Mulling

…

Two newly over-60s, who have registered to receive retirement benefits, mull.

Tom: You ever, mmm?

Willis: Ever what?

Tom: Ever think about starting a second life?

Willis: Second life as in Second Life? The game?

Tom: Second life as in start a new job. Now that retirement looms.

Willis: I should. If I don’t prepare, then I’ll be stuck with only these skills and this way of thinking and then have to beg them to keep me on as a part-timer.

Tom: On a severely reduced income.

Willis: And be like those who keep coming to work because they’ve got no new places to go.

Tom: They say that upskilling makes you feel younger.

Willis: Yeah, cut the fat and delay dementia.

Tom: So what do you like to do?

Willis: (long pause) Hmm. Kind of like what I’m already doing.

Tom: What do you do?

Willis: Teach a bit, take care of those around me.

__________

Voice-over

Two features of an unstructured mulling session.

Clarification of “second life”. Product names sometimes usurp everyday expressions.

One speaker builds on the other’s ideas: “On a reduced income” … “And be like…”

Despite Tom and Willis’ views of second lifing, Willis’ “take care of those around me” is a nice reminder of a fundamental human value.

…

Shared adversity

A Maru Department Store customer approaches the clock and watch counter.

...

Maru Customer: Those clocks, the ones which keep time by a radio beam.

Technician: Yes?

Maru Customer: Well, I actually have one already, but it’s a got a problem, see, the radio beam function is showing an error message.

Technician: Oh? What brand?

Maru Customer: Seiko, same as those ones. Is there a battery controlling the auto adjustment?

Technician: No. How old is your clock?

Maru Customer: 4, 5, 6 years old. It was a present.

Technician: Cheaper to buy a new one than fix your one.

Maru Customer: Yeah, at 3000 yen, that’d be right. Doesn’t worry me, I just wondered if there was a separate battery for the auto-adjustment. I mean, I changed the main battery and it still showed an error.

Technician: No building going on nearby? To cause interference?

Maru Customer: Nope.

Technician: Interesting. I have the same clock. Same problem. 6 years old and the auto adjustment starts showing an error.

Maru Customer: Ah. That’s good to know. Something inside gives up the ghost then.

Technician: Must be.

_____________________
Voice-over

The technician goes through the questions before she divulges that she too has the same problem.

Once the Maru customer shows no antagonism about what is likely a common defect in the product, a shared experience settles into a comfortable conversation.

“That happened to you? Same thing happened to me. Ha.”

The comfort of shared adversity!

...

Man in the Moon

It’s moon cake time in China and Man in the Moon is challenged:

...

Where’ve you been?

MM: What do you mean? “Where’ve I been?”

Well, you haven’t posted anything for a month.

MM: Who’d notice?

Some of us thought you’d DIED!

MM: Things were difficult. For one thing, China.

China?

MM: The site is blocked in China. I couldn’t log on.

But you weren’t in China for a MONTH! You exaggerate.

MM: No, but I was in other places that made me feel like I was.

That difficult?

MM: That difficult.

________________
Voice-over

A conversation with a LOT of questions. Even questions posing as responses to questions:

Where’ve you been?
What do you mean? “Where’ve I been?”

And a quaint ending:

That difficult?
That difficult.

The falling intonation on the imitated utterance turns the question into a statement.

...

Handshaking protocols

The visitor arrives at the Virtual Center.

...

Supervisor: Find your way all right?

Visitor: Something of a journey of uncertainty. But I’m here. Nice office.

Supervisor: I feel lucky to have it. It’s a new building. I thought we’d begin by going upstairs and you can meet Carl. His unit handles the machine translation coding.

Visitor: Sounds fine.

Supervisor: In here. This is Virtual Carl, he handles the translation side of things. He’s working on a modification to Unicode. He can tell more about what this unit does.

Visitor: Virtual Carl. Nice to meet you.

_____________

Voice-over

Getting to the point when introducing people who share an interest but have never met can follow a simple protocol to establish a connection. Something like fax machines or computer modems beeping at each other to establish connection speed, coding, interrupting procedures, etc.

In this case, the supervisor uses a location, identity, task, wh3 approach:

Where (“In here”),

Who (“This is…”),

What (“he handles…” and “he’s working on…”).

“He can tell you…” is the handover for the drill-down phase into the detail substrata.

