog of my own. Off to the doctors to see about injections and so on in the meantime.

Loss of Face and Job

2007-07-15T10:35:00.000+10:00

不会写

This would be pretty humiliating, I think.

It does also highlight something else which irks me.

That trend amongst really wealthy American families to compete in the language stakes of the child. Like 'guru'* Jim Rogers bragging about his daughter:

He is so confident that China will be the world’s next great nation that he employed a Chinese nanny for his daughter shortly after she was born. “She is 3 years old and already fluent in Mandarin,” he says.

I don't think I was fluent in English at the age of 3. Anyway, I'm probably totally mistaken here, but I don't think the painless 'teach them when they're young' method will work as well as these billionaires think. Ethnic-Chinese still struggle to pass Chinese language tests. The difficulty, I'd say, is not the spoken aspect, but the written. Plenty of savvy people are making lots of cash getting people to speak Mandarin, and they'll claim that speaking is what's important.

Ms Bai, a student in bilingual education at the Teachers College of Columbia University, explained that teachers of Chinese "still focus on grammar, on reading, and don't speak much. Chinese students focus mostly on getting good grades, so writing is more important for them. But in a job interview, you need to speak the language. In the United States, the focus is more on speaking."

Right. I'm unaware of this alleged crowd of people who are literate in Chinese yet struggle to speak. Their silence is deafening. But who needs that pesky grammar and reading?

Quick Mandarin's Zhang said: "It's hard to find good Chinese teachers, because teachers coming from China are very strict in their methods of teaching. Americans have a different way of learning - they like to actively learn through searching answers. But in China, it's different. The teacher will talk and then just give a lot of homework."

To which, I reply with a quote from the Straits Times article at the top:

Mr Richard Ong, an ethnic Chinese born in Malaysia, did not write Chinese well enough to take a mandatory test for senior managers, say bankers.

And so he didn't get to be a Goldman-Sachs CEO- probably the very job that Rogers has targeted for his kid. I wonder which test it was. But in any case, regardless of what the second hand language salesmen try to tell you, reading and writing is important, and there's no painless way to learn those 3500 characters required to be considered literate. In fact there is a Chinese professor I know who says writing is the most important aspect of learning Chinese.

*Guru. I hate the word, particularly since nowadays it is almost always applied to investment authors.

Man of Mystery

2007-07-13T02:10:00.000+10:00

My brother has been watching a lot of Derren Brown, lately, and I've been watching a bit of it myself. It's quite entertaining really, and some of it is really impressive. His card handling skills, for example, really are brilliant.

Some of the other feats, however, I'm still skeptical of. Regardless of how good one's skill with persuasion or suggestion is, the mere fact that this is television should be an alarm bell for any rational person. And yet...It's certainly nice to believe that with the right application of behavioral science, one could affect such stunning results. There's also no question that in addition to being an excellent showman, he's an extremely intelligent guy. So it's thought provoking entertainment at worst, and I think that's better than most of the crap that passes by these days.

And, to his credit, attempts to dig up any dirt or proper criticism about him will turn up nothing.
Thus far, at least.

So, for now, enjoy.

My Favourite Republicans

2007-07-09T15:22:00.000+10:00

A favourite Republican? Surely not! Well, like it or not, they're not all neo-con fanatics. Whilst I disagree with most of their policies, there are a few I'd like to single out as being moderate and rational, to the extent that I have respect for them and note their positions to be rational, logical and consistent.

My favourite Republican runner would have to be Ron Paul.

Of course my own choice for the election would be Obama, and I doubt Paul will actually secure the nomination since he's so at odds with the Christian Right of the GOP, but this video is certainly worth watching, particularly from 5:20 onwards. He's a foreign policy realist, not an idealist, and so I think that qualifies him as conservative, and not a neo-conservative.

