The problem: She went missing about a week ago.

I suspect someone stole my Rei.

The possibility of that being the case isn’t too remote either: I’ve had two other cats of mine stolen before.

(As for the cats: One vanished without trace; the other, however, was fortunate enough to be able to return to my care, mainly because the thief was a neighbour (and an accomplished moron), whose immense foresight made her oblivious to the fact that her cat-napping activities were readily apparent, what with her living only two houses away from mine back then.)

Why I Love(d) Rei

1. Rei was the first feline member of my family. I still remember her as that anxious, confused, irresistibly cute, and eternally curious kitten, which, while tracing my footsteps perfectly, followed me everywhere around the house she would later come to call her own.

2. Of all my cats, Rei was the fiercest: she could and would scare away even the neighbourhood dogs. (And by ‘dogs’, I mean the big scary ones.) None of my other cats inherited her heart of steel.

3. Whenever and wherever I worked, Rei would always be happy to cuddle herself into a furball in some soft, warm spot nearby; whenever Rei spotted me by the front door, she would roll down on her back for a quick petting, then graze her body and tail against my legs; whenever I talked, Rei would be happy enough to (pretend to) listen and not talk back. (Then again, come to think about it, it would have been a rather macabre occasion if she had replied.)

4. Hanging out in front of the TV with Rei — especially if she was cuddled up somewhere near the sofa: great stuff. It felt like having your legs caressed by a cushion of fur.

5. (Please find attached herewith 5 billion other reasons, all of them implied, as to why Rei is and was a lovable cat, which I am unable to enumerate completely due to my being at a loss for words currently.)

Final Thoughts

Now that Rei’s not with me anymore, I regret not having petted or played with her enough.

Still, it is the month of Ramadhan, that time of the year when the virtues of patience are greatly and continously extolled.

Therefore, Mr/Ms. Thief, taking that into consideration, and, being the benevolent human being that I am, my only wish is for you to die a most gruesome death.

Preferably, Mr/Ms. Thief Who Stole My Cat — whomever you might be — I’d have you rammed into by a cement truck, or succumbing to a fatal illness like AIDS, or completely disfigured by a mutant variation of a chronic skin disease, or mauled by your jugular by a Rottweiler, or sawed into tiny cube-ish pieces of meat by a serial killer, or paralyzed completely for the rest of your natural life, or bankrupted beyond the point of financial salvation, and so on and so forth.

Of course, I’d love it best if you could be deprived of your own family member(s), and the closest one(s), and in the worst way possible.

Now, wouldn’t that last one work out just great.

“By authority, the only duties in connection with the operation of a current bank account that a customer owed to his bank, in the absence of express agreement, were a duty to exercise due care in drawing cheques so as not to facilitate fraud or forgery, and a duty to notify the bank immediately of any unauthorised cheques of which he became aware; that no wider duty, requiring a customer to take reasonable precautions in the management of his business to prevent forged cheques being presented to the bank for payment, or to take such steps as a reasonable customer would to check the periodic bank statements in order to be able to notify the bank of any items which were not, or might not have been, authorised, could be implied into banking contracts as a necessary incident of the relationship of banker and customer, and that, therefore, the banks were not relieved by any breach of duty by the company from having to bear the loss occasioned by the forged cheques.”

My first thought: Holy crap.

The wanton use of abstract words, continuous shifting between tense usages, disparate ideas (made all the more confusing by excessive and arbitrarily placed commas), and misguided use of a semicolon; all of it, packaged to fit nicely into just one sentence.

If that isn’t bad English, I don’t know what is.

——

Update: Still interested? Laugh and learn with The Bad Writing Contest. Here’s a quick steal:

“With the last gasp of Romanticism, the quelling of its florid uprising against the vapid formalism of one strain of the Enlightenment, the dimming of its yearning for the imagined grandeur of the archaic, and the dashing of its too sanguine hopes for a revitalized, fulfilled humanity, the horror of its more lasting, more Gothic legacy has settled in, distributed and diffused enough, to be sure, that lugubriousness is recognizable only as languor, or as a certain sardonic laconicism disguising itself in a new sanctification of the destructive instincts, a new genius for displacing cultural reifications in the interminable shell game of the analysis of the human psyche, where nothing remains sacred.”

