The Easter Song

My newest song. I tried to finish it by Easter Sunday, but I was about 2 days late :(
Thanks to Saki for singing with me.

You can download it here: Stephen Hunter - The Easter Song.mp3

Remember, when you listen to thoughtful music, you should listen loud on good speakers. And for goodness' sake: don't listen on laptop speakers! At least use some good headphones or earbuds.

When Galaxies Collide

The most complex object in the known universe is in my skull, and yours too! The brain is estimated to have over 100,000,000,000 neurons. That's about how many stars are estimated to be in our Milky Way galaxy. So, congratulations: you have a galaxy in your head. But it's more amazing than that; neurons are way more complex than stars, so your brain really is far more complex than most galaxies!

As you may have seen on many news sites today, NASA has released a few dozen Hubble images of galaxies colliding. It's fascinating to see how one glob of 100 billion stars affects and is affected by another glob of 100 billion stars as gravity does its thing. Sometimes they destroy each other, and sometimes they meld into a new larger galaxy. As amazing as that is, I think something far more interesting and unpredictable is what happens when Person A comes into contact with Person B. Galaxies collide! What's going to happen? It's anybody's guess!

O Holy God, how wondrous is your creation! My awesomely designed 3-pound, 100-giganeuron brain can't even begin to fathom the depths of your wisdom!

Japanese Test Results

I have been delinquent in my blogging! That's embarrassing.
Anyway, on Dec 2 I took the test, and sometime in early Feb I got the results:

Writing/Vocab: 74/100
Listening: 96/100
Reading/Grammar: 126/200

Total: 296/400
Passed (240 points needed to pass)

I can't believe I'm blogging about this 2 months late.

A podcast you have to subscribe to!

If you are interested in America's role in the world, and want to know what you're talking about when you have political discussions, YOU HAVE TO SUBSCRIBE TO THIS PODCAST!

PRI: America Abroad <--Click to subscribe

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Play

At college, when we played soccer together, I used to say that you could really get to know a lot about a person by how he moves on the soccer court; that athletic self-expression was no less telling than verbal expression.
Then today I read this:

"We obtain better knowledge of a person during one hour's play and games than by conversing with him for a whole year." --Plato

I wouldn't word it quite this strongly (those ancients did have a way of exaggerating for effect), but I was surprised to see this old idea of mine resurface, and come from Plato no less!

The Psychology of Atheism

"Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe."
--Peter Kreeft

Actually, the odds of finding any planet in the universe that could support advanced life is a lot bleaker than a million monkeys typing Hamlet. The Anthropic Principle (held by theists and many atheists alike) says that the universe seems specifically designed to accommodate advanced life. A compiled list of 322 design characteristics of the universe reveals "less than 1 chance in 10²⁸²(million trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion) exists that even one life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles".

So back to "At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe." I always thought that was funny, if not a little sad in its truth. But then I actually found a university lecture on exactly that topic!

"The Psychology of Atheism" by Paul Vitz at the University of Florida

Intriguingly (ironically?), he bases his case on Freud. Have a listen!

Banana Peels: Sinister Slipsters or Misunderstood Myth?

If you take your standard Websters dictionary and look up "The thing that is most likely to make someone slip and fall if they step on it", you will find a picture of a--you guessed it--a banana peel. But honestly, in the history of mankind, has anyone ever slipped and fallen because they stepped on a banana peel?

Japanese Language Proficiency Test (Part 2)

I have now officially registered for the test, which will be in Nagoya on December 2. Pretty soon, I'm going to self-administer a second practice test, and hopefully my score will have improved since February. We'll see.

Another Attempt at Electronic Dance?

I'm trying out some new music technology with the hope that I can make some better sounding music. Here's a roughly thrown together example of what kind of sound quality I can get:

Click to listen

An Observation

I hate it when people use the phrase "I hate it when (so-and-so)" when actually all they want to do is let you know that they've made an observation that (so-and-so) happens.

