Stalking Asian kids

Fukuoka city 

What a great idea for the hot weather ^0^ 

Taipei/Tainan city

 Good to have a big sister ^0^ 

Big brother, you shouldn't fall down again! 

 This couple was so adorable... Grandpa and grandson moment... Grandson had the fancy mango-milk-ice ~ grandpa the traditional red-bean sauce... @Shilin night market 

 The coolest baby in the world ^0^ 

Nagasaki prefecture

 chasing dreams

Seoul city 

Chinese kid (note the 'do not enter' sign)

 the most fascinating way to eat a sandwich I've ever seen

Sunday is still school time +.+

Decluttering...and finding treasures

Well, we've sent like 50kg of books (mostly dictionaries) from Japan and we definitely need storage space... I've also been planning to go through all my books and to get rid of some of them... I mean, there is stuff that I just don't need and I'm wondering why I even had that... Like a book on tarot cards or 'inspirational quotes for girls', what the heck? I remember, I had friends who would just send something that sounded remotely close to my area of interest... which was mainly 'gothic' and 'China' in my teens ^.^ so voilà... I even got books from a (random) dead man's home because my former friend thought I'd like some of his stuff... By the way, does any German- or French-speaker (who happens to come across this blog) want to start learning Chinese? I still have some of the beginners stuff that I just have no use for anymore and I'd like to find it a nice new home...

Speaking of which... I've been trying to organize my crafting/art supplies... I've bought a lot of those awesome clear boxes and my deco tapes and postcards-to-send have already moved ^0^ Today, among all kinds of papers and stuff to recycle into ATC backgrounds, I've found a bunch of old homeworks and tests ^.^

This was an amazing class about characters during my first uni year! Our teacher told us a lot about their origin, meaning and development, we had to solve riddles and we had to write characters beautifully as our homework. It was an optional course and not many students joined it (and I had to skip lunch to attend the optional classes), but it was totally worth the effort. Also, it was taught in Chinese and it was such an amazing experience... What a patient teacher we had who took time to explain everything a thousand times and to correct our scriblings... Well, it totally pissed me off that I couldn't write my last name beautifully (the one in the third row), so I totally wrote it like a thousand times... the comment below says that it almost looks like a native...uhm...writers' characters... It was the best reward I could get!

Some homework from the first year's conversation class... We had the best teacher ever! We were afraid of her first, because she was very strict ~ but in fact, she was very kind and sweet. I even slept at her place once after a party ^.^ The comment says 'finally I've found some mistakes (in your homework)' ^.^

Another homework from the first year. This teacher was no good at explaining grammar, but she had her creative methods and I liked that ^.^ (The story is about how it's more important to have a good teacher instead of multi-media learning ^.^ I was so anti-progress ^.^ ) Also, being from Taiwan, she helped me a lot with learning traditional characters. At that time there were no cool online dictionaries and I guess I didn't even have internet at home. I think I didn't even possess a computer o.O So, I took the vocabulary list we had in our book with simplified characters, copied a list with the most used simplified/traditional equivalents (well, we had copy machines at least ^^) and looked up every single damn character in that list when I wrote my homework, then wrote the traditional form in brackets beside the simplified character ~ and the teacher went through that mess and made corrections. I actually wrote both, simplified and traditional actively in my first year o.O Crazy! Later, in Taiwan, I switched to traditional and just stayed like that ^.^ I sometimes make the effort to write simplified characters for non-native speakers who can't read traditional, but otherwise, come on, they're ugly and make no sense!

For the ones who have no idea about simplified and traditional characters: Traditional characters are, well, traditional. They were like this all the way, changing only slightly in the course of an endless amount of years. 

Here's an example (which means 'Ireland' ^^) ~ 愛爾蘭

Then, in the People's Republic efforts were made to alphabetize the masses, because well, all those characters were such a bitch to learn! So a few hundreds of characters were simplified, which means that the number of strokes was reduced.