Lovely.

Firstly, it decided to play nicely with the dates of the Gregorian calendar. Just as the beginning of September marks the beginning of Ramadhan, so will its end mark the end of Ramadhan too. It’ll be easy to keep track of how many days I’ve fasted and how many more I have left to go, unlike in other years.

Secondly, what better way would there be of keeping myself pumped through Ramadhan, than by savouring writings about food? (More so because I can’t do just that until at least after 7PM.)

So here’s to Akki, an old buddy of mine, and (the return of) his food blog, The Cocoa Nut. Looking forward to your new entries, man.

Pre-Hari Raya Preparations

… While in other news, I’ll be laying down the Hari Raya traps early this year.

I’ve decided to ramp the floor plans up a notch too: there are pitfalls designated about the place already (all clearly marked by a gigantic and red-coloured X symbol, because I don’t want family members falling into them) and I’ve a cute little torture chamber at the back of my house too.

I’d like to share a thing or two about the torture chamber, because it happens to be my favourite room this year: I’ve lots of cutesy, pink-ish Hello Kitty wallpapers (and then photos of everyone’s favourite Disney characters) decorated about and divided equally between the room’s two sections; one, where the temperature can be set to a warm 0 degrees Kelvin, and the other, a mildly-scalding 8000 degrees Celcius.

The torture chamber is also equipped with spikes for picquet treatment, curvy and very voluptous-looking knives for when the little kids ought to be given a manicure or a denailing, and a lovely cord, made of electro-sensitive Batman’s-cape type fabrics, which would be handy should I feel like issuing a mancuerda or two.

Oh, and not to forget, a really, really big frying pan, that serves as both a place to make dodol and budak-budak kecik masak rendang.

So if you’re 15 years old (or below), celebrate Hari Raya ‘religiously’, and think you deserve my duit raya money, do drop by my house.

I’ll be waiting.

The former is playing white; the latter, black.

Anwar has these pieces remaining: a King, Queen, Two Knights, and a Castle. No pawns. Anwar can’t afford to risk any moves; a single lapse in judgment, and he’s out.

Pak Lah, on the other hand, is in a luckier position: his pieces populate the entire range of the chessboard. He could easily choose to sacrifice any, if not all of them, for a quick win.

And yet, Pak Lah wears an expression most somber.

Questions; tough ones. They ask him how his pieces should be played; where they should be deployed to; how the next piece could be better employed; and what he ought to do, in a manner that would not spell ruin for him.

Pak Lah’s been staring blankly at the board for quite some time now. He’s thinking deep.

First time’s always the hardest, they say.

===========

Here’s to my shallow and myopic interpretation of Malaysia’s current political state of affairs.

The event was fantastic. The man lived up to all the myths that had been weaved of his character, and surpassed them.

Justice Gopal Sri Ram was, in every sense of the word, amazing.

He was eloquent, with a flair for very emphatic hand-gestures. The man punctuated his thoughts with many pauses, taking great care in choosing the right words to use; a trait of his which I absolutely loved. (The pauses were in fact something he seemed to have an impeccable, almost supernatural, sense of timing for, and also one that he used to great effect.)

The verbal flamboyance wasn’t just that; the Justice had the substance to hold the fort too. The law seemingly burned at his fingertips. And I don’t mean just the principles; the man could dish out the full names of decided cases, their dates, facts, the names of the judges who decided them, and hell, even the cases referred to by them as well. He then used those elements to answer the questions we put to him not just coherently, but also chronologically, and that was why it was all (i.e. ‘he’ was) so impressive.

He came off as a gentleman and a man of manners (although he confided to us quite the contrary, “my wife says I have absolutely no manners”), and though very opiniated (and this I mean in a good way, as he has good reason to be just that) he impressed upon me (at least) the image of an honest and very hardworking person. (And funnily, the image is a rather Romantic one too; as in, that of the judicial underdog, who is battling hard to reform the the oppressive, antiquated government machinery that hates change and reform; sadly, this he does although he knows he has no means of achieving the intended end, no thanks to a corrupt political system that favours and rewards the well-connected yet punishes the principled.)

