#i translate for a living. i’m technically professional. i spent way too long trying to word that last line in english.

[gmkz]

“There are tons of fractured dimensions, with tons of Elles. But I’m the only me. That’s the only thing I don’t want you to get wrong.”

the only positive thing that happened today was getting purple-eyed daughter and awakening her.

#tales of asteria #tales of xillia 2 #i don’t actually play asteria i have just logged in almost every single day since the game launched #i spent like 2 hours total farming for victor because fourth copy just WOULD NOT DROP #he finally came for his elle after i stopped holding back my cough and spent a minute dying #i translate for a living. i’m technically professional. i spent way too long trying to word that last line in english. #i had a really rough fucking day today my dudes i’m sorry

[plus-size-reader]

Babysitting

Alexei x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 1313 words

Warnings: none 

Summary: Hopper leaves Alexei in the care of his deputy. 

———————————————————————————————————

The knock on your door was too familiar, and too forceful for you not to recognize it. Knowing who was at the door wasn’t the question though, you needed to know what in the hell Jim Hopper was doing at your door first thing in the morning.

“You do know that I’m off today right?” you asked, opening the door expecting the chief of police. Instead you came face to face with a much smaller man who you didn’t recognize.

After a brief moment of thinking maybe you’d lost your mind, you found Hopper, standing to the side of the man, holding his hands behind his back.

“Who’s this?” you wondered, moving to the side so the two men could get through, because it was clear in Jim’s eyes that he wasn’t just paying you a visit.

Again, no answer. You turned around to see the curly haired man in your arm chair, while Hopper was lighting a cigarette.

“His name’s Smirnoff” he introduced, plopping down on your couch with so much force that you were almost sure he’d popped a spring.

That earned a laugh from you. What kind of name was that? And more importantly, what is he doing on your loveseat?

“That’s great Chief, what’s he doing here?” you wondered, removing his dusty boots from your coffee table before taking a seat beside him.

Hopper was technically your boss but you’d been his deputy for longer than either of you could remember so there wasn’t much professional respect between you.

“He’s a Russian scientist, I have to take Joyce Byers to go get Murray Bauman so he can translate, and I need somewhere safe to leave him until I get back” he informed, boggling your mind.

First of all, that was a lot to process at once. Secondly, that didn’t tell you why he was sitting on your couch. There had to be somebody else in Hawkins that could watch his little Russian.

That being said though, you also understood why he brought the man to you.

You were the one person that Hopper trusted above most others and he knew you’d do your best to keep this little man a secret.

“Fine, I’ll keep your Russian” You sighed, turning toward the man on the chair now. He was already smiling up at you when you made eye contact, and despite yourself, you smiled back.

~

With Hopper out of the way, you started trying to get to know the scrawny Russian on your chair.

There was something sweet about him, and even with the language barrier, before long you two were hitting it off. As it would turn out, his real name was Alexei, which he was able to communicate to you after a few hours of calling him Smirnoff.

You had learned a few things about him in the time that you two spent together. He was a huge fan of cherry slurpees, which he made sure you knew. He enjoyed loony tunes and reruns of Happy Days whenever they came on.

All in all he was a cool guy but you still weren't' understanding something.

Hopper made it seem like Alexei was some kind of dangerous criminal and while he may have been very intelligent, he wasn't a monster.

You had only just met the guy and you could still tell that he was no more than a sweetheart that had gotten mixed up with the wrong people at the wrong time.

It wasn’t fair to him to assume that just because he was working for the bad guys, the he was a bad guy as well. Alexei seemed harmless, and honestly...he was.

You were learning that more and more with every passing second.

Your thoughts were interrupted by him laughing, once again, as the coyote fell from the cliff, missing roadrunner by a foot. He found cataclysm so entertaining...something he likely had in common with Hopper.

“Kaboom” he mimicked, making the noise back to the television screen which earned a laugh from you. It was rare that you felt that way but there was something so innocent about Alexei that made you feel different than you had in a long time.

He was different than most of the guys in this town. He was sweeter, and nicer to be around than anyone else you’d ever known, and it was affecting you.

“Do they not have cartoons like this in Russia?” you wondered, crossing your legs under yourself on the couch as you waited for his response. Communicating wasn’t easy with such an intense language barrier. Luckily, through a complicated combination of charades and sounding out every letter like you were learning it for the first time, you got your point across.

Alexei, in turn, used the same system to let you know that they didn’t, and if they did, he’d never had the privilege of watching them.

For some reason, that made you sad, though you were enjoying his company too much to let him know that. The idea of the life that this man had been forced to live, under the thumb of much eviler men, made you upset.

You wanted to protect him and show him all the fun that the world had to offer him, and after a few minutes of thinking, you knew just what to do.

~

There wasn't anything super exciting about Hawkins, you knew that but for a man like Alexei, anything was going to be more of an adventure than what he was used to.

Luckily, there were a few things in Hawkins that you could only see there, and one of those things, was the video store. It was a dusty sort of place, occupied mostly by bored kids and impatient moms, but you loved it.

You had been going there since you were a child, and based on how Alexei had reacted to the few cartoons on the tv screen, he was going to love it too.

You entered the building with no hesitation, expecting Alexei to follow you, which he did after you prompted him to do so. Technically, you were just supposed to sit around and wait for Hopper to come back but while they were gone, the least you could do was show him a good time.

What Hopper didn't know wouldn't kill him.

"It's okay Lex, pick anything you want" you suggested, leading the skittish man down one of the closer isles so he could get a better look at all the options. They had everything from fantasy to horror and you were kind of interested to see what he would choose.

There was no real good way to know and honestly, you couldn't wait.

There was still so much you didn't know about Alexei and maybe this experience would help open your eyes to what kind of man he was.

Pretty quickly, his eyes fell on a classic. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory, a film that you hadn't seen in years. It was an excellent film, but something you didn't really think about.

That being said though, it was a fantastic film to open his eyes to american pop culture. It was quite the trip.

"That's a really good one" you clapped, proud of him for making such a good choice. You looked around for more time, but Alexei's attention remained on the box in your hands. He was intrigued by what was shown on the cover, and needed to know what it was about.

So, needless to say, you left with a single copy of Willy Wonka in hand and nothing more.

Now,Hopper did eventually come back, with Joyce and Bowman in tow.

However, he didn't return to a sight that he was expecting. Instead of you, sitting across from the Russian as he'd left you, he two of you were now wrapped around one another on the couch, the movies end credits playing on a loop in the background.

You would have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when you woke up, that was for sure.

#stranger things #stranger things 3 #stranger things x reader #stranger things season 3 #stranger things x plus size reader #alexei #alexei x reader #alexei x ps reader #alexei x plus size reader #st #st x reader #st x ps reader #st x plus size reader

[honeymoonjin]

A/N: It’s here!!! Like I said before, this fic will be a lot lighter and more humor-based than DOPE, so that you have some variety! 3k words.

LOST IN TRANSLATION ↳What do you do when you have no qualifications but want to see the world? You help teach English in a Korean primary school, apparently. ↳Principal!Jin, math teacher!Yoongi, PE teacher!Hoseok, English teacher!Namjoon, school nurse!Jimin, art teacher!Taehyung, and science teacher!Jungkook.

CHAPTER ONE ↳You arrive in Seoul and begin to meet the teachers you’ll be spending your whole year with.

You hover awkwardly in the arrivals foyer, consulting your phone again, reading the email you had been sent a week ago. According to the information given, there should’ve been someone there for you already, waiting to drive you to the school.

But no matter how often you glanced around, up on your tiptoes as you tried to scan the massive area of Incheon International Airport, you couldn’t see any signs with your name on them.

Oh shit, you thought, what if they’ve written my name in Hangeul? You sigh and begin another dutiful look-over, deeply focused on the countless signs with Korean characters on them, trying to recognise ones that would make up your first or last name.

You just about jump out of your skin when someone taps you on the shoulder out of nowhere.

“Are you Y/n, here for teaching?” He’s younger than you were expecting for a schoolteacher, although you remember the email stating he was in charge of physical education and the rec sports teams, so maybe it was better to have someone still pretty fit. And he definitely was fit. Although he was in a grass-stained polo shirt and basketball shorts, he had a contagious smile and kind eyes, and his dark, wavy hair was endearingly a little bit messy.

Clearly you were looking over him for a little too long, because he smiles sheepishly and pats down his shirt. “Sorry about the messy clothes. I came straight from practice.”

You frown, hoping your Korean will be at least coherent if not entirely correct. “But it is 8am.”

He gives you a wide beam and laughs a little as you get through the sentence one syllable at a time. “Yes, soccer practice is from 6am to 7:30 on a Monday morning.”

“Oh. The kids still play soccer when it is very early?”

He shrugs, beginning to lead you towards the carpark area. “Actually, we have 6am sport every day of the week. Soccer on Monday, basketball on Tuesday, swimming on Wednesday. You get the idea.”

“And you teach all sport teams?”

“Your Korean is fantastic, you know?” He chimes the final part in a cutely accented English, and you blush at the praise, shaking your head modestly. “I teach almost all of the sport teams. Technically the mathematics competition team is classified as a sports team, but Teacher Min does that. You’ll meet him later.”

You nod slowly as he talks, a little overwhelmed by how fast he’s speaking. You had studied the language for five years, but all of the other teacher’s assistants you had spoken to had said a thousand times how when you were finally confronted by a native speaker in that country, your mind went blank and you forgot every single word.

It was what you had been obsessively worrying about on the whole red-eye flight over, and you were lucky that some last minute studying had made you feel a little more confident in your abilities.

He comes to a stop beside a shabby Nissan, unlocking it and gesturing for you to get into the passenger side. It smells like sweat in there, and you can see a random assortment of various balls and other equipment stashed into the backseat and boot. “Sorry about the mess in the back,” he apologises, starting the car up and pulling away towards the exits.

“You don’t need to apologise, I’m very thankful you drive me from airport to school.” The matter is forgotten completely as the car breaches the exit and your eyes are filled with light. Several skyscrapers dot the horizon line in the near distance, and everything looks so advanced and modern. There’s a large amount of people milling around outside, and the traffic just around the airport is rather congested, but the man navigates it with ease. You sit in a comfortable silence for a good half an hour before directing your gaze back inside the car with a sudden thought. “Sorry, I don’t know your name now.”

“Oh, you forgot?”

“Ah, yes, I forgot.”

He glances over at you intermittingly, hands relaxed on the wheel as he winds through the streets of Seoul. “My name’s Hoseok. Well, Teacher Jung.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Y/n.” You purse your lips in the awkward silence that falls, trying to work out something grammatically correct to say. “Uh, the school is good? You like it?”

He hums his affirmation, and with a surprised blink you realize the car is already pulling up to a relatively small primary school, heading towards the staff parking. “You’ll love it here. The kids are great, and the staff are more like family.” He slides into a park in one clean swoop and stops the car. “Alright, out we go.”

You can’t see much of the school before you’re taken straight to the reception building, but it looks like there are only five or six classroom blocks out back, all lined up around a slightly bumpy and overgrown sports field. When you had applied to three different schools in South Korean, they were all smaller schools. You had decided you’d feel more comfortable with a rural primary school rather than a large one in the city. But you hadn’t connected the dots that a school away from the hustle and bustle of the city meant that funding wasn’t so high.

It probably worked out quite well for a school like this to get a teacher’s assistant. You had paid for your own flights, and they basically just provided you with a homestay for accommodation and a small weekly allowance for your work. Coming fresh out of a half-completed university degree, it was a nice break from student life for you, and a good opportunity for them to save a little money on staff.

One thing that immediately stuck out to you was the lack of receptionist in the reception office. Technically, it looked more like a waiting room with a few offices branching off. Hoseok bounced up to the door right across from the main entrance and rapped three times.

Principal Kim Seokjin, the plaque read, and the amount of time it took you to work that out by reading the characters, the door was falling inwards, and a warm voice called out, “Ah, Y/n, come in!”

You look up from the silver engraving and your mouth falls open. In the correspondence that had occurred between you and the principal, you had always imagined a grouchy but softhearted, slightly older gentleman. Okay, if you were honest with yourself, you just imagined Ji Seokjin from Running Man. If the shoe fits; but in this case it most certainly didn’t.