Here's Ireland once again in simplified form ~ 爱尔兰

Looks quite nice to those who feel overwhelmed by the traditional characters' form... Well, the problem is that the characters' structure gets destroyed when you 'simplify' it randomly (yes, in many cases the simplified form is random). Imagine, if I would 'simplify' the above sentence by leaving out the words 'structure', 'character' and 'destroyed' ~ it would make no sense. Simplified characters are often stripped of important elements that are hints to meaning and pronunciation. The most often cited example is the first character of Ireland ~ ai, love (as you might have seen as a tattoo on somebody's most attractive body part). The simplified form replaces the part in the middle 心 'heart' with 友 'friend' ~ decide yourself what you like best ^.^ But being a person who thinks about language structure a lot, I certainly prefer the traditional characters.  And ~ simplified characters mostly look crappy in calligraphy...

Speaking of which...

Another homework in my first calligraphy class ^0^ I must say, the dots are the hardest to make T.T

An example of the times when I went slightly beyond the dots... I guess it was my second term in Taiwan ~ when I joined the Hakka club (I might have mentioned somewhere that I'm quite fascinated by the Hakka people). We had lessons with Taiwanese students who were beyond the basics in calligraphy ~ and our teacher was (still is!) such an amazing artist who let us be creative as well (this is why these characters look weird ^^). It was a lot of fun to try out crazy stuff ~ and to ask the teacher for a performance (and a souvenir ^0^).

I can't believe it was all ages ago... But to tell the truth, today I really felt like I (re)discovered treasures ~ because those two years were among the most happiest (yes, I'm using a double superlative and I mean it) of my life. 

Why am I writing all this stuff about how I learnt Chinese? Because I really want to tell you ~ please, find something that you really love and DO it! No matter what the others say, no matter how much you would be paid for it later, no matter whether it drives you crazy at times and makes you skip a few lunches ~ DO it! I'm not getting paid for Chinese right now (I would be though, if I didn't have a different job) and I've had my share of people who said that I'm a nutcase but I love it with all my heart and I will never regret any minute I've spent learning it. I'm also sure that if you're really good at what you love and what you learnt with passion, it will also pay off professionally in some way (well, if you love having fun more than having money). So ~ DO it ^.^

Now I'm trying to DO it with Japanese... 

I think I've overcome my language learning burn out and well, I'm looking forward to plunge into a new world of linguistic awesomness ^.^ 

Speaking of which...

I love Maura, did you know? 

Baby Maura ^0^ Whatever this antiquity is doing at getty images...

Back?? not quite sure about that...

sooo, hello folks ^.^ Some of you know that I've been travelling in Asia for all of August and I arrived back home a week ago... I don't feel like I'm settled though... there are a few people to meet and a few things to do (like changing my working computer) and there is no routine whatsoever in sight for now... I've certainly had the time of my life, but there is only that much company and entertainment that a person can take and I just feel like I need a rest... it's weird considering that I'm actually back from a holiday... I feel like I'm floating in the air and what I need right now is to feel some solid ground under my feet. What to do? I guess I'm just going to enjoy my weekend with more friends at a non-routine place and then try to build up something like a schedule...

Plans ~
*mastering some stuff about powerpoint... yeah, I know how to make a presentation... now I want to learn how to make a GOOD presentation... this term my class has to be stellar! (I might have somewhat of a competitor)
*learning Japanese (for fuck's sake, I really need to get serious about that!!)
*reading loads of books on language change and Indoeuropean languages (well, I might manage three or four ^.^)
*updating my diary (one week is still missing)
*slowly getting back to creating stuff ~ drawing, papercuts (bought three books on that in Japan ^0^), calligraphy ~ opening that book on watercolours
*showing a little bit about my travels on this blog

Maura is on holidays too and I'm totally dying... am using old stuff to keep my Mauraddiction under control... she should start shooting that pilot for an ABC show pretty soon, as far as I understand... I'm crossing my fingers for the show, she totally deserves an Emmy a role to show all her skills!! screw the Emmy, who the fuck needs an Emmy?!?

How's my mail doing? Not so good... I'm getting there though... I've accumulated quite a few missives in the crazy last months of the term and well, then I was away... I am writing, but I have a lot to tell mostly and I refuse to send random mail to people who are waiting for letters... you know what I mean, I guess...