Best of all, the Justice was a massive joker, and one of the sardonic sort too. (I’ve attended his court sessions thrice by the current count; I enjoyed them all. His trademark sarcasm makes even the most mundane of legal arguments a pleasure to listen to.)

Interestingly, the Justice delivered some rather… uhh, controversial statements tonight. I look forward to tomorrow, when some idiot would undoubtedly twist the man’s words in an attempt to smear his good name.

And you know what’s the best part about that, with regards to Justice Gopal Sri Ram?

He just doesn’t, and wouldn’t ever, give a damn.

Before I begin, a quick clarification: Save for the few insignificant suggestions I have in mind (that which I still feel bound to offer you), I need to make it clear that I write to you because I am all for your cause, and would do whatever I can to support it.

Now, as to the heart of my letter.

It has come to my attention that recently, the meddling Opposition parties (nosy as they always are) had managed to entangle your officers in some messy and nonsensical affair of theirs, when you were about to designate and develop certain burial grounds as for the perusal of VVIPs only.

Well, as regards the matter, I have some questions I’d like answers to.

(Yes, I fully understand that you consider devoting attention to my inconsequential concerns a waste of precious time and energy, and I for one know that none of my questions are significant enough to warrant a reply, to begin with.

And yet, I beg you to consider the gains that stand to be acquired should you care to afford this insignificant citizen the privilege of such a reply: with my curiosity satiated, I would have greater confidence in your cause; thereupon, the warrior from the depths of my own being would emerge, and you are sure to find him useful, as he is one who will rally even to death’s door to defend your hallowed ideas.)

The Heart Of My Letter

If I may be permitted the assumption, would it be that the abbreviation, ‘VVIP’, refers to this: ‘very-very-important persons’?

If it does, these questions then arise:

1. Firstly, who is a VVIP, and who can become one?

No, I harbour no thoughts of becoming one. But I would love to be able to identify one from afar; it beats having friends and people poking me in the ribs while pointing to some random person and exclaiming, “Hey, that’s a VVIP!” as if they were pointing at something that you don’t get to see in everyday life, like a kid pointing at and calling everyone’s attention to a monkey in a zoo.

2. Secondly, what makes them deserving of that extra ‘very’?

No, I don’t have anything against them receiving the title. I just wish the letters used for the abbreviation were, you know, less redundant. I have always been of the thought that VVIPs, with the amount of cash riding behind them, could have at least employed the services of a marketing/advertising consultant (or two) to put in a few nice words. I would suggest these names for your consideration, then: EVIP (”Exceedingly Very Important Person”), XVIP (”Extremely Very Influential Person”), OVIP (”Overtly Very Impressive Person”) and the like.

3. Thirdly, why did the proposal ask for burial grounds amounting to 200 square feet per person? (Forgive my indiscretion: I meant to say “VVIP”.)

With all due respect, whomever-it-may-concern-from-City-Hall, that just isn’t enough! He’s a VVIP!

A VVIP!

The contributions of a VVIP to society are so numerous, so influential, of an importance so monumental that could hardly be exaggerated (…and even if it were exaggerated, it would still be insufficient to highlight his unfettered awesomeness), and of such repute that everyone would and should know about him.

Honestly, a VVIP deserves more respect than a mere 200 square feet - especially since we are considering something as important as his final resting place.

My Proposals

I therefore propose that each VVIP be allocated a pyramid as his burial grounds.

Indeed, it would be rude to suggest anything less than just that: a pyramid. And these are the reasons why:

1. We need to take into account the fact that VVIPs are elevated members of society.

They are therefore exceedingly better than any and all of us. It also follows that their resting places must be exceedingly different (or rather, ‘distinguished’) just as well.

(I myself am inclined to believe that all humans are equal, but then again, I am also aware that such a sweeping categorization befits only mere mortals such as I, and perhaps, some (but not all) VIPs. On the other hand, VVIPs, with all due certainty, could never belong to this realm, for they transcend it.)

