Today is a somewhat exciting day, as I am going to be moving into a new apartment. It will be cheaper and the people who I will be living with seem to be more friendly as well. I've spent the past few hours packing my possessions into bags, and there is nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that I have so little in the world that I can just set it on my back and go (so little here at least, I have a few more duffel bags full of stuff stored away in Minnesota). I still have a few hours before I am due to meet up with my new flatmates at the new apartment, but I am full of energy and excitement. I really enjoy this feeling. It is not quite the same as being on the road, but it is a transition, and I do enjoy these little changes through space in a similar manner to big trips.
Since returning to Albacete in early January I have been busy. I have taken on an additional class at Monkey Business, so that now in addition to working in the mornings at the high school, (from which I get home anywhere between 1:30 and 3:00, depending on the day) I am working four hours (from 4:00pm to 8:00pm) on Mondays and Wednesdays and I am working three hours (4:00pm-6:00pm, and then 8:30-9:30). It is pretty exhausting, especially since I go to a mediocre-quality (but free!) Spanish class Monday and Wednesday from 8:00pm until about 9:45. This makes Mondays and Wednesdays quite full, and makes me which that there wasn't such a gap between the classes I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am earning the money I need, though, which is good: I don't want to be in debt forever. If I keep up this rate for a few months I should make a good dent in my debt, and potentially have a little bit stored away for the summer. All in all, most of my life has consisted of working during the week, and doing a lot of reading online, running, and solo language practice during the weekends. I have been using italki quite a bit to practice my writing and to ask language based questions (mostly in Chinese, but some in Spanish). It is a pattern that works. Although I would certainly enjoy working fewer hours and socializing for one or two hours more each week, I know that I need to take advantage of being able to earn money while I can, since there may be times (potentially this summer/autumn) when I will not be able to earn as much as easily, so I want to build up a buffer for that possibility.
"Why not go out on the weekends?," one might ask. A mixture of reasons: the standard "I don't know anybody here" excuse is my main one, but my desire to save money affects that decision as well. My recent preference for going to sleep at or before midnight makes it kind of pointless to go out, since parties get going late here. My attempts to hang out with co-workers have mostly ended in my discovery that they go to other cities for the weekends to spend time with friends/family there, and finally the feeling that "I am gonna be leaving in a few months so why bother" is also present. Fortunately, although I enjoy socializing, I am not the kind of person who is made miserable by spending time alone. Sometimes I feel neutral about it, and sometimes I am quite excited to get home and practice writing, to study, or to watch a particular movie. This is something that I think my co-workers don't really understand. They were asking me the other day why I don't have a Spanish girlfriend yet (the first level answer being: "because I am not making that a priority", which by necessity leads to the second level answer of "because I don't want one"), and when I explained that I didn't have the time (read: I wasn't making the time) they didn't understand. They all get off work at 2:00pm, with the rest of the day free, where as I feel as though I only have my weekends free (I do have a few hours on Tuesday and Thursday between classes, but I don't feel that I can do much in that time since it is so limited). With this schedule going on, life seems pretty similar from day to day, form week to week. I can only think of one event/musing that really does seem blog-worthy.
This past Friday, a co-worker of mine had a birthday party. The first part of the party was a lot of fun: just socializing in Spanish, munching on snacks, making myself understood suprisingly well, and understanding a surprising amount of what was being said around me as well. I really enjoyed that, since I don't often get to socialize with people (aside from the brief socializing that happens at work). The food was tasty and the conversation mostly held my attention and kept me focused. When I learned that we were going to play Trivial Pursuit after dinner I was super excited. From what I recall, I excel at games like this. I have such a random and wide knowledge of so many different subjects (although I only have a depth of knowledge in a few) that I have a good record of succeeding at random quiz-like competitions. I always wanted to do more Pub quizzes in Beijing, where they abound. The language and cultural differences made it so challenging as to be impossible for me, though. I didn't realize how hard it would be! There were only about three or four of the questions that I understood throughout the whole game without having someone repeat it a few times or being able to read it for myself. And even for the few time in which I understood the question, the subject of the information was often completely foreign to me. Things like What famous match was the first played between these two teams in 1929?, or Who was José Luís Aztiazarán the president of when he left the Royal Society? For me, lacking the cultural knowledge that is assumable widespread here due to being raised elsewhere, there was only a single question which I both understood (after having it explained to me) and knew the answer to: What is the only animal in which the male gives birth? Seahorse is the answer according to Trivial Pursuit, but I remembered from elementary school that the female actually gives birth and the male stores the young in a pouch, making the Trivial Pursuit answer wrong, which thereby makes my "knowing" of that answer questionable. The whole experience was variously boring and frustrating, but it served as a great lesson in humility: I often consider myself such a global and multi-cultural person, and yet what I really know is so incredibly little.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Capoeira in Albacete, and Ego in Martial Arts
