By the lake

Today is one of Patty's days to have some time at home alone. I went for a walk along the shore of Gui Lake. A Gui is a kind of Osmanthus tree.

You and me and the new world

Are you working to help build a new world? Please, tell me about it. Post a comment, or send me an email.

Cass Elliot

"New World Coming"

Photo by CBS Television
(eBay item photo front press release)
[Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Phil Lucas

"New Wind Blowing"

"There's a new wind blowing, calling me.
There's a new wind blowing, gonna set mankind free."

The 5th Dimension

"Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"

"Harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding ...
Mystic crystal revelation, and the mind's true liberation ..."

By Soul City Records. (eBay item photo front photo back) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Last days of semester at GLIT

Patty is teaching this year at the Guilin Institute of Tourism, 15 or 20 km south of Guilin. Here's a picture I took of a little park on the campus:

This last week Patty gave final exams to her students in oral English. The final for her students in written English will be January 6. After she turns in the grades, she'll be on vacation until February, for the Spring Festival.

In the last week we watched a few movies that we bought or rented from iTunes. Today we'll do our Saturday on the Town, lunch at Rosemary Cafe, then shopping around.

I'm still playing with my Diabolo every day, in front of our apartment. It's turning out to be good exercise for me. Before we came to China I was working in the park around the state capitol building, raking leaves, cutting grass, planting flowers, digging holes for trees. Since we came to China my only exercise has been walking to and from bus stops, and some places near where we live, never more than fifteen minutes each way.

Danio and Lillian finishing their apartment

Danio and Lillian and their daughter, and Lillian's parents, are staying with us for a few weeks while they finish the work on the apartment they bought here a few years ago. It's a little crowded here! They plan to move here from Shanghai, in about four years.

Learning Chinese

WARNING

One of the comments to this post contains a link to a marketing affiliate Web site promoting Rocket Chinese. Affiliate marketing floods search engines with links to reviews and testimonies about a product, posted by people who are paid for promoting it, which come to the top of search results. To learn the truth about an affiliate marketing product, it is not enough to follow the first few links that come up in a search. If you don't already know of a reliable place to look for reviews, you may need to look through several pages of search results.

In this case I went through several pages of search results without finding any reviews of Rocket Chinese that were not posted by affiliates. I tried searching for language learning software, without any name, and I found this:

How to Choose Language Learning Software

I'm using Rosetta Stone language-learning software to help me learn Chinese. It's an immersion method, no English, only Chinese, with pictures.

Another way I'm trying to learn Chinese is by reading Tintin books in Chinese, using my electronic dictionary to look up the words. In the beginning, it sometimes took me days to find one word. Chinese characters are not phonetic. Most words are composed of one or two characters which may or may not have clues about how they are spoken. Here's a fictitious example:

#@

Those are not Chinese characters. I'm using them to represent a character that sounds like something between "dzai" and "tsai" and one that sounds something like "jien." The "jien" is pronounced with the tip of the tongue at the bottom of the lower teeth, and the middle of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Both sounds are spoken with a falling pitch, like at the end of an English sentence. That means "goodbye." If the same sounds are spoken with a rising pitch, like at the end of an English question, or with a steady high pitch, or with a pitch that falls then rises, they might be written with entirely different characters, and mean something entirely different.

The easiest way I've learned to find Chinese words in my electronic dictionary is with the CKC system. The number keys represent various combinations of strokes. For example "1" represents a single stroke from left to right, horizontally or diagonally upwards, and "4" represents any combination which looks more or less like an x, a plus sign, or two plus signs in a row. I enter codes for the four corners of the character, then choose from a list of possible characters. In the beginning sometimes it took days for me to find the right combination for some characters.

Some time ago the government of the PRC (People's Republic of China) adopted a phonetic system for writing Chinese words, which in English we call "Pinyin." In Pinyin, the word above would be written "zai jian." To show clearly how it's pronounced, it would be written with accent marks over the vowels.

In Rosetta Stone, the words can be displayed in Chinese characters, in Pinyin, or both. First I went through the lessons using both, to help me with the pronunciation. Now I'm going through them again, using only Chinese characters, to help me learn the characters.