Others call Paul, like that other likeable Republican Clint Eastwood, a Libertarian; that might be right, too, but I'd have to hear more of his views about other social issues. He defends his position on abortion well enough. I don't agree with him about gun ownership, immigration and free-market health care either, but at least his positions are consistent with the GOP, and are defensible. On the Libertarian/Republican angle: it's said (though it seems hard to be sure of this) that Matt Stone, of South Park fame, is a registered Republican.

So yeah: Ron Paul, Clint Eastwood and Matt Stone. Exceptions that prove the rule, perhaps, but worth remembering.

Finally, note also, in the video, the Fox technique of interviewing and shoving words in peoples mouths, which is also employed by Rudy G- who himself first looked like he may have been a moderate, rationalist but has since proved to buck under the pressure of the Christian Right.

Fascist Joggers

2007-07-08T12:31:00.000+10:00

Nicholas Sarkozy enjoys jogging. So, perhaps jogging belongs to the ideology of the right, says Liberation, and Alain Finkelkraut. Of France, in case you weren't sure.

Interesting. I'm a walker myself, like Socrates and Rimbaud, and I'm not a conservative. So I'm safe from this charge.

But wait a second. I also enjoy sleeping, eating, and drinking vodka. I was also once heavily into Judo, and I learn Russian too. Does this make me a totalitarian of the Putin brand? And I have been known to enjoy the odd cigar at times. Am I therefore Churchillian in my thinking?

Another great walker was none other than Nietzsche. He even wrote that he'd sometimes walk for 8 hours in a single day.

Anyway, two posts which give a deeper analysis than I can be bothered to today, courtesy of a quick google search.

Taiwanese Death Metal Politics

2007-07-06T16:43:00.001+10:00

Chthonic, a Taiwanese death-metal band (I hate the genre as much as anyone, believe me) aren't rocking just for the normal reasons.

They're rocking for sex, drugs and Taiwan joining the United Nations.

As much as I hate the style of the music, it was interesting to hear the blend of that guitar wall and machine gun bass-drums mixed with an Er Hu. Very strange in fact.

Other than that, I don't think I'd pick them as Chinese (or Taiwanese, as they would no doubt insist upon).

Those interested can visit them on MySpace.

Ronnie Chan, Regina Ip on Bloomberg

2007-07-06T16:05:00.000+10:00

The original interview was taped in late June, apparently, but I just saw Bernie Lo's interview with property tycoon Ronnie Chan. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a linkable site, at least to those of us unsubscribed (such as myself). In any event, Chan made some interesting, some may say bold, points, suggesting that:

1. The opening of China is the biggest economic opportunity in the history of mankind.
2. The press in Hong Kong has more freedom under Beijing than it did under the British.
3. Hong Kong is moving too slowly compared with Singapore and Shanghai, and missing out on the prime opportunities.
4. Foreigners don't care about the economic future of Hong Kong.
5. Los Angeles, in the 1970's (whilst Chan was living there) had pollution problems that were comparable or worse than those China faces today.
6. Hong Kong already has universal suffrage.

He's extremely pro-business, yet one also detects a certain Anglophobia too, or at least bitterness. Perhaps rightly so, too, but I couldn't be sure on that.

I'm not sure on the facts about press-freedom, as I was under the impression that it was more heavily censored these days than before.

He also may be right in his optimism about the pollution problem. L.A has, according to him, come huge bounds since the 70's, and current technology should allow a faster transition.

I think, however, on the point of universal suffrage, he is completely mistaken. Bernie seemed to think as much, too. Chan was nonetheless a very persuasive, impressive man, and he knew how to debate in a civil manner.

Regina Ip, formerly security secretary of Tung Chee-Hwa's administration, made a small headline by saying Hong Kong doesn't need democracy for economic prosperity. I don't think that's at all controversial though, as it hasn't had democracy for all this time, and still had huge growth. China hasn't had democracy through its period of extraordinary growth either. Just a case of trying to find a headline I guess. But still, surely it's not simply for economic reasons that a democratic system is desirable.

Coming Soon...Need New Blog Name

2007-07-04T00:12:00.000+10:00

Just got an interesting email from Canberra, the upshot of which is that I'll be most likely starting a new blog for the next year.