I've wanted to do it ever since I first learned about it. When Sarah introduced it to me personally during my sophomore year at Kalamazoo, I found it to be so very different, and so very interesting. A community of people that practices capoeira together has such a different feel than a community that practices karate together. Not only does the flipping and the acrobatic aspect appeal to me, but the ideas and the philosophy of it appeals to me as well (at least from what I understand of it). Whereas one thing that turned me off about judo and karate what how personal and competitive people got, getting egos involved in training, what appeals to me the most about capoeira is the element of play. When judo-ka say that they are going to play judo, what they really mean is that they are going to fight, compete, or train for fighting. When capoeiras say that they are going to play, I get the idea that it is more playful. It feels more like a game. Much like other games, there can certainly be winners and losers, but when people keep a smile on their face they (amazingly enough, stay happier). I don't play with a specific goal in mind to score points, to damage an opponent, or to win. I want to play with just one goal: to enjoy the game. If this involves successfully moving my body in a particular way, so be it. If this involves myself and whoever is playing with me exchanging movements back and forth in a friendly and a good-natured challenge, all the better. I don't have a problem with Kudo or Karate or similar martial arts. In fact, I have enjoyed them very much in the past. But so often I have seen people training without seeming to enjoy it very much. I guess if they view their personal worth as directly related to how well they do in a martial arts class or competition, it is not such a fun a laughter-inducing matter. In this situation, if one performs poorly he or she is less of a person. Nonsense, I say!
I can perform a complex series of motions with juggling balls in my hands, or I can horribly fail at an attempt to do a backflip; I can read a script that many peers consider to be impossible nonsense, or I can sing so poorly that people request I never attempt it again: none of these affect my view of my own worth as a person. Maybe is it because I have such a diversified skill set that I have such an easy time of considering myself to be able to let go of ego. After all, I could justify it to myself as “it doesn't matter if I am not skilled at X, because there are a dozen other things that I know I am great at.” That just seems like super-confidence, though. I wonder if my desire to more zen-like has just allowed me to convince myself that my super-confidence in a lack of ego? My transferable physical skills certainly wouldn't hinder that theory. After all, it is easy to not have my self-perception damages when I perform far better than any other beginner on my first class of capoeira, similar to my experiences with kung fu, judo, and jeet kune do.
Regardless of the philosophy behind capoeira (I assume that I am idealizing it quite a bit) and regardless of how nice it is to engage people with a physical sport without feelings of harsh competition, I enjoy the physical aspect of it too. Although I've starting to go running and to do a little bit of exercise in the mornings before going to work, it has been a long time since I have been a part of a group or a class like this. Sure, I did circus at Kalamazoo College, but that wasn't much of a physical challenge. I took popping, locking, and breakdance classes last time I was in Beijing, but a dance class has a very different feel than a martial arts class. I remember trying our a couple martial arts classes when I studies in Beijing back in '08, but they didn't last. I have to go all the way back to the summer of '08 and the preceding spring in order to find the last time I was part of a little martial arts community, when I was going to the local YMCA to do Jeet Kun Do that summer. It feels good to use my body in these ways again. Not only are there the physical and community aspects of it, it is also a great way to keep Brazil in my mind so I don't forget about my future goals!
Monday, January 9, 2012
High speed Chinese
One of the blogs that I follow is that of Benny The Irish Polyglot, who does missions of learning various languages in three months. In fact, it was partially reading about Benny's experiences that made me decide there is no reason that I should stop at two or three languages. I am dubious of his latest mission, though.
Previously Benny has learned languages with an Latin based alphabet (various romance and Germanic languages, mostly), but now Benny has decided to take on Mandarin Chinese in Taipei. (I'll just refer to it as Chinese from now on.) Although I have a great respect for Benny, I think that he won't make it. The methods and techniques that he uses accelerate the pace of learning incredibly: he learns smarter, and he makes good use of his time. However, I think that the characters of Chinese are going to hold him back. I don't doubt that he will be able to get a decent conversation after three months of intensive work. Times have changed a lot since David Moser wrote Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, and now the dominance of pinyin over other romanization systems and the proliferation of excellent electronic dictionaries nullify a few of his points, but Moser's points about the writing system and the lack of cognates with European languages still hold true. (in fact, if you aren't very familiar with the Chinese language just skip my next two paragraphs and read Moser's article instead: it lays everything out very succinctly)
I agree generally with what is written on Hacking Chinese about Benny's Mandarin mission, that Benny won't succeed, but I have different reasons. Hacking Chinese lists the tones of Chinese and the lack of shared linguistic roots between Chinese and any European language as a point of difficulty, and I would claim that the tones aren't that hard, and the incredibly simple grammar makes up for the lack of shared vocabulary. I bet that I can describe a university in half a dozen European languages fairly easily (unibertsitateko, universitet, universitet, l'université, Universität, and università in Basque, Bulgarian, Danish, French, German and Italian, according to Google Translator), where as the Chinese term cannot be mentally linked to a sound from any previously known language (assuming the learner has experience with languages which are not related to Chinese, such as is Benny's case). The Chinese terms (Dàxué or Xuéyuàn, depending on context and meaning) have no linguistic relation whatsoever to any previously known terms. In short, learning a language with shared heritage allows one to add on new vocabulary to pre-existing mental knowledge, but learning a language with no (or little, if you count proper names) shared vocabulary forces one to build from the ground up.
