Human beings have limits; that is the nature of being human. It's still difficult, though, to come to grips with how limited my own abilities are, and face the fact that there's just some things that I can't do.
When I was a kid, I was like most other kids: thought I was the sh*t or the bomb, that I could climb that tree, could be the best at this video game, could be cooler than everyone else. Oh you got the new Pokemon card? Well I got the shiny rare limited-edition one; it's always comparing oneself to others and try to one-up them. As a kid I thought I was invincible; nothing could stop me.
But then came the first pull-up challenge during P.E. class: no matter how hard I tried to pull my chin up over the bars, gravity just wouldn't allow it. That was one of the first times I distinctly remembered, "oh man, I'm not able to do this."
College is a very very humbling experience in this regard. Sure you can get by with some "softer" classes like Humanities or Asian Literature (no offense to those majors), write a 10-page paper right before the deadline and get by the class, but there are some seriously difficult majors that require the right type of mindset and IQ. I never ventured into those hardcore-sounding ones like "Engineering" or "Advanced Physics," only venturing as high as Math 242 Calculus III, before taking my first B- since Home Economics and being scared off.
I consider myself a relatively smart person who "gets it" pretty quickly, a quick learner of things if I am interested in them, but the sciences are just difficult to be a quick learner in. Sometimes it requires something to "click in" and if it doesn't click, everything seems like gibberish and nothing makes sense. Its when intuition gets thrown out the window and the really raw material that comes through, that's what separates the advanced thinkers v. others. For me, I've always been someone who is fine memorizing easy information, learning languages and memorizing historic facts, knowing laws for the bar exam. But when it comes to using that information to build a physics equation from scratch, for example, or prove a mathematical formula, the implementation part is where I hit a wall. I commonly wonder about physics and science problems, "there are not enough examples! How do people create something without knowing what they're doing and seeing someone else do a similar task first?" I much rather prefer the "lot of information but quick and easy" of learning 500 new Korean words a day than the "short but difficult" solve-this-problem-using your knowledge and having to solve different problems. Part of it might be lack of dedication and laziness, but part of it definitely is not having the right kind of brain for it, reaching a limit of understanding and brain capacity to process everything.
It's also the sinking feeling working on a problem that I haven't made any progress on it, that I've just been going in circles but not getting to the core of the issue and having no work to show for any of the studying I've done, whereas easier tasks allow you to track your progress of "I learned so and so many words" or "at least I've done this for the day." Science classes can make you feel useless, lonely, unproductive, and unfulfilled.
I say this because computer science, although still OK now, has the potential to hit a limit for me, and I wonder how I will handle it when it gets too hard. Sure I'm pursuing an undergrad degree and I already have a doctorate so theoretically I should be able to handle it, but it's one of the hardest things on earth apparently: a hard-science undergrad. Will I eventually reach my limit? I hope not, but it's certainly bringing back memories of when I DID reach a limit in science, and decided to pursue finance/law in the first place.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, July 22, 2018
Monday, July 16, 2018
Wildlife (야생 생물, 野生動物)
In 2010, in the midst of going through law school, 2 songs got me really amped up on my runs through Culver City: "Club Cant Handle me Right Now" by Flo Rida and "Animals" by Maroon 5 (sign of the times, back then Flo Rida and David Guetta was big, Nicky Minaj, Lady Gaga. Something about the excitement of animals. Everybody likes animals, animal analogies (he's a beast! He's an animal!), especially pets. Zoos have their whole business model built around people's fascination of animals, and in some sense, it is refreshing nowadays especially to break out of our fascination with the Internet, technology, trending news stories, to be in the presence of other real live living things in the world. There's no internet for hippos, lions, elephants; they're just living in their world with us, trying to get by day to day.
I guess that's why "Planet Earth" on Netflix is so appealing. First of all, thank you NFLX, for being a well run company leading to elevated, albeit volatile stock prices (earnings report coming out today actually, should be interesting after the stock went down -17 (17 whole points!) back under 400. Man if I had known we'd be talking about NFLX at 400 just 7 months ago! Geez. I don't know about most people, but I struggle with the amount of choices we get with NFLX. It's like going to a buffet and being dazzled by the amount of chicken dishes, the 16 different types of pizzas, mashed potatoes, fish you didn't even know existed.....you don't know where to start, and that's often the dilemma with NFLX. You see a bunch of shows you wouldn't mind seeing, and are interested by, but you can only watch ONE now........what to start with so you don't lose out on seeing other good ones? The dilemma is difficult, but one sure bet is Planet Earth! Can't go wrong with animals as the star of the show, and no matter what the next monkey or bird or underwater creature do, they don't disappoint. It's not like we're expecting them to crack us up or play to our emotions, so the expectations are lowered.
