Yes, learning Chinese with Hanyu Pinyin is a clever decision.

However, you can see there is a mass in the romanized phonetic systems in Taiwan . There are several systems that people are using, Wade System, HanYu Pinyin and TongYong PingYin, the same Chinese word can be spelled in vary ways. I am living in 板橋 in the Taipei District, you can see the word can be spelled as “PanChio”, “BanChio” or “BanQiao” in the road signs, but all these mean the same location. Many people consider that Taiwan is not a friendly place for English-speaking people just because the signs are always confusing them.

Many consider that the DPP government’s developing of TongYong Pinyin is just because of a radical nationalism, it’s all political and they never think about the usability and how to let the English-speaking people to have a easy to learn and convenient phonetic system. They said that just because the HanYu Pinyin system is popular and the main stream system used by the people in the Mainland China, the DPP government want to show that Taiwan is an independent country, and then develop another system differs from HanYu pinyin. To be honest, TongYong is the official phonetic system in Taiwan, but people in Taiwan learn bopomofo as young, people in China learn HanYu Pinyin, and the Hanyu Alphabets can map to the bopomofo symbols, no one leaned and have to learn TongYong Pinyin. The only meaning of this system is to confuse people.

Many native English speaker who live in Taiwan use the Hanyu system, they introduced Taiwan to the world by using this system. Dan Bloom, who is a journalist, living in Chiayi and published four or five books in Taiwan, what he loves most is the night markets in Taiwan and plan to stay in Taiwan for good. TC Locke was born in US and bacame a citizen of Taiwan, since he want to be a Taiwanese citizen, he must serve in the ROC army for about two years, and he published his stories about the life in the ROC army, too. They both use Hanyu Pinyin. Since people use HanYu Pinyin to show their love of Taiwan, I can not understand why the officers would like to deny their habit of using a phonetic system and their suggestions. By the way, you can check Dan Jacobson’s website, he must be the one fight against the TongYong system most.

By the way, Steve, I got a question in my mind for a long time.

I noticed that the URL of your blog entries in the “Chinese Word of the Day” section always end with a number, such as “25340″ in this post. I guess that might be the html entity or somehow encoded data of the original Chinese character. What I want to ask is, since I am also a WordPress users, I know that the sanitize_title() function can not handle the UTF-8 encoded Chinese characters, how do you generate the “post-slug” of the blog entries with Chinese titles? Or you must input the “post-slug” manually?

Recently lots of Chinese WordPress users are confused with how to work with the sanitize_title() function in Chinese. Weeks ago I and a friend wrote a function to replace all the Chinese characters in entry titles into HanYu pinyin with a VERY HUGE ARRAY, but the result is awful. I hope that you may offer some suggestion, may you? :)

I created a wordpress plugin that overrides “sanitize_title()” to converts Unicode entities into their numeric equivalents. I didn’t think it would be useful for anybody but me, so I never released it!

yes, your sanitize_title() would be very helpful - been trying to figure out a remedy and I like yours. is there somewhere i can download it?

I think the latest WP actually handles this just fine, doesn’t it? Anywhere, here is my plugin for what it’s worth. I wouldn’t use it if I were you, because it will probably break all your permalinks:

sanitize title plugin

http://batteries101.blogspot.com/

International Recharge Your Batteries Day

April 7, 2006

Prepare now. Start celebrating today!

“international cloud lovers day”

http://iwishiwasacloud.blogspot.com

Did you know that International Cloud Lovers Day is set for April 7,
2006, but it can be celebrated or observed on any day of the year.
Whatever you do or see on that day, please email your comments to
leinadmoolb@gmail.com

Thanks

Leinad Moolb,
Founder, International Cloud Lovers Day

International Cloud Lovers Day

We’ve been had. COLDPLAY, which made the song YELLOW into an international hit [2000], with these opening lyrics:

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do.
Yeah, they were all yellow.

Now [2005] singer lyricist Chris Martin tells the truth. A slap in the face to his fans.

“The world yellow has all this meaning attached to it now [2005], but here’s where the mystery ends. It’s not quite so romantic. The whole song makes lyrical sense except for that word. I needed a two syllable word when I was composing the song, and there was a book lying next to me in the studio with the word “yellow” on the cover somewhere, and there it was, I just stuck that word in the lines I was writing, without rhyme or reason. And now the mystery is solved, or shattered. But it worked.”