However, Chinese is very grammatically simple (no conjugations, no declensions, no grammatical gender), so that once one learns to say I eat a sandwich in Chinese, it is very simple to say will you eat a sandwich?, they ate sandwiches last week, or you (plural) probably didn't make any sandwiches, did you (plural)? Conversely, in any Romance, Slavic or German language saying these phrases would require learning several different morphological rules, so that one could change form of the words to express the desired meaning correctly. To stop being hypothetical and to get a bit more concrete, I will take Spanish as an example: to describe eating in Spanish, one needs to be able to use half a dozen different forms of the verb comer, plus another half a dozen to describe it in the future, another 16 or so forms to describe it in the past, plus another headache full of forms to describe hypothetical or unknown situations. As a regular verb, this is not an insurmountable challenge: there is a pattern, and some forms are repeated and built upon others, but it is a decent example to describe the grammatical simplicity of Chinese: one need only know a single sound (chī) to describe any eating that is going on, in any time period, tense, or mood. Even just speaking in the present tense with a regular verb, ignoring gender and mood, a learner of a Romance language would need to learn 12 bits of information (6 pronouns and 6 verb forms), where as a learner of Chinese would only need to learn 5: first (我), second (你), and third person (他), the plural marker (们), plus the verb (吃). Anyone who has studied both Chinese and a language that conjugates verbs knows how many headaches are prevented by the grammatical simplicity of Chinese. And I haven't even learned the declensions of German or the grammatical titanic of Russian. Compared to those Chinese looks even simpler!
Benny is no amateur, and I think that he will exploit the grammatical simplicity of Chinese to zoom along in conversational ability, and although I have my doubts of him reaching a level equivalent with C1, I have no doubts that he will be able to converse. He also wants to be able to read, though, and I think that this is what will prevent his from achieving his goals. Lacking reliable phonetic markers, learning to read and write (even via computer or text message, since recognition and selection is required) Chinese is an exercise in rote memorization (and in patience). There are strategies to make it better (mnemonics and Anki, for example), but it is still more difficult to learn 1500 characters of Chinese than 20-30 letters of a Romance, Germanic or Slavic alphabet. I predict that Benny will succeed in his conversational goals, and that he will fail in his reading goals such as reading newspaper headlines or menus. I consider myself to speak Mandarin Chinese at a strong conversational level, and there are still plenty of newspaper headlines that I cannot understand. I am cheering for him, though!
Previously Benny has learned languages with an Latin based alphabet (various romance and Germanic languages, mostly), but now Benny has decided to take on Mandarin Chinese in Taipei. (I'll just refer to it as Chinese from now on.) Although I have a great respect for Benny, I think that he won't make it. The methods and techniques that he uses accelerate the pace of learning incredibly: he learns smarter, and he makes good use of his time. However, I think that the characters of Chinese are going to hold him back. I don't doubt that he will be able to get a decent conversation after three months of intensive work. Times have changed a lot since David Moser wrote Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard, and now the dominance of pinyin over other romanization systems and the proliferation of excellent electronic dictionaries nullify a few of his points, but Moser's points about the writing system and the lack of cognates with European languages still hold true. (in fact, if you aren't very familiar with the Chinese language just skip my next two paragraphs and read Moser's article instead: it lays everything out very succinctly)
I agree generally with what is written on Hacking Chinese about Benny's Mandarin mission, that Benny won't succeed, but I have different reasons. Hacking Chinese lists the tones of Chinese and the lack of shared linguistic roots between Chinese and any European language as a point of difficulty, and I would claim that the tones aren't that hard, and the incredibly simple grammar makes up for the lack of shared vocabulary. I bet that I can describe a university in half a dozen European languages fairly easily (unibertsitateko, universitet, universitet, l'université, Universität, and università in Basque, Bulgarian, Danish, French, German and Italian, according to Google Translator), where as the Chinese term cannot be mentally linked to a sound from any previously known language (assuming the learner has experience with languages which are not related to Chinese, such as is Benny's case). The Chinese terms (Dàxué or Xuéyuàn, depending on context and meaning) have no linguistic relation whatsoever to any previously known terms. In short, learning a language with shared heritage allows one to add on new vocabulary to pre-existing mental knowledge, but learning a language with no (or little, if you count proper names) shared vocabulary forces one to build from the ground up.