It is a most welcome reminder to all then, that by having a separate burial ground for VVIPs, it highlights this most important fact that everyone must understand: that even in death, we are never their equals.

2. VVIPs are often, as I would understand it, rich, and exceedingly well-known.

With a pyramid, you do not only give them adequate space to rest, you also give them enough space to store their cars, houses, jewellery, and so on and so forth.

If need be, you could also install CCTVs and things like that.

3. The idea goes that in the past, when kings and upper-class members of society (the VVIPs of those times, I believe) died, their important organs would be removed prior to their burial through a ‘mummification’ process.

But today’s society would regard such a thing as wasteful. We do, after all, have technological advancements that allow the organs to be recycled.

Which would mean this: that VVIPs, even in death, can still do their part towards the betterment of their beloved nation and people!

(Of course, proper recognition shall be accorded to the VVIPs when any such organ donations are made. Amongst others, glorious memorial events, replete with singers, big names, with a RM10 million budget using government coffers, or book launchings, etc.)

4. The plans, had they been executed, called for the designated burial area to be in the middle of the city.

Seeing as to how Malaysia loves mega projects, what better way to kill not two, but four birds, with just one stone, by making pyramids for these VVIPs:

(a) If built in the heart of the city, people would pass by these pyramids daily - these VVIPs would then effectively be remembered for as long as the monuments continue to exist. I must quote a little Shakespeare to add depth to this proposal (although I risk adding an element of superficiality to it just as well): “So long as men can breath or eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

(b) The tourism industry will experience a permanent boost, because international visitors would of course want to visit Malaysia instead of a boring historical place like Egypt to look at pyramids. Why? Because we have KLCC.

(c) Moreover, it’s another mega project (or several of them, because we are contemplating one pyramid per VVIP, are we not?) to add to the list of mega projects. It would do nothing but intensify the sweet fragrance of Malaysia’s name in the ‘glocal’ community, no doubt.

(d) 200 years down the road, Malaysians of 2208 will have something to look back to with pride, for all Malaysians would take to heart the virtues of having pyramids amongst our midst.

Conclusion

Lastly, I note, that expenses and/or concerns about costs should never be taken as being detrimental to your cause. You would always have our taxpayers money to draw from.

We, the citizens, perfectly understand.

I end here.

Warm regards,

(signature)
Wan Zafran
(Mortal, non-VIP, non-VVIP)
MAJULAH SUKAN UNTUK NEGARA

Making Kanji Lists

(Note: Please read the Introduction, and Part 1 first.)

This entry will teach you to how make (automated) kanji lists.

Why this method may appeal to you: You will not have to hunt down the meanings of individual kanji any further.

By making a list of kanji beforehand, the contents of which may number in the hundreds (even thousands, if need be), you save time and energy. Better still, the kanji list would contain characters in the order that they appear in the actual text, and, the list may, if you want it to, be comprised only of uniques (i.e. there won’t be any duplicates).

This method is immensely helpful especially when you are dealing with a text that contains many (as of yet) unknown kanji characters.

What You Will Have In Your Hands

Have a look:

The above is a snippet of the kanji list from the example parallel text I made for Part 1 of the series.

Tools, Places, And Instructions

1. You need Editpad Pro, because we will be playing with regular expressions (regex) after this. Also, you should have OpenOffice Calc. (I put these apps as requirements in the Introduction.)

2. Professor Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC. (Yes, that site will be your best friend from now on.)

3. Ten Nights of Dreams, by Natsume Souseki. (Hosted on Aozora.)

I would advocate that you trace the steps I’ve outlined below closely; the reason being that the regular expressions I made can be quite difficult to decipher if you don’t know what they are or how they function.

(A quick note to the regex wizards, if there be any reading this entry: please don’t laugh at my regex functions! I realize that mine are rather primitive in form. One could probably render them more efficiently. And yet, they suffice for the task at hand. That is why I have chosen to leave them as is. Still, should have you any suggestions in mind, I’d be most pleased to have a go at them.)

