Travel and other good things
Oct. 1st, 2024 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi[So this morning when I was running I met the usual black cat and crouched down to pay my respects; the cat put a polite paw on my knee and then climbed up to settle comfortably in my lap and get thoroughly stroked. I figured I was just going to have to scrap my plans for the day and sit there for the duration.]
Weird Chinese-Japanese false friend of the day: 暧昧, which means “vague, fuzzy” in Japanese (it’s used for fuzzy matches in translation software, but I was taught never to call them 暧昧 but always ファジー, in order not to make the client think we were doing sloppy work), but as far as I can tell means something more like “ambiguous, dubious, obscure, subtle, it’s complicated [romantically in particular]” in Chinese—what I might call 妖しい in Japanese, in short.
(My other recent 中日 confusion: I keep trying to say 客气 kèqì for “stingy” when I should be saying 小气 or 吝啬, because my mind goes to けち kechi first…)
Latest farmboy Chinese vocabulary:
Brief notes on brief trip to Korea! Also see various photos below.
Winifred Holtby in letters to Jean McWilliam from the 1920s, mostly about writing:
Photos: Lots of photos, see above. 
Be safe and well.
Weird Chinese-Japanese false friend of the day: 暧昧, which means “vague, fuzzy” in Japanese (it’s used for fuzzy matches in translation software, but I was taught never to call them 暧昧 but always ファジー, in order not to make the client think we were doing sloppy work), but as far as I can tell means something more like “ambiguous, dubious, obscure, subtle, it’s complicated [romantically in particular]” in Chinese—what I might call 妖しい in Japanese, in short.
(My other recent 中日 confusion: I keep trying to say 客气 kèqì for “stingy” when I should be saying 小气 or 吝啬, because my mind goes to けち kechi first…)
Latest farmboy Chinese vocabulary:
丝滑 smooth, either literally smooth to the touch or matters proceeding smoothly
日思夜想 to think of (or long for) something day and night
吃得消 to endure (and its opposite, 吃不消, to find something unendurable)
造孽 to commit a sin, to let yourself in for trouble, hard luck
骗你是小狗 cross my heart and hope to die (literally “I’m a puppy if I’m lying to you”)
扛不住 I can’t hold up my end any more (literally or figuratively)
日思夜想 to think of (or long for) something day and night
吃得消 to endure (and its opposite, 吃不消, to find something unendurable)
造孽 to commit a sin, to let yourself in for trouble, hard luck
骗你是小狗 cross my heart and hope to die (literally “I’m a puppy if I’m lying to you”)
扛不住 I can’t hold up my end any more (literally or figuratively)
Brief notes on brief trip to Korea! Also see various photos below.
Y’s time off comes in such odd ways that he likes to make the most of it, so we took a few days and went to Pusan. I had been there before and liked it; it was fun this time too, although almost unrecognizable. We stayed a night in Haeundae near enough to the sea to go wading, and I couldn’t resist collecting shells; also a wander around a fishing village, passing a boat with my name on it (sort of). Also visited Gamcheon, up on the hill with its pastel houses, which was about five million times more touristy than I remembered, but nice when we went down a back stairway and everything went quiet, apart from an unreasonable number of cats; we emerged on an avenue that could have been the main street of any sleepy Korean provincial town.
Unsurprisingly lots of good food, including the special treat of abalone congee. Really the best meal was in one of the hole-in-the-wall cafeterias that are a dime a dozen everywhere in Korea, looking like a revamped living room and run by an ajumma more interested in the drama on TV than her customers; I ordered the most straightforward thing on the menu, tofu sprinkled with sesame seeds and served with a pile of piping hot stirfried kimchi and pork, rice on the side. I like my kimchi (the napa cabbage variety) sour as well as spicy, and this was perfect.
We walked around the edges of Yongdusan Park, which I did remember and which is still lovely, and visited the markets for Y to sample three different varieties of hotteok (all good) and me to give in to roast chestnuts; the rest of the time we just walked here and there, up and down more hills than I care to remember, and enjoyed the city-watching. Saying “wow, Korea is so much like Japan” is a fraught remark at best, but there are enough structural similarities that it feels very close to home, if unmistakably foreign as well.
I had a terrible time with the language—I was never anything like fluent in Korean but I used to have passable communication skills, but this time in order to say literally anything, up to and including yes and no, I had to consciously and forcibly set the switch in my brain to “Korean” or else everything would come out in Chinese. Frustrating! How do real polyglots do it? It was tantalizing to understand tiny bits of things, though; if I had nine lives I’d certainly spend one of them mastering Korean for real.