However, Chinese is very grammatically simple (no conjugations, no declensions, no grammatical gender), so that once one learns to say I eat a sandwich in Chinese, it is very simple to say will you eat a sandwich?, they ate sandwiches last week, or you (plural) probably didn't make any sandwiches, did you (plural)? Conversely, in any Romance, Slavic or German language saying these phrases would require learning several different morphological rules, so that one could change form of the words to express the desired meaning correctly. To stop being hypothetical and to get a bit more concrete, I will take Spanish as an example: to describe eating in Spanish, one needs to be able to use half a dozen different forms of the verb comer, plus another half a dozen to describe it in the future, another 16 or so forms to describe it in the past, plus another headache full of forms to describe hypothetical or unknown situations. As a regular verb, this is not an insurmountable challenge: there is a pattern, and some forms are repeated and built upon others, but it is a decent example to describe the grammatical simplicity of Chinese: one need only know a single sound (chī) to describe any eating that is going on, in any time period, tense, or mood. Even just speaking in the present tense with a regular verb, ignoring gender and mood, a learner of a Romance language would need to learn 12 bits of information (6 pronouns and 6 verb forms), where as a learner of Chinese would only need to learn 5: first (我), second (你), and third person (他), the plural marker (们), plus the verb (吃). Anyone who has studied both Chinese and a language that conjugates verbs knows how many headaches are prevented by the grammatical simplicity of Chinese. And I haven't even learned the declensions of German or the grammatical titanic of Russian. Compared to those Chinese looks even simpler!
Benny is no amateur, and I think that he will exploit the grammatical simplicity of Chinese to zoom along in conversational ability, and although I have my doubts of him reaching a level equivalent with C1, I have no doubts that he will be able to converse. He also wants to be able to read, though, and I think that this is what will prevent his from achieving his goals. Lacking reliable phonetic markers, learning to read and write (even via computer or text message, since recognition and selection is required) Chinese is an exercise in rote memorization (and in patience). There are strategies to make it better (mnemonics and Anki, for example), but it is still more difficult to learn 1500 characters of Chinese than 20-30 letters of a Romance, Germanic or Slavic alphabet. I predict that Benny will succeed in his conversational goals, and that he will fail in his reading goals such as reading newspaper headlines or menus. I consider myself to speak Mandarin Chinese at a strong conversational level, and there are still plenty of newspaper headlines that I cannot understand. I am cheering for him, though!
Monday, January 2, 2012
There are so many people around the world that want to give me money or products
I can't help but laugh when I get something like this in my inbox:
Sadly enough, the spam I see tends to be of the lowest quality. Today my Yahoo inbox recieved a message which was alledgedly a "Payment Release Instruction from Federal Reserve Bank of New York," which didn't even have any text in the body; just an attachment. I also got an anouncement saying that Amazon's new Kindle Fire could behad for just sever or eight dollars. Seriously? I can't even buy a basic cell phone, non-smart, for that little. Do people really believe that one could buy a brand new kindle for that little? I am not sure if I should be dissapointed with the spammer side of this equation for their lack of creativity or for the victim side of this for showing the spammers that their foolish methods are actually effective.
To rap on the spammers a bit, they could do way better targeting. From the information that is available about me online, it is easy to see that I am male, young, and educated. Anyone who is a personal contact of mine online can see considerably more, such as I am not religious, I like circus and languages, etc. Despite that, I still get plenty of adds for viagra (which I don't need), christian singles dating sites (which I don't need), acne medicine (which I don't need), and imitation Prada materials (which I don't need). If the spammers would just do some better customer reasearch they could target me with things like language learning courses, travel packages, or juggling equipment. Even the automatic adds on facebook and google can figure that stuff out.
I am going to work with the assumption that the spammers are not going to hire the additional staff just to do customer/market research, but that is okay: with so much information online digital text it can be done with a couple good computer programs. With just a bit of intelligent research, which I am sure could be automated, spammers could significantly increase the click-through rates and get a lot more "bites." Rather than flailing around at random, a well-planned strategy targeted to specific customer groups would be so simple to create. Plenty of people don't use the privacy settings on their Facebook, Google, or other accounts. A simple machine analysis of someone's tweets could easily show what topics they are interested in, and hacking into someone's Facebook account is not too difficult for someone that knows about hacking (or so I have heard).
