Pneumatised!

Trying to understand this spoiler thing.

Some things are spoilers for me, but apparently not knowing who lives or dies in A Song of Ice and Fire because I read the books anyway even knowing certain characters were going to be dead by the end of book three (and certain not-my-favourite-characters are around in book four). Kind of hard to avoid knowing if you are reading book one and have book three lying around and there’s a list of characters in book three. Besides, I still had no clue what the “Red Wedding” was until I read the book. (“Red wedding”. Not a spoiler people, but a mystery for ya to figure out. :p Consider it a teaser.)

What does spoil things for me is knowing what happened – the exact details – before I read the book, and even then I might just read the book anyway. Frankly the end of the story isn’t always the most important for me but everything leading to the conclusion. A lot of the time, reading for me is just about enjoying how the words come together to form a picture of what’s happening. The same could be said about movies and shows – I simply enjoy how the story is put together. For videos, I enjoy seeing how well the visuals are put together.

Besides, who hasn’t re-read a favourite book or re-watched a favourite movie/show? Since you’ve already read/watched it once, you’ve ‘spoiled’ it so why re-read or re-watch? Arguably, there is some enjoyment to be had in experiencing the story over again (I’m assuming you haven’t forgotten everything that happened in the story.)

(And if you watched Game of Thrones before reading A Game of Thrones, you already spoiled the book for yourself.)

I think I might be delving into A Dance with Dragons very soon. 😉

~~~C

Saw this the other night – “We are the 1 percent: we stand with the 99 percent”.

Huh. Nice sentiment, but how many on there would give up what they have and live with less than they have? It’s not that all 99 ‘percenters’ want fancy cars and super-sized homes for two to four that really can accommodate 10 or even 20 people in hard times (I grew up in a medium-sized home that accommodated seven), it’s that some things aren’t necessary for a decent life. Frankly, a privileged lifestyle isn’t sustainable for everyone in the long term. Some people would have to ‘downsize’. So the question remains, are the 1% willing to give up what they have and live with less?

(I should also point out that I’m not sure everyone on that 1% blog even knows what would define them as 1%. It has to do with ‘wealth’ as opposed to ‘income’. Wealth aka ‘net worth’ being assets minus liabilities and income aka ‘net income’ being revenue minus expenses. Net income is added to assets – it does not represent your wealth.)

I started reading a Star Wars novel a few months back, then got sidetracked. I felt like returning to this novel, Downbelow Station, which I started a while ago. I’m still not sure what I think of it so far, except for it reminding me of the remade Battlestar Galactica, which can be a good or bad comparison depending on how much you liked the remade BG (note that this novel was written in 1981, around the time of the original BG series). I have no complaints about the author’s writing at least – always a good thing.

“Pell’s Station, orbiting the alien world simply called Downbelow, had always managed to remain neutral in the ever escalating conflict between “The Company,” whose fleets from Earth had colonized space, and its increasingly independent and rebellious colony worlds. But Pell’s location—on the outer edge of Earth’s defensive perimeter— makes her the focal point in the titanic battle of colony worlds fighting for independence…” (See GoodReads link above.)

Sidenote: I tried reading David Farland’s The Runelords: The Sum of All Men again (see my previous blog containing a review of this book), but read another passage that annoyed me. Perhaps you can argue that he was writing in character and that’s what his character was thinking, but I have a problem with a character who’s supposed to be ‘good’ being prejudiced. “When Raj Ahten entered, he took the Sultan, determined to make an example of him. What happened next, Iome could not say. Such things were never discussed in civilized countries.” (Page 169, Tor paperback copy) I stopped reading the book again after that last sentence – “civilized countries” indeed. Who is to judge what is “civilized” and what isn’t? *silent rant; moving on*

~~~C

Spike: Shadow Puppets by Brian Lynch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Shortest review ever for me:

Ninja puppets!!!

‘Nuff said. 😀

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For those who are interested in learning Taishanese (台山話 aka Toisanwa aka Hoisanva), I finally got a chance to put up a web page linking to the Taishanese learning material that I found (as mentioned in my previous blog post, ‘Learning Chinese: Cantonese or Mandarin? Or…? Taishanese!’).