MJ and I recently watched a really cool Planet Earth about animals living in cities, large metropolises. There are apparently leopards wandering around some cities like Dubai, and large packs of hyenas traveling around the streets of India being fed by the locals, where they're more just like wild dogs. I mean I've heard of the odd coyote or two in Southern California eating pets, and in very rare cases mountain lion sightings (soon to be driven away by local park rangers), but LEOPARDS are strolling around at night in your neighborhood? The earth truly is a wild place, and especially when CATFISH are eating pigeons. No, not cats, that was within my realm of expectation, but CATFISH somehow jumping pigeons while they bathe in the city river, huge catfish literally jump out of the water and drag pigeons down into the water, drown them, and eat them. Like crocodiles. Unbelievable. And these wildlife cameramen get all these shots on camera, with ability to slow-mo it down for us. I see some wildlife photographers around Palos Verdes with seriously lengthy cameras for whale watching, but for catfish and pigeons? That must take a lot of patience to wait for some action to occur.
Come to think of it, how do animals survive of boredom? As a human here in the 21st century, I can't imagine just going about my day only worried about my next meal, not knowing anything about anything in the world, or even caring to know. Seems like a very boring way to live with the gifts that human beings have been given. Then again, animals and their ignorant bliss might be the best way to be happy.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
I guess that's why "Planet Earth" on Netflix is so appealing. First of all, thank you NFLX, for being a well run company leading to elevated, albeit volatile stock prices (earnings report coming out today actually, should be interesting after the stock went down -17 (17 whole points!) back under 400. Man if I had known we'd be talking about NFLX at 400 just 7 months ago! Geez. I don't know about most people, but I struggle with the amount of choices we get with NFLX. It's like going to a buffet and being dazzled by the amount of chicken dishes, the 16 different types of pizzas, mashed potatoes, fish you didn't even know existed.....you don't know where to start, and that's often the dilemma with NFLX. You see a bunch of shows you wouldn't mind seeing, and are interested by, but you can only watch ONE now........what to start with so you don't lose out on seeing other good ones? The dilemma is difficult, but one sure bet is Planet Earth! Can't go wrong with animals as the star of the show, and no matter what the next monkey or bird or underwater creature do, they don't disappoint. It's not like we're expecting them to crack us up or play to our emotions, so the expectations are lowered.
MJ and I recently watched a really cool Planet Earth about animals living in cities, large metropolises. There are apparently leopards wandering around some cities like Dubai, and large packs of hyenas traveling around the streets of India being fed by the locals, where they're more just like wild dogs. I mean I've heard of the odd coyote or two in Southern California eating pets, and in very rare cases mountain lion sightings (soon to be driven away by local park rangers), but LEOPARDS are strolling around at night in your neighborhood? The earth truly is a wild place, and especially when CATFISH are eating pigeons. No, not cats, that was within my realm of expectation, but CATFISH somehow jumping pigeons while they bathe in the city river, huge catfish literally jump out of the water and drag pigeons down into the water, drown them, and eat them. Like crocodiles. Unbelievable. And these wildlife cameramen get all these shots on camera, with ability to slow-mo it down for us. I see some wildlife photographers around Palos Verdes with seriously lengthy cameras for whale watching, but for catfish and pigeons? That must take a lot of patience to wait for some action to occur.
Come to think of it, how do animals survive of boredom? As a human here in the 21st century, I can't imagine just going about my day only worried about my next meal, not knowing anything about anything in the world, or even caring to know. Seems like a very boring way to live with the gifts that human beings have been given. Then again, animals and their ignorant bliss might be the best way to be happy.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Thursday, July 12, 2018
いちや漬け (Last Minute Cramming)
When I was in high school, I always thought that somehow squeezing the last drop of studying in right before taking a test would be helpful, and you would always see me with a book or notes in my hand right before a test (there were no smartphones back then), either reading while walking in the hall (thus further solidifying my nerd status) or busily scanning pages at my desk before the exams were handed out, hoping to gobble up the last morsel of information that might somehow give me an advantage on the test. In law school there were still others like me who did that, but much less due to the open book nature of the test and theoretical nature of the exams, where it was more about analyzing the problems and applying one's knowledge, not just regurgitating some memorized information or knowing as many terms as possible. That's when I started thinking, maybe last minute cramming isn't so great after all?