It felt like you had stumbled straight onto a cheesy k-drama set. He had honey blonde hair that swept over his much darker eyebrows, perfect bone structure and full, pouty lips that made you want to pass out just so he could perform mouth-to-mouth. “Uh…Yes, I’m Y/n. Nicetomeetyousir.”

He grins at your rushed introduction and invites you in to sit. His office is warmer than outside, and you automatically tune in to the principal’s brief conversation with Hoseok as you take off your coat and scarf.

“…those clothes. Didn’t you have time for a shower?”

“Why am I not hearing ‘Thank you, Hoseok, I’m so grateful, Hoseok’? I could’ve easily gotten Yoongi to go. She would’ve turned right back around and hopped on the next plane out of here.”

“Go back to class, Jung. Year 3 PE starts in eight minutes.”

“You’re most welcome for picking her up, sir. I appreciate the thanks.”

Principal Kim huffs and shuts the door gently behind him, making his way back to sit behind the large desk you were sitting across from. As your gaze follows him around the room, you notice a few frames nailed to the wall; a teaching certificate, a local management award, a photo of the school itself, and, larger than the rest, a professionally-shot picture of himself, with a white blouse and some round-framed glasses, lips slightly parted and staring dead-on into the camera.

You cough lightly as he turns to you with the exact same posture and expression. “How was your flight?”

“Good. I slept the flight.” Every time you say a sentence, you cringe internally when you know you’ve messed up, but he doesn’t really seem to react.

He breaks the gaze, reaches into a drawer and pulls out a stapled pile of pages, tossing it over to you to flick through. “There’s a map of the premises, though I imagine you’ll be able to find your way around soon enough, a copy of the official contract, and some general advice for living in Korea. Don’t worry too much about all that, since you’ll be living with a member of staff. He’ll take you to and from work each day and we’ve given him some extra funding for meals for you.”

You nod gratefully. “Thank you, sir. It is very helpful.”

A grin lights up his face as he leans back in his chair. “Now, that’s the boring stuff out of the way, are you ready for a tour?”

You blink, not understanding one of the words he used. “Tour?”

He gestures vaguely around himself. “I’ll show you the school, introduce you to our other teachers, that’s what tour means.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, let’s do it!”

One of the first things you learn about Kim Seokjin is that he walks pretty fast with those long legs of his, and you spent so much energy on half-jogging to keep up with him, that as he explained the history of the school, you couldn’t really focus on that too. You tried your best to make general sounds of surprise or agreement so that he thought you were listening, and hoped you weren’t missing anything too important.

It wasn’t until you finished following him around the school field that he comes to a halt outside the first classroom and you can finally zone in on what he’s saying. “…is the physical education classroom since it’s the closest to our equipment shed. Jung is teaching in there now, but you’ve already met him, so we won’t go in. You won’t really have to go over here much, but I thought I should mention that if you ever get here early, this is the only classroom that’s unlocked since it’s where the kids meet for early morning sport. There’s a bathroom in there too, so it’s a good place to stay warm until we officially open at 8am.”

You barely have to walk fifteen meters to be standing in front of the second building. Instead of staying outside on the concrete quad, he leads you up a short wooden ramp and into a small locker room. When he continues speaking, he’s dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “To the left, Class 2, that’s a basic room, we have most classes like Korean, English and Math in there.” He pops up to the small window on the door. “Ah, Min’s doing Year 5 math. Let’s go in.”

“Oh, we don’t have to…”

Your protests go unheard as he barges right in without knocking. “Can they do Pythagoras yet, Teacher Min?”

A low voice from inside the classroom calmly replies, “You can’t do Pythagoras yet, Seokjin.”

Principal Kim turns to you from half-in, half-out of the doorway, and tips his head over to get you to follow him inside.

The voice belongs to a man with dark hair and perfect skin. Like Principal Kim, he’s pretty young, and you’re beginning to regret not listening better to Kim’s speech, wondering if he had explained why all the teachers looked well under thirty so far. He’s lounging at the desk, one leg crossed leisurely over the other, eyebrows raised from behind his glossy bangs. His students, kids around 9 years old staring blankly at the three division questions written on the blackboard.

“You haven’t placed first in a regional beauty pageant, but you don’t see me complaining,” Kim bites back.

The teacher quirks his lips up a little in bemusement. “I wonder how long it’ll take you to realize that’s not a relevant achievement in the line of education.” His dark eyes flick over to you, and he raises his eyebrows further. “The new kid arrived?”

You bow to him. “Hello, my name is Y/n, nice to meet you.”

Principal Kim smiles benevolently and turns to the kids, who have long since given up on the math questions and are watching the interaction with wide eyes. “Children, Y/n will be helping you with your English. Take good care of her.” He leans over to you. “Say a little something about yourself.”

If there’s one thing worse than being put on the spot for an icebreaker, it’s being put on the spot for an icebreaker in a foreign language. Your mind whirs on double-time as you desperately try to find something interesting to say. “I have not been to Korea before, it is very kind here but more winter than my home country.”

An unreadable smile plays on Teacher Min’s lips. “What a relief that it’s English you’ll be teaching.”

You blush violently as Kim scolds the Teacher and quickly hustles you out of the classroom, shutting the door behind him with a little more vigor than usual. “Sorry about Min. He’s the only math teacher we could find. You’ll get used to him.”

“It’s fine,” you breath out with an awkward laugh, “I know my Korean is not good. I want to learn better here.”

He pats you on the shoulder, then points behind you. “That there is our art classroom, I’ll introduce you to Teacher Kim.” You frown. “Different Kim. Actually, there are three Kims at the school including me, so we call the other two Art Kim and English Kim. Anyway, let’s go in.”

You’ve always been a little biased towards the arts; you would’ve gone to university to study art history and painting were it not for your parents insistence that education was a much better field, and so it gave you a certain kind of wonder to see the people that had pursued their dreams in the field, and the kind of life they led where their job was their passion.

Your first impression of the classroom was how chaotic it was compared to the one across the hall. Instead of four lines of chairs and tables, students were bunched into small groups dotted around the room. The room itself was lined with benches; some had sinks where old streaks of paint led down the drain, some had boxes of charcoal sticks and pastels, others held cardboard sculptures and mock-ups. A fond smile played on your face at the scene you were met with. Principal Kim had chosen not to noisily announce his presence, and you could see the teacher looking like a giant on the extra small and short children’s chairs, talking quietly but passionately to a student attempting to draw an old green bottle that sat in the middle of the table.

His voice was surprisingly deep, and his hair was much longer than most men you had seen, flopping over in the front and reaching near his shirt collar in the back. Like every art teacher you had ever met, he had an endearingly quirky fashion sense, wearing a patchy pink woolen robe over a dress shirt and pants. The other students at the table bunched up as best they could, listening intensely and looking at him like he was explaining all the secrets of the universe. You remembered that feeling of awe well.

He glanced up when the principal called out his name, and let a boxy smile overtake his face. He quickly excused himself from the table and stood up to his full height, approaching you two as the kids called out in disappointment behind him.

You notice that when Principal Kim introduces the two of you, Art Kim never once takes his eyes off of you, staring at your face with some intent curiosity. You smile at him awkwardly and give a short bow. “Nice to meet you, Teacher Kim. Art is my favorite school subject.”

His lips drop open slightly. “Oh, really? Why do you like art?”

You weren’t prepared for the extremely open-ended and opinionated question, and it takes you a moment of stumbling over your words to get any coherent thought out. “Well, I see…no, I think art is, uh, beautiful, because it is…um, it is like a conversation from artist to person looking. I’m sorry, that doesn’t make sen-”

“It makes perfect sense,” he cuts you off quickly. His chestnut hair glows under the harsh lights in the room and his eyes stare deeply into yours. “You’re completely right. Art isn’t just a picture, it’s meant to be given and experienced. The artist is sending a message to the viewer, of course, but art is nothing if the viewer doesn’t see it and give something back, even if it’s just an emotion or an analysis.”

You don’t understand most of the words he just said. “Yes, exactly.”

He smiles at you again, shyly this time. “It is very nice to meet you, Y/n. I look forward to seeing you around.”

Principal Kim looks back and forth between the two of you, blinking like he’s just as lost in the conversation as you are. “Thank you for your time, Teacher Kim, we will be moving on with the tour now.”

Art Kim bows quickly and gives you a cute little wave, then goes back to his students, pulling up a chair at a different table and immediately entering into a conversation about whether the young boy should make the sky orange and the sun blue instead of doing it the normal way.

Once you’ve left the building and stand outside in front of classroom 4, Principal Kim turns to you and tuts. “Ah, this tour is so boring! Math and drawing pictures. But don’t worry, next is the science blo-”

He’s cut off by a loud bang coming from inside, which is paired with a flash of white and kids squealing in excitement and delight. A thin wisp of smoke trails out of one of the half-open windows.

Principal Kim lets out an exhausted sigh. “Dammit, Jeon Jungkook.”

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#bts fic #bts x reader #bts au #bts imagine #bts scenarios #seokjin x reader #jimin x reader #hoseok x reader #taehyung x reader #jungkook x reader #namjoon x reader #yoongi x reader

[actuallyschizoid]

Do any of you guys experience concerningly low empathy? How about limited emotional range, like a spectrum? What about sensory process meltdowns, similar to autists? Do you feel almost no emotion until hit with intensity? How about falling inlove and a best friend? Any previous ddx of anxiety or depression or adhd? Ever made stock friends for the sake of benefits? Rather One night stand than relationships or is it all to disinteresting? Any comorbid SzPD and APD out there? How did you get diagnosed? Views on religion? Im sorry for asking alot, recent ddx and idk what this means for me, never met the average schizoid to paint the picture. Some of these questions have to do with relatability to my symptoms, I guess.

Thanks for submission! Interesting questions. For me personally:

Empathy. In fact, it gets better over time. At least cognitive empathy - which is pretty much psychoanalysis on the go, i.e. taking into account what you know about each person and trying to extrapolate what would they feel, how would they react based on those feels, etc. It isn’t really connected to being able to understand their feelings on your own experience, and way more dependent on one’s knowledge of human psychology, experience observing people and just general live experience. It can be trained for anyone with some effort, but for those who lacks natural emotional empathy it generally gets better just due to having a constant reason to practice it. 

As for emotional and other kinds of empathy... eh, mine’s pretty much limited to laughing along when someone’s laughing their ass off. Yeah, tiny bit of mirroring is all I get, it’s pretty useless. Though, I must say, I do get easier time to relate to feels of other schizoids, autistic people and pretty much anyone who struggles relating to average kind of people.

Emotions. Now that I’m 32, it’s probably not as limited as when I was in my 15-to-25 years, but less of a mess than it was before 15. Still those are pretty... uh, alternative emotions. I still don’t often get the “correct” one triggered on same triggers as most people. My natural tendency is to rationalize stuff, analyze it from system POV instead of getting sad and emotional. 

Like, yesterday there was a plain crush, the whole local internet was buzzing about how terrible it was. I can’t say that was exactly what felt, but instead we were casually discussing the technical nuances of it with a fellow schizoid. Like what effects this kind of event might have had on this or that system, how it might have been made better, what mistakes happened there and what were the means to prevent some of those deaths. I.e more from a system design point of view, where people are just numbers in statistic rather than dead kids who won’t have live, sad parents, etc etc. 

I mean, all that’s sad and all, I get it, but there’s nothing I can do to be sad about it. To me it’s no different from knowing the fact that every day on roads in my country horribly dies about the same amount of people and no one gives a single flying fuck about it. But then same people die in a plain crush and it’s a nation-wide tragedy for some reason. To be honest, if I try to dig into actual emotions I feel about stuff like that, I can find out this kind of feels look rather... wrong to me. I know people can’t help but to feel whatever way they do, and there’s no such thing as “wrong emotions”, I definitely won’t be the one to judge them. But from my POV, it’s really hard to understand this negative hype around it.

