Gung Hei Fat Choy!
January 28th 2009 -
It was Chinese New Year on Monday, in addition to being Australia Day, so of course it was an extra special day for Hong Kong Australians. Von and I spent much of the day with Von’s family eating excellent chinese food and watching Cantonese soap operas. I also saw “The Sound of Music” for the first time all the way through, on their ancient laserdisc player. A good day, but I made it a little stressful for myself by trying to memorise a couple of new year greetings. It’s traditional to exchange good wishes for each other, so I memorised:
Sun1 Tai2 Geen3 Hong1 – Good health
Maan6 See6 Sing3 Yee3 – Luck
Tshing1 Chun1 Suong6 Jiu3 – Beauty
Sum1 Suong5 See3 Sing6 – Ten thousand things as you desire
The numbers represent tone (which I think I have roughly correct): 1 is high level, 2 is mid rising to high, 3 is mid level, 4 is mid falling to low, 5 is low rising to mid, and 6 is low.
Anyway, I had a lot of trouble going from one phrase to the next, so it took me a couple of seconds of run-up to give my good wishes in Cantonese, which was quite frustrating, as the others stood around wondering why I was chewing on my lip and staring into space (specifically, the space to the upper left of my vision) muttering to myself.
Still, we were all happy that I managed to say the phrases (eventually), and hopefully next year I’ll start practicing a bit earlier, so they’ll be more second nature. The Cantonese soaps will hopefully have helped with that too – they’re great practice for picking out phrases that I’ve learned.
EDIT: Fixed some of the tones in the phrases.
Jimbo Says:
January 28th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Were you looking at the upper left because that’s where the HUD on your retina is? Hmm, now I’m picturing all my HUD dialogue with lines to indicate pitch and it’s starting to look a lot like Singstar. Or Guitar Hero: World Tour which is more manly.
admin Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I think the instinct to look up to the left is because of a HUD, yes. However, I can’t currently see it. I wonder whether that’s because it has somehow evolved away, or whether it’s still there, and I just need to look harder (or further to the upper left).
I bet it shows all kinds of cool stuff. Messages from the unconscious to the conscious self. Debugging display info. Mind you, it’s probably cluttered with pop-up alerts.
Iain Says:
January 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
You have to change the opacity of the font. But not too much – I blinded myself for a week.