Nowadays, as a 31-year-old computer science student, my philosophy on last minute cramming has transformed. The morning of the test should be about consolidating one's knowledge into summary form, making sure one sees the big picture and is able to master the knowledge well enough to gather all the facts and organize them in one's mind, ready to be applied to any question that comes up, not just as a temporary stopgap. What those last minutes of studying might do is actually overemphasize one area of the test that may or may not be on the test, and get one's thoughts mixed up and confused.
The night before the test, actually, in my opinion, is the one where you have to get the most sleep, not as the proverb indicates, cram everything into one's mind in one night. Testing, like an athletic competition, involves some performance, too, and the mind needs to be fresh and clear to be able to bend a little depending on what questions are thrown up. I find that I am able to spot "tricky" questions and traps easier with a fresh brain, so I try (sometimes in vain) to get 8 hours of sleep the night before. The best example of this was taking the LSAT in law school, where I was all set to take the test the night before, there's really nothing to memorize, it's all just being able to perform and get through the questions quickly on exam day, but my roommates had a big party on Friday night before the Saturday morning test and I didn't do as well as I hoped, which was the difference between USC Law School or a Top 14 law school (and probably a few $10,000 of scholarship money!). Urg.
This next test I'm taking is not as high stake, but it's no joke (장난아니야! in Korean) and I'd like to able to do well on my first computer science test and get the degree off to a good start, or at least have it be a gauge of whether I should stay in the program or not. Like the LSAT, I don't think last-minute cramming will do as much, it's more of reading a code and knowing what kind of mistakes were made and what violations of the code rules (called logic errors in computer-ese) and being able to correct them, or know what weird unexpected result they produce if output.
MJ and I are like college students, both having classes in different majors. MJ's method of last-minute cramming is to have me drive her to class while reading notes in the passenger seat for about the 20-minute drive down the I-10 West to Santa Monica College. She claims there were instant results cuz she got a good grade on her first exam, but then again her classes are more about rote memorization. So different strokes for different folks!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Nowadays, as a 31-year-old computer science student, my philosophy on last minute cramming has transformed. The morning of the test should be about consolidating one's knowledge into summary form, making sure one sees the big picture and is able to master the knowledge well enough to gather all the facts and organize them in one's mind, ready to be applied to any question that comes up, not just as a temporary stopgap. What those last minutes of studying might do is actually overemphasize one area of the test that may or may not be on the test, and get one's thoughts mixed up and confused.
The night before the test, actually, in my opinion, is the one where you have to get the most sleep, not as the proverb indicates, cram everything into one's mind in one night. Testing, like an athletic competition, involves some performance, too, and the mind needs to be fresh and clear to be able to bend a little depending on what questions are thrown up. I find that I am able to spot "tricky" questions and traps easier with a fresh brain, so I try (sometimes in vain) to get 8 hours of sleep the night before. The best example of this was taking the LSAT in law school, where I was all set to take the test the night before, there's really nothing to memorize, it's all just being able to perform and get through the questions quickly on exam day, but my roommates had a big party on Friday night before the Saturday morning test and I didn't do as well as I hoped, which was the difference between USC Law School or a Top 14 law school (and probably a few $10,000 of scholarship money!). Urg.
This next test I'm taking is not as high stake, but it's no joke (장난아니야! in Korean) and I'd like to able to do well on my first computer science test and get the degree off to a good start, or at least have it be a gauge of whether I should stay in the program or not. Like the LSAT, I don't think last-minute cramming will do as much, it's more of reading a code and knowing what kind of mistakes were made and what violations of the code rules (called logic errors in computer-ese) and being able to correct them, or know what weird unexpected result they produce if output.