Meltdowns. Not sure I ever had an actual meltdown, perhaps as a kid. But I might not even get the idea of what it is well enough. Heavy sensory stimulation actually causes me lots of discomfort. Like, neighbors drilling their walls almost on daily basis is an utter nightmare for me. I still stick my fingers into ears like a kid, yeah. And then try to poke at my macbook’s touchpad with whatever I get left - elbows, tongue, toes... To find at least some distraction from the noise. Eh. Not sure what’d happen if I wasn’t protecting myself from this kind of stuff, tbh, I never neglected this kind of safety measures to find out if I’d be able to handle it.

About no emotions until being hit. Hmm, maybe, not sure. To me it’s more often just no emotions from one specific trigger until.. well, until the trigger is gone lol. It just never occurs if it’s not there, yet when it’s there - it’s there. 

Being in love and having best friends. Never was in love. Seriously, I doubt I’m capable of it. And not sure the best friend thing relates to me either. I had some friends, but never the kind of friends whom I could entrust much about myself. Like, the schizoid person I still consider best friend doesn’t even know I have this blog lol. Or that I write a book, for example. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that people who knows me would also know... well, me. Knowing some part of my life is ok, but no way someone would have access to everything. And the better I know people, the less I feel like sharing. Yet I have absolute no issue with writing this kind of personal stuff anonymously and hundreds of people potentionally reading it.

Previous diagnosis. At early childhood I was suspected to have autism, actually. Or, well, it was long time ago so it was more of a “some development malfunction” diagnosis. I started speaking way too late, but by the time I was able to hack into this speech thing, I already was rather fluent at it, could understand more than my peers, etc. Same happened with reading. And from then on any language, be it human or programming, I can pretty much grab and use, if I want. I can turn in some youtube video on whatever language I’ve no idea about, turn in automatically generated subtitles translated to English and understand most of it, and after few hours getting the basic structure and matching a few common words with their meaning by ear. It might be related to that “could’ve had autism”, but not sure, it’s still not something I explored much with professionals as adult. And yeah, ADHD in some of its (subtile and inactive) forms could be the case too.

Stock friends. Eh, probably? I mean, some kids used to stuck on me now and then in school or college. I didn’t care much, but I tolerated them as long as they weren’t too annoying at least for the sake of dragging at least tiny bit less attention to my own weirdness. It felt like a safer option, yet most time I still have spent alone. 

Relationships and one night stands. Well, I’m aro ace agender, so... Actual romantic relationships were always out of question for me, tbh. Never tried, never feel like trying in the future. Had somewhat of an experimental semi-relationship with a friend, but it wasn’t romantic much and never was intended as long-lasting (at least, not on my part). We’re still friends, by the way, there was no “break-up” (coz there wasn’t much to break in first place). 

As for one-night-stands thing - yeah, that’s pretty useless for me either. Not that I’d had anything against it, were I in need to have sex. Perhaps, if I had that need, it would be the way to go for me. But since nothing really drives me for this shit, I’m fine without it.

Religion. Atheist down to the bone marrow. There was never really a dilemma for me, I knew it’s all utter BS the moment I’ve heard what the fuck is the fuss about this “God” thing people are talking about. Mind you, my mother is kinda religious (not in actual practice way, but she sees no logical issue with the idea of religion, that’s for sure). But she never dared to bring me to church for that orthodox christian initiation practice, what’s it called? Probably was afraid I’d yap about what idiots they are to believe it right in the middle of being shoved in a bucket of “holy” water lol.

Ok, that’s about it. :) And what about y’all? Feel free to add, I’ll reblog.

#actually schizoid #actuallyschizoid #schizoid #schizoid PD #schizoid traits #schizotypal #schizophrenia #depression #social anxiety #ADHD #autism #self-diagnosed #officially diagnosed #submission

[thebachelordiaries]

Jocks And Finance Bros: Bachelorette First Impressions

Becca, I hope you like jocks and finance bros. 

If not, you’re shit out of luck.

Becca dates one athlete and they beat that one dating preference of her’s to death by casting 18 or so former athletes. Kind of like how they beat “Let’s Do The Damn Thing” tagline to death.

I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am.

A letter to the men on this season of The Bachelorette:

Do you think you deserve this goddess of a woman, Becca Kufrin? You probably don’t. You probably think too highly of yourself to know this.

Maybe two of you will be good enough for her. Five of you may turn out to be decent people, but that’s me being generous. If it’s anything like JoJo’s season, we will have just one or two decent men. ABC producers, please don’t let me down. Oh wait, you already did with the super-short bios. 

This season we have 25 28 men vying for Becca’s heart, or at least a blue checkmark on their Instagram page. At least one of you will get fake engaged on Paradise and six of you will move from middle-of-nowhere USA to Los Angeles and move back home within a year. I’m not sure which guys will do that yet, but it’s always fun to guess!

Anyway, good luck with your 15 minutes of fame!

Signed,

The Bachelor Diaries.

WTF: No Q&A?

ABC did not include the usual Q&A in this year’s cast bios. I’m so offended. How will I truly understand these men if I don’t know what kind of fruit they’d be or what kind of superpower they’d want?

I would boycott this season because of this, but I have literally nothing better to do on Monday nights, or any night for that matter. I’m still going to try my best to roast these men, of course. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Despite no Q&A’s, I will still form my own opinions on these guys. I, like Kanye West, am a free thinker. Go poopidy-scoop yourself, ABC.

Ok, now let’s get to know these men:

Alex, 31, Construction Manager

Alex is the male equivalent of the basic white girl. He likes country music, his dog, the beach and skiing. He probably has “Let’s go on a hike together!” on his Bumble profile and regularly wears a Patagonia dad hat.

Blake, 28, Sales Rep

We already met horse boy Blake on After The Final Rose. He either played baseball or football in college. Thanks for being so concise, ABC. However, he looks like a baseball player to me. While originally from a small town in Colorado, he definitley lives in LA now. He also believes “two people need to be independent in order to truly love each other” so I think that means he’s into open relationships and or will cheat on you.

Chase, 27, Advertising VP

Chase, unlike Blake, was definitley a college baseball player who was apparently good enough to be in the College Wold Series but evidently not good enough to go pro— at least longterm. We also met Chase on ATFR and I don’t remember much about him. He likes “adventure” and the “outdoors” so he’s quite the special snowflake.

Chris, 30, Sales Trainer

What even is a sales trainer? Chris hopes to retire by 40. In this economy? Good luck with that. He is passionate about “fitness” and “health” which is so unique and different. I feel like I really got to know him through that piece of information.

Christian, 28, Banker

Christian is a former semi-pro soccer player who moved to the US from Mexico when he was three. I feel like his picture makes him look like he has a little head, but other than that he seems alright.

Christon, 31, Former Harlem Globetrotter/ Professional Dunker

I spent a good 30 seconds wondering why two guys with the same name didn’t have their last name initials included in their bios. It took another 30 seconds to notice that Christon was spelled differently than Christian. So this dude is a professional dunker in LA. My first thought is that he’d have a pretty good intro video package for The Bachelorette. Anyone want to put money down that he gets one?

Clay, 30, Pro Football Player

Clay was on his way to the poetry slam but somehow got lost and ended up on the Bachelorette. He allegedly doesn’t curse but is a fan of hip-hop music. I think he is the “famous” football player who was in talks to be on this season. Apparently I should care. Never heard of him. 

Colton, 26, Former Pro Football Player

“Hi, my name is Colt and welcome to my Youtube Channel!��� That’s the vibe I’m getting from this picture. I’m also getting Blake Griffin vibes. He just looks strangely tan here. Colton may have a job at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I’m curious to know if he has a story as to WHY he is involved with CF. He also lives in Denver and has a dog named Sniper, which is awkward because the neighboring city of Boulder just banned assault weapons.

EDIT: He was the guy who asked out Aly Raisman via public video and they briefly dated. I shipped them so hard. I AM SHOOKETH.

Connor, 25, Fitness Coach

I feel like I’m going to be sick if I hear one more guy talk about how they were “almost” a professional athlete and how much they lo0o0o0ove working out. I’m sadly only at the beginning of this cast list. Someone pray for me. And someone pray that Connor’s eyebrows grow back after that terrible wax job.

Darius, 26, Pharmaceutical Sales Rep

Darius works for big pharma yet claims to be dedicating his life to helping others. Err, okay. He likes to dance and travels a lot so my guess is he’s probably not ready to settle down at age 26 despite his 36-year-old hairline.

David, 25, Venture Capitalist

David looks like every finance bro who lives in West Village and only dates 22-year-old Instagram models. The only difference is that he lives in Denver instead of Manhattan, which by society’s standards makes him more wholesome. He also loves guacamole, but dislikes avocado, which roughly translates to: I don’t cook and eat Chipotle for dinner every night.

Grant, 27, Electrician

The only way Grant is making it past night one is if he shows up fully dressed as a member of the Village People or as Bob The Builder. If not, he has no chance.

Garrett, 29, Medical Sales Rep

Pro tip to ABC: The letter A comes before the letter R in the alphabet. These names are out of order. 

Anyway, Garret reminds me of Ben Afleck in that his face just makes me want to punch him..in the face. Besides the fact that he also works for big pharma, he actually has outdoor hobbies besides “I enjoy fresh air and walking in the woods” like fly fishing and showshoeing. I’m hoping he isn’t a giant jerk because I kind of like him.

Jake, 29, Marketing Consultant

I thought his name was “Joke” at first because I am a terrible person. I think Joke...I mean Jake...is from the same city as Becca. (I’m assuming Minnesota only has one city) I feel like all hot people in cities have this inner-circle where they know of each other, so maybe they’ve crossed paths before.

Jason, 29, Sr. Corporate Banker

Andrew Keegan? I love your work. “Jason” likes sports and singing along to Disney movies. He contains multitudes. 

Jean Blanc, 31, Colognoisseur

I love that ABC took a smart, educated, immigrant with a successful job and gave him a fake occupation on television. Jean Blanc is a cologne connoisseur. I feel like he would smell good. 10/10 would smell him.

Joe, 31, Grocery Store Owner

I feel like a lot of these bios are the equivalent to what it’s like to drive in an Uber. The driver is always explaining to you how successful they are and where they traveled as a way to prove they aren’t some loser driving you around. Joe’s bio screams “Yeah I own a grocery store but also worked in finance before I burnt myself out, so don’t judge me.” Nobody was judging you, but now I am.

John, 28, Software Engineer

John hopes to be the first Asian male to make it out of night one on The Bachelorette. I can already tell he’s better than most of these guys: he works at a start-up in Silicon Valley, likes wine, plays guitar and bakes banana bread. He deserves a rose, dammit!

Jordan, 26, Male Model

Robert Mills, who is like an important ABC guy or something, called Jordan the “greatest Bachelorette contestant of all time.” Clearly he’s trying to make us forget about Chad. Good luck with that, Robert. Definitley not happening.

So Jordan is probably this season’s villain. Whatever, I don’t care. I DO care, however, that his bio is bragging about a mediocre 4:24 mile time and “sprinting to the finish line.” The time was written as “4.24″ by ABC and a comma is also missing from that sentence. ABC, let me know if you want to hire me as an editor. Back to the mile comment: A mile is an endurance mid-distance race. Nobody is technically sprinting in it, unless it’s a tactical race. Puns don’t work if they’re factually incorrect. 

Kamil, 30, Social Media Participant

Kamil works in real estate and is a part-time model, but ABC decided to call him a “social media participant.” He’s originally from Poland but lives in Upstate New York, which is evident based on the fact he’s wearing a denim button-up shirt.

Leo, 31, Stuntman

It’s crazy how fast Alex Bordy grew his hair in a year. “Not Alex Bordy” is a stuntman in LA, which I heard is a pretty sick job. I am personally a fan of his hair. He knows how to tame those curls and probably rocks a great man bun. I would love to know what products he uses.

Lincoln, 26, Account Executive

Lincoln has a lot of things going on in his bio. He moved to Boston from Nigeria as a teenager, went to college in Kentucky and moved to Santa Monica for work. We met him on ATFR and he was super nervous, cute and had an accent to make most girls swoon. I’d say make him The Bachelor but 26 is too young in my opinion.