*tongue in cheek

It's Sea Day! 海の日だよ！

---Click for pictures---

It's summer, and wouldn't it be a waste if we didn't go to the beach? So I got some people together to go to Goza Shirahama. A typhoon had just passed, so the weather was perfect. I think we all got a little sunburned, except Tomomi, who stayed in the tent I brought the whole time.

We had a good time swimming, tossing the frisbee, lounging on floating wood "islands", playing with sea urchins, drawing stuff in the sand, um...I can't think of anymore. Unfortunately the typhoon stirred up so much sediment in the sea that we couldn't snorkel.

The beachgoers: Jen, Renelda, Tomomi, Kumiko, Paul, and me. So basically, this is the group of people I've met by going to the English Church in Nagoya.

Younger and Wiser

I've always been taught about life from people who are "older and wiser." It feels natural to put myself under the teaching of people who have lived longer than me. But I must be approaching the age that I have to learn how to learn from people who are younger than me, like pastors maybe. I guess everyone has to get used to that reversal sometime.

The Wisdom of the Age

The "wisdom" of the age, as expressed by 26-year-old supermodel Gisele Bundchen (in protest against the positions of the Catholic church):

"Today, no one is a virgin when they get married."
"How is it possible to not want people to use condoms and also not have abortions? It's impossible, I'm sorry."

I'm not trying to make fun of anyone here. Just exposing the ridiculous, shallow common sense of a generation that has grown up with backwards thinking.

日本語能力試験２級

I recently decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, Level 2 (the hardest is Level 1 and the easiest is Level 4). To take Level 2, one should know about 1000 Kanji, about 6000 words, have mastered relatively high grammar, and "have the ability to converse, read, and write about matters of a general nature".

Last Monday, I went to an onsen (hot spring) called Gokurakuyu (Paradise Spa) in the nearby city of Tsu. I brought along Japanese Level 2 Mock Test, and took it there. To pass the test, you have to get %60 (240 of 400 points). It took about 2.5 hours. I got 241 points, barely passing. The crazy thing is that the test is only offered once a year in December. So I have a long wait...er...a lot of time to improve before the test.

Passing the level 3 or level 4 test doesn't mean much, but the level 2 and level 1 test do look good to Japanese employers. Honestly, the test is not that important to me, though. I just want to get better at speaking, listening, reading, and maybe writing; if the test can give me motivation to continue learning, then so be it.

Merry Christmas

Christ is born. This changes everything.

One Giant Leap for Khayng

This week, I've been spending a lot of thought on Khayng (my constructed language in process).
Every time I approach Khayng to work on it, I feel like I'm coming back to a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with just a few of the pieces tentatively put together.

The last major step in the evolution of Khayng came about a year ago, when it went from a postposition language to a preposition language. (This is because I decided that it's nice to know how a word or phrase is going to function before hearing the word or phrase.)

With that decision having been made last year, I was able to make a bigger decision: SENTENCE STRUCTURE! Subject-Verb-Object (like English)? SOV (like Japanese)? VSO, rare but tempting? Free word order?

My ideal was to make it Free Word order (I guess like Latin). But it seemed impossible to make that ideal fit with another of my ideals: being able to drop subjects or objects that are already understood. I almost gave up my free-word-order ideal and went with a strict V-S-O word order (which is actually quite convenient for preposition languages. why aren't more languages V-S-O?). But as I neared the giving up point and VSO looked very tempting, through lots of careful thought and a little inspiration, the solution came.

If you've read this far, you have an amazing attention span.

Here's how free word order works. Just mark the subject as a subject with some kind of preposition, same for the object, and VOILA! now you can rearrange them without losing meaning. So all of these would mean the same: "He saw me; Me he saw; Saw he me; Me saw he; Saw me he; He me saw." Fine for simple sentences, but not so fine for complex sentences with subordinate clauses (I use { and } to show clauses): "I can't believe {that it doesn't annoy you {that he hates reading!}}" With totally free ordering of subject, object, and verb, nightmarish arrangements are possible: "I {you {he reading hates} doesn't annoy} can't believe!" Also, it gets impossible to parse without clause-beginning AND clause-ending markers, which may be fine for computers, but no person wants that kind of system.