MJ and I are like college students, both having classes in different majors. MJ's method of last-minute cramming is to have me drive her to class while reading notes in the passenger seat for about the 20-minute drive down the I-10 West to Santa Monica College. She claims there were instant results cuz she got a good grade on her first exam, but then again her classes are more about rote memorization. So different strokes for different folks!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Sunday, July 8, 2018
Lightning Round (번개가 둥글다) 闪电, 稲妻
I tried to translate lightning round into my 3-headed monster of languages, but "lightning" it turns out lightning is really wonky in all 3 languages and is one of the few words that don't share any real resemblance to the other languages. In Japanese it's like a "farm wife," Chinese is a "flash electricity," and I'm not advanced enough in Korean except to know it's nothing like the other two. Huh.
Anyway, the Lightning Round is a segment on Jim Cramer's podcast where viewers skip the long-winded questions and just ask him about individual stocks and his opinion on them, like Amzn (always a buy), RTN (struggling like all defense stocks but he thinks it's a buy), and any Chinese stock except BABA (all sell's according to him). It started many years ago but fitting for the times because everyone likes their information fast so they can move on to the next thing, like lightning. It's the trend of the future: quick, quick, quick, must have it NOW! (especially when you're drunk, so much so that Amazon has started cautioning customers not to online shop while drunk, where a lot of purchases are made when people have had too much to drink, as much a health risk to one's wallet as drunk driving is to one's actual health).
I was wondering why the other day the World Cup uses penalty kicks to decide the most crucial guys in the knockout stages, where they have to decide a winner but what if it's tied through regulation and then 30 minutes of overtime? It goes to penalty kicks, which seems like a difficult and rather heartbreaking way (for the losing team) of determining something they've worked so hard for. It hardly seems fair, letting what essentially is a coin flip and which has no real resemblance to the normal game of soccer determine the fate of a match. It's kind of bizarre really: it's like if basketball decided their tied games with a round of free-throw shooting, whichever team makes the most, or baseball decided their games with a home run derby. Even hockey OT in the playoffs (only in the playoffs, where games matter more) they go overtime until it's over, not penalty shots. It's using a rather small sample size that's susceptible to lucky bounces and doesn't always determine who the better team is. Better ways come to mind if soccer is worried about stretching the game out too long and somehow forcing a result, like making it 8 v. 8 or less instead of 11 v. 11, shorten the field, something.
But then I realized, penalty kicks are the perfect "lightning round" fix for the new generation! The new generation doesn't really care about fairness, or the best merit, or large sample sizes. It cares about deciding a result fast. The whole idea of a playoff system is less about fairness (the purest way as I've always said is just have an entire regular season and whoever wins the most wins) than about building excitement and marketing one game, and penalty kicks sure are exciting. Fans holding their breath for one kick, leads to great Twitter reactions and "get to your phone!" and highlights.
That, I think, is the secret to business, life, and sports in the 21st century as we go more and more to a lightning round society. People already depend on online retailers like Amazon to ship all their purchases, now it's even their food: people at my apartment building have delivery people show up all the time with food ordered online. In sports, the more "one-punch/ one strike" sports are getting more attention now than the traditional 3-hour sports: baseball seems like it's on the decline due to the length of its games, slow pace, basketball's a little too long, while fighting (UFC) at least for me is picking up pace, where the fights can be over immediately and never more than 25 minutes. I have a big problem with the fairness of UFC where one punch can derail 8 weeks of hard training camp getting ready for one fight, and that sample size of a few punches can determine a fighter's performance and ranking and status for months until his next fight (whereas baseball has thousands of pitches of sample size it can draw from to determine a player's performance. Soccer's penalty kicks are like UFC. My sport, trampoline dodgeball, has fit into that model by limiting each game to 3 minutes (great idea!)
Whoever best captures the market for quick entertainment, fast and furious lightning round action, in my opinion, will capture the market in the new century, fair or not.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Anyway, the Lightning Round is a segment on Jim Cramer's podcast where viewers skip the long-winded questions and just ask him about individual stocks and his opinion on them, like Amzn (always a buy), RTN (struggling like all defense stocks but he thinks it's a buy), and any Chinese stock except BABA (all sell's according to him). It started many years ago but fitting for the times because everyone likes their information fast so they can move on to the next thing, like lightning. It's the trend of the future: quick, quick, quick, must have it NOW! (especially when you're drunk, so much so that Amazon has started cautioning customers not to online shop while drunk, where a lot of purchases are made when people have had too much to drink, as much a health risk to one's wallet as drunk driving is to one's actual health).