Rock and roll is so fake, sometimes, and we been had.

http://guantanamomo.blogspot.com/

GUANTANAMOMO (2004-2005)

Original musica para Jose Jorge Bushera

Musica adaptatione para Ricardo Cheena

Lyrica adaptatione para Julio Bara,
based on a poema paraJose Muerta

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma

Chorus:

GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO
GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO

Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo

Chorus:

GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO
GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO

I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red

(the next verse says,)
I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out this
heart with which I live
I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose

Cultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Qultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca

Chorus:

GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO
GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO

Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la rosa blanca

Chorus:

GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO
GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO

Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mar

Chorus:

GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO
GUANTANAMOMO
Guajira GUANTANAMOMO

(c)2005-2010 (Renewed) Fallen River Musica, Inca (EBMI)
All Rights UnReserved.

Guantanamo
Guantanamomp

Song parody

http://guantanamomo.blogspot.com/

The original lyrics of “Guantanamera” are the opening stanzas of Cuban hero Jose Martí’s Versos Sencillos. Martí was a writer and intellectual who died in 1895 fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain. His immensely popular verses were combined with the chorus in a way that suggests the song is addressed to a young woman from Guanta’namo on the southern tip of the island. The version written for Musical Spanish is quite different from the original.

It’s really not clear what any of this has to do with Pinyin.

Oh good. I was getting confused. Thanks for clear that up.

The International Registory of Backward Names

A huge global list of backwards names in use worldwide, compiled by Leinad Moolb in cyberspace

Doing it backwards…………………………..

The International Director of Backwards Names ignites a worldwide craze as hundreds of people across the globe join Nad Moolb’s international registry of individuals listing their names or company names in reverse, the Associated Press wrote

Spell your name right and Dan Bloom just yawns with boredom. But dare to spell it backwards and you join a select crowd, members of Nad Moolb’s International Registry of Backward Names. What’s it all about, and the big question — why?

It started as a lark in the USA in 1990 but has turned into a longterm hobby as hundreds of Americans — and others from as far away as Europe, Africa and Asia — have sent Bloom email letters and postcards with their names in reverse. There’s now a free website on the Internet, and the call is going out now for more nominations and signups.

Tim Rae of Baltimore, Maryland, also known as ”Ear Mit”, signed up in when the registry first went public in the early 1990s. He told Bloom that he has used his backward name ever since friends dubbed him Ear Mit during his college days.

So has Ed Clayfoot of Dallas, Texas, who name reversed is listed as De Tooftalc, in Nad Moolb’s whimsical little registry. Toofyalc also sent in the names of 27 Toofyalf family members, including the family dog, Leber (Rebel).

Derf Semloh (Fred Holmes) of Irving, Texas, has used his backward name in organizing a dart tournament for the last 35 years.

In Tokyo, there’s a coffee shop called “Alucard” in both English and Japanese signage. When Bloom asked the Japanese owner why he chose that name, the owner said he was a big fan of the Dracula movies from Europe and the USA, and Alucard is, well…..read it backwards!

Over 1000 people from 15 countries have signed up for the real but imaginary registry since it was first launched in 1990, Bloom said in a recent e-mail from his spartan open-air office on the subtropical island nation of Taiwan in the Western Pacific ocean.

For 2005, Bloom, aka Nad Moolb, has taken his registry into cyberspace, set up a website that allows for comments and free membership requests and is now putting out cyber-feelers around the globe for new members and name and word nominations worldwide.

“With the Internet, distance no longer exists, and we can sign people up, add their names to our registry and email back to them in Internet Time,” says Bloom, a 45 year old Boston native who has made his home in Japan and Taiwan since 1991.

“I’m just doing this to give people around the world a chuckle, in times when we all need a chuckle. The real world news right now is not very good at the moment,” Bloom says. “How did I get into this hobby? I kind of just stumbled into it. Now the New York Times, CNN, the BBC, NPR and a host of newspaper reporters from around the world are calling me to verify if this thing is real. It is. I am. We are.”

There’s no cost and no obligation for those who sign up. All prospective members must do is send in their names by e-mail, backwards. of course, to Nad Moolb’s official backward e-mail account at leinadmoolb ATMARK gmail DOT com

Bloom says that he eventually plans to donate the entire file and list of names over to the SmithsonianInstitution’s popular culture division in Washington, DC. For free– he doesn’t want any money for this project. It’s just a hobby “to keep me sane in an at times insane world,” he says.

Moolb, er, Bloom, first got the idea for the registry back in 1983 when he started writing a weekly newspaper humor column for a newspaper that he edited in Alaska, signing his name as “Leinad Moolb.” “It was a far-fetched, tall-tales view of Alaska and the world in general,” Bloom said about the column. “In fact, some of my columns worked their way, I believe, into the popular Hollywood TV show called ‘Northern Exposure,’ which was about life in a small Alaskan town.

“I thought it might be fun to have someone else’s name on the stuff I wrote, since I was the editor of the paper.”

