Oh What a Circus

I always hated musicals as a kid. Apart from West Side Story, which I don't believe is possible not to like. They always seemed so unnatural, and even a bit creepy: why are these people singing, and why are passersby and incidental characters always being forced to join in these weird co-ordinated dance routines around the main cast, as if compelled by an external and invisible force stronger than their own will?

But I'm reconsidering my position after listening to the Cabaret and Evita soundtracks at Mamiko's mother's place over the past few days. They really are very good; psychologically interesting in a way I hadn't given musicals credit for in the past, and musically mature too - more adult than what I remember Oliver!, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma etc. being like.

From a British perspective, Evita is also historically interesting for two reasons: firstly because Argentina and Britain have such an odd relationship, being so antagonistic and yet so obviously similar in character. But secondly because the story of Evita is so similar to that of Lady Diana - the title song could in fact just as likely have been written about her death and funeral rather than Eva Peron's. The sarcastic line - But who is this Santa Evita? Why all this crying, hysterical sorrow? What kind of goddess has walked among us? How will we ever get by without her? - sounds like a pithy puncturing of all the ridiculous over-hyping of Diana's death, which back then I thought was absurd and which now, ten years later, most British people look back on as a national embarrassment, especially since, like the line in the song about Evita, Diana had actually done nothing for years. Other than, I suppose, look waif-like and vulnerable while throwing herself from rich boyfriend to rich boyfriend.

What is it about Argentina and Britain, two nations hitherto reknowned for an almost ridiculous consciousness of propriety and correctness, that made them go so loony over the deaths of these two women?

Wordless Wednesday - Japan, August 2006

Going Through The Motions

I woke up this morning feeling a little crappy. Then I joined in sharing some kippers with my mum for breakfast, a tasty breakfast (I've never had them for breakfast before) which has been repeating on me ever since.

The day has been on a downward incline ever since.

It's not all bad news though; despite finding last night that my computer at home didn't have the necessary software to do my slides with (or the right unzipping software to allow me to install it), I am beginning to feel quite at peace with it. A conversation with my friend before has made me realise that as I am giving it, in a sense, because of my PhD I can justify it as "time well spent," so from tomorrow I'll work on it for half the day each day until it is done. If I can get the install done with no problems tonight then I can work on the text of my slides at home, and get my pictures on to the slides when I'm in uni (because I don't have the internet or a decent drawing program at home).

The news story that made me say "What?!" today exists on the borders of bizarre and mundane: an eleven year old boy who has been deaf in one ear for nine years finds the tip of a cotton wool bud in there... What can you say to that? You can just about believe that it was lodged deep enough so that his parents couldn't see it, but the fact that health professionals missed it for that long makes me extremely thankful that I'm in general good health.

Ah well, back to the slides... Wordless Wednesday tomorrow I think.

"Not Much" Monday

So what's going on? "Not much."

Of course, in the wider scheme of things that's not true. There's war and famine, plague and death, chaotic weather systems, even more chaotic relationships between humans, and a spoof on 300 is top of the box office in America...

I spent some time in the office over the weekend working on my slides for the talk that I have to give to a group of high school maths students next week. Part of me is looking forward to doing it, part of me is replaying every nightmare I've ever had about being ill-prepared for my part in a play or for a public speaking occasion on a nearly constant background brain chatter. It will be pretty good, and I'm sure that's what I'll think when it's over and done with - but for some reason I am more nervous about this than I was about the various talks I've given at a national or international level.

Steve Merchant, in one of the Ricky Gervais Show podcasts, once talked about going into a primary school to talk about being a writer. He described being nervous, and realised that he didn't know anything about children really, or what things they understood at a conceptual level (i.e., what it means to "get inside someone's head"). This is a different thing really, although there are still conceptual issues at stake.

My big worry is just how high/low I can pitch this talk. My friend John (who is a teacher at the school I am going to, and he was here doing his PhD up until about eighteen months ago) said that they're all fairly bright, but there's bright and then there's bright, you know?

I've met Masters level students who are "bright" but who are unable to think for themselves (desribes about half of last year's Masters students here). These high schoolers might be bright, but knot theory is something that most university students won't meet until they're nearly in grad school. That's not because the problems in knot theory are difficult to state; far from it, the basic problems (which in a sense are still open) can be explained to the layman in less than five minutes.

