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not drowning, waving!!

October 19th 2007 03:45

thanks to jupiterimages.com for the image

as the summer has finally hit melbourne it would seem, albeit a hot change from the last few refreshingly freezing winter days, the attitude to get out and enjoy the sun is upon us all. bbq's, beers, and general frolicking in parks in the flavour that most of choose to welcome the glorious sun that we have been deprived of for so long.

melbourne has the added asset of the yarra river winding through the city with its glorious parks lining its entirety. this makes for a real hot spot for both people on the edge of the yarra enjoying the various barbies and space for 'six and out' (australian for cricket), along with those that choose to take a leisurely cruise on the many boats and floating cafes that cruise up and down this murky water playground.

why is it then that people feel the need to wave when they are on a boat? these are people you don't know, they don't know you, and chances are you will never see them again! i could almost guarantee that if this same person passed you on the street there is no way in hell that they would take the time to wave at you. the most alarming part of this exercise is that not only are you struck by the oddness of this action, you feel compelled to wave back! so you do and the 'waving happily to a complete stranger as they pass you in a boat' cycle is complete.

i wonder if it the hibernation of winter, or the glorious feel of summer that makes us act in this way. so soak in that feel of strangeness as you wave to me on the banks of the yarra this weekend, you know i'll wave back.

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Posted By: Jonathon - Category: Language

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alternative communication

June 11th 2007 18:05

communicating in means other than words seems to be the theme of my thinking patterns this week, so i have been exploring alternative forms of communication. what use does a word have if the person you are communication it to has no idea of its meaning? by saying it slower or louder at them doesn't help the situation any (which annoys me to no end!), and the conversation just, well, stops. or you might end up getting an ashtray when you asked for a glass of cab sav!

the book the trumpet of the swan by e.b. white, is a fine example of this. it basically is about a swan that cannot communicate the same way that other swans do. he ends up going to school and learning how to read and write by writing on a slate around his neck. he returns home and tries to tell one of the lady swans that he loves her, but she cannot read so she just swims away. his father then steals him a trumpet and louis learns how to play it, which becomes his new form of communication. he then returns home, trumpets his way into his beloved female swans heart, has cygnets and lives happily ever after.

this beautiful, well constructed novel metaphorically states the bleeding obvious. there is a way to communicate to everyone, we just need to find out how. just because we understand one form of communication well, that doesn't necessarily mean that others will. and when we start using multiple forms of communication simultaneously, all hell has the potential of breaking loose. maybe someone should have taught george w how to play a trumpet.

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Posted By: Jonathon - Category: Language, Media/Communication

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words don't mean nutin', korean cinema

June 9th 2007 17:58

coming to end of the semester, it also brings with it the finalization of all of the deadlines, late night cram sessions, and frantic time rescheduling to try and fit in all of those group projects that we have embarked upon. it also brings a certain amount of joy and fulfillment knowing that the projects we have created are both successful and completed.

having just completed one of my korean cinema projects, of which was to create a 20 minute short film, the best part of the semester happened last night. as much fun as it was to create these films with groups of truly creative people, it is more fun to spend four hours watching the fruits of our collective labour. it was a truly great night and a really great chance to see who the next big names in the korean cinema world are going to be.

my korean language skills have improved notably since my arrival here, however i still have major problems when it comes to listening to it. what korean i do know is spoken at record speeds by the koreans, and still leaves me spinning for at least five minutes - even when they do simply ask me what i would like to order! so needless to say watching korean films without subtitles is a more than hard chore.

whilst watching all of these films last night, i realised that i could understand what was going on really easily without actually being able to understand the dialogue (apart from one which was heavily dependent on the words). it starting me thinking as to why i was understanding them so well.

as with general conversation, cinema relies on so much more than just dialogue. let's just think about the aural stuff on its own first. we can have a blend of ambience - to set the location, time, and a small amount of emotion; music - to definitely set the mood and maybe heighten location; fx - allow the viewer to be absorbed into another world completely if done well; and lastly the dialogue - even if the words don't make sense to the viewer can still understand what is trying to be communicated by the tone or level at which the actor speaks. and that's just the audio!

then comes the imagery. without talking for days about this, you can imagine that framing, lighting, and movement are only some of the components that make up this component of film making. acting also plays a major part (obviously) but not so much in only the dialogue. looks and movements tend to enhance the script far more than the words do. there are so many more attributes also that make up movie making - far too many to attempt to discuss in this blog entry.

after watching 10 films, non of which were in english, but being able to understand all but one, i have really come to the decision that words hold so little impact in communication. communication is an all encompassing process that stems from the background knowledge that we bring to the table, and only holds the meaning that we give it. how we portray that to the listener is the real trick.

thanks to u.t.a.s. for the image

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Posted By: Jonathon - Category: Language, Art, Media/Communication

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real estate agent language

May 31st 2007 11:50

our time in korea is drawing to an end and it is time to start looking for accommodation back in the land of oz. since we live in the future now, the days of scouring through newspapers or driving from real estate agent to real estate agent to pick up their 'rentals' list have come to an end. now we are blessed to be able to search on the internet for our prospective house/dwelling, or even get these notifications emailed to us. but it is good to know that real estate jargon hasn't progressed along with the technology.

i have been recently looking for our next potential place and was quickly reminded of the 'secret' way of reading the rental lists. it is almost as they are written in a cryptic way so as everyone can have a laugh at either how bad the place is or how exorbitant the price the owner is attempting to charge for it. here is a list of a few of my favourite adjectives/phrases

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no more gaps!

