A Japanese and Chinese Major

Archive for March, 2006

Ok now to jot down some research ideas. I think it would be really fun if i could do some kind of research to compare the amount of time it takes to write a message in Chinese or Japanese to the amount of time it takes to write it in english. you would have to give each kanji and each letter of the english alphabet a certain value of time that it takes to write and add them up to compare which takes longer. there are so many variables though, they’re different languages so they wouldn’t be in the same format or arrangement, they wouldn’t be produced by the same thought processes. You would have to make sure they are direct translations as well, that they both mean exactly the same thing, something I think you really cannot accomplish in translation. and once we get results, what would we do with the information? ok we figured out that it takes longer to write in Japanese, what are we going to do go to Japan and tell them, “Hey, guys, this whole Japanese thing you guys are doin, no good… Here, look at this, according to our results, English is a much more efficient language to write, so, why don’t you guys start writing in english since it’s better.” Yeah so i’m not sure how we would use the data for something useful once we figured out the results.

I would also like to do a study on determing someone’s intelligence by observing whether or not they are prone to wearing hats, specifically and solely baseball caps. I have noticed that just about everyone that I hang out with or like to hang out with never wear baseball caps. Incidentally, alot of people i don’t like do wear baseball caps. So i thought that was a very interesting correlation and i wonder if there were someway i could make this into a research project. How would i be able to compare one’s intelligence over the other? I guess I could do a survey asking people wearing baseball caps to record their gpa and also their past discrepencies with the law, and compare them with random people i ask that are not wearing hats. ok bye

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back to writing books. I have read very few books in my life. but what i have noticed is that books especially the bazillion research and cultural books that exist are just filled with quotes and ideas from other people’s books. For example the one EALL book I have contains nothing but names of other authors and their works. What is the significance or knowledge about knowing the person’s name! nothing! you’re just telling me a name you’re not giving me any useful real information. Hence this is another reason why i think it would be easy to write a book because i could just borrow everybody elses words an ideas and credit them in the bibliography, site the sources down of every name but there would be no new information given! it would just be another book with the same information as the others, like there isn’t enough books in the world. That makes me really wonder how many books exist that do that same thing, and how much information is really contained in those books. It makes me really uninterested in reading to think that there are thousands of books out there and you’ll be lucky to find one that tells you something new and doesn’t copy off the others or tell you the same things as the others except in a different format.

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I just got done with my first quarter of chinese. But anyways, there’s alot of things I want to do. Like for example do research on certain subjects and write a book. Like, since I’m staying in Japan next year, I think a really good thing for me to do is keep a daily blog to record my experiences there. Then at the end of the year I can look back on my travels and write a book. It would be called something like Gaijian Power or how ever you spell it. I think writing a book would be a good idea because it could serve as a constant and occasional supply of income. One of the professors here warns me to not pursue translations saying he’s done it before and warning me “there’s no money in that, believe me I know”. Yeah right when you write a book and you make money even if it’s not best selling-wise it’s still alot. Besides, how much is no money to you? You probably were born into wealth and to you a couple thousand or so dollars is nothing. And if it isn’t profitable, why are you continuing to translate books?

ok now to write down some random thoughts because I guess that’s what journals are for anyways. My vocabulary has become sooo low since high school, i hate it. Some of my teachers that are foreign even have a wider english vocabulary than me. That’s embarrasing. Hmm i kinda don’t feel like writing that much anymore maybe later.

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