Phew!

Prologue: Lethargy sets in quicker than expected and the weather here had been pretty unpredictable. Dark cloud is forming again in the sky.

With the click of the "save" button, the first round of the Chinese -Malay proverb translation job is FINALLY completed. Wow, 15 days gone in a snap! Currently in PHS 1, on the 1st floor occupying the cubicle seats right outside the koleksi khas section. The task of the day: identifying and keying unknown chinese character and finalising the data table.

Introducing the dictionary involved for the task of the day: 辞海, (Pinyin: ci3 hai3 Sea of Vocabulary? LOL Sounds funny when translated literally) the benchmark and most comprehensive Dictionary of Chinese Language, written in Simplified Script but also supplies the equivalent/entry Tranditional Script. The entry of each words is supplied with the Pinyin pronouciation, short etimology and usage in modern and classical chinese literature context as well as various collocation/phrases of the words. Searching a word in the dictionary however was very tricky which is further complicated by the nature of written chinese itself (especially determination of radicals (编按：应该没错吧，部首的英文配对就是Radicals.） and number of strokes 笔画). It was arranged according to radicals and alternative search method were also given in the form of wordlist arranged according to the total number of strokes. Not to mention that the size of the word are a tad bit small for me so identifying the word that I need to find can be very tedious with hit or miss here and there.

To add in the complication, all the entries are divided into 3 part and as you can see from this pic, these 3 book are DAMN THICK (and the one I am holding is only the first part). Due to my lack of experience using 辞海, (in fact, this is only the 2nd time that I actually used it intensively for my two years in USM, first time during building etimology of my name) I had to resort too using the alternative way that is searching through the number of strokes but it is still quite tedious because you need to know how to count the strokes in a word and any miscalculation equals to wasted time. After identifying which pages the word appeared, I need to flip through searching for the page number in different book and this can be quite tiring for our arm. The fact that I had to carry these three GODDAMN HEAVY dictionary all the way from the dictionary section on the other side of library to my cubicle is not helping.

After rounds of flipping through dictionary and keying in the word, it was a relieved that the whole thing is finally completed! But still there are a couple of uncertainties left regarding the label of translation method and definitely pray that there will be no more changes and confusion happen in the last minute. I think I can do one more round just to check through it...

Next task of the day: Completing my student exchange application form. (MY, it has been dragging on and on for way too long! And oh, whatabout the scholarship? IO, please answer.)

Looking through UVic's timetable website to look through the courses available for Spring term (Jan to Apr) and choosing the right one for myself. The whole process takes quite a while and its can be a total bummer when the courses you wanted are either not available for Spring Term (especially certain courses that I want for Pacific and Asia Studies. GRRRR!!!) or it require pre-requisite courses. (that's what I encountered for linguistic courses) After round and round of clicking links and jotting down, I had to settle for these choices:

Click it to see it yourself. In case you are wondering why the mish-mash of different courses from various streams and faculty? Its because I opt for General courses for more flexibility in choices. One worries though: this is only planning and it can still be rejected (and I didn't even consulted Dr. Hasuria for this). Plus, there isn't much courses that I can take and transfer unit back. (For example: Sociolinguistic and Introduction to Phonology is not available for Spring Term (GRRR!!!) and while Morphology and Syntax has pre-requisite. Geez!)

Last hurdle of all this though is to defeat the PROCRASTINATOR 3000 and grabbing the motivation to actually drop by IO and hand in the application. DANG. Total fail.

To finish up this post, a couple of random pics:

ボーーーーーーーーーーー　休みボケ。。。らしい。

Hmm...what should I choose...

That's all for now. Need to go for lunch soon.

Epilogue: ...nah, don't know what should I write for this part of the space. Demotivation and lethargy sets in~~~