The AH Coffee Shop and Reading Room 04: Come On In

Status
Not open for further replies.
I see our Chloe is trying to draw us down another rabbit hole. :D I liked the one from yesterday. Lots of plot bunnies hopping around from start to finish. And Yes, Chloe, they need to have subtitles as very few of us speak Chinese or Korean or Japanese, or any of them other languages...

Chloe blushes and confesses. I need the subtitles too. I know enough cantonese to order dim-sum. I can say hi and bye. That's about it. I can't read chinese at all - years of Saturday morning chinese school went right by me....:eek: ... and let's not mention Mandarin Chinese. My vietnamese is non-existent, altho I can tell when spoken it is. As for Korean. Huh? Is that some kind of foreign language? :D

As for Polish, polski jest cholernie trudny but skurwysyn, I can swear in Polish!

That film from yesterday? I liked that, especially that scene where they drove down the steps - shades of "The Italian Job" but with sex and humor thrown in. I love those tribute scenes where they twist them. If you've seen "Nikita", there's a Hong Kong version called "Black Cat" that I love - at the end the HK version is a bit different, she shoots her lover and gets back to work as an assassin - that HK work ethic kicking in I guess...

But if you want one of the best ever Hong Kong movies, it's got to be John Woo's "The Killer" starring Chow Yun Faat and Sally Yeh. It's fabulous.... The action starts at about 4:30 with one of the best restaurant shoot outs ever

And now, serious writing today! Jay-Lin and Round Out! Plus some work on One Night in Xanadu.
 
Last edited:
Today is day three of the quitting experiment and so far no one has died, including me or the cat. But the day is still young and I need to go to the store and do my first of the month shopping. The possibilities of deadly encounters are endless. :)

A couple of the side effects of this Chantix is sleeplessness and weird dreams. I'm sleeping about like normal and my dreams are about as weird as they always are. So no problem :cool:

Hang in there! :rose:

Did you have Mefloquine Wacky Wednesdays in Vietnam? Dreams here have to be better than those.
 
Hang in there! :rose:

Did you have Mefloquine Wacky Wednesdays in Vietnam? Dreams here have to be better than those.

Luckily, we were not issued that crap, I think we had quinine.

Chloe, I've enjoyed the first two but the second one seems to only been half the movie.

Zeb, I can handle a little Vietnamese and a little Korean. Enough to order a meal a beer and directions if need be. I understand far more than I speak. About the same way with Mexican.

Another side effect is the see food one. :eek:
 
You're welcome HP and I hope some of it's useful. And it's ALWAYS time for coffee and I need a refill.

I love those films. Those and the wuxia films, watch and few of those and you can see a few influences on Chloe in her formative years. There's some great wuxia movies out there if you can find them. Here's one I watched recently

The Fate Of Swordsman (it's got english subtitles)

Thank you, Chloe. :rose:
The thing that always puzzles me is the translation. For example "The Fate Of Swordsman" is a bit weird, for it implies that Swordsman is the Name of whatever-it-or-he-is, whereas "The Fate of the Swordsman" implies the reactions to the wielder of a sword.
I also get puzzled by the translations of some of the films of Akira Kurosawa.

Time for another coffee.
 
Thank you, Chloe. :rose:
The thing that always puzzles me is the translation. For example "The Fate Of Swordsman" is a bit weird, for it implies that Swordsman is the Name of whatever-it-or-he-is, whereas "The Fate of the Swordsman" implies the reactions to the wielder of a sword.
I also get puzzled by the translations of some of the films of Akira Kurosawa.

Time for another coffee.

The translations are just weird sometimes but I think it's a result of using translators who speak English as a second language and who aren't fluent. Chinese doesn't translate literally into English - if you do european languages into english you can get really close with the meanings and then get it colloquial without too much effort - the underlying language and culture is close enough - but you see some quite literal chinese to english translations and they quite often don't make much sense because it's literal without looking at the underlying intent and meaning and reworking it.

Take that story I just wrote - 不了情 can be translated as Never Ending Love, or Everlasting Love, or Love without End and you see it all three ways. And that's an easy one.

A lot of the lovely little quirks with Chinese to English translations come from the unique nature of Chinese language, culture and society, which in many cases don't have any direct counterparts in Western countries. It's not enough to know all the proper expressions in English, you need understand the concept or idea from the Chinese point of view as well as the western to get the English language phrasing right. Most Chinese don't have that deeper understanding of western culture and language, and if you're like me, you don't truly understand the chinese viewpoint either. There's times I just don't get how chinese-chinese see things.
 
Don't mind me as I help myself to a coffee.

Thanks for the videos, Chloe! I'm so excited to watch them. I'm using them as my motivational carrot to finish my story.

It's fascinating to put 不了情 in to Google Translate and then put in the individual words. The most clueless translation seems to be "do not up situation".

