nnozomi

this is mostly just self-satisfaction

I passed HSK6! Well, technically apparently you don’t actually pass or fail levels 5 and 6, you just get a numerical score, but the pass/fail line for the other levels is around 60% and I ended up with 76%, so I feel okay about saying I passed. The listening test was a bitch, pardon my French; listening is so hard without context, plus my mind tends to wander…but I scored just about the same as I’d been doing on practice tests, so at least not worse. For some reason my score on the reading/grammar part was MUCH higher than on any practice test, thanks Xi-laoshi for going over the awful grammar questions with me a million times (I hate this section, you have to choose which of four long sentences contains a grammatical error). The writing section (where you have to read a passage and then summarize it from memory) was all about Liu Ying, a charisma train conductor from Changchun, who is a fun person to know about. Incidentally this was the online test; I would never pass the version where you have to write an essay by hand, thank God (or rather 谢天谢地) for computers and smartphones. (The test itself was a bit odd—I was expecting, from the strict rules, a huge auditorium, lockers for belongings, etc., but it was a little battered classroom with a couple dozen people spread across HSK2, 4, and 6, presided over by a middle-aged Chinese lady speaking Japanese with a heavy local accent—“your bag? oh, just put it under your desk.” It was nice to think about absolutely nothing but the content of the test for two hours or so.)

I’ve been reflecting on how different my Chinese study experience has been from studying Japanese. I had four years of classroom Japanese in college, including six months as an exchange student and a summer at Middlebury; I also watched some anime with friends, started reading Japanese books as soon as I was up to it, went through a period when I was watching all the Toyokawa Etsushi dramas I could get my hands on…but definitely laid my groundwork in the classroom, where I was fortunate enough to have good teachers. For Chinese I haven’t done any formal study at all, unless you count a weekly hour of conversation with Yu-jie and then Xi-laoshi; otherwise I’ve had Duolingo (not good, but not bad practice for a beginner), teaching myself from the lifesaving Chinese Grammar Wiki (and the Anki deck made from it), more Anki decks (HSK vocabulary and my homemade vocab one), A-Pei and our text-chats, the lovely people who kindly hang out at

guardian_learning, and of course incomparable teachers in the form of Zhu Yilong (in part via the blessed Wenella), Bai Yu, Liu Chang, Jiang Dunhao and his fellow farmboys, and their various c-ent colleagues. I think I got extremely lucky with Chinese study, in terms of a) having the time available to spend, which many people do not, and b) getting born on third base by knowing the characters already from Japanese.
Oh dear, that got long. Anyway, unfortunately passing the HSK does not magically confer fluency, but it’s a nice milestone to hit and hopefully motivation to keep going.

Other random Chinese-related stuff. Gu Lin Ruei-Yang is a pitcher for one of the Japanese baseball teams, a Tayal indigenous Taiwanese guy from Taichung who uses two family names (his mother’s and father’s), an interesting collection of characteristics; the history of indigenous Taiwanese success in baseball goes back to the legendary prewar Jiayi Agricultural High School team.
Silkworms are called 蚕宝宝, a word which adorably contains an affectionate diminutive (a lot cuter than silkworms are to look at, appreciate their work without googling them).
Listening to an interview with my favorite singer in which, doing a little self-PR, he says 我不挑活儿，可盐可甜. I was very pleased with myself (sorry, more bragging) for hearing and understanding this; 我不挑活儿 just means “I’ll take any work that’s going,” but uses more colloquial phrasing than the classroom words 选择 and 工作. 可盐可甜 I had to look up, but got the general sense of: it’s literally “I can do both salty and sweet,” and figuratively “I can be hardcore or soft and cute,” roughly. A fun phrase.
Also Zhu Yilong’s birthday vlog, in which some inspired person got him to go to a park and have a barbecue; he looks gorgeous and seems to be genuinely enjoying himself, singing along to the car radio, relaxing in nature, and earnestly cooking noodles. <3

Music: João Gilberto’s Disse Alguem, which is “All of Me” with Portuguese lyrics, and William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag, an old favorite of my dad’s and also of mine (the link is to Yeol Eum Son’s performance, which is one of the closer ones to my father’s).

Translating a table of chemicals, some of which cracked me up. “Glacial acetic acid” sounds like what happens when you put vinegar in the freezer; “methyl cellosolve” should be the brandname for a luthier’s tool (do you think they offer violinsolve and violasolve too?). And I certainly don’t plan to go anywhere near “fuming nitric acid” until it calms down. Also, this particular source text confounded me for a LONG time with 息化, breathification, which wouldn’t turn up anywhere, until I realized it was a visual typo for 臭化, literally stinkyfication and chemically bromide.

Random other things: I rediscovered cobalt.tools and am delighted to find that it downloads not only YouTube but also bilibili; now how long will it take me to download my huge backlog of bookmarked B站 videos? and will my computer have enough storage space? (I’m grabby about things I like online, whether music or fics etc.; I want to download everything, just because you never know when someone will see fit to delete it.)
For writing purposes a few days ago, I honestly genuinely found myself googling “why is the sky blue.”
So there’s a recent commercial on Japanese TV (I see CMs when I’m watching baseball games, I can’t help it) in which a giant, besuited salaryman is fighting off a monster amid a Japanese cityscape, Godzilla-style, while his wife and teenage daughter watch from their apartment window: “Oh dear, it’s your dad again. I hope he won’t knock down the supermarket this time.” “My boyfriend asked me if I can turn giant-sized too…” with a look of teenage angst. I’m entertained by the possibilities for stories here. (I don’t think this commercial has fulfilled its original mandate, on account of I don’t actually know what it’s advertising for, but it’s fun.)

Photos: Seasonal azaleas, irises, maple leaves, and other flowers I don’t know by name, as well as some carp flags and interesting machinery.

Be safe and well.

Listening recently to Elis Regina sing Ih! Meu Deus do céu, a fantastic song that I tend to forget about in favor of “Amor até o fim” or “Aguas de março” and so on. “Espontaneidade eu sou, eu sou / Na misticidade eu vou, eu vou…” jeez.

Latest farmboy words: 劈叉, the splits; 哇塞, which just means “wow,” usually positive, but I like the way it sounds; 大波斯菊, cosmos flowers (literally “large Persian chrysanthemums”); 熟鸡蛋, boiled eggs (literally “mature eggs” although technically that’s a different usage); 克隆人, clone (a transliteration); 五花八门, all different kinds of something (literally “five flowers and eight doors”)

My friend A-Pei is also a technical translator, in her case from English to Chinese, and the English source texts she receives are sometimes not what they might be. The other day she texted me a line from an agricultural machinery manual: “This combination will reduce the risk of serious injury or death, should the machine be upset.”
We agreed that the machine would certainly pose greater risks if it got emotional or lost its temper. (机器难过时风险变大，请大家注意安全!) It took both of us a moment to arrive at what the source text actually meant to say…

At the Saturday juku last week I happened to work with two siblings in a row, seventh-grade Yuki and his ninth-grade sister Satsuki (pseudonyms). She said cheerfully “My brother’s smarter than me, his English grades are better than mine were in seventh.” Me: Well, how much time did you spend studying English every day in seventh grade? Satsuki: Maybe ten minutes? Me: How about your brother? Satsuki: I don’t know, half an hour, no, an hour? Me: Are you sure this is a question of who’s smarter than who?

I have temporarily (?) finished revising the translation of the Miura Shion novel I’ve been working on (revising a translation is SO MUCH easier than revising my own writing, I don’t have to worry if the plot or structure or emotional beats work, just make sure the words are where they should be, phew); next comes the far more difficult process of trying to figure out how to get it published, oh God. In the meantime, I need something new to translate! Based on past lists of possibilities, if interested please cast a vote or two below? (I have never made a DW poll before, I hope it works).

Poll #32655

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

View Respondents

What should I translate next?

View Answers

Akasaka Mari’s essays on Japan’s struggles immediately postwar
0 (0.0%)

Letters and diaries of Chujo (Miyamoto) Yuriko and Yuasa Yoshiko in the 1920s
0 (0.0%)

One or more of Hara Takeshi's books about trains, emperors, 1970s Communism, and history in general
0 (0.0%)

Haraguchi Takeshi’s book on the Osaka day laborers’ district and its history and sociology
0 (0.0%)

Hasuike Kaoru’s accounts of his abduction to North Korea, eventual return to Japan, and later visits to South Korea and work as a Korean to Japanese translator
0 (0.0%)

Imaizumi Takayuki’s book on his imaginary city maps
1 (9.1%)

One or both of two random books about falling in love with Finland and Finnish, by Inagaki Miharu and Takahashi Erika
0 (0.0%)

Kisaragi Kazusa’s YA book about a boy who figures out he has a good singing voice in the guise of a girl
0 (0.0%)

Komatsu Ayako’s YA book about a high school girl who discovers Arabic calligraphy and Islam through her sister’s half-Turkish classmate
0 (0.0%)

Kuroiwa Hisako’s biography of Sakai Toshihiko
0 (0.0%)

Li Kotomi|Li Qinfeng's essays about foreignness and language and sexuality
5 (45.5%)

Maekawa Masayuki’s book about bicycling around South Korea and revisiting its colonized history
1 (9.1%)

One or more of Miyabe Miyuki’s mystery novels involving telepathy and/or time travel
0 (0.0%)

Nakajima Atsushi’s letters to his wife and young children from the South Pacific in 1940 or thereabouts
1 (9.1%)

Tai Shotaro’s diary of a year working as a conductor on the Osaka city trams in 1930 or so
1 (9.1%)

Hiko Tanaka’s MG trilogy about the first year of junior high school
0 (0.0%)

