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...

Desperately tired...

Can you feel what it's like? When you need to stay awake for just in case, but you want to sleep so baaaaaaad?? I will try to distract myself with this blog of mine... I've got a bunch of mail pix to show anyway...

 first a very yummy cake that I've baked for my parents...

Incoming ^0^ 

 

this is what I've found in my mailbox when I returned home after Christmas ^0^ Cards, letters and Christmas gifts ^0^

 

 the package from Romania contained this handmade marvel ~ a card that is probably 20 years old and insanely beautiful! I just had to show it off! 

another insanely beautiful thing ~ Arabic calligraphy... when those words form birds and stuff, I totally start drooling... 

something else to show off ~ Taiwan fan-stuff ^0^ so perfect for a Taiwan-fan (meeee!)... I've been wanting that tape for a while, somebody was selling it on etsy for about 5 US dollars plus shipping  ~ well, now I've got it for free and its original price is 35 NTD (a little less than a euro)... I guess my friend could read my mind ^.^ the post-its also show Taiwanese famous landmarks ^0^ 

those are some postcrossing cards, a letter that made me very happy and my order from Prinzapfel (the most terrific calendar ever, you can start envying me after clicking this link)

another postcrossing card and fantastic letters ^.^ 

a New Year card from Japan... I feel kinda bad that we never send those, not even to family... but we didn't get any apart from this one and the one in the package on the previous pic, so I guess that's ok ^^

today's mail ^0^ I just need to say it again ~ as opposed to Germany, Estonia has beautiful Christmas stamps... *grumpy* The package was from Iran, so it has spent an endless amount of time at the customs and everything, even the envelope with the letter, was ripped open... 

Somehow, this Christmas season was the time of getting in touch again! I've got letters from my awesome 'language geeks' gang (it started out as language exchange and blossomed into beautiful friendships), from my Japanese pal with whom I lost contact around the big earthquake time and the letter from Iran was a lovely new start for an old friendship... 

Now to my habit of sticking Maura everywhere ~ so missing her... She must have rehearsals with Tom Hanks now, that lucky bastard... Hope it doesn't look like this ^^

 

 

 

Now to my outgoing ^.^ 

 

that was for an ATC swap ~ Monsters in ugly holiday sweaters ^.^ 

this was a profile-based swap for someone who, well, likes Ghibli, obviously ^.^ 

another Draw this word swap ^^

silly card for a pal's birthday ^.^ it's a pun-picture, 'to wish' sounds like 'pig', 'all' sounds like 'one eggplant' and a part of 'without problems' sounds like 'chestnut' ^.^ oh, how I love puns ^.^

here I've tried lettering and I guess it's my new addiction ^.^

I share the love for rats with my pal ^.^

so, what can I say, it totally SUCKS to draw with pencils on envelopes =.= but still, Dory looks so cheerful ^^ and I still can't get over the fact that Vicky Lewis gave her her voice ^0^ she's rad!

another Shiro envelope ^^ I also like the winter stamp ^^ 

mwaha, the year of the snake... felttips are a lot more fun on envelopes, if only I had GOOD ones...

some friendly monster ^^

ah, now I'm wondering whether they'll make a fuss about the stamp being on the other side...

nekoppoi tanuki ^^

I like drawing faces on the envelopes... I think, I should practice all I can ^^

yawn...

My treasures...

This week was so full of mail ^0^ And very busy too, but I enjoyed myself most of the time ^.^

 

not so much outdoing mail, because the last two letters I wrote were really long... ^^   The last envelope's decoration was an article about a dance performance I MISSED lately =.= I'm not fond of classical ballet at all, but sometimes I like some modern stuff... it's amazing what a body can be like, what it can express...

On that day I almost went crazy because of all this awesomeness!! fat mail from two beautiful people ~ and one hopefully beautiful person who requested my address on letternet and who actually did write me a letter... amazing!

 this week was also Hong Kong week ~ a short letter from my friend and a postcrossing postcard, isn't it terrific?? I believe it's self-made ^.^

 my friend added this amazing Christmas card (though I'm not too fond of thinking of Christmas already), Asian people never stop to surprise me with their decoration ideas!!

 so much love inside one envelope ^0^ the leaf is a real one ^0^ I didn't even notice at first ^.^

 

more awesomeness ^0^ and Romanian pufuleti (fluffy corn snack) below (they're half-gone on the pic and they were gone completely a minute later ^^)

 

 I loved the post by GotThatSwing on her blog, about good things on a crappy day... I've been making a list of great things too, so that I can be truly happy when a day is over ^.^ even if I feel tired and don't write as much as I'd like to... But, apart from my full mailbox and some great snacks and dishes, I've discovered that there are people who still make good music years after years ^0^

I was enchanted by Sandy Lam this week! Like, she swept me away, totally... I mean, I did like her before, she has a voice that I can always enjoy, even if she sings the letters of the alphabet ~ but Sandy Lam was probably the last of the Hong Kong singers I like (it IS Hong Kong week ^0^) that I'd have expected to be so WOW! Nice ~ yes, cute ~ yes, lovely ~ yes, but not WOOOOOOOOOW!! o.O I've discovered the new album 'Gaia' while browsing a Chinese music site and I just can't stop listening to it...I was prepared to discover one or another catchy pop song (well, it's been what I call quality pop after all) among countless sugar-coated-honey-dripping ballads about how her darling went away and how she misses him so... but OMG, she certainly didn't waste her time during those two years she took for producing it! Her vocals are mindblowing, the lyrics are truly moving me, especially the beauty of thoughtfully arranged words that add a special flavour to the music and it's music that I actually find interesting... I mean, come on, I was really pretty tired of looking forward to the album of a Chinese singer I liked and of being disappointed and bored to tears! Stanley Huang, Jay Zhou, Evonne Hsu, Angela Zhang (now once again) =.= I literaly HAD to turn to Jolin Tsai and S.H.E. who at least maintain their usual level... Then, cute little Sandy decides to explore her inner self and the never-ending possibilities of music and just takes my breath away! Girl, you rock ~ and I love you creepy and sexy ^0^

It was so hard to decide which video to choose, because those are awesome too, but I decided to share this one... The whole damn thing gives me goosebumps T0T

OK, did I just say 'I love you' to someone else than Maura? Oh, darling, of course, I didn't mean it! ^.^ You are a goddess even without singing ^0^