Workaholic

  It's been far, far too long since last I posted. To update my dear and faithful readers (you really would have to be a faithful reader if you're still reading my blog after all these months/years of inconstant posting), I've been very, very busy! How?
  Thankfully quit my job at SSBC. It was a learning experience, a humbling experience and a traumatic experience, but one that I'm glad to have lived. The people were horrible, the managers incommunicable, the workplace unimaginable, the customers discourteous, and the location remote.
  So, now I'm working as a "lab assistant" for a digital photo imaging company. Completely digital, so very few chemicals involved. And I don't even get to touch the chemicals, so even fewer opportunities to poison my body with funny fumes. I've been doing stuff like cleaning up databases, merging and loading databases, designing and printing (highschool) student ID cards, and designing/printing pictorial directories(PD). PD's are what every principal of each school would normally have, in order to be able to have a face for every name. If, for example, parents call in complaining about a certain student, the principal will be able to look him or her up. And there are also barcoded pictorial directories. For the school libraries, and other cool stuff.
  Commute is a bit painful; I wake up at 6:00am, or 6:30am depending on how tired I am, barely manage to make it downtown to get into work (in Burlington) for 9:00am. Stay until 6:00pm, usually with only a 15 min. lunch break, and don't get home again until 8:00pm. Try to sleep before 11:00pm, so that leaves me with 3 hours of leisure - one of which is usually devoted to food. Small wonder I haven't had the time to read my peers' blogs, much less write my own!
  But I'm happy. My bosses are very nice and understanding and kind, and almost to a fault. My current wages with them is significantly higher than the minimum wage I was offered at that horrible, horrific fastfood restaurant.
  Not exactly an expert in my field, but I'm learning a LOT at the workplace, and it's really interesting stuff. One of my friends, in a one of his weaker moments of good taste, suggested that I might get bored of my job after a month or two. Why would he say such a thing? Can't he just be happy for me? But whatever, he wasn't the only one. Yes, I know Burlington is quite a distance away, but by public transportation, it can take that long to get from one place to another in Toronto alone! Of course, they're doing that for school, and school usually doesn't start at 9:00am every morning, so they kinda have it a bit easier than I, but hey, I'm enjoying it, if only for the moment, right?
  Other things aside from my current burning desire to do better and excel at my job? Well, I wish I had more time to practise piano. I also wish I had a piano upon which I could practise more properly. I can hear myself play everything soulessly, and it hurts. I need to learn to re-sensitize my fingers to that wonderful world of dynamics. Where ppp does mean something from fff, and staccato means something different from legato. Well, maybe in time...

Business

  What does it mean when everybody has trouble relating or reacting positively to your good news concerning your new or current job? Only that nobody cares.
  Well, no matter. I still have fun at my job, and I still have the society of my friends, so no harm done.

South St. Burger Co.

HORRIBLE time. Never want to work there again. And I wonder if the "necessity" of money outweighs the effects it has on my life.
I was on my feet since 3:30pm 'til 11:15pm. Only ONCE did I get a break and sit down, for about 10 minutes, during which, I had the opportunity to read the Operations Manual for SSBC. My feet hurt, my lower back aches, my hands seem to permanently smell like vegetable oil, and I'm now turned off food even more than before I worked there.
So that means that I'm inducing extra stress on my already-weak body, I'm bathing my hands in repugnant chemicals, and I'm making myself even more anorexic than I already am (comfortably underweight, according to my BMI).
As a short ingestion history surrounding my time at SSBC, (one day so far), 2 hours before I went in to work/train, I had only a fastfood combo (not very filling, nor very healthy). Worked for almost 8 hours with no breaks and no food. Came home, didn't feel like dinner. Now is lunchtime, I haven't had breakfast, and if I were any dumber, I wouldn't be having lunch either. The thought of food now churns my stomach because of the horrors I've had to bear witness to in the kitchen of SSBC.
Money isn't everything, and certainly not in this case. I'd gladly be broke than work there again. Even as a homeless youth, the smell I'd accrue would be more easily removed than that accurséd stench of vegetable oil.
Now I need another job.

Love

Just wanted to share a humerous poem by Ravi Zacharias, apparently written in his youth.

