first post!

i think the biggest thing holding me back from making a blog was choosing a name for it. everything i could think of just seemed to sound stupid after thinking over it a couple of times... eventually i thought of 黑白講, which in mandarin literally means something like talking in black and white, but if you read it in Taiwanese, this phrase becomes the equivalent of saying someone has absolutely no idea what they're talking about, which, i think, fits perfectly for my blog ^^

so.. i bet you're all dying to know what i've been doing recently!

and the answer is absolutely nothing. haha. so ridiculous XD ok so i do the occasional chauffeuring of the siblings and volunteering at the school and some dinner parties with the family. but other than that, my schedule has been something like: wake up, take out retainers, sit down in front of computer, check email, answer phone calls, pick up brother from school, come home and read manga or facebook, eat dinner, then resume whatever i was doing before that, chat online, shower, play ds in bed, hear the newspaper thudding on my driveway, then by the time i fall asleep it's probably about 4am. then the next day the whole cycle starts again somewhere between 10am and 1pm~ (no, that's not a mistake, i basically only eat 1 meal a day now.. but i snack a lot too.. plus it's not like a really move around or use that much energy haha)

anywayyy enough about my schedule. time for me to share some of the things i've found interesting lately.

first off, i think some of you know that i enjoy listening to really old-school japanese music, known as 演歌 enka. this genre is typically defined by the likes of 小林幸子 kobayashi sachiko (video) or 北島三郎 kitajima saburou (video). the other day i was surfing the net and found this. i think you all believe me when i say that this completely took me off guard.. i mean, would you expect to see someone like that singing this genre?? (for those of you too lazy the click the link, it's a black guy named ジェロ jero (pronouced like jello? haha) who looks like a (american, not japanese style) gangster but sings enka)

apparently he's a quarter japanese, with a japanese grandmother.. and his japanese... sounds a lot better than mine... haha furthermore, he totally acts like a japanese person, bowing excessively to absolutely everyone. totally blew my mind~

now then, those of you who know me probably know that i think tattoos are a bad idea unless you have some really really really good reason to get one. also a bad idea is getting tattoos of chinese characters of which the meaning you have no idea. so i was at my sister's graduation the other day, and sitting about 5 or 6 rows below me was this poor young woman with this tattoo on the back of her neck. She looked caucasian to me, or maybe perhaps part asian. anyway, whatever she was, i bet she had no idea what the chinese character 笨 means. nor, do i think, did she have any idea that there were a good 3-4 cameras trying to capture the greatness that was her tattoo. i only very discretely took one photo, but my dad with his uber fancy dslr camera changed his lens to the one with the i dunno... 20x zoom and very obviously took probably more pictures of this woman's neck than he did of my sister's graduation. by the way, for all you chinese-illiterate people, the word 笨 (pronounced like "bun") it means stupid or clumsy, most commonly used in the phrase "笨蛋" meaning "A fool, an idiot, a simpleton; a dullard; a moron; a foolish fellow; a stupid fellow; a silly fool; a wooden head" according to my chinese-english dictionary. so for all you people who aren't planning on getting a tattoo, good job. for those of you who are... well... i hope you understand that getting this tattoo will result in a bunch of chinese people waiting for just the right opportunity to snap a picture to make fun of you later =)

so to counter my boredom, i've been doing a little more music lately... dawdling on the piano and violin again. i'm trying to learn Chopin's Ballad #4, op. 52 in f-minor, but i'm getting stuck at the part that requires some effort on my part haha. oh, btw, i made a couple of videos of my playing erhu~ 1) 江河水 (Jiang He Shui) 2) 三門峽暢想曲 (San Men Xia Chang Xiang Qu) and 3) 金珠瑪米贊 (Jin Zhu Ma Mi Zan). check them out if you can~ give me good ratings plz XD

current music~
蕭敬騰 - 王子的新衣 Jam Hsiao - The Prince's New Clothes (or as they translated it, "New Dress for Prince" haha)
林宥嘉 - 眼色 Yoga Lin - A Meaningful Glance
蕭閎仁 - 看袂落去 no english name for this guy... ooh time for a taiwanese lesson: the title literally means in taiwanese "i can't watch it anymore" (pronounced "khwah veh lohk khi" phoneticized by me using no real romanization standard whatsoever :P) which is what you would say if you see something (typically bad) happening and you can't stand it anymore~

ok until next time~~