A Busy Day: Odds and Sods

THIS IS WHY YESTERDAY WAS LAZY. It's all happening today. Too much to do!

AKH I'VE GOT TO GO OUT IN A SEC. Got an appointment with a woman down a disused mine or somewhere. She's sorting out my paperwork re the council..? Something. If I'd been "all vague" like that a few years ago I'd have just not wanted you to know. Now I just do not know. Haven't a clue about any of it. Fed up of being an adult baby (not in the fetish sense though ~ you ever seen that one? I saw it on telly. Grown woman putting a man in nappies (diapers). Most hilarious.) Now what was I saying?

O yeah I've got to run out. Gotta go chemist. Gotta see this lady down a disused dripping mine shaft to sort out my paperwork. I can't remember where I actually see her. Somewhere I have a map, but it's gone... I can get their phone number. From somewhere.

By the way I must complain about the voices in the German version of ghost. Now either I was hallucinating floridly through the auditory "faculty" or these really were the voices coming from my telly. They all sound like TV presenters! With that Standard German Accent, which is like standard English from Britain or the USA. Whichever you think of, it's pretty characterless. I expected Whoopi Goldberg at least to sound like a True Berliner, but no! Sounds like she's just knocked off a shift reading the 6 o'clock news on ARD. Plus they didn't sound anything like the original actors. Whatever dubbed film you watch the actors always sound the same.

At least British dubbing has some character. Greatest dubbed drama of all time is the NHK-produced Monkey（aka Monkey Magic), a Japanese rendition of Chinese traditional Buddhist folk tales. It was on childrens' TV in the 1970s. It was on nighttime telly, where I was again glued to it, in the late 90s or early 2000s. My favourite characters where Trippy-something or other [Tripitaka] (young woman playing a little boy) and Pigsy who's more interested in eating magic dumplings than actually saving the day...(!)



PIGSY'S 10,000 LADIES 1/4 you can view the rest on my random blog here.




LYNN: i made a real hash of my answer to you last night. I meant to say:
~ sorry I don't know about GPs
~ supervised is not a good way of getting control over your dose
~ you shouldn't feel ill mornings
~ then again they want you not to do gear; you crave it; they're giving an inflexible dose, so what are you going to do except use on top...?

hey that's better!



AGE OF LOVE: AGE OF LOVE (SVEN VATH MIX)
this is beautiful, that tune that goes "come on dance with me, move your body..."
better mix than that long jam & spoon one, or the official video

High in the Chinese Hills...

This is my favourite Chinese poem, "To Tan-Ch'iu" by Li Po aka Li Bai 李白 † 762. Translated by Arthur Whaley:


My friend is lodging high in the Eastern Range,

Dearly loving the beauty of valleys and hills.

At green Spring he lies in the empty woods,

And is still asleep when the sun shines on high.

A pine-tree wind dusts his sleeves and coat;

A pebbly stream cleans his heart and ears.

I envy you, who far from strife and talk

Are high-propped on a pillow of blue cloud.


A little film. Highly Chinese. Highly entertaining. Worth a look if you've 10 mins to spare. Chinese, English subtitles. Includes more of Li Bai's poetry:



Incidentally the "star of Venus" 白星, after which Li Bai was named, literally means "white star" so the poet's given name, Bai (Li being the surname) really means white or clear. A lot of his poems are "celestial" in theme.

Anyone who speaks fluent Mandarin might like to watch a 40-minute documentary on my random blog, here. I think it will be quite some time before I have any hope of following this link ;-)

Here's a Burmese Poem, The Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese Poem: Emerald Lake:
http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Poetry/Mrakan.htm

Burmese short story (also in English): http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Burmese/literature/Short_Stories/Ma_Le

IS ALL THIS BANGING ON ABOUT CHINESE annoying y'all?

I was desperate for a hobby, desperate for a heroin-replacement (granted: Chinese wouldn't make a good heroin-substitute for most people, but it does for me).
I was also desperate to educate myself. I wish to speak Chinese and Japanese fluently. There is nothing new about this goal, which has been with me since my teens. So I have decided (or fixated) on training myself up as a translator. To be a qualified translator, you need a postgraduate degree on top of a language BA. Most translators can offer at least two languages on top of their own, so there is no conflict between improving my German and French and studying Chinese. Especially as I could do that post-grad in Germany, which would effectively qualify me to translate Chinese into German as well as English. German is the number one business language of Europe (after English, of course) and Chinese, as we all know, is the most-spoken language anywhere on earth. So I doubt I'd be out of work...
I've been looking into BA courses in Chinese actually in China. Annual tuition fees start from about £1600 ($2500US) pa for four years.
One of the websites I consulted complained that many of these courses concentrate on reading and writing at the expense of listening and speaking. But who cares, when you can pop outside to an authentic Chinese noodle-stall and listen and speak to your heart's content?
One major major hurdle is that every course I have looked at imposes a meximum age limit of between 30 and 40 years ~ I am 39 next spring.
But where there's a will there's a way. I have a cunning plan up my sleeve that might hopefully put some oomph behind my appeal against this ridiculous regulation.
Oxford, Cambridge and London universities offer Chinese and Japanese studies, but the prospectuses state rather bafflingly that a prior knowledge of the language won't help your application that much. Plus they specify that their courses aren't suitable for native speakers. Looking closer I see why: these courses promise only to take you to about a year past A-level ~ which is where my German is now! Which all in all suggests that if I cannot do Chinese in China I may as well get on to a "Sinologie" course in Germany, killing two linguistic birds with one stone.
I desperately need a copy of Hammer's German Grammar (the standard advanced reference work). My written German is still pretty dire ~ despite my daily blogging attempts. I'm having less and less trouble reading zentraleuropäische books and websites as time goes by, which shows I'm at least making some progress. (And I do know the German for a corpse (eine Leiche), which means I can describe my face in the mirror at six in the morning...)
I do apologize once more if my whittering is boring. I have a slightly obsessive temperament, you might see... Which also might explain why I've found heroin so very hard to kick.
Right from the word go I had a sense that my drug addiction had turned my strengths against me ~ so now my strengths were weaknesses. When I love something I give it everything. I have loved "B" like nothing else. So I gave my entire life to heroin.
And that, my friends, has been the crux of my problem...

Illustrated: Chengdu (top), home of the University of Sichuan... famous for its Szechuan chicken (bottom)!

Chinese for today:
Zhe4 这=this shi4 是=to be ren4shi 认识=recognize
zhen1 真=really gao1xing4 高兴=happy bei1 杯=cup
jiu3 酒=alcohol ba 把=suggestion particle
ne 呢=question particle hui4 会=know how/can/will
ju2zi 桔子=orange 橘子 also = ju2zi, orange
ju2zi-zhi1 橘子汁 / 桔子汁 = orange juice
ma 吗 = question particle

The numbers refer to tones: 1 high level; 2 high rising; 3 mid-low-mid dipping 4 falling. No number=neutral tone (the de facto 5th tone).

Chinese names

The train to China!

THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT is planning a transcontinental high speed rail link that could take passengers from London to Beijing in as little as 48 hours!

Now I know where I wanna go by train next after Berlin!

When I'm in Beijing I'd love to take the Himalayan express to Lhasa in Tibet. At 15000 metres it's the highest railway in the world, with oxygen tanks on all trains in case passengers get altitude sickness!

As well as the Euro-route, the Chinese government are also planning a line via Korea to TOKYO.



The future's bright. The future's on rails!