Accent

So I was making generalization about English accent between American and British, classifying them only by rhoticity. The thing is, there's actually a whole load of different accents if we observe, each with their own distinctive characteristics where people classify them by regionality. Take American English for example, there are Texas, California and New York accents to name a few, which are rhotic. There are also non-rhotic ones which are mostly spoken on South Eastern parts of the United States. All in which I drew conclusion from Pétur Knútsson's page.

For many untrained ears like mine, regional accents are difficult to identify due to my unfamiliarity and the lack of participation in conversation involving people from those respective regions. Some differ so subtly that only a number of non-natives accustomed to them could perceive. But of many diverse accents, Texas seems to be more noticeable, easily encountered and heard. Perhaps "spearheaded" by the infamous former US president whom was all over the television a few years back.

I think my accent (if any) began to take shape when I attended English course back in high school where Pronunciation was among its subjects. The instructor who herself isn't a native-speaker taught us Received Pronunciation and as part of the teaching, we were expected to repeat words after her in compliance. I followed them to some extent but often strayed far, mostly on those intervocalic words, presumably as a habit I had picked up watching TV.

Specifically speaking, I always wonder how one's accent is formed when he/she isn't living in an English speaking country where interaction with native speakers is down to a minimum or next to none. I take to be the case that television had me greatly influenced than any other media. And along our non-English mother-tongue, our accents are sometimes blended to form a unique entity that is easily identifiable. Like when someone hears you talking, they'd know where you're coming from your "accents". Once, I posted my recording online and had people commented on it. Most weren't able to identify but one and the reason was his aunt is an Indonesian.

Rhoticism

Of the many differences between American and British English, one that intrigued me is how R is pronounced in it's spoken form. Though been familiar with a few English accents, I have never know the term Rhoticism up until recently. In American accent which is classified as rhotic, R is hard-pronounced whereas in British accent which is non-rhotic, almost all R are excluded except when followed by a vowel with the same syllable.

Being a non-native speaker of English, I tend to favor rhotic accent instead of non-rhotic style which suggests regular exclusion of R and rliking (occasional inclusion of R which acts as a bridge between two words thus producing smoother transition between words). I attribute this tendency to the exposure and widespread of American culture - movies, musics and news which many, if not all speak with strong rhotic accent. As a result, my spoken english was shaped as I spoke and read with the accent I heard frequently. And it just happened almost naturally.

I always find rhotic accent to be more easily adopted and spoken because of the way R is pronounced as opposed to non-rhotic with its obligatory rules. Having Indonesian which itself is rhotic as my primary language where R is accentuated with trilling tongue, it was easier for me to fit into rhotic accent when speaking English. On hearing, the regular exclusion of R in British spoken English and it's rhythmic pattern can sometimes be distractive. Making words hard to grasp, possibly leading to lost of understanding.

To best illustrate the above points, I found 2 following recordings of native speakers: one from London, England and another from New York, United States. Hearing them one after another would make the differences apparent.

While accent is one thing, clarity is another. Learning specific accent doesn't make our spoken English becomes any clearer. It is through the practices of jargon and unique slang removal, plain English mastery and taking consideration of audiences' background that is, which I have been constantly trying to learn all these while.

PC or MAC

My windows notebook has been with me for slightly over 2 years now. It's performance degraded over time but still capable enough to guarantee my companion. Doing less resource intensive activities such as browsing, instant-messaging and text-editing make the slowness feel almost non-existent. But it becomes apparent when a heavy application such as Photoshop is loaded on top of other tiny apps. Things slow down to a crawl and it validates my wish to seek a replacement.

Having been a windows power user for a number of years, I am geared toward getting a windows notebook when it comes to a replacement. Considering switching to Mac would take extra effort. Instead of just data and profile migration from PC to PC, we'll have to learn a number of shortcut keys, Unix like shell command (to be a power user), Mac terminologies and windows-equivalent applications which aren't available on Mac, among other things. But putting those concerns aside, Apple MacBook is really an interesting thing to consider. I won't make an extensive list of reasons as you'd find on the Internet. As I believe they're doing the same thing differently and all else being equal, it's just a matter of preference and I love trying new things.

Though most of my computer usage were mostly spent on Windows, I am and had actually been more or less agnostic when it comes to platform choices. There are good side of both world irregardless of the plethora of Mac and PC religious debates. In most cases, you'd hear that the price of Mac (Mac Tax) has always been cited as the main reason for lesser Mac adoption. The argument is you can get a higher spec of Windows-powered notebook with the same price. But arguable as it is, Mac's price as of recently had declined and this has proven that a few series of Mac are in-line with most mainstream windows notebooks. It has became much more affordable to general mass.

With all that being said, I will still use my windows notebook for sometime unless there's a compelling reason come knocking. Until then, the grey line between NEED and WANT is clear enough for me.