Taking myself as an example, I am sure that an automated information gathering program could easily discover what kind of music, movies, and activities I like. This would allow the spammers to stop wasting Viagra and Christian single dating site spam on me, and they could instead try to trick me by sending discount juggling clubs, travel deals, and cheap books my way. If they don't do their research, they end up telling me that I can learn Chinese, which is kind of a waste, since I already know Chinese:
After decades of the same thing, I would have thought that strategies and methods should be updated. It doesn't help that several hundred other people are CCed on the email either. Since I started to use the internet (in highschool, really) there have just been the same general types of messages. I specifically recall getting a message allegedly from a distressed banker in the Ivory Coast when I was a senior in high school (he wanted to use me as a safe way to get his money out of the country, giving me a generous share in exchange for my help of course), and I found it absolutely hilarious. Almost as funny as me being the last living relative of a recently deceased Taiwanese millionaire. But that was in 2005 or 2006. There hasn't been much creativity in the format or the content in the past decade, as far as I'm aware. Sure, the graphic images are more common, but this isn't changing the core concept; that kind of change is just window dressing around the periphery. Where are the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of the spamming world? Where are the smart and creative entrepreneurs? Where are the intelligent and innovative marketing strategies?You have a bank draft of $800.000.00 USD which await outstanding payment of $100usd USD.You need to Contact Mr. Hemant Singh Email: fedexdeliver83@yahoo.in Tel: +919920343690
Sadly enough, the spam I see tends to be of the lowest quality. Today my Yahoo inbox recieved a message which was alledgedly a "Payment Release Instruction from Federal Reserve Bank of New York," which didn't even have any text in the body; just an attachment. I also got an anouncement saying that Amazon's new Kindle Fire could behad for just sever or eight dollars. Seriously? I can't even buy a basic cell phone, non-smart, for that little. Do people really believe that one could buy a brand new kindle for that little? I am not sure if I should be dissapointed with the spammer side of this equation for their lack of creativity or for the victim side of this for showing the spammers that their foolish methods are actually effective.
 |
| As if a free iPhone wasn't suspicious already, look at the email address it comes from! |
To rap on the spammers a bit, they could do way better targeting. From the information that is available about me online, it is easy to see that I am male, young, and educated. Anyone who is a personal contact of mine online can see considerably more, such as I am not religious, I like circus and languages, etc. Despite that, I still get plenty of adds for viagra (which I don't need), christian singles dating sites (which I don't need), acne medicine (which I don't need), and imitation Prada materials (which I don't need). If the spammers would just do some better customer reasearch they could target me with things like language learning courses, travel packages, or juggling equipment. Even the automatic adds on facebook and google can figure that stuff out.
Taking myself as an example, I am sure that an automated information gathering program could easily discover what kind of music, movies, and activities I like. This would allow the spammers to stop wasting Viagra and Christian single dating site spam on me, and they could instead try to trick me by sending discount juggling clubs, travel deals, and cheap books my way. If they don't do their research, they end up telling me that I can learn Chinese, which is kind of a waste, since I already know Chinese:
 |
| Does anyone actually think it's possible to learn any language (beyond the 'survival level') in just 10 days? If this spam succeeds, it lowers my faith in the intelligence of human beings. |
One encouraging fact (in the sense of efficiency and intelligence) is that I began to receive Chinese language spam (although of similarly disappointing quality) once I began to get online in Chinese. I also remember being quite excited about receiving my first item of spam in Spanish. Thank goodness that the gmail spam system is as multilingual as me! (one of the reasons I stopped using Yahoo's email service was an overwhelming amount of Spam)
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Blending in
Today, while walking home from teaching an English class, I was stopped on the street by a lady. She started telling me about the Red Cross, asking me if I was familiar with it, and detailing specifically what it does in Spain. I followed her explanation okay for a while, but got lost at some point and I had to ask her to slow down. Up until then, she didn't know that I was a foreigner. She just thought I was a regular Spaniard, like most of the people walking the streets in this country. That is something I really like here. With a single glance someone assumes that I am native enough to speak the language, vote, donate money to the Red Cross, or give directions. My first few weeks in Spain, when I was mostly in touristy locations like Madrid, I was asked for directions half a dozen times. Do I just exude an aura of confidence that makes people assume I know my way around? That is something that often got on my nerves in China: I was not invisible.
On the contrary, even in a city with upwards of 15 million people (like Beijing), in China I was always hyper visible. People noticed me, and not for anything special I was doing nor for any special clothing that I wore, but merely because I was white. In the same way that people in Spain assume I am a local and I am aware of things, people in China assumed I was a foreigner and ignorant of everything. I only remember one time in which a stranger approached me to ask for directions: she came from behind me, and as soon as I turned and she saw my face she instantly apologized and asked someone else for directions, assuming that I didn't know. Ironically, I knew the location she was asking about, and I knew how to get there. She didn't listen to me, but instead listened to the Chinese guy standing next to me who didn't know where it was, and continues to wander aimlessly for a while, despite my intentions to help her. Normally, strangers in Beijing assumed that I was ignorant until it was proven otherwise. Until I opened my mouth to speak (not flawless, by any means, but I think) pretty damn good Mandarin, I was considered to speak only English. Until I displayed my excellent knowledge of Beijing's geography (at least the western and central areas) I was assumed to be lost.