Would you count Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a wuxia movie?
 
I'm still stuck on an April Fool story. Maybe Anglish is the wrong language and I should write in COBOL. That effort will require coffee and probably guarantee a score under **.

Meanwhile, snow is dissolving under a constant drizzle as the latest Pineapple Express slides in. We made it to town yesterday and retrieved the little RV so we now have more escape options. But there's nowhere dry within range! Europe is experiencing record heat but that's too far to drive. When will Musk bore a Boston-to-Paris tube?

I feel First World Problems approaching. More coffee...
 
Would you count Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a wuxia movie?

Definitely sucks. Ang Lee filmed that one as a sort of wuxia tribute I think. It is a classic but there’s a huge number of them and some are really good. There’s a good film industry in South Korea now too and there’s some good movies from there too. The hard part is finding them. Most of them fly right by western audiences. I shamelessly abuse the goodwill of my cousins to track them down.
 
Shopping done and no bodies to hide and no wild trips to the ER for anyone. Kind of boring except for the nice stock clerk I met. I like talking to happy cheerful people. They make me smile, among other things. She could easily become a great character.

Fresh coffee for the afternooner crowd.

I got me some noodle bowls, so if anything happens, it's Chloe's fault. ;)

Which reminds me again, where is my Tai Chi tapes. I want to watch me some Tiffany Chen.
 
Definitely sucks. Ang Lee filmed that one as a sort of wuxia tribute I think. It is a classic but there’s a huge number of them and some are really good. There’s a good film industry in South Korea now too and there’s some good movies from there too. The hard part is finding them. Most of them fly right by western audiences. I shamelessly abuse the goodwill of my cousins to track them down.
So you don't like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? What's bad about it? What are the best wuxia movies?

This is not wuxia, but I saw The Handmaiden and really liked it.

Ah, I see. So many Englishes, then: Anglish, Briglish, Auglish.
 
I'm still stuck on an April Fool story. Maybe Anglish is the wrong language and I should write in COBOL. That effort will require coffee and probably guarantee a score under **.

Meanwhile, snow is dissolving under a constant drizzle as the latest Pineapple Express slides in. We made it to town yesterday and retrieved the little RV so we now have more escape options. But there's nowhere dry within range! Europe is experiencing record heat but that's too far to drive. When will Musk bore a Boston-to-Paris tube?

I feel First World Problems approaching. More coffee...

I commend you to write in FORTRAN; I found it a little peculiar, but quite satisfying in its own way.

Boston-Paris ?
Why bother? Paris (France) is featuring a lot of militant folks in hi-Viz waistcoats, wand'rin' round smashing things up.

It's taken Heaven only knows how long to drill 26 miles with 10 New Stations and 30 rebuilt/ upgraded, in London.
How long do you think it would take to do Boston - Paris ?

Drilling Paris /Indiana to Boston (884miles - ish) would be a tad tricky, I reckon
 
So you don't like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? What's bad about it? What are the best wuxia movies?

This is not wuxia, but I saw The Handmaiden and really liked it.

Ah, I see. So many Englishes, then: Anglish, Briglish, Auglish.

Oh no, that was autocorrect. It corrected wuxia to sucks for me. I loved Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Hero (Jet Li) was great and I love House of Flying Daggers. There’s a Korean one called Legend of the Shadowless Sword that’s great but there’s lots more.
 
Last edited:
I commend you to write in FORTRAN; I found it a little peculiar, but quite satisfying in its own way.

C would be more readable.

How long do you think it would take to do Boston - Paris ?

I don't think it would happen. There's a very seismically active volcanic zone called the Midatlantic Ridge sitting right in between.

I bought 12 cu.ft. of composted manure, carted it around town this afternoon while I did errands, and then unloaded it onto the garden where I'll dig it in tomorrow. I'm a little fragrant right now, and this scent isn't one to raise a lady's interest level. That would be fresh sawdust.

This morning, all the roses and lilacs in the yard were budding, and the forsythia was getting ready to flower, but the lawn was hardly starting to grow. When I left on my errands this afternoon (four hours later) new grass growth was obvious. I guess spring sprung.

I'll season the steak I bought for dinner after I'm done with this beer.
 
Anglish is that bastard tongue cooked up by Angles and inflicted on the world.
A Boston-Paris tube bypasses many fossilized Anglishers, and just in time.
COBOL is that noble but thick tongue cooked up by Adm. Grace Hooper.
ForTran, Forth, c (and variants), are mental diseases, not tongues.
Don't be confused by pidgin, krio, Engrish, Spanglish, or Welsh.
Anglish is deficient in type-checking, a near-fatal weakness.

More coffee.
 
NW, the fertilizer of choice around here is the tailings from the mushroom growers plant over near Waco. The only problem is that it is dried before they release it. If you don't tarp it good, you won't have anything left in the bed of the truck by the time you get home.