Slippery ice, very thin
pretty girl tumbles in.
Saw a boy, on the bank,
gave a shriek, then she sank.
Boy on hand, heard her shout,
Jumped right in, pulled her out.
Now she's his, very nice,
But she had to break the ice.

The other one can be found here.

Perfect

*deep breath*

'Was about to rant about a certain group of people, and their poor education, lack of articulation and scrambled lexicons. 'Wanted to complain about how communicating with them is more a labour than it is a pleasantry. 'Wanted to make a rebuttal to their attitudes that I, Captain Grammar, am being unnecessarily proper and strict with their [disastrously imperfect] English. And in fact, I actually did. I just deleted it immediately after. Why? 'Cause I already have enough enemies. And most of you already know my stance on languages anyways.

Instead, I'll talk about something more exciting: This Monday (August 22nd), Toyich International Projects will be hosting the Toronto Gala Monster Concert at Nathan Phillip Square. Why is it a Monster Concert? Because it'll be 20 pianists on 10 pianos!! It'll be a blast! I caught their Mel Lastman Square performance, and I was totally riveted with their arrangements of such orchestral suites as Mozart's Symphony 40 (1st Movement) and Rossini's various operas. So, for those of you who enjoy and celebrate the richness of the arts that our cultural centre, Toronto, has to offer, come on out on monday! It starts at 7:30pm! And I don't have a cellphone, so good luck finding me there! haha...

Filters

  It has often been postulated that the world would be a better place to live if people were honest and open with their thoughts and feelings. That social intercourse would be easier if we didn't have these "filters".
  What is considered a filter? A filter is a conscious effort to either enforce or discourage any number of things. A diction filter, for example, would restrict the language one uses. (e.g. filtering out swear words for the elderly, or big-words for children, etc.) There can be conversational filters, i.e. avoid talking about death or marriage to a recently widowed woman, or avoid vulgar jokes and crude humour with the "clean, christian crew". There can be gesticulatory filters, not slouching in public, or tapping one's foot on another's chair. Avoid eating foods with one's fingers, if possible. There can be clothing filters -- avoiding pink clothes, or refusing to wear baggy jeans, rejecting anything that isn't from the GAP. Many, many filters which seem to restrict our speech and manner when speaking with other people. Why can't we just be honest and do away with them?
  Isn't that a filter? Since when does a filter have to exclude things? As people who [hopefully] seek to progress and improve themselves in some way or fashion, tend to focus on one thing at a time. These are filters that are designed to exude some manner or quality of that person. There are therefore grammatical filters, in which students of a second language carefully form their sentences. There are dialectic filters, in which people consciously try to speak a certain way in order to fit in, or not stand out. There can be even diction filters, in which people try to display their pomp and pretension -- middle managers who try to use "professional" language in an effort to impress their colleagues. Students who seek to impress their peers by speaking only in slang. And yes, there can even be filters to use only "big words".
  Most of the time, these people are blissfully unaware of their efforts, and find it "natural" to use those words, or to wear those clothes, or to act in those ways. But here's a concept: manners, clothing and language itself isn't natural. They're all man-made. They are, therefore, all filters. There are those who have been with a filter for so long that they have refined it. E.g., people who are the pinnacle of good manners, or those who possess diction of lethal accuracy and precision. But those of opposite disposition, who suddenly seek to turn around their habits, while commendable, is somewhat laughable that they would claim that such a new habit is "natural".
  There are people who find the rules of etiquette to be formulaic and insincere, when they themselves use the same, formulaic responses. "Hey dawg," "haha... icic," "o i c k," "hey 'sup?" etc, etc. They may not carry the same flavour as "how do you do," or "it was a pleasure to have met you," but really, their usage is exactly the same. It is an autonomic, dry response just as sincere (or insincere) as those who would use the older phrases.
  To take it a step further, I am willing to go as far as to say that it is shere lunacy and idiocy to truely remove all filters from one's being. Speaking consistently in one language is a filter. Dressing clothes from the same era is a filter. Seeing people as humans is a filter. A lot of perspective is used through these filters. In other words, with assumptions. Yes, we shouldn't make certain assumptions, but it is quite impossible to live without any sort of assumption. (That you or I exist is a very nice assumption. That this world is real is another comforting assumption.) So those who think that people shouldn't use filters are like the epistemological skeptics (who were nicely disproved by St Thomas Aquinas).
In short, these people who are against filters in general are like "moral imperialists" who impose their morals of calling it wrong to imposing ones morals upon another.
  And no, I'm not saying that all filters are good and valid, but just that it's somewhat silly to think that we can exist without any filters at all.

