世界末日

. . .Wow. Well, I had on amazing weekend. Centre Island on Saturday, and Church, softball and karaoke on Sunday. And lotsa phone chitchat on Friday night. ^__^ Thank you Alison, Esmond, Lucy, Shelly, Greg, Karen, Jessica, and my dear sister, Ava, for a wonderful weekend. Thanks to your friendship and continued support, this weekend has been the best times I've ever had all school-year! But more importantly, I've regained a bit of myself back from the terrible clutches of Waterloo! I think I've revived some of the more chaotic elements in my personality. Which is to say, you guys have helped me to undo most of the damage that Waterloo has done to me over the past 3 terms. (wow.. this it turning out to be quite the yearbook-blurb-type thing.)
. . .Meanwhile, a strange storm is brewing. Apparently, a certain friend is mad at me because of a rather revealing message I left in said friend's yearbook. (Which is to say, 'everybody' was able to deduce who friend likes.) I fear for my life. But more importantly, I fear for the situation... my friend's crush will either get turned away from this newfound information (thus, it'll be my fault that the relationship was never nascent), or friend's crush will like friend back, (which'll become horribly public, again being my fault). So, while not too many people read my blog, I'd still like to post a public apology to my friend, to whom I never intended to cause any harm, stress, misery and/or heartache. I'm also sorry that I'm not in Toronto to attempt to mend the matter. :(
. . .But, my depression over the situation will hardly make anything better. So, being a selfish creature, I'll refuse to let this affect me, and plunge into my translation work, which'll get my mind off things and allow me to be frightfully productive.

未來如何

. . .Finally, I get to play! But, it's kinda late now. And I don't have the money or the resources to go out and purchase novels. :(
So I'm stuck here writing my blog (which I personally find to be quite a vulgar and ugly word) and later on, quite possibly working in my sketchbook. Haven't really used my artistic side for quite a while. And I'm also becoming frightfully introverted! Ahh!
. . .Today, like the past 5 days, have been quite uneventful, albeit productive. But I'm not sure if I'm eating enough; I just figure I'm still alive, and that's good enough. Especially since I don't have the time to work out, my intake is delightfully less than, say, a certain male model friend of mine. :P
. . .On a lighter note, it's good to know that my imagination hasn't died... just my wit and my use of irony, understatements, litotes and sarcasm. *sigh* I swear, it's Waterloo... My roommates being prime examples. Half of what I say they either don't understand or misunderstand. An easy example was this one time, when I said, "It's tasteless to wear one's emotions naked on one's face," to which he said, "wear... ... ... emotions... ... ?" Emaciated Engineer... *cough* anyways... Actually, I think I've solved my own little riddle. Because I'm not interacting with enough people who care for language and/or enjoy the humour that English has to offer, I think I've automatically dumbed down my language in order to be vaguely understood by the average computer/engineer/mathie. Of course, this only leaves professors, but I can't very well argue with them. So no fun for me here in Waterloo. :(
. . .What I need to do is get my hands on some Shakespeare. My hope is that by reading him, my use of language will automatically elevate itself to a more idiomatic/figurative form.
. . .Suddenly, I'm reminded of several things that I must do tomorrow. I gotta go to Algebra class tomorrow, and proctor for the Japanese midterm, and look into getting Traditional Chinese taught here in Waterloo... It'd be really cool if my mother taught it; She'd finally get the recognition she deserves for her more-than-abundant knowledge of the Chinese language and literature.
. . .And speaking of Chinese, I'm wondering what my odds are right now for studying/living in Taiwan or HK for 8 months for the new school year. Or if I stay in Toronto, would it be possible to take a German course there so that I'm still eligible for the exchange to Germany in autumn 2004. Of course, that also somewhat depends on when the Matthews plan on having their sabbatical. (August or January? January=8-month exchange for me. :D)
. . .And why, in God's name, do I want to do all this international travelling, you ask? Simple. In order to pursue my masters/PhD in linguistics, I have to be certifiably fluent in two languages other than my native tongue (which, in my case, is English). And why stop at two? The theory is, I can pick up German and a touch of French in Germany, since it's oh, so close to France... And if I get to go to Taiwan, I could pick up Japanese in addition to Mandarin because today's Taiwanese youth have this strange fascination with the Japanese. (Must be the stationary.)
. . .Yah, it's a long shot. But at the very least, I'd hope to learn German and Mandarin. Japanese, Cantonese and French would be bonuses. And if I mastered all of those, I'd have 6 languages under my belt. Uwahaha...
. . .Well anyways, I wanna go draw now...

孤人寡心

. . .It's been a lonely weekend, and it's only getting better. I think that I'm becoming socially estranged; I fear I'm forgetting how to socialize. So this is what isolation does to a person. Small wonder I want to get out of here (Waterloo). I can't wait 'til I'm back in the comforts of Toronto... ...hopefully to be reunited with my cat. I hope that evil woman doesn't take too much life out of him; he's still got a good decade in him!
. . .Meanwhile, not working hard at all at my translation. I have been the last two or three days, but right now... Right. Back to work...

浮生若夢

. . .AHHH!!!!! I just woke up; missed yet another Algebra lecture. Thank god I have the advanced section's textbook. Though I'm a little disturbed; I usually wake up at around 8:00am or so. Never before have I ever slept in 'til noon. And this weekend has been really boring. I did almost nothing except translation with a bit of algebra on the side. Well, at least I'm making up for the lectures I've missed. On a lighter note, a good friend of mine is supposed to come visit me sometime this week. Yay!!
. . .Meanwhile, I shouldn't spend too much time on blog; gotta get my five hours in today for translation... *groans*

天色成晴

Wow... So tired today. I've worked off a commendable amount of hours, but still not enough. The weather's really nice outside, though. It's all sunny and green, and the temperature isn't too hot nor too cold. And since my window is facing South, I don't get any direct sunlight, but plenty of breeze. ~^_^~
It's pure bliss.
At least, it would be if I didn't have to work 32 hours a week on translation alone...
Ah well. At least my Chinese is improving. At least, I'd like to think it is. But unfortunately, since I'm learning it so late in life, I'll end up forgetting it when I get older. Which is to say, English will always be there in my brain. Well, anyways, I should get back to translation.