So after I wrote that sample sentence in English and proto-free-order-Khayng, I realized Free Order is no good! What I want is Flexible Order! In other words, keep the free order system of marking the S and O with prepositions, but put in some much needed restrictions, namely "You may eat of any fruit of the word-order garden, but you must not put a subordinate clause anywhere but at the end." This sounds complicated, but it's not; we do it in English without thinking:
Simple sentence: "You annoy me."
Sentence with clause: "It annoys me that you always walk in front of me."
Usually you don't say: "That you always walk in front of me annoys me."
See? You put the subject, which is a clause, at the back automatically (and this requires a perverse maneuver that entails highjacking an "it", sticking it where the clause should be, then ungrammatically tacking the clause onto the end of the sentence. At least in Khayng, it's grammatical).

Anyway, I'm happy to announce that Khayng is now officially a Flexible Word Order language, and that I have finally figured out how to implement this while not sacrificing my other ideals or making it unparsable.

Seriously, if you read all this...I should give you an award.

Stolen Bike #2

My last post was about my nice bike getting stolen. At the end, I said that I got a nice new bike and that I was paranoid that it was going to get stolen.

Well, it did.

It took me a while to recover from the first theft, to get used to borrowing other people's bikes, to file the police report, to do the research to find another bike, to find a good bike shop, and to wait for the new bike to come in. Now I'm back at square one again.

You know how when your work gets destroyed or erased on purpose, so you start over and get it almost back to how it was before, and then someone destroys it or erases it again, so it makes you not want to try again and just makes you frustrated that there's nothing you can do to stop it from happening again? Yeah, it's like that.

(and, whereas I'm not sure whether I locked my first bike, I AM sure I locked it this time. There are pro bike theives here).

A Time of Loss

At Starbucks, practicing my Japanese writing seriously for the first time (as opposed to just reading), I needed a break. So I went out to put my writing practice book on my bike, but...


Huh? Where's my bike? Haha Ryan must have moved it to play a joke on me. Wait, Ryan lives in America now! Huh?! WHERE'S MY BIKE?!!

Pacing quickly around the bike parking lot, looking everywhere, I came to accept what had happened. I sent a cell phone email to Mike and Bill, those 5 words no bike enthusiast ever wants to be true of him: "Welp, my bike's been stolen."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO


It was a good bike. I'd just done work on it to get it back into like-new condition.
Oh well. It's been a few weeks since the event, and I recently ordered and recieved a new bike, actually the same model, newer edition. It's nice, but now I'm paranoid that this one's going to get stolen, too.

(by the way, I may have forgotten to lock my bike when it was stolen, which would have been the first and only time)

Sexist Language?

Some complain that the English language can tend to be sexist:
1. The title Mr. can be used for a married or unmarried man, while a woman's marital status must be brought up every time she is addressed (Miss vs. Mrs.)
2. He is the pronoun of choice for referring to a generic person, as if men were a more fundamental type of human being than women (for example "What is a person to do if he finds his language lacking in gender-neutral pronouns?").

But English is not alone. Japanese, to a greater extent, has what might be thought of as sexism built into the language. Let's compare words for "husband" and "wife".
1. 主人 (shujin), used to refer to husbands, and literally means "lord" or "master". (The first character "shu" is the one used in the Japanese Bible in place of the Hebrew word YHWH, where you would find LORD in all-caps in an English version.)
2. 家内 (kanai), used to refer to wives, and literally means "inside the house". I'd love to hear a feminist's take on this one.
3. 奥さん (okusan), used to refer to wives, and literally means "behind", "within", or "further inside", giving a sense that the husband is the face to the outside world and the wife is kept in. (I have heard one woman explain that it could be thought of as a sign of affection, that a husband keeps his greatest treasure hidden away).
4. 愚妻 (gusai), used to introduce your wife, especially to a superior, and literally means "stupid/foolish wife", as in "this is my boss...And boss, this is my foolish wife." It could be said that this too might be a sign of marital unity, that is, when a Japanese man is to speak humbly about himself, he also must be humble about his wife because they are one, and to speak highly of his wife would be to speak highly of himself. But then again, there is no equivalent word a woman could use to introduce her husband which would mean "stupid husband". She could still use "shujin" (lord, master).