Distinction and Discrimination

Living in a multicultural centre like Toronto makes it easy for one to regard the issue of racism as a thing of the past. Others, spurned by such prejudice often make the erroneous stance of equating lack of discrimination with lack of distinction. To not judge a book by its cover does not mean to pretend the cover doesn't exist.
As all of you (most of you should) know, I am a Canadian-Born Chinese (CBC). This means that I speak, read, write and understand English to an equal, if not better, proficiency as my Chinese. This also means that despite the North American clothing and decent education, I will still be regarded as an oriental male.
Now, having been obsessed with some sort of discrimination for the better part of my life, I've become familiar with certain concepts and motifs that crop up. I've noticed certain people (who shall remain nameless) who are hyper-sensitive to any hint of racism to the point of (what I personally find) idiocy. When asked to describe a person, they will give height, weight, body-type and shape, age and gender, but will consciously refuse to mention race. This is sheer idiocy, in my opinion, because if I want to know if I've met someone, I'm very likely to notice the approximate realm in the world whence this individual (or the individual's forefathers) came.
To consider the converse, let us assume that it is racist to identify the race of an individual. (So I am racist for describing someone as being Swahili, or Russian, or Malaysian, because it clearly does not serve any purpose in helping to recall the physical characteristics of the person.) And if one is to be non-discriminate of race, then one must also be non-discriminate of others -- of gender, because that would be sexist. So we cannot mention the sex of the individual in question. Because clearly, when we do, we've already imposed certain biases and stigmas that we associate between sex and personality. Therefore, we cannot also mention "trivial" things, such as height and weight, for who are we, that such superficial things would matter? We certainly aren't authoritative judges of beauty, certainly, and therefore cannot be as prejudiced as to describe someone as being "tall" or "fat". And we definitely cannot comment on the clothes one wears, because that is superficiality to the extreme. Fashion changes by the minute, and who are we to discriminate between those who can and cannot afford good taste in clothes?
What, then, do we have left to use to describe a person? Personality, clearly. Because it is obviously personality that one first notices when meeting a person. And obviously people would always give out personal details at the first meeting.
Hopefully you gleaned my point through that emotional, sarcastic rant.
It is NOT racist to identify one to be of a race (if only by appearance). I may be Canadian, but I certainly *look* Chinese (unless you're one of those asian-racists who insist that there is a *clear* distinction between the east-asian countries, in which case you might think I'm Japanese or Korean). Is it racist to have a culture? Is it racist to speak another language? Please...
Now, there are times when it *can* be racist to call someone by their race. Here are some examples of what I find to be acceptable and unacceptable statements involving a person's race:
1. a) Have you met Tom? He's my age, jewish, and about 5'8, with blue eyes, and short, gelled-back hair.
1. b) Bah, Tom's always trying to save money; he's Jewish!
2. a) I'm not sure if I've met Nancy. Is she the one from Ethiopia?
2. b) No, I'm not friends with Nancy; I don't have any Ethiopian friends.
It should be obvious which ones I find acceptable and which I don't but just in case, the first of the two sets (that is, the a) lines) are fine to use, in my opinion, whereas the b) lines are slightly dangerous ground.

