Counseling + Residency
So my social anxiety has heightened to the point where I seriously cannot function in class anymore (I suspect that it may have had to do with the double awareness that something was wrong). With a debate and class presentation coming up, I’m not going to do well at all, and my current class participation points is a fantastic big 0. I’ve bitten the bullet and scheduled a counseling session next Friday… I hope I’ll get some help out of it.
Good God, my hands are shaking after that phone call.
Residency update: I am going to kill that motherfucker. This guy keeps going around in circles. I sent him an email asking exactly what documentation was needed:
Hi Jeff,
Shot you a phone message, but you didn’t respond. I just wanted to ask another quick question: what type of documentation exactly is required? Are just the W-2 forms acceptable?
His response:
Elaine,
Please send me a copy of your 2007 federal tax return (when it comes in.) If you have any questions, please call me anytime.
Okay, I’m not so sure you actually read my email. First, you don’t pick up your phone. Second, I already mentioned that my aunt won’t get her 2007 tax return until April 2008, so what the fuck are you asking me to hand in?
Food, Glorious Food
Yesterday, for the first time in three weeks, I went back to my aunt’s house. I ate all of this within a four hour period:
1 bowl of cereal
6 Krispy Kreme doughnuts
2 large bowls of fried bee hoon
1 bowl of seaweed soup
Lots of biscuits
5 bowls’ worth of steamboat fare.
At the end of the steamboat I literally wanted to throw up.
I also made the mistake of buying pig’s stomach. It used to be my favorite bit of the body, but I ate it for lunch this afternoon and was just appalled at the amount of fat and oil I had to eat. I never noticed it before. I stuck myself on DDR for an hour and a half trying to make myself feel better. Ugh.
Chinese and Japanese
It’s so cold I have a headache. Ow.
Okay, time to wail about where this post (and its responses) went wrong. I tried to let the thing slide into ‘I forgot’ territory, since my attention span is the equivalent of a retarded bunny, but I forgot to disable emailing comments. So I got this comment in my inbox today, and I’m going to complain.
(Summary: Some chick decides Japanese and Chinese are pronounced the same, and assumes different pronunciations = two different names. Other people agree, also throwing in the fact that one’s name stays the same between languages. German, Spanish and English are a few of the languages that are used for comparison. In short, nobody believes that, in Chinese, Sakura’s name is ‘xiao ying’. Everyone thinks it should be just Sakura, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron).
1. My language is not your language.
It was rather shocking to see the amount of arrogance and assumptions everyone had in thinking Chinese and Japanese were pronounced the same and calling other people morons for thinking otherwise, or that Chinese was part of some odd universal language law that said people’s names stay the same when crossing between the language barrier.
Yes, throw in German/English, Spanish/English, Language learned in high school/English as your basis for comparison. Hey, if GERMAN/SPANISH/LLIHS does that, then it means EVERY LANGUAGE does it too!
No, it does not. Coming from a community that has already shown itself to accept that every single rule is subjective (even with topics of incest, bestiality and rape), it just made me wonder how on earth they managed to lump languages under one single umbrella with a Universal Rule to rule them all. Even English in itself doesn’t follow its own rules; why should every language need to have something in common?
The problem lies with the Japanese kanji and Chinese characters. Chinese does romanize (or Chinesefy?) English names, but the Japanese kanji creates a new rule altogether. Kanji is, essentially, traditional Chinese. Some phrasing has changed over the… decades? Millennium? (like how the kanji for ‘teacher’ are the Chinese characters for ’sir’), but regardless, kanji names are still pronounced the Chinese way when speaking in Chinese, simply because they are Chinese characters.
They are not different names. Simply because the kanji characters are pronounced differently doesn’t mean they’re two unique names with no relation to each other. Think Latin and English. In Latin, the endings of names change depending on their case, but in English it stays the same. They’re still the same person, even though they have like, 4 different versions of their names. (For the record, I took Latin too, so I have the relevant knowledge to make this parallel).
2. No one is a moron. Only you.
Go ahead and backpedal by saying the Japanese/English speakers don’t pick up on the different intonations, so for some reason, the rant is still valid(???), but that makes you look more of the moron. You don’t know for sure if the Japanese can pick them up - you’re not a native Japanese speaker. I learned both Japanese and Chinese (and Latin, hee), I can tell the difference, and that is the limit of my experience. Don’t overstep your boundaries by proclaiming that no one can tell the difference just because you - the native English speaker - can’t.