I should say that these words don't necessarily bring to mind their literal meanings every time they're used. They're usually just used according to their social function without much thought about the original meanings.

Last Day on Phi Phi Island

This is my last full day on Phi Phi Island. Tomorrow I go back to Phuket by ferry, then make my way up to the airport by evening, and arrive in Japan the following morning. Then I resume teaching the day after that.

So I'm spending my last day here on a beach in Nui Cove. The snorkelling here is about as good as monkey beach. It's kind of secret, so there are very few people here, but there's no lunch stand here, like on monkey beach, so I'll just starve until my longtail boat comes to pick me up again at 4:00.

But I like it here. The water is clear and the scenery is amazing. I just pulled myself away from typing this to ask a tour boat that just pulled up if they had any extra lunches to sell. No luck. I probably look like a castaway to them: alone on this beach when they pulled up, no food, scraggly beard because I haven't shaved since I left Japan.

Well I guess there's nothing left to do but get back in the water.

Scuba and Monkey Beach Again

Yesterday's scuba went well. Many people panic their first time, being dropped in the ocean without first being given a chance to get comfortable with the equipment. I was lucky to find a dive shop that gave me a free trial run with the equipment in the pool. By the time we got to the ocean the next day I was ready, though still a little tense. The first dive was near the entrance to a sea cave. The second was around a large, steep rock island that plunged deep into a beautiful bay. We went all the way around, with the wall, all decorated in coral, sponges, and fish, at our right side the whole time. Twice we swam through small canyons; a little intimidating, but fun.

Something I didn't know about scuba was that the jacket fills with air and empties of air from the tank with two buttons. I think it's the hardest part, with equalizing ear pressure coming in at second.

We didn't see any sharks, but on our way back to the main island, we did see some dolphins. We tried for a while to get close enough to swim with them, but they kept on disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. We had to give up because the tide was going out.

That was yesterday. Today, I'm spending the day on monkey beach. The snorkelling here is the best I've found on the island, and the monkeys love to entertain. I'm writing this on the palm pilot (which is running out of juice), with the waves lapping at my feet. I guess it's time to bring this to an end.

Chill Day

So yesterday the tour boat picked me up from bamboo island as I had arranged, and we continued on to monkey beach. Unlike bamboo island, monkey beach is appropiately named, as there are actually wild monkeys on the beach.

Today was a day for relaxing. But, in the evening I went to one of the dozen dive shops here on Phi Phi island for a 30 minute scuba crash course. Then tomorrow I'm going scuba diving for my first time. It's going to be just me and the instructor. We are expected to see lots of cool things like leopard sharks, which aren't dangerous. Well time for bed now.

Bamboo Island

I am really burnt now, despite liberally applying spf 45 twice or thrice a day. Snorkelling is deceptively...um...it's deceptive. You have cool water on your back all day until you finish, when you realize that your back is in a world of hurt. Also, with all that water, your need for hydration goes unnoticed even after spending all that energy. But anyway I got in some good snorkelling today here at...Bamboo Island!!

I woke up this morning and bought a ticket for a snorkelling tour boat around the two main islands here. It also makes a stop at a minor (undeveloped) island, bamboo island. I had asked if they would drop me off there and pick me up on the next day's tour, and they said sure (that's the cheapest way to get there for the night, cheaper than hiring a longtail boat). So off we went.

When we arrived here at bamboo island, there were lots of people swimming and playing, but they all left at around 3:30. So now I'm in my tent on this remote Island in the Andaman Sea with no noise but the waves and crickets, no people but the park ranger. But it's really hot.

Fyi: 1 After everyone left, I walked around the circumference of this island and it took about 45min. 2 There is no bamboo on bamboo island. 3 This is my tent's maiden voyage.

Hammock

Now I'm in a hammock strung up on some trees with low-running branches at a beach on Phi Phi island, somewhere in the south of Thailand. I'm typing this on a pda lent to me by a student of mine, and sending it by cellphone.