The difficulty comes in firstly explaining why these are difficult problems (which I think I can do) and secondly in describing how we might approach trying to solve them. The machinery for the latter is what I'm trying to decide how to explain, what I can expect them to understand or how I can explain things simply.

And then there is the real difficulty in trying to persuade them that knot theory is an area of maths worthy of study...

Still, it's not all bad. It was worth getting out of bed just to see these pictures from the Venice Carnival. I especially like the fourth picture in the sequence, there's kind of a grotesque beauty to it. I've never been to a proper masquerade, it's something I would like to do at some point.

What's going on? "Not much."

It's the answer that's easy, the answer that applies on perhaps a cosmic level, but right this second...
...I'm breathing in...
...I'm thinking...
...I'm remembering...
...I'm typing...
...I'm listening to Maroon 5...
...I'm waiting...
...I'm searching...
...I'm lacking...
...I'm becoming...
...and you and I are doing all these and so much more. OK, maybe you're not listening to Maroon 5, but you get the point. That's just this second, a split-second, an atom of time. That's without getting down to what's really going on with you, with your life and with the people in your orbit.

More soon.

Dreaming Big

Just a short post: is it a realistic goal for my 101 Things In 1001 Days to aim to have won an Oscar in that time? I never really thought about it, but then I saw this photo story about how they are made and I quite want one now...



Any more suggestions for realistic goals?

EDIT: thanks to noisms for observing that I had mis-spelled "realistic" - the Academy takes a dim view of such things...

Starting Up a Business, and The Meaning of Meaning

I'm thinking about making a go of this freelance translation malarkey. No overheads except rent and what it costs to keep my laptop running round the clock (and dictionary batteries), no boss, no overtime except what I schedule, lunch breaks when I want...this is the life. I remember watching an episode of The Apprentice once, when Sir Alan Sugar was reminiscing about his life (he's one of those self-made billionaire types from a background of absolute penury); one thing he said with surprising (to me, at the time) vehemence was that once he'd started his own business "wild horses couldn't have dragged [him] back to working for somebody else."

Now I see what he means.

What I don't like about translation is that if you don't have absolute faith in your knowledge of the source language, you can mess everything up. This is especially likely in Japanese, which tends to create neologisms which can convey meaning very efficiently but which aren't actually 'words'. It does this because of its writing system, which can communicate visual meaning outside of how it sounds. For example, I'm currently trying to translate the word dousatokusei, which isn't a real dictionary word but which you often find in technical documents. Dousa comes from the kanji for movement and making, and tokusei from those for special and having the property of [something]. The English phrases that I can think of that come closest would be Dynamic Characteristics or Motion Properties or some such, but I don't think those phrases really exist in the English language and have no faith that English-speaking readers would really understand what they even mean.

But then, thinking about these things is all part of the fun. One of the most enjoyable things about learning a new language - especially a non-Indo-European one if you're an English speaker - is the different perspective it gives you on not just the world, but what fundamental concepts like communication, meaning, and thought, even are. I recommend it.