Mike, 27, Sports Analyst

How come every Ohio sports fan names their dog Riggins? Based on his hair, I’m assuming Mike is a radio sports analyst. That hair on television? No thank you. Hopefully Leo can give him some tips to make his hair look decent. Did you know: Becca’s psycho ex Ross used to have long hair? It was not cute. But I don’t think Becca is going to send the long-haired guys home immediately a la the notoriously shallow Andi Dorfman.

Nick, 27, Attorney

I’m excited for Nick to be on the show because I know him by association. Let me explain: A friend of mine went to school with one of his friends and periodically stalks her social media. The friend is a girl, so I think he’s friends with mostly girls, which may explain why he loves to “brunch.” He looks terrible in this photo. Nick gives me polished, sexually ambiguous vibes based on how he appears on Insta. I also knew he was going to be on the show before R*ality St*ve, which made me feel powerful. It was a rush.

Rickey, 27, IT Consultant

I know of Rickey too. He was a Bodybuilding.com Spokesmodel Search finalist in 2017. Hashtag #rightreasons. I’m not sure how “online personal trainer” translates to IT consultant, but ok. Side note: I don’t think bodybuilders look good in suits so he might go home night one. 

Ryan, 26, Banjoist

Before the “Yanny or Laurel” debate there was the “Ryan or Brian” debate on After The Final Rose. Evidently the answer is Ryan. He’s the new Wells and I could not be more excited to watch this babe on my television screen. He plays at least four instruments and loves to sail. He also screams “family money” but it’s ok, we can mooch off his parents together.

Trent, 28, Realtor

Can you imagine having a child and naming it Trent? This guy never had a chance. He is a realtor and a part-time model (I swear I wrote the same thing a few contestants up) and has appeared on covers of romance novels, but I certainly wouldn’t call him the next Fabio.

Wills, 29, Graphic Designer

Wills is a graphic designer who loves Harry Potter. I see no problem here. Except for maybe his porno-stache.

Prediction corner: 

Welcome to the prediction corner where I never get anything right. Oh, you know what happens because you read spoilers? Please keep that information to yourself. I like to find out what happens on my own.

Without further ado, here are my baseless predictions:

First Impression Rose: The guys who got the First Impression Rose on the last three seasons became engaged to The Bachelorette. If that happens this year I demand a scientific case study to explain the power of first impressions on women. Anyway, I think Ryan gets it.

Season Villain: Jordan (that was easy)

Next Bachelor: Blake (don’t ask me why)

Winner: Garrett (I like him)

Comment below to let me know your early favorites!

#The Bachelorette #Becca Kufrin #abc #Arie Luyendyk #chris harrison #photo credit ABC

[zoestagg]

Ironman Cairns 70.3: The Bike & Run...

He put his arm around me and leaned in, talking low.

“This isn’t me being mean, this is just what we need to do.” I couldn’t be sure, but I think I recognized him as the man who asked last year in the middle of a monsoon in Indonesia, if I had another lap left. He continued gently, raising his voice just slightly to compete with my sniffles, “You’ve missed the cut-off, we don’t make them to be mean I promise,” I nodded, miserably. “But look, love,” I’m 99 percent sure he said something like that, if not the actual quote — the sentiment. “You are welcome to continue. You will be an DNF, but the course is open. Get out there and give it a go!”

I nodded again and carried my squished, hotel-made onigiri to the Run Out.

He wasn’t the only angel in T2, but we need to struggle through 90 km of biking before we meet her.

Where were we? Ah yes, fresh from having our hopes dashed in the inky foam of the Coral Sea. I found out after that Ryan had dialed up my mom on FaceTime to let her watch me pedal out, and when he saw that I was in a full hysterical breakdown, realized that there is nothing about my performance in any given triathlon that is safe going live. In the weeks since the race, I’ve had a realization about my relationship with the sport.

Being pregnant and giving birth is like a universally horrific and painful experience, right? And yet, there’s all these people out there with more than one kid. I was told it’s because “It’s so worth it in the end, you forget how awful it is.”

GIRL.

I remember every last excruciating millisecond of those 257 days. For that experience, that old yarn does not add up. BUT. Apparently I can spend a whole race scared and crying, and FAIL in the strictest sense of the word and come home and immediately pick races on the two continents I’m missing. (Ecuador and Cape Town, I’m coming for you.)

ANYWAY. We’re on the bike. I’d heard in the little performance art piece about the course the day before, that there’s a dude who just travels the world doing every single IRONMAN event, and he’s declared that the Cairns bike course is the most beautiful.

Oh, you beautiful tropical fish.

You can look anywhere but at the pavement right in front of you while you’re riding? What is that even like?

Someday, I’m going to start a very important translation service: taking the official Course Description copy and making it REAL. Here’s how they described it:

The undulating, and winding course will take athletes past Thala Beach Resort and Hartley’s Croc Farm to the turnaround point, approximately 6km south of Wangetti, before heading back to Port Douglas.

Here’s what it is:

Undulating STRICTLY means up and down, but there’s an undertone of gentle that… let’s just say on an out-and-back loop, there is no rejoicing in racing a downhill, there is only knowing that it will soon be a grueling uphill. The constant hills were tough, but what really ripped me to shreds was the texture of the road and the headwind. In the course brief, we’d been warned that the roads were “county roads” and that we’d be best to try to ride in the left-hand wheel rut. Like the pioneers did. I did not know much about the types of pavement before this race, but I now know that peculiar specifically to asphalt, is a soul-crushing theft of effort. I could NOT get a leg up on it. I pedaled and pedaled and watched my speedometer and worried.

I managed one successful water bottle exchange while still moving and felt like a (slow and wobbly) boss. The road up the coast and back was closed, blessedly. It took 30 miles or so, but eventually I stopped cringing and remembering the awfulness of last year with every course monitor’s scooter that roared up behind me, and I pedaled.

On the way back, I crested a hill and saw a tent. By this point, I was already doing the complicated math as to whether I was going to make it to T2 in time, and a guy stepped out from the tent and motioned with his hand.

OH GOD. IS HE PULLING ME OFF THE COURSE? IS HE GOING TO MAKE ME GET IN A SWEEPER WAGON?

“I just need to let you know,” he started…

NO NO NO NO NO

“That this is the top of the last hill!” He looked triumphant and helpful.

I started crying. Again.

I don’t know, fam, but I’m probably going to need some kind of special warning vest for next race.

Eventually, I was out of the winding coastal road, and on back roads in to town. Then, the wind kicked up. Now of course I didn’t expect the race to be a glassy pool and a spin bike in an air-conditioned room, but DANG. When they say Australia basically just wants to kill you, you don’t imagine your death will be from all the effort needed to overcome inertia, but here we are.

I hit what had to be one of the last aid stations, and wanted water badly. I hadn’t done a great job of eating on the bike, because eating at 20 mph is freaking hard, but I’d been hydrating pretty good. I considered trying to exchange bottles and then just stopped.

“I’m not good at this usually, and I’m really not good at it tired.” I explained to the nice volunteer.

Those last five miles… were peak struggle. Everything was screaming, I was sick of the wind, and I just wanted off the bike. Eventually I started seeing people on the run course. Oh yeah, I feel like THIS, and I have a half marathon to run now.

Fun vacation.

Bike: 4:22:55

All I remember about getting to T2 is that it was full of bikes already. Suddenly, a lady in a volunteer shirt materialized next to me.

“You all right? Brilliant job, let’s get you to your spot.” She steered me through the racks as I walked my bike in a daze of tears.

“I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m just going to… I’m okay.”

I was trying to tell her my dismal scene needs I must act alone, but she wasn’t having it. She stayed next to my spot, chatting as I wobbled to get my bike shoes off. “Here’s the good news!” She continued. “While the cut-off has technically passed, you have loads of time!” There it was, the official proclamation that I’d busted. “One year,” she continued, “I only made it with ONE minute to spare. Another year, one of my friends took 12 whole hours to finish the Half, but he did it!”

Wait, I might be crying again…now.

“Why don’t you see what you can do? Start the run and see how it goes.” I got my running shoes and visor on, and slipped on my fuel belt. “You all right? Good luck, you’ve got this!”

I headed out, and got the official okay to keep going from the kindly course director at the beginning of this saga, and gingerly started to trot. This is where I finally felt like there was a part of me that could do this. All of the running off the bike all training cycle kicked in. I’d been WRECKED on the bike, and now I felt…okay?! What’s even happening?

I ran past Ryan and Frankie and told them I was going to give finishing a go, and trotted on. I WAS DOING THIS. The run course was flat as a pancake and packed with spectators. I started to catch up on the fuel I missed on the bike, and relished the full-fat Coke at each aid station. I wouldn’t touch the stuff if I wasn’t trying to kill myself physically in other ways, but when you are? It tastes like heaven. I had it on my Fuji climb last weekend, and can confirm — Gatorade, who?

There were still tons of 70.3 competitors out there when I started, but as they dwindled, I was VERY careful to make myself as invisible as possible. I stayed well out of anyone’s way racing the 140.6, hugging the shoulder of the path and waiting at the aid stations until they were totally clear before I approached. (The run course was on an esplanade with splash pools, which Frankie took full advantage of.)

Omg those aid stations when you’re not the last one on the course? STOCKED. The run was two laps of the same loop, so the second time through — finally feeling like I was going to very maybe finish this thing — I thanked the volunteers handing out watermelon, “This is my favorite restaurant in Cairns!” I had a lot of time to think on the course, and while I spent a lot of time feeling bad about taking so long, it occurred to me that if the race was only the fastest people, they would miss out on a heck of a lot of entry fees from us back-of-the-packers. While it’s weird to do a sport with professionals out there at the same time, I’d like to think by virtue of it being inclusionary, they can offer more amenities and support to everyone.

I don’t know exactly when I knew I would finish, maybe after the first loop, when my feet were still dry, there was no monsoon, and I was kind of feeling physically… fine? Fine-ish? I was IN THIS. No, I didn’t strictly run the entire way, but I kept moving forward, every single step that much closer to the finish line. Finally, I could hear the announcer and the bells and drums and cheering of the end.

Here’s where I put my finish in humiliating perspective: The woman who won the FULL had a faster time that me doing the HALF. I don’t know what to tell you guys, I’m slow AF. But I have a heck of a lot of Don’t Quit. I ran down the finish line shoot, with the guy on the microphone announcing my name. I got to the end, and he said, “It’s all right to stop now, you made it!”

And then I cried a little more.

Run: 3:30:24

Total: 9:11:22

I did all 70.3 miles of it this time, and THIS TIME, I got a daggone towel.

Triathlon takes a LOT of time. Not just racing one when you’re slow like me, but training. This was Ryan and Frankie’s race too. They let me disappear for half of every weekend day, they helped me get my bike on four different planes, they spent all day figuring out where I’d be when to cheer me on, and hung out on the esplanade for hours while I struggled away at the last 13 miles. And my coach, who kept me honest and on track and encouraged me the whole way, I couldn’t have done this without them. 

Triathlon IS a team sport, if you do it right.

(So I think in the whole “you forget how bad giving birth is” is because babies are so delightful? I mean, talk to someone who has both given birth AND eaten their first meal the day after a long-course race — this is not a comparison that works out well for babies if that meal is artisanal avocado toast and a Bloody Mary, I’M JUST SAYING.)

Part 1: The Swim...

#try club #triathlon #swimming #bicycles #running #australia #fitness #cairns #70.3

[gamerfcapuno-blog]

The Adventures in Fansubbing: Localization and the Song of La Béfana (FR Miraculous Ladybug S2)

At this point, I just have a feeling I need to write this (mainly since I think people might find this interesting). If people are ever curious about the process of making subtitles/captions and what goes on, I’ll share some of that right now.

Now, releasing subtitles to a show isn't super abnormal these days. But there are some challenges that do come with making them.

Most people these days aren't too fussed with getting a direct translation from a fan subber, but when trying to create a quality project that keeps with the spirit of the original work is much more difficult to execute well. If you want to know more, keep going. You’ve got a lot of reading under the cut.