I was wondering why the other day the World Cup uses penalty kicks to decide the most crucial guys in the knockout stages, where they have to decide a winner but what if it's tied through regulation and then 30 minutes of overtime? It goes to penalty kicks, which seems like a difficult and rather heartbreaking way (for the losing team) of determining something they've worked so hard for. It hardly seems fair, letting what essentially is a coin flip and which has no real resemblance to the normal game of soccer determine the fate of a match. It's kind of bizarre really: it's like if basketball decided their tied games with a round of free-throw shooting, whichever team makes the most, or baseball decided their games with a home run derby. Even hockey OT in the playoffs (only in the playoffs, where games matter more) they go overtime until it's over, not penalty shots. It's using a rather small sample size that's susceptible to lucky bounces and doesn't always determine who the better team is. Better ways come to mind if soccer is worried about stretching the game out too long and somehow forcing a result, like making it 8 v. 8 or less instead of 11 v. 11, shorten the field, something.
But then I realized, penalty kicks are the perfect "lightning round" fix for the new generation! The new generation doesn't really care about fairness, or the best merit, or large sample sizes. It cares about deciding a result fast. The whole idea of a playoff system is less about fairness (the purest way as I've always said is just have an entire regular season and whoever wins the most wins) than about building excitement and marketing one game, and penalty kicks sure are exciting. Fans holding their breath for one kick, leads to great Twitter reactions and "get to your phone!" and highlights.
That, I think, is the secret to business, life, and sports in the 21st century as we go more and more to a lightning round society. People already depend on online retailers like Amazon to ship all their purchases, now it's even their food: people at my apartment building have delivery people show up all the time with food ordered online. In sports, the more "one-punch/ one strike" sports are getting more attention now than the traditional 3-hour sports: baseball seems like it's on the decline due to the length of its games, slow pace, basketball's a little too long, while fighting (UFC) at least for me is picking up pace, where the fights can be over immediately and never more than 25 minutes. I have a big problem with the fairness of UFC where one punch can derail 8 weeks of hard training camp getting ready for one fight, and that sample size of a few punches can determine a fighter's performance and ranking and status for months until his next fight (whereas baseball has thousands of pitches of sample size it can draw from to determine a player's performance. Soccer's penalty kicks are like UFC. My sport, trampoline dodgeball, has fit into that model by limiting each game to 3 minutes (great idea!)
Whoever best captures the market for quick entertainment, fast and furious lightning round action, in my opinion, will capture the market in the new century, fair or not.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Monday, July 2, 2018
Computer Science (컴퓨터 과학) (计算机科学) (コンピュータサイエンス)
I went to delete my last sentence and suddenly felt apprehensive about hitting the backspace button on my laptop because I've recently started taking a computer science course and using backspace is not conducive to writing a computer program! It's like electric shock therapy, every time I click backspace I make a mistake and have to redo what I just did.
Otherwise though, the online computer science second baccalaureate program at Oregon State University has been smooth sailing so far (I'm a week into the program so who knows what I'll think in a couple months, plus I'm only taking one 4-credit class this quarter, and the most basic class at that so it'll definitely get harder) and I haven't lost my nerve, gotten hopelessly confused, or broke out in tears yet! It's an online course, so I can listen to the lectures, read the materials, and do the assignments pretty much anytime I want, and still go to work. The whole curriculum is kind of designed for people like me, who have a job and another career but want to get another degree in computer science on the side. Why computer science? I feel like I need to improve myself in case this whole law thing doesn't work out, and there are career paths in the intersection between law and computer science (patents, intellectual property come to mind) as well as computer science jobs in it of themselves. I'm following my still-developing job market playbook (2nd edition, published 2011) of following supply and demand: there seem to be a large supply of jobs requiring a technical degree like computer science, I hope to satisfy that demand. More importantly, I do think I'm improving myself and learning something new to further gain an advantage for the next 30 years or so of working (man, that sounds like a long time).