You may go to Learn Taishanese (台山話) (alternate link: Learn Taishanese (台山話)) to download the zip files containing the Defense Language Institute’s ‘Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course’ (Audio Material). The link to the text material is also provided there. Please note the information about copyright regarding this material.

~~~C
周婉蓮

I love social media. I think it’s an important aspect of the internet as it gives people a chance to connect with others they might never ever meet in ‘real life’. I’ve been considering GoodReads for a while now. On my old Facebook profile, I used to use weRead, but since I signed up for that on Facebook, that account got deleted with my old Facebook profile. I finally got around to setting up my GoodReads account (feyMorgaina). I find GoodReads nicely organized and streamlined. Strangely enough, I find the site’s colour scheme peaceful, which puts me in the frame of mind to read something.

A feature I like about GoodReads is the exporting of any new reviews I write on there to my WordPress. In fact, my last blog on here was a review imported from GoodReads. (See “Review: Brian Lumley’s Mythos Omnibus: “Burrowers Beneath”, “Transition of Titus Crow”, “Clock of Dreams” Vol 1”.)

Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve read lately (though of course you can now go to my GoodReads profile to see what’s on my bookshelves):

Knights of the Old Republic: Commencement (Star Wars graphic novel)
Angel: The Wolf, The Ram, and The Heart (graphic novel)
A Feast for Crows (book four of A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin
Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn

And, my current ‘to read’ list:
The Last Command by Timothy Zahn
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Priestess of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Stormqueen! (part of The Ages of Chaos omnibus) by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Circus of the Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton
Stolen by Kelley Armstrong
Moon of 3 Rings by Andre Norton

I enjoyed the first six issues of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) and will likely read more at some point. I think the series got off to a good start in the first little story arc. Like all Star Wars comics/graphic novels, KOTOR is published by Dark Horse. They have finished the run of KOTOR, so now is a good time to read the whole series. The series takes place before the setting for the new Star Wars video game The Old Republic. The new game is an MMORPG (if you’re a gamer you know what that is). 😀

IDW finally published Angel: The Wolf, The Ram, and The Heart and concludes their run of the Angel (Buffyverse) comics. I enjoyed IDW’s Angel: After the Fall series and the few stories after that, but I failed to see where they were going (or that they were going somewhere good) with the series when Bill Willingham took over in Immortality for Dummies. (I initially enjoyed Willingham’s Fables comics, but when he started dragging out the stories I lost interest after volume ten.) The Wolf, The Ram, and The Heart concluded Willingham’s storyline for Angel, and in my opinion brought the story back to what Angel is all about as a series. I think it’s for the best that the Angel title is moving back to Dark Horse. Dark Horse will be publishing a new series called Angel and Faith which will be running alongside Buffy Season 9. 😀

I finally finished A Feast for Crows, the fourth book of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. I found I didn’t enjoy A Feast for Crows as much as the previous three novels – likely because I didn’t care about the characters in this book as much as I did the characters in the first three novels. (I kind of think of the first three novels as a beginning trilogy in A Song of Ice and Fire.) I do not like Cersei – never did. I may feel a little pity for her, but she wins hands-down on the b-i-t-c-h award (considering that she’s probably sleeping with all the men who swear allegiance to her as queen, well… the b-word pretty much fits her). She’s conniving, manipulative, and paranoid. Sure, maybe she feels like she got the short end of the stick (not really though; in reality, she got things pretty good for a while) when she had to marry Robert Baratheon instead of Rhaegar Targaryen, but she still got to be queen in name (even if being Robert’s queen wasn’t exactly how she dreamed being queen would be). Basically her point of view chapters consisted of “Look how beautiful and smart I am” and “I deserve better than this!”

I have to commend Martin though for writing so well. Clearly, we are not supposed to like Cersei. Considering how much I dislike her, Martin did an awesome job writing her chapters.

Some high points of the novel were Arya’s chapters (who doesn’t love Arya??) and a new character in Dorne that I rather like, though it remains to be seen if I’ll like her later. There’s only a little bit about her in this novel. For those who have read A Feast for Crows, I am speaking of Princess Arianne Martell of Dorne, of course. She’s high-spirited, but not irrational. (Okay, maybe she reminds me of me, but at least I know my biases.) It will be interesting to see where Martin takes her character.

There’s more I could say about A Feast for Crows, but the previous points are really the most important things to note (at least, in my opinion). I do have to point out though that the Cersei chapters are important (annoying as she is) because as Queen Regent, her chapters provide important information as to what’s going on in Westeros and overseas (or at least they show how the Queen and her council think things are going). One last thing, Tommen seems to be a ‘normal’ boy – not at all like Joffrey. Instead of killing a mother cat to see the kittens inside, Tommen sleeps with three little kittens. Will wonders never cease.

I finished reading the third book of the Earthsea trilogy. I doubt I will be reading the remaining books in that series. The Farthest Shore just didn’t seem as fun as the first two novels in the trilogy. LeGuin is a good writer, but I think the next novels I’ll read by her will be some of her science fiction ones.

Speaking of science fiction, having caught up with The Wheel of Time and A Song of Ice and Fire (in terms of hard copy books I have sitting around), I continued with the Star Wars trilogy written by Timothy Zahn, also known as the ‘Thrawn trilogy’. Dark Force Rising turns out to be pretty much a chase for some old, but very deadly and powerful starships that the New Republic could use in its battle against the remaining Empire loyalists. Some minor plot points get resolved in this novel, such as the “C’Baoth is crazy, Luke, run away!” storyline and the “Mara Jade wants to kill you, Luke, rescue her!” storyline. All in all, Zahn continues to please readers with a very Star Wars tradition of storytelling. The trilogy is worth reading if you like Star Wars. 🙂

