In a late response to Obama's speech when accepting his Nobel Peace Prize... I'm just going to quote US Congressman Dennis Kucinich
Once we are committed to wars instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where war is p[e]ace...
When I first read that Barrack Obama, incumbent president of the USA (for those who have not been living on this earth in the last couple year or so), won the Noble Peace Prize I thought it was a hoax: some news editor couldn't wait until April 1st '10 probably; it seemed like the only plausible explanation.
But no, we are witnessing what can only be described as Nobel Prize inflation. My theory being that the Norwegian Nobel Committee thought they should follow the international trend set by the economy in recent years and reevaluate the meaning of the prize alongside with the devaluation of the fixed prize money (about 10 million Swedish krona, which is a bit more than US$1,2 million) attached to Nobel Prizes.
For a man who has been in office for only 9 months and has yet to full-fill the promises he made during his campaign, to be put on the same level as Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi is not just premature; it's pre-embryotic if you ask me.
To quote:
The Times of London (in some online opinion piece):
"the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace."
"[g]iving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country's aggression and domination."
헬로 에브리바디! 헤피 한글 데이~
투데이 이스 한글 데이 인 고리아, 이트 셀러브레이트스 더 인벤티언 어브 더 고리언 알파벳 바이 더 고리언 킹 세정 더 그레이트.
^_^;
Okay... I realize that this blog I have here is becoming increasingly vague... and I kinda end up restructuring it to the point that the restructured structure is kinda structureless. Not a good thing, I can't seem to make up my mind about what to write here. Some social commentary? life stories? random ramblings (mostly these have been posted here)?
And then I linked my facebook notes to this blog... and twitter to facebook, and now everything is interconnected and in the end it all means not a damn thing.
Mostly cause my facebook became a mesh of at least three languages regularly featuring, which is confusing to most, and I've done that here as well. So I kinda need to decide... which language, which subject, and why a frikkin' Uni of Broken Glass...
because in the end that's what it is: broken glass, there is always broken glass...
While of course not being the perfectionist when it comes to the use of the English language, or any language for that matter, at least I get my linguistic facts straight (about the only thing about me that is, you know, quote-unquote straight)
But let's start with the issue in question, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (Published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26312-0), pages 11-12:
For two hours, Becker interpreted an endless stream of Mandarin symbols. But each time he gave them a translation, the cryptographers shook their heads in despair. Apparently the code was not making sense. Eager to help, Becker pointed out that all the characters they'd shown him had a common trait-they were also part of the Kanji language. Instantly the bustle in the room fell silent. The man in charge, a lanky chain-smoker named Morante, turned to Becker in disbelief.
"You mean these symbols have multiple meanings?"
Becker nodded. He explained that Kanji was a Japanese language [apparently this was revised to read "writing system" in later editions; "Kanji language", above, remained - ed.] based on modified Chinese characters. He'd been giving Mandarin translations because that's what they'd asked for.
"Jesus Christ." Morante coughed. "Let's try the Kanji."
Like magic, everything fell into place.
The cryptographers were duly impressed, but nonetheless, they still made Becker work on the characters out of sequence. "It's for your own safety" Morante said. "This way, you won't know what you're translating."
Becker laughed. Then he noticed nobody else was laughing.
Apparently in Jecheon in North Chungcheong Province, South-Korea, an AIDS-fear epidemic has broken out. Granted, South-Korea - like most parts of this world - has been all AIDS-fearish for the last couple of decades, still I do - as always - claim the right to rant about... call it an activist's prerogative if you will.
Okay short version to this latest episode: A cabdriver - who has tested positive for HIV - was arrested, and I quote, on suspicion of acting as a mediator in spreading HIV this Friday, ironically Friday the 13th. The guy went to sex workers, but also had sex with others... specifically, and I quote, ordinary housewives and others.
Now he did admitted on having unprotected sex. Bad? Yes, very. However he told this to the police after he actually was arrested and thus after the warrant was issued... Conclusion he still was arrested because of having sex with someone else, not for having unprotected sex.
Punchline: he got arrested cause he is HIV-positive and apparently in South-Korea you are not allowed to have any sex life then or you will be arrested as a mediator in spreading HIV, whatever that means...
Okay, a bad case of criminalization of HIV-positive people - duhh! no need to spell it out, says you... some of you at least... I hope and pray.
Oh and yeah, in this specific article they go on to quote an expert:
...the likelihood of catching HIV from unprotected sexual activity with someone who is HIV-positive is a mere 0.5 percent. "Since Jeon had been taking drugs to control the virus, the odds could be even lower,"
In the line-up of "International Days", I'm sure there are more "Days" than there are days in the year nowadays, the 8th of March I guess is one of the better known: International Women's Day. First observed in 1909 on the 28th of February it now gained attention worldwide and recognition by the United Nations. In western society International Women's Day was observed through the 10s and the 20s but dwindled after that. Until it was revived by second wave feminists in the 60s.
Small side note of interest to some of you maybe: demonstrations marking the International Women's Day in Russia was the first stage leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Thus so far the history lesson, now let's get personal...
For me women's day would have been getting slammed into the pavement by a girl half my size (almost) and half my weight for a women's self-defense demonstration near City Hall in Seoul. You'd be surprised how far the prospect of a free lunch goes in convincing you to participate in such masochistic an event. In any case the event was called off due to people who were organizing it not really organizing anything... all I could think of was "damn, no free lunch!"
Though somehow the idea of being thrown down by a girl is enticing... Okay, I digress I digress...
But on this auspicious of days I do would like to give some critical comments to this women's movement. As a transgender woman, and a former sex worker, I guess I could say that this movement has it's issues, big issues, still... Especially here in South-Korea it seems that feminism too often equals anti-sex work, anti-let's-enjoy-having-sex (cause obviously all men who want sex are evil...), all about transgender-is-okay-but-you-aren't-women-and-you-don't-understand... Naturally I've gotten a bit of an aversion towards these radical second wave feminists that seem to dominate whatever movement here in Korea.