The Steps

You should be able to complete the following steps in less than 15 minutes. If you’re confused, click on the links; the screen captures are there to help you.

Here we go:

1. Select and copy (shortcut key: CTRL-V) the Japanese text. (At this point, make sure that Notepad2 is using the UTF-8 file encoding! Click File -> Encoding -> UTF-8.)

2. Fire up Editpad Pro. Paste into it what you had copied.

3. Open the Search bar. (Shortcut key: CTRL-F.) The ‘Regular expression’ box should be ticked.

4. In the Search field, insert this code:


[ぁ-ヿ０-９0-9]|[｡-ﾟ\n．、”　\-\s（）。※(「」＋―]


The ‘Replace’ field should be left empty.

And now, for the cool part: click ‘Highlight’. This has the effect of highlighting those sections the regex function covers.

5. Now press ‘Replace All’. All non-ideographic elements would be removed, leaving you then with just the Chinese characters. (Many of them will be duplicates.)

Now copy everything. (Shortcut key: CTRL-A, then CTRL-C.)

(An explanation as to why this step is necessary: If we feed the search process with the original text as is, we increase the possibility of a timeout error. So, by stripping the text of all but kanji, we are able to feed more kanji (thus, obtaining more output as well), yet at the same time we also minimize the possibility of a timeout error.)

6. Head on to WWWJDIC’s Kanji Database.

7. Paste what you had copied into the text field, and hit Search. The kanji characters, their search-codes and definitions will be enumerated, en masse.

Unfortunately, most of what had been generated is superfluous for our purposes. (After all, we only need the kanji characters and their respective definitions.) So we need to remove the extras.

For now, just select and copy all that’s on the page. (Shortcut key: click anywhere, then press CTRL-A.)

8. Go back to Editpad Pro, and paste what you had copied. Now, do the whole regex-replace thing again, but use this code instead:


(\s\d[\d\w].*([あ-ん]|[ア-ン])|\sSODA|\sSOD)|(^[(a-z)(A-Z)\n-].*)


9. And we have a kanji list! What’s great is that the kanji(s) and their definitions (inclusive of duplicates) appear in the exact order they do in the original text. If you’re satisfied with this text list, you’re already done. If not, continue.

10. Still in Editpad: We need to make sure the data is formatted nicely, to help OpenOffice Calc import it more easily. So, let’s do another search-replace again, but use the following regex functions:


Search: (?<=\p{lo})((\s|-\s)(?!=([a-z]|)))
Replace: \t


What the above function does: it will select only the whitespaces in between kanji and their definitions, and will convert them into tabs once you hit ‘Replace All’; do just that.

Now, select and copy everything.

(Careful readers may notice that I used a negative lookbehind function as a subexpression of the larger positive lookbehind function. This feels redundant, I know, but, in my humble opinion, it keeps everything safe and dandy, by imposing a double check on both characters to the left and right of the whitespace.)

11. Fire up OpenOffice Calc, and do a Paste. A ‘Text Import’ window appears. Make sure the ‘Tabs’ box is ticked. (And the ‘Space’ box, unticked.)

12. You’re done! (Take note that the list includes duplicates, so if you want to have them removed, read the following section. Otherwise, skip to the last section, the Side-Notes.)

Kanji List - Uniques Only (No Duplicates)

(optional — continued from the previous section)

1. Completely highlight the two columns with data. Then, from the menu, select: Data -> Filter -> Standard Filter.

2. Change the field in the Value drop-down box to ‘not empty’.

3. Click ‘More’, then tick the ‘No duplication’ box. Also, tick the ‘Copy results to…’ box, and insert this value into the field below it:


(-undefined-) -> C1:D1


5. A new list, without duplicates, has been created in the 3rd column and 4th column. Scroll up and down the spreadsheet to check.

Now, just delete data from the 1st and 2nd columns, then move the contents from 3rd and 4th column there.

6. And you’re completely done! All you’ve left to do is to apply the tips from Part 1 to make your spreadsheet look good.

Side-Notes

I understand that some people may question the necessity of being able to create kanji lists my way, when there are already gloss generators (such as this one) out there.

