my name

January 25, 2007 at 10:42 am · Filed under Words

Yesterday was meetup #3 with the karate club. Oh boy it is hard to do those moves when you can see your awkwardness in the mirror. But people are so helpful. Near the end of practice they were helping me “understand” the form I need for side kicks. At one point I think one person was helping me balance while 3 others held my leg up trying to bring it backwards in a direction it currently doesn’t think it can go to. I need a lot of practice and more flexibility and some more core strength would help too.

If things work out I will eventually buy a karategi (I think that is what it is called…karate training uniform). Most of the people in the club have their names embroidered on their karategi and they told me I should think of kanji for me name. Why not use the katakana (メーガン　ドイッチャ）? Because you pay per character and it can be written in fewer kanji characters. So I have thought about this before. I think I know how it works of course I could be horrible wrong or unaware of some rules but…first I break my name down to: me – gan – do – i – cha and then I find kanji with readings of those syllables. Again, I might be totally missing something but…this is just to entertain myself. Taking my first name and a kanji reference book I found the following kanji for me:

目 (eye)
芽 (sprout)

and the following for gan:

岩 (rock)

岸 (coast, shore)

頑 (obstinate, stubborn)

願 (prayer, wish, vow)

丸 (circle)

元 (origin)

眼 (eye)

顔 (face)

含 (include)

癌 (cancer)

鴈 (wild goose)

Now for many of the above symbols, gan is a Chinese reading of the symbol. I don’t know if Chinese readings are typically used but I think you can use them. So what are good and meaningful combinations?　目眼(eye-eye)? 目顔(eye-face)? 目癌(eye-cancer)? The eye kanji would be good because it is very simple. But combinations of sprout might be more meaningful like, I am 芽願 (a sprout’s prayer). 芽頑 uses the kanji for “stubborn” which is typically viewed as a negative word but is it always negative? Stubborn can be firm, strong, steady. I am a stubborn sprout meaning that I am firmly rooted.
But am I?

Anyway, I will have to think about this one for a bit. Will probably also want to consider the aesthetics, recognizability (is that a word), and my ability to write the kanji.

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i am back

September 12, 2006 at 5:34 pm · Filed under Mundane, Thinking, Words

I just ran into a guy in the hallway at work, or rather, he ran past me then stopped and looked back. My first thought was “yes, I know I am beautiful but you don’t have to stare” (kidding) and then he said “remember me?” That certainly pulled me from my vanity – {oh crap I totally don’t remember} “yeeee..eeesss…” {did I meet him last week at the conference?} “your face looks familiar but…” {I don’t remember his face, usually I remember faces} “…I don’t remember your name”.
“More’s…” {???} “…you were there with my girlfriend for supper.”
Then I remembered, but still couldn’t place his face. I think he was wearing a suit that time and today he was in casual clothes. The suit transforms the man.
Crazy though, I met him during my first week in Japan. I met a lot of people then and have met many people since. Many I remember but there are people who slip through the mind’s cracks. I feel horrible when I realize I have given them blank stares of nonrecognition. When that happens my reaction is to (for the next day or so) smile at everyone like we had lunch the day before and talked about so many things that there isn’t much sense in starting a conversation at that particular moment or even saying ‘hi’.
On another note, I was sending an email to my Japanese teacher and couldn’t remember how to say “anytime” so while searching I came across this:

無芸大食
むげいたいしょく
mugeitaishoku

meaning: lacking the talent to do anything but eat, a noun I think…mugei is lacking talent, taishoku is gluttony. I like it.

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holy not very holy water

August 9, 2006 at 12:59 pm · Filed under Things Found Online, Words

I tend to avoid NSFM (not safe for mother) material here, but this is too good to pass up. I was googling the word “bathe” to get to dictionary.com’s thesaurus and the top site caught my attention:

Bathe with Jesus

Have not ventured past the first page of the site and don’t think I will but…oh boy. I laughed, and then it made me a little sad, then I laughed again.

This makes me think about the meaning of words based on their top google results. Search for “apple” and you get Apple computers, far from the fruit…”banana” leads me to Banana Republic first.  Search engines load and expand the meaning of our words.

Now the meaning of “bathe” shall be forever changed to me .

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homework

January 10, 2006 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, Words

Yes! Something in the ol’ SK was boingboing’d. We are officially on the map and for LSD experiments conducted at the Weyburn Mental Hospital nonetheless.


In other news, I had the most amazing weekend and I want to write about it but I don’t think I could summarize it in words quite appropriately. Instead, here are some enjoyable words. Please use them this week! But avoid thinking about them too much. They’ll start to bug you.
Astonishing
Swimmingly

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vitiate

December 11, 2005 at 7:37 pm · Filed under Words

vi·ti·ate (vĭsh’ē-āt’) pronunciation
tr.v., -at·ed, -at·ing, -ates.

1. To reduce the value or impair the quality of.
2. To corrupt morally; debase.
3. To make ineffective; invalidate.

Usage:

Thus the substantial work by the artist in constructing a response system has been vitiated by a too tenuous connection between action and reaction. (Stephen Boyd Davis)

I like it.

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