" I would myself have preferred to stay in Korea instead of being adopted and doomed to a lifelong status as an outsider, becoming a lifelong object of racism and discrimination..." - Susanne Brink
The film Susanne Brink's Arirang shocked South-Korea. It showed the story of a child sent abroad to face a childhood of abuse, discrimination and racism. With it's release the issue of international adoption from Korea gained attention for the first time in the country where international adoption itself was born.t'Was early in mornings past
I looked to the sky, to the east
Heared a soft drop of rain,
maybe it lost its way trying to find
its cloud again
I heared a soft drop of rain, falling
maybe you heared it as well
- He-Jin Kim
Seoul, March 7th 2009
Dedicated to all those who try to make sense of "home"
Just to vent a random thought that occurred to me today.
Earlier today I was making an appointment over the phone with a friend when something (not-physical) hit me. The premises was to meet food related during a part of the day which is non-food related (breakfast, lunch or dinner). Then there is a word for brunch, namely brunch (obvious), but what if you want to have a brunch-like meal in the afternoon? As the other Seitz mentioned when I raised this vocabularic issue: there should be... (that is: if vocabularic ever becomes a word of course)
In any case our aim was to meet at around 5-6pm, which isn't dinnertime (unless you live in the Netherlands... but then again, inhabitants of that country are not qualified to have a say in this). In Korea I guess you can say that dinner is between 7pm and 9pm, anything after 9pm is considered side dishes for the alcohol(called anju in Korean) it doesn't matter if the side dishes are equal in size and nutrition as the hypothetical dinner here: before 9pm that food is called dinner with drinks, after 9pm it's called drinks with side dishes. Lunch is more or less general everywhere, set around 12 to 1pm (I can never figure out if noon is 12 am or pm, no matter how often I wikipedia it - wikipedia is now officially a verb: to wikipedia).
Thus 5-6pm does not constitute dinner, and is several hours behind lunch, which is clearly illustrated by the following:
Lunch + circa. 6h = 7pm or 8 pm or 7pm or 8 pm - circa. 6h = lunch
So if we take into account that lunch = 12 or 1 pm + food... then we can surmise that 12 or 1 pm = lunch - food !!! (this is still completely logical and as far as I know mathematically correct!)
Okay, moving on...
If 7pm or 8pm - circa. 6h = lunch and lunch = 12 or 1 pm + food
...then 7pm or 8pm - circa. 6h = 12 or 1pm + food leading to 7pm or 8pm = 12 or 1pm + food + circa. 6h end then to 7pm or 8pm - 12 or 1pm - food = circa. 6h (again! completely accurate!!!)
But! 7pm or 8pm - 12 or 1pm is clearly 6h or 7h
Thus 6h or 7h = circa. 6h!!!
Okay so what about the food... eh...
Conclusion: I spend too much time reading xkcd and now have lost the majority of my readers. Notheless the issue remains:
...
What about linner? or lunner?
On the 17th of November, 1999, UNESCO decided to internationally acknowledge the Language Movement Day in Bangladesh as the International Mother Language Day... A day which I want to commemorate by writing a blog-post in every language I can speak reasonably fluent and maybe one that I pretend not to speak reasonably-ish.
So... in order of appearance (and fluency): Nederlands (Flemish is not a language! West-Flemish is by some standards, not so by others), english (He-Jinefied ^_^), Français (unlike what you would expect the standard version, not the the Belgian one), Esperanto and 한국말 (Korean - the South-Korean variety, garnished with lots of mistakes and served on a platter of simplified grammar).
Disclaimer: My Français is ancient, as in I have used it too long ago and my grammar sucks, especially all the femine, masculine... comes with being transgender I think - gender, even grammatical gender, just doesn't follow any pre-established patterns. So read it and deal, or don't! either way if you can't handle it, just shove it, kay.
Dus begin ik met Nederlands, gezien vandaag de Internationale Moedertaaldag is, is het vanzelfsprekend dat Nederlands effe gedag komt zeggen. Moet ik wel toegeven dat ik me soms afvraag wat er bedoeld wordt met native language of mother tongue - moedertaal... Nederlands is noch de taal van de moeder die ik niet heb, of native? inheems? whatever... het klinkt in ieder geval niet juist gezien Koreaans die quote eer unquote heeft, terwijl mijn Koreaans eerder een poging tot Koreaans is. Mijn Nederlands aan de andere kant komt niet zo natuurlijk meer, wanneer men een taal niet spreekt... echter toch wel wat schaamte, engels de massa moordenaar der talen poogt ook hier een slachtoffer op te eisen (effe de schuld op de engelse taal afschuiven.)
But then again I don't mourn that much about the little loss I've had in the Dutch department, I can still fluently converse and write in it, fully understand it, make fun of the fact that the Flemish speak better Dutch than the Dutch, etc. And I must admit, Dutch isn't the most beautiful language around, that honor goes to obscure tongues such as Gaeilge and Cymraeg, Euskara, Diné bizaad, etc. Then again my over-use of english isn't all that good and well - and definitely not beautiful, english's value lies in the fact that it is the Jack the Ripper among languages, just so much material is published in english, so many speak it either as first language or second - to the extent that those native english speakers in this world bathe in linguistic arrogance and monoglottism... in fact, let me go back and edit all the capital letters from english, just to annoy those native english speaking monoglots among you.
Mais tres belle est la Français, vraiement. C'est comme le Merovingian a dit, est-ce que vous vous rapellez le film Matrix Reloaded?
I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d'enculé de ta mère. It's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it.