A (Thurs)day in the life

4am: Wake up. Check the time. Wonder what I was dreaming about...? Zombies? No... But there was something. It escapes me.
6am: Wake up again thanks to alarm. Stretch a couple of times and finally get up after about twenty minutes of procrastination and bleary thoughts.
6:20am: The shower's still out of use (there's a leak somewhere that means water is getting through to the floorboards, and hence the ceiling of the ground floor) and is likely to be for weeks to come.
7:45am: After breakfast, getting dressed, making some lunch and catching the breakfast news I leave the house for the local train station (less than two minutes away, but I had to run). On the train I think about the day ahead and read some more "Tales Of The Dying Earth" for a bit.
8:35am: Arrive at uni after walk from Lime Street station. The rain only started as I crossed the edge of the campus, so I don't get too wet. First order of business on entering the office is to login and perform my daily ritual of checking email, reading blogs (quite a few these days) and completing the daily puzzle.
9:10am: Start work before I can procrastinate any further. Only have a little more work to do and then will have two chapters to hand to my supervisor for comments. Want to get the work done before teabreak (at 11), so all I have to do then is write a covering paper with some points that I think need addressing and any questions I have.
10:30am: Going well, almost done, and then my officemate arrives and I turn my back on the computer to have a chat.
11am: Oh look at that! Time for a break! Over tea and plain chocolate digestives we talk gossip, intrigue, moan about university red tape and admin and then finally concede that we should get back to work.
11:30am: Takes only a little while to finish the changes to the chapter, and then about a half hour to write the letter for my supervisor. The rest of the hour and a quarter before I hand it in to him is taken up with more small talk, sharing of news stories, some more departmental gossip and discussion of specs for laptops.
12:45pm: Print off work and hand in to supervisor; eat the tuna and spinach wraps I made for lunch and check the 17 webcomics that I have bookmarked (praise be for Firefox's "open all in tabs" button!).
1:15pm: Go to café with officemate for caramel shortcake and to talk some more about stuff. Then back to the office where I start my next chapter. It's an extension of the one I just finished, so it should come fairly easily. Aiming to have a draft complete by next Friday.
3:30pm: Have managed to get quite a bit done, but then my attention starts to wander. I check to see if some blogs have been updated through the day. I dash off a couple of emails, and start to think about what I might blog about.
4:30pm: Remember that my mum wanted me to pick up something from the art shop, and that I also have things I want to pick up (OK, comics). Leave early.
4:33pm: On the way to the art shop remember that I forgot to blog, forgot some emails I had to write and still didn't get to writing down the definitions for another chapter that I had intended to do last week. Sigh.
5:20pm: After picking up Chinese style stamps from the art shop, and comics from Worlds Apart, read comics on the train home.
5:45pm: Home. Finish reading week's comics and wonder how come the new run of the Ultimates can have turned into a fan-fictionish parody despite having one of the best writer's in comics and jaw-dropping artwork.
7pm: Dinner. Keep out of family disputes whilst enjoying salmon steaks and wholegrain rice, then wash dishes. Family go out to Tesco for something or other; in their absence I make a CD of music for a friend on my computer and sing along loudly to Tom Jones.
8pm: Watch a couple of episodes of Buffy whilst thinking about what I did during the day (and, a little guiltily, what I didn't do). Friend texts me a couple of times and I reply; remember that I am meeting them for lunch and smile.
10pm: Turn off TV, see what family are up to now and decide to call it a night.
10:17pm: What will I dream of tonight?

More soon.

Pages

I've been measuring progress on my thesis this week (and quite a few times in the past) based on the number of pages I do in a day. This may or may not be a good thing, as often as it comes to tidying things up and making small corrections the increase is quite small. Still, I've added about two pages to the thesis today, and made some alterations to some tables of results which needed doing, and while I feel pretty tired now I also feel pretty happy with what I've done today.

I lost six squash games in a row yesterday (the first three were enough to lose the match and keep me on sixteenth place in the ladder; the second three were just for practice), and then played football. Five-a-side felt great, just awesome to be playing again. I was really, really stiff by the end of yesterday evening, but felt quite good this morning. It's 4:30 in the afternoon now, and I'm starting to flag a bit...

I've just seen this news story and I'm amazed: the sheer pedantry, box-ticking, political-correctness-gone-mad-ness of it just blows me away.

So this evening I'm going to relax, kick back and play some Darwinia, which my officemates got me for my birthday. I'm hoping to read a couple of chapters of "Tales of the Dying Earth" (which I postponed reading before Christmas) too, and then tomorrow I have to finish this chapter I'm working on (was hoping to do it today but my mental energy is just gone) and then start another one. Woohoo!

Oh, and on my way home I am booking tickets to go and see this!

And in closing, because I was going to just do a Wordless Wednesday but didn't see this picture of Iron Man until I went and looked back on Empire; Iron Man is in the running for this year's second best superhero film.

Teasers

I am sick to death of teaser trailers. I remember when trailers actually showed you something of the film, gave you some hint of plot or visuals to make you go "Ooooooh!" Sure, there are still trailers out there (and some of them are very good), but just lately I have come to hate teaser trailers, because at most they have one little thing which makes you go "Ooooooh!" and the rest of it is just a waste of time.