It'll have a China focus, I'm pretty sure of that.

I'd love to hear some suggestions for the name. Sino-Something.

Anyway I'll provide more details as this develops.

For the moment, it's uni-break and I'm in back in far-north QLD, and life is sweet.

sif ban CS Ruddock u n00b

2007-06-26T18:26:00.000+10:00

Ruddock wants to ban films, books and computer games which encourage terrorism.

Does this mean Counter-Strike is under threat of a ban? Afterall, one side of the team are the terrorists, and the aim of the game is to set off bombs, keep hostages, and act in a generally terrorising manner whilst pwning n00bs.

It's also one of the most popular online games in the world.

Hopefully I've made my position on games clear from the previous article, but if not, I'll just quote Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Zelda and Mario (via Wikipedia):

""Video games bad for you? (laughs) That's what they said about rock and roll."

Surely Ruddock wouldn't be that much of a spoil-sport, and I do realise the bigger issue pertains to the banning of books which are a valuable academic resource, and don't even get me started on banning films.

But surely other people have had Counter-Strike pop into their heads when they heard about Ruddocks latest?

In any event, it must be said: zomfg Ruddock am ghey ffs.

Guerilla Gamers

2007-06-26T17:58:00.001+10:00

Well well well, computer games aren't the evil addiction that everyone has been making them out to be.

And by everyone, I mean family values conservatives like Jack Thompson and Andrew Bolt.

I note the disclaimer in that article about huge periods of gaming being bad for social interaction.

The same can be said about huge periods of reading, watching films, listening to music, studying and almost all the fun individual activities.

However, I'm still waiting for an article to shut up the people who claim that computer games are training a generation of crack-shot killers. This might help.

Still, let's just sit down and look at the argument on the table: that computer games train or cause people to be murderers.

If I'm to be persuaded into agreeing, I want statistics showing a disproportionate number of murderers being gamers.

Certainly in terms of notable violent crimes, the computer game connection has only been made a handful of times. Columbine, Virginia Tech, some guy in Germany, probably a few others that I'm missing. But given that the overall amount of violent crime is so high, then one possible conclusion is that everyone should play games, since so few violent crimes are committed by gamers.

It's fuzzy logic, but no fuzzier than that used by the anti-games crowd.

Ultimately, the conclusive or correlative studies haven't been done yet. I might attempt a collection of data myself some time in the future.

Finding Mars in North West China

2007-06-25T00:43:00.000+10:00

According to NASA, the deserts of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau are the coldest and driest in the world (in combination, not singularly).

Similar conditions perhaps to those on Mars, and apparently useful in microbiological investigations.

Adams on Turnbull

2007-06-24T00:04:00.000+10:00

Philip Adams, as entertaining and erudite as always, says what I've been thinking myself for a while.

Malcolm Turnbull is too smart not to get it on climate change. He's also my favourite Liberal, perhaps along with Joe Hockey. As entertaining as Costello is, if they really want a proper leader, they should go with Turnbull. But with slimeballs like Costello crawling around, I doubt it'll happen. Which is a shame.

A Trip to the Video Store

2007-06-23T21:02:00.000+10:00

Now that the holidays are on and my only other commitment is preparing for the Chinese Bridge competition (to be held in Jilin this year), in addition to lots of reading, I'll probably watch quite a few films.

I take absurd times to select videos these days, but I finally settled on

Yi yi by Edward Yang
The Missing Gun
8 1/2 Women by Peter Greenaway
A Zed and Two Naughts by Peter Greenaway

I can't remember who directed The Missing Gun at the moment. Anyway, I'll hopefully give a brief review of each within the week which I have rented them for.

Australians and the British

2007-06-22T12:28:00.000+10:00

Some good confirmation of our preconceptions over at The Australian today.

"The point of this story is...the Aussies were fantastically brave and the Brits were a bunch of cowards..." explains BBC journalist Frank Gardner.

