1 July 2005 (24 Sivan 5765)
"One has to love oneself in order to be loved by others." This is what I was told by a teacher of mine in Jerusalem when I was still in my early thirties and was not so happy with myself. It was only after the age of forty that I came to be reconciled with myself more or less and realize the validity of this universal truth. Even by simple analogy this must be evident: how can we expect others to like our research with which we ourselves are not satisfied?
Of course, to love yourself is not to be narcissistic but to accept yourself as you are, especially things that are not predetermined, hence cannot be changed at your own free will. Whether we like it or not, we have to live with ourselves all our lives, then it is healthier to accept ourselves positively. Actually, as far as I understand from a number of books on reincarnation, our souls choose our respective specific bodies in specific time and place to maximize the learning process in a specific reincarnation. This is another reason to (try to) love yourself.
Quite a few people seem to confuse "to be loved by others" with "not to be hated by others". At first sight they sound similar, but there is a huge difference between the two. According to my own experiences, a person who is trying not to be hated by others will never be truly loved by anyone, for any effort one makes so as not to be hated by anyone is based on one's lack of confidence in oneself.
This is what I have been telling someone who I thought was close to me, but she seems to prefer hypnotizing herself how miserable she is, thinking as if she were a heroine of some tragedy. She does not realize that this was she is making sure that her life will be miserable in her subjective terms and she will not be truly appreciated by anyone else. Such awakening must come from inside and not through conviction by others, however close they may be. Unfortunately, all I can do is to leave her alone, hoping that someday in the near future she will "wake up".
8 July 2005 (1 Tamuz 5765)
I spent all my free time this week translating some Internet-related manual from English into Japanese in order to earn some pocket money for my planned visit to Japan next month. The translation itself was quite easy as I am more or less familiar with the technical details of the content, but as is always the case with translation (and interpretation) it was a frustrating experience, though in a totally different sense this time.
Being a linguistic purist, I generally avoid making excessive and unnecessary use of foreign words, especially if they have not become part of the native vocabulary yet and there are native equivalents, though I refrain from being puristic ad absurdum at the same time, inventing words nobody else uses. Even in a language like Japanese that is highly receptive to foreign words for structural and cultural reasons, the area of computing seems unusual in that it often sounds more natural as Japanese to use English terms transcribed in katakana with phonetic adjustment than Sino-Japanese words that already exist or are newly coined (mostly calqued) ad hoc for the purpose. So the majority of computer-related terms in the above manual had to be simply transcribed instead of being translated, which is probably a natural phenomenon in present-day Japanese that draws no special attention of the majority of its native speakers. I cannot stand this kind of Japanese, so I prefer using software and reading computer-related books in English, though Japanese is my native language.
Actually, Japanese was deprived of its word-formational power twice in its history: first, after Chinese words infiltrated into Japanese in several periods, and second, after a massive influx of English words in the past century. The core native vocabulary of Japanese, probably in sharp contrast with other agglutinative languages like Turkish, has totally lost its productivity as formatives in coining new words; it is (almost?) totally impossible to express anything abstract with native Japanese words now. Words and even formatives borrowed from Chinese have assumed the role of abstract content words, and when the society changed and new lexical needs arose, new words could be formed quite productively from the existing ones. But even this word-formational power seems to have been lost, having been choked by English, and even purists, probably except for extremists, are left with no choice now but to use transcribed English words in order to sound natural.
15 July 2005 (8 Tamuz 5765)
In making a critical decision, e.g., in life, it may be important to make sure that it is as perfect, or internally consistent, as possible at some given time and place, but it seems even more important to guarantee its continuity even when it turns out to be internally inconsistent afterwards. To sacrifice continuity for perfection by changing one's decision every Monday and Thursday is the most foolish thing one can do.
Zamenhof was a genius not only in that he invented a language that seems very logical and consistent even in today's standards but also in that he prohibited the revision of his language after the initial period. We all know the fate of the "reformed" Esperantos, including Ido; they have mostly sunk into oblivion after a series of reforms for perfection.