There were certainly some parts of Beijing that I did know pretty well. Granted, I was a foreigner there, there were (and always will be) some things that I wasn't aware of. Nonetheless, I often ended up knowing Beijing better than Chinese people from outside of Beijing. On many occasions Chinese friends of mine weren't familiar with a particular location in Beijing, but I was able to direct us there. (There were practical reasons for this: I went outside my home to other parts of the city more often than they did)
In Spain people don't assume that I am ignorant and incapable unless I prove myself ignorant and incapable. I guess I really enjoy that.
On the contrary, even in a city with upwards of 15 million people (like Beijing), in China I was always hyper visible. People noticed me, and not for anything special I was doing nor for any special clothing that I wore, but merely because I was white. In the same way that people in Spain assume I am a local and I am aware of things, people in China assumed I was a foreigner and ignorant of everything. I only remember one time in which a stranger approached me to ask for directions: she came from behind me, and as soon as I turned and she saw my face she instantly apologized and asked someone else for directions, assuming that I didn't know. Ironically, I knew the location she was asking about, and I knew how to get there. She didn't listen to me, but instead listened to the Chinese guy standing next to me who didn't know where it was, and continues to wander aimlessly for a while, despite my intentions to help her. Normally, strangers in Beijing assumed that I was ignorant until it was proven otherwise. Until I opened my mouth to speak (not flawless, by any means, but I think) pretty damn good Mandarin, I was considered to speak only English. Until I displayed my excellent knowledge of Beijing's geography (at least the western and central areas) I was assumed to be lost.
There were certainly some parts of Beijing that I did know pretty well. Granted, I was a foreigner there, there were (and always will be) some things that I wasn't aware of. Nonetheless, I often ended up knowing Beijing better than Chinese people from outside of Beijing. On many occasions Chinese friends of mine weren't familiar with a particular location in Beijing, but I was able to direct us there. (There were practical reasons for this: I went outside my home to other parts of the city more often than they did)
In Spain people don't assume that I am ignorant and incapable unless I prove myself ignorant and incapable. I guess I really enjoy that.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
My new favorite Spanish actor
I saw some similarities between Los Lunes al Sol and Biutiful. They both focused on the hard life that people have with not much money living in Barcelona. Although I enjoyed Los Lunes al Sol, I thought that Biutiful was really a beautiful movie. I did enjoy that it had some Mandarin spoken by the Chinese immigrant workers, but the sorrow of the film, the tragedy there, and the hard life portrayed are things that I found to be very moving.
I really like movies like that: perhaps it is because I was raised on movies that always had happy endings and always had the good guys win. These films cut black and white so clearly, and films that display the world as more ambiguous seem so much more real to me. Main characters that aren't very good or heroic, obstacles that aren't from a megalomaniac evil person, and difficulties that can't be blamed or placed on any person, but merely are. Sometimes I wonder if movies that display conflict as so clear-cut and black-and-white are somewhat responsible for simplified views of the world. The movies that I saw as a child were almost all American movies, but that isn't to say that other countries don't have movies like this too. I think that this is also one of the many reasons that I like Miyazaki films so much: rather than having villains and heroes, the antagonists of his films often have clear motivations that an audience can understand and sympathize with, such as wanting to protect one's people from destructive monsters, or to be reunited with a long-lost loved one.
In Biutiful, Javier plays a man with a pretty tough life. Not enough money to treat his children as well as he would like, an ex with drug problems who keeps coming back, trying to manage a bunch of illegal street vendors while placating (bribing) the cops enough to back off, and dealing with a high pressure agreement with Chinese immigrants workers make his life difficult right from the start of the film. When he gets more bad news he makes some small efforts to live a better life, but this is no Disney fable, so the world continues to shit on him. I highly recommend it. This is one of the best Spanish movies that I have seen. Biutiful was nominated for many film awards, and it won several of them too, so if you care about film committees and their opinions that may sway you.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Video Games and Me
Fascination
When I was young, I was charmed by video games. They were something completely foreign to my existence. In the house that I lived in as a small child, we didn't have video games. Visiting relatives, however, basically introduced me to the concept of video games. Cousins often had a Super Nintendo or a Sega Mega Drive game system hooked up to a TV, and I was amazed. I recall being completely enchanted by these games, and playing Sonic and Mario games for as long as I could (until my parent's called me away for a meal or to start the long drive home) in the basements of houses belong to my aunts and uncles. Since it was something that was completely absent from my normal existence, playing video games at relatives' houses was often a major source of excitement and joy.