Interesting that stories of the future (eg scifi) generally still have humans using present-day lexis, grammar and pragmatics. For an example, read the script of 2001 A Space Odyssey.

...

Tango and culture

Norman and Brian, aged 50-something Aussies, during a scene change, exchange impressions of the tango performance at Al Tortoni, Buenos Aires.

...

Norman: Spectacular innit.

Brian: Awesome.

Norman: Don’t say that, mate. You sound like your daughter.

Brian: OK. Well, it’s OK.

Norman: Now you’re speaking our language again.

Brian: We didn’t have music like that growing up in Oz, did we?

Norman: Yeah, we never danced, did we? Culture like that we never had.

­­­­­­­­________________
Voice-over 

Adopting the jargon of a different generation happens, but for a while it doesn’t ring true. But at least Brian used “awesome” appropriately, whatever we may think about its origins referring only to god-like epiphanies.

Beyond quibbles about lexical change, Brian and Norman are engaged in a serious debate on why Australians (and New Zealanders) leave their countries on culture-seeking OE missions. 150 years of European settlement in Australia and New Zealand isn’t very long to build a culture (Latin America has had 500 years). And the British, despite having a great literature, didn’t cook or dance that well.

...

Being Jewish

A chance evening meeting in the Plaza de Armas in Santiago.

...

Ephraim: We come from Israel.

Angela: I lived for five years in Israel.

Ephraim: So you are Jewish?

Angela: No, my father was a diplomat in Tel Aviv. I went to school there.

Ephraim: You learned Hebrew?

Angela: I had to. The other kids teased me, so I had to find out what they were saying.

Ephraim: Unusual. Israel is generally a tolerant culture.

Angela: Children can be unkind. But it was a good experience. They say that which doesn’t kill you makes you strong.

Ephraim: And eventually you prevailed over your tormentors?

Angela: I really like Israel. I’ve lived in many places, I can understand the sense of Diaspora. Of adapting to the place you live in, taking the best of it and keeping your core identity. I feel I could be Jewish.

_____________
Voice-over

Angela shows ability is being able to relate personal experiences and to generalize from them. “Children can be unkind.” When she doesn’t recall the exact wording and source of the aphorism “That which doesn’t kill you makes you strong,” (Friedrich Nietzsche) she paraphrases and falls back on the standby of “They say.”

...

Cycling from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego

In the Plaza de Armas, Cusco, late in the afternoon.

...

wh5: Is that your bicycle? Could I ask you why it has two chains?

Goat: The wheels are too wide for a standard crank so I had to figure a way to transfer the drive to the rear wheels.

wh5: And you’re heading for?

Goat: We started in Alaska about 3 years ago, we're hoping to reach the bottom of South America by next spring.

Wh5: You travel with friends?

Goat: There are three of us.

wh5: And do you blog about this?

Goat: Sure, you can follow the progress at ridingthespine.com.

______________
Voice-over

A crowd gathers, questions are asked in Spanish. Goat (his real name) fields them deftly. His sister arrives having just flown in. Jacob says the crowds gather whenever they stop in a town square, and the usual questions come up. You can imagine they are mostly the usual what, when, where, who, why types, even if they sometimes lack an interrogative.

If you read Goat’s bio on the website here, you can’t but help admire his independence, inventiveness, curiosity. If more of us traveled this way, tourism might not have such a dark side.

...

Advising on the Andes and alpaca

Francisco advises Tbn Tbn on what to take up the Andes.

...

Francisco: You wish to base yourself at Cusco.

Tbn Tbn: For a week.

Francisco: A week is good. You will have soroche, altitude sickness, when you arrive. But not for a week.

Tbn Tbn: It is cold?

Francisco: Señor, this is winter. Cusco is 3400 meters in the Andes. Could I suggest an alpaca?

Tbn Tbn: I have very little. I can carry my own bag.

Francisco: Señor, I suggest alpaca WOOL. A sweater, a scarf perhaps? And layers. You do not go to the Andes with little undies. You can get them in the market. Now, when you arrive, you will go light in the head. Your heart will beat the faster. You will breathe sometimes with difficulty. Take it easy and you will not suffer so much. Drink the coca tea there, it will help.

Tbn Tbn: I’ll rest the first day.

Francisco: What wisdom in one so young!

Tbn Tbn: I’m older than I look.

Francisco: No, Señor. You are not old. You will learn a lot from meeting the Uros on their totora floating islands on Titicaca. You will enjoy the hike to Machu Piccu. Trust me, you will.