When I was in college and law school, I never really thought about switching out careers or changing my major or quitting altogether because it was just the thing to do, go to college, get a degree, get a job. I was too naive to make an informed decision and just went along with it, figuring it'd pay off someday. There were times 1L of law school when I toyed with the idea that law really wasn't for me, but I brushed those off and powered through figuring that there would be a beaucoup-salary job waiting for me at the end of the rainbow. Now that I have much higher opportunity costs, though, with a job and other responsibilities as an adult, it's much more of a gamble for me to invest in a degree that I might not need or might not be able to complete, but nothing worth getting is easy. Computer science is notoriously one of the hardest degrees to get for undergrad, and for those reasons I like many others shied away from it, but that makes getting one all the more valuable. I hope to learn a lot about functions, if else statements, programming, and this whole other world I've never been that interested in but know that I should in order to keep up with the times.
Now back to loops, if-else statements, variables, module operators, linux servers, and a bunch of stuff I'd never heard of!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Otherwise though, the online computer science second baccalaureate program at Oregon State University has been smooth sailing so far (I'm a week into the program so who knows what I'll think in a couple months, plus I'm only taking one 4-credit class this quarter, and the most basic class at that so it'll definitely get harder) and I haven't lost my nerve, gotten hopelessly confused, or broke out in tears yet! It's an online course, so I can listen to the lectures, read the materials, and do the assignments pretty much anytime I want, and still go to work. The whole curriculum is kind of designed for people like me, who have a job and another career but want to get another degree in computer science on the side. Why computer science? I feel like I need to improve myself in case this whole law thing doesn't work out, and there are career paths in the intersection between law and computer science (patents, intellectual property come to mind) as well as computer science jobs in it of themselves. I'm following my still-developing job market playbook (2nd edition, published 2011) of following supply and demand: there seem to be a large supply of jobs requiring a technical degree like computer science, I hope to satisfy that demand. More importantly, I do think I'm improving myself and learning something new to further gain an advantage for the next 30 years or so of working (man, that sounds like a long time).
When I was in college and law school, I never really thought about switching out careers or changing my major or quitting altogether because it was just the thing to do, go to college, get a degree, get a job. I was too naive to make an informed decision and just went along with it, figuring it'd pay off someday. There were times 1L of law school when I toyed with the idea that law really wasn't for me, but I brushed those off and powered through figuring that there would be a beaucoup-salary job waiting for me at the end of the rainbow. Now that I have much higher opportunity costs, though, with a job and other responsibilities as an adult, it's much more of a gamble for me to invest in a degree that I might not need or might not be able to complete, but nothing worth getting is easy. Computer science is notoriously one of the hardest degrees to get for undergrad, and for those reasons I like many others shied away from it, but that makes getting one all the more valuable. I hope to learn a lot about functions, if else statements, programming, and this whole other world I've never been that interested in but know that I should in order to keep up with the times.
Now back to loops, if-else statements, variables, module operators, linux servers, and a bunch of stuff I'd never heard of!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
I'm not Prince Shotoku! (聖徳太子)
This past Sunday despite being super-busy with other things in my life (known as 猫の手も借りたい, or so busy that I could even borrow the paw of a cat to help) (starting a computer science program!), have a job, getting ready for UDC (trampoline dodgeball championship in Chicago!) I volunteered with MJ at a conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center to be a translator for conference attendees. I was Mandarin, MJ was Korean. It was very different than I expected, being a translator at this event because it's not what I also envisioned a translator to be, like the N. Korean translator for Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. I expected to only casually use my abilities and greet some customers once in a while, give them directions to certain places in Chinese, engage in some small talk about where they were from, direct them to the restroom, help them ask a question to someone more senior them me.