Immersion
Probably the most revolutionary event of my pre-high school youth was when my family bought a computer. When I was small my father and my sister and I had played Prince of Persia together, but when in late 1999 our family got a (at the time) new and powerful desktop machine, it changed everything. We bought Myst and Might and Magic VI. I wasn't old enough to understand Myst, but Might and Magic VI was a bit easier for me to grasp. I was already familiar with stories of heroes, wizards, swords, and dragons due to an introduction to Dragonlance from my sister. I loved Might and Magic VI. I loved it so much that I probably played the game through three times, and I got other games in the series (Might and Magic VII and VIII) based purely off of my love of the first game. I recall spending hours playing Starcraft and the Diablo games. When a classmate introduced me to emulators, it might have been the beginning of my long and glorious career of getting-things-for-free-online-rather-than-paying-for-them-in-stores. Armed with a Super Nintendo Emulator, various Marios, Final Fantasys were available to me. Some of the best memories I have of video games are of RPGs like the various Final Fantasy games and Tales of Phantasia. To me, these games were like novels. I usually used a set button to speed through boring random battles and walking at a high speed (another benefit of using an emulator rather than a real console) so that I could quickly get to the dialogues or the next key point in the progression of the plot. Naturally, most of my memories of these games are not of fighting of monsters, but rather are about the relationships between the characters, the experiences that they go through, and their reactions. Looking back, they really feel like interactive novels. At some point, we got a N64 and later a Playstation 2. I vaguely recall getting a Gameboy at some point too. There were certainly some games from these consoles that I spend many hours on and enjoyed (such as FFX and Zelda), but I don't have as many memories of other console games. I think that, in general, they tended to be simpler, with less of a focus on story, characters, and plot, and with more of a focus on simple repetitive action.
Rejection
Now I look back at how many hours a spent playing video games with a bit of a shudder. Calculating just for the Final Fantasy series, I have no doubt that if the same number of hours had been devoted to a language class I could have learned French, German, or Spanish up to a decent level. Of course, I didn't have the same desire for productivity back then as I do now, and it is likely that I wouldn't have had the motivation to learn a language or do something similar back at that age, but I look back on those hours and wish that I could re-use them more productively, somehow. Naturally, I do not consider all of the hours I spent playing video games to be wasted. Many, but not all. As I mentioned earlier, some of the games that focused more on character and story were more like novels to me, and I still think back, remember, and enjoy those stories. Others, however, had no real story or progression, I would quickly cut them out of my past if I could. Although I hadn't reached this level of reasoning at age 18, arriving at Kalamazoo College helped me to realize how enjoyable it was to socialize, and I basically gave up video games as soon as I arrived there. It was seriously a big change. In middle school and high school I probably spent most of my time in the evenings after school either reading (mostly fantasy novels or Dungeons and Dragons books late into the night) or playing video games. After arriving at college though (Autumn of 2006), I basically didn't touch video games until January of 2009. For more than two years video games were simply less interesting than spending time with the circus club, hanging out with new friends, exploring what it was like to flirt, getting my schoolwork done on time, and generally being a young college student with other young college students. I look back and think how young and foolish I was then, but it was certainly an improvement over who I was in high school.
Acceptance
In January of 2009, to guard against boredom and the cold winter, I spend a few weeks downloading and playing amateur RPG games on my computer. They were story- and character-focused, creative, and very enjoyable to play. Once I started my spring semester and life picked up pace again, however, I didn't touch games again until more than a year later. In spring of 2010, with my graduation a week or so away, and my schoolwork basically finished, I didn't really have any projects on my plate, so to keep myself from boredom I again spent a few days of playing games, this time more casual games from Kongregate, which my roommates had introduced me to. The following winter I spent a week or two obsessed with Spore, and I just finished a two week obsession over Divine Divinity.
I think I have a general pattern, now: I will spend a week or two each year playing a video game intensely, and then not touch video games for the rest of my year. I think that works okay for me. I know that I don't have to do something productive (such as study/learn something new) constantly, and the joy and relaxation that is brought from slaying dragons or saving the world can be pretty nice too. I still have mixed feelings, and I still have a desire to spend more of my waking hours doing productive things, but I find more and more the great difference between my desires and expectations as opposed to my reality. Looking at it logically, though, I don't really see how spending 10 hours non-productively playing a video game is any better or worse than spending 10 hours non-productively watching bad movies or crappy TV shows, watching sport games, or reading low-quality novels. Enjoyment is what counts in recreation time, right?
