To Be Fair to Tantai Jin

In my last post I was a little unfair to Tantai Jin, the male protagonist in Till the End of the Moon. SPOILER ALERT - It is only when the female protagonist Ye Xiwu is about to die that he learns that he is the Demon Fetus, prior to that he thinks he is just a mere human with some cultivation skills. 

Ye Xiwu knew he was the Demon Fetus because she was sent back from 500 years in the future to kill him & stop him from becoming the Devil Lord who is annihilating the Immortal Realm & the Human Realm during her actual time period & who is so powerful that he is unstoppable. 

Before she is sent back in time, however, she learns that there is an evil bone embedded somewhere in Tantai Jin's body & she must find it & remove it before she kills him or he will automatically become the Devil Lord & annihilate the world even earlier! Unfortunately, Ye Xiwu is not told how to remove the evil bone or where it is located; she must figure that out herself. 

When she lands in that earlier time, she discovers that Tantai Jin is just a human who is being mercilessly bullied because he is a 20-something who has been a hostage prince since he was 6 years old. Oh, yeah, & she is also married to him! Although she is trying to kill him, she also protects him to prevent him from being killed before she can remove the evil bone. Talk about a complicated relationship!

Some of Tantai Jin's behaviors seem to me to be on the autism spectrum. The main one being that he cannot feel human emotions, supposedly because of the evil bone. But to try to make people like him, he imitates a young prince that he admires & who was his only friend. I know this is a behavior of people with autism because Kai told me that when he was younger he did not have a clue how to act in new situations so he would imitate the people around him. I told him it was a good thing none of his friends were psychopaths or sociopaths!

Speaking of psychopaths, Ye Xiwu initially wonders whether Tantai Jin is a psychopath because of the lack of emotion. After a while, however, she leans towards believing since he was bullied if she is nice to him she can prevent him from becoming the Devil Lord. I think she goes in this direction because she observes him being constantly bullied but finds that he holds no grudges & does not seek to get revenge on the bullies. He remains calm & serene in spite of everything he must endure as a hostage prince.

By the way, the 1st half hour of Episode 1 was so boring, I almost stopped there. I am glad I did not because I enjoyed it once the pace picked up & a real story line kicked in beyond just blowing things up & killing other beings. And as usual, as I was watching Episode 28 after Ye Xiwu dies & Tantai Jin descends in to madness, I was thinking there's got to be more to this story because there are 12 & 1/2 episodes left! SPOILER ALERT - There was; essentially they go through 4 lifetimes together in 3 different realms. It ends with a 495-year long pregnancy! (Or maybe Immortals have the ability to induce embryonic diapause at will. Which is more plausible, because if you are an Immortal you would likely be able to do something to avoid having morning sickness for that long!)

The window for Episode 48 of the eruption of Kīlauea has been revised. It is now expected to occur some time between the 23rd & the 25th.

OMG!

I was watching an episode of Love of Nirvana tonight & started to read the Chinese subtitle & I recognized the Hanzi character for "water"! (Which is 水.) A quick glance at the English subtitle confirmed that "water" was one of the words! I can't believe I could remember that after only 3 days of starting the Mandarin course on Duolingo! I am trying to do at least 1 Mandarin lesson a day, while doing about a half hour of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi; I want to retain what I have learned while waiting for Duolingo to develop more ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi lessons. (FYI I start my day with Duolingo when I get up in the morning at around 6 while lying in bed.)

I am truly amazed at the neuroplasticity of the human brain! If you had asked me when I started the Mandarin lessons how long I thought I would have to practice to be able to start retaining the Hanzi characters, I would have said at least a month. Or more! But 3 days? I can't believe my brain was able to do that. (I have also figured out how to add the Pinyin keyboard to my Mac so I can incorporate the Hanzi characters into these posts. Kinda like how I figured out how to incorporate the ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi keyboard. But that was kinda easy to figure out since I have been playing around with computers for about 40 years.) 

Today was the Celebration of Life for Aunty Doris; it was a wonderful event. I got to meet more cousins & their significant others; it was Kellie's kids & their partners. And also great-granddaughter Leila! Most of the others in attendance were Aunty Doris' students & friends from the senior center.

This is only the desserts!

At the celebration, the person who led the prayer to bless the food & event, talked about grief & love. As I listened to him I realized that the expression of grief by Tantai Jin in Till the End of the Moon showed his deep love for his wife Ye Xiwu who sacrificed herself so he could stay alive. I am not an emotional person & had not previously made that connection while watching it earlier this month even though it did make me cry. (A rare thing for me.) If you don't like watching gut-wrenching scenes, avoid the 2nd half of Episode 28. 

SPOILER ALERT - Tantai Jin becomes so grief-stricken he has a mental health crisis. He lays down next to Ye Xiwu & starts a fire in the memorial hall to create a funeral pyre. Even though I am tearing up, I am thinking, Wait a minute, you're on a foot-thick block of ice. The fire will have to 1st melt the ice, then evaporate the water from the melted ice before it can incinerate your body. And, oh yeah, you are the Demon Fetus who will become the Devil Lord so fire is not going to do anything at all to you! Did you not take the How to Be a Devil 101 course? And do you not remember that part where your Master taught you about thermodynamics? (Which is why you can boil water in a paper cup over an open fire.) FYI This is on the "Watch Again OK" list even though it uses Hollywood physics. Because swords, horses, martial arts...

The window for Episode 48 of the eruption at Kīlauea is some time between the 22nd & the 26th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e hoa hānau Scott! 

Learning Hanzi

Duolingo wasted no time in getting to teaching Hanzi. I am on the 2nd lesson & it is already making me trace the Hanzi strokes! I now know how to write "water". But don't ask me to pronounce it. I'm pretty sure I am pronouncing it wrong! In Pinyin it is spelled "shui" with a caron over the "i", however, I have not yet figured out how to get to a keyboard that contains the caron.