Here is what I came home to... it was awesome ^.^ some mail was totally unexpected, but lovely ^^

And even while I was away I've experienced some interpals batshit-craziness!! Here's the story: Just before I went, a girl contacted me and asked what I considered really long letters... we exchanged a few messages on that and other topics and she was so eager to write to me... I said, well, I'm going away, but she insisted on sending the first letter right away and I said, if I get it before I go, I might send something from my holidays place... well, I got nothing before my flight and thought ~ typical for the mail service... then forgot all about everything until I reached the place where I did have some time for myself... Then I noticed that she already deleted me from friends... not a really big deal so far... Then I got home ~ and there was no letter from her... which was weird, because she has stalked my profile as if she expected a reply letter beamed over to Japan (she's from Japan... poor Japan!) the minute she sends hers... So I took a look at her profile and well, noticed that it says how she doesn't snail mail anymore (uhuh, did she actually send letters at all?) and people should just leave her alone, especially Europeans with their decadent culture (loved that ^0^) and fake Japan-fans with their bad google-translated Japanese... What can I say, at last, somebody is blocking Europe instead of Africa! ^0^ My point is, I'm really pretty weary of all that insanity all over... It makes me feel numb, because you always have to deal with all kinds of crap when you actually just want to write letters and send mail... so numb that I can't even feel as thrilled about potential great friends as I used to, I totally take a step back and think something like ~ oh, it might turn out alright... Does it happen to you that you try not to expect anything to avoid feeling disappointed when it doesn't work out? 

Anyway, I'll have to send a few postcards and notes to some awesome people I met during my travels... this time I'm only returning the kindness and not expecting anything, because I already got more than I probably deserved ^.^ And I feel thrilled enough about the awesome friends I already got... don't forget that you are loved!!

Oh and Heidelberg totally has its own panorama stamps and maximum cards @.@ I also like the new sky stamps, looking forward to sending stuff ^0^

And here's some stuff I sent sometime... ages ago... as it seems...

 I googled something about 'Algerian' and this is what I got ~ Algerian hedgehog! Thank you, Earth, for this wonderful creature ^0^ 

 Combination ATC ~ rabbit and moon ^.^ 

 yep, we have some stamps with Korean themes now too... 

 birds can be cute too ^0^ 

 this one is actually still sitting on my desk... let's see who'll get it...

 Haiku swap ^.^ 

I totally forgot what swap that was for, but yeah, that's a Beijing Opera actor... a little bit of Leslie Cheung atmosphere ^.^ sigh...

EDIT: I deleted my bloglovin account because I can still see everyone's updates right here on my own page... so yeah, screw that...

EDIT II: I just can't go without a Maura pic T.T deal with it...

Bloglovin, huh...

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/4281641/?claim=hdutd2bd27s">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

I've been following everyone on feedly for a while, but it was so convenient to just open my blog and see the google reader updates without having to log into something and do stuff +.+ I'm going to try bloglovin' after all + hope that it works somewhat in a similar way... Otherwise ~ ignore this post... Follow me or follow me not, you're welcome to peep on these pages anyway...

*~awesome week~*

Guys.... I've seen Balkan Beat Box ^0^

It was a helluva concert and my un-fit body still needs to recover after going totally crazy with these awesome people! (Though I started to do some sports each week and I think things are getting better ^^) However, I was amazed that they played at that little place in our little town. The stage was so tiny, same as the hall (unlike this video's location) - which made the atmosphere really cozy, but I felt a little sad for the guys who didn't have much space. Also, the sound was CRAP! That's when I felt sorry for everyone, especially the saxophone guys, because you only heard the bass +.+ Still, I guess, everyone had a great time ^^ I do hope they'll come back ^0^

Then, this week was the birthday of ~ Le sacre du printemps ~ by Igor Stravisnky. It was performed for the first time as a ballet in Paris 100 years ago. I'm dreaming of seeing such a performance live at some point, that's definitely on my bucket list ^.^ But this week I just enjoyed two performances on TV ~ the original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and a new choreography by Sasha Waltz. Both were awesome, but I prefer the original because it's so Slavic ^.^

 

Then, Maura.... It's not exactly this week's news, but I love her every day ^0^ 

 

Mau-stache?? she looks like a little beaver... ^.^ (many thanks to Deirdre Lovejoy for all the pix!)