~~~C

Brian Lumley’s Mythos Omnibus: “Burrowers Beneath”, “Transition of Titus Crow”, “Clock of Dreams” Vol 1 by Brian Lumley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I liked The Burrowers Beneath (I’d give that 3 or 4 stars), but was disappointed with The Transition of Titus Crow. Maybe Lumley lost me somewhere (or maybe he got lost himself). All I know is suddenly I was reading science fiction and fantasy instead of horror (not that I don’t like sci-fi and fantasy, but I was expecting the book to lean towards more horror). While reading The Transition of Titus Crow, I kept waiting for the story to turn back to the CCD – it did so only vaguely. The elements of The Burrowers Beneath that I liked was the distinct Holmesian mood of it and was looking forward to more of that. Sadly, I was disappointed.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t read The Clock of Dreams. Though, maybe curiosity will bring me back to this series at a later date.

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A few years back, I tried looking for material on Toisan (aka Taishanese). The most I found was this linguistic paper, Toisan: A Cantonese Dialect by Aaron Lee, which I thought was fairly good in terms of giving you an understanding of the pronunciation in Toisan. What I didn’t know then was that the name of the language was being changed to ‘Taishanese’ (in accordance with the town/city Toisan now being called ‘Taishan’, which is the Mandarin name) and that Toisan, which is the Cantonese name, was/is called ‘Hoisan’ by its own native speakers. I grew up with it being called ‘Toisan’ or ‘Toisan-wa’ (Toisan is also sometimes called ‘Toisan-wa’ to distinguish it from Toisan the place; ‘wa’ simply means ‘language’ used in this context). I did also find the site for Taishan itself, although I didn’t find much use for it in terms of learning Toisan/Taishanese.

Because of the lack of material for learning Toisan, I decided simply to go ahead with learning Cantonese (since it is quite similar to Toisan-wa, and since I already had exposure to Cantonese growing up, as evidenced by my use of “Toisan”). Unfortunately, whenever I speak to my mom, I automatically speak Toisan instead of Cantonese (my mom understands both although she is stronger in Toisan).

I decided recently to try looking for material on Toisan again. Searching for ‘Toisan’, I found again Toisan: A Cantonese Dialect (see above link), but also an amusing blog by Toisan Girl. In one of her recent posts, she writes:

I’m feeling rather disappointed in myself lately about how I haven’t taught much Toisanese to my children, as days and years go by ever so quickly now, and knowing sadly one day our language will die. At least in America, it likely will. Perhaps it may continue for generations in the Hoisan villages back in China. It’s been over a year since I’ve conversed with anyone in Hoisan-wah and I can feel it slipping away from me. As with anything that we value, we need to make an effort to hold onto it, it’s not easy when I have few people to speak my mother tongue with. Maybe I’ll look up the Hoisan society organizations here and check it out. I feel the need to hold on for some reason, maybe it’s simply a comfort mechanism for me to want to return to my childhood roots, to remember the contributions of our ancestry.

While I don’t have children, I can relate to her feelings that it feels like my native language may well die out. But as she points out, it may well continue to thrive back in China, specifically in Taishan where Toisan-wa originally comes from. However, in Taishan they also speak Cantonese. According to Wikipedia’s article on Taishan:

The main language of Taishan is Taishanese. While most Taishanese today use Mandarin in school or formal occasions, Taishanese is the de facto language. Taishanese is a dialect of Yue Chinese, a large group which includes, but is broader than, Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Thus Cantonese and Taishanese are related but distinct. Before the 1980s, Taishanese was the predominant Chinese language spoken throughout North America’s Chinatowns.[9] Cantonese (Guangdonghua) is also widely known in Taishan, as it serves as lingua franca of Guangdong Province.