Why I decided to make my own kanji lists: Firstly, the generators out there are great, but I really dislike having duplicates in my printed kanji lists. I want each kanji to appear only once. Secondly, I’d rather that the kanji list be presented in a way that appeals to me, which is something that can’t be done with list generators. Thirdly, I like having control over each step of the output process.

If I’ve helped you out in any way, do let me know.

The Lines-Replace Method

This entry will teach you how to make parallel texts quickly and efficiently.

A quick explanation: The main purpose and use of this method is to generate, in raw text format, a list of sentences separated by newlines. (The ‘\n’ character.)

Spreadsheet apps are able to import them with greater ease as such.

What You Will Have In Your Hands

Here’s the end result of this tutorial:

You’ll be making that yourself, with a bit of guidance from yours truly.

Content and Copyright Issues

The above is a parallel text snippet of 夢十夜 (Yume Jyuu Ya) - Ten Nights of Dreams, as penned by Natsume Souseki, the distinguished Japanese author.

I would recommend anyone who’s interested in Japanese to start off with Ten Nights of Dreams: the horror-fantasy theme the story plays with makes it a fantastic and fascinating introduction to the world of Japanese literature. (It does not use complex grammar either, so beginners should be able to cope well.)

For this tutorial, I have chosen to use Natsume Souseki, as the copyright for his works have expired. (So I’ll be safe from any legal repercussions.) However, the translations I’m using were obtained in their entirety from No-Sword; I therefore reserve and attribute full credit to him for that. (I hope the author won’t mind, as I’m not making any profit out of this exercise.)

So, visit these sites to get what you need for this tutorial: the original Japanese version of Ten Nights of Dreams. (The site, Aozora, is something like a Japanese version of Project Gutenberg.) Get the translations from No-Sword too.

You may also download the example parallel text if you like. (It’s in OpenDocument format though.)

Now, read on.

The (Twelve) Steps

My example will use the story from the First Night in its entirety. I’ve taken a lot of screen captures; so click on the links for a visual guide if you’re confused as to what you should do.

The steps outlined below may seem complicated, but really, they would take only take 5 minutes of your time to complete.

1. Select and copy (shortcut key: CTRL-V) the Japanese text. (At this point, make sure that Notepad2 is using the UTF-8 file encoding! Click File -> Encoding -> UTF-8.)

2. Fire up Notepad2. Paste what you’ve copied.

3. (EXPLANATION: Sentences in Japanese are often demarcated by the ‘ 。’ symbol. Therefore, we will use that marker as a line-ending to denote where sentences begin and end.) Open up Replace Text (shortcut key: CTRL-H), and insert the following into the empty fields:


Search String: 。
Replace With: 。\n


Make sure you don’t forget to tick the “Transform backslashes” box. Then click Replace All.

4. Now you’ve got a list of sentences, aligned nicely. However, it’s a bit messy: some sentences have blank lines in between. Not a problem. Select all text (Shortcut key: CTRL-A), then click Edit -> Block -> Remove Lines. (Shortcut key: ALT-R.)

5. Once you’ve done that, the sentences should look much cleaner. Now, select everything (shortcut key: CTRL-A) that’s present in the text file, and copy them.

6. Fire up OpenOffice Calc. Paste what you have (shortcut key: CTRL-V) in the first column/row. A new window should open, asking you to configure the character set and separator options. Unicode, the default character set should work fine; as for the separator, leave it on “Tab”. Press OK.

7. You’ve now a spreadsheet with perfectly aligned sentences, but with an ugly and jagged appearance. What we need is some formatting magic. But first, enable the use of specific fonts for Asian languages. (Click Options -> Language Settings; at the ‘Enhanced language support area’, ]tick the ‘Enabled for Asian languages’ box. Then hit OK.)

8. Now press F11. In the Styles and Formatting window, right-click ‘Default’, then click ‘Modify’. Click the tab called Fonts. Change the font under ‘Asian text font’ to something you like. (I have a bit of a preference for Meiryo myself, and would highly recommend it.) Next, click on the ‘Alignment’ tab. Select ‘Top’ from the Vertical drop-down list, and under ‘Properties’, tick the ‘wrap text automatically’ box.

