Category: Journal

I blame Al Gore / Mi Kulpigas na Al Gore

So we took a long weekend and went out to Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic peninsula (the town’s name is pronounced as one syllable, which often occasions snickering). Very pretty country, with fields of tulips and lavender, and bluffs above the placid strait of Juan de Fuca.

Marred a little by the inch of snow we got on Saturday.

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Ni ja prenis etenditan semajnfinon, kaj veturis al Sequim, Washington, je la duoninsula Olimpika (la nomo prononciĝis unusilabe, ofte okazigante ridetojn). Tre bela pejzaĝo: kampoj de tulipoj kaj lavendoj, kun krutaĵetoj apud la serena markolo de Juan de Fuca.

Iomete difektita per la du centimetroj de neĝo sabate.

Oh the Humanity

So I think I may be finally recovering from the stomach flu that has laid Andrea & me low for the last week or so. I snuck a dab of peanut butter on my otherwise unadorned toast for lunch today. I’m still, to use Andrea’s favourite phrase, weak as a kitten.

To make up for the complete lack of variety in our diets — mmm, cream of wheat — Andrea & I have been watching a lot of Food Network, especially Iron Chef America, Restaurant Makeover and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

The latter is especially entertaining because of his gentle persuasion of the “people who think that, even though they asked him to come save them from financial ruin, that they shouldn’t have to actually, you know, change their behaviors that got them there.”, as Tobias Buckell observes.

Career Change

There are some significant changes ahead for me, so I thought I’d better get this out so people can absorb it gradually. I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with the world of computers for a while now, what with crashing hard drives, impersonal programming languages, and flickery video screens. So I have decided to make a change of careers. I will no longer sit in front of a computer all day courting repetitive strain disorders.

Instead, I am embarking on a career as a private image consultant.

This means that I will be consulting for numerous clients — I have a large number lined up already — in various areas. I will be evaluating people’s style and wardrobes, and advising on hair, glasses, makeup, and especially clothes! I will be running seminars on how to be more outgoing and how to strike up witty conversations with strangers on subjects ranging from sports to fashion to daytime television to the latest celebrity gossip.

I’m also planning to have a sideline in interior decoration, based on the principles of homeopathic feng shui. I think that by properly balancing the energy flow in people’s dwellings, we can more easily obtain harmony with each other and with our household pets.

I think that this change of direction is going to be great! Who wants to sit around all day reading a book or playing video games, when you could be shopping for shoes!

“It’s only Hard for the First 10 Years”

Via LanguageHat, a wry essay on the difficulties of learning Arabic, something I know more than a little about.

Soon I began marching into the Arabic markets on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, near where I live, and testing out my textbook phrases. Generally I was met with a confused look and then a smiling apology: “We don’t hear too much fusha around here.” Linguistically speaking, what I had done was a bit like asking an Italian for directions in Latin. Modern fusha, also known as Modern Standard Arabic, is a modified version of the Classical Arabic in the Koran. It is the language of public address, and of any newscast on Al Jazeera and other Arabic television stations. It also corresponds to the written language, and any educated Arab can understand it. Arabs have enormous respect for fusha (“eloquent” is the word’s literal meaning), especially in its fully inflected Koranic form; that is why Al Qaeda’s leaders, like clerics and most political leaders, place great emphasis on the classical idiom.

But the language of the street is different. The colloquial versions of Arabic are derived from fusha, and they are dialects rather than wholly separate languages. Still, the gulf can be substantial in vocabulary as well as pronunciation, and takes getting used to.

I’ve been studying Arabic off and on for over 10 years, and really haven’t achieved anything. I can sound out words and read very slowly with a dictionary, but as for listening and speaking, forget it. Kinda depressing, actually.

By the way, do not pronounce the word “fusha” with an esh sound. The “s” and “h” are separate sounds. The first syllable rhymes with “book”, and the second is basically a choking sound (the author’s “lovely breath of air”).