Enter Leinad Moolb. Then people began sending him examples of backward names that have come into everyday use:

* A California company that makes cement calls itself TNEMEC.
* An oil additive produced in Boston is named Silogram, after its inventor, Ed Margolis.
* Oprah Winfrey’s TV production firm is named Harpo Productions.
* The late Frank Sinatra used to sign his oil paintings with the name “Artanis”.
* A street in Annapolis, Maryland, is called Silopanna Street on the street maps there.
* A travel company in San Francisco is called LevartTravel Company.
* A coffee shop in Tokyo called Alucard, for fans of Dracula.
* The names even of some characters in the novels of Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, or is that Kiruha Mikaramu? [In Japanese, the backwards things are the separate sounds backwards. Japanese entertainers call their coffee, hiko, for exampke, which is kohi sounded out backwards. Saifu, wallet, becomes fusai. Beeru becomes rubee. Gangsters use this backwards vocabulary, too.]
* Fathers named Leon who name their sons Noel; fathers named Amos who name their daughters Soma. Mothers named Selma who name their daughters Amles.
* A burger joint in Davis, California that serves buffalo and ostrich burgers and was originally called Murder Burgers. However, the city council felt the name was too violent and asked the owne to change it. He did: to Red Rum Burgers.
* Nutrimetics used to sell a product called Derits. It was a herbal tablet that helped you to stay awake — a natural version of caffeine. Hence the name — ”tired” spelled backwards.
* The song lyrics to “Work It” by Missy Elliott, 2002, that go:

“Is it worth it? Let me work it
I put my thing down flip it, and reverse it
Ti esrever dna, ti pilf, nwod
gniht ym tup, I…
I you got a big you know what, let me search ya…”

There’s more, much more, in Bloom’s archives. And he’s putting the information on his website now.

“What I am doing is very unimportant and trivial in the big scheme of things,” Bloom, a freelance writer and magazine editor who graduated from Tufts University in Boston with a degree in literature, says. “But people around the world apparently find it interesting. I do, too!”

That interest has increased over the years when Bloom began appearing on radio shows across North America and began using the Internet to publicize his campaign in order to prmote his idea of the registry.”

“There’s a small coffee shop in Tokyo called Alucard, which is Dracula spelled backwards,” says Bloom, who lived in Japan in the early 1990s where he learned that many show biz entertainers use backward terms in Japanese for things like beer or coffee (”beeru” or beer becomes ”rubee”, and coffee or ”cohee”, becomes ”heeko”).

“The owner told me hewas a big fan of the Dracula books and movies, and apparently Count Dracula often used his name backward when he was alive. The sign outside the coffee shop there is written out in Japanese hiragana characters!”

Bloom also learned that popular Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami spices his books with names of characters that are sounded out backwards as well.

Bloom says he is a somewhat surprised at the amount of international interest in his registry, but he thinks the world always need a laugh or two to help it get through the day.

“Maybe in a world that is so mobile …. joining a backwards name club is a way of feeling you are part of something,” Bloom, a native of Boston, Massachusetts and a graduate of Tufts University, says. But he says that he likes to think there is a greater meaning.

“This isn’t my club, this isn’t ‘Dan Bloom’s Backwards Names Club’. This is ‘the International Registry of Backward Names’,” Bloom says. “This club belongs to everyone who joins in the fun. People feel they are becoming a part of history by signing up their names in reverse.”

[NOTE: To join, send in your backwards name or backward company name or any other backward name you have spotted or heard about to leinadmoolb ATMARK gmail dot com

You, or your backwards better half, will receive a letter validating your registration by return email. It’s all free, your email address will never be given out to anyone and everything will remain confidential.

Let’s add…………………………………………………………

Zul Airam Senyam of Luz Maria Designs in California who told us about Red Rum Burgers above, and who noted in her email: “Thank you for being different.” Hey, that’s what life is all about!

Leg of Eel, a wonderful name for Lee Fogel.

pokkuri , to die quietly in sleep, discreet death, RIP, old age

彼は「愛してるよ」と言って、ぽっくりと死んだ in Japanese
[kare wa “aishite’ru yo” to itte, pokkuri to shinda] in romaji
He said “I love you,” and dropped dead. (translation)
========================================

When my time comes, I hope I will just ”pop off”

[oped commentary ]

When you get ready to meet your maker, do you want to die a long slow, painful, costly death — or do you just want to “pop off”?

I ask this question because there’s a unique Buddhist temple in Japan where people go to pray that they will just “pop off” when they die and not be a burden on their families during their final days.

They ask the gods to let them “pop off” –”pokkuri” in Japanese — and die a sudden death, preferably on a quiet night in their sleep, or via a sudden heart attack, without spending a long time in a sickbed at home or in a nursing home or hospital.