Tawada Yoko’s essays on language, writing and translation
1 (9.1%)

Yamamoto Yukihisa’s novel about a bus tour guide, her company problems, and the power of Pino ice cream
0 (0.0%)

Yonehara Mari’s novel and essays about her childhood at a Soviet school in Prague and its effects on her later life as a Russian interpreter
1 (9.1%)

Various present and prewar oral histories
0 (0.0%)

Favorites from my Chinese song list, part 3 of 3. Three from Liu Chang: 再睡五分钟, making “let me sleep in another five minutes” sound extremely sexy (and 我以为是伦敦时间 always makes me laugh); 谢谢你来听我唱歌, with its lovely syncopations and wistful lyrics on 不怕轻易受伤; and 雨人 (this particular video has a terrific English translation), with the long sad note on 不闻不问 and the way 天大地大的 almost comes out as scat syllables. Along with that one, LTR has the best soundtrack going as far as I’m concerned: 往下跳 still makes me sad, the grief all the way through actually emphasized by the major third of 笔记已合上, and the title song 重启 is for my money some of the best singing Zhu Yilong’s ever done, from the playful-wistful catch in 人们在追寻答案 to the short phrases making up 河川自由奔流会流向哪里, where the melody is major but the harmony wanders into the minor and his voice knows it. Elsewhere, 灵光 because it’s the only sodagreen song I know where you can imagine a whole arena full of people singing along (and probably crying); the way Wu Qingfeng hits the chorus on 霎时灵光拨弄我心弦 is dazzling. Two different versions of 麦芒, fast and loud (warning for flashing lights) and sung by all ten people (this is the farmboys) with each one’s style distinct (and I do like syncopations, okay, the verse makes nice use of them), plus a quieter version sung by Jiang Dunhao solo, where his lower range is lovely. Finally 水星记; the version I really like best is Liu Chang and Wang Leda fooling around, but there are a lot of others, so I’ve linked Shan Yichun. The rising phrase on 还有多远才能进入你的心 does me in, along with the sudden minor on 那个人; I could listen to that so many times.

Photos: This year’s first plum blossoms, some other assorted outdoor moments, a cat that will complain loudly about how cold it is but not actually let you do anything about it, and Jiji-chan thinking I can’t see her.

Be safe and well.

Assorted little things. I’m way too pleased with myself for translating “立flag” as “famous last words”; not universally applicable, but idiomatically pretty good, if I do say it myself. / For work purposes I recently discovered an academic institution called the Center for Research and Education of Natural Hazards; it’s important work and I shouldn’t get silly about the name, but man, I wish it were possible to educate natural hazards to be less hazardous! / The other day Y took me to an exhibition of Nagano Mamoru’s work; I couldn’t help grumbling about the short skirts, but I was blown away by the fantastic level of detail and also the little notes throughout the sketches, just someone who’s not only extremely good at his job but also consistently has enormous fun with it. See also the pictures below—photos of postcards, sorry, but the paintings are absolutely gorgeous.

Latest farmboy words. 土土的: unsophisticated, uncouth, down-home (lit. earthy); 蔓越莓, cranberries (“vine berries”); 豆沙, red bean paste (this one is weird to me because in Japanese it would be 馅子 (in the unlikely event of being written in characters), a word which in Chinese, as far as I know, refers to any edible paste, such as the middle of dumplings); 怒发冲冠, seething with anger (lit. so angry your hair stands up and knocks your hat off); 巴拉巴拉, blah blah blah (phonetically bālābālā); 嘎嘣嘎嘣, crisp (as in a clear voice or a delicious pie crust).

More of my favorites from my C-songs playlist, part 2 of 3. 一格格 as sung by Janice Vidal and Jay Fung, when they both come in on 难以想象 with the VI chord on the raised tonic that’s such a harmonic shock, and then the sudden switch from ballad to delightful bouncy silliness in the chorus. Bai Yu in 小幸运 singing 一尘不染的真心 with a real ache in his voice; Zhu Yilong on the second time through the bridge in 太阳, filling 还有我站在这里 with passion. 小城回忆 is not a very memorable song overall (and Zhao Yibo, bless him, is an actor who sings a bit rather than a serious singer), but the high II above the tonic on 已飞了数万里, right near the end, is gorgeously bright and warm and open. 我成为我的同时 gets me with the leap up to 要往明天去 and the way it hovers on V there, plus the switch at the very end from ten voices in chorus, fast and loud, to one soft slow solo. 梦开始的地方, where Zhu Yilong actually gets to sing in his natural baritone range for once in his life; 望 (okay, I would have to like this one regardless [see username] but I do anyway), where the key change and the float up to Zhou Shen’s high range on 绕啊绕 always stun me; 心酸, a decent song rendered mesmerizing by Wu Qingfeng’s voice, especially the repeated drift up to the vii note. 以后, where Jiang Dunhao combines spat-out-crisp enunciation with delicious syncopation and sweetness; 甘暑么 with the two vocalists perfectly matched, and the happy chorus with the sad lyrics.

Photos, well, not really: three of Nagano Mamoru’s paintings as noted above.

Be safe and well.

Belated happy New Year! Just a few things I’ve been enjoying lately.

There’s a Korean place nearby that serves big bowls of dried-radish-stem soup, which sounds dubious and is, with rice on the side, a delicious satisfying winter meal. In Korean it’s shiraegi soup, a word I unfortunately tend to confuse with sseuregi, garbage, and even less explicably with tieosseugi, the grammatical/notational rule for where you put spaces between words. One of these days I’m going to end up asking for a bowl of tieosseugi soup and the poor ajumma is going to be very confused. If there’s alphabet pasta, is there hangul pasta too? I would absolutely eat soup with little edible hangul floating around in it.

Recent farmboy vocabulary:
三脚猫: an amateur, a dilettante (literally a three-legged cat)
麦片: oatmeal (“wheat pieces” are oatmeal, but “potato pieces” are potato chips/crisps; not very consistent in what size the pieces are!)
烂梗: a dumb joke, what Japanese would call a dad joke
拐弯抹角: roundabout, zig-zagging, the long way around (literal or figurative)
齁: added to a flavor (sweet, salty, etc.) to indicate that it’s too much so and tastes bad
太甜了, 我的天! 舔一舔: not a new word in itself, just a comment about honey that doubles as tone practice: “it’s so sweet, oh my god, have a lick,” in which the syllable tian gets used three times in one breath with three different tones (tián sweet, tiān heaven, tiǎn lick)

I tend to (try to) be strict with myself about how often I’m allowed to read/listen to things I really like (books, fanfic, music), because otherwise I’ll go back to them over and over and over again and the bloom will come off a little, not that I like them any less, just that I end up knowing them so well. (Case in point; I haven’t reread Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight and Dragonquest in many years, even though I still think of them as favorite books, on account of having read them almost literally to the point of memorization in my childhood/early teens. When I do read them every line is already printed on my brain, and although that’s a nice thing in its own way, with my current favorites I still want to keep some of the shock of delight.) With regard to music, as I’ve mentioned I have a couple of playlists of favorites (one for classical/jazz/Brazilian/miscellaneous, one for C-songs), and I listen to them a little bit at a time, mostly while I’m writing my original thing (self-bribe).
Long 前置き, but lately I’ve been working through my C-song playlist, and man, some of them are just so good. sodagreen’s 无眠—as a song I’m only moderately in favor, but Wu Qingfeng has so much voice. (It’s so strange in a way that people have compared him to Zhou Shen—I get that they’re both singers with androgynous voices, but their, mm, density? affect? is so different.) Zhou Shen himself covering 敢爱敢做 in Cantonese—he’s justly famous for his high range but the low note he hits around 3:18-ish is STUNNING. Jiang Dunhao covering 就是爱你, singing 像绿洲给了沙漠 with a husky sweetness that does me in every time. Zhou Shen again, in 借过一下, where the contrast with his normal gentle floaty image works to enhance the punch when he spits out 你是你，我是我. A-Mei with her throat wide open on the title line of 也许明天. The wistful syncopations on 谁为我留下… from 如燕 (it’s good whoever sings it, from Olivia Ong’s original on, but I like this short a cappella cover). Zhu Yilong belting out 没人懂！ in 谢谢侬. Li Hao, ballad-sweet and playful, promising 在晴天雨天白天旁晚为你守候 in 骗你是小狗. Zhou Shen again in 也很值得, giving me chills and thrills every single time on 你是那个人.
…and that’s just excerpts from the first half of my playlist! Part two coming at some point.

Photos: just a few I thought would be auspicious for the New Year, some citrus, some goldfish (?), a shrine camphor tree (this is from the shrine we always go to on New Year’s, a little old-fashioned one on its own little hill, and the sacred tree always reminds me of the Father Tree from Elfquest), a station at sunset

Be safe and well.

I’m in one of those Brahms things where I went and listened to the Second Symphony and now I have to keep listening to it over and over again because nothing else will do. It’s one of my all-time top five symphonies anyway, the happy-ending one as opposed to Brahms Four (also in my top five), the first and fourth movements are so joyous and the second movement is so painful and lovely, how am I supposed to move on to anything else?
(But I do listen to non-Brahms things occasionally. I’ve posted this one before, a double feature of “Meditação” and “Barato Total,” two totally different but both fabulous Brazilian songs; this version is a chorus of college kids recording (maybe during the pandemic) at home, so you can enjoy their faces and one girl’s cat into the bargain.)