After reading a bit of Toisan Girl’s blog, I continued searching for learning material on Toisan. I decided to search for Aaron Lee since he wrote that linguistic paper on Toisan. I was hoping that maybe he was doing more research and work on Toisan. Well, fortune favoured me! I found Aaron Lee on Twitter, and from there, I found his blog, Four Counties, where he is writing about Taishanese.

From there I found Stephen Li’s Taishanese Language Home and Hoisanva 台山話 | Seik heng m seik gong by Gene Chin. Stephen Li is also teaching Taishanese on his blog, Toisanese Chop Suey, but the really great find is the Hoisanva English Dictionary from Gene Chin. 😀

From one of Aaron Lee’s blog post, ‘Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course’, I discovered that the U.S. Defense Language Institute was teaching a course in ‘Toishan’ back in the 1960s! They have since made the text material available online. (See Defense Language Institute’s ‘Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course’.) From that post too, I found a link to Ben’s Cantonese Practice Journal: Toishanese (台山話) Textbook Audio, where he has provided the audio material for the Defense Language Institute’s ‘Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course’. 😀

Finally! I have some learning materials for Toisan-wa! Okay, it is called ‘Taishanese’ now, but remember… “You can take the girl out of Toisan, but you can’t Toisan out of the girl.” 😉 For me, it will always be ‘Toisan-wa’.

Using the Defense Language Institute’s ‘Chinese-Cantonese (Toishan) Basic Course’ and the Hoisanva English Dictionary from Gene Chin, I should hopefully be able to improve my native language, Toisan, over time. At the very least, it should give me a better understanding of the language than I had when I was growing up. Will I still be studying Cantonese off and on? Sure, but I am definitely going to try out the Toisan materials I found. (I guess I might be flip-flopping between the two, checking the Toisan with the Cantonese to note the differences or to supplement Toisan with Cantonese. Oh, this is complicated!)

“What about Mandarin?” you may ask me.

Well, Mandarin is actually quite different from Toisan, and a lot of native Toisan speakers find Mandarin a bit difficult to pick up. It just doesn’t feel natural to us Toisan people. It’s like it’s ‘Chinese’, but not – this is kind of hard for me to explain. As difficult as it is for a native Toisan speaker to pick up Mandarin, it’s actually harder to go the other way around, that is, from Mandarin to Toisan or to Cantonese. I’d have a much easier time learning Mandarin if I go from Toisan to Cantonese to Mandarin (although that means I’d be in effect learning three languages, even if they are somewhat related; generally Toisan is considered to be a dialect of Cantonese although it’s possible it may have evolved separately).