The window for the Episode #48 at Kilauea remains between the 22nd & the 25th.

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Jessie, Neil, Bill, & Susan! 

Duolingo Mandarin

I have gone as far as I can in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi on Duolingo & reached Level 25 out of a potential 160 levels (about 15% of the way to fluency). I've been here for about 2 months now.

Since I have reached that point in my ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, I have decide to learn Mandarin since I am watching Chinese TV series from Mainland China where the official language is Mandarin. After about 6 months of watching, I have already picked up 4 words that I am using as commands with Moʻo; I guess I can now say she is somewhat bilingual! (I know several other words that are repeated a lot like "thank you", "Iʻm sorry", & "I must be punished, kill me!" Actually, I don't really know that last one, but they say it a lot in the historical dramas so I will eventually learn it.)

Apparently you get to Level 5 just by clicking on start button!

I am still going to continue the refresher lessons in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi on Duolingo because I do not want to lose what I have learned while I wait for Duolingo to release the next set of lessons in Hawaiian. (According to Duolingo I know 930 words in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi. I find that hard to believe because I can't really have a conversation with what I "know".) I would like to find an online source where I can find a bunch of movies or TV series in ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi so I can hear the language & try to interpret in my head & understand what they are saying. But I have been unable to find anything like Rakuten Viki for ʻOlelo Hawaiʻi; I guess that's part of why it is considered an endangered language.  

So I am turning towards Mandarin. It may never come in handy for having conversations but it will help exercise my brain! A lot ... The Mandarin section of Duolingo has 2 different writing systems, Pinyin & Hanzi. Pinyin uses English letters with diacritical marks over the vowels. Apparently there are 5 different tones for each vowel! I listened to the Pinyin pronunciations & realized perhaps when I talk to visitors at Lapakahi & try to explain the difference between a Hawaiian vowel with a macron & one without that they are feeling the same sense of, "It all sounds the same to me!" that I am feeling when listening to the Pinyin! Auē! 

The Hanzi system are the ideographic characters that are like what is called Kanji in Japanese. It is those beautiful calligraphy words with multiple brushstrokes. I'm not sure what I will need to do to begin to remember the Hanzi characters. My only hope is that the Kanji characters that I know from Japanese are used in Hanzi with similar brushstrokes; at least I will know the numbers for counting & my last name! Life must be really tough when you need to remember all the Hanzi & you are starting down the road to dementia!

Made a little progress with Mandarin!

The window for the next eruption episode for Kīlauea has now been narrowed to between the 22nd & the 25th. 

Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Gary & Jessica! 

Chinese TV Series Rabbit Hole

Last October, when I was returning from the Hawaiian Council annual meeting in Washington state, I was sitting on the plane near a woman who was watching a show on her tablet. It turned out to be the Chinese TV series, The Imperial Coroner; & even though I could not hear any dialogue it piqued my interest. I like crime & mystery type stories & the historical & cultural aspects also interest me. So when I got home, I Googled it. And thus started my journey down the rabbit hole.  

I think I like watching these type of things because of trying to figure out who the culprit is & whether the clues that they find or give are really based on science. (I do that with ones in English, too.) And in the historical genre ones, because of the swordplay, horses, & martial arts. This one had a little bit of everything plus a blossoming romance.

Screenshot from Rakuten Viki.

Since then I have also branched out in to watching some wuxia swordplay & some xianxia fantasy-oriented series. Most of the things I have been watching are from mainland China so they are in Mandarin with English & Simplified Chinese subtitles. I have watched a handful of Korean shows & a couple each from Hong Kong, Shanghai, & Taiwan. Nearly all of them are on Rakuten Viki. Here's what pops up when I click on the link on my desktop.

Maiden Holmes is the only one out of those above that I have watched.

Since starting the journey down that rabbit hole, I have also made a document to help me keep track of what I saw & whether I liked it & would watch it again. There are 4 categories on the list: Watch Again OK, Once Is Enough, Nope, & Viki Pass - Watch When Free. The Watch Again category is self-explanatory; but I have hyperlinked the actual 1st episode to the ones I really enjoyed (which is about 90% of them) to make rewatching easier. The Once Is Enough category is shows I enjoyed the 1st time around but don't have an overwhelming urge to see it again. However, if you come for a visit & want to see it, I will sit there & watch it with you. For the Nope category, if you want to watch those, I will let you watch it on your own; they were so painfully boring I could not even get through 2 or so episodes. For all of the ones I have watched, in the document I list the description of the series as indicated by the hosting site, the genres it covers, the main actors, when I watched it, & my very short description of it that is more meaningful to me. Like "phoenix sold as chicken" or "detective with anger management issues". These short phrases probably won't help you remember the series but they trigger a lot of memories for me; my brain seems to be wired a little differently.

It rained really hard for about 15 minutes at around 7:45 this evening. It was coming down so hard the rain was visible on all the security cameras. Usually it can only be seen on the North & East cameras because water is directed down in those areas. Rain coming down by the West & South cameras flows away from where the cameras are pointing; but the wind was blowing the large raindrops in all directions so they could be seen going by horizontally. The rain in the Front Yard camera just comes down through the leaves of the puakenikeni.

The next episode of the eruption at Kilauea is predicted to start some time between the 22nd & the 27th.

Well, gotta go! Need to watch the next episode of Love of Nirvana. [shameless cat vs Marquis] 

IASA #4-14

For EMFV final demo, Danie (R) shows Marielle how to roll out purple sweet potato gnocchi dough. 

 

IASA #4-13

Childrens' Day koinobori for sale at Kohala Jodo Mission.