Professional captioners have some standards to keep to which can drastically alter what you read. These can include:

Ensuring the lines only show up in a certain number of lines and within a certain percentage of the screen. (The standard is a max of two lines, with few exceptions being three.)

Making the captions easy to understand and read in a timely manner.

Format captions to flow easily and smoothly to a viewer.

Making the idiosyncrasies, jokes and cultural references of one country understandable to other cultures. Otherwise, using an appropriate cultural reference in their place. (AKA Localization)

It's a lot of work trying to stick to that list and can often result in many things being lost to translation. A lot does hit the cutting room floor and things are altered to get an idea across in a shorter form. It's the kind of stuff that people might criticize on forums or such, but it's sometimes a necessary evil that has to be done.

With that, I want to talk about the last tick on the list (localization) in relation to S02E04 La Béfana in Miraculous Ladybug. Of course we’re talking about captioning the French language version.

I’ll start with a disclaimer: I am not a translator. I am not even fluent in a second language. I don’t even claim to be a professional captioner. I only do this for my own personal fun and education. Most of what you’ll read now is merely anecdotal and based on experiences doing this as a hobby.

It’s a pain in the butt trying to write subtitles for a language you aren't at all fluent in. What's worse, is when you run in to something that only works within the context of the original language or culture. It happens too many times to count.

I'm only going to detail a small sampling of what happens.

In this case, we have two very time consuming issues in La Béfana: the song that Béfana sings while flying around, and subsequently Chat Noir and Ladybug's responses to the song. These two are exactly the kind of localization problems that slow down jobs when you're not working on a team of multiple people. Let that be known if people are thinking of picking this up.

I won’t detail people on Miraculous Ladybug, one can easily Google the show on their own. But to set the stage for us here, La Béfana is actually based on the myth of Befana from Italy. She's a very popular figure who gives gifts to children on a flying broom, kind of like Santa. She gives candy and presents to good children in their stockings and coal or dark candies to bad children. The way Béfana in Miraculous Ladybug is portrayed is in line with this myth. Naturally, the show also has her sing a traditional Italian song while she's flying around. I wasn't able to find the original song this was based on (which may have made this easier to understand). Allegedly, it's a song that's found in a Befana opera, according to a friend of mine but I could be wrong. Knowing this background information can be helpful in understanding how to handle what we’re tackling. (Google is your best friend!)

The song in the show looks sort of like this:

La Béfana arrive sur son valle volant aus enfent j'en tiens don de bonbons aus enfent benial chet du charbons

*NOTE: I'm aware this is most likely not correct at all

This is not obvious to someone that doesn’t understand French, but this song isn't entirely in French. It's some sort of mixture of French with some thick Italian undertone and word selection. It's non-standard. The best I could do was sound it out and look through dictionaries and grammar books to figure out what Le Béfana is singing. This problem is exacerbated by the fact I know neither French or Italian and have no basis on their grammatical structure or phonetic language.

This language mixing also makes it hell for a normal translator to pick through since while it sounds like one language it doesn't line up with it (in this case it's French). It caused a lot of confusion when I asked a French translator to assist me. I spent hours trying to figure this out but I can't be spending more trying to figure this out if I'm on a timetable.

Needless to say, how do we handle this scenario for captioning?

There's two ways this can go. One is to try to bring over the spliced languages. I've actually done it before when working on No Game No Life. Of which I have and example here:

The alternative is to just play it straight and not even bother with bringing the song's language mixing over. That would look like this:

The Befana is here On her flying bike All good children get candies All the naughty ones get coal

In this case, I threw out trying to chop in multiple languages in the English caption and not bring over the idea of Béfana singing in not-Italian. Why? Because it would slow processing it when it's read.

This is just a song that La Béfana sings that (specifically) American-English speakers won't understand the significance of. Additionally, it might not even be intentionally mushed together! Trying to write the mangled-ness might even be insulting. I'm pretty sure the people who wrote the French script didn't actually intend for it to be interpreted as really terrible joke-Itali-French. And unless you live in that area of the world, the meaning of it is lost regardless of what I do and I don’t want to disrespect it.

This is a case of a functional change. I can't salvage this even if I wanted to. It felt best to not try and overstate the mixed sentences as a thing. However, I did leave the not-real spliced not-French-not-Italian caption above the English caption in case someone cares for it. (This technically is my file I make for fun. I can do whatever I want with it.)

At that point, it was just choosing between a direct translation and a more artsy lyrical one. Long story short, in this case, we (my translator buddy and I) just picked a lyrical one because we liked it more. It's not 100% what Béfana sings, but we wanted it to read as chipper as the tune. In the end, we end up with something that looks like this:

Doing alright so far! Next!

Our second issue was Chat Noir and Ladybug singing in response to Béfana in the second half of the episode. It goes a little something like this.

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir vient lui aussi Descret comme mort la nuit

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What also rhymes with "-it" [I]?

LADYBUG (singing) Il défend Paris Avec sa Lady

In this case, Chat Noir is wondering what will rhyme with "aussi" and "nuit" which end on the same phonetic sound of "-I". Ladybug jumps in and supplies "Paris" and "Lady" (which also end on the same sound in French). Oh man. This is a gag that specifically works because of how French is pronounced.

This is also entirely a children's show joke. There's plenty of words in French that rhyme with "aussi" and "nuit". It's silly, and perfectly in line with the normal comedy line of this show. The problem was trying to get that idea and feeling across to read in English captions. If you translated this more directly, it would look something like this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir arrives as well Discretely like the night

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with “night”?

LADYBUG (singing) He protects Paris with his Lady

It's serviceable. It's functional. The gag is completely lost though and it makes no sense to read.

Well. Let's try an alternative version! It might go something like this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir is here as well Discrete as the dead of night

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with "-ell"?

LADYBUG (singing) Defending from the tower, Eiffel Helping his Lady fight

Hmm. This at least rhymes now in English, but it's clumsy to read. I really don't like it. We don’t want it to look like some strange archaic poetry you need a masters in English to interpret.

As a related aside, sometimes you do have to completely rewrite a cultural joke or a gag to work when bringing a work to a different culture. This happens all the time (especially in dubs) and it's definitely based on how much people would know about at the current period.

A super famous example of localizing a cultural item was turning rice balls in to donuts. One has to understand, that at the time this sort of change was made (early 90s), people didn't know much about Japanese foods. The standard was people knowing about ramen and sushi. Rice balls look similar to sushi (specifically maki roll type sushi). They might have even been interpreted as sushi. But rice balls are 100% not sushi. (joking) What a mistake one can make! (/joke) On top of that, having rice balls be retained in the context of the show had a chance of not being accessible, thus a change was made to keep the flow of the show intact.

Another one that people might not be familiar with is changing ramen in the Phoenix Wright games to hamburgers. (If you want to see an insane piece of localization work, look up articles on the localization of Phoenix Wright. It's fantastic. The amount of alterations in that game series is astonishing.)

In our case in Béfana, this is just a phonetic gag. This gag may only make sense right now in French because of the way French is spoken, but it’s still only a phonetic gag. I don't have to look up anything like French expressions or idioms or cultural lore or even specific items. I could make a completely serviceable alternative that shouldn't look as weird or insert an equivalent American-English gag.

Unlike in the case above where we couldn’t retain La Béfana’s not-Italian song, we can do something here. Our goal here now is to capture the spirit of the joke or the joking nature of the lines. If we have to toss out the direct meaning of the words to do it, we’ll have to do it.

Spend a couple of more hours with a pen and some scratch paper and end up at this:

CHAT NOIR (singing) Chat Noir is now here, you see Coming like the night on the scene

CHAT NOIR (speaking; questioning tone) ...What rhymes with "-ee"?

LADYBUG (singing) And he defends Paris Alongside his Lady

Surprise! We got super lucky here! I didn’t have to rewrite an entire section of episode dialogue!

It isn’t exact, but it’s not a full replacement of the original French lines. The same questioning of the rhyme still exists. It's working on the fact that it's pretty much all half-rhymes, but if you actually read it out loud (of course pronouncing Paris as "Par-ee" and not "Pah-ris") it sounds pretty good! The line where Chat Noir is referring to the night can also be connected to the environment transitioning to night time so that tracks as well. On top of that, there’s plenty of words that rhyme with “ee” in English. (Get it together Chat Noir!) As a bonus, this version is singable to the tune they sing to in the show. It works just fine for my purposes. We saved the joke! That’s all that matters!

Job done! Looks nice! Time to ship it out!

Now, If you survived this long reading this and you're thinking "Oh god. Is it over?" while I did just write an essay, you probably only read this in a fraction of the time it took to solve this issue. I’m heavily generalizing this process. In reality, these two sections alone took maybe seven hours to settle on. Surprised?

You don't want to imagine listening to these dialogue exchanges for that long trying to interpret what's being said and workshopping captions till you find a set you like. This is just a small snippet of what goes in to these sorts of things. It's work. It takes (a lot of) time. It's exhausting. But in the end people that do this do it out of enjoyment of the same piece of media you enjoy and to help other people enjoy it as well.

That's about all I have to say for now. I hope this was informative. I may see you all again some time in the future.

Thanks to aprilblossoms for being my translator buddy for this one! And thanks to all my friends for putting up with me while I was giving myself a lobotomy trying to hammer this out! (Special note to C-Note for helping me come up with the final captions for Chat Noir and Ladybug's song response.)

[jasonhaw]

Life in Ghana 10.3: Post-Presentation Processing

I’m still reeling in from the high of yesterday’s presentation.

I am fortunate to have four years of research experience to ground me on how to prepare for the presentation. I have attended high level meetings before, but I was always there as a quiet observer or diligent rapporteur, never someone who really needed to present anything. Yesterday, the spotlight was on me. I was the lead (and only) investigator of my research. Whatever I say during the presentation is a reflection of my professional competency and personal opinions on the health financing situation in Ghana. I carried the name of Georgetown and Dodowa Health Research Center, and there was that pressure to present myself well because I am not acting only on my own capacity. I was a pageant baby, and I have acted, sung, spoken in front of live audiences as far as I can remember so stagefright was never an issue with me. But for the first time in a long time, I had the jitters.

The first challenge that I had to overcome was making my presentation easy to digest and relevant to my main audience, the senior NHIA officials. The statistical analysis involved in my research is highly technical - and I am grateful for the help of Professor Bouey in linking me to statisticians that validated my outputs. I have read five statistical books (one on analysis for complex survey data, one on econometrics, and three on mixture modeling) in a span of two months (I'm sorry to my fiction reading list as they had to take a back seat). I have written thousands of lines of Stata code, redid my analysis far too many times because I am a perfectionist that never settles, and convened debates with myself on how the data should be interpreted. All of that was extremely worth it, but the bigger issue was whether the results were interpretable to a wider audience. For example, I had a significant interaction term in my regression analysis - ownership of facility (private vs. public) affected the propensity of patients to use their insurance card - and so I struggled to present the results of the regression analysis. The first time I presented was to staff of Dodowa Health Research Center, and the main criticism to my presentation was that it was too technical. And to think that I already tried to simplify the explanations to my analysis! That was my best effort at that point in time, but seeing that my best effort was apparently not good enough, the perfectionist in me spent more days trying to find a way to ease interpretation. I finally did, because everyone understood what the main result of my analysis was.

The second challenge was coming up with recommendations based from the results of my analysis. I knew from the beginning that the main value of my study was the fact that there is this survey that can be used to feed into policy. For my thesis, I saw my role largely as a bridge between the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) dataset and feeding it to policymakers - I cleaned the dataset, conducted the analysis, reviewed literature, processed the results, and yesterday I presented it to them so that they can pick up the gist and make policy from there. I was very cautious with how I phrased my recommendations. I needed a delicate balance between two conflicting perspectives: from the perspective of the clients, the NHIA seems to not be doing anything towards patient improvement and improving quality of care, but I also want to validate all the hard work NHIA has been trying to do in being more responsive to clients. Having worked in government made me more understanding of how difficult it is to change things from the inside. It has given me this patience and humility that while in public, we can harp about how easy it is to change something, but in reality, nothing is ever as simple as it seems. I decided that I will take a position with my recommendations - that I want to be explicit that the NHIA should work harder to be more responsive to clients - but I also want to incite discussion and reflection from the NHIA staff during the open forum on what they have done and what they could still do. And I was so relieved when that happened.