On the way back, instead of going straight home, we took the night ferry to Fukuoka. (The ferry was nice! It involves at least as much sit-around-and-wait as an airplane, but you get to lie down and sleep once you’re on it—we had a zakone room, just a carpeted space shared with half a dozen other people, but everyone was quiet and no one was sick, and it was just a very peaceful way to travel.) In Fukuoka we visited the shrine of poor exiled Tenjin-san and rode in the swan boats (pedal boats rented by the hour) in a local park, seeing hordes of napping ducks and a few meditating turtles. And then finally home.
Unsurprisingly lots of good food, including the special treat of abalone congee. Really the best meal was in one of the hole-in-the-wall cafeterias that are a dime a dozen everywhere in Korea, looking like a revamped living room and run by an ajumma more interested in the drama on TV than her customers; I ordered the most straightforward thing on the menu, tofu sprinkled with sesame seeds and served with a pile of piping hot stirfried kimchi and pork, rice on the side. I like my kimchi (the napa cabbage variety) sour as well as spicy, and this was perfect.
We walked around the edges of Yongdusan Park, which I did remember and which is still lovely, and visited the markets for Y to sample three different varieties of hotteok (all good) and me to give in to roast chestnuts; the rest of the time we just walked here and there, up and down more hills than I care to remember, and enjoyed the city-watching. Saying “wow, Korea is so much like Japan” is a fraught remark at best, but there are enough structural similarities that it feels very close to home, if unmistakably foreign as well.
I had a terrible time with the language—I was never anything like fluent in Korean but I used to have passable communication skills, but this time in order to say literally anything, up to and including yes and no, I had to consciously and forcibly set the switch in my brain to “Korean” or else everything would come out in Chinese. Frustrating! How do real polyglots do it? It was tantalizing to understand tiny bits of things, though; if I had nine lives I’d certainly spend one of them mastering Korean for real.
On the way back, instead of going straight home, we took the night ferry to Fukuoka. (The ferry was nice! It involves at least as much sit-around-and-wait as an airplane, but you get to lie down and sleep once you’re on it—we had a zakone room, just a carpeted space shared with half a dozen other people, but everyone was quiet and no one was sick, and it was just a very peaceful way to travel.) In Fukuoka we visited the shrine of poor exiled Tenjin-san and rode in the swan boats (pedal boats rented by the hour) in a local park, seeing hordes of napping ducks and a few meditating turtles. And then finally home.
Winifred Holtby in letters to Jean McWilliam from the 1920s, mostly about writing:
11/13/21: They say it is bad manners to type one’s letters, but I want to get this new wheel into running order, so perhaps you will excuse this temporary lapse of good behaviour. Personally, if any of my correspondents wrote as badly as I do, I should be only too pleased for them to adopt some method of communication which did not necessitate my struggles with their calligraphy. Did you know—but of course you would—that you can spell calligraphy with one L or two? I didn’t until I looked it up this minute. I have adopted the family dictionary, because I considered that my need of guidance was greater than that of my parents who continually say they can’t think why I spell so badly.
6/20/22: Now, my idea of a happy ending is where circumstances go right and wrong higgledy-piggledy, as they do in life, and at the end the hero or heroine is still undaunted, with plenty of hope and enjoyment of such fine things as are left, and a kind of promise of better luck next time—perhaps.
6/28/22: I am trying to write a novel that won’t write itself. It nearly drives me crazy. I can’t get the words, although I know what I want to say. I ought to let it alone a bit and can’t.
5/12/23: I am having the devil of a time with my book. First it was too short; now it’s miles too long, and back and back I have to go, wasting time over the beastly thing that will probably be no good in the end. The minor characters simply refuse to stay minor. The major ones insist on telling me everything about their perfectly ordinary pasts as well as their somewhat amorphous and uninteresting presents.
7/21/24: I did not interfere [with a confused public speaker], because I always pray myself that when I am confused in a speech an angel of the Lord shall confound the minds even of my brethren also.
5/19/25: But oh, my feet! I take the poor things all over London to find pretty shoes for them. Says the young lady, “Not in that size, moddam,” and my poor feet grow more and more depressed. I have to bring them home in a bus.
9/7/25: I am going to spend the morning at [Stella Benson’s] house to-morrow going through her new book with her and one or two of her friends. She has scrapped most of the book, she says, and feels too depressed to embark on it again alone without some one telling her that it is worth while. It is so very encouraging to hear of people who can write books like hers scrapping them.
10/1/25: Everybody dies in my present book, which is not really sad. After all, it simply means that I take the tale on rather further than most. We hardly ever any of us write about immortals, so I suppose that all heroines die one day. Mine, however, kills its heroine in the first quarter, and the hero is most of the time over fifty. But I can’t help that.
10/6/26: It is queer how one goes on making the better acquaintance with one’s characters, just as though they were people. I could no more make mine do what I want them to do, once I have created them, than I could make you do something. …When I am writing, I am so happy—no, not happy, but interested—that I don’t want to do anything, go anywhere, or see any one. Only one can’t go on all the time—and the real world keeps coming in.