Okay, fresh coffee for the night crew.
 
NW, the fertilizer of choice around here is the tailings from the mushroom growers plant over near Waco. The only problem is that it is dried before they release it. If you don't tarp it good, you won't have anything left in the bed of the truck by the time you get home.

Mushroom Compost. I bought some of that once. It's available, but it probably didn't come from Waco. It's a little expensive. When I bought mine, there was a group of women (actually appeared to be three generations of one family) who loaded up with about eight cu.ft. of mushroom compost.

They were fun. The world should have more of them.

What I bought was all bagged, so blowing away wasn't an issue. I plan on building some more raised beds, and filling those is going to require a whole lot more poop. I found a landscape supplier not far from here. It'll take a couple trips with my little truck before those new beds are filled.
 
Mushroom Compost. I bought some of that once. It's available, but it probably didn't come from Waco. It's a little expensive. When I bought mine, there was a group of women (actually appeared to be three generations of one family) who loaded up with about eight cu.ft. of mushroom compost.

They were fun. The world should have more of them.

What I bought was all bagged, so blowing away wasn't an issue. I plan on building some more raised beds, and filling those is going to require a whole lot more poop. I found a landscape supplier not far from here. It'll take a couple trips with my little truck before those new beds are filled.

What we get here is loose and you haul it anyway you want. The last I got was for my flower beds around the house. My truck has a five by eight bed and not quite three feet deep. I put a tarp inside and they dumped it full. I leveled it of, closed and locked the bed cover.

It was free. They get overloaded with it ever so often. Actually, I think the expense was six dollars round trip in gas.
 
What we get here is loose and you haul it anyway you want. The last I got was for my flower beds around the house. My truck has a five by eight bed and not quite three feet deep. I put a tarp inside and they dumped it full. I leveled it of, closed and locked the bed cover.

It was free. They get overloaded with it ever so often. Actually, I think the expense was six dollars round trip in gas.

That's not happen'n here. If nothing else, the round trip to Waco costs *way* more than six bucks.

The area up river from Waco contains a really high concentration of dairies and feed lots. We did some work out there for EPA a few years (or decades) ago. It's like compost heaven, if you can imagine.

That's not stench, it's the smell of money.
 
Marital Communication

As part of the medical condition I am being investigated for at various hospitals, my speech is slurred. My wife has a cold and sinus infection which is affecting her hearing.

Over breakfast:

Wife starts coughing after sipping coffee.

"Sorry," she said, "I've got a frog in my throat."

"I can hear that." I responded.

Her expression shows puzzlement.

I repeat "I can hear that."

She starts giggling. Why?

What she heard me say was "I have a cold too" and she couldn't work out why I would say that when I haven't and how she could hear something totally different from my statement.

Her amusement is because of the possibilities if the miscommunication is that odd. She has an inventive imagination and thought of what she might hear if I responded to a simple request such as "Like a coffee?".

Cue for multiple plot bunnies...
 
Multiple plot bunnies... Ogg that could be a thundering herd. :D

Happy Sinday morning all.

Fresh coffee you don't have to slice, coming up.

We've already had the high of 58 today and it is now wandering down. 35 in the morning is the forecast. At least the rain is slacking off.
 
Morning everyone. Coffee please. Got it. Thanks.

60f raining, miserable outside.

After coffee, I might just go back to bed. :(

Y'all have a good day.
 
The translations are just weird sometimes but I think it's a result of using translators who speak English as a second language and who aren't fluent. Chinese doesn't translate literally into English - if you do european languages into english you can get really close with the meanings and then get it colloquial without too much effort - the underlying language and culture is close enough - but you see some quite literal chinese to english translations and they quite often don't make much sense because it's literal without looking at the underlying intent and meaning and reworking it.

Take that story I just wrote - 不了情 can be translated as Never Ending Love, or Everlasting Love, or Love without End and you see it all three ways. And that's an easy one.

A lot of the lovely little quirks with Chinese to English translations come from the unique nature of Chinese language, culture and society, which in many cases don't have any direct counterparts in Western countries. It's not enough to know all the proper expressions in English, you need understand the concept or idea from the Chinese point of view as well as the western to get the English language phrasing right. Most Chinese don't have that deeper understanding of western culture and language, and if you're like me, you don't truly understand the chinese viewpoint either. There's times I just don't get how chinese-chinese see things.

Who knew translation was such hard work? Asian languages to English done in a literal sense is often rough at best as anyone reading an instruction originally in Chinese may have discovered. Tattoos are a great example if anyone heard about the Ariana Grande example. She wanted 7 Rings in Japanese but actually wound up with barbecue grill and when she added to it to clarify only made it worse. So to those getting inked make sure the person doing the translation understands the meaning and context in both languages (and is looking after your best interest).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top