I will brag about this because I am so giddy that this happened - the officials were applauding after my presentation because in the words of one of the directors, "It was very well-presented." (#nailedit!) During the open forum, all of the officials were keen on discussing the issue of patient empowerment and health system responsiveness. They dwelled mostly on my recommendations but I was glad that they did because they were able to reflect on their performance as an agency. For example, one senior official asked me about what else they could do to empower patients. The NHIA has a call center, and there have been numerous pilot studies on community engagement and ensuring patient safety, but none seemed to stick. I gave my two cents on the matter - that it was important for health systems to have an independent patient watchdog embedded in the public sector but is completely independent from the Ministry of Health or the NHIA, and has enough power to demand accountability from health providers. Having a call center embedded in the agency that the patient is complaining about does not give patients the assurance that their feedback will not be used against them. It's not a function of how the call center operates, but a function of where it is operating and what impression it gives to clients. That comment was well-received, and the officials agree that it is the case. They also mentioned to me that the latest revision of the National Health Insurance Scheme Act has a legal provision to set up a consumer protection group, but this has not yet been operationalized. In response, I promised that I would fine tune my recommendation to stress the fact that this already has legal basis and that political will and action is what is needed to make that happen. It was that kind of fruitful exchange during the open forum that really showed to me that meaningful, constructive conversations on one's weaknesses is still possible in today's hostile political climate.

The final challenge was trying to find a way to make my report stay longer in their minds than the presentation. During the open forum, the officials gave specific requests on the final report that they would like to see, which they pledged they would use to help shape policy. I've mentioned the recommendation regarding patient empowerment, but let me share another. One limitation of the DHS dataset was that while ownership of the facility was asked, the level of facility (hospital, clinic, health center) was not asked. It was a comment first brought up by Director Williams even before I started my analysis, and this was thhe same comment that the officials noted because they wanted to identify which specific facilities were having issues with the card. I was able to demonstrate in my analysis that the use of the card is not negatively perceived in public facilities, but it is in private facilities. They wanted to know if such a difference in perceptions was also present across different levels of the health system. I said that the NHIA should request to have this question added when the next survey round is done in 2018/2019. This additional question would not be a troublesome request and the wealth of insight that can be extracted later on would significantly improve the utility of the analysis. I promised to also make that recommendation clear. I also got confirmation that they want to read the final report, and so I will send it to them as soon as possible. I was not able to mention this during the presentation, but I also want to write a policy brief that can be peddled around the NHIA and to other stakeholders.

I am excited to spend the next few weeks wrapping up my literature review, writing up my results, analysis, insights, and recommendations. This whole experience has been monumentally helpful for me as a researcher on so many fronts - technical skills, communication skills, building social capital, and actively advocating the reduction of research waste and the value of research translation. Again, I could not have asked for a better conclusion than this. I have dozens of people to thank for getting me this far, but I'll save the farewells for my final post next week.

#Life in Ghana

[headhunterjosh-blog1]

Character Development Task Week Eleven

For this week’s character development task, we would like the following questionnaire to be answered:

Word Count: 2.222

10 Facts about my room

I live in a studio apartment, so ‘my room’ is kind of a wide term. Technically you could consider the total of my loft, that's 800ft² just in case you were wondering, my room.

I am a lot tidier than most people expect me to be. In fact, I’m almost embarrassingly neat. Everything in my apartment has it’s place and I like to keep it that way. That's why I hate it when I have people over and they start messing with my stuff. Like, honestly. If you feel the need to put your little grabby hands on my possessions, at least put them back where they belong.

I don't really like living in New York. Most of the time it's actually pretty shitty, but damn. When I'm in bed at night, looking out of the window and see basically all of Midtown just sitting there right below my window even I have to admit that it's at least kinda pretty. Even during the day, the view from the 54th floor isn't too bad.

My favourite piece of furniture is definitely my Californian king bed. Some people say it's a little over the top but yes, I actually do need that much room to sleep. Loads of pillows and blankets are a thing, too. Again, people thinking it's too much, but me pointing out that yes, those four blankets are necessary.

I share my apartment with my two dogs, which is pretty surprising when you consider how much I hate sharing anything, especially living space. Having a bit of company isn't all that bad, to be honest, and I love my dogs a lot. Still, that’s probably as close to actually having a roommate as I will ever get.

I'm not a big fan of decorating. I own like three paintings, all of them painted by a really good friend of mine, who just so happens to be a really great DJ, but sadly also a really shitty painter. Besides that most of my walls are plain. Not really surprising when you consider that all of my outward facing walls are covered with floor to ceiling windows anyway. 

Windows. The windows in my flat are the best. It's always bright and really adds to the open feeling. I don't even need curtains. It's the 54th floor. Who's going to peak into my window – Superman?

My video game collection is worth more than the whole flat – and that's just my telly, PC, consoles and games, merch not included. Sure, a lot of that cash is just due to the collector's value of things like my Commodore 64 GS. Not like I actually use stuff like that to play games, but it's cool being able to brag about owning one.

I own exactly one plant. Just one shitty little cactus sitting on the table next to my couch and even though I am pretty sure I haven't watered it in almost three years, that thing just refuses to die.

Honestly, having such an awesome is a waste considering how little time I actually spend there.

9 Facts about my family

Even though I was born and raised in the UK, the bigger part of my family is actually French, just like my mother.

When people find out that I'm half French, they often ask him what my first language is – English or French. And while that seems like an easy question to answer, it really isn't. With a French mother fluent in English and an English father fluent in French, I was actually raised on a weird combination of both. English words mixing with French, translating idioms word for word to a point where they don't even make sense anymore, pronouncing English words the way they would be pronounced in French and vice versa. It took me years to get rid of that habit and actually speak one language instead of some weird cross-over hybrid.

My father is an only child, just like me, so I don't have any family in the UK besides my parents.

My mother, on the other hand, has a whole bunch of siblings. She's the youngest of seven children.

Having unusually big families is kind of a theme for the French part of my family. Everyone has a bunch of kids so I have a lot of cousins in France. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.

Speaking of themes – my family is rich. Not just my parents, but my whole family. Bankers, real estate agents, entrepreneurs. They all have a knack for business. In my family, it's never about becoming wealthy. It's taking the old family money you already have and trying to make more using it.

When I was younger, we used to spend every summer and the time around Christmas with my family in France. Summers we spent in Cannes at the Côte d'Azur, in way too hot weather with way too much sun. During the winter, we would stay in Megève, in the French Alps. Lots of skiing, enjoying the snow, coming home to the chalet when it got too cold. Sure, the hunting trips were a bit grim, but besides that, winters were great.

8 Facts about my appearance

As you may have noticed – I am wickedly handsome.

I have quite a few tattoos. Most of them were done by friends and turned out accordingly – not that great. If you want to avoid scarring and shaky lines, I'd suggest hitting up a professional instead.

A lot of my tattoos are actually cover ups for scars. What can I say, I get into a lot of fights, so scars are pretty much unavoidable. I can count myself lucky that most people have the decency not to go for the face – I'd rather not get that tatted up, too.

I'm 5'11ft and weigh 181lbs. According to my BMI, that technically makes me overweight.

I'm pretty fit. Like, pretty damn fit. I might spend a little too much time focusing on diet and working out, but it definitely pays off.

I really love my hair, but it definitely gets annoying at times. Luckily bobby pins are a thing and really help with keeping it out of my face. Otherwise, it would probably have annoyed me so much at some point that I would just have chopped it off.

I have heterochromia, meaning that I have to different coloured eyes. My left eye is half brown.

My style is actually pretty basic. Plain t-shirts, jeans, leather jackets, trainers or boots. I'm still a sucker for brands, so most of my clothes end up being a lot more expensive than they look. I just like looking sharp – that is until I come home. From the second I walk through the door it's just sweatpants and star wars t-shirts that I would never wear in public, but like too much to throw out.

7 Facts about my childhood

I was born in London but moved to Dover when I was eight and my parents decided that growing up in the city wasn't what they wanted for their child. To be fair, growing up in Dover didn't really beat growing up in the greatest city in the world.

When I was a kid, my parents were never really around much. My father worked a lot, my mother was his secretary, so both of them were pretty much too busy with work for the bigger part of my life.

I didn't really get to interact with a lot of kids my age. Growing up as an only child, my parents had very strict expectations when it came to the people I surrounded myself with. The first actual friend I made is some annoying little redhead called Lillian.

All my teachers hated me. Sure, I wasn't exactly an easy kid to deal with. I didn't like to share. I didn't play well with others. And I didn't handle not being the centre of attention too well. Honestly, I can't really be too mad at them for hating me.

I was so incredibly spoilt, it's almost disgusting. To others, at least. Poor people, mostly. For me, it was great.

I did a lot of travelling in my childhood. Bragging about vacation was just as important as bragging about cars or houses, so obviously, my father was more than happy to spend thousands of pounds on vacation each year. The older I got, the less interest I was in spending my holidays with my parents though, so once I was old enough to make my own decisions, I'd usually prefer to stay home or go on vacation with my friends instead.

My parents would always insist I attend their dumb dinner parties or social events. It was basically just a bunch of rich people coming together, bragging about how rich they were. It was really annoying. Especially since my parents actually expected me to behave and be polite. Can you believe that? Polite? Me?

6 Facts about my hometown

Hometown is a bit of a complicated term for me. There is my hometown, London. The town where I was born. My hometown, Dover. The town where I grew up. And my hometown, New York. The town where I live.

My favourite hometown is definitely London, by far. It has the absolute best music scene in the world. The best pubs. The best clubs. The best people. It's just perfect.

Dover doesn't have much to offer, but the ocean is quite the sight. It's not what you usually think of when you here the word ocean though. No soft sand, blue water, sun. No, not at all. There are close to no beaches, just huge, white cliffs and grey water. It's amazing.

I don't like New York at all. The skyline is one of the few good things. Maybe I'm only saying that because it's right in front of my window so it had a lot of time to grow on me.

I had quite the reputation back home in Dover. Most police officers even knew my first name and were annoyed, but definitely not surprised when they got to pick me up because I got myself in trouble again.

Another of the few perks of living in a city like New York is that it never gets boring. There's always something to do.

5 Facts about my best friend

I have this undeniable talent for really, really fucking up when it comes to best friends.

My best friend growing up was Lillian. Okay, she was my only friend growing up. You happy now? Anyway, there was quite a long time where we weren't really friends anymore. Somehow she got super mad I moved to the US without telling her. Or saying goodbye. … Okay, I probably deserved that

During my teenage years, my best friend was a guy named Jackson. My parents always told me he was a bad influence when in fact it was pretty much the other way around. He was quite the good kid before he met me, actually. Long story short, he's in jail now.

My best friend in New York is a girl called Alisha. The DJ with the shitty paintings? Yeah, that's her.

My best friend ingame is this really awful vampire who has absolutely no filter. He's a nerd.

4 Facts about my parents

I prefer not to talk about them.

My parents are definitely not good people.

I don't call them mum and dad. It's mother and father, or sir.

I don't hate them, but I sometimes feel like I should.

3 Facts about my personality

For some reason, people usually don't think I'm not all that clever? As if just because I'm unnaturally attractive I somehow don't possess the ability to read a book. True, it's not like I brag about being clever, either. Can't have people thinking I'm a nerd and kill my reputation. Still, sometimes I just can't help but make a comment that makes me seem a little more intelligent than I usually do and it would be really nice if people were a little less surprised by that.

I am an adrenaline junky if there ever was one. Some of my friends go as far as calling me a death seeker. Yeah right, as if I could die.

Most people think I'm an asshole. Well, they aren't wrong.

2 Facts about my favourite things

Dogs are by far the best animals and if you disagree, you are just wrong.

My taste in music is all over the place and half of it is trash. Yes, I do like classic rock and early 2000s punk. Twenty One Pilots and Cage The Elephant have some great songs. But when I'm alone, working out or driving, nothing really beats songs like You Oughta Now or What's Up.

