False Positive

I woke this morning to a chat from Aftab, wondering whether I had yet seen this. A brief racing of the heart: Could it be? After all this time? After attending so many talks that started with "We tried to prove such and such" and ended with "We found that it's equivalent to the Riemann Hypothesis"? But I know where to check, so the excitement was short lived.

Meanwhile, on my way in to the office today, I recognized for the first time a tattooed Chinese (or Japanese) character. Now that I'm learning Chinese, I always look to see if I know the characters people have tattooed on themselves, but until now I hadn't seen any that I actually know. This isn't so surprising, as the Chinese we learn tends to be practical, and people are unlikely to tattoo "fried rice" or "taxicab" on themselves.

The tattoo in question was on a girl's arm and the character was 生. I'm told that in Japanese this has 8 billion pronunciations and meanings. In Chinese, I know it as "shēng", meaning "to be born; to give birth; life; to grow". It's possible that it was preceded by another character or other characters, covered by her sleeve, giving a more particular meaning (possibly something one is more likely to tattoo upon oneself). The only thing I could think of offhand was 出生，"chū shēng", "to be born", but that seems unlikely. Searching by pinyin, my dictionary also just turned up 畜生, "chù sheng", "domestic animal", which seems even less likely. We learn 生 early on, as part of 生日, "shēng rì", which means "birthday" (日 is "day" or "sun").

Grand Masters Game 6

There's a new Go Seigen game review on Guo Juan's site. I'm working on memorizing the game (below) before I watch the review. When I have it memorized, I'm going to add it to Mnemosyne, to start trying to commit these games to long term memory.

歌剧

昨天晚上，春燕，刘建和我一起去看歌剧。歌剧很好听。我们去看 "Ariadne Auf Naxos"。 因为我想一个歌唱家唱得很好听，所以我想去看这个歌剧。可是昨天晚上他只唱了一点儿。

唱 "Ariadne" 的女人是美国人。她很有名。她叫 "Deborah Voigt"。几年以前，她应该在 Royal Opera House 唱歌，可是他们对她说 "你太胖了。这个服装太小。" 所以当时她没唱。她比以前瘦了。 她唱歌唱得很好听。

我很喜欢 Naiad, Dryad 和 Echo。我也很喜欢音乐：小提琴，等等。

看歌剧以前，我去春燕的家吃晚饭。刘建做中国饭。 晚饭很好吃。我想回中国。

昨天最长日。夏天快乐！

Last night, Chunyan, Liu Jian and I went to see an opera. The opera was very good. We went to see "Ariadne Auf Naxos". I wanted to see this opera because I think one of the singers is very good. But last night he only sang a little bit.

The woman who sang "Ariadne" is American. She is very famous. Her name is Deborah Voigt. A few years ago, she was supposed to sing at the Royal Opera House, but they told her, "You are too fat. This dress is too small." So at that time, she didn't sing. She is thinner now. She sang very beautifully.

I really liked Naiad, Dryad and the Echo. I also really liked the music: the violins, etc.

Before the opera, I went to Chunyan's house for dinner. Liu Jian cooked Chinese food. Dinner was delicious. I want to go back to China.

Yesterday was the longest day. Happy summer!

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

---William Carlos Williams