13:38 [fail]

/not dead

Apparently people still drop by my blog.

I guess I should start publishing stuff again, but I don’t know what to write or where to start. I haven’t died or anything and stuff is happening in my life, It’s just that I don’t feel like writing any of it down and sharing it with the rest of the world. It’s not that exciting anyways, so it’s not like you’re missing out.

Oh well.

maybe tomorrow

/kill me

Weather forecast for Oslo the coming week:

Wednesday: -15 degrees Celsius
Thursday: -14 degrees Celsius
Friday: -9 degrees Celsius, snow
Saturday: -11 degrees Celsius
Sunday: -17 degrees Celsius. I refuse to leave my bed this day.
Monday: -16 degrees Celsius. I have to go to work. Argh.
Tuesday: -16 degrees Celsius. I have to go to work. Again. Fuck.
Wednesday: -16 degrees Celsius. Same as above.
Thursday: -14 degrees Celsius. Yay.

..and this is pretty much what the next three (!!!) weeks will be like.
WHY did I ever leave Japan? Oslo is covered in 0,5 m of snow, and is cold as fuck. Can’t wait for summer.

Source: www.yr.no

Made it!

OK. I’m at Kobe airport waiting for the first flight of what shall from now on be known as the journey from hell. Dont ask me why I’m flying from Kobe - that remains a mystery for me as well. Oh, and everything kilroy and whoever i spoke with from ANA said about not being able to cancel my ticket turns out to be bullshit. Now add the fact that i have the heaviest bag in the world, in addition to one big camera bag, two laptops and my normal bag. Did I mention that i have exactly three hours from this flight lands at Haneda until my second flight leaves from Narita? and yeah.. they couldt check me in from here either. Feel free to place bets on whether ill make it or not. Oh, and im broke, so taxi is not an option. merry fucking christmas!

The people

This little badboy decided to join us for lunch last Monday, and ended up being the target for my beloved camera.

Pretty spider :)

A note on onomatopoeias

This post is reblogged from ledenes. I’ve no idea how I came across his blog, but I’m so glad I did. It kicks ass. I suggest you take a peek at it :)

/Julie

ledenes:

One of the things that fascinates me the most about the Japanese language are Japanese onomatopoeias. They use them in regular conversation in such a variety of ways that I’ve never seen before.  First of all, they are most often (though certainly not always) a repetition of the same sound twice.  And they do have basic ones like we have in English, for example “gan-gan” is roughly equivalent to “bam” or “bang” in English.  ”Kushan” is the English “atchoo.”  But they get even more specific than that.

“Bisha-bisha” is the sound of liquid continuously hitting a surface, like rain on a window (like “pitter-patter,” although “pitter-patter” can be used to describe things other than just liquid).  ”Kyat-kyat” is the sound an animal or person makes intermittently when it’s excited or in high spirits.  ”Zubu-zubu” is the sound of something soft being repeatedly stabbed or penetrated by something long and thin, like walking through fresh snow (the snow being repeatedly penetrated by your feet).

“Doki-doki” is one I hear and use fairly often.  It is the onomatopoeia for a heartbeat, like the English “lub-dub,” but more specifically a hard and/or fast heartbeat.  And although it represents the sound of a heartbeat, it’s used in regular conversation to describe the feeling of nervousness.  Instead of simply saying “I was nervous,” people will often say “I was doki-doki,” which means exactly the same thing, only it’s much more descriptive of the actual feeling.

And there are so many others that, in the same way, do not describe sounds, but instead certain types of movements, actions, or feelings.  And they can have rather complex meanings.  The word “fuwa-fuwa” is often used to express something that appears smooth and soft, like baby’s skin or a marshmallow.  And to get more complicated, when my kindergartners, inevitably, start to touch and feel my beard, they often say that it feels “funya-funya,” which means something like “soft but inflexible.”  There’s also “nou-nou,” which means acting carelessly despite being in a situation that requires one to act with care.

I was once trying to explain how difficult it is to eat rice with chopsticks when it’s not sticky because it won’t stay together and the person I was talking to taught me “boro-boro,” which describes when something breaks apart and falls haphazardly to the ground, as does rice from chopsticks when it’s not sticky.

What really amazes me is how commonly they are used and how commonly they are understood.  In English, we don’t really use onomatopoeias that often, aside from, like, animal noises.  But in Japanese there are thousands of them, from the sound that boiling water makes to the rough feeling of sandpaper, and they are used all the time (some more often than others, of course).  I have a dictionary that is solely for Japanese onomatopoeias, that’s how many there are.  And I think it’s a really wonderful aspect of the Japanese language.  ”Doki-doki” is much more descriptive than saying “nervous.”  ”fuwa-fuwa” is much more descriptive than saying “soft.”  It makes conversations way more interesting.

Ah, Tuesday again. Lovely.

This Tuesday has decided to bless me with shitloads of reactivation cases. That means I’ll be having a lot of fun with domains in redemption period, deleted zone files, deleted websites, deleted exchange accounts, and various other deleted things.

I wish someone would delete this day.