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Voice-over

“You will…” functions as part imperative, part prediction and part suggestion marker. It is a blended functional marker. Perhaps a portmanteau expression?

And the exchange on age follows a long tradition. One person admits to being old, it is polite for the listener to vigorously deny it…

Double entendre

...

Paul remarks on a stairway detail in a new Chinese Museum.

wh5: Striking piece of architectural detail, the way the stairs project unevenly.

Paul: What’s striking about it is that this one's likely to hit you on the head as you exit the restroom. Sticks out fair and square into the passageway.

wh5: Hmm. Not so clever.

Paul: I mean, these modern architects, they have often have a great artistic sense but they sometimes don’t think about how people’s behavior will impact on their design.

wh5: Come back in a year’s time, you’ll probably find the stairs are sawn off to a uniform length.

Paul: Only after someone lays themselves out.

________________
Voice-over

Consciously or unconsciously, we sometimes use words which emphasize our message. In talking about a hazardous protrusion which passersby could collide with, Paul turns “striking” into a double entendre and follows up with another, possibly subconsciously generated, in “impact.”

...

Twittering Liberty

...

Carla visits Liberty Island and receives a tweet.

Liberty: Are you ready for your climb to the crown? It’s 354 steps up.

Carla: I can do it.

Liberty: And it’s 20 degrees hotter inside than out.

Carla: I have two bottles of water.

Liberty: Like your crown.

Carla: Excuse me, you aren’t Miss Liberty.

Liberty: How could I text holding a book and a torch?

Carla: Who are you, then?

____________

Voice-over

There is actually a Liberty Twitter site. It’s run by Liberty Island park rangers. Some liberty may have been taken with the synchronicity of what they actually twitter here.

...

New York talk

…

Two New Yorkers bump into each other on the street.

How you bin?

Well, not so good you know, the economy…

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, you want a coaffee?

Naw, got no time. Gotta go woikout.

_________________
Voice-over

The sociolinguistics of New York English is fascinating.

The accent is colorful. Like “o” as in “coffee” becomes “oa”. Or the “er” as in “firm” becoming “oi”, or “r” in “park” being dropped, or "or" in "talk" becoming "tawk."

There aren’t many vocab items, maybe “standing on line” instead of “standing in line.”

Mainly it is the speed at which New Yorkers talk, the aggression with which they approach a conversation, which leaves non-New Yorkers wondering just when to break in and say their piece.

...

Starting a NGO

...

S. talks about founding a NGO in Northern Thailand.

S: I went there originally as a pastor. I wanted to start a church.

wh5: And people came?

S: Oh, they came. Many were refugees. They came with traumatic life problems.

wh5: Like?

S: In Burma….loggers and the army come to a Karen village, they find the village headman, grab his daughter, beat and rape her, throw her into a burning house, the village cannot fight back, the villagers become the slaves of the loggers and environmental exploiters. If they can, the Karen escape across the border, into Thailand.

wh5: A terrible story.

S: I realized I couldn’t just pray or preach parables. It was more helpful for me to listen and take them in. Soon the church was full of refugees camping out in my house, which was also my church. I did what I could, we didn’t have a lot of money, but it didn’t take long for me to realize (1) I didn’t have the resources to carry on this permanently, and (2) God was telling me to find a way to recognize Him by helping these people.

wh5: Did you find a way?

S: So I started an NGO.

wh5: Political?

S: Basically an aid organization. Just my family at first, but now we have a staff, we can help with their needs. Essentials like clothing, medicines, food and cooking pots, plastic sheets, mosquito repellent.

wh5: How do you get funding for it?

S: Donations from churches. Foundations.

wh5: The U.S.?

S: A dozen different countries.

wh5: I think it was Bill Clinton who said that “people are inherently generous, that giving makes you feel good, and that the only thing most of us are looking for is an opportunity to make a difference.”

S: And Mother Teresa who said, “The poor are wonderful. The poor give us so much more than we give them.”

wh5: Are all your helpers Christian?

S: By no means, no. Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, they all work alongside each other.

________________

Voice-over

Getting the message across about atrocities can be done in several ways.

We can present pictures of terrible scenes.

We can breathe fire and say loudly that something is unthinkable or shocking, we can urge that something must or should be done or it's essential, crucial, imperative, that something be done.