When I was young, I was charmed by video games. They were something completely foreign to my existence. In the house that I lived in as a small child, we didn't have video games. Visiting relatives, however, basically introduced me to the concept of video games. Cousins often had a Super Nintendo or a Sega Mega Drive game system hooked up to a TV, and I was amazed. I recall being completely enchanted by these games, and playing Sonic and Mario games for as long as I could (until my parent's called me away for a meal or to start the long drive home) in the basements of houses belong to my aunts and uncles. Since it was something that was completely absent from my normal existence, playing video games at relatives' houses was often a major source of excitement and joy.
Immersion
Probably the most revolutionary event of my pre-high school youth was when my family bought a computer. When I was small my father and my sister and I had played Prince of Persia together, but when in late 1999 our family got a (at the time) new and powerful desktop machine, it changed everything. We bought Myst and Might and Magic VI. I wasn't old enough to understand Myst, but Might and Magic VI was a bit easier for me to grasp. I was already familiar with stories of heroes, wizards, swords, and dragons due to an introduction to Dragonlance from my sister. I loved Might and Magic VI. I loved it so much that I probably played the game through three times, and I got other games in the series (Might and Magic VII and VIII) based purely off of my love of the first game. I recall spending hours playing Starcraft and the Diablo games. When a classmate introduced me to emulators, it might have been the beginning of my long and glorious career of getting-things-for-free-online-rather-than-paying-for-them-in-stores. Armed with a Super Nintendo Emulator, various Marios, Final Fantasys were available to me. Some of the best memories I have of video games are of RPGs like the various Final Fantasy games and Tales of Phantasia. To me, these games were like novels. I usually used a set button to speed through boring random battles and walking at a high speed (another benefit of using an emulator rather than a real console) so that I could quickly get to the dialogues or the next key point in the progression of the plot. Naturally, most of my memories of these games are not of fighting of monsters, but rather are about the relationships between the characters, the experiences that they go through, and their reactions. Looking back, they really feel like interactive novels. At some point, we got a N64 and later a Playstation 2. I vaguely recall getting a Gameboy at some point too. There were certainly some games from these consoles that I spend many hours on and enjoyed (such as FFX and Zelda), but I don't have as many memories of other console games. I think that, in general, they tended to be simpler, with less of a focus on story, characters, and plot, and with more of a focus on simple repetitive action.
Rejection
Now I look back at how many hours a spent playing video games with a bit of a shudder. Calculating just for the Final Fantasy series, I have no doubt that if the same number of hours had been devoted to a language class I could have learned French, German, or Spanish up to a decent level. Of course, I didn't have the same desire for productivity back then as I do now, and it is likely that I wouldn't have had the motivation to learn a language or do something similar back at that age, but I look back on those hours and wish that I could re-use them more productively, somehow. Naturally, I do not consider all of the hours I spent playing video games to be wasted. Many, but not all. As I mentioned earlier, some of the games that focused more on character and story were more like novels to me, and I still think back, remember, and enjoy those stories. Others, however, had no real story or progression, I would quickly cut them out of my past if I could. Although I hadn't reached this level of reasoning at age 18, arriving at Kalamazoo College helped me to realize how enjoyable it was to socialize, and I basically gave up video games as soon as I arrived there. It was seriously a big change. In middle school and high school I probably spent most of my time in the evenings after school either reading (mostly fantasy novels or Dungeons and Dragons books late into the night) or playing video games. After arriving at college though (Autumn of 2006), I basically didn't touch video games until January of 2009. For more than two years video games were simply less interesting than spending time with the circus club, hanging out with new friends, exploring what it was like to flirt, getting my schoolwork done on time, and generally being a young college student with other young college students. I look back and think how young and foolish I was then, but it was certainly an improvement over who I was in high school.
Acceptance
In January of 2009, to guard against boredom and the cold winter, I spend a few weeks downloading and playing amateur RPG games on my computer. They were story- and character-focused, creative, and very enjoyable to play. Once I started my spring semester and life picked up pace again, however, I didn't touch games again until more than a year later. In spring of 2010, with my graduation a week or so away, and my schoolwork basically finished, I didn't really have any projects on my plate, so to keep myself from boredom I again spent a few days of playing games, this time more casual games from Kongregate, which my roommates had introduced me to. The following winter I spent a week or two obsessed with Spore, and I just finished a two week obsession over Divine Divinity.
I think I have a general pattern, now: I will spend a week or two each year playing a video game intensely, and then not touch video games for the rest of my year. I think that works okay for me. I know that I don't have to do something productive (such as study/learn something new) constantly, and the joy and relaxation that is brought from slaying dragons or saving the world can be pretty nice too. I still have mixed feelings, and I still have a desire to spend more of my waking hours doing productive things, but I find more and more the great difference between my desires and expectations as opposed to my reality. Looking at it logically, though, I don't really see how spending 10 hours non-productively playing a video game is any better or worse than spending 10 hours non-productively watching bad movies or crappy TV shows, watching sport games, or reading low-quality novels. Enjoyment is what counts in recreation time, right?
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