ക GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY

In less than 30 hours, 2009 is long gone. Time flies like an arrow and all the years gone by like a blink of an eye. We cannot escape the facts of life, { 生老病死 shēng lǎo bìng sǐ } which is birth, old age, sickness & death. Life is impermanent, quite uncertain and always in a state of flux. We know one thing for sure we grow old but we can grow old gracefully and mindfully.

Had a get together with old friends whom we have not met for some time over cuppa of coffee, all the four are 'YesNoYes' (Chinese educated)[in case some missed my earlier post ~ its a name we called those educated in Chinese and Kenwooi coined them as 'mango'] and as usual I'm the only bananaz. That has been my "gift" since day one, having lots of "yesnoyes" friends more than bananaz friends. Yak yak yak about travel, [fast forward]..and finally about how to retire and one peculiar topic of "OLD" creeps into the conversation and I can hardly wait to blog and share about it. One of them shared his ideology of growing old gracefully with four paramount factors of "OLD" that we need the most which sounds terrific to me. A creative joke pun replaced the most common Chinese proverb thus inverted the meaning as not to depend on our children to look after us when we grow old..

養兒防老 OR 養兒煩恼

{yǎng' ér fáng lǎo OR yǎng' ér fán nǎo}

The first part { 養兒防老yǎng' ér fáng lǎo }  means to bring up children for the purpose of being looked after in old age OR the second { 養兒煩恼 yǎng' ér fán nǎo } where there is rhyme for 'fáng lǎo' & 'fán nǎo' which literarily means to have more worries or anxieties having children. If the first part is true MAYBE that is one of the reason why our ancestors in the olden days prefer boys than girls so that they can lived happily ever after with the son (s) taking care of them through old age? That's my wild guess. In future do you still believe your son will take care of you or you think your daughter will take care of you even more or will your children bid you farewell and send you to old folks home? Take it as a bonus point, hope for the best and prepare for the worst..(Thanks to Autumn Belle who added  this "Chinese want to have sons in a family to carry on the family surname and the 'OLD' is like addressing 'Sir' and not referring to old in terms of age").

So what are the four very important factors we should look forward to so as not to be a liability to our children and society? Here you go..

I. { 老伴 lǎo bàn } old spouse (husband or wife or soulmate).

II. { 老友 lǎo you } old friend, someone to catch up for a cuppa.

III. { 老生 lǎo shēng } old body, healthy living.

IV. { 老本 lǎo běn } old capital, retirement fund or nestegg.

Wishing everyone a blessed wonderful, and bountiful ll0l0.

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ക Merry Bollywood Xmas

Dear fellow Bloggers & friends

A BLESSED CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE! शुभ क्रिसमस (Śubh krisamas); 聖誕快樂, 新年快樂(shèngdàn kuàilè xīnnián kuàilè). Thank you all for the kind support and will do my level best to make this blog more 'apeeling' [appealing]. :p TOUCHDOWN 2010 very soon..

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ക SEX { 色 sè }

Some men just don’t know the danger of becoming naughty. Right now script writers are cracking their skull with some sexciting movie scripts for a movie with a title "Crouching TIGER Hidden WOLF " { 臥虎藏狼 wò hǔ cáng láng } into the life a top-notch golfer caught with his pants down. Bee Gees’s tune of ‘How can you mend a broken heart’ would be humming in people's ear drums all over the world. You can cheat one people all the time, all the people at one time but you cannot cheat all the people all the time which connects to another Chinese saying. [ 爬的山多終遇虎 ] { pá de shān duō zhōng yù hǔ (climb the mountain more eventually meet tiger)} translates to "if you climb the mountain too often chances are, you will eventually meet the tiger.

The warning is already set in the word "SEX" in Chinese { 色 sè } and it also means 'color' with the same pronunciation {sè } as sex. Here again there are variation on the Chinese character, thanks to Jeannie. The ancient scholars have great foresight to think of this good old advice which carries the same meaning of playing with fire, so - {色 字 頭 上 一 把 刀 sè zì tóu shàng yī bà dāo (sex word head top one handle knife)} meaning there is a wood handle knife on the upper top part of the word {sex ~ 色 sè }. The knife is ever ready to stab any naughty ones and it serves as  reminder to all sensual beings to be aware and cautious at all times. The world undisputed heavy weight champion Mike Tyson was ‘knifed’ and the  consequences, three years jail term and later on declared bankruptcy. Edison Chen, the canto pop singer/actor was ‘knifed’ and lost all major advertisement contracts. Now the latest  is Tiger Woods, who was just ‘knifed’ and triggered Gillette not to feature him in its ads for an unspecified period of time. Going on hiatus indefinitely to salvage his marriage is gonna hurt his associations with most major sponsors. Will the crouching Tiger be able to return and maintain his form to a T just as when and where he left? Well some men just can never learn to see the knife, especially a sharp falling knife.

I have just discovered a strange difference, in pornographic terms we say 'blue film' in English what about in Chinese? Your guess is as ‘blue’ as mine, its 'yellow film' { 黃色片 huángsè piàn }. The English and Chinese have different perception of colors?