Rediscovering Baha'u'llah

I was thinking I should write more in this blog, in case someone reads it some day, but I didn't know what to write about. Now I have a long list of things to write about from my previous post.

I was feeling something missing in my life, that I associate with turning to Baha'u'llah. I don't know how to describe it, except with some phrases from His writings, like "'the shade of Thy protecting wings," "the sweet-scented streams of Thine eternity," "the crystal springs of Thy love," "the shadow of Thine everlasting providence," "the meadows of Thy nearness," "the fragrant breezes of Thy joy," "the heights of the paradise of Thy reality," "the melodies of the dove of Thy oneness," "the garden of Thine immortality," "the Day-Star of Thy guidance."

So, maybe it would help me to memorize that prayer?

I've felt this way before, and I always imagine that I need to get to know Baha'u'llah better. Once before I thought of it in terms of starting all over, as if I had just now discovered Baha'u'llah. This time, thinking about how I might rediscover Him, I thought of studying and practicing passages from His writings addressed to the "people of Baha." I started with The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, because I haven't read it yet. The passage I'm studying now, from a letter to Napoleon III, is:

"O people of Baha! Subdue the citadels of men's hearts with the swords of wisdom and of utterance."

(Baha'u'llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 76)

After reading the whole letter, and pondering that passage again, I thought it might help me to memorize some more of Baha'u'llah's writings, so I chose this from Ruhi Book 6:

"Say: To assist Me is to teach My Cause. This is a theme with which whole Tablets are laden. This is the changeless commandment of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future."

(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 196)

That's from Tablet to Siyyid Mihdiy-i-Dahaji. I read the whole tablet, and found this:

"From the texts of the wondrous, heavenly Scriptures they should memorize phrases and passages bearing on various instances, so that in the course of their speech they may recite divine verses whenever the occasion demandeth it, inasmuch as these holy verses are the most potent elixir, the greatest and mightiest talisman."

(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 198)

Exactly what I was thinking!

I also noticed this:

"In such manner hath the Kitáb-i-Aqdas been revealed that it attracteth and embraceth all the divinely appointed Dispensations. Blessed those who peruse it. Blessed those who apprehend it. Blessed those who meditate upon it. Blessed those who ponder its meaning. So vast is its range that it hath encompassed all men ere their recognition of it. Ere long will its sovereign power, its pervasive influence and the greatness of its might be manifested on earth. Verily, thy God is the All-Knowing, the All-Informed."

(Baha'u'llah, Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 199)

Now I'm going through the Aqdas, memorizing each paragraph so I can ponder it all day long for a few days.

List of things to do now & later

* Things to do now
This list is actually a few weeks old. Some of this has been crossed off, but I'm posting it all here.

1. Rediscovering Baha'u'llah.
2. Rosetta Stone Chinese lessons.
3. Call someone in the US.
4. Call Charlotte.
5. Blog & email.
- Bard
- Fred
- Baha'i Studies project
- Erin
6. Dishes, laundry, sweep, mop.
7. Hold Aeryn
8. Online with Patty.
- VACU
- BofA <-> VACU
9. Help with meals.
10. Unpacking and organizing.
11. Insurance form.
12. Ubuntu.
13. Put stuff away from the supermarket.
14. Tintin.
15. Read heater remote.
16. Budget and expenses.
17. Fix sink stopper.
18. Make books.
19. English.
20. Report stolen phone.
21. Read staples receipt.
22. TV picture too dark.
23. See what's in the suitcases.

* Things to do later
1. Reschedule flights <= 7/29/2008. 2. Hotsync Palm. 3. CCB -> BofA.
4. Sometime list.
5. Financial file for Patty.
6. Verizon Wireless.

Comments

I just discovered that there were some restrictions on comments in this blog. Sorry! I've fixed that now.

Things to do

I also defrosted the refrigerator.

List of things to do today

At home
1. Call Charlotte.
2. Dishes
3. Sweep and mop.

In Qibao
1. Look for shoelaces, a transformer for the DS, and a street map of Qingpu.
2. Buy some more cereal.

At the Olympic Garden entrance
1. Get a Bank of China remittance form to apply for a demand draft for the $18 for the FBI background check.
2. Buy some more milk.