I read about this temple in the newspapers the other day and was immediately drawn to the subject. I want to ”pop off”, too, when I go. What about you?

An elderly Japanese housewife was quoted in the article as saying, “I want to pop off (”pokkuri”). I think more and more people feel the same way in a graying society.”

She had gone to the temple to pray for a quick end when the time comes. And she knows, as we all do, that the time will come someday.

This Buddhist temple was set up over a thousand years ago in Japan by a monk whose mother had passed away peacefully after she wore clothes that he had prayed over. A tradition was born, and ever since then, pilgrims across Japan have been coming to the Kichi-denji Temple to pray for a discreet, quick, popping-off kind of death.

“Let me pokkuri,” they say.

Maybe that’s a good word we ought to borrow from the Japanese — as we have done with sushi and sashimi and wasabi — and make part of our postmodern American vocabulary.

“God, grant me a good life, a useful (and meaningful) life, and when it’s time, let me ‘pokkuri’ in a dignified, discreet way. Amen.”

That’s my prayer. What’s yours?

The Buddhist priest at this temple in Japan told a reporter that the pokkuri prayers offered there represent “a simple desire for people to hope to die a peaceful death.”

“It’s natural that children should wish that their parents have a long life,” he said. “However, seeing aged parents anguishing in bed or too senile to recognize their own children makes many people, especially daughters here in Japan, come to hope that their parents will die quiet, quick, discreet deaths.”

Well, I’m paraphrasing, since I can’t read Japanese very well. But I think I know what that priest was getting at.

According to news reports, around 10,000 people come to this temple in northern Japan every year to pray the Pokkuri Prayer. They pray that they will not be a burden to their families when they meet their maker.

A 76-year-old woman interviewed for the news story said that her husband of 40 years died suddenly a few years ago from a heart attack, after repeating telling her that he wanted to “pop off” — and pop off he did.”

His prayer was answered,” she said. “I want to follow suit some day.”

I can relate to that.

Life’s been good, I’ve had a great ride, and at 55, I still have a few more years to go, I hope. But like those pilgrims at the Kichi-denji Temple, I hope that when I go, I can just”pop off” in a quick, quiet way.

Give me pokkuri, O Lord, when you give me death, yes!

Nowadays, many Americans are debating such issues as assisted death and assisted suicide. Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act has some people up in arms, and others quite satisfied.

Meanwhile, the US federal government’s Controlled Substances Act has other people up in arms, and the debate about doctors using certain medications to help some patients die continues to heat up.

One of my neighbor’s father is almost 90. He’s in a good health, except that he doesn’treally know what he did yesterday, he’s more or less blind, he can’t hear too well and well, you know, he’s getting ready to meet his maker. I pray that he will have a “pokkuri moment” and leave this Earth in a quick, quiet way — preferably in his sleep, in a dreamstate, headed back to the stars.

And when my time comes, as come it must, I’d like to “pop off”, too.

What about you? Do you want a long, drawn-out death or a pokkuri moment of release?

NOTE: The author, Tufts 1971, is a freelance writer in Asia. He can be reached
at _________________.

Deltiology

Postcard Collector Is Real Card

http://www.taiwanho.com/people/dan/dan.jpg

Daniel Card, an American expat in the Asian island nation of Taiwan, is a real card: His hobby is collecting postcards — from all over the world. A world traveller since his college days in Boston USA, Card has been doing this since 1985 and says he has amassed a huge collection of over 10,000 cards from around 30 countries. His goal is to collect one million cards. Later, he will donate them to a musuem somewhere in the world that specializes in deltiology. He is now soliciting postcards from any country in the world, in any language, and promises a return airmail postcard from his home in Taiwan in return, to anyone who writes to him.

Just write:

Daniel Card,
Post Office Box 1000,
Chiayi City,
Taiwan
zip code 600-99

CONTACT: Daniel Card at leinadmoolb (AT) gmail DOT com

Http://postcards1000.blogspot.com

is a non-profit, international, all-languages website. Don’t click, you are here now! SMILE. And thanks for coming aboard!

Our purpose here is to promote global interest in postcard collecting (known by its official name of “deltiology”) by encouraging the study, preservation and exhibition of postcards and related materials; to cultivate mutual friendship and assistance among collectors, students and penpals worldwide.

On the backwards names thing, I actually find it much more fun to reverse the first letters (or first sounds) of people’s first and last names. Like Meve Stinutillo. Or Blaniel Doom! You can’t say you don’t like BLANIEL DOOM.

The problem is that a german cow orker says that Meve means “stinky” in german. Can’t win ‘em all.

LOL, Steve! I do like Blaniel Doom! You’re a card, too!

Thanks for that! LOL still!