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恭喜 ക 恭喜 CONGRATULATIONS TO JEANNIE

Congratulations to Jeannie for winning the "Inukshuk Blog Award for Edutainment 2009" from the #1 Canadian Blog! Kindly click on the above picture for full details of the Award. For those who wish to learn more about Chinese language the fun and easy way, please check it out on her BLOG. Would like to seize this opportunity to thank her from the bottom of my heart and I'm very very very glad that I have picked up quite a great 'bunch' of Chinese vocabulary from her over the weeks. Kudos & Xie Xie 謝謝

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ക ENGLISH IS HARD! Face It..

Oh yes in my last entry I said Chinese is one tough language (personal opinion) as it has many variations and English too is not spared. Thanks to Lee Glen for this and also to Al Lowe who has flashed me the green light. I often asked about weird English just for the fun of it like the plural of box is boxes and why ox is not oxes or why is it we say "raining cats and dogs"? English refers to England, Polish refers to Poland and why not Hollish to Holland? This may not be new to some as with the speed of internet it has been in circulation for some time. Anyway have fun and go bananaz over weird English, good news is links are provided for easy reference. Any idea what is the longest word in any major dictionary? I just learned it's "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" a total of 45 letters, with sincere thanks to my English guru,  Kevin of "Back To English".

English is Hard! Face it: English is a crazy language.

Try to sight-read these sentences correctly:

1. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
2. A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
3. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
4. How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?
5. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
6. An alarm goes off when it’s on.
7. Boxing rings are square.
8. English muffins aren’t from England nor French fries from France.
9. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
10. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
11. How can we have noses that run and feet that smell?
12. I did not object to the object.
13. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
14. If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
15. If teachers teach and preachers preach, why does a teacher taught, but no preacher ever praught?
16. People recite at plays and play at recitals.
17. Quicksand works slowly.
18. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
19. Sweetmeats are candies, while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
20. The bandage was wound around the wound.
21. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
22. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
23. The farm was used to produce produce.
24. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
25. The plural of goose is geese, but the plural of moose is not meese.
26. The plural of tooth is teeth, but the plural of booth is not beeth.
27. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
28. The wind was too strong to wind the sail
29. There is neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
30. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger.
31. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row
32. They were too close to the door to close it.
33. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
34. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
35. We must polish the Polish furniture.
36. We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.
37. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
38. Why doesn’t Buick rhyme with quick?
39. Writers write, but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce, and hammers don’t ham.
40. You can make amends but not one amend.
41. You fill in a form by filling it out.
42. Your house burns up as it burns down.
43. How can inflammable and flammable means the same thing?

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Oh . . . one more thing:

What is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?

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ക PEOPLE HEARING WITHOUT LISTENING @ 聽

"People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices that never share

And no one dare disturb THE SOUND OF SILENCE..." 
~ Simon & Garfunkel

Friends, Bloggers, countrymen, lend me your EARS;

I come to bury seizure[Caesar], not to praise him. 

[..] ~ William Shakespeare

God gave us two EARS and one mouth, so we can hear twice as much as we say? This is an abstract from an article from ACQYR, written by a psychologist, Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., CBC, who says that the main communications tasks are: reading, writing, speaking or listening and out of the four tasks, 50% comes from listening alone. But only 25% were retained. Why? Because we give little attention and simply taking it for granted that everyone knows how to listen. The average person speaks at about 130 words per minute against our thinking speed of about 500 words per minute. This causes our minds to wander and we are actually drifting away to other things, thus this phrase "People hearing without listening" is very well said. Krakoff has recommended "Active Listening" to curb the problem. In active listening, it involves the listener paying full attention to the speaker, and then summarizing or reflecting back what he or she has heard without evaluating or interpreting. 

One classic example I could think of,  most successful restaurants or fast food chains used 'active listening' on their waitresses to repeat orders made by clients as confirmation. Oh yeah another example is the "whispering game" whereby a leader in a group of 20 people would whisper a message to the second person and the second guy to repeat the same to the third person and to the next and next until finally in conclusion what the first person says does not tally with the last person. That is where the listening problem begins.

What is the above Chinese word means? This is another simplified version not been used often. Practically the olden way of reading starts from right to left. So it begins with 'you' [figure of a person] using the 'eye' [目]{mù} (sideways) with 'one' [一]{yī} 'heart or mind' [心]{xīn} and 'ear' [耳]{ěr}. Thus the whole word added up is "LISTEN" [聽] {tīng }.  Try talking to a person without looking at his/her face or blocking your own eyes with your hand during the conversation? Can you get the message across? Or when you are in a seminar without looking at the speaker's face? Most likely you would bound to dose off after a while. Quite interesting to note that this Chinese character is very meaningful and actually a composition of what nature gives us, knowing very well just by listening with only the ears is not good enough. So it practically tells us to hear with our ear and listen attentively with our eyes and our mind (heart).

For a bananaz like me, would be at risk of having a seizure to unfold such complex Chinese word  if without the kind assistance of my laoshi Jeannie who went all out researching over the net on the Chinese Etymology of this word 聽 { tīng } as the 'evolution' has created many variations. BTW I have just found out that Jeannie has won the "Inukshuk Award Edutainment 2009", Congratz! Dear fellow bloggers 請多多指教 { qǐng duōduō zhǐjiāo } appreciate your kind advice and comments. Just when you think this word or Chinese language is a tough nut to crack wait till you see some nonsensical English surfacing in my future post.

[ ] Mandarin

{ } Hànyǔpīnyīn

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