1 August 2003 (3 Av 5763)
From Monday through Thursday I was in Matsuyama as I was invited to teach a four-day intensive course at Ehime University. Since this was the third time to be there, I felt quite at home in the city in general and at the university in particular. In the past two visits I taught on languages and cultures of the Jewish people, but this time I experimentally dealt with Esperanto as an international planned language. Although it was seventeen years since I first learned Esperanto, and I am more or less fluent in it, this was the first time to teach it.
I could not know in advance what students would come to this course, and I was even wondering if there would be any at all. Fortunately, 13 students turned up, but having heard in the first lesson that almost none of them had heard of Esperanto, and some of them even did not know that the course was on Esperanto, I started wondering what would become of the course. In spite of this worry, I can say, at least on the basis of the comments I asked them to write in the last lesson, that the course was more or less successful in that it could instigate them to take an interest in the phenomenon called international planned languages in general and Esperanto in particular.
I could reconfirm that teaching is the most efficient way of learning. So this has turned out to be a precious learning experience for me. Through preparing materials for the course and presenting aspects of international planned languages and Esperanto, including its history, culture, grammar and lexicon as well as possible criticisms against it and its benefits, to those who had no prior knowledge about them, I could reevaluate this unique experiment in the linguistic history of mankind more objectively.
8 August 2003 (10 Av 5763)
Multilingual computing on Windows seems to have come a long way. I have been using this proprietary operating system since the days of Windows 3.1. It was still nothing but a dream to be able to read and write English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Esperanto and Japanese - five languages I use most frequently - together on Windows. But starting with Windows 2000, it finally allows me to mix these languages even at the system level.
I used to be a good customer of Microsoft, using its operating systems but also applications for all the four main areas in which I rely on a computer: Internet Explorer for web browsing, Outlook Express for email, Word for word processing, and FrontPage for web authoring. As I became more and more aware of common web standards and subsequently open standards and open source, I started to find problems with these Microsoft problems in terms of standards compliance and stopped using them one by one. Now my reliance on Microsoft is none at the application level.
After some consultation with a very knowledgeable and helpful cyberpal of mine in the US I am now taking the next logical step of considering the possibility to switch from Windows to Linux, an open source operating system. I used to have some reservations about it in terms of multilingual support and the availability of software. Now that I have switched to crossplatform programs that are also available for Linux, I do not have any problem at least with the second area. Since I cannot spend my summer vacation in Israel this year as I used to in the past nine years, so I have relatively free time now, so I have decided to experiment with Linux especially to check its multilingual support. I cannot wait to receive the necessary software packages I have just ordered. If the experiment should turn out successful, I will eventually switch to Linux though I may continue to use Windows side by side at least for some time.
As a preparation for this voyage to electronic terra incognita, I have been reading online and offline materials about Linux these days, including books like The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond, Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution by Glyn Moody and Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds himself - the inventor of Linux. For the first time I am being exposed systematically to the philosophy of open source software in general and of Linux in particular and am extremely impressed with it. Even if the present experiment of mine with Linux should fail, I think (and hope) it will eventually become the operating system of choice not only for server computers but also for desktop computers. This will probably be a matter of time.
15 August 2003 (17 Av 5763)
Having prepared for the wedding of my notebook PC Vaio intensively for a couple of weeks, I finally had the honor of welcoming its new bride Red Hat Linux yesterday, for which I, the matchmaker, had paid a lot of dowry. Although the bridegroom lived with its first wife Windows without any serious problems, speaking many languages, I wanted him to try another, open source bride as polygamy is permitted in the marriage of PCs and operating systems.
Unfortunately, however, in spite of the efforts and expectations by their matchmaker, their marriage lasted less than two days, and the bridegroom had to divorce his second bride this afternoon. This had nothing to do with the jealousy of his first wife. From the very beginning of the wedding ceremony, also known as installation in the language of the bride and groom, the open source bride behaved so badly and unexpectedly that the groom mostly lost control of her. Even their matchmaker could not tame her.
After a lot of problems the wedding ceremony ended somehow, but during their honeymoon the groom found that the new bride was physically incompatible with him. She simply refused to recognize his display, so he was forced to remain in the small display of 800×600. There was simply no way to solve this incompatibility between them.