One final Toisan link I found today for amusement’s sake (you’d have to be Toisan to get the humour or at least have some imagination): Toisan Lives (Check out the T-shirt designs. “Moh yoong” LOL.)

~~~C

The past month has been a bit crazy. I’ve just been trying to finish some things and then started working on others.

Here is some fiction that I’ve read recently:
Knife of Dreams (book 11 of The Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan
Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton. (I had read the graphic novel first, then The Laughing Corpse novel. But I wanted to contrast the novel with the graphic novel, so I decided to read Guilty Pleasures before moving on in the series of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels.)
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (Season Eight) in comics is finally completed. 🙂 I am waiting for the last Angel TPB from IDW. Then Buffy’s story and Angel’s story will continue under Dark Horse Comics. The new Angel series will be called Angel and Faith. (No, you aren’t imagining it, Faith’s last name was revealed to be ‘Lehane’ in the last issue of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (Season Eight) No, they never used a last name in the TV shows. Covers for the first issues of these two series are on Dark Horse Comics’ website already. See ‘Buffy Season Nine’ issue 1 Jo Chen cover and ‘Angel and Faith’ issue 1 Jo Chen cover’.

And now, my ‘to read’ list:
A Feast for Crows (book four of A Song of Ice and Fire) by George R.R. Martin
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin
Downbelow Station by C.J. Cherryh
Priestess of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Stormqueen! (part of The Ages of Chaos omnibus) by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Circus of the Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton
Stolen by Kelley Armstrong
Moon of 3 Rings by Andre Norton
Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn

I am currently reading A Feast for Crows now that HBO’s Game of Thrones is finished. It’s a bit confusing to be reading book four of A Song of Ice and Fire while watching the events of book one on-screen. I rather liked the adaptation to screen of the book, A Game of Thrones. They are preparing for season two of Game of Thrones, which is based on the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings. I seriously think HBO should rename the series, but whatever. Hopefully, they do just as good a job with book two as they did with book one. But yay! Back to A Feast for Crows. Book five, A Dance with Dragons, will be released soon, so I’m trying to catch up. At some point, I will re-watch all of Game of Thrones.

I’ve been in a bit of a studying mood. I decided to get back to studying languages.

I started studying Cantonese a few years back more out of a sense that I should know it, but tonal languages are hard if you don’t have a good ear for pitch. I am a native Taishanese speaker.  (Taishan is on the southern coast of China. Once a small town, it is now a city. Taishan was once called ‘Toisan’, so you may hear some Chinese people say they speak ‘Toisan’.) Taishanese is very similar to Cantonese which is why I decided to study Cantonese first and then Mandarin.

However, I don’t have much use for Cantonese or Mandarin right now. I can use Cantonese with my mom, but it often turns into Cantonese mixed with Toisan mixed with English – a very strange version of ‘Chinglish’. My mom does not speak Mandarin. I like the Chinese writing system though, but you really have to use that nearly every day to be even remotely good at it. So, I decided to put the Cantonese aside for a while. The written language for Cantonese is the same as they use for Mandarin, one of the reasons I like the Chinese writing system. Even if two Chinese people don’t speak the same language/dialect, the writing system would still allow them to communicate. If I ever get some more time, I think I will be more likely to get back to the Chinese writing than the Cantonese.

I studied French for eleven years continuously throughout school. A few years ago, I did a fairly thorough review of French grammar because there were a few things I hadn’t quite gotten the hang of yet. I was intending to increase my French vocabulary, but I’ve since decided that I don’t like the way French sounds all that much. I also don’t have much use for it, unless I visit France or somewhere else where they are speaking French. If that’s the case, it’s a bit of a review and adding some vocabulary – not too difficult to do.

There are other languages that I actually like and want to learn rather than Chinese or French. They are Korean (which I have been studying off and on for about a year or so), Spanish, Irish, and Dutch (which I did study consistently for a little bit – I need to do a review before moving on with it).

I like Korean because the language seems lively and fun without it feeling like a constant pop song as in Cantonese. I also like the writing system, called han’gul in Korean. Korean used to use the Chinese writing system, but then a new system was created to use with the language. The han’gul makes a whole lot of sense for Korean. Korean is however still a hard language to learn if English is your dominant language. (See “Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers”.)

For a while, I was switching between studying Korean and Cantonese – two very hard languages for an English speaker to pick up (although I probably have a slight edge since I grew up speaking Taishanese with my parents; note that Korean does have some words that are cognate to Cantonese, for example, “chung gwok” in Cantonese and “chunguk” in Korean for ‘China’). There are different reasons why Korean and Cantonese are difficult. Korean uses the subject-object-verb (SOV) construction which is different than the subject-verb-object (SVO) construction in English. For example, in Korean you’d say “I (subject) school-to (object) go (verb)” while in English, you’d say “I (subject) go (verb) to school (object).” Also, Korean has their own writing system. Cantonese is hard simply because it’s a tonal language. Some grammar points are different than English and some things are done in Cantonese that aren’t in English, but Cantonese is pretty much SVO. You can learn to speak and understand Cantonese without learning to write Chinese.

Since Korean is a pretty hard language to learn, I decided that I should just start studying an easier language on top of Korean. Since I’m not studying Cantonese as much, I’m really only focused on one hard language (Korean, and I’m starting to get used to the writing system and the SOV construction!), so why not just start an easier language? Sometimes, you can get your fill of one language for a bit. For me, it takes a day or two for new vocabulary to settle in before I can move on in that language. You also don’t ever ‘finish’ studying a language (I still learn new words in English sometimes), so there’s no point in waiting to learn another language. Since I’ve been wanting to learn Spanish, I decided to do a little bit of Spanish the other day. I don’t think this will be too hard to do on top of the Korean since I spent years studying French. (French and Spanish are both Romance languages.) Of course, there’s vocabulary to learn, but some words are cognate between languages.

I really want to learn Irish, but it seems much harder than Spanish or Dutch, so I will wait until I have a firmer grasp on Korean before I start Irish. As I mentioned earlier, I need to do a review of Dutch before I move on in it. Once I have a better grasp of Korean, maybe I’ll review Dutch and then start studying Irish or vice versa.

There are two languages I’d like to study from a purely academic perspective – Sanskrit and Latin. I started the Sanskrit a while back. Got past the pronunciation and learning the writing system, but I need to review those before moving on. Also since I’m only studying Sanskrit from an academic perspective regarding languages, I’m in no real rush with it.

For now, I’ll be busy enough with Korean and Spanish – and trying to catch up on my reading list above. 🙂

안녕히 가세요!
(‘Annyǒnghi kaseyo!’ is the English romanization. It’s “Goodbye” for when someone is leaving.)

¡Adiós, chao!

~~~C