 

nobody holds hairpins like Maura does... *.*  (the hairdresser is totally cool, by the way)

absolutely sensational ~ for ONCE I liked all of her glamorous outfit! Her casual style is flawless, but as for glamorous... Usually she would destroy the whole picture by picking some atrocious accessory or hairstyle, but here I really have nothing to complain about. She's mindblowing *.* Even if the photographers make her look like a dwarf all the time =.=

 that type of cookies is called 'Russisch Brot' (Russian bread) for some reason... it's a very caramelly biscuit and those letters make it all the sweeter ^0^ 

oh yes, MAIL ^.^

 no, for once, I wasn't going to write 'Maura'... those are the initials for my friend... I know, I'm just a beginner, but it's a nice and relaxing pastime ^.^ 

 my friends gave me a gift certificate for my birthday and I've invested in awesome art supplies ^.^ I decided to make a thank you card and drew what I bought ^.^ 

 a birthday card for a friend

 that was for an ATC swap for a place with A ~ I don't know whether it's politically correct to dress a touareg man in Algerian colours, but I love this card... it inspires me to draw more faces!!

 my first attempts at Western calligraphy ^.^ the only part of address I can actually show ^.^  the paper was for watercolour though ~ I know, I'm stupid, but I had nothing better at that time...

 looks like I like drawing my supplies ^.^ 

 some more big-eyed girls...

 my part of the 10 doodles-swap ^.^ 

the recipient likes Russian, so I wrote some Russian for her ^.^ 

Don't feel like talking...

What the hell is wrong with this spring? Or this year? Or our world forever? I feel so tired and dull with all the weather changes +.+ But I'm working again and it feels quite good to be important for a small bunch of people during a tiny amount of time and I also have time to be inspired and creative...
I'm still writing my diary.
I'm using my goal-book.
I've got myself a sketch book for everyday drawings.
I feel alive.
I love Maura.
I dream of her every day and every other night.
I finished a 52-pages letter yesterday.
I'm lacking good songs on my cell phone, so this is the other thing that I'm going to take care of after this post.
I'm reading 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman. I like it that his fantasy world is intertwined with real life. I need some reality in my fantasy books, otherwise I'm not interested. And his characters... I think I could find similar ones in my every day life ^.^
I've spent an hour drawing initials. The person with the huge letter has another thing to look forward to.
I totally need more Winsor & Newton inks. I'm in love with them.
Where is my waterbrush? It was sent from France on Thursday.
I'm learning Croatian. Or Serbian. Or Bosnian. We have to list them all for political correctness.
But actually it's Croatian, most of all.
I can say ~ na vrh brda vrba mrda. Yes, I can actually SAY it ^.^
Does it all sound like a quirk list? geez...

Maura with Stamos ~ both look so classy ^.^

 

 The Maura of yesterday... I love and adore you *.*

 

 went to a friend who appreciates a good llama in his mailbox... 

 

 awesome incoming ~ swapbot and postcrossing ^.^ 

 

 some paperdolls... or something like that... I like making gimmicks with faces that introduce German culture... Have you met Miss Spätzleschaber yet? ^0^ 

 

 Birthday mail ^.^ Taken on the day itself, so that wasn't all...

 

 Great Moomin letter and my inks ^0^ 

 

received and sent on one pic ^.^

 

 postcrossing custom made card... somebody had 'drawing of geishas' on their wishlist o.O 

 

 

 this one is probably lost in Russia...

 

 this one isn't lost in Russia... ^^

 

 

 blue-haired ladies ^.^ the upper envelope done with my new inks... now you understand why I'm in love with them ~ colouring looks awesome on the crappy envelope paper ^0^

 

 a rainbow swap... I'm not teribly fond of all of them +.+ but I really like Miss blue ^.^ 

 

 Easter beaver ^.^ 

 

 Wallace & Gromit ^0^ How I love them! 

 

 

 a little princess who just wants to be left alone... 

 I made a card for someone who loves goats... I happen to love them too, in spite of thinking that they smell atrociously... but they're such wonderful gentle animals *.*