Muggles!

I emitted a very excited squeak (in a public place with a crowd) when I saw the 4th entry listed below in my KTdict Chinese-English iPhone dictionary.


我是麻瓜。
Or is it 我是一个麻瓜。?

I'm trying to say "I am a muggle."

I'd like to be able to say: I am a muggle, but I'd rather be a wizard.

Unfortunately, my Chinese is far too elementary.

Now I want to get a copy of Harry Potter in Chinese. (Or maybe I shouldn't. I bought a copy Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone in Spanish in high school when I was attempting to learn Spanish in my sorry excuse for a language class. I don't think I ever made it past the first few pages.)

Ooh! Maybe I'll just use my "studying Chinese" time to look up Harry Potter words. Like, how would you say pensieve? Or boggart? Or Snape? Or Blast-ended skrewt?!

And what about hobbit? Legolas? Bombadil? Fool of a Took!? Figwit?! (Though considering Figwit is a product of fangirl frenzy and not an actual written character, I doubt there's an official Chinese rendition of his name.)

What about Middle Earth?

I vote 中国.

That is, Middle Kingdom/Country.

That is, the official name of China.

Look! I'm thinking of going to Middle Kingdom/Earth this year!

Last year, I went to Middle Earth under the guise of New Zealand (hehe).

I sense a trend here.

I've been geeked. Travel geeked.

Now how do you say "Fern, get your travel-geeked butt back to work." in Chinese?

Goals! Oh dear.

Two months ago, I essentially said, screw goals, I'm gonna wander. But lately, I've come to the conclusion that goals are rather important.

For example... I wanted to take some classes to fill in some skill gaps but got rather carried away with all the freakishly cool things to learn. Like futures studies! But in the end, it had to be dropped and filed away under "cool things to learn about someday" because meandering there stretched my energy a bit too thinly across too many arenas.

But, back to goals specifically.

The problem for me is that "goals" sounds far too fixated and impermeable. It's like saying, THIS is where I WILL be in x years and I will ZOOM into TIGHT focus towards this SINGULAR ambition. My space-loving soul cringes and wriggles to find a more flexible way to roam.

So the best compromise seems to be to reframe my whole perception of goals. It doesn't have to be a singular goal. Or if it does need to be one goal, it doesn't have to get there NOW. I'm fully allowed to wittle them into focus slowly. And, most importantly, these goals can change. They can be scrapped completely in light of new discoveries. They can be modified according to how the path pans out. They can grow, live and, if need be, pass away.

Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity (a blog with great posts and a splendidly artistic header) had this to say:

But most of us are not Tigers or Serenas yet. Not all of us know what we want to do; not everyone is single-minded towards the pursuit of only one goal. Some of us have more than one passion.

So that’s the idea: why not try it all? Have your cake and eat it too.

I’ve written about living a renaissance life a few times before—see here and here, for example—but this is a different approach. Try this, for example:

Higher Education: sign up for the maximum number of credits. You can drop any classes that aren’t a good fit, but maybe you just have a busy semester of learning. Why not?

Business: Have four ideas and aren’t sure which to pursue? Launch all four. Stick with the one or two that gains traction in the marketplace. Don’t worry about the others.

So, for now, my goals consist of going into 3D animation in the entertainment or education areas, being a graphic designer or publication designer, and moving to China to learn Chinese.

Are they related? Not in the slightest. At least, not as far as my mind can see right now.

It's a bit like being a double major in art and physics at the same time. Are they related? If you're looking at the path to get a physics major and looking at the path to get an art major... not in the slightest. No overlap at all. Except in my own learning, problem-solving, and creativity, where I've found plenty of overlap in the process.

Are the paths to 3D animation, graphic design and China related? Not really.

But I'm going to try the paths to all three out and see where it takes me. If one gains prominence either in my own desire or in outside traction, then I'll travel down that path.

And the most important thing to note here is that going down any one of these paths doesn't mean that the other paths are automatically excluded for the rest of my life. Aren't we constantly told that the days of one single career are over?

In the end, it's a combination of goals and wandering.

The goals help focus the wandering.

Or maybe it's that the wandering that helps give the goals life and focus.

Your thoughts?

A Wild Sheep Chase, Chapter 35 ¾

Part Two of a peek into the mind of my high school self, this round via an English assignment in my sophomore year. (Part one here.) We were to write an additional chapter for a book. I chose A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami.

Now, I fully admit to being slightly kooky. I also fully admit to being a sponge. I easily absorb people's styles and writing styles. The latter absorption becomes problematic after reading authors like Faulker because my sentences grow from lengthy to unending. However, when reading a slightly kooky book like A Wild Sheep Chase--a book which I highly recommend--the absorption tendency can lead to some, well, interesting, results...

A Wild Sheep Chase

by Haruki Murakami

Translated from Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum

Chapter 35 ¾

—¶ð

Pliers That Jabber and Rap

The glaring sun seemed to have a way of hooking weights surreptitiously onto my eyelids. I looked out over the pasture through diminishing slits and it wasn’t long before my head drooped over with its heavy load.

I dreamed about the dairy cow again. Except this time, it had an uncanny resemblance to the Sheep Man. The cow still wanted pliers in exchange for the old electric fan so I ransacked the Rat’s house looking for those evasive pliers. Dust flew in little clouds around me like those hastily drawn in a comic strip. Then one of the dust clouds pulled together with a loud sucking *thwooop* and materialized into the Sheep Man. He was staggering around in circles like a drunkard because of the weight of a gigantic pair of red furry pliers. The pliers had a star on what would be its back, if pliers had backs. I started to wrestle with the Sheep Man for the pliers when a sudden spurt of efficient raps on the door made me start and loose my grip.

I opened my eyes and squinted violently at the sunbeam that fell across the door. The raps became more insistent. How is it that the manner in which one knocks on a door sounds exactly like the manner of their voices? There were deep booming door knocks that shook the foundations of the earth. Those went with the deep booming voices that blew you off your feet and onto the floor with an ungainly crash. Then there are voices and door knocks like this present jabbering rap that eats its way into every fiber of your being, annoying and aggravating every cell until the one responsible for the rapping is pacified.

A Short Little Tale Regarding the Importance of Mushrooms

A peek into the mind of my high school self (November 2003!) via a short story I wrote for English in my junior year. Unfortunately, the external harddrive on which all my pre-college work resided went and died on me, so this is one of the few digital bits that remain. Thanks to... get this... a floppy disc! It had two whole word documents on it, the second of which is titled, A Wild Sheep Chase, Chapter 35 ¾.

So why post this? For one, I like traipsing into the mind of past selves. For two, it reflects my high school concerns quite well. And, for three, threads of those high school concerns have wound their way into the present. Things evolve as time progresses, but do they really change?

Note: My high school self had a thing for mushrooms. It showed up in my nickname, in a series I did for art, and of course, this story... So, without further ado...

A Short Little Tale Regarding the Importance of Mushrooms

In a world entirely unrelated to our own, the pursuit of life is not happiness, but mushrooms. Now before you start to think of little people zooming around and snatching more mushrooms to add to the already large piles in their arms, understand this – these mushrooms are not ones you eat. It has never even so much as crossed the minds of the inhabitants of the world that mushrooms are items to be ingested. Mushrooms grow, most certainly, but not in the way you might imagine…