9. Voila! You now have something that resembles a parallel text. But we’re only half-done.

10. Repeat steps 1-9, but use the English translation this time around. (Here are the translations from No-Sword, if you missed the link above.) Also, take note that you should use the normal period fullstop character, ‘.’, instead of ‘。’, this time around.

So:


Search String: .
Replace With: .\n


When you paste the data into the spreadsheet, take care to do so in the 2nd column.

11. At this point, you should have something that looks like this: a dual-parallel text. We’re nearly done. Now use the shortcut keys ALT-Left Arrow/ALT-Right arrow to gauge the width of the columns for both the English and Japanese language cells. (Alternatively, you could also drag the column headers.)

12. Select all cells (shortcut key: CTRL-A). Then, click ‘Format’ -> Default Formatting.

Done! All that’s left is for you to beautify the spreadsheet, just the way you like it.

Side Notes

The parallel sentences may not be nicely aligned against each other sometimes. Manual inspection and correction may be necessary.

The line-replacement method I’ve been using, as outlined above, may seem fairly obvious to some. But it would surprise you how many do not employ it, thus wasting valuable time and energy making parallel-texts manually.

Lastly, if I’ve helped you out, do let me know. And, if you’ve any tips or suggestions, please do share. Look forward to the next tutorial, which will be concerned with making kanji lists.

Just the other day a friend brought up the topic of marriage.

See, the topic would have been just fine… if she hadn’t been so ultra-idealistic about it.

Nooooooooooooo. She just had to dump the whole fluffy bunnies, rainbows and butterflies, sugar and spice, sweets and chocolates, azure blue oceans and clear skies, life-is-so-perfect, “What A Wonderful World” batshit on my ass, managing it all in less than 5 minutes flat.

(Please pick a phrase: ’supernatural’, or ‘typical female’. You may use either one to describe her mutant powers, depending on how sexist you would like to come off sounding. )

(Note: No offense meant to Louis Armstrong.)

Then, she asked me for my opinion.

… Heh.

The Conversation

I chimed in, “Well, I’m not against the idea of marriage.”

“Great,” she replied.

“… But if I ever find myself about to be shackled by one, I’m going to at least have my body tattooed and painted beforehand, with legal documents, ordinance mantras, cursed statutes, holy judgments and magic seals so powerful they could even seal up Nine-Tails’ chakra. And, if it would be absolutely necessary for me to pull off awesome ninjitsu summoning powers and shit, I’d summon Johnnie Cochran instead of huge-ass giant frogs or snakes or slugs. He’d definitely be of use to me, comparatively speaking.”

She looked at me, amused. With one eyebrow raised.

“… Right, Zafran.”

I continued. “As always. And, I’m also going to make sure that I would have an assload of other contracts at arm’s length, covering all of the ancillary matters. You know — prenuptial agreements, asset declarations, all that jazz. All so microscopic in detail it’d make Malaysian politicians cringe if they were to be held that accountable.”

She looked at me, mortified. “But Zafran, that’s like… quantifying love!”

“… Plus, at least 20 witnesses for the registration process. The whole thing will be televised, and encoded in MP3 format, then down-sampled so that I can easily upload it to Creative Commons for the whole world to see, and testify as witnesses to, for that time when the Gates of Hell lets loose a woman’s fury. And oh, what the hell. Since I’m at it, I might even fill out child custody forms in advance too. Just in case.”

“And, pray tell, who would ever marry you should you continue being this anal?”

“Myself, of course. I’d be honoured to. Anyway, if my future chick doesn’t want to marry me because of ‘love transcends all’ issues, I’ll just go find some other chick-lah. Senang kan? (Simple right?)”

“No way.”

“Yes way. If you enjoy being sucked clean and dry — I mean that financially, by the way — and have everything you own split into two just because the other party had some RM6,000 contribution in a RM400,000 higher-purchase agreement, then feel free to be my guest and jump into marriage and be made love to by human leeches.”