標準語言

. . .After perusing through several different blogs (as a form of a sanity break from the evil that is translation between mutually exclusive languages), I've decided to create a little blurb on my thoughts. While I won't critique content -- what people want to say is their choice entirely -- I feel that for a most effective communication, there must be some sort of standard to alleviate some of the ambiguity and confusion contained in any given text. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a set of guidelines which were rigid enough to be followed, yet flexible enough to allow for personal style?
....Oh wait! It's called spelling and grammar!
[and yes, I realize I'm somewhat mirroring a friend's rant in another blog]
. . .While it is true that my background was somewhat more traditional than the average youth, I'm *positive* that basic punctuation and proper spelling were taught in public school. And while I don't expect everybody to know the difference between present, present progressive, past, past progressive, present perfect, present perfect progressive, past perfect and past perfect progressive, it would be nice to see some real punctuation instead of the abused ellipses(...) to replace the period, coma, colon and semi-colon. Conventionally (for me, anyways), I use the ellipsis to indicate a trailing after a word, or to denote the omission of one or more words. For example, "hi." is a bland, flat statement. "Hi..." however, is trailing; it hints at some sort of reservation, apprehension or hesitation.
. . .If a sentence ends with a quotation, does the period reside inside or outside of the quotation? Well, it depends. If the entire sentence is a quote, the ending punctuation ought to be inside the quotes. If, however, the quotation is a small part of the sentence, then the ending punctuation ought to be at the end. For example, consider the following:
"He'll rue the day he crossed paths with me."
and
"The above sentence states that 'he'll rue the day he crossed paths with me'."
See? Easy.
. . .On the topic of grammar, I could practically write a book, so I'll go on to spelling. I think it's wonderful for people to devise a form of short-hand writing style for a more effecient tool for taking notes or sending telegrams, since they're awfully expensive. But if something is to be published, there ought to be a level of professionalism to be considered; one would typically want the reader to easily understand what one wants to say. And as for written correspondence, telegrams are out of date; e-mails don't exactly charge $0.08 per character. Replacing "the" with "d", "my" with "mah", and all those other wonderful abbreviations become confusing, especially when they're not capitalized to indicate a replacement of something.
. . .Language is always changing, and therefore, so is spelling. But there is a reason why the Chin standardized the Chinese written language; too many variations are fun, but both cumbersome and ineffecient. One should always be aware of what one is writing. Too many are unaware of the difference between "their", "there" and "they're", or, their personal distinction is a skewed one. Remember, "their" is always a possessive pronoun, it doesn't matter WHAT it's refering to. And speaking of "it's", the difference between "its" and "it's". Or the difference between "than" and "then". While reading a fanfic, I encountered a grievious error: "eliminate" and "illuminate". Sure, they sound the same *smirks*, but one means 'to erase out of existence' while the other means 'to bring light' or 'to shine'.
. . .Or better yet are what can only be termed 'American' -- where they start to spell out the euphemisms for coarse language. For example, the word which I shall only imply here as 'f*ck' is also known as the "F-word". But this word is horribly versatile, and even has its own set of declension and conjugation. So, the adjective, "f*cken" is colloquially often said as "F-en". But now, apparently, they also spell it as "effen", which I initially mistook as an abbreviation of "effeminate". (Optimistic me, yes, I know.) Apparently, they also enjoy whole consonant-shifts, replacing every 'v' with 'b' so instead of 'every' and 'even' it's 'ebry' and 'eben'. I first thought 'eben' was somebody's name.
. . .And as I brushed on before with 'effen' above, there's also a little something to be said for diction. I'm willing to bet (without a penny in my pocket) that people who write 'leik dis' won't know the following words:
Consanguinity
Indignation
Fustigation
Cordial
Antepenultimate
At least, titles and names are helping to bring back some of the other words like 'perdition' (which means 'eternal damnation') from the movie title "Road to Perdition", and 'evanescence' (which means 'fading away quickly') from the quickly growing popular pop-group from the States. Yay!
. . .English is a beautiful language, if used properly. But I feel that because too many people don't give it enough credit, and because of the unstoppable force of today's youth and their insistence in 'non-conformation', most people won't be able to ever realize the full potential that the English language has to offer.
. . .Of course, it doesn't come close to comparing to Chinese... but that's a rant for another day... :P

數語主義

While I would love to write in Chinese or Japanese (it's prettier.. :P), I'm afraid I think best in English, where I'm not confounded in a constant search for appropriate vocabulary... ... in theory, my Chinese should be improving because of my little translation project, but I find it's largely recognition; I'm still not able to synthesize the actual grammar and/or mirror the vocabulary contained in the novel I'm translating.
*sigh*
Meanwhile, I decided to spruce up the place a bit by having the date encoded in Japanese, just for the pure fun of it. I don't know any java, so editing the actual layout of this place is going to be a bit of a challenge for me... if I'm lucky, I'll soon be able to tinker with the colour schemes...
Anyways, just making a second post for the fun of it... Shall write soon.
Tschüss~

最初之記

I've finally succumbed to the peer pressure of acquiring a blog account, to which end I have begun to make thumbnails for a more personalized design. With any luck, I'll become more comfortable using this thing, for the reading entertainment of my peers.