The reality is shocking sometimes, and I naively thought for some reason there wouldn't be a lot of Mandarin-speaking people, maybe because in my daily life cycle I deal with only a few people, and definitely not that many Mandarin speakers. Turns out there a LOT of Mandarin speakers in the world, and thousands of them gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Sunday; I felt like I spoke to every single one. I probably met more people and had more conversations (albeit) brief than I do in a week or 2 weeks in my normal life. I was helping people get registered in a rather difficult registration process, which required me being a problem solver most of the time more than just a translator, as the process was not an intuitive one and people would often run into problems, and I became pretty much customer service, and multilingual customer service at that. Because of the nature of lining up waiting for the registration process, I was subjected to many people in line coming to talk to me because I wore a "I speak Mandarin" t-shirt (mandated by the company) which was like wearing a "I am a rotten banana" t-shirt in our home for fruit flies to descend upon. It was a literal verbal assault of questions specific to each person, and I had to deal with each one, and quickly because people were impatient. It reflected a cultural difference between Chinese people and Americans: Chinese people are impatient, don't wait for you to finish your conversation with other people before butting in, and feel free to tap/ touch you to get your attention at any time, like they're the most important person in the world. Many times I wanted to yell at them, "I'm not Prince Shotoku! (Prince Shotoku is a Japanese historical figure, a shrewd politician who was said to be able to listen to 10 people talk at the same time, and remember the contents of each conversation. In modern times Japanese people say they're not Prince Shotoku if too many people are trying to talk to them at once). Not necessarily blaming Chinese people because that's the culture they were brought up in, but it seems like common sense to me: wait your turn, I have to finish my conversation with the other person before I get to you, I can't finish that prior conversation if you're constantly butting in trying to get my attention about your own problem. It was very very annoying, and coupled with the fact I had to be translating conversations to relay them to English speakers, made it that much difficult and my head hurt that much more. I often was talking so much I'd forget which language I was speaking and start speaking the wrong language to the wrong type of speaker! They just gave me a blank look before I had to start over.
*Another cultural difference, maybe specific to Chinese people who attended this conference: they seemed to be pushy with no sense of asking nicely, no "lip service" or "cushioning" questions with a smile or anything to round off the edges a little.
Another thing about a translator is having to break bad news to other people, or show disagreement, or basically anything negative. That's not my forte, and probably not anyone's forte, having to give them the bad news and not have them kill the messenger. It's why doctors probably don't like telling patients about a disease, now I know how they feel. Many times the customer would be upset that the convention had sold out and they couldn't register anymore, even though they flew halfway around the world from China to come to L.A. for this specific event. I felt bad too, but the organizers of the event didn't offer any suggestions, so I had to be creative and try to pacify the angry customers. That was not easy, and I don't relish doing it again. Translators have to bear the brunt of the emotion, being at the surface level of the words and understand that some people are going to be upset. I just wish I didn't need to be customer service and relay back the customer's upset message, even though I knew it was a lost cause, I had to relay the message anyway with the responsibility of getting the customer's message across.
It wasn't easy being Prince Shotoku, and it's not being a translator. Listening to people and then talking for people was pretty exhausting, and I was really really tired by the end of the day.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
The reality is shocking sometimes, and I naively thought for some reason there wouldn't be a lot of Mandarin-speaking people, maybe because in my daily life cycle I deal with only a few people, and definitely not that many Mandarin speakers. Turns out there a LOT of Mandarin speakers in the world, and thousands of them gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Sunday; I felt like I spoke to every single one. I probably met more people and had more conversations (albeit) brief than I do in a week or 2 weeks in my normal life. I was helping people get registered in a rather difficult registration process, which required me being a problem solver most of the time more than just a translator, as the process was not an intuitive one and people would often run into problems, and I became pretty much customer service, and multilingual customer service at that. Because of the nature of lining up waiting for the registration process, I was subjected to many people in line coming to talk to me because I wore a "I speak Mandarin" t-shirt (mandated by the company) which was like wearing a "I am a rotten banana" t-shirt in our home for fruit flies to descend upon. It was a literal verbal assault of questions specific to each person, and I had to deal with each one, and quickly because people were impatient. It reflected a cultural difference between Chinese people and Americans: Chinese people are impatient, don't wait for you to finish your conversation with other people before butting in, and feel free to tap/ touch you to get your attention at any time, like they're the most important person in the world. Many times I wanted to yell at them, "I'm not Prince Shotoku! (Prince Shotoku is a Japanese historical figure, a shrewd politician who was said to be able to listen to 10 people talk at the same time, and remember the contents of each conversation. In modern times Japanese people say they're not Prince Shotoku if too many people are trying to talk to them at once). Not necessarily blaming Chinese people because that's the culture they were brought up in, but it seems like common sense to me: wait your turn, I have to finish my conversation with the other person before I get to you, I can't finish that prior conversation if you're constantly butting in trying to get my attention about your own problem. It was very very annoying, and coupled with the fact I had to be translating conversations to relay them to English speakers, made it that much difficult and my head hurt that much more. I often was talking so much I'd forget which language I was speaking and start speaking the wrong language to the wrong type of speaker! They just gave me a blank look before I had to start over.