Procrastinaton

Procrastination is perhaps the single most bad habit I've been doing in my life. Most of us procrastinate in a varying degree but many seem to be able to get away with it without causing much annoyances to our everyday lives. Often, resource intensive tasks are more prone to be procrastinated. As we instead are more willing to substitute those with tasks which require less amount of time and effort. While there's a sense of guilt as we procrastinate, the substitution aren't always without any purpose as they just could be of less importance or less urgency in comparison.

Many people attributed laziness as the main cause of procrastination but a few online journals suggest amongst other things, perfectionism and self-downing as two of the many possible reasons of procrastination.

As explained, perfectionism is a mentality of high expectation upon oneself who believe everything must go completely right but often proven to be unrealistic. A perfectionist may procrastinate out of a feeling that it's hard to get something perfectly right on the very first attempt.

Self-downing is a mentality of doubt of one's abilities, which undermines the real skills one posses. And procrastination occurs before starting a task which is a result of disbelieving in ability to execute it. Thus, the lack of necessary skills for a task also contributes to procrastination.

The consequences of procrastination can be undesirable such as productivity decrease, over deadline and task cancellation. And under repeated act of procrastination, it can even leads to under or over estimation of a task.

Apart than those bad consequences, Paul Graham and John Perry articulated procrastination as a way of shifting from a task to another. Structured Procrastination as in John's term suggests a list of task which are ordered by importance, having the most urgent and important tasks at the top. So when a higher level task is being delayed, the lower tasks are being done instead. As John explained, while this method does provide an alternative to "blank procrastination", being able to do it requires a certain amount of self-deception.

Though some believed procrastination can't really be cured, there are a few suggested methods to at least minimize it. For perfectionist: self-assurance, appraisal and the impossibility to eradicate all mistakes are among the many resolutions. As for self-downing individuals: learn to accept compliments instead of shrugging off as a pure luck and try to figure out why success might be apprehensive.

References:
California Polytechnic State University Skills Library - Procrastination
Structured Procrastination
Good and Bad Procrastination

Vipassana at Dhammaguna

I attended a 10-day Vipassana course at the last turn of the year in Klaten, Java. It was introduced to me by a friend who had a prior experience with Vipassana. Vipassana is a technique of meditation which focuses on any sensation (vedana) we feel and experience around and within our body with the objective of mental purification which allows us to deal with life's obstacles in a calm and balanced way.

During the course, we're obliged to comply with the course's code of conduct. Being a new student, the first rule I had to observe is the 5 precepts. They are abstention from : killing any being, stealing, all sexual activity, telling lies and all intoxicants. The rest of the codes of conduct include acceptance of the teacher and technique, noble silence (maintaining complete silence), abstention from any physical and outside contact, music, writing and reading activities. Three extra precepts to be kept by old students (who have attended a full 10-day course before, irregardless of age) are abstention from : eating after midday, sensual entertainment and bodily decorations and using high or luxurious beds.

The first and foremost method we were taught was Anapana; the in and out breathing meditation which help increases our mindfulness. Anapana was repeated thorough the first 3 days and it is the foundational step before we enter Vipassana. I found them to be the most challenging because having no serious background in meditation, I had to maintain extensive sitting posture which usually last 1 or 2 hours, several times a day.

Vipassana was taught from fourth day onwards using the recorded teaching of S. N. Goenka with the help of two teachers who were present thorough the course. We acted on the instructions from the recording with different instructions each day. Interview sessions were held daily at noon after lunch where students address questions to the teacher.

The process of Vipassana is to identify any sensation we feel when we're focusing our attention to many parts of our body from head to toe without reacting to the respective sensation which varies among students. Cold, hot, itchy, tiredness, numbness and the feeling of being crawled by an insect on the skin being the most common. The principle is not to be carried away by those feelings, be they pleasant or unpleasant and also by not rejecting or accepting either of them, just being neutral.

The frequency of shifting attention to different parts of our body is fasten when subtle sensation becomes apparent. We then progress from one part to another when we aware certain sensation is occupying that physical part of our body. We were reminded not to purposely search for any feeling or sensation because illusion of feeling something might arise when our mind is actively engaging in trying to make certain feeling to appear. Sometimes the sensation is so subtle that we can hardly feel anything and it is advisable to spend a bit longer focusing on that part of our body.

This practice is repeated until the last day of the course and ends with Metta Bhavana (loving kindness meditation) with the intention of sharing the goodwill and loving kindness with all beings, irregardless of who they are.

Tags of my life

Click the photo for larger image.

An unusual dream

He is a friend of mine, a friend of whom I've known for long.
And just like every other person, he has grown up with a dream.
A dream that might sound unusual for most people.
I still remember the day, a day of a few years back.
When he told me that he had been having a desire.
An occasional desire, to lead a simple life.
A simple life of a yellow robe.
I tried to understand, as it is not of a thinking.
A thinking out of impulse, or a momentarily desperation.
And up until now, he would still be occasionally harbouring.
Harbouring the very same thought he had had before.
And hopefully, when the time comes.
He'd be able to live, live life as simple as it would.
But just before the time ripens, and with all the time left.
It is now, a time for him to learn and to acknowledge.
All the things, that are needed for him to walk the path.