Y and I went to a fancy cake shop the other day, partly for the cakes and partly because it’s in a beautiful old building (see photos below). Instead of giving you a menu, they bring you a tray of delicious cakes to select from, maybe twenty varieties, very hard to choose. The young man sitting alone at the table next to us had made it easier for himself by ordering FIVE cakes instead of one, and was eating his way peacefully through them, unhurried. I mean, there are obviously health-type reasons for not doing that on the regular, but damn would I like to have the nerve to say “I”ll have that one AND that one AND…”. I think the next time I’m afraid of what people might think, I’ll tell myself to remember the five-cakes guy.

Chinese: this week’s farmboy vocabulary (one is actually from a fic I was reading instead, but I suspect the farmboys use it too at some point):
夸人 to praise someone (potentially over and above the facts)
嘎嘎香 slang for “delicious”
晦气 unlucky, suffering from bad luck
插队 to cut in line
书签 a bookmark
~归～ similar to ~是~ (same word front and back in both cases), something like “for all ~ is the case…” (this one is so much easier to express in Japanese)

I saw somewhere—it must have been in one of the blessed Wenella’s interview videos, but I don’t remember which one—that the alien language in Zhu Yilong’s new film was made by modifying Chaozhouhua|Teochew|潮州话, on account of there were a bunch of Teochew speakers among the production staff? Somebody please find out more about this—I want to know what they did!

If you remember I posted a while back about the Miura Shion novel I’m translating, very slowly, for my own amusement, and boy am I amused; I’d forgotten what a fun book it is. Under a tight deadline, Akari keeps messing with the pseudo-medieval romance novel she’s translating into Japanese, giving the minor character she’s fallen for more to do and making the heroine less passive; meanwhile she’s dealing in real life with her grumpy father and laid-back boyfriend and…
Here's a scene (very rough draft) where her boyfriend is reading her translation-in-progress. Not really NSFW but kind of? ( Read more... ) And a paragraph from Akari’s visit to the local baths after Kanna demonstrates his prowess as romance hero. ( Read more... ) In which I find myself doing to Akari (just a little) what she’s doing to her romance novel; she just says “thinking about that kind of thing,” but I couldn’t resist making it “mind full of vocabulary and breasts.”

I have actually gotten a (perhaps temporary) position with a local amateur orchestra playing the bassoon; given that I’ve been practicing a couple years now, I am just amazingly terrible at it, but they’re very patient. It’s fun! My mouth gets tired and also my left wrist gets tired because playing sitting down is hard, and the number of wrong notes and not-there-at-all notes and fortissimo pianos and God knows what I’ve produced is appalling, but the view from the woodwind section is neat. The thing with the bassoon, unlike the string section, is that you’re either playing your own part with nobody else doing it or you’re in unison with one other person, both of which, as a bit of a closet exhibitionist, I find an interesting challenge. Let’s see if I can tame these damn C-sharps and pianissimo low notes by October.

Photos: assorted sarusuberi, assorted elegant old stairwells, some flowers that made me think of a grapefruit assortment, a hibiscus tree (?), and some sheet music created by power lines and an out-of-season weeping cherry.

Be safe and well.

Short clip of Zhu Yilong making friends with a shy cat; linked because a) adorable and also b) I hope Bai Yu saw him saying to the cat 你知不知道喵喵喵什么意思呀 and called him up to say YOU OWE ME ONE.

I have a translation job involving a lot of junior-high level math worksheets, which is taking me back. I was okay at math, but uninterested, up through eleventh grade, with just occasional flashes of algebra-related ooh, that’s neat; I damn near failed calculus my senior year (with a teacher who’d won national teaching awards, too), and have pretty much managed to avoid math and its relations ever since. I’m awed by people who are not only good at it but find it interesting, it just makes me think there’s something fundamentally different about the way our brains work (the same way it’s hard for me to understand that not everybody finds language learning intrinsically fun).

Veranda report: my morning glories are not good at multitasking, they can bloom or grow but not both at once, and for a while they’ve been specializing in the latter. The veranda is now a complete tangle of wires and morning glory vines. I’m hoping they will make good on their growth and bloom more in September or October, knock wood. Lemon tree growing more pointless leaves, enough already, give me some lemons! Mint syrup achieved again, time for mint soda or maybe something more adventurous if I can think of it, any ideas? Cherry tomato plant successfully repotted and seems to be growing with a little more energy? although it hasn’t managed any new flowers yet, knock wood again.

Chinese: mostly Anki and fic reading, with some ongoing translation practice. New words from the farmboys, somewhat game-related:
· 拿铁 the phonetic word for “latte” as in coffee, why they chose these characters I’ll never know (and why it’s nátiě instead of latiě).
· 头头是道 entirely logical, perfectly correct
· 绝了 slang for “too much,” “incredible,” used both negatively and positively
· 接龙 shiritori—I can’t remember the English name for this game, the one where you say a word starting with the last letter of the word the person before you said?
· 捉迷藏 hide and seek
· 说了算 what I say goes, that’s the final word on the subject

High school baseball tournament, featuring as usual sunburned buzz-cut teenage boys with improbably kira-kira names. Some of my favorites this time around: 利朱夢, pronounced “Rhythm”; 凱塁 (pronounced “Kyle”) and 球児, both clearly destined for baseball from birth, since 塁 is a base and 球児 is another word for a high school baseball player; 七聖, 吏紗, and 琥珀, all charming names more typically used for girls (琥珀, not a common name either way, means “amber”), and 空輝星, whose family name means “sky” and first name means “shining star.”

Some music that’s been in my head lately: Who Cares, one of the Gershwins’ best; He Can Do It, from Purlie; Les Barricades Mysterieuses (Couperin), and Jiang Dunhao singing a slow version of his 麦芒.

Rereading some Cynthia Voigt; like (the very different) Peter Dickinson, I think she’s one of those writers who would be considered a major 20th-c. author if genre (in her case, MG/YA and some fantasy) wasn’t a thing. She really needs a whole essay, not a paragraph in the middle of another post, but lately the one I was reading was The Vandemark Mummy, which is kind of about the importance of integrity and scholarship and family and feminism, as seen by a perceptive (and slightly psychic) but not especially academic or introspective twelve-year-old boy, in the context of a well-constructed mystery. It’s beautifully written in her deceptively straightforward style, with some incredible set pieces (Phineas going through the basement in the middle of the night). I also think it would make a very good movie, if they cast Althea right and didn’t make her too conventionally pretty.
ETA as it occurred to me: it would be really interesting to read The Vandemark Mummy alongside Gaudy Night, because although obviously very different they treat some of the same themes in (mutatis mutandis) similar contexts... it's the middle of the night right now, but I want to think more about this one...

Photos: quite a lot today. Bubbles against a shrine background; a cleverly concealed Jiji-chan, too hot to do anything more than open her eyes and give me the fish-eye; another cat I don’t know, eating her vegetables; some fresh figs; some sarusuberi, ah, crepe myrtle; a house with its own greenery; a humongous, translucent hibiscus; trees and sky; a fried-egg flower (no, I don’t know its real name); the neighbor’s morning glories; and a road sign that tickled me because all four of the place names on it are 難読地名, ie you have to live around there or you’ll never figure out how to pronounce them.

Be safe and well.

As various people have noted, Zhu Yilong is going to have blue hair for his new movie; I love it that he’s never satisfied unless he’s doing something completely new. No worries though, in this picture it’s clear that blue hair or not, his habit of hugging pillows remains.

Rereading a very good translation of Tove Jansson’s letters, which are wonderful (although on reflection I wish the editors had just lined them up chronologically rather than dividing them by recipient). Mostly more fun in the aggregate than in specific quotations, but a few that I enjoyed:
August 14, 1946
And if rocket-propelled missiles are eventually going to blow us to smithereens along with everything we’ve done, I want to be as calm and happy as I can now and work in peace.
December, 1946
That was when I realized [that I was in love with her], as we were dancing. It came as such a huge surprise. Like finding a new and wondrous room in an old house one thought one knew from top to bottom. Just stepping straight in, and not being able to fathom how one had never known it existed.
June 27, 1956
Everything I do, everything new that I see—there’s a parallel reflection: I shall show this to Tuulikki.

Reading a Japanese book—or rather a book originally published in Taiwan and translated into Japanese—which is a historical novel presented as a travelogue written by a (fictional) Japanese woman author touring Taiwan in 1938. Aoyama Chizuko is a young woman from a good Kyushu family who has just written a bildungsroman that became a huge hit and made her much in demand as a lecturer; when she visits Taiwan, her translator is a modest, immensely competent young Taiwanese woman called Oh Chizuru|Wang Qianhe, who instantly gets Chizuko’s quirkiness (and her absolute passion for eating huge quantities of every new and delicious food she can get her hands on, don’t read this one while hungry). I’m only a few chapters in, but it's clear that the book is going to take on colonialism and class, along with female friendship, in Chizuko’s idiosyncratic voice. More to come when I finish it.

Chinese: I don’t think I’m quite managing three to four hours a day, but I am doing the best I can and getting caught up on my daily Chinese Grammar Wiki Anki deck for the first time in ages. I probably need another deck full of sample sentences at all levels… . Still messing with translation, very slowly. I have finally ventured onto Lofter—if I have to have WeChat for Chinese conversation lessons I might as well make use of it?—and am very confused, but I’m enjoying meandering around tags reading bits of fics.
New words, slang and otherwise, from the farmboys:

· 神不知鬼不觉 without anyone knowing (literally, God doesn’t know and the devil has no clue)
· 裸考 to take a test without studying (literally, a naked test)
· 给你个麦 Guangdong slang (?) for something like “you want a piece of this?” in the aggressive sense
· O不OK? just means “okay or not,” but I adore this piece of Chinese-English (or English-Chinese)
· 嘴硬 stubborn, refusing to back down (literally, hard mouth: used punningly in the show to describe a Sichuanese guy eating a hot pepper without changing expression)
· 无法无天 out of control, unruly, going too far
· 马虎 careless, sloppy

Music: A handful of random things I’ve been listening to lately. Eliane Elias and her trio doing “Aguas de março” (one of the best Tom Jobim songs ever) and “Agua de beber”; Seong-Jin Cho playing Chopin Preludes, with one of the most thrilling openings I know of; and for something completely different, Leroy Anderson’s little novelty piece The Syncopated Clock, which I’ve always found very charming.

