An Alter Ego

I have created another blog written entirely in Japanese as a practise ground for myself.

www.recklessjapworld.blogspot.com

It may, or should I say, does contain quite a few grammatical errors that will tighten the most relaxed of Japanese asses. I hope a native Jap or many native Japs will help me out a bit by correcting my mistakes. I don't learn from mistakes. I learn through rectifying mistakes.

Thanks in advance!

The High Life

I am living in a messed-up cerebral continuum detached from the chronological linearity of the real world. Why else am I harking back half a year into the past to dig up some of these old photos of where my footprints had dented the ground?

Ok, let's work backwards from my bus trip, which was actually going down the mountain. My blog is rewinding those tapes... But I assure you, my brain is interleaved.

Right in the midst of the surrounding mountains stand this church called the Liu Village Baptist Church. It was one of the first major church building of cement and glass in that area (followed by a number of other such churches in the following many years) that marked (sort of) a turning point for the prevalent folk religions there. Animism was the dish of the day way before Christianity was brought there. As more locals turned towards Christianity and abandoned their deep-rooted superstitions of old, they began to experience changes in their lives, both on the inside and out, from which they have not turned back, even till this day. Drug and gambling problems became a thing of the past. In their place are many other simple joys that many of us have begun to take for granted (teach a local how to play a guitar and watch him/her glow). Music, fellowship, honest labor, FOOD, harmony, education... fresh fish (though you don't get to eat those very often), entire pigs (see parenthesis for fresh fish), fresh mountain air, cold bathing mountain water... many things that we do not know we are missing.

Don't get me wrong. I am not begrudging living in an uber-metropolitan city like Singapore (though a certain Taiwanese somebody called Singapore a third-world country in the guise of a developed nation). I mean, we have toilets with flushing systems and no holes-alignment problems... I guess I do advocate that we do not think that highly of ourselves than we ought to. Take pride in what we have achieved, yes. But there's a fine line where, when crossed, it becomes haughtiness. I mean, think about it. We spend our lives working hard to afford metal boxes with rubber tyres, erected caves, and we eat dead fishes, and we consider ourselves rich. In other places, half of that debt amount that we are chained to can buy one a plot of land enough to start a village, dig a pond big enough to supply fresh live fishes all year round (subject to the competency of the fish farmer, that is), and maybe even grow vegetables that can be pulled from the ground and cooked right away. Who's actually the richer one here, I ask...? Of course, the back-and-forth comparisons can be so numerous that it is very much a pointless exercise. Which leads us back to the basic question: what fundamentally brings us joy?

My thoughts drift back to the people I met when I was there in the mountains. The joy the people take in their simplicity couldn't be hidden, and they certainly weren't. Smiles that come from the bottom of the heart and smiles that come from the heart of the bottom: which would you wear on your face?


...

Someday I'll be Saturday night? How about now?

Children photo courtesy of my friend, CJ.

To illustrate my strong belief in the saying "What isn't said speaks louder that what is", read on.

























Thanks for your time.

When Babel Founded Babble 1: Three Dots

"..."
You say it best/ when you say nothing at all... (Ronan Keating)

My kawaii-na sensei was asking a few of us who were in class early yesterday if we were going to take the JLPT Tribulation in December. Normally, at this part of the year, if you're still stuck at Intermediate 3, conventional wisdom has it that you go for the easier mountain to climb so that you'd have a better chance of preserving your body in its entirety after everything is over. My logic, combined with some consultation with other senseis, was that I am still in time to complete Intermediate 4 classes, which will punch my ticket to the JLPT 3 Grand Slam, with a month more or so to prepare myself before the Day arrives.

So, when the kawaii one came to know I signed up for JLPT 3, she went, "So desu ka? ..." The whole punch didn't come from the "So desu ka?", but from the three dots that followed. That is what is meant by what you don't say speaks louder than what you do say. That three-dot moment lasted a fleeting 4.5 seconds before other words followed, but the look on her face augmented the weight of those three omnimous dots, and gave an audible quality to silence.

"... so desu ne. Gambatte yo."

Coming from someone whose ID includes descriptions like kawaii, the above line seemed disarmingly innocent and, most probably, encouraging. It reads, "... that's the case, yeah? Do your best, y'hear?" in a pseudo-black fashion. But, as I have had the priviledge of reading her face as she mouthed those words (and you didn't), we can endeavor to analyse this one more time combining the two factors, namely facial expression and words, in one coherent delivery, and we might unearth what actually went through her head at that immortal moment.

The three dots at the front need no further explaination. "So desu ne" spoken with a falling intonation meant something like, "Is that so?" or simply, "So...". The whole point of saying that is to express an understanding that, man, the deed is done, and there's no turning back. Something like what Hokkien would say with the suffix "liao". The range of emotions can be pretty broad, but I should take it to mean, in this case, that she was surprised anybody would be this audacious in his undertakings. To be fair, this is pretty new to me, too. Never in my academic life have I done anything like skipping a grade, so to speak.

"Ganbatte yo" in plain black and white means "Do your best." "Yo" is a Japanese equivalent to an exclaimation mark. Again, there is a range of emotions that could be conveyed with that one word, the subtlities of which can pretty hard for one to appreciate through reading alone. In it's more campy and innocent form, it just goes, "Do your best!", coupled with a V hand-sign and a toothy smile, and the the listener is supposed to feel encouraged or motivated. In this particular scenerio, however, the tone of her voice and how the words were delivered made all the difference. Expect no "Gambatte yo!" pumped out through the diaphragm with a clenched-fist downward-pulling action, but a much gentler, more feminine, and dunno-what-else-to-say kind of "gambatte yo." The former shouts "Go for it!", while the latter utters "Good luck, boy."

In the age of MSN and other forms of communications made possible and viable by microchip technology, previously invisible thoughts can now be materialized in written or pictographic forms (think those pesky emoticons). Those moments of heavy silence from the bygone era can now appear right in front of you as three dots or other things. The next time you see three dots appearing in your written communication, be sure to pay heed to what they could possibly telling you, for what isn't spoken sometimes speak louder than what is.

...

Epilogue

What am I to make of all this, then? Well, as the story went, there was nothing more to it than surprise as the kawaii one did not expect anyone from her class to have enough brass to go straight for level 3. As a sensei, however, I'm guessing that she could be secretly glad that somebody is taking this study enough to at least try. As the class went on, I could feel her trying to give me a little more chance to practise, though her Japanese ramblings sometimes zips past me, offering no respite. So, kawaii-na sensei, arigatoo gozaimasu yo. Kitto gambarimasu ne.