Now, that was a very long introduction to the actual topic I wanted to write. Having established that racism is a bad thing, but that culture is a good thing, consider what happens when you mix the two. CBC literati sneeringly label Caucasians with East-Asian interests as sinophiles or japanophiles. Chinese parents of CBC's call their English-proficient children "bananas" (yellow on the outside; white on the inside).
Despite the alleged antiquity of racism, most of us still retain a curious sentiment concerning those of culture. It doesn't "seem right" when one of Chinese descent is instructing an English class in a Canadian highschool. It's "just wrong" when a Russian gentleman is tutoring CBC children the many characters in the Chinese written language. A Japanese TA's authority on the language is discredited because he is not Japanese. Caucasian students are discouraged from taking Korean because they "can never be Korean".
Where does this ideology come from? Why does it exist? Is there a genetic correlation between the knowledge of the (very arbitrary) rules of conduct for any given culture, or the linguistic knowledge of any given language? No. It just requires a degree of intelligence and some memory, two things that every race possess.
But sadly, these arguments only have a hope of being heard in such an open place as here in North America. The Japanese couldn't care less if you had an IQ of 300 and PhD in English; if you aren't a [natural] blonde-haired, blue-eyed caucasian female, odds are, they don't want you teaching English in their classrooms.
It's just lucky for most of us who are enamoured by other cultures (invariably the older, ancient version of that culture), that most older cultures share many common points. Parents of these older cultures are all considered "conservative" -- a term that seems to be internationally recognised. The jokes of saving money equally applies to the Indians as it does to the Chinese, as it does to the Jewish, as it does to the Russians. Why? Because we were there when war waged through the world. We weren't idling by in our infancy while the rest of the world slowly slaughtered itself, waiting for the most opportune moment to strike and become the world's leading economic power.
*cough*
Politics aside...
Yes, the world is slowly becoming more multicultural. Even if most of China isn't used to seeing a caucasian on the streets, the Chinese still recognise that English is pretty useful to use in the world outside their [very, very large] borders. Almost all countries of note have tours available in almost any language imaginable. And yet...
How would the people react if I, a Chinese, were to start dressing like an English gentleman? What if I somehow managed to marry the daughter of a Duke or Earl and became an English noble myself? Somehow, I doubt the British public would be so forgiving. It's all very well for me to know the history, culture and language of England better than most of the English would, but yet it would be unacceptable for me to actually live the part. For whether I have a British citizenship, I still wouldn't be English.
It's reassuring to see how far we've come in the past century. Here is a poem written by Thomas Burke in around 1920, called An English Gentleman:

I determined yesterday to become English gentleman;
And I have this morning bought a bowler hat.
I have bought brown boots and a suit of rare blue serge,
Which the affable one who supplied me with it
Spoke of as Natty, and added his assurance
That I would look Quite the Gentleman.
I have bought white collars and many-coloured ties,
And a walking-stick and a blue-spotted shirt.

Apparelled thus, I strolled this evening down Pennyfields,
And the old men came out with expressions of no-kindness.
They made ugly mouths,
And passed words one to the other of a derisive nature.

But I am young Quong Lee,
Who write verse in the English tongue,
And am quite English gentleman.
And English gentleman
Not suffer himself to be disturbed by hooting of owls.

Hacker

I'm so proud of myself; I made my first successful Firefox search engine! Had to look at some source code of some other search engines (like the default google one), but all in all, I did it ... my way~♪

So now I can look things up in a japanese dictionary. yey. If I ever find a decent online Chinese dictionary, I'll be sure to add it. :P

Komm, Süsser Tod

I know, I know I've let you down
I've been a fool to myself
I thought that I could
live for no one else
But now, through all the hurt and pain
Its time for me to respect
the ones you love
mean more than anything
So with sadness in my heart
'feel the best thing I could do
is end it all and leave forever
whats done is done, it feels so bad
what once was happy now is sad
I'll never love again
my world is ending

I wish that I could turn back time
'cause now the guilt is all mine
can't live without the trust from the ones you love
I know we can't forget the past
you can't forget love and pride
because of that it's killing me inside

It all returns to nothing, it all comes
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down
It all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down

In my heart of hearts,
I know that I called never love again
I've lost everything, everything
that matters to me,
matters in this world

I wish that I could turn back time
'cause now all the guilt is mine
can't live without
the trust from those you love
I know we can't forget the past
you can't forget love and pride
because of that, it's killing me inside

It all returns to nothing, it just keeps
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down
it all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down
It all returns to nothing, it just keeps
tumbling down, tumbling down,
tumbling down
it all returns to nothing, I just keep
letting me down, letting me down,
letting me down