Ending is another form of beginning

When there's beginning, there's ending, collegial study is of no exception. To that end, we had a graduation ceremony this late September, which was pretty much delayed considering we passed our thesis the same month of the previous year. Our graduation ceremony started early in the morning, opened with farewell address and speeches from academic personalities and a few invited social figures. Present along with them, were our families.

It then progressed to commencement with our rector and each of our head faculties standing on stage, with each one of us going forward in motion and had our cap tassels flipped from left to right by our rector. It signifies we, the undergraduates, are ready to blend back with society with our new status and responsibilities. There were around 170 something of us so the whole process took around 1 hour or so.

The ceremony ended with photo-taking session as we lined up in four rows, with all the ladies sitting on the first row. We were working closely with photographer as when he was about to shoot, he signalled us and we tossed our caps into the air. And that was how I lost my cap and got another person's.

More graduation photos »

It took four years.

It has been 4 years for me, 4 years more or less for others, to walk out of collegial responsibility. 4 years of hard work, struggle, a tiny bit of anger and disappointment perhaps, which made our journey eventful.

I chose Computer Science because I have always found that computers are interesting and I had some practical knowledge about computers from my previous part-time job. I thought that would be useful and help to smooth my learning curve while delving into computer science. My understanding about computer science was rather limited and superficial; only a handful of experience with computer hardware and system installation.

The very first few subjects that we were taught included: Algorithms & Programming, Computer Hardware, Program Design Methodology and Computer Ethics. They were taught conceptually by large which bored many of us until we got our hands-on computers in real time. The programming language was Visual Basic which fascinated many simply because it was rather easy compared to some other languages such as C, C++, Pascal or Java. One semester we were taught in the classroom and the next we were brought into the lab to actually exercise what we had been taught.

There were so many lecturers I can hardly remember their names. But there was one that caught our attention: his name was Salvirius. Salvirius was flexible and thoughtful. Unlike a few others, he never put much thought into starting and ending the class at the exact time listed on the schedule. He felt what mattered most was how we could absorb and react to the subject he taught rather than the importance of time discipline. It was nice to be in his classroom; at least for me.

Perhaps the hardest thing of all was when we were on the last semester and preparing the thesis. We were obliged to choose a topic and it had to be unique in the sense that no other students chose the same topic as us. It also had to have a graphical model and a list of questionnaires. Each of us was assigned a mentor and he or she was responsible to answer whatever questions we might have. During this process we often had to go back and forth meeting them while bringing our drafts for counsel and correction. This continued until we finalized our draft, our accumulated questionnaires, as well as the final calculations and summary of the project.

The trial began on a certain date a few weeks after we handed over our thesis. Those who mentored us were in the panel of judges. We had to present and defend our work in front of them as they questioned, probed and challenged us and our wits in a period of an hour or so. The questions were about why we chose a specific population to be our respondents, how some results were calculated and why we used the method of the calculation. As often told, we needed to be quick in reply and pretend to be as confident as we could. We also need a supporting argument to justify our previous reply.

The latter session of the trial was used to test our understanding about the general aspects of our academical subjects; what we had learned since day one. A few questions were asked normally. They might be general, technical questions or both.

The results came out a few weeks later. Most of us passed while a handful of students who failed were required to retake the trial in a few weeks time. With our good passing grade, we felt lighter as if some sort of burden had been lifted from our shoulders which we had carried all this time. Those whose faces were gloomy had begun to smile and we saw joy! It was a great relief for most of us.

A week ago I went to the university to get the "blue book" of my thesis. We each made 3 books total: 2 for the academy and the last book would be returned to us. Blue was the color chosen for Computer Science students, they were used as the thesis book cover and will be used on the graduation apparel.

Our graduation ceremony is scheduled to be on 27th August, 2008. It has been postponed one week later than the previous date. Hopefully our creative university management won't make any further changes which might delay the ceremony again.

Glutinous rice flour balls.

Today is month 6 day 15 of Chinese Lunar calendar. Every year on this day, my mum would cook some glutinous rice flour balls which is called "Tang Yuan" in Chinese. Late last night, I helped her with rounding of 2 big doughs into tiny rice balls. Those glutinous rice balls were white and pink in color which make them look rather interesting. The whole took less than 1 hour in making and they were kept until the next morning to be cooked.

They were cooked early this morning, in a pot of sweetened hot water with pandan leaf and a bit of ginger. The pandan was strong in smell while the ginger was strong in taste which made them complemental. The taste of the soup was unique, a nice combination of sweetness and gingerish, while the rice balls were cooked just perfectly, soft in bite and seemed to melt away in a few munches along with the soup.


Raw glutinous rice flour balls



Cooked glutinous rice flour balls