Recent Reading

2007-06-22T10:59:00.001+10:00

Just finished Empire of the Sun by J.G Ballard. Brilliant. The second world war through the eyes of a young British boy, growing up around the Great Rivers of Asia. The tone and sense of war throughout this semi-autobiographical account is seperate from what we've heard from the European and African theatres of war. There is a paragraph very early on in the book which I feel sums up the message and theme of the novel best.

"Jim had no doubt which was real. The real war was everything he had seen for himself since the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the old battlegrounds at Hungjao and Lunghua where the bones of the unburied dead rose to the suface of the paddy fields each spring. Real war was the thousands of Chinese refugees dying of cholera in the sealed stockades of Pootung, and the bloody heads of communist soldiers mounted on pikes along the Bund. In a real war no one knew which side he was on, and there were no flags or commentators or winners. In a real war there were no enemies."

Now reading The Maths Gene by Keith Devlin, Difficulties with Girls by Kingsley Amis and a Concise History of China by J.A.G Roberts.

The Maths Gene is a fascinating theory about the interconnection of language and mathemathics. I don't want to do wrong to Devlin by attempting to sum it up before I understand or have read it all, but it's very entertaining to read, and he has a nice flowing, informative writing style.

Difficulties with Girls is an interesting read, partly because the edition I picked up second hand was missing the dust jacket, so I haven't actually read any blurb of it. It's a very fun way of reading a book, as it happens, and I recommend trying it at least once if you haven't. It's quite like flicking to a movie on television which you have no idea about; there is joy in the unexpected. Of course your chances of enjoyment are increased when you know the author is brilliant, like Amis.

The history of China by Roberts is unfortunately more styled as reference material, presented from the perspective of a bored lecturer in the subject. I wanted to get something opinionated and biased and entertaining; this is not it. It is, however, filled almost to the brim of it's 300 odd pages with facts, which are actually very interesting in spite of the dull writing style. Perhaps he has crammed too much in such a small space, with not enough space to ellaborate on the interesting subjects. Apparently Open Empire by Valerie Hansen is what I should be getting next.

Just bought From Rice to Riches by Jan Hutcheon, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci and The Gate of Heavenly Peace, both by Jonathan D. Spence.

Now that university is over for the time being I finally have the chance to get some proper reading done.

And finally, I'm looking into this technorati thing too.

Technorati Profile

Mike Patton is Right...

2007-06-17T20:46:00.000+10:00

Wolfmother, you suck.

Green Prosperity

2007-06-15T15:52:00.000+10:00

I figure I'd take this chance to draw attention to an interesting study, whilst at the same time plugging my university.

Firstly, take the time, if you will, to read an article by Bruce Sterling, this one.

And then read this, a brief outline of a study done by Associate Professor John Asafu-Adjaye.

Now, to be fair, I should really read Growth Fetish by Clive Hamilton before I can form a balanced opinion here.

But a possible conclusion to draw from the first two, though probably contrary to the third, is that a green future is not an ideal belonging only to those of the far reachest of green left. It would seem that theres is empirical evidence linking improved economic growth and the greening of an environment, which may be summed up by Asafu-Adjaye when he says

“In many cases people start to care about the environment because they can afford to,”

Note, though, the qualifer 'in many cases'. It certainly isn't a universal occurence, but it is a possibility. Another criticism is that the study only focused on carbon dioxide emissions as a measure of environmental quality.

But still.

Take for example Japan, a model nation in my opinion, whose environmental credentials come as a result of economic prosperity, smart governance and an investment in research and development. The last element, investment in R&D, is something that to my knowledge Australia is lagging behind in, where it could be leading. And so the commitment to more spending on education and development is one of Rudd's strongest points I feel, a point which I am in fervent agreement with him.