1 Fact about the person I like

I've never had romantic feelings for anyone, but he might just have what it takes to change that.

#bfrpgcdt010

[63824peace]

Monday, 7th of november 2005

Another world exists that I must experience. A genus of people exists who I must meet. I must inhale the air they breathe--share their world at all costs.

I must do these things... I must.

We have equipped ourselves with basic military instructions and hands-on training in order to produce MGS4. Mr. Mori and several other instructors have assisted our preparations many times and has provided instruction on psychological war tactics too.

But it's not enough. That knowledge merely simulates the truth. We can't possibly experience the reality of war, but we should be able to approach it.

We must meet the people who put themselves in mortal danger. That's the keystone of our self-imposed MGS4 training: we must experience the battlefield.

We have planned since November to gather these materials. We've always intended to go all the way.

We're not going to a live war site of course. We're not even getting close to one. We intend to interview people connected with the battlefield and the military training facilities.

Unfortunately, terrorism alerts are increasing. All governments will no doubt tighten security measures for their borders and their military facilities. We're planning to go to places that have been assigned the world's highest terrorism alert level. We have finalized all the negotiations and travel arrangements, but regrettably we must give up right now. We no longer live in pre-911 times like we did during MGS1.

I really wanted to have this done before winter arrived, but there's no point insisting anymore. We'd just wind up butting heads with the security treaty, you know. The efforts of KojiPro's staff and our local contacts have come to no avail. We're stuck with sad results.

I want to try again next spring, depending on how the situation looks. I doubt that the security level will decrease though.

We still need to go. We need to see the real thing... we need to feel it. We can't avoid the realities of war as long as we're making games about the battlefield.

We had planned MGS4's supplementary X-Training for December. We modified our schedule and moved X-Training to a future date.

We only intended to absorb a wide and shallow breadth of information from the basic instruction and hands-on training. X-Training involves the highest level of professional and technical instruction yet, so I need to limit the number of participants from our staff.

Today we selected the flight suit that we plan to use during part of X-Training. Toyopy and Shin-chan tried them on.

I decided to try out the flight suit that Toyopy wore.

We spent the morning in KojiPro's usual internal meeting. I didn't have time to go out for lunch, so I settled for a sushi bento.

There's an executive meeting at Konami's head office this afternoon. That's why I came to work in a suit today.

I usually wear casual clothes to the office. I wear a suit maybe two or three times a month, and usually only when I need to meet with the head office.

It's nice to wear a suit once in a while. It can restrict some body movement, but it makes me feel as though I'm part of society. I feel a sense of security because I've conformed to the standards of the rest of the world.

I try as hard as I can to behave like a salary-man whenever I ride a train while wearing a suit. I strain to imagine myself strictly as a salary-man, and I enjoy it as much as I can. I hold onto a ceiling strap for balance, and I join everyone scrambling for a seat.

I sometimes sing karaoke when I wear a suit. I wear my tie around my head like a bandana and play a caricature of other drunk salary-men. They call me a game designer, but part of me will always be a salary-man.

I sent my Kamen Rider article to Hyper Playstation2 magazine. It will appear on November 30. I am so passionate about Kamen Rider yet I had difficulty organizing my thoughts for the article. My feelings are too strong to rein easily into ordered expression.

After Wednesday I will be in Seoul for Korea's G-STAR.

I'll meet with Director Park Chan-Wook on November 9. We decided my plans in a hurry, so I had to find a copy of his latest film fast. I want to watch it before we meet. I couldn't fit the movie into my schedule during last month's Tokyo International Film Festival, so I never saw it.

I asked him to send me a copy of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. The DVD arrived from Korea, but it's in Korean with English subtitles.

"There's no way I'll be able to understand this!"

Just as I was thinking about it, Toshiba Entertainment kindly sent me a copy with Japanese subtitles.

The film will run in Japanese theaters starting on November 12. I'll watch it again on a large theater screen once I return from Korea.

I'm a huge fan of Director Park. He's only one day older than me. I'm looking forward to a lot of good movie conversation.

People need to take one of Metro Hat's long escalators to enter Roppongi Hills from the subway station. Two escalators move people up, and another one moves people down. Each escalator takes about fifty-five seconds per one-way trip.

I always observe the people who pass by when I ride an escalator. I'll never see most of them again, so I imagine a lot of things about their lives... about the day ahead of them. I craft the drama as I like... I emotionally react to my imagined stories, laughing or crying. I do the same thing whenever I see inside an apartment building or a house while I'm riding the train.

People who ride the escalator on the way to work glance around, and so do the holiday tourists. Most of them usually look up at the information display, an advertisement, or the Metro Hat stairwells.

"Wait a minute... I think I've seen this scene before...."

I remember the 1970 Universal Osaka Expo. I think of the Tree of Life sculpture that was encased within the Tower of the Sun. The escalator tunnel's infrastructure seems similar... the escalator flows through the Metro Hat stairwell like the Tree of Life filled the Tower of the Sun.

After leaving the subway, I mount the long escalators at the transfer station. As before, two escalators move up and one moves down. Each trip takes fifty-five seconds.

I observe the people who I pass here as well. At least a third of them talk on their cell phones or read email, and some of them even type email.

The morning commute is just the same... so are holidays. It's a pretty convenient time to check messages.

You might wonder why everyone's so distracted with personal items down here. People can find all sorts of interesting public information and sights to look at in the Hills above. The transfer station has nothing.

Still, why is everyone watching their personal screens and the advertisements? Why aren't they more interested in the people close by?

I spend that precious minute enjoying my inner self. I stop breathing, close my eyes, focus my thoughts upon one point, and go from there. I have already expended the special energy needed to dive into myself today. I have nothing left to do except observe other people. I'm never bored when I watch them... I use them to develop a variety of dramas.

Tons of plots and stories lie scattered throughout the long escalator.

The NHK national television channel featured the Da Vinci Exhibition on their Italian Language Lesson program--the very exhibition I attended earlier. Because it was broadcast on NHK they didn't go out of their way to specify the materials' location. They merely ran a bland subtitle across the telop that read "Roppongi."

Oddly enough, the Hills didn't look like the Hills when broadcasted on television. Did the Italian context inflect the Hills with an unknown Italian atmosphere?

It may sound tautological, but Da Vinci and the Italian language really go hand-in-hand.

The reverse-scripted Italian and the spoken language suit each so other well, I can't help but wonder if translation would strain the writer's soul from the words.

HIDEOBLOG has been translated into English since a few days ago. It has been hosted on the site during a trial period for overseas readers. We have done this in response to a great demand from overseas.

I'm skeptical nevertheless.

I asked people working in a few magazines' editorial departments. Most of them affirmed my skepticism. They said that my writing and my words are no longer HIDEOBLOG once they become translated. HIDEOBLOG's beauty comes from the intimacy of expression--Hideo Kojima can communicate his words and feelings to his readers.

HIDEOBLOG isn't a novel with a plot.

I write HIDEOBLOG as a private diary before proofing it as a blog. I update my diary daily, so it is unpretentious, unguarded writing.

Think of it as similar to a poem or a prose poem.

Only information will remain if the tone and the rhythm change. HIDEOBLOG will become nothing more than daily news once it has been chewed, digested, and processed into English. HIDEOBLOG should stay as it is.

I agree with all this. Then again, people living in foreign countries cannot understand Japanese.

What should I do?

[asullivan4062-blog]

Follow your passion is bad advice unless…

Is 'follow your passion' a relatively new concept? I never heard this when I was a high school student in the late 80s. My parents wanted me to study engineering or medicine. These careers will support a family. Their advice was to follow a good steady paycheck because life will be easier. They worked minimum wage jobs for years and became small business owners when I was in high school. Our family finances were unstable for most of my youth. For them, a stable paycheck was a much higher priority than passion. Mrs. RB40 told me it was the same with her. Her parents told her to study and get a good job. I'm pretty sure no adult in my youth ever uttered the word passion.

Luckily, I was good with math and science so I studied engineering in college. It worked out well for the most part and I found a stable, well-paying job after I graduated. Engineering was never a big passion, but I was competent at the technical part of it. Personally, I think 'do what you're good at' is better advice than 'follow your passion'. At least, you have a talent base to build on. Today, we'll explore why follow your passion is bad advice. There is an exception, of course. Read until the end to see the unless…

Passion doesn't last

The first problem with passion is that it rarely lasts. Passion is like teenage love. It's fleeting. I've been passionate about many things. Nothing really stuck, though. Here are a few of my past obsessions.

Video games – What kid doesn't love video games? I used to play for hours and I loved it. Now, I only play casual games on my phone occasionally. Video games are fun, but it takes way too much time and effort for no return. Besides, my thumbs and shoulders can't take that kind of abuse anymore.

Ukulele – I got into the ukulele in the early 2000s. The ukulele was having a resurgent and you heard it everywhere. I had 10 ukes at one point and even started a uke enthusiast group. Learning to play was a lot of fun, but the passion fizzled out after 5-6 years. Now I have 4 ukes and I really want to keep just 2.

Watching the Portland Trailblazers melt down – The year 2000, the Blazers were up 15 points in the 4th quarter against the Lakers in Game 7 of the Western Conference Final. For the next 10 minutes, they choked completely and missed jumper after jumper. I was watching this game with a bunch of friends and it was unbelievable. I followed the Blazers passionately for a few more years and then lost interest. They never got anywhere near the playoffs. Earlier this week, a checker at Safeway told me they're doing pretty well, but I'm just not that interested anymore.

Reading Sci-Fi books – Well, I still love reading a good science fiction book, but I don't know how you can follow that passion into a career.

These are just a few examples. I'm sure you have a bunch of passions that you left behind also. People change and our passion evolves over time. Maybe your passion is traveling the world, but I'm pretty sure it won't be much fun once you've on the road nonstop for 5-6 years. It'll get old.

Everybody has the same passion

The thing about passion is that everybody has similar ones. Most of us like these activities:

Sports – running, rock climbing, and other active pursuits

Leisure activities – listening to music, watching movies, and playing games

Active music – playing the guitar and other instruments

Reading – novels, blogs, magazines, etc…

Active art – painting, photography, wood working

Learning – taking classes, watching useful videos on YouTube, studying

Travel

Everybody is passionate about these things. However, there are relatively few decent paying jobs in these industries. You'd have to be a talented musician AND be very lucky to make a good living. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you can succeed in that field. The competition is fierce for those few jobs. It takes extraordinary talent, a lot of luck, and a ton of hard work.

Passion doesn't translate well into a career

Lastly, passion just doesn't translate well into a career. I still love reading a good book, but I have no idea how to make money with that passion. I guess I could try going to work in the publishing industry or something like that. However, that doesn't sound fun at all. Reading for leisure is great. Reading to make a living seems much more tedious.

As for those other things on my old list, I'm just not very talented at any of them, although I recently heard there are professional computer game payers now. Elite gamers fill stadiums and fans watch them play just like any team sports. That's insane. Apparently, it's called eSports. Wow, I was born too early to give this a go.

Follow your success

An advice I like better is to follow your success. When you're successful at something, you're more likely to develop passion for it. Let's look at blogging for example.

I started blogging about early retirement in 2010 and I spent a ton of time learning the ropes. The first 6 months were tough because I didn't have any readers. However, I networked with other bloggers and slowly increased my readership. After a year or so, I started making a little income from blogging and this kept me motivated. Our readership peaked in 2014 and it's been mostly flat since.

Blogging was a fun hobby that turned into a passion after I had some success at it. If the readership didn't improve, I probably would've lost interest and moved on to something else. Interestingly, I never liked writing essays when I was in school. English was my second language and I still have some trouble with grammar. That's why I need Mrs. RB40 to edit every post before I publish it. I'm a lot better writer now because I had a lot more practice.

Coincidently, I haven't looked at the stats in a long time. Retire by 40 has been viewed over 8 million times. That's amazing!

*If you're curious about blogging check out my tutorial – How to Start a Blog and Why You Should.