The teaser trailer for the new Star Trek film is my argument exactly (spoilers for the trailer, but not the film, ahead).

It's just... Well... Boring. Some shots of some guys working on the hull of the Enterprise. Well. Whoop-de-do. Nearly a minute of guys welding. Bear in mind, this is supposed to raise excitement levels in anticipation of the film.

The two good things about the teaser trailer are in the audio as well: Leonard Nimoy's incomparable voice giving those timeless words, "Space... The final frontier..." (which sends shivers down my spine just typing it; Nimoy's voiceover at the end of Wrath Of Khan is ten times better than either of William Shatner or Patrick Stewart's efforts); the sound of the original series transporters as the old Starfleet logo appears.

Empire's blog recently had a post about how there was no opening voiceover or narration to beat the one which accompanied Star Trek, and I'd pretty much have to go along with that (although the various different opening monologues which have accompanied the first season of Heroes have been pretty good on the whole).

Work has been going well over the last two days; finished the first draft of my chapter of background material yesterday, and did a solid three pages for another chapter today (which I'm hoping I will finish tomorrow) as well as tidy up the formatting on some tables of results for one of my appendices. Through it all today I have been listening to Daft Punk and The Benjamin Gate (as well as the soundtrack to the musical episode of Buffy). I find that listening to music which is generally faster in beat has an effect on how fast I type and keep concentration.

Got to go now; playing squash in fifteen minutes, immediately followed by five-a-side. More soon.

Stereotypes

So we're back in Japan. Nothing has changed; not that I really expected it to. We went to a ramen shop today and ate massive punch-bowls full of the stuff while drinking barley tea and listening to jazz music. (Two of the little-remarked upon features of Tokyo ramen shops are that they always give you as much barley tea as you can drink and always have jazz playing in the background. I have no idea why this is, but the three things - ramen, jazz, barley tea - seem to go together very well.)

Anyway, there was an interesting article in the paper about Masi Oka, the actor who stars in the TV show Heroes as a Japanese geek-cum-superhero type guy. (Why do superheroes always have geeky alter-egos, by the way? Peter Parker, Clark Kent...they're never normal, sensible people, are they?) The writer, a Japanese guy, was complaining about the stereotyping of East Asian men in American cinema and TV; Hiro Nakamura (the character Oka plays in Heroes - yes, he really is called Hiro...oh my aching sides), he says, is just the latest in a long line of geeky, inadequate, submissive, meek and generally naff East Asian men in American cinema, and that's all they're ever portrayed as.

This is partly true, and something I've noticed too, but there are of course other East Asian men in Hollywood. There is the dirty old man, who has an unhealthy interest in junior-high school girls' panties and smokes too much. There is the yakuza-punk-chimpira type, who is surly and menacing and does a lot of monosyllabic grunting. And there is the mystical ninja/samurai/judo master type, who is serene and wise and can also beat people up quicker than you can say 'Mr. Miyagi.'

In fact none of these types have much bearing in reality - and nor indeed do the East Asian female stereotypes we often see on the big or little screen: the dragoness ninja queen, beautiful but deadly; the demure, seductive sex-kitten; the ageing prostitute. What interests me about these stereotypes is actually how sexualised they are - we either seem to see East Asian people as perverted in some way (the submissive weakling man, the filthy old sleaze), or else as hyper-erotic (the cute young temptress; the sword-wielding scampily clad assassin). It's odd, and it reminds me of similar stereotyping of black people in Western movies and literature, whereby black men are always seen as sexually dangerous and black women are sexually promiscuous.

It's funny how you notice these things only when you've stepped away from Western culture and come back. I remember watching Lost in Translation after having spent a year in Japan and being shocked at how absurd and unsympathetic it was in its portrayal of the Japanese. But by all accounts, people in Europe and the US lapped it up, and probably never even noticed how racist it was.

Anyway, maybe one day there'll be an East Asian leading man in a Hollywood film. Denzel Washington and Will Smith have broken that particular barrier for black people; I'm hoping Ken Watanabe will be the first East Asian to win an Oscar for Best Actor - and ideally not as a samurai or army officer or other typical 'Japanese' role. Just as a normal person. That would be refreshing.