Worst of all, the bride turned out to be unable to speak Hebrew, which the groom speaks all the time. Somehow both the matchmaker and the groom had an impression that Hebrew was one of the many languages the bride would be able to speak, but it was a mistake. Since this was the most important condition for him, he was quick to decide to divorce her.
The bride could spent less than two days with her first groom and his first wife. She behaved badly even when she was divorced. She made a mess in the house of her ex-husband and his first wife, also known as the hard disk. Although this mess is not so serious as to disturb the family life of this couple, I as the matchmaker of the second wedding feel responsible for rebuilding this house by reformatting it and reinstalling everything.
22 August 2003 (24 Av 5763)
I used to spend one month in the City of David every August. Having visited there in mid-June to participate in a workshop on Jewish languages, I could not afford another trip there this month. My purse is not so healthy as to allow its owner to make two trips abroad in two months. One of the advantages of visiting the City of David in the summer is that I can meet a number of friends and colleagues of mine from other countries who also visit there now, to say nothing of local friends. The disadvantage is, of course, that flight tickets are more expensive in August than in any other month of the year. Weighing the advantages and disadvantage, I have decided to make it a rule to change the time of my annual "pilgrimage" to the City of David from the summer vacation to the spring vacation. This way I only pay half as much money as in the summer for the flight, and with the money I save I can probably afford to make another trip to Israel or the US to participate in one of the conferences that are held there every May or June.
So where and how am I spending time this August? Since the 8th of this month I have been staying at my parents' house in Akita. This is the first time in the past ten years that I come here in the summer though I do spend my winter vacation here every year. And this is probably the longest period of time I spend with my parents at least in the past fifteen years or so. This is a vacation par excellence. I am free from obligations and appointments. I spend most of my time doing what I wanted to do during the past semester but could not for lack of time. Before I came here, I was afraid that I might not get along with my parents for such a long time as I have been living alone for the past 22 years. Luckily, however, we seem to manage though we inevitably had some quarrels about trifles.
I am often tempted to have an illusion that everything remains the same as it used to be when I left here over 22 years ago. At least as far as I am concerned, I am still single and have no permanent job. My relatives, neighbors and ex-classmates have not changed much internally though they may look older now, and we still recognize each other. Most of the places I used to visit in my childhood are still recognizable and remind me of various memories of the days gone by.
Of course, I know that this is an illusion. There are at least two big differences. First of all, my grandmother is not with us any more physically. There are so many things that remind me of her not only at my parents' house where she also lived until her last day but also in the neighborhood, including mountains and rivers she used to take me in my childhood. I still feel as if she would come out of her room at any moment with her optimistic smile and voice. Secondly, I feel that I do not belong to my hometown any more, nor do I think I can get along here. As I spend more time here, the more problems I notice of living in a small town where everyone knows everyone else, today is like yesterday and tomorrow will be like today, and people are subjugated by old-fashioned customs that none of them likes or can change.
29 August 2003 (1 Elul 5763)
No one comes to this world ex nihilo. I owe my existence to my parents, and I respect them not only as my parents but also as human beings. But does this have to dictate that I should consider their house as my one and only "real house" all my life even after spending more time elsewhere, though I naturally have some emotional attachment to it?
When people around me in Japan ask me where my "real house" ('jikka' in Japanese) is or when I "return to my real house" ('jikka ni kaeru' in Japanese), almost all of them mean where my parents' house is and when I visit there. Although I understand what they mean, I feel uncomfortable with these expressions and cannot help asking them if they ask me where my parents live and when I visit them. Does this mean that in whatever house I live, it is unreal as long as it is not my parents'?
I am not just picking on what they say. Whenever I visit the place where my parents live and I was born, and whenever I recall my childhood there, I feel strongly that this way of considering one's parents' house as one's "real house" all one's life does more harm than good. It is a mentality that may take everyone's self-sacrifice for granted, hence makes no one happy.
For me the place where I now sleep and keep all the books I have collected from the four corners of the world in the past twenty years is my house, so as of now, the apartment where I live now in Kobe happens to be my house. But even it is neither "real" nor eternal but temporary. Actually, our existence itself in this world is temporary.