Photos: Just a few today; my morning-glories (still blooming steadily, anything from one to five flowers a day, rain or shine), and a tree decorated for Tanabata (on a windy day).

Be safe and well.

Okay, travel over, safe home. It was a good trip, but part of me hates traveling even to places I know and like; I always get sick (not actually sick, but tension-symptoms, which is dumb). Still not great on that front but at least now home!
While traveling I bought a half-dozen new books, which are now in the mail on their way to join me; when I’ve actually read them I’ll post to discuss. Spent most of the time eating all the things I can’t get at home (Afghan food, Cuban, southern barbecue, Middle Eastern, Greek, American-style Chinese food, and a great many sweets of all kinds), walking about four hours a day, prowling through bookstores, and sorting out a dozen-odd boxes of books and other oddments which I had left with my mother years ago. I could have done without the tour of my younger self (couldn’t bring myself either to open or to throw away my high school yearbooks and so on), but did come up with a few nice things I’d forgotten about.

Went to the opera once, to see Turandot, of which—having sung in the (amateur) chorus of a concert version years ago, and now written a fic about it—I feel very possessive. I did not much like the singers, especially Turandot herself; Calaf wasn’t bad but shouted a lot on his high notes. (The only operatic tenor I really love is Klaus Florian Vogt, who at his best has this wonderful crystalline floaty tone, and he doesn’t seem to do Puccini.) But the orchestra was great, and it’s SUCH a good opera. I think my actual favorite part isn’t any of the more famous arias but the one near the end of Act II where Turandot is begging her father not to make her marry this oaf, it’s just spectacular musically. Also, surprisingly enough, the three ministers’ “casa nell’Honan” trio, which is much lovelier than it gets credit for (now indelibly “the Yucun song” in my brain). And the very end, Calaf names himself, and then where she tells her father his name is Love. (Also I realized that “Figlio del Cielo” is actually straight from the Chinese 天子, who knew.) The opera was further enlivened for me (?) by one of those incredibly chatty ladies who sat next to me and talked in a constant stream during all the intervals—her name was Susan and she was seventy-three and she went to the opera ten times a year and to the ballet much more often, she’d seen Swan Lake a hundred times, and which of these photos of her did I think was better, and what was my name (I told her Rebecca, which it isn’t, but I dislike telling people my name because it’s rarely pronounceable, and I look like a Rebecca) and where did I live and what did I do and… . Even having a book open in my lap was not proof against her, but it was kind of endearing in the end.

I have celebrated getting home again with new spring plants for the veranda. Two of last year’s managed to survive: I came home to find my four-season strawberry covered in bright pink blooms and the lemon tree which never lemoned producing its first buds ever. They have been joined by the usual suspects: three different colors of morning-glory, cherry tomatoes, chili peppers, and habaneros. I’m still in need of some herbs, maybe basil or mint, and possibly some fruit. Let’s hope this year I do better than last.

Speaking of growing plants, I am currently EXTREMELY hooked on this silly Chinese farming show I mentioned last time, originally encountered courtesy of Wang Yang via mumblemumble. Summary: ten aspiring singers/actors in their 20s spend a year? several months? running a farm in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to explain why watching ten random young men work out the minutiae of farming should be so enjoyable! They are sure enough cute, and their interactions are entertaining; also it’s partly because I love slice-of-life stuff and that’s basically what it is, about a hundred hours (literally) of extended slice-of-life. Also well, I wouldn’t exactly call it competence porn on account of they are quite often pretty incompetent, but it’s functionally a string of problem-solving exercises, and it’s satisfying to watch them figure out a) how to accomplish a given task and b) how to get it done effectively. (This also gives a lot of scope to my favorite among the kids, a good-looking, high-strung engineering-student-turned-actor(-turned farmer) who always has a better idea.) Plus the whole thing is painstakingly subtitled in Chinese, and it really is good language practice, from slang to agricultural terms… . Fortunately for me, sakana17 is just as obsessed and is willing to join me and chatter about the show at length! Anyone else want to succumb?

Relatedly or not, I think my listening is actually getting better! I watched Zhu Yilong’s birthday livestream with no subtitles (C or E) and actually understood, like, somewhere from 40 to 70 percent? Easier because a) I’m familiar with the general content/context and b) Z1L is himself not great at auditory processing when he’s nervous and tends to repeat all the questions his manager relays to him before he gets around to answering them, so I get to hear everything twice; but still!
Bless him, he does seem to be a little more comfortable being himself in front of the camera than he was, but I wish he’d figure out that his fans would be just as happy if he spent the whole hour ignoring the camera and just noodling peacefully with guitar, piano, etc. You can see him relax more as he gets into the song he’s playing, when he’s just thinking about lyrics and guitar fingering and not about “ai, what do I say next,” although he’s almost comically self-deprecating about his performance. That was one place where my listening failed me—I heard him say 没怎么lian and guessed he was saying 脸, I don’t have the face to [sing in public], but it was actually 练, I haven’t practiced that much. When will I learn to hear the tone difference…
Also I got curious about the red bracelet thing he seems to be fond of lately, and it’s apparently a thing you wear during your 本命年, the zodiac year of your birth, especially pertinent in his case since he’s named for the year as well.
Also the number of gorgeous photos of him has been unreal, thanks to the faithful Meng Yinan and God knows who else. These two, from Geneva, I think get to me the most of all—the angles in the piano one, and the incredible combination of strength (his hand and wrist) and delicacy (eyelashes and cheekbone) in the other, along with the rich coloring.

Photos: various from my trip. (Mostly just flowers, but if you recognize the city they’re in from context clues, please don’t name it, although I’m sure it doesn’t matter one way or the other.)

Be safe and well.

Just coming out of a couple of super-busy weeks (end-of-fiscal-year stuff; we’ll see how March goes) in which my work has been confusingly divided among deathly boring contracts (they could be satisfying in the Lego-ish way technical translation is if I actually knew the relevant terms and phrases, which I don’t), transcripts of seminars on international relations (genuinely interesting; I now know the general outlines of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which I knew 0 about before, not to mention a lot of internal and international politics surrounding the Okinawa reversion of 1972; relatedly, there are a lot of diplomatic telegrams and other documents from the relevant era available online and they’re a rabbit hole, salted with little bits of personal impressions and feelings around the politics of the time), and first chapters of light novels (the first one was almost unreadably bad, repetitive and boring and with character names like Astrothorn and Lily-Gemme, only even sillier; the second one was apparently dom/sub stuff between high school girls, which, well, it’s a change).

As so often, I’ve been putting on Guardian episodes as background listening here and there, and I’m finding that I can understand aurally better than I could; however, I think this is less that my Chinese listening is actually improving and more that I know the script backward and forward by now, so I already know what I’m hearing. Well, better than nothing.
Still reading this very long Under the Skin fic in Chinese (you can expect to be hearing about this one for a while, it’s got 82 chapters at last count and I’m only on chapter 24), and enjoying it a lot. Part of that is just self-satisfaction at being able to read in Chinese at all, even with a lot of dictionary help; the repeated words and grammatical constructions natural to a longfic are hugely helpful for internalizing their use. Also I do (so far, anyway) think it’s a good fic in itself, with decent characterization and a nice balance of a main arc, smaller case arcs, and Du Cheng/Shen Yi. My favorite character, Lu Haizhou, also shows up with some interesting character notes, although I am not sure just what the author has planned for him. The main flaw is not enough ensemble—needs more Jiang Feng, Li Han, and Director Zhang!

Also Chinese-related—does anyone know a good way to download videos from Bilibili? The SaveTube thing I use for YouTube, which is a godsend, tends to be hit-and-miss for B站.

Some Zhu Yilong links just because. (Other than YouTube, I’m losing most of my access to the blessed Wenella on account of nitter.net failing and something about her Tumblr settings; very regrettable. I’ve been relying on onlyzhuyilong for Z1L news etc.) This image, for instance—between the intense gaze and the slow blink, can you imagine? I’d be a puddle on the floor. Also this very dramatically shot black-and-white interview in which, asked about his MBTI thing: “Um, I’m I-something but I forget the rest.” How many times have you been asked that interview question, Long-ge?

Things I’ve been listening to: (usually I post Chinese songs to 第七天 posts at guardian-learning, but I’m sure I have posted this one there before) Two versions of 下雨天, Liu Chang on one of his livestreams and Shan Yichun in full concert. I just really love this song.
And for something completely different, in honor of February 29th, a little bit of Gilbert and Sullivan (although it’s the wrong one)—the first-act finale from Mikado, which I adore in musical terms—the “For joy reigns everywhere around” theme really is lovely, and Katisha’s “My wrongs with vengeance shall be crowned” is both a great contralto moment and harmonically fantastic as it returns to the tonic. (Also of course I sympathize with Katisha, who doesn’t? Give me a production where there really is chemistry between Katisha and Ko-Ko, please.)

Photos: Way too many photos, mostly of plums and other flowers I can’t identify by name, belligerent-looking stray cats, and an umbrella I took for R2-D2 at first (it’s the bullet train, which is almost as cute).

Be safe and well.

