Tempus Fugit

Despite having never taken a Latin course, it would seem that what I thought were common phrases aren't as easily recognised by the average university English student.

In the dining room of my current residence (wherein I live with three other people; all uni students, and all Canadian-born Caucasians), there's a whiteboard, where we write random notes to each other, or things of interest. The fall term having just started, we decided to clear the board of the old junk to leave room for new fun. I then decided to do something very cliché, and wrote: "[Tabula Rasa]," centered at the bottom of the board. The irony, of course, is that by writing "tabula rasa", the tabula is no longer rasa.

But apparently, the male roommate didn't make any comment, and the two female housemates thought it was a food term. It was there for a month, and nobody said anything. :( So what I hoped would be a nerdtastic joke turned into a genuine mystery for the audience.

Sometime later, in my Japanese 302 class, we were reading an article describing the perspective people have on time. (eg. "for some people, waking up 'early in the morning' means 04:23~05:27, whereas for others, it's 05:37~06:19.") We were discussing some of the terms used, and how we would translate them into English. Now, despite this being a 3rd-year language course, most of the students were in arts, and otherwise reasonably competent in English. One of the terms, which was glossed as "time flies", was under discussion, and the class explored some of the other possible phrasings available in English. Thinking I'd make a joke, I decided to suggest tempus fugit, but it seems the rest of the class didn't react at all. So not only did they not think it funny, they simply didn't get it at all. ...Or maybe I just didn't speak loudly enough.

Now, I know that Latin phrases are in sharp decline nowadays, but I thought that more of them were still floating around in the aether of modern times than our current undergraduate population would suggest.

Google Fails in Dream

I had such a stressful dream just now. But maybe it's a way of showing me that I shouldn't care about being right all the time -- it ultimately destroys friendships. Anyway.

I (recalling the real-life episode of Q.I.) recount to my sister how "vestibule" can mean an anteroom/entrance, or also the derriere region of a female elephant. My sister, however, is adamant that a vestibule does not mean anything room-like. So, naturally, we turn to the immediate source of the internet. Google search for {elephant vestibule} resulted in a lot of images of cartoons. I guess in my dream "elephant" was some sort of animator slang for "cartoon", and vestibule for a particular type of pose. Searching the OED was equally useless, it came up with specific definitions (that I can't recall now), but none of them related to the concept of "room". There was also some "secondary" plot in this dream involving having to literally fend off a woman (who thought she was in love with me), and some property damage to my most precious posessions -- books. The book that was damaged was a rare (and comprehensive) Chinese-English etymological dictionary, that instead of focusing on the formation of the written word, focused on the change of meanings. (Such a dictionary does not exist in real life, to my knowledge.)

But yah, that was my dream. It's about 5:30am right now, and I'm still in disbelief. But a quick google searched confirmed that what I dreamt wasn't true; the image results now show a series of images of chambers and entrances. Also, the first (and therefore oldest) definition of "vestibule" in the OED:

"In reference to ancient times: The enclosed or partially enclosed space in front of the main entrance of a Roman or Greek house or building; an entrance-court or fore-court."

To be vindicated against my own dreams. Is this a sneak-peak at being senile? The confusion alone will be enough to drive anybody mad..

EcoRIO

I like using majuscules, no matter what modern designers will tell me. Maybe it's a vestige of being raised under stricter teachers. Well, anyway...

I don't know if I've ever blogged about it here before, but I've definitely thought about it an awful lot -- about the environment. I downloaded saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and it only echoed a few things I already had in mind. General air quality of the world, and how the developed nations are kinda ruining it for the rest of the world. (Air being moved by wind, so pollutants produced in North America, Europe and Asia end up poisoning the air for the inhabitants of South and Central America, Africa, and any other place that's been formerly colonised.)

Against the context of saving the world from the ravages of man, shopping for a new pair of shoes suddenly feels quite empty. So anyway, a good and long-time friend of mine (recently graduated from my university!) with four other [engineering] buddies decided to enter Google's Android competition and won! But before I go into plugging my friend's product, I feel I should explain something. Despite the intelligence and stigma that usually accompanies an engineer graduate, my friend is also intelligent in other areas as well. He's rather artistic, and has an extraordinary ability to pick up languages [and drop them] in a remarkably quick amount of time. He's also socially competent, so no awkward silences with him. And now, back to our regular programming.