Perhaps the existence of universal standards cannot be more important than for computers and the Internet today. HTML, and later XHTML, is a case of success, though it is abused not only by newbies but also by ignorant commercial web authors; there may be room for perfection but its continuity (i.e., backward compatibility) has not been sacrificed in its various versions so far. I think Microsoft Office is one of the worst programs every made not only because it is far from being perfect but mainly because it breaks its continuity on purpose, supposedly for commercial purposes, making backward incompatible versions and documents. I cannot be so enthusiastic about OpenOffice.org, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office, because its developers have not put enough emphasis upon the continuity of its format; to the best of my knowledge, they have changed the format at least three times, but nevertheless they have left some internal inconsistencies unfixed.
We can generally decide on one of the existing possibilities by a clear margin in the area of languages and computing, though so many uninformed netizens continue to use craps called Internet Explorer and Outlook Express instead of switching to far superior free alternatives such as Firefox and Thunderbird. But when it comes to critical issues in life, the alternatives have a very slim margin, hence the decision to choose one of them (and not to be sorry for it later) is often agonizing even after a fairly long period of contemplation. But it is important here too to continue one's decision once it is made. One can never reach one's destination if one changes it so frequently. Someone once told me very figuratively: one cannot cross a river with two boats.
22 July 2005 (15 Tamuz 5765)
Since I started to use my own computer in 1993, my PC life has been characterized by two things: constant quest for satisfactory multilingual support, especially Hebrew and Yiddish, and migration from Microsoft and other commercial products to open source (often crossplatform) software.
Multilingual computing has come a long way since the days of Windows 3.1, the first OS I used when I purchased my first PC in 1993. I was full of frustrations then with lack of multilingual support in the OS, especially because I could not use Yiddish-specific characters in Hebrew script, nor could I mix Hebrew and Japanese. I spent thousands of dollars to find at least temporary solutions at the application levels; none of the commercial programs I purchased before Windows 2000 is with me. It is only with the release of Windows 2000 that I could finally benefit from the kind of multilingual support on the OS level necessary for my specific linguistic needs.
The first major open source software I used must be OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office on the recommendation by a student of mine in 2001. Since then I have also switched to open source browser and mailer, Firefox and Thunderbird, from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express respectively, again on his recommendation. Most of the other applications I use most frequently are crossplatform with the exception of text editors; I still use commercial ones for Windows. And the only Microsoft product I use now is Windows itself (Windows XP Home).
It is therefore only natural to think of switching to or at least using Linux, the major open source OS, together with Windows, especially because its multilingual support is said to be enough for my needs. Actually I tried Red Hat Linux, one of the most popular distros of Linux, two years ago, but the experiment was a failure because of its lack of satisfactory multilingual support. Recently I happended to stumble upon a new distro called Ubuntu Linux. From the information available on its website and numerous positive reviews this distro seems worth trying, especially because the foundation that develops it sends its CDs (both installation and live CDs) at no charge. There is nothing I lose this time, unlike with Red Hat Linux, for which I paid a significant sum of money. I have just applied for the free CDs and cannot wait for their arrival.
29 July 2005 (22 Tamuz 5765)
There are a number of marked differences between Israeli and Japanese students, especially if they are undergraduate. One of them, about which I have been thinking these days, is the attitude to their scores probably due to the the difference in the relative value of specific marks they get on the one hand and in the importance attached to them on the other. In Japan, at least where I studied, 80% was considered a high mark, while in Israel points less than 90 out of 100 seem to be considered low. I wish I were wrong, but it often seems to me that for certain students here to get a high mark, preferably more than 90%, is the purpose itself of taking a course. The fact that they attach far more importance to their scores than their Japanese counterparts must be because their acceptance to a graduate school is mainly determined by their average score with no entrance examination unlike in Japan.
I do not remember asking any of my teachers why I got such and such a mark, nor do I think anyone does so in Japan, except for special cases. But here I have already learned that many of the students who get less than 90% in one of my courses contact me, asking why they received such a low mark ("low" even if it is more than 80%) and/or trying to raise it, often with the help of emotional words. When I find any mistake in my calculation, I of course correct it immediately. But if they themselves are responsible for their "low" marks, I do not give in from pedagogic considerations.
Although I consider myself a lenient teacher and love to give what little knowledge I have to any student who comes to me with intellectual thirst, I cannot be so lenient toward those who behave like spoiled children who do not take full responsibility for the outcome of their own deeds. I fear that I may spoil them further by accepting their self-pitying whine. I used to think that amae was a typically Japanese phenomenon, but I see that it is not so uncommon in Israel, either.