So A-Pei and I were talking about chocolate chip cookies, and I had cause to ask her for the Chinese word for “pecan.” She said 胡桃, which horrified me, since in Japanese that means “walnut.” Come to find out that (I think) in Taiwan 胡桃 is pecan and 核桃 is walnut, while on the mainland 胡桃 is walnut and 山核桃 is pecan…give me strength! [Then again, as long as neither of them ends up in my chocolate chip cookies I’m okay—cookies should be warm and melty and goopy, not crunchy.]

Reading Naomi Mitchison’s short autobiography You May Well Ask, which is all kinds of entertaining: a couple of things about her early writing that I found very relatable.
“The Conquered, my first book, came out at white heat and, what is more, I wrote all the best bits, the juicy bits, first, the bits that were most exciting and satisfying to write, like the very end. Then I filled in the rest, but I enjoyed that too.”
“I got a great many letters about The Conquered. This is something writers need, and a phone call isn’t the same; you can’t pick it up and look at it again years later, when you are exhausted and unhappy.”
Also, I know where I’ve heard of that book before! “She had time to…wonder what she would do if They said nothing could be done, her hand must come off, and produced block and chopper, and hacked—like Meromic in The Conquered--with dunking in hot tar to follow.” It delights me that Nicola Marlow has read Naomi Mitchison. [For the non-Forest readers, nobody chops Nicola’s hand off, she gets it stitched by the one character of color in the whole series, a cricket-loving Pakistani doctor, and recovers sufficiently to win a cricket match a few weeks later.]

Listening, not for the first time, to an old mixtape [now a mixCD] of my father the classical musician’s favorite pop songs. “Once upon a time I drank a little wine, was as happy as could be. Now I’m just like a cat on a hot tin roof, baby what do you think you’re doing to me,” to which my mind immediately appended “—Lan Wangji, probably.”
Also, on the Brazilian side, I don’t think I’ve posted Se todos fossem iguais a você before—another of my very favorite Jobim songs, very singable and very loving, with the irresistible Portuguese plural of iguais for igual. (Link goes straight to the song, but just listen to the whole album, it’s about the best full album ever recorded in any genre).

I’ve read Diana Wynne Jones’ Charmed Life so many times I can recite good chunks of it from memory, and even so—and reading it in Chinese yet!—the climactic scene still grabs me so hard I missed my stop on the train. Comical and thrilling and quietly numinous and upsetting, all at once.
The Chinese translation is terrible, even I can tell, flat and inconsistent and inaccurate, but you take what you can get. ”And he needs us like he needs two left legs,” Bernard remarked, jerking around in the hammock as he tried to eat a jelly comes out as “我们对他来说就像左膀右臂。“伯纳德从吊床上一跃而起，去拿冰淇淋, that is (I think) “And according to him we’re the staff he depends on,” Bernard said, sitting up in the hammock and going to get an ice cream.” [The ice cream, at least, is a source text difference.] And that’s just one thing. Between the “he needs us like…” and the stocks and shares and the name, it suddenly occurs to me that Bernard might be Jewish. Neat.. When Chrestomanci tells Gwendolen “Stay here and learn how to do it [use magic] properly,” it comes out as 留在这里学学怎么做人吧, stay here and learn to behave properly. I like 做人 as a phrase, though—be a mensch. Translation faults aside, I will say it cracked me up that when Cat yanks the silver handcuffs off, Chrestomanci’s “Ow!” comes out as 哎哟！.

Still rehearsing the Brahms violin concerto in orchestra—I love this piece so much, especially but not uniquely the first movement. Last week was our first time with the solo violinist.

interpersonal grumbling

I was low-key infuriated the whole time for reasons unrelated to the music—I’m sitting inside first stand this time around, meaning that the person on my left is the first chair = leading the cello section. At this rehearsal a younger guy was asked to substitute for the usual first chair, and IN SPITE OF not being totally sure of the music he didn’t refuse when he should have done, so I spent the whole rehearsal mentally snarling that’s a tricky entrance, if you don’t come in properly with confidence no one else can either! or pizzicato on the OFF-BEAT wtf is your PROBLEM and so on, on account of if he didn’t get it right, I had to be the one responsible for doing so. Which was not ideal at the first soloist rehearsal, when it really matters to be able to follow the conductor and get it right.

That aside, it was a wonderful experience anyway. The soloist (a professional violinist) was a smallish, mild-mannered, fortyish guy from Hiroshima with a big wide lush tone, very secure. Going through the concerto without stopping felt like setting off on a life-or-death adventure, exciting, knife-edge, important, heartwrenching. The best thing about rehearsing a piece for six months is that you get to know not just the parts you hear in concert or on a recording but also all kinds of little things in your own part and others—there’s a place in the violas near the end of the first movement (around 23:27 in this recording), for instance, just a little three-note motif under the solo line that absolutely moves me to tears every time.

Zhu Yilong doing his usual thing, behaving like one of his own frequently whumped characters (I wish somebody would explain to him that putting his health at risk also means putting his career/his work at risk, then he might listen?) and still somehow managing to look absurdly beautiful.

Photos: The beauty salon cat having a nice outdoor bath in the sun, another cat glaring at me, geometric creepers (?), a village lane in the middle of the city, a rose, a camellia (either tsubaki or sazanka but I can’t tell the two apart to save my life).

Be safe and well.

I’ve been dithering over posting, or mostly just too busy/disorganized to take the time, since getting home from my trip over a month ago; here is a tacked-together five-things-ish post to cover the bases.

New (to me) books: Blackgoose, Broad, Biggs, Gilbert, Ford

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose: fantasy novel narrated by Anequs, an Indigenous girl from an island off a continent being rapidly colonized, who…I don’t want to say Impresses a baby dragon but that’s basically what it is? She talks her way into attending the mainland Academy for what the colonizers call dragoneers, where she encounters, not surprisingly, a lot of prejudice about her background and her gender both; she also makes some good friends, falls in love a couple of times, discovers a talent for blending the colonizers’ academic takes on magic/science with elements of her own culture, and makes it through her first year intact. I enjoyed it for the worldbuilding (including Anequs’ brother, a budding steampunk engineer, and his colleagues) as well as Anequs’ stalwart selfhood, and for the way, on the whole, the author tries hard to avoid creating a cast of flat good vs bad characters sorted by ethnicity, to show a range of people with different prejudices, positive and negative, based on their own varied experiences and personalities. (One quibble is that, except for one or two moments, the dragons feel like plot devices rather than characters in their own right; maybe in future books as Anequs’ dragon grows up?) (It’s invidious to compare this with R.F. Kuang’s Babel, since the only thing they really have in common is being school/college stories told from a minority perspective, but for me at least, it does some of the same things better, in that the author cares about her characters and their relationships and sees some hope therein.)

Quartet, Leah Broad: group biography of four 20th-century British women composers, Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. Very well-written and well-researched; I can sort of see why she chose the four-person format but I’m not sure it works entirely. Howell and Carwithen, who had less prominent careers and about whom less is known, seem like supplements to the other two, and Ethel Smyth’s far-out Ethel Smyth-ness tends to unbalance the book a bit (not the author’s fault, I think Smyth just did this to every context she ever appeared in, and for that matter kudos to the author for getting that across). I was most interested in Rebecca Clarke, including her work as a violist; not totally grabbed by her Viola Sonata, but I should go back and listen again.

A Life of One’s Own, Joanna Biggs: short essays on eight women writers melded with the author’s own personal-essay musings. Picked it up because I liked her previous book, a very short UK version of Working, and it didn’t disappoint, although I think it might not be satisfying for anyone who specializes in any of the writers mentioned. The essay on George Eliot reminds me that I really should read Middlemarch, especially having encountered my own version of Dorothea and Casaubon in Yuriko’s life. “I used to want desperately to be a ‘proper critic’…[but now] I want to know what it’s like to be someone else.” The author loves Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, making me want to go back and reread it for the first time since high school, when I remember loving it also. On Toni Morrison: “Her attitude toward [non-Black readers] was: sure, you can come in, but these books are not for you,” and yeah, Morrison isn’t writing to make white people understand, is she? She has that effect in passing but it’s not what her point is. (Disappointed that this book focuses on Beloved and barely touches on Jazz, which is my favorite.) “Much of [Morrison’s] teaching was reminding her students that you do not destroy what you’ve written by working over it, you discover, rather, what you are writing in the process of rewriting.”

The Country-House Burglar, Michael Gilbert: This is cheating, it’s not a new book at all, it was published in 1955 and I purloined it from my mother’s bookshelves. The amount of books she has, she can spare it /guilty. I like Michael Gilbert’s mysteries and this one, unusually, has a female POV character, Liz Artside, a middle-aged widow with a fine bass singing voice, a difficult son, and a general air about her of having wandered in from a Peter Dickinson mystery instead. The whole thing is very entertaining even apart from Liz, especially the way her son Tim goes from annoying to endearing as we get more of his POV (although I think Sue should wait ten years to marry him…).

Aspects, John M. Ford: The first book of a proposed fantasy series, published posthumously. John M. Ford can be hit or miss for me but I enjoyed this one, and am very sorry there’ll be no more, since in many ways the book is mostly setting the scene for events to come. I have to say, if his estate ever decides to hand it over to someone else to continue, my vote would go to L.D. Inman of the Ryswyck series, because for some reason it struck me very similarly—the austere worldbuilding, the vaguely post-war feel [post- a war in text, I mean, not our war], the friendly dueling, the religious background notes, the author’s passions coming through, Longlight very much a Speir in some ways… . I liked the different dialects, and the food, and the trains of course! (Also kind of in conversation with Yamaguchi Akira’s paintings, in terms of trains?) The naming conventions annoyed me—either use “English” words or non-English words but don’t mix the two together so awkwardly, and if you’ve got a major city with major-city bureaucracy, you need to have last names or patronymics/matronymics or SOMETHING to keep people straight, although I guess they manage in Indonesia—and the male lead I did not find especially interesting, unfortunately, the more so because all the other characters think he’s so special. Oh well. Was sorry not to see more of Brook, instant face-casting as Zhao Xinci, or rather Wang Weihua. I liked Silvern and Edaire a lot, and Alecti, who in two short scenes has infinitely more chemistry with Longlight than Varic does in the whole book…oh well.