Their product is called EcoRIO (where the RIO stands for Reduce, Inspire, Offset). It basically tracks the user's carbon footprint, and suggests ways that it can be reduced. There's also a user-to-user section, where people can share their own eco-friendly strategies. Very utopian ideals. When I heard that my friend had won (an entire $275'000 USD!!! ... but shared among a team of five boys), I was immensely happy, both for the environment, and for my friend.

So, being curious about the competition, I decided to see what the other winners were. Remember, this is being compared against an application that'll help save the environment. So what I found were applications that would help you shop faster, find services more quickly, or spend more money on useless items. One even tracks the traffic of night clubs. Personally, I hate night clubs, if only because of the volume at which they blast the music. I guess I should integrate myself more with the deaf community. I like silence, and I also like practising sign language.

So in my mind, they're the only real winners. XD Check it out! The site isn't particularly geeky either.

http://www.ecorio.org/

Afternoon Dreams & Literature

Napping in the afternoon is actually quite stressful for me. I usually wake up during the warmest part of the day, when the sun is high above the sky. On Wednesday, I took such a nap, since fatigue had overwhelmed me. And during that time, I had quite a disturbing dream.

I was in what I assumed to be Korea, since I was on the run from ... something. The authorities, the mafia, or a gay perv, something. I'm running down the stairs in an area that's best described as resembling a certain city in FF12 (which is somewhat odd, since I haven't played that game recently). I find an old man to talk to, figuring that I'll be left alone if it looks like I know someone here. So, I chat and follow the old guy to his home. Apparently he's Korean, but knows a bit of Japanese and Mandarin. He prefers to speak in Mandarin because of painful memories associated with Japan, but I perfer to speak Japanese (but only minimally). We're sitting in the tea room of his home, when I hear someone come in from the outside. Apparently his daughter (or niece, granddaughter, etc) has come home, with a relatively large bag. And then, suddenly there are two voices that come from her direction. One is hers, but the other is "her younger brother". I go over to investigate, but see only her, and a medium-sized duffel bag. Apparently the "brother's" voice was coming from the bag. When I opened it to see, there was a spirit posessing a small figurine. The old man explains that everybody here [in Thailand] has a companion spirit-ancestor to help guide them in life. Being the devout Christian, the figurine/ghost starts reacting strangely. I then invoke the name of Jesus and command the demon to leave this house. My voice gets louder and louder, and the scene gets more and more violent. It was like a battle of territory; who had more influence on the immediate area -- my faith in Christ Jesus, or the devil? I think I successfully exorcised the demon before waking up.

Referrants? Many. From popular entertainment: FF12, Shaman King, Kekkaishi.
From real life: seeing a bag at night and thinking it was a ghost, socio-linguistic deduction (knowing that idol-worship/spirituality is high in Thailand; Japanese and Korean are linguistically similar; Mandarin is a popular choice for Korean nationals to learn as a second language).

The idea of demonic encounters frighten me. I remember hearing from a friend's mom that her faith in God was solidified only after rooming with a demonically posessed roommate. Personally, I'd rather not want to deal with it, and honestly, I don't feel I have that size of faith to exorcise demons. At least, not in the way that we're taught in sunday school. But maybe that's an excuse. Maybe I don't want to deal with demons because I know that it can only strengthen my faith in God. Or maybe, I'd be tempted to turn to the dark side...........

In other news, I bought most of my books early, so hopefully I'll be able to get a head start on some of my readings. Although I'm fairly confident that the two books I'm starting with won't be touched upon until near the end of the term, I'm interested in reading them because 1. they relate to Chinese-Canadians; and 2. both authors/books were recommended to me by my Postcolonial Literatures prof last term. Which is to say, Diamond Grill by Fred Wah, and Disappearing Moon Cafe by Sky Lee. Sky Lee's book has a family tree built in already, so I don't have to bother mapping out the relationships between characters. Yay!

Generally, I find that I need to map out these sorts of relationships. Especially for Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai. That book had 2 families that were related by a common great-grandfather, or something to that effect. It was a good book though. So, you kids out there with too much time, I highly recommend reading Cinnamon Gardens. It's a bit of a long read, but I managed to finish it in a day. Booyah! XD