April 10th 2007 08:00

as i have been teaching my native language for the first time in recent times, i have concurrently been learning another language - that being korean, or hanguel. this process has allowed me to step back and assess both languages for what they are - a communication tool that we carry in our tool box and bring out to tighten some bolts or hammer a nail with. it is only part of the communication process as we really do rely upon so many other parts to communicate with, but for todays lesson kids, we are going to focus on our language....

although the korean language sounds as though they are saying ten thousand statements in ten seconds, they are really only talking with the bare bones of communication. however they do have quite a few filler sounds that basically fill the sentence between the words to make a series of statements make sense. an example of their sentence structure - without getting all verb/noun/blah blah blah - would be ' i rice eat', as opposed to the english arrangement of 'i eat rice'. as i study this i always seem to reflect back to my own language and think of how much shit we fill our conversations with

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milo goes to 'wikipedia' college. what do you think?

April 2nd 2007 15:05

the never ending debate is always raging as to the quality of the information that is available on wikipedia. the onlline information encyclopedia that is for wikipedians, written by wikipedians. it is hard for me to take an un-biased opinion of this as i am a firm believer that wiki is all good, however i will attempt to be diplomatic in this discussion of the world's coolest information resource.

wiki is good because

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Posted By: Jonathon - Category: Language, Media/Communication, Technology

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does google own the world?

March 30th 2007 19:59

your searching stops here?

is there no end to what google seem to have their fingers into? off the top of my head i can think of the almighty google search engine, google earth, adsense, and youtube. not to mention the multitudes of spin offs like google scholar, froogle, gmail, and blogger. without a doubt they are the world's largest search engine that i would dare say the majority of the world uses, and to be fair, it is a search engine that rarely lets me down in my never ending persuit for information. even as you read this blog entry, it is being endorsed by google adsense which is attempting to pay me with advertising money for my journalism efforts. they certainly are a force to be reckoned with and have established themselves as a super power within the information super highway. however as with all monopolies, it can't be a good thing all together.

one issue that springs to mind is the idea of censorship in one form. for example, when one does a search for a particular item, the search returns with an enormous amount of results and who is to say that is the best selection of information that is available? the potential sources are selected through a process of recent activity on the many webpages that the information is available on, along with the highest amount of links that correspond to this webpage. for a useful explanation of this refer to this blog post. so in a sense, it is popular information that is found and could potentially not be the best source for this information. not to mention that you, depending on your research skills of course, have to traul through possibly 20 000 000 internet pages. i would really like to meet anyone that has done this

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Posted By: Jonathon - Category: Language, Media/Communication

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language barriers or road blocks?

March 16th 2007 15:00

it's just one little word....

i am attempting to learn the korean language at the moment and it would have to be the hardest test i have put to my feeble little brain in this life yet! i have been sitting in language classes all week, feeling like i am back in grade one, surrounded by kids with vegemite stuck to the corner of their mouths (bad childhood memory resulting in me having convulsions everytime i smell the stuff). the only thing that is different is there isn't the one smelly kid in the corner with a building block stuck in his nose.

as we sit there saying the vowels, then their consonant appurtenances, i start to thinking how one little sound, or word can really change the meaning completely. sometimes in a way that is piss funny, and then sometimes in a way that could be bad for your health. for example, the korean word for crab, roughly translated is 'ge'. the korean word for dog, roughly translated is 'gae'. one can imagine the look of distress on the young waiters face when i asked for 'gae' at the bbq house the other night! all with one simple mouth shape, i could have been eating 'lassie' instead of a lovely creamy lassie. for some nice 'engrish', check out this website. here are some more little examples of weird language near-aties

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funny photo

February 26th 2007 08:50

when translation goes wrong

after all of the more serious posts that have appeared in this space of late, i thought i should lighten it up a touch with a picture of a shirt that was for sale at one of the local markets. all i can say is translation problems....

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arriving in cheonan

February 12th 2007 14:13

so after an educating two days in seoul, it was time to fly the roost and heard towards cheonan (pronounced chonan) and set up for the next six months. it took one hour on the slow train, which apparently can be reduced to half an hour on their bullet train. we arrived with only knowing that there was a university there somewhere that i am enrolled in, and that there was a tourist information center when you turn left out of the station.

when we arrived there, conveniently the tourist information centre was closed and left us wondering what we were going to do. cheonan is more korean than seoul - meaning everything is written in hangul and virtually no one speaks english. whilst contemplating this, i decided that a coffee was in order, and set off to try to acquire one. the first coffee shop that i found had a plastic kangaroo sign sporting the phrase 'g'day mate', which sent my spidy senses tingling. upon walking in, i was greeted with a friendly hello in perfect english. it turns out that the shop was owned by a man named michael, who lives in sydney but owns a business in cheonan. he invited us in for a free coffee, and started explaining how things run around here. again the gods were smiling, or budha was rubbing his belly

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seoul searching...

February 10th 2007 07:18

welcome to seoul!

after an 18 hour trip from melbourne we finally arived at kim's guest house, seoul, which was to be our residence for the next two days. and what a journey it was to get this far. we were prepared partially for the language barrier, as everything that i read said that koreans could all basically speak english. i had the basics down and was well confident that easing into the culture wouldn't pose that much of a problem. i think that was my biggest mistake!

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