For the Zhu Yilong fans, I’ve discovered another of our number in a funny place: some idle googling led me to the Acknowledgments section of a scholarly work on international relations, in which, along with her colleagues and her family, the author thanks “Mr Zhu Yilong, an esteemed actor from China, who…epitomises hard work and a zest for life, …maintaining a humble and unpretentious demeanour, and remaining steadfast in pursuing his dreams, a quality that I deeply admire” and quite a bit more in that vein. For some reason I am totally charmed by this straightforward fannishness in an entirely un-fannish context, good for the scholar in question!

Quick music link: Thad Jones’ 61st and Richard, once heard on site at the Vanguard, where it made me cry a little—there’s something about it that sounds like “yeah, things have been hard, but it’s gonna be okay” to me, who knows why. (Also discovered that the Vanguard jazz band’s long-standing first alto sax player, Dick Oatts, shares my birthday. I can remember him when my father used to take me there in my teens, when he had plentiful black hair, and now what hair he’s got left is all white, but he still plays, and smiles, like an angel.)

Photos: A few mostly autumn-themed pictures from my trip back to the States last month (for some reason I always feel odd about revealing my hometown on here in an unlocked post, so if you happen to recognize the city, please leave it nameless).

Be safe and well.

I’m traveling and worrying as usual about the flight etc. and I should be working and/or doing other useful things, but as per usual for stress relief purposes here I am posting various bits and pieces. I owe a bunch of DW and other comments/replies, which…may not happen yet for a little while…

Making glacially slow progress with my revisions, as usual. Maybe I will be more efficient while traveling…? (oh yeah sure). I’ve been very fortunate to have multiple beta readers, and I love hearing their various different opinions and perspectives, but man, no two of them agree on most things! That said, at least two of them have agreed on the fact that, of all things, my romance subplot could use to be more romance-y, which I am finding difficult. With original characters in general, I never feel comfortable getting into the details of romance, whether it’s feelings or physical actions; I feel like it’s private to them and I don’t have any business sticking my nose in. This makes literally no sense, I made them up, they only exist in my imagination! Any privacy they have is inside MY HEAD! Plus in fanfic, while I still tend toward the gen side, I have enjoyed writing romance (and, for the last-named below, occasionally sex) for couples as disparate as Harriet and Peter, F’lar and Lessa, and Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan. So why the hell not for original characters?
I suppose partly, in this case, I’m writing from the perspective of the person who eventually realizes he’s having a slow burn as opposed to the one who essentially fell in love (much to his horror in terms of his ideological beliefs) at first sight, so there’s less consciously going on in his head to write about; and while their attraction is not asexual per se, it seems to tend more to I-need-you-to-be-part-of-me than I-need-you-to-be-fucking-me (or vice versa), so the details of physical attraction don’t quite seem to fit. Still, there should be something I can do.

Zhu Yilong promoting his latest movie and looking, as always, dazzlingly beautiful, in Meng Yinan’s photos in particular (oh dear) as well as various videos. In one of his better examples of duality (or I guess he’s well into multiple facets by now), we also get to see him 15 kg heavier, wearing glasses, and passing the time between filming scenes by learning to knit. (I don’t know what he’s currently filming, but it seems to call for a kind of hyper-Wu Xie look, by which I mean his hair is grown well out (not quite ponytail-length yet) and he’s so thin his cheekbones go beyond beautiful all the way to ow. Someone please give him a role (in a drama, if I’m wishing anyway) for which he can keep his natural weight?) (Also it will never cease to be relatable that at his degree of experience and fame he’s still so shy that he can appear in front of people and be nervous enough to say not 大家好，非常开心 (hello everyone, very happy to…), but 非常大家 (very everyone…)).
There are a couple of longer interviews with him and the other associated movie people available—I imagine the blessed Wenella will provide a translation of them in good time, but I’ve been watching them on B站 and as always feeling very frustrated with my lack of listening skills. Oh well, I suppose that makes it the more satisfying when I can actually follow something—“I don’t choose scripts by their genre, I choose them for the story and the characters.” I’m always interested in how the way Z1L talks about his work overlaps with (from my amateur perspective) the work of writing, especially with regard to thinking about backstories, evoking character through small moments, etc. (As an actor he only has to create one character at a time, but he has to do it in three dimensions, or rather four, I guess, since the character has to change over time as well, not to mention reacting and interacting with those created by other people; us (would-be) writers have to handle all the characters at once, but we get to do it all through text on the page… and other obvious considerations.)

A machining term new to me which turned up in a technical translation, and struck me as the new and improved way to get hold of utility actors: centrifugal casting.

Someone among the Yuletide letters has requested a BL manga I’ve translated a few chapters of, not named here because I’m not especially proud of it, but it cracks me up to find the streams crossed this way.

Re my last post’s mention of Angela Brazil, cyphomandra suggested Dorita Fairlie Bruce, who proves to be harder to find online but quite entertaining. Two passages I enjoyed: one which strikes me as a very faithful rendition of dialogue among English schoolgirls required to speak French in their dorms, one a discussion of the fledgling writer’s troubles by someone who has clearly been there.
“And, Jean, est-il true que vous faites choses comme ça? Parce que vous savez bien c’est entirely against les regles, and must be stopped. Comprenez-vous?” / “Oh, oui, je comprends all right, mais c’est tout-a-fait fair, parce que je suis much slower to apprendre que le rest de vous.” / “Nonsense! Besides, ce n’est pas le point.” (Dimsie Moves Up Again)
“Well,” said Pam thoughtfully, “it seems to me simply putting temptation in their way to enclose the customary self-addressed envelope. Stamps you must send, but think how easy it is for a harassed editor to put your MS. straight into the enclosed envelope and post it back if he hasn’t got time to read it at the moment. Whereas he might think twice if he had to find an envelope and address it.” / “Oh, Pamela!” exclaimed Jean, shocked at such cynicism. “They always say they are panting for fresh talent.” / “I know,” said Pamela, “but they get such a lot of it.”(Dimsie Grows Up)

Photos: The hair salon cat, awake and asleep, plus another less pampered cat; the long, long, long flight of steps up to a serene café at the top of a very small urban mountain, in company with a DW friend I won’t name unless they’d like me to, but it was a very nice time; autumn persimmons, not quite ready to eat; and a drunk-hibiscus plant (white in the morning, pink at night).

Be safe and well.

Thanks to kind encouragement in my last post, I have gone ahead and made a community presenting histories of women in and around Japan, 1868-1945. I hope to post about one person a week, and the first one is already up (below the sticky post). A request: people on Tumblr and whatever the other social media sites are now, if you think your friends/followers would be interested, a quick link would be much appreciated (me being only on DW). Let me know if sample text/links etc. required. Regardless, please take a look if interested, and enjoy!

Shana tovah to those who are celebrating the new year right now. Have to remember to go out and get some apples and honey tomorrow.

Via the blessed Wenella as usual, Zhu Yilong (looking almost improbably demure and serious) talking about how he works to create characters based on experience—” you might not find someone who is exactly 1:1 like your character, but you’ll find elements of him in different people, you need to put them together yourself”—interesting in terms of his process, and also in its relation to how writers work to build up characters (as Dorothy Bryant says in her writing manual, “When I choose a model, I’m actually choosing, not that person, but a particular quality. It might be a certain vulnerability or passion that I sense in her or a strain of daring or of fear that seems likely to lead to certain events, or a particular act she committed which leads to a complex of possibilities”).

For the last few weeks the local baseball team has been pushing toward a league victory, and it has been (officially?) forbidden to say “pennant victory” or anything like that on TV, in the news, etc. etc. Everyone just said “THAT” or possibly it should be “You-know-what.” Yesterday they clinched it (now I’m worrying about the playoffs), and the ban was repealed--but a lot of the spectators had homemade signs saying “It’s THAT time” and similar. The power of language!

Photos: Mostly flowers. Three morning-glories from my veranda (at least two of which may be the same one at different times, I’m not sure any more), some more crepe myrtle, some red berries, and somebody else’s morning-glories, prettier than mine. Also a family nameplate which made me laugh because both 竹 and 笹 are types of bamboo, and they have the real thing growing right there to illustrate their names. Also assorted cats and a gentleman whom I believe to be taking a nap and not, like, preparing to be sacrificed or anything.

Be safe and well.

·I made (?) two things. The Guardian fic which is basically all my Zhao Xinci feelings in one place is now complete and ended up running to 35K, twice as long as the next longest fic I’ve ever written, which I did not expect. (Wish to hell I could write 35K of even vaguely coherent original work in six weeks!) I think maybe I’ve gotten Zhao Xinci out of my system for a while, but who knows. The fic is also, inevitably, another entry in my administration-saves-the-world series.
Also I’ve spent, oh dear, almost two months poking at another Chinese translation for fun, this one of an interview of Zhu Yilong and Ni Ni, to be found here (on the 0630 sheet), while the original interview is here (via the blessed Wenella; I don’t think she’s posted a proper translation of it, but I may just have missed it). Please note that it is spoilery for 消失的她|Lost in the Stars. Rife with my mistakes as usual, although a-Pei and Xi-laoshi helped me with some of the stickiest places. Notable for very sweet chemistry between them, Ni Ni doing about 2/3 of the talking (see also: all Zhu Yilong’s other shared interviews ever), Ni Ni explaining why she respects him as an actor and also giving him hell (“this from you, Mr. character bleed?”) when she feels he needs it.