And yet again, I see projection all over. I find it incredibly infuriating when people assume things they don’t know about applies to everyone else at large, and think themselves knowledgeable when they draw parallels between languages that don’t actually exist. Look, if you don’t know the language and how it works, don’t draw parallels, because you don’t know what the other line actually looks like.
I think it will be extremely heartening to see people rein this this psychological mindset when talking to a public. I too, like to submit to projection when making snarky remarks, but not in terms of making logical arguments that will be judged by the public, in which this rant obviously did. Said person ignored my comments and continued her tirade of ribbing the fanfic author whom she was complaining about.
The lack of knowledge in people isn’t what bothers me. It’s the assumption of knowledge that creates this horrid atmosphere of ignorance and arrogance.
In short: Don’t rant about languages you know nothing about.
Among other things
Dear America:
FUCK YOU AND YOUR RIDICULOUSLY OVERCOMPLICATED TAX SYSTEM.
—
On a happier note: JULIA GOT 8 POINTS YAY!!!!! ACJC, HERE WE COME.
YOU’LL NEVER GET HER, SAJC!!!!! HAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!
—
On a more coherent note, I’ve consistently been failing at DDR. I’ve gotten the Basic mode down, but the Advanced mode requires some level of incredible eye-leg coordination, which I don’t exactly have. The only song that I like to dance to so far is Sean Paul’s ‘Temperature’, so there’s some major lulz.
Umm… I feel like writing a whole post about the idiocy of this post (and its responses), but I’m currently kneeling on the DDR dance pad right now, having failed some Bobby Brown(?) song for the 5th time in a row, and my knees hurt. Later.
Heath Ledger
In case you haven’t heard already: Heath Ledger dies at 28.
It hit me rather badly. I called Julia all the way in Singapore at 7 in the morning to tell her about the news.
My reactions to death follows a predictable pattern. It’s ‘oh my god oh my god oh my god’, followed by an intense and desperate search for some breaking news, and when the event has passed, I would have it engraved in my memory forever. And my heart breaks every single time.
It’s really the same way I reacted to VTech and Columbine… I remember trying to blog about VTech in some way that would make sense, but I just couldn’t. I was angry at the people who brushed it off and said ‘oh, that’s so sad’ and did nothing, I laughed at Cho Seung Hui’s angry diatribe because that was me when I was 14 and emo, I felt so much sorrow for the people who needlessly died. I remember when Applie’s father died and I attended the wake. I was a wreck afterwards. I didn’t know what to say, and I still don’t.
It’s a paradox… I don’t know Heath, but he feels like a friend that’s just gone. I’ve seen him since A Knight’s Tale, and it feels like he’s been around for so long. He’s become a familiar face. And I suppose the shock stemmed from the fact that there were no previous indicators, not like Britney or Paris. I don’t care about the cause of death, but the fact that he’s dead. He’s dead.
And I still cannot understand how people can move on so easily. At least one forum that I frequent were absolutely unsympathetic to the news. People posted stuff along the lines of ‘good riddance’, or ‘and this concerns me how?’. ONTD was being an asshole, as usual, where a person’s death can be quickly supplanted by a post that says ‘HAPPY SUPER MEGA FUN POST GOOD TIME 2008!’
It hurts, really, looking at the indifference.
I can’t move on after someone dies. I don’t know how everyone else manages.
Residency
So my residency application was found, and I got this in my email a couple of days ago:
Elaine,
I am in the process of completing your residency packet and need additional information. Can you please prove me a copy of [your aunt's] 2007 tax return. You can bring, mail in or fax it to the number below. Your application will be in pending until I receive that information.
I called up my aunt, and it turns out she wouldn’t receive her tax return until April, so I wrote back an email:
Hi Jeff,
I phoned my aunt about procuring the 2007 tax return form, and she said she won’t receive it until April 2008. Would a 2006 tax return be okay, or is the 2007 tax return form absolutely necessary?
And then I got this:
Elaine,
I do not need her 2008 tax return. I need the 2007 which she should receive in April of this year. Call if you have questions.
That’s exactly what I said, you nitwit. And I said Two Thousand and Motherfucking Six, not 2008. Can you not read? BWARGH.
