Pretty Good for a Monday

So I was reading the dictionary this morning (Shh! I’m an editor! C’mon, I was looking something up, I got distracted, one thing led to another. . . ) Anyway, I came across this section on names and how to index them in bibliographies. What was interesting about it was that it explained naming customs of various cultures around the world. For example, the way that in Vietnam, China and Japan, the last name comes first (although, some people who are born in Western countries or have ties to it choose to write their name in the western, given-name-first order). Thus the correctly written Japanese name Tajima Yumiko (Yumiko being the given name and Tajima being the family name) can be reversed, if the person wants to conform with Western tradition, to Yumiko Tajima.

Burmese (incidentally, Burma’s the one that is also called Myanmar), Javanese, and other Indonesian names (good thing Laura bought me a map for Christmas—I’ll have to get it out) don’t have family names at all. They just have personal names. Which seems like it would get very confusing. I guess, until recently, there probably weren’t that many people around, so it wasn’t an issue. Or maybe they refer to them like “Aung San the artist” or “Kin-Kin the teacher”. . . or maybe that’s just me thinking that’s what I would do. They also have some other interesting naming customs over there in Burma/Myanmar. I’m supposed to tell you this info is from Kate Monk, off a web page.

"Burmese only have a given name without an inherited surname. It is polite to add the prefix 'U' which is equivalent to 'Mister'. A Burmese given name often indicates which day of the week a person was born. For instance, 'A', the last letter of the Burmese alphabet, is used for the names of people born on a Sunday. Those born on Monday to Saturday use names beginning with the first five letters of the alphabet."

And anyway, the dictionary is pretty interesting. I like to look at the pictures and see which things they chose to put a picture of. How do you think they decide that? To show lobster pot but not line graph? Eel and elephant but not tiger? And who was really dying to see a picture of a minaret (a tall slender tower of a mosque having one or more balconies from which the summons to prayer is cried by the muezzin) anyway? (Actually, come to think of it, it looks kinda cool. Here are some photos of minarets.)

And, you know, they have to hire people to draw those pictures. I bet in the whole country there are only like 10 people who have that job. I have a friend who’s a medical illustrator—does renderings of body parts for medical textbooks and such. Now that is a narrow field of study.

Moving on. I have a theory about the heating system on trains. See, it’s always so toasty warm on the train, and in every car it’s the same amount of toastiness. So it really doesn’t make sense that those heaters would work the same way car heaters do, now does it? Pulling heat off the engine? Because there’s only one engine and like 8 to 10 passenger cars. That’s a long way for air to get pumped, and, besides, by the last car, hardly any air would be coming through. I’m thinking they’ve got an alternative heat source—maybe converting the kinetic energy of each car’s wheels into heat for each individual car. And if this is the case, when did somebody figure that out? Because I can’t imagine the very first trains were like that.

I bought a new winter coat today. Well, actually two. One short and one long, because I can't make up my mind. But they are cute and will last me a long time. They're gray. If I could figure out how to get pictures to work, I'd put up a picture. But no dice.

I had some interesting thoughts today. Unfortunately, some of them have gone away. But here's one I remember. On the train this morning I was sitting near a man and a woman who were making medium talk (you know, what you do with your co-workers and people you talk to a lot but don't particulary socialize with normally) about restaurants. Which ones were good, too expensive, blah, blah. "Oh, isn't that one a Lettuce Entertain You Restaurant?" (By the way, I always liked how they spelled "Lettuce Entertain You." So witty, those corporate brainstormers!) Anways, I could tell neither of them cared very much about the conversation, and they'd probably talked about the very same things before with different people. So why did they bother? And then I thought, hmmmm, maybe they're not really talking about restaurants at all. They're carrying on this uninteresting conversation in the hopes it will establish a bond. They could be talking about deep sea fishing, or Bill Clinton, or women's fashion, and they would still be having, in some way, the same interaction.

I used to be afraid of sewers. Not the round manhole covers, but the grates that are at the curbs, the rusty iron ones with the slits. I think it's because our street flooded once and somebody told me I could get sucked down there. Or maybe it was Baby Jessica getting stuck in the cistern in her backyard. (Do you remember that? They saved her, right? Wonder what she's doing now.) Anyway, I passed one today and thought of that. Funny how when we're younger all the objects around us are more intrusive: they either scare us (like the sewer) or fascinate us (I remember when I was little how I'd look at the ceiling and imagine what it would be like to live in an upside-down world. I thought that was just so trippy, in my 7-year-old mind). Then maybe later we get used to things and stuff is just there. But I suppose if you want to know what it's like to live in my head, it would be sort of like you at 8 years old. Oh! One more thing! Did you ever look at someone's face upside down for so long it looked like they had lips in their forehead? That's some creepy stuff.

Bye!