Mine English Empery

For those of you who know me, as some of you are already woefully ruing, I am a sesquipedalian bibliophile. Moreover, I am a traditionalist, an imperialist and a very shrewd grammarian. I am also seeking to become a discerning dialectician, although with the advent of globalisation, I fear that a lot (if not most) of the richness of any language will be lost with the death of its dialectic diversity.
And as some of you may be keen to guess, I was not always like this. There was a time when I (or rather, the physical origins of my body) was a single cell in the womb of my mother, mindlessly multiplying into the multi-cellular organism I am today.
But as for my linguistic history (as I'm sure you're all dying to know), I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, a predominantly English-speaking nation. However, being born to parents of foreign birth, the English tongue was not introduced to my linguistic faculties until I was nigh six years of age. So, with a willful and determined mind (something I've seem to have lost since), I sought to learn the rudiments of English speech and spelling. I still remember to this day, the first book I was able to read on my own, as well as the first word with which I had trouble pronouncing. The book was called Hello House, and it was about this rabbit who would always manage to thwart his predator wolf. The word I had trouble reading was "house". I would first try to read it was "hoe-wu-ss". Come to think of it, I should have been raised in German; at least it's phonetic. ("Bearbeit", for example, is pronounced be-ar-bite.)
Now I was the proud owner of a set of phonetic rules of the English language, so I set out to devour as much as I could with these new tools. I read, and I read and I read. I read so much, in fact, at such a speed, that when I was placed in the "advanced reading circle", my peers there in the second grade were in disbelief that I finished reading about twice or even thrice as fast as they did.
And I wasn't a picky reader either back then. As a child with virtually no power or lnfluence, it was natural for those of my demographic (at the time) to be enticed by the concept of a skill and science that would enable the user power and persuasion. And what was that? Magic. Or more generally, fantasy.
Not to say that I dislike fantasy now, but just simply that I had no taste for literature when I was a child. Novels? They were long, but boring and dry. Who would want to read Pride and Prejudice? There were no dragons in it!
And as time waned by, after my succession of old and soon-to-be retiring teachers (with all their strict and stern rules of grammar and writing), I naturally developed a strong sense of language, that has been growing ever since (especially now with my introductory education into linguistics).
Now, by no means do I claim to be an expert on language. Granted, my interests in grammar and language are not shared by many of my age (or even by those one or two generations above me), and so by virtue of being interested in something most aren't, I automatically seem to become a leading authority on the subject. But, for example, I still don't know what a "dangling modifier" is, even though I've heard that grammatical term many times before. What are the six cases for all nouns? Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, ablative and vocative. But what do they all mean? I've no idea what the ablative is, though after making this post, I'm of a mind to find out.
So yes, my knowledge of the English language (or of any language) is terribly incomplete, and I fear will always be so, if only because of a certain curséd fact that languages live, and are always changing.
But, I do intend to (eventually) earn my PhD in linguistics, after which I hope to teach class in university and have my nerves wracked after every class from the new generation of youth with their staggeringly incomplete and imperfect grammar.
So there you have it, the abbreviated, linguistic life and times of Joseph Tam.
Oh, and I should add that though my language has not always been as it is, I was always raised in that standard.
And although I do enjoy editing your essays (in which I hope I'm helping a friend), please have the decency to do three things (these courtesies which should be extended to any peer editor):

1. Attach a copy of the assignment so that the editor (i.e. I) have a better idea what the essay is supposed to address.
2. Allow yourself the time to go through your finished essay once before tossing it in my direction, expecting me to up its grade by 20%. While I do find the natural and subconcious errors of language intriguing, I would rather analyse those for my thesis than having to cut through them in a vain attempt to glean what you mean to say.
3. Give me at least two days to edit your essay. Especially if you know your English to be particularly weak (e.g. non-native speaker, or not very well-read, etc), certain awkward phrasing that you invent will take me a little more time than 20 minutes to phrase and re-phrase into a better, natural sentence.

So that's my English rant for the day. Don't flame me for any small error I make; I myself acknowledge that we're all human, and that we're all prone to error. I'm just a stickler for certain things because I find them to be very basic and rudinmentary. If, for example, in a friendly, casual conversation, someone says "protractor" when they mean "compass", I'll let it slide. But other howling errors (such as the redundancy contained in "from whence did you come") I will be more quick to correct.

What was the point of this post? I don't remember any more. That just goes to show what a good writer I am. Ha-ha.

Totally irrelevant, but here's a quote I found immensely hilarious:
"You don't die of heart-break; you only wish you did."