1/10/27: I believe that there is little prose which can stir me in the same way as Sir Walter Raleigh’s. Isn’t the Discovery of Guiana an endless joy? He will keep appearing quite irrelevantly in my novels, because I am so much in love with him that I cannot keep him out. That is, I suppose, wrong, but I am coming to the conclusion that one must sometimes write in that sort of sublimated idiocy which comes from being in love—with a person, a place, or an idea. It doesn’t much matter.
6/20/22: Now, my idea of a happy ending is where circumstances go right and wrong higgledy-piggledy, as they do in life, and at the end the hero or heroine is still undaunted, with plenty of hope and enjoyment of such fine things as are left, and a kind of promise of better luck next time—perhaps.
6/28/22: I am trying to write a novel that won’t write itself. It nearly drives me crazy. I can’t get the words, although I know what I want to say. I ought to let it alone a bit and can’t.
5/12/23: I am having the devil of a time with my book. First it was too short; now it’s miles too long, and back and back I have to go, wasting time over the beastly thing that will probably be no good in the end. The minor characters simply refuse to stay minor. The major ones insist on telling me everything about their perfectly ordinary pasts as well as their somewhat amorphous and uninteresting presents.
7/21/24: I did not interfere [with a confused public speaker], because I always pray myself that when I am confused in a speech an angel of the Lord shall confound the minds even of my brethren also.
5/19/25: But oh, my feet! I take the poor things all over London to find pretty shoes for them. Says the young lady, “Not in that size, moddam,” and my poor feet grow more and more depressed. I have to bring them home in a bus.
9/7/25: I am going to spend the morning at [Stella Benson’s] house to-morrow going through her new book with her and one or two of her friends. She has scrapped most of the book, she says, and feels too depressed to embark on it again alone without some one telling her that it is worth while. It is so very encouraging to hear of people who can write books like hers scrapping them.
10/1/25: Everybody dies in my present book, which is not really sad. After all, it simply means that I take the tale on rather further than most. We hardly ever any of us write about immortals, so I suppose that all heroines die one day. Mine, however, kills its heroine in the first quarter, and the hero is most of the time over fifty. But I can’t help that.
10/6/26: It is queer how one goes on making the better acquaintance with one’s characters, just as though they were people. I could no more make mine do what I want them to do, once I have created them, than I could make you do something. …When I am writing, I am so happy—no, not happy, but interested—that I don’t want to do anything, go anywhere, or see any one. Only one can’t go on all the time—and the real world keeps coming in.
1/10/27: I believe that there is little prose which can stir me in the same way as Sir Walter Raleigh’s. Isn’t the Discovery of Guiana an endless joy? He will keep appearing quite irrelevantly in my novels, because I am so much in love with him that I cannot keep him out. That is, I suppose, wrong, but I am coming to the conclusion that one must sometimes write in that sort of sublimated idiocy which comes from being in love—with a person, a place, or an idea. It doesn’t much matter.
Photos: Lots of photos, see above.
Be safe and well.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-01 02:10 am (UTC)Awwwwwwww! <3
but nice when we went down a back stairway and everything went quiet, apart from an unreasonable number of cats
Hee! I love that you found cats in Korea, too. <3
Winifred Holtby in letters to Jean McWilliam from the 1920s, mostly about writing:
Ohh, those were lovely excerpts! <3 <3 <3 I enjoyed the photos, too, especially the concrete rainbow. <3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:07 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked Winifred Holtby, she's great; and glad to please with the photos <3 <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2024-10-01 06:14 pm (UTC)Ha! This is the core of fannishness (at least for me).
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-01 06:31 pm (UTC)Oh that's so cute! I wonder what's so wrong with puppies that that's the imagery. Puppies lie? Make puppy eyes?
And pics! 😍 Love the peeking kitty and the rainbow and the sea shells and the pretty roof!
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:09 am (UTC)My impression is that it's basically "dogs bad" and the 小 that makes it "puppy" rather than "dog" is just added for euphony, but I love your interpretations ;)
and glad you liked the pics! The peeping kitty cracked us up. <3
no subject
Date: 2024-10-01 09:09 pm (UTC)That sounds like a lovely holiday otherwise, though! Covetous of your piping hot sour kimchi, yum. One day the weather will settle down enough for piping hot anything!
Unreasonable numbers of cats! \o/
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:10 am (UTC)lol this is a great phrase, and glad it's not just me! Soup indeed, frantically fishing around with a ladle for the right expression...
One day the weather will settle down enough for piping hot anything!
It's just barely starting to get cool here too, but I figured the spiciness would be the right thing for the heat ;)
<3
no subject
Date: 2024-10-02 12:36 am (UTC)骗你是小狗
I love this.