As every travel agency will tell you, Phi Phi island is where the Leonardo DiCaprio movie "The Beach" was filmed. It was hit hard by the tsunami, and there is still evidence of that. Also the port area is the ugliest piece of tourist pandering nightlife trash you can imagine. But once you get away from that, it's really beautiful.

The snorkelling at this beach is pretty good with amazingly clear water and colorful fish. Tomorrow I'm going to take a day tour around the surrounding islands , get off and stay on one of them, Bamboo Island, a small undeveloped snorkelling paradise, or so I hear. I'll camp there, then catch the following day's tour boat back to Phi Phi. Wish you were here, whoever 'you' might be.

I'm writing from Thailand

Yes, I decided to take my spring break in thailand. I originally wanted to go to the Maldives, but it turns out that's wicked expensive, so I researched out the wazoo and came up with this Thai island hopping snorkelling and maybe camping adventure.

Now I'm in Phuket, which is nice, but maybe a bit overcrowded with tourists. After finishing breakfast, I'm going to snorkel, then probably take a ferry to Phi Phi island.

I'll be here until April 5th, but I can still check email, so send me something because I'm here alone:)

A Day of Amazing Chance Meetings

Today I had 4 amazing chance meetings with students.
1. At a culture festival held at an elementary school where our church's gospel choir sang, I met a former student from my Wednesday night class, a middle aged man who quit my class 6 months ago and happened to be volunteering as a stage hand today.

2. At the same festival, I met a woman who hasn't been able to attend my class at all this year because of her husband's recent cerebral hemorrhage. It was great to get a chance to talk to her.

3. Then Mike (fellow teacher at the English School, from Tasmania) and I went to downtown Yokkaichi to eat lunch, go to starbucks, and walk around the big shopping center. There, I met another former student.

4. As I was talking to her, another former student walked by! She quit my Wednesday night class (same as #1) at the same time as #1 because she was getting married and moving far away. So obviously I was surprised and glad to see her back in Yokkaichi for the first time since she left and got married a half year ago.

All this, and then one of the video games there in the shopping center started playing the tune of "It's a small world after all"...and THAT after some kindergarteners had played "It's a small world after all" on handbells earlier that day at the culture festival!

Grand Re-opening

I'm REALLY hoping to re-open my music page soon with 2 new songs.
(I haven't released any finished songs since "These Empty Halls" in early 2004, before I came to Japan). In fact, I wanted to finish by this weekend, but I caughtt a cold, preventing me from doing the necessary singing.

Which country am I in?

I thought two of you might be interested to know that the Japanese guy who owns an Indian curry restaurant near my house has been playing Sitar for 8 years and gave me a demonstration, and that I asked if I could try, so he let me.

So, following his instructions, I rubbed the first and second fingers of my left hand in coconut resin to make them slide easier up and down the strings (because you only use those 2 fingers to push down the strings), fitted the metal pick-like implement onto the first finger of my right hand, took off my shoes, sat in the classic sitar sitting position on a mat he had laid down on the wood floor for me, and played around for 10 minutes while a few other patrons continued eating their dinners (it's a small restaurant, with a bar and 4 tables). I was surprised to see that there are 2 layers of strings: you strum and pluck the upper layer, while the layer underneath just resonates.

Seeing how skillfully I played, he asked if I played guitar, too. He also lent me a book he has explaining the basics of playing sitar. I'm tempted to take either sitar or shamisen (like a traditional japanese banjo) lessons.

Visitor

Carey arrives tomorrow. She's been studying Japanese in preparation, and I'm surprised at how much she's learned. This is just the right time to see 紅葉 (kouyou), that is autumn colors.

Khayng Update

The language is really coming along. I think I'd like there not to be a "to be" verb (so hopefully, there will be no equivalent of "be, is, are, am, was, were"). I think it's possible. At least I've heard of languages that don't have a be-verb. Instead of "The shirt is red", the adjective would actually be a verb, so it would be more like "The shirt reds". Of course I'll still have a verb meaning "exist".