We can appeal to the listener’s sense of morals, “We can’t allow this to continue, we can’t just stand by and watch, we can’t just close our eyes to this.”

Or we can take a low-key, pragmatic, non-ideological, religio-tolerant approach such as S. does and set out the situation plainly and let the facts speak for themselves. Something stirs inside us and we feel we need to help. This low-key approach makes us think we initiated the assistance by ourselves.

...

Migration and alternative identity

The stories of two non-traditional Norwegians:

...

My name is Rachel. I’m 30. My father was from Morocco and my mother was Norwegian. I was born in Norway but when I was two, my parents split up, and my father took me back to Morocco. He kidnapped me actually, because my mother chased after him and tried to get me back. She had two attempts, the second time with help from the Norwegian embassy and her brother, and finally she managed to grab me while everyone was napping and escaped back to Norway. She had to change her name and her address and I grew up with her. But recently I found my family in Morocco. They are Muslim. They treated me very kindly, especially my foster mother. I stayed for three months and although it would be difficult for me to be a Muslim, I wonder now what my life would have been like growing up in that big extended Moroccan family.

My name is Nguyen. I’m 52 now. I was born in South Vietnam but my parents were killed when the North Vietnamese took over Saigon. My brother and I wanted to escape but it cost more money than we had to become boat people. Anyway, we heard there was a good chance we would drown because the boats often sank. So we learned how to build our own boat. We learned about sea-worthy design and engine repair. Finally we could escape to Hong Kong and a refugee camp and enter Norway. I work here as boat builder now, it’s good, but I sometimes like to go back to Vietnam.

__________
Voice-over

You might think that Norway is populated exclusively by Thor Heyerdahl type men and Liv Ullman type women. But Norway seems receptive to migrants. There is an intercultural museum including artifacts from immigrant groups, in fact at present, there is an exhibition of six world religions: Sikhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism, brought to Norway by migrants. Rachel feels lucky she did not grow up in Morocco but is learning Arabic and dreams of having another life. Nguyen created for himself another life and speaks Norwegian but sometimes thinks of where he came from.

...

Defining culture

...

A boy asks his uncle a question.

Boy: Culture?

Uncle: Culture, yes. The beliefs and behaviors of a society.

Boy: What are beliefs and behaviors and societies?

Uncle: Oh, well. Yes. Let’s turn it around. Society is people. Beliefs are what they think. Behaviors are what they do.

Boy: People thinking and doing.

Uncle: Like a man who thinks about God so he goes to church on Sundays.

_____________________
Voice-over

Grownups can handle abstract definitions. For children, until their cognitive apparatus is in place, definitions need to be phrased in simple concrete words, preferably accompanied by examples.

And better if the main noun comes first.

...

Doctor Patient Conversations

...

First adventure on the road was at the B--Hospital. A patient asks for some shots to get him through Peru. The doctor glances at a rough spot on the back of the patient’s hand.

“How long have you had this?"
“Two, maybe three months.”
“Not sure if that’s precancerous or cancerous, I’d like a biopsy.”
“What will the biopsy tell you?”
“The architecture of the cells. The structure and the depth of penetration of the growth. Whether it’s just precancerous, so we can just freeze it off with CO2, or if cancerous, determine if it’s aggressive or not. If it’s more aggressive, we must cut deeply, cut out a wider surrounding margin. Lab results will be back next week.”
“I’ll be in New York by then. You can email?”
“Sure. I’ll let you know how quickly you need to act. Different cancers require different treatments. They can’t all be frozen off with dry ice.”
______________
Voice-over
Doctor-patient consultations start off with the doctor observing and then asking quiet questions. When possible diagnoses are proposed, along with treatments, accompanied by any mention of c--- any patient gets a little apprehensive. Then, roles reverse: it is the patient asking most of the questions.

...

Why Dazai?

Shizuko finds out that Osamu is reading No Longer Human, Dazai’s last work.

...

Shizuko: Dazai? Why Dazai?

Osamu: Everyone’s reading him.

Shizuko: For what? He was so negative. All he talked about was dying. He’s dead.

Osamu: I can relate to his ideas. When he writes something like “The cold half pint of milk I drank each morning was the only thing that gave me a certain peculiar sense of the joy in life.” Dark, yes, but funny too.

Shizuko: Are you sure you’re not just identifying with him because you live only a hundred meters from where he drowned?