“And you’re suggesting that…-”

“Oh, sorry dear. I forget that you’re a woman sometimes.”

“Right. And how would your future wife ever talk to you?”

“Through my accountant, of course. Psychic mediums are fine by me too.”

“Uh-huh. Just how are you going to convince her parents to take you up then?”

“I dunno. How the hell would I know? Thank God for my Family Law studies. It’ll be me versus centuries-worth-of-Malaysian tradition. Like a skinny guy against a sumo wrestler. Fun stuff. And you haven’t heard the other stuff too, have you.”

“… What other stuff?”

His Lordship Returns

Sorry, can’t talk about the ‘other stuff’. Suffice to say that it’s offensive, so I won’t be writing about it.

Anyway, the only reason this post came about is because His Lordship, The Malay Male, made His Return a while ago, and posted something related to this just recently. And I just couldn’t resist from sharing my insignificant and biased thoughts as well.

So, yes, go and read ‘Semusim di Syurga: Proses Memelayukan Diri‘.

(Warning: The blog post is in Malay, and depending on your sensitivity level, can come across as being very, very offensive, or ten times that. But it’s sharp, realistic, and totally balls-to-the-walls, which is why it should warrant at least one reading from you.)

——–

I intend to make a series of entries, chronicling the way I go about learning languages; in particular, the Japanese language. I will share any and all methods that I’ve come to devise myself over the past few months.

Some of these methods have been of immense help to me. I hope the same will hold for you as well.

(The methods may still be applicable even if you’re learning other languages. If you find that they are, do let me know.)

What I Offer

I’ll teach you how to make this, in 20 minutes or less:

Tempted yet?

What You Will Have In Your Hands

1. A parallel text of a full short-story or novel.

(Nearly-perfectly) aligned in form, sorted English-Japanese, or Japanese-English, as you please. Requiring only minimal editing or fomatting to have it entirely your way.

The good thing is that my method is fairly automated. (In comparison, the effort you would have to spend doing the same thing manually could deprive you of some few nights of sleep. Yes, I know. I speak from experience.)

2. A list of kanji.

Appearing in the exact order you encounter them in the Japanese text. Without duplicates.

Accompanying definitions included.

The Benefits

As I’ve discovered, the benefits of having something like the above are plenty.

1. The aligned texts are great for printing. Better yet, since you can select individual or batch parts (with the accompanying translations), you can easily extract a page or two for practice for whenever the computer’s not around.

2. The data can be easily sorted. We are using spreadsheets, after all.

3. The data can be exported. For use with Anki, or any other SRS apps of your choice. (So long as they support *.csv or *.tsv files.)

4. You can select your own font-type and size. This I find to be a huge incentive, especially if you’re a Meiryo junkie like me.

5. Easily cross-refer to kanji and their meanings. No need to waste time hunting down definitions by poring through Remembering The Kanji (if you’re an RTK user) or kanji dictionaries, especially if you don’t have a ready Internet access nearby.

6. And so on and so forth.

I love regular expressions, and I use them a lot, so be prepared to play with them a bit. (And don’t worry — if you follow the tutorial properly, you won’t even need to know what they are to make parallel texts like the above. I’ll try to make the tutorial as clear as possible.)

The Tools You’ll Need

All that I mention below are either free, open-source software, or (usable) shareware.

Other tools better or more efficient than the ones I suggest probably exist. (And if they do, and you use them, please recommend them to me by way of a comment.) For the moment though, I’ll make the best use of what I already have.

1. Notepad2. The original Notepad bundled with Windows XP is lacking in features, and that’s why we need Notepad2.

2. Editpad Pro. The only reason why I’ve included this here is because I like the regex engine, which I think beats the one in Notepad++. Also, Editpad Pro has the ability to highlight regex searches, which I love and think is absolutely fantastic. (Pardon my enthusiasm.)

3. Open Office Calc. (Alternatively, Microsoft Excel). I will only illustrate my examples using Calc though.

In The Meantime

I’m currently a bit busy with exams, so I’ll get about completing the tutorials as soon as possible.