2010年10月18日星期一

Life

Life is half suffering and dying, half happy and living. No matter which points of view, suffering happily or living death, these 4 things are going to intertwine. So, what are you going to do? Be cynical about everything or take it easy?

2010年10月11日星期一

My Dog

Different sleeping positions : I guess it means mulitple dog-alities!

2010年8月1日星期日

Movie - Inception

STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE MOVIE!

Levels of Dreamhttp://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/film/5-levels-inception-infographic.html
I personally don't think we have levels of dream. The levels of dream in the movie give me a sense of entering hell, especially when the ultimate level is called "limbo". We do have different phases of sleep. We also have levels of consciousness. The levels of dream in Inception are like call-forwarding. I wouldn't say it's getting deeper anywhere. It's just going from room one to room two until room five.

Dream Equals to Memory?I know Sir Edward Youde died in his sleep, but not because of a dream. I don't think anyone will die in real life because (s)he dies in a dream. All those subconscious characters attacking dreamers, dying in a dream can harm you physcially, dreaming your own dream in someone else dream, bringing totems into dreams (like charms) ... are like video games. It's there to make it an action film. The purpose of getting into someone's dream is to get into someone's mind. Hypnosis can do all that. Why all the hassles and stupid dream machine? You can hypnotise a person and get information or distort the person's memory. Where dream is often elusive. Can Fischer remember the dream? Would he take it seriously? Planting something in a dream is not the same thing as planting an idea in mind. I may dream of marrying someone I hate but that doesn't mean I will do so when I wake up. Dream is the mirror of the mind working. It's not a pathway to mind. Even the dreamer may not understand his/her own dream. The best thing we can do is messing up the dream. But messing up the dreamer's mind? Nuh.

You can find a lot of explanation about Inception here:
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Inception-Explained-Unraveling-The-Dream-Within-The-Dream-19615.html

But I'm more like this guy:
http://frontalot.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=2991&sid=4b0e0937a803df520a3b561192f77d8e

*** *** *** *** *** *** ***
So far, I had taken full control of a dream twice.
The first time, the dream is so scary I tried to figure out how I got myself into such situation. Things were so illogical I found out that I must be dreaming. I manipulated it for a while and I woke up. Guess designing your own dream is no fun.

The second time, I woke up from a bad dream. I wanted to alter it into a good ending. I planned the ending, went back to sleep, accomplished the mission. This happened only once because usually during a bad dream, your body will create adrenaline (putting you into a flight or fight condition) and you will sweat quite a lot. When you wake up, it's too excited to get back to sleep immediately.

2010年7月4日星期日

IKEA - English or Swedish

A Hong Kong IKEA commercial is driving me crazy. The kid pronounces it 'it-key-ah'. If you want to pronounce it in English, it should rhyme with "idea"; i.e. 'eye-key-ah'. If you want to pronounce it in Swedish, it sounds like 'ee-care'.

2010年6月18日星期五

Dr Qooble is a Secret Agent!

I pick this pamphlet from my mailbox today. OMG! I must be an old-English teacher because the English here is very odd to me.


First of all English question is not the same as question about English. It has something to do with the UK's politics.
A noun before another noun, the first noun acts as an adjective. For example, carrot juice is juice with the taste of carrot; a vegetable person is a person who is like a vegetable (probably in coma).

Grammar, syntax, vocabulary, usage, or expression, No question too simple?
Can you find any verb in this ...er... line? Every sentence must have a verb. A lot of Chinese students have the same mistake - skipping the linking verb. Try say this in Chinese "She is very beautiful". No verb eh? That's why. Then, a very good use of commas until the capital N screws it.

Write an essay an assignment submitted to Dr Qooble, He will proofread and mark your writings, give you comment and positive advices..
Is it some new font which a full stop/period looks exactly the same as a comma? If it's a list of action, there should be a comma between "an essay" and "an assignment":
-->  "Write an essay, write an assignment, submit to Dr Qooble and he will..."
If "submitted" is the verb, there's no subject. A writing cannot 'submit' itself.
-->  "Write an essay or an assignment and submit it to Dr Qooble..."
OOOH!!! --- "submitted" sounds like "submit it" --- OMG (oh my gosh)
Last "advice" is uncountable.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=3&search=advices
http://www.iciba.com/advices/
Either Dr Qooble is far from HK or he's disclosing us some top secret!
Last 2 full stops. Is it Dr Qooble, his assistant or the typist?

Wanna take a look at the back of the pamplet or visit the website?

2010年5月18日星期二

Go Banana = becomes crazy; Go Toilet ???


"to" gives readers a sense of action done towards a place. Here, "go" is an intransitive verb (i.e. no object; nothing to accept/receive the action). One can make a toilet, break a toilet, flush the toilet (all transitive verbs) but 'go a toilet' doesn't make any sense. So one has to say "I go to school by bus."

Another meaning of "go" is "to be". For example: "go bananas" means "go crazy", i.e. to become crazy. I don't think your teachers would want to know if you want to be a toilet.


Sometimes, we go shopping, we go swimming ... Here, shopping and swimming are activities. Toilet is a thing. So you should say "Teacher, may I go wee wee/poo poo?" which is like in Chinese 先生, 我想痾屎!  

Sleep vs. Nap; Name vs. Lamb