Osamu: Geography’s a factor, mm. But mainly I feel my life has no depth, no direction.

 

______________

Voice-over

Young people identifying with Dazai Osamu? That one so driven to self-destruction could write so clearly and powerfully. And influence a generation fifty years later.

Have Japanese young people lost their sense of mission?  Where has their sense of purpose in life gone? Can a limping economy and rising unemployment cripple the national identity?

Ironical that the Tamagawa Josui is scarcely a foot deep much of the time.

...

Green flowers mean...

Ludovic suggests a new signaling system.

...

Ludovic: The telephones are bugged and email is too dangerous. Cameras are everywhere. If I have a message I’ll leave a sign.

Marcus: A sign.

Ludovic: Yes. I’ll leave a plant on the stairs. If there is no message, there is no plant.

Marcus: What kind of a plant?

Ludovic: A discreet one. I am thinking of a small pot plant with green flowers.

Marcus: And where will the message be?

Ludovic: The usual place. Under the bridge.

Marcus: So I go to the staircase, and if there is a small plant with green flowers, then I go to the bridge?

Ludovic: Exactly.

______________
Voice-over

Just as spies need a protocol to pass information, so do we when we call a friend at the office.

“Can you talk?”

“Important?”

“Life and death.”

“Urgent?”

“Level orange.”

“Bit busy. Got someone with me. 10 minutes.”

Such signals are helpful, but not foolproof, they can interpreted or intercepted.

...

Artifacts

Laurence wonders if Dean is seeking another lost ark.

...

Laurence: You’ll be away?

Dean: Three months: July, August, September. Asia, South America and Oceania.

Laurence: And you have a grant?

Dean: To study ethnic minorities. Ones whose culture and language are in danger of disappearing.

Laurence: Culture’s a big word.

Dean: Not a big word. But a big field. I collect artifacts that represent a society.

Laurence: Artifacts.

Dean: Utensils. Pieces of art.

Laurence: If valuable then so much the better?

Dean: Not really. Flies start swarming, vampires seek blood. Seeking the commonplace, there is no competition from gold-diggers. I can do my work without getting into fights.

_____________________

Voice-over

The rain forest is disappearing, species are becoming extinct. Is the disappearance of minority cultures and their languages as big a threat?

Possibly not. Human beings are plentiful enough. But the common theme is diminishing variety.

What monocultures of agriculture, and lack of species differentiation, has in common with disappearing human cultures and languages is a concern that the world faces a decreased ability to cope with adversity.

...

Only see you once a year

Maurice and Ben meet at a conference

...

Maurice: Every year we meet, like this.

Ben: A long time, old friend. I often think about what you do for the rest of the year.

Maurice: I prepare. Then every year in June, I come to this conference and present my research.

Ben: And at the reception, we run around the room like it was a chariot race.

Maurice: An existential question. Are our once-a-year hyped-up conference selves the same as our everyday selves?

­­­­­­­­­­­__________

Voice-over

When you take the podium, mind you don’t let slip a loose roof tile.

When Douglas Adams gave the answer to the meaning of life as “41” had he been watching the less than benign galley scenes in Ben Hur where Judah Ben Hur is given that number? Quintus Arias: “Your eyes are full of hate, 41. That’s good. Hate keeps a man alive.”

...

Air France AF 447 announcement

Announcement of a missing plane.

...

Official: It’s missing. We are very worried. The plane disappeared from the screens several hours ago. It could be a transponder problem, but this kind of fault is very rare and the plane didn't land when expected.

­­­­­­­­­­_________

Voiceover

 

Stages in handling news of a disaster: (1)  introduce anxiety first, to pave the way towards the probably inevitable awful denouement, (2) cushion the impending tragedy by noting the rarity of the event (3) highlight steps being taken to cope with the problem (4) extend support to relatives waiting for news (5) finally to soften a very hard landing by acknowledging acceptance.

 

With expressions like these:

 

“AF 447 drops from radar…”

“We are very worried.”

“…this kind of fault is very rare…”

“Air traffic control lost contact with the Airbus A330 at 0600 GMT as it crossed the ocean.”

“Airport authorities have set up a crisis cell at Charles de Gaulle.”

“Brazil air force searching for missing aircraft…”

"Air France shares the emotion and worry of the families concerned."

"We have lost hope for the missing jet.”
“There is a real pessimism at this hour about the fate of the aircraft.”
"We can fear the worst."