Some radical types seem to be anti-capitalist, or anti-corporate, to the extreme point where it becomes anti-wealth. Just as some ultra-conservative types seem to conflate any environmental protection with poverty and economic decline. I think this is a worrying trend. I consider myself of a moderate center-left, middle of the road persuasion, a bit like Paul Keating perhaps, or currently Barack Obama. Keating is/was certainly my favourite politician- watch his Lateline interview if you haven't! And as he points out in the interview, he initiated several drastic economic changes. Changes which are still feeding our prosperity today.

My point is, before there is anything to share around to those who need it, we first need to create that wealth. This is a point that only the most extreme seem unable to grasp, and something that most of us can agree on, surely. It's the management of that wealth, and how to generate it, that is a point worthy of debate.

But like I said, I should read Growth Fetish first.

'Perfect' Albums

2007-06-13T22:31:00.000+10:00

And now for some groundless conjecture.

I think everyone has an album, or albums, which are perfect to their ears. Probably more than just ears in fact; an album which just resonates in the most pitch perfect way within someone.
As Robert Fripp of King Crimson said, "Listen also with the ears of the heart". A nice way of putting it.

An interesting point is that a perfect album may not necessarily come from a favourite band. Because it may be that the rest of the albums from the 'perfect album band' aren't all that. Unlikely, but it does happen.

I think something that should qualify a perfect album is not just a single song on it, but the soundscape of all the songs. The album which once you put on, you have to listen to all the way through. An album like Pyschocandy by Jesus and the Mary Chain, for example, has some fantastic songs on it, and some that I just can't stand. For me at least, perfect albums are quite few and far between.

What comes to mind? Well.

Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Bought it in Japan, actually, and it rather suits the city scapes of Tokyo (as was used to great effect in Lost in Translation in fact)

The Power to Believe by King Crimson. Now I would actually say that King Crimson are my favourite band, so obviously perfect albums can come from favourite bands. These musicians are at such an incredible stage these days, I can't even begin to imagine what their next album will sound like.

Directors Cut by Fantomas. Mike Patton is possibly the single most impressive singer out there. And entertaining. He can perform the most amazing aura (or should that be oral? Which perspective am I trying to portray here?) acrobatics with that voice of his, and he's not ashamed to sound ridiculous in the name of a great song (some of Fantomas' tunes are...a bit off the wall, in the best way possible)

And most recently, Satan's Circus by Death in Vegas. Such sweet, sweet tones. Very cathartic.
The perfect thing for the end of the exam period.

A Different Sort of Agency

2007-06-12T01:23:00.000+10:00

I'm almost finished with the essay about theories of freewill, and arguing for a supercompatibilist position.

Everyone has an opinion on the question of freewill, whether they like it or not (ba-doom-tish, stay around for a drink, I'm here all week).

So what's yours?

A) Hard determinist "All your actions are determined in Minkowski space-time"

B) Soft determinist (aka compatibilist) "But Minkowski space-time and determinism is necessary for free will"

C) Libertarian "It's a chancy world and so we have freewill (somehow)"

D) Hard indeterminist (aka supercompatibilist) "It's an indeterministic world but we're totally controlled by it"

Beats Mythbusters

2007-06-08T02:26:00.000+10:00

Reading from Cosmic Conicidences, the Bespoke Universe chapter.

A particular reference is to the bubble theory of multiple universes, and research undertaken by Fahri and Guth, and their paper "An Obstacle to Creating a Universe in the Laboratory".

It's quite a task they set themselves, really.

Their research is partly summed up as:

"We already have the energy available to do half the trick, in the form of hydrogen bombs; the other half of the trick is to confine that energy within a very small volume (the size of an atom).."

And here I am worrying about my Russian exams for the semester.

Casting for Mao

2007-06-06T23:16:00.000+10:00

Laurie and I have agreed that one day, the definitive Mao film will have to be made.

Perhaps it will have to be a Taiwanese production. Perhaps they'll have to film it outside of China.
Perhaps it's too soon.

Indeed. But there is one question that towers above all the others.

Who to cast?

Well, comrades, we may have our leading man right here.

Funnily enough, our leading man is a woman.