*Another cultural difference, maybe specific to Chinese people who attended this conference: they seemed to be pushy with no sense of asking nicely, no "lip service" or "cushioning" questions with a smile or anything to round off the edges a little.
Another thing about a translator is having to break bad news to other people, or show disagreement, or basically anything negative. That's not my forte, and probably not anyone's forte, having to give them the bad news and not have them kill the messenger. It's why doctors probably don't like telling patients about a disease, now I know how they feel. Many times the customer would be upset that the convention had sold out and they couldn't register anymore, even though they flew halfway around the world from China to come to L.A. for this specific event. I felt bad too, but the organizers of the event didn't offer any suggestions, so I had to be creative and try to pacify the angry customers. That was not easy, and I don't relish doing it again. Translators have to bear the brunt of the emotion, being at the surface level of the words and understand that some people are going to be upset. I just wish I didn't need to be customer service and relay back the customer's upset message, even though I knew it was a lost cause, I had to relay the message anyway with the responsibility of getting the customer's message across.
It wasn't easy being Prince Shotoku, and it's not being a translator. Listening to people and then talking for people was pretty exhausting, and I was really really tired by the end of the day.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Saturday, June 23, 2018
World Cup (월드컵)
No USA? No problem! in downtown Los Angeles today as "Viva La Mexico" was out in force when Mexico took on South Korea in the second game of group play in the World Cup. I was rooting for S. Korea, but alas Mexico has a really strong team this year, having already beaten Germany. Many U.S. supporters have (somewhat controversially) backed team Mexico this World Cup, and that might not be a bad way to go so far.
There's a lot of stuff I wish could be improved about the World Cup, like the officiating, the constant faking injuries and trying to fool the referees (where's the dodgeball sportsmanship quality of taking your own outs?) and the fact one goal (or one penalty in the penalty box) can determine so much of a team's fate that they've worked so hard for, but there's a lot of stuff to love about the world cup. It's a global gathering of sports enthusiasts and a way for the world to stop and bond over something non-political and non-violent, like wars or political tensions, just athletics. So many fans around the world engage in the 4-year tradition of drinking at bars and rooting for their own country. I also love the crowd reactions of enthusiastic fans, dressed to the teeth in their nation's colors with face paint and colorful accessories, reacting more than the players and coaches to a near-miss on goal or something.
Another World-cup like event this week was the "clash" between President Trump of the US and Kim Jung Un of North Korea, a historic event in Singapore where the two leaders met. What I was more interested in, though, was the interpreter who was tasked with doing the translation between the 2 leaders, as Trump doesn't speak Korean and Kim Jung Un doesn't speak much English. A lot of power (and responsibility) in the translator's hands, especially to get the tone of the conversation right and select the right words to get across the correct meaning of what each leader wants to get across. I've mentioned before, it's not easy to get it perfect, and this translator named Yun Hyang Lee had a pretty tough job. She certainly had the qualifications for it, getting a masters in translation and interpretation and also a PhD from University of Geneva. I didn't even know there were such higher education programs! I wonder what happens for those at those programs, certainly you can become fluent and even native-level without having to go to school, but the degree carries with it more weight I think and suggests a more formal education on getting the translating right.
That'd be one of my dream careers, if the whole A.I. taking over all human jobs thing wasn't happening. Using my ability in multiple languages to work in international affairs at the highest stage. I bet there's a lot of pressure to get it right and say it quickly, especially simultaneous interpretation, but I'd thoroughly enjoy it. I could even do a conference meeting with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean! (Although, I think it's probably best that most interpreters stick with 2 languages that they know the best). It's very very hard to be fully native-level in even 2 languages and catch up with all the evolutions of the language and new words, each language is its own world. But with the translation power I'd wish to help world leaders and citizens (especially in Asian where my language studies are focused) understand each other's culture and not distrust each other so much, understand that there's good people (and bad people) in every country
Alas, as in the World Cup where the referee communicates to both teams in a game in the same language (English), there's probably not that much need for that many translators, and you have to be pretty established with credentials like Ms. Yun Hang Lee to get the very top translation gig in the world (working for President of the United States).
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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