·In other cdrama news, elen and I just finished watching Under the Skin, which I enjoyed a lot—good leads, good ensemble cast, lots of competence kink and interesting plot writing. Typically, I fell for a character who only appears in four episodes (Lu Haizhou, played by Zhang Tao), at first because he reminded me of a younger Chen Moqun, and then I kept liking him more the more I saw of him. Am I going to do anything with this? Who knows.

·Listening to San-San-San as it’s known in Japanese, more properly the St.-Saëns Third Symphony, which I’m never gonna get a chance to perform because amateur orchestras can’t afford to do pieces with organs in them, but it’s one of my very favorites and blows me away every single time. I realized that the first measures, the premonitory muttering of the strings, invariably come with a very strong sensory memory: standing on the upper balcony of the vast auditorium where my father’s orchestra rehearsed, listening to them play it, and eating something nougaty and delicious (not white nougat like Toblerones, German-style nougat like this).

·The high school baseball tournament is on—almost over, actually—and I’ve been following it on TV (every game in the national tournament is broadcast on national TV in full, it’s Japan’s national religion, you only think I’m joking) and hoping the Keio team wins, because I’m shallow: unlike almost all the other teams, whose players wear regulated buzz cuts, they’re allowed to have proper hair. Would like to think this also means that they’re somewhat free of the oppressively regulated culture of high school baseball (the fictional Nishiura High School being a shining exception, come to think of it they also have no hair rules), but who knows.

·Reading a couple of Japanese books about language learning experiences.

This got quite long

One is by one of those journalists whose motto is to go places nobody else does and do things nobody else has done, in the course of which he ended up learning bits of French, Lingala, Bomitaba, Spanish, Thai, Burmese, Shan, Chinese, and Wa (three of which I had to look up how to spell in English). His accounts of how to get a working knowledge of a language from scratch on the ground are really interesting (get a native speaker to come up with a bunch of similar but not identical sentences, ie “I eat, you eat, he eats” or “She goes, she went, she will go” etc., and figure out the grammar empirically), and tempt one to go learn a brand-new language somewhere. He talks about having difficulty connecting with French speakers from France, even when having a grasp of the language: “If only the French had different ethnolanguages!” referencing how a sure way to get into conversation in the Congo countries was to ask someone “So what’s your native language?” given the plethora of possible answers. (He really doesn’t like French: I was tickled by the complaint that in French “not only do all the consonants at the ends of words disappear, when there’s a vowel placed after them all these presumed-dead consonants rise up like zombies, it’s a horror show”). He also put me on to “Yokohama Pidgin Japanese,” apparently used for communication among foreigners and Japanese in Meiji-era Yokohama, as summed up in a comical/alarming “dictionary” published in 1879 which has to be seen to be believed (Orientalist all to hell but with not much mercy for foreigners either, and containing an appendix contrasting Chinese and Western pronunciations of Japanese). Weirdly, one of the sites that came up when I looked it up belongs to a university professor whose linguistics research I became familiar with after having met him in a completely different context (friend of a friend of a friend, it’s complicated, he got me some wonderful recordings I couldn’t have found elsewhere). Finally, this journalist describes spending a year in a remote village in the Wa State, speaking three languages (or a language and two dialects, depending on who you ask) none of which he was fluent in. He talks about someone in the village receiving a letter with news that their correspondent was in good health—mailed two years and four months ago, the time lag making him think of communication among different solar systems.
The other book, which I’m actually still working my way through, is by a younger guy who talks about learning Romanian and becoming a published author in Romanian while hardly ever leaving his apartment in Tokyo. I am really turned off by the linguistic tone, which is a sort of heavy forced colloquial style, with 俺 (casual male pronoun) instead of one of the more neutral ones, って instead of と (as in speech, not writing), and だよ thrown in at the end of every sentence, like having “I mean…” or “y’know?” scattered everywhere. (It could be that it grates on me because the latter in particular is very East Japan, and clashes with my West Japan-assimilated ears, but who knows.) He does have some interesting things to say, though, including a discussion of how to translate the title of Usami Rin’s novel 推し、燃ゆ into Romanian, without losing the distinction of the online slang, the comma, and the archaic verb declension (the English title is apparently Idol, Burning; I think My Fave, Aflame might work). Will report further later if he comes up with anything else to the point by the time I finish the book.

Be safe and well.

·It is so hot and soupy. Maybe in another month the average high temperature will go down below 35?

·Silliness for the day: the DMBJ character known as Hei Xiazi is also called Hei Yanjing 黑眼镜, usually translated literally as “Black Glasses.” I think it would be both a more idiomatic translation and a lot more in keeping with his personality if he went by “Shades.”

·Still practicing the bassoon and still really terrible at it, although I’ve ventured into the territory of accidentals and dynamics by now; gradually transforming from “person attempting to play the bassoon” into “really terrible amateur bassoonist”? The instrument doesn’t like the hot humid weather any more than I do, making assembly and disassembly difficult ( ”very ). Next up is tenor clef, which is going to be a nightmare: it’s not that I can’t read it, it’s that I read it as cello fingering, not note names, so I’m going to have to translate it through two different fingering systems in my head, not conducive to, like, playing anything faster than a Largo.

·Calligraphy studio posting children’s efforts outside, including one reading 階段をおりたら出口, the exit is at the bottom of the stairs. Y and I couldn’t decide whether this meant “there’s always a way out even when things seem to be at their worst” or just “go down the stairs in order to exit the building.”

·So Zhu Yilong went on holiday (probably a working holiday, knowing him) to Indonesia, and his studio posted a short video from there, mostly diving and eating. I sent it to an Indonesian friend/ex-colleague (I’ll call him John Woe for reasons I can’t go into without explaining his real name, but he speaks seven languages and I think he’d appreciate the pun(s) involved), who identified the town without difficulty and turned up his nose at the “15x spicy” rice flavoring that pleased Z1L so much (“I have a 50x one, it’s not that hot”). He also recommended a local Indonesian restaurant, which (even if they didn’t serve 50x levels of spicy) was very good, especially the corn fritters and the black-rice porridge with coconut milk for dessert; thanks, ex-colleague and Zhu Yilong!

·Title from Arthur Ransome, of course; I had a technical manual a while back with a GNAD part number in it, and had akarabgnadabarak in my head the whole time, Bridget’s reproach to Daisy. One of the bits in which Ransome approaches period-typical racism, unfortunately; although I think he can be called “somewhat-better-than-period-typical,” for what that’s worth, if only because Titty’s sensitive imagination puts herself in the place of the people she’s imagining rather than othering them. As below, also a fine pocket sketch of three personalities (or two and a Ship’s Baby).
“Civilization,” said Titty. “I don’t suppose the people in the town ever dream they’re so near the Secret Water and the Country of the Eels.”
“What is civilization?” asked Bridget.
“Ices,” said Roger, “and all that sort of thing.” He looked hopefully at a cloud of thin blue smoke that, in the windless air, hung lazily above the town.
I approve of Roger’s priorities: Some people always forget things like chocolate in making out a list like that. But Mrs. Blackett, after all, was Captain Flint’s sister. Chocolate was in it, and oranges, bananas, tins of steak and kidney pie, tins of sardines, a large tin of squashed fly biscuits. It was a decidedly good list and Roger had had no criticisms to make. That one is, I think, from Pigeon Post. Not one of my absolute favorites—the long Timothy misunderstanding and the short fire one upset me—but the scene where Titty finds water is mesmerizing, both the dowsing itself and the way it affects her (and John’s understanding of how her mind works and what she needs). And the very relatable feeling of Roger […] telling and re-telling his share in the fire-fighting, not because he wanted to boast, but because by telling it he somehow made sure of it for himself. At the time, things had been happening too fast.
Also, from Winter Holiday, one of the funnier lines that doesn’t involve Roger, Dorothea Callum to her absent-minded professor brother upon having failed to get his attention, “Well, you ought to hang out a notice when you’re not there.”

·Photos: mostly from our annual visit to the wind-chime temple, in hopes of bringing a little bit of coolth. Also my veranda morning-glory, the same blossom at morning and evening.

Be safe and well.

・As seen elsewhere, petra and associates are making the OTW membership fee available for anyone who would like to vote in the elections but has difficulty with the fee. Registration required by June 30. I am one of the people offering financial support, so if anyone would rather contact me directly, please feel free to DM as well. It should go without saying, but all confidentiality upheld, also whoever you vote for is your own business.
Re OTW issues in general, right now I will limit myself to saying that I do plan to vote in the election, which I haven’t done before, and that among the people talking about it, in addition to petra above, starandrea in general and lunarriviera in specific have also had good things to say.

・Amazingly enough not related to the above, an old diary entry reminded me of the song that was playing everywhere during a college summer vacation many years ago: Jill Sobule’s Bitter. I like it musically and I can do with repeating to myself “I don’t want to get bitter, I don’t want to turn cruel…” every now and then in life in general.