Sounds like a lovely trip. Thank you for the photos! I especially love the cats and the staircases. Mmmm, hotteok sound yummy.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-02 02:06 am (UTC)I love the way you write about your travels! And abalone congee sounds like a really cool experience! (Not into abalone, but I'll try it every time haha.)
“wow, Korea is so much like Japan”
I'm guilty of also saying this about Taiwan (or at least Taipei)...
this time in order to say literally anything, up to and including yes and no, I had to consciously and forcibly set the switch in my brain to “Korean” or else everything would come out in Chinese
Yeah I think yes and no are such non-words that I always end up saying them in the wrong language in any foreign context. I've said Japanese "hai" a lot to my Mandarin-speaking AirBnB host because 是/是的/对 isn't natural to me... well at least I can pretend I was speaking Cantonese lol
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:13 am (UTC)Glad you enjoy them! <3 (Bear in mind I'm not a native speaker of either one and I'm probably getting things wrong here and there...)
“wow, Korea is so much like Japan”
I'm guilty of also saying this about Taiwan (or at least Taipei)...
It's funny--Taipei is obviously much more like Japan compared to, you know, any random European or US city, but it seemed much more "foreign" to me than Pusan. Maybe partly just the climate etc.--different fruits in the greengrocer, different flowers blooming?
I've said Japanese "hai" a lot to my Mandarin-speaking AirBnB host because 是/是的/对 isn't natural to me... well at least I can pretend I was speaking Cantonese lol
lol yeah, I feel this, I kept saying 对 in Korea and trying to pass it off as the Korean "ne" ;)
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 06:31 am (UTC)but it seemed much more "foreign" to me than Pusan.
Yeah this is so interesting! From my end I come from a third-world country so my comparisons have much broader strokes. Clean, walkable cities... Rentable bikes... Good mass transit... Things we don't have that I'm sure are also in KR (which I've never been to), except Taipei's food options have greater JP influence. I think TW produce might lean closer to SEA, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about this.
How convenient that these East Asian languages have all these points of similarity (and sometimes real overlap)... for plausible deniability when accidentally misspeaking. ^^;
no subject
Date: 2024-10-04 12:33 pm (UTC)I'm glad the weirdness of my brain is entertaining <3
Clean, walkable cities... Rentable bikes... Good mass transit... Things we don't have that I'm sure are also in KR (which I've never been to), except Taipei's food options have greater JP influence. I think TW produce might lean closer to SEA, but I'm not knowledgeable enough about this.
I did not think about it that way, huh! Good to know about. (And yeah, now that you mention it there were SO many Japanese chain restaurants, stores, etc. in Taipei...). The fruit and vegetables for sale there did seem more "tropical" to me compared to here or in Korea.
On reflection, I have like half a dozen DW friends now from Malaysia or Singapore, but I've never set foot in SEA. Something to keep in mind for future travel...
no subject
Date: 2024-10-02 07:31 pm (UTC)As is right and proper, should the cat wish it!
I'm glad you had a lovely trip!
no subject
Date: 2024-10-03 02:11 am (UTC)Indeed! And thank you :)
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Date: 2024-10-04 12:35 pm (UTC)That is so cute!
Thank you for sharing your lovely pictures and impressions of Korea and cats.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-05 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-06 11:08 am (UTC)Oh that is a beautiful one! <3
How do real polyglots do it?
I don't know! We discussed this on the small discord lately, and all came to the same conclusion: for those of us from Germany, there are two languages at the forefront that just *work*, German and English. (No idea how to get that second language to get prominent enough for that, though.)
But then there is exactly *one* additional language that can be used, and all the other languages we may have learned at some point recede behind that one, to only come out after much coaxing and concentration. Always to be interrupted and mixed-up with that one language again when you're not careful. I used to be able to speak very good French, and a little Polish, but right now all that comes out voluntarily is Chinese.
It's interesting! (If frustrating, of course.)
I am trying to write a novel that won’t write itself. It nearly drives me crazy. I can’t get the words, although I know what I want to say. I ought to let it alone a bit and can’t.
Oh wow. <3 Always the same. <3
Gorgeous pictures! The pastel houses! <3 The sleepy cats! The peeking cat ears! <3 The round stairs are gorgeous. The kind of wavy fractal forms one doesn't usually get from architecture. <3
Ha, and the last photo tricked me into thinking it was a scenery, with weirdly wavy sky. :DDD
no subject
Date: 2024-10-08 01:04 pm (UTC)Yes, exactly! Although in my case of course it's Japanese and English, not German. (I wish.) (Should I know what the small discord is?)
Glad you liked the pictures! I really liked the wavy staircase, just popping up for no reason in the middle of town. <3