Anyway, I think it's better to try a few different things. If you're successful, then stick with it. If not, then move on to something else. I had a graduate degree in engineering and working with computers was fun for a while. However, I moved on when the career wasn't a good fit anymore.

So here is the 'unless'. 'Follow your passion' is bad advice unless you succeed. Success trumps everything.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT DATES

Might there not be an alternate route to innovation that goes through obedience and cooperation instead of individualism? Such deals may be a net win for founders, who ought to be working on their company, not worrying about investors. It's natural for US universities to compete with ITA and chose to write your software in C, they would be able to make a port run efficiently, it can't coax startups into existence. Microsoft isn't benevolent? Now we think of the middle class made a living largely by creating wealth, society as a whole started to get richer very rapidly. And that will get us a lot more than you expect for the deal to close even after they say yes. So what will business look like when it has assimilated the lessons of open source and blogs are done for free, and it wasn't here? Isn't it wiser, sometimes, not to be cool and maybe make money. To me the most demoralizing aspect of the traditional office is that you're supposed to be like.

He showed how, given a handful of junior employees called something like associates or analysts. If your friends or family happen to be, there are few strong enough to resist doing something just because that's what one is supposed to suggest efficiency. The word was first used for backers of Broadway plays, but now applies to individual investors generally. When you're small, you can't afford not to have any teeth, and the fact that so many people work in offices now: you can't show off by wearing clothes too fancy to wear in a factory, so you have to start over. In OO languages, you can fix it yourself. There are no generally accepted standards. It takes a while to realize I just wasn't like the people there speak with accents. I thought I'd already put in so much time that it was the first thing we thought of; we were ambivalent about being in business at all; and we deliberately chose an impoverished market to avoid competition. The cubicles were full of programmers writing code, product managers thinking about feature lists and ship dates, support people yes, there were actually support people telling users to restart their browsers, and so on. The Mythical Man-Month, and everything I've seen has tended to confirm what he said. The best we could do than the channel.

In Javascript the example is, again, slightly longer, because Javascript retains the distinction between statements and expressions, so you can see is the large, flashing billboard paid for by Sun. At Viaweb we got our first $10,000 of seed money from our friend Julian, but he was sufficiently rich that it's hard to change something so simple as a name, imagine how hard it is to believe now, the reason startups do better when they turn down acquisition offers usually end up doing better. As this example suggests, the rate at which technology increases our productive capacity is probably polynomial, rather than something that has to be more like bureaucrats. So it must be work. As we got close to publication, I found I was very worried about the essays in Hackers & Painters that hadn't been online. And that's one reason open source, and even the enforcement of quality can flow bottom-up: people make what they want, and the essay will still survive. Fortran program contains an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. The SEC defines an accredited investor as someone with over a million dollars as much as the average person. Similarly, though there are plenty of people strong enough to resist doing something just because that's what you were getting whether you liked it or not. In every case, the creation of wealth seems to appear and disappear like the noise of a fan as you switch on and off the prospect of keeping it. If you can attract the best hackers to work for our company.

This is true of all venture funding, on the condition that Woz quit, he initially refused, arguing that he'd designed both the Apple I and the Apple II while working at HP, and there was no point in making anything else return a value, because there could not be anything waiting for it. In the limit case, by writing a Lisp interpreter. They're outlying data points; what makes them gripping also makes them irrelevant. Those that don't fail all seem to get bought or go public. It was like having a new mother. And so most of them are money guys rather than technical guys, so they are speaking from experience. 8 and 9 together mean that you can get, and come with tougher terms. So we ditched Artix and started a new company, Viaweb, to make software for building online stores. I'm not too worried yet. So if doing good for people gives you a sense of mission that makes you harder to kill, that alone more than compensates for whatever you lose by using a less powerful language. When the company goes public, the SEC will carefully study all prior issuances of stock by the company and fired one of the angels is willing to invest.

It probably takes five years, on average, before a startup founder wondering why some angel investor isn't returning your phone calls, you can write any program in any of them. You already know them. Evan Williams came in to work the next day, and there was no good way to do it: as well as keeping worse time, mechanical watches have to be in the software business, and they're writing an application that will be one of their products, then it will probably involve several hackers and take at least six months to write. That seems like saying that blue is heavy, or that up is circular. Hell if they know. Someone with ordinary tastes would find it hard to blow through more than a few tens of thousands of dollars. Some angel groups charge you money to pitch your idea to them. I mention no names, there may be a net win for founders, because you can't remember them. It's probably the place in America where someone from Northern Europe would feel most at home. So I'm not suggesting you be good in the usual sanctimonious way.

But I wouldn't bet on it. I should add that vesting is also a way for founders to protect themselves against one another. As long as he considers all languages equivalent, all he has to do is choose the one that seems to have started to matter for men as well. Don't be evil. Compared to other industrialized countries the US is disorganized about routing people into careers. In this case, you trade decreased financial risk for increased risk that your company won't succeed as a startup. Could it be that, in a matter of choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous. More important, I think is a red herring. It's natural for US universities to compete with ITA and chose to write your software in C, they would be able to cash out partially in a funding round, by selling some of their stock direct to the VC firm. A top-ranked professional chess player could play ten thousand games against an ordinary club player without losing once. If you want to attract to your silicon valley. Looking at the applications for the Summer Founders Program, I see a couple things you could do to beat America, design a town that puts cars last.

It's the architectural equivalent of a home-made aircraft shooting down an F-18. Ideas and even the more sophisticated ones rarely get past judging it by the brand name of the artist. England in 1974, on. You could translate simple Lisp programs into Python line for line. Answer: immediately. And it's only now that you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; don't try to sound impressive; don't hesitate to change the world for the better. For example, in the clothes and the health of the people in a company they discovered.

When you ask what message a city sends till you live there, or even whether it still sends one. Palo Alto was probably much like Cambridge in 1960, but you'd never guess now that there was a university nearby. Isn't the pointy-haired boss from responsibility: if he chooses something that is industry best practice. They may if they are extraordinarily fortunate do an IPO, it might be wise to give him as much stock as the founders. Not always, but usually there's a bigger offer coming, or perhaps even an IPO. And your brain seems to know this stuff to program in Lisp, but it is enough in simple cases like this. If you spent a year on a new feature, they'd be able to get better terms from them. On the day of the race, most of the risk out of starting a startup also to cut the average return.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #founders #plays #Cambridge #billboard #mission #browsers #US #design

[asromaworld]

El Shaarawy’s interview

#AskElsha

Who was your idol when you were young?

“Kakà. I always used to watch him when I was young – when he was at AC Milan. He was my role model, both on and off the pitch. He always came across as really down-to-earth, even before I met him. Then I got to know him one time when we played Real Madrid in a friendly in America and he was exactly as I imagined – a wonderful person besides being a fantastic footballer.”

What advice do you have for youngsters trying to make it in the game?

“My advice is to believe in yourself and show commitment and determination in everything you do. You also need to be very passionate about the game and enjoy it. Obviously you have to hone your skills as well but I think having the right mentality is even more important than technical ability. You must be very consistent too.

"In football it's more about what you do with your head than your legs. I also think it's very important to remain humble. Real winners are those who remain humble despite being successful. When I was young I sought out advice from my friends and family. I'd ask them where they thought I could improve.”

What's your favourite place in Rome?

“Rome is a fabulous city with so many beautiful places. There are loads really. I was particularly impressed by the Colosseum as I'd never seen it before. I'd only been to Rome a few times before and seen Piazza di Spagna. I must say I love EUR too, which is where I live. It's a quiet area and I really like it.”

What's your favourite place in Italy?

“Savona. That's where I was born and grew up. Whenever I get a day off I go back there and it energises me. My family are there and I've bought a house by the sea so I can relax. Of course all my friends are there too so it's invigorating for me.”

What's your relationship with Mohamed Salah like? What sort of relationship do you have with Egypt?

“I have a great relationship with Salah. He's another one who besides being a fantastic player is a wonderful person, really humble. He's much more mature than you'd think for his age. He's got his head screwed on properly and has strong moral values. We got on really well right from the start. His Italian's getting better now too so we can communicate better.

“I feel a very strong connection with Egypt, my father's homeland. Unfortunately I don't speak Egyptian but my dad translates all the messages and the compliments I receive from Egyptians and it's really nice. I've been there several times.”

When was the last time you visited Alexandria?

“I went there when I was a boy, I can't remember how old exactly. I travelled around the whole country, from the Pyramids to Cairo, Abu Simbel, Assuan and the Valley of the Kings. Then I went to see my dad's relatives in a city near Cairo called Tanta, which, incidentally, is near where Salah's from.

"I haven't been able to go back for a few years because of all the various football commitments I've had with Italy and so on, but I'm planning on going back in the next few years.”

How did your dab celebration with Leo Paredes come about?

“Before the [Palermo] game we decided that if either of us scored we'd do the dab and we prepared this little routine. That's it really. Luckily I scored.”

Who's your favourite actor?

“There are lots but two I like in particular are Denzel Washington and Will Smith. I watch all their films.”

What about TV series?

“I watched Lost, which is great. You don't really understand what's going on but it gets you hooked! To think they spent six years filming that in Hawaii... Prison Break is another one I liked. I think there's a new series coming out.”

Do you have any pets?

“No.”

Is there one team-mate in particular who you're especially close to?

“Well, there's Momo, as I've already said. We always go out to eat together after games. But they're all very happy, smiley people and I get on really well with the lot of them. We often go out together for meals and that helps us bond even more as a team.”

What was your childhood like?

“It was a very good one. I managed to study and play football at the same time and I finished school so it was good. I broke into the first team at a very young age and that helped me grow in every sense of the word.”

What was your favourite subject?

“Err... Can I say P.E.? Apart from that I was good at Italian.”

Do you have any pre-match rituals?

“Yes, lots. I'm very superstitious. But being superstitious I can't tell you them! I can give you a clue though: in the next match look closely at what I do as I enter the field.”

Aldo says his six-year-old son wants hair like yours. What should he do?

“There's only one thing to do and that's to take him to my hairdresser! I have three actually – one in Savona, one in Milan and one here in Rome.”

How long does it take you to comb your hair in the morning? And what gel do you use?

“Not very long at all. It hardly needs anything doing to it nowadays. I don't even comb it. I just give it a blow with the hairdryer, use a bit of wax – not gel – and some hair spray to hold it in place and that's it.”

What happened with that head bandage against Sassuolo?

“I was headbutted by a defender and I was bleeding so the ref asked me to go off to get it bandaged up. The physio wanted to wrap it up but it was annoying me and I told him it would only last 10 seconds. Luckily it stopped bleeding so I didn't have to keep it on for long. It was really uncomfortable and I couldn't play properly with it on.”

Was there a moment when you realised that you might make it as a professional footballer?

“I don't think there was a precise moment because it was a gradual process, although it happened very quickly. But when I made my debut at 16 I thought, 'Well, I just might make it.' That was a key moment in my career. It was Chievo v Genoa, the 84th minute.  Jankovic got cramp and had to come off so  Gasperini told me to warm up as I was going on. It was 0-0 at the time and we won it 1-0 –  Olivera scored – so it was a dream debut. That was 21 December 2008.”

Where did you first develop your passion for football?

“It started before I joined any club, with my dad – he gave me a passion for the game on the pitches below our house. I went back to those pitches with a couple of friends the other day when I had the day off. I hadn't been back for ages and we walked along the seafront where we used to play. It was a really nice stroll down memory lane.

“When I was five or six I joined Legino, a club in Savona, and stayed there till I was 10 or 11, when I joined Genoa. I worked my way up through the academy to the first team, won a Primavera Scudetto with Genoa then went to Padova on loan. After that AC Milan... and the rest is history.”

What was the first match you saw at the stadium?

“I don't remember it actually because I was in a pushchair! But my dad me he took me to Marassi to see Genoa. As I grew up, I went to see more Genoa games, and I was a ball boy there too. It's a wonderful ground.”

What's your favourite dish?

“Trofie al pesto – a typical Genovese dish. I love that stuff. Although cacio e pepe is pretty good here in Rome!”

Do you like Chinese?

“Yes, I like Cantonese fried rice.”

#Stephan El Shaarawy #interview