・In Zhu Yilong news, he and Chen Sicheng, the director of 消失的她/Lost in the Stars, did an interview with Harper’s Bazaar, filmed for some reason in black and white; it has C-subs and I decided rashly that I was going to translate it, so I did. I think there’s already a subbed version somewhere, and I have no doubt the blessed Wenella will make a proper version at some point, but this was a fun endeavor. You can find the interview here (on B站) and my translation here (ZH and EN). Probably full of mistakes. Among other things it establishes that Zhu Yilong writes songs, can liquefy himself, has 大痣 and 大志 (which defeated me as a translator, there just is no equivalent pun), and owes his director a pair of pants. (He also looks beautiful and sounds more bass than baritone, too much smoking or too little sleep?). (A-Pei helped me catch a few unsubtitled words, and her judgment was “I like his intelligence and reserve, but he’s too thin!”)
In even more Zhu Yilong news, genuinely breathtaking photographs by Meng Yinan here.

・In Chinese study, I found a site called Speechling which offers online dictation practice; I have a feeling the range of sentences isn’t all that large, but there are multiple levels, male and female voices, slow and normal speeds, and it’s a good place to start.

・Reading a YA novel by Komatsu Ayako about a high school girl who discovers Arabic calligraphy and Islam through her sister’s half-Turkish classmate…it’s quite a complicated setting for a short book, but I like it because there are still very very few Japanese books, especially YA/MG, which deal with differences (the “homogeneous society” myth is still strong, even though it’s blatantly not true), and for the lovely depictions of calligraphy and the likable characters, Maho and her slightly weird family and her friends Leyla/伶来 and Sena/千凪.

・Still in revisions hell. Finished one pass of adding things (now at 94K) and about to start another, after which the line-by-line revision is waiting, along with the overall theme that should be in there somewhere…

・Photos: Assorted flowers; a stream, phone, and cat from one of the big shrines; a park cat gradually deciding how snuggly to get.

Be safe and well.

·I think most people on my f-list have seen it by now, but chestnut_pod has an extremely thoughtful and constructive post up about what to do with the OTW, including a huge discussion in the comments (mind the content warnings added).

·Last week I went up to Fukushima to play in a concert of 500 cellists, amateur and professional, in memory of the earthquake. Y tagged along and we did some sightseeing in advance, see the suspension-bridge pictures below. Dreamlike, gorgeous, all green and stone, like wandering into an ink painting. It was raining and cold, and we went into a souvenir shop where the lady cannily served plum-and-chili-pepper tea, and I bought a bag of teabags… . Lunch at a traditional noodle place where he ate soba with a huge leek, and I ordered tempura and took a bite of what looked like a shiitake mushroom, which turned out to be a red bean bun…shock. But tasty.
The concert was kind of an experience one is glad to have had, but not hugely satisfying for me in musical terms—partly because all the music was boring and partly because five hundred people is just too many, you can’t hear or see properly what’s going on. I was glad to be there, though.

·I am struggling lately with Chinese; not working as hard as I should on the Anki etc. I already have, not figuring out how to get further. I really don’t want to take an in-person class, but I’m not sure what the next step is. Among the latest Zhu Yilong videos posted by the blessed Wenella, I watched the same 10-minute interview three times in a row, once with no subtitles, once with C-subs (and then once with English), understanding going from 5% to about 75%. Listening is impossible.
(Relatedly, a drinking game for anyone who wants to get drunk: take a sip every time Zhu Yilong says 还挺 when he’s being interviewed. It just means “quite,” but he’s very fond of it.)

·I have one more scene to go in book 2 of my original thing, an epilogue really, and I’m very stuck; in terms of personal issues, all three protagonists are very much in a To Be Continued status, I’m not sure how to wrap it up in a way that feels like the ending of a book even if not the ending of a series. Also I have provided myself with sixty zillion assorted plot lines that have to be touched on in some way. I think at this point I might should just start writing and let it happen. When/if I do finish I have so much revision to do, aaargh.

Photos: Suspension bridge environs as above. A couple of nice roses and a somewhat less hidden koi. Turtles sharing rock space, and the "turtle rock" in Y's hometown, of which it's said that if it ever changes the direction it's facing, trouble will follow. Many cello cases all lined up. A very fortunate cat which lives in a stall next to the butcher's.

Be safe and well.

Mostly little language-related things:

·One of my Guardian fics, "a language without an army," was translated into French by Loaric; it's an honor to have any fic translated, especially this one, which is all about language anyway. My French is only just about good enough to follow along, but there are some lines which sound far more gorgeous in the translation--"les consonnes coulissant les unes dans les autres," "égrainant du Haixinghua vif et aiguisé," and the rhythm of the last line, "sans l’accent, Zhao Yunlan aurait compris."

·Still very slowly organizing the Chinese Guardian script; amused by a passing moment in episode 30 when you can see Minister Gao think “one Zhao is more than enough stress, now I have to cope with two of them at once?”

·The meta-ness of translating a text that's all about the value of transcribing versus the value of writing (the meaning of creativity, especially for women), with reference to a Tawada Yoko story. (Tawada Yoko's novels are too weird for me, but I like her essays about language a lot.)

·(mildly icky content) The irony of writing in my original thing about magic done with a drop of the caster's blood, when my actual real-life hands are cracking and bleeding here and there (nothing serious, cold weather + frequent handwashing). Inspiration where we can get it!
So far, knock wood, writing is going well, a fairly steady 500+ words a day (minus one day when I just fell stone asleep). Well over 40K now, getting into the second half when basically there's always something dramatic happening; I don't know if I can make it work but it's fun to try, and I love the way that the more I write, the more ideas and themes seem to fall into place.

·New Chinese conversation partner, Xi-laoshi, a friend of a friend in Beijing. Sadly she had not heard of Zhu Yilong; she was coaching me through pronouncing his name correctly (shows you how terrible my accent is, you'd think that's one word I could get right) when I remembered that interview clip of Z1L and Bai Yu teaching each other to say their names in dialect ("Zhu-laoshi? Ju-laoshi?"), and had a hard time keeping a straight face... .

·Music: A YouTube channel based on the history of music compiled by Otto Maria Carpeaux, an Austrian-Brazilian Jew who seems to have been a piece of work. I don't necessarily agree with all his choices of major works in the history of Western classical music, but there is a lot of good stuff in there, and if you want a playlist of almost 400 pieces in chronological order from 13-something to 1962, this is where to go. (The one thing I object to is that the performers aren't cited; that needs fixed.)

Photos: just a few. The year's first 梅通信, letter from the plums; they're hell to take good pictures of but I can never resist trying. Also my four-season strawberries, living up to their name in a modest way; if they survive into a second year maybe they'll be bigger?
( Read more... )

Be safe and well.

内忧外患, or as I like to translate that bit of Zhao Yunlan's dialogue, everything's fucked; what can we do but hope for the best and expect the worst.
I have nothing to offer today but a couple of random cute-small-child interactions, a lot of pop music rambling, and some photos.

( Two hopeful moments )

( Thinking about Chinese songs I like )

Photos: Three pairs of things, a typical Japanese urban sunset, my veranda strawberries, and a melting cat.
( Read more... )

Be safe and well.

・I feel like half the people on my f-list, self included, have been sick, or taking care of someone sick, or otherwise under (more than usual even these days) stress; let’s hope spring will bring some good hope, or autumn for the lucky southern hemisphere people.

・I got my first set of veranda plants for the spring: strawberries, yellow cherry tomatoes, chili peppers, a weird mint. I usually have about a two out of three success rate, so we’ll see which ones actually grow. I still want a habanero and maybe something else green...

・I finally laid hands on A Desolation Called Peace, the second book in Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan duology. I really loved the first book, and was very happy to find I enjoyed the second one just as much. ( mild spoilers follow )

・Still very slowly rewatching LTR, and wow, I forgot how much they stuffed into 2-15. Not just the much-admired sequence at the beginning, Wu Xie all but dying and summoned back by Xiaoge, but his sad (and ominous) goodbye to Wu Erbai, his (physical and emotional) near-breakdown afterward all alone, the clifftop scene with all its different forms of love and loyalty, the dreamy parachute float down accompanied by the Chongqi song which always makes me cry anyway, Xiaoge’s little “it’s Wu Xie, he’s come for me” not-quite-smile, poor Liu Sang’s look of big-eyed wistfulness when Pangzi just barrels in and hugs Xiaoge...it’s a lot. (In general, to repeat myself: how is Zhu Yilong that beautiful and also that good at what he does...).

・I learned that the Chinese word for pistachio is 开心果, happy fruit.

・好可爱，Liu Chang singing something bluesy in English with slightly iffy pronunciation (a little bit non-native speaker, mostly his idea of what the genre calls for) and crisp final consonants: once a trained choral singer, always a trained choral singer lol.

・Another Seidensticker quote, something they amused themselves with in a class on the Genji: “Someone to the Third Princess: ‘And what color hair did your little boy’s father have?’ Third Princess: ‘I don’t know. He didn’t take his hat off.’” Irresistible as an MDZS joke, replacing the Third Princess with poor Qin Su...

・Photos: I treated myself to this glass thing which I think is called a Galileo thermometer; it’s not of much practical use but I just really like looking at it. Also a few last cherry blossoms, some...snapdragons?..., and tulips which I love for their stained-glass quality in the sun.
( Read more... )

Be safe and well.

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nnozomi

May 2025

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Entries tagged with zhu yilong

可盐可甜

espontaneidade

Lists of things

ssoup and ssongs and other sself-indulgences

小蛋糕嘎嘎香

难读好读

嘴太软了

ho una casa nell'here

以爱还爱，以粥还粥

aren't they lovely

a humble and unpretentious demeanor

self-distraction: rambling

leading to a complex of possibilities

Progress reports, etc.

Akarabgnadabarak

Mostly assorted links? with commentary?

同人不同命

is that all you blighters can do?

rainy season

开心果？

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May 2025

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