Post #12 4/28/09 Accents: Can't Do Them, Don't Try Them

4/28/09


Wednesday April 22, 2009. Fourth period English. We’ve just opened our literature books to a copy of the Declaration of Independence. We groan as the sheer volume of words meets our eyes. We know what comes next: we’re going to read it. Our teacher offers us the hints of a smirk, amused and at the same time exasperated at our reaction. I can just imagine her thoughts: Of course we’re going to read it. This is English class. Amidst our complaints, one of my classmates has a suggestion.

“We should read it with accents!”

A cacophony of opinions immediately resound throughout the room. Our teacher laughs as do several other members of the class.

My immediate reaction: Hah. You’re funny.

My reaction once I had the chance to fully process the sentence: Oh, please no. I’m begging you. Reading the thing is torture enough; don’t make me go through it while listening to about 30 horrible variations of a British accent.

Do I hate British accents? Heck no. Actually, that’s as far away from the truth as you could possibly get.

See, I have this little thing that if I wasn’t American I’d be British. Why? Well, to be completely honest, a big reason is because of their accents. I’ve always (and I can’t stress that enough) adored the English accent. And the Scottish. And the Australian. And…well, you get my point. There have been several occasions when I’ve even tried imitating a Scottish, Australian, and Irish accent to name a few with my friends but those attempts failed horrifically so I now restrict myself to a much more private audience: myself.

Now I have another little story. So, I was on YouTube the other day just looking up videos and I stumbled across an interview of one of my favorite actresses, Yvonne Strahovski who happens to be Australian. As I was scrolling down the list of comments, I found one, by an Australian, that interested me. Here it is:

Haha, me and my friends are always talking in an american accent (its usually
always the southern american accent :P) and we love it! i would love to have an
american accent but i'm stuck with an aussie one

Now, I’ve always had the absurd idea that no one wanted an American accent. In fact, my reply to that previous comment was exactly that. Why would someone with an accent as cool as an Australian one ever want an American accent? It’s so…boring. I mean, we don’t have fantastically awesome pronunciations for words like “fish and chips“ or “no”, which, as parodied by another great actor, Zac Levi, is pronounced in Australia as “naeiou”. But then again I suppose it’s a matter of perspective.

This leads me to my next point. We all seem to want an accent other than our own, for the most part at least. Australians want American, Americans want British, etc. Agreed? So riddle me this: why is it that foreigners are, in general, so good at imitating an American accent while we lousy Americans couldn’t copy a decent foreign accent even if someone phonetically recited the pronunciations to us? Really. It’s a mystery me. And I’m not even talking about foreign actors playing Americans in movies and TV shows (Who are phenomenal, by the way. Have you heard Hugh Laurie and Christian Bale’s American accents? One word: whoa) Take my Australian cousins, for example. They have pure Australian accents complete with words like “mate” and “bloody” in their daily vocabulary but can switch to near flawless American accents in a second. I, on the other hand, managed to get out, “Hey, mate.” before my cousins burst out laughing at my ridiculous rendition of their accent.

Personally, I have a have a theory as to why exactly this is the case.

American TV is popular, right? Not only here in the U.S. but around the world as well. I mean, I went to the Philippines over Christmas break and I was watching “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” along with my cousins. “And American TV is so popular that the UK independent Channel Five is starting a new digital channel called Five US, which will show nothing but American programming.” So it’s safe to say that shows like “CSI: Miami”, “ER”, “Bones”, and all those other primetime programs that we love so much are just as popular abroad as they are here.

But what about foreign shows? Do you ever see much of them on our channels? No, right? Personally, I make it my duty to watch some BBC World News and an episode or two of “Extras” and “MI-5” which are both British shows but it’s not like you can just tune in to ABC and see a mob of MI-5 agents led by the dashing Matthew Macfadyen take down a group of terrorists in the London Underground (which is basically what they do on “MI-5”).

Because of this, it seems that foreigners get much more exposure to our American accents than we do of their accents. Therefore, they’re able to pick it up a lot easier since they’re so familiar with it. Our exposure to English, Irish, Scottish, and Australian accents, on the other hand, are limited to the occasional British news correspondents stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan and, of course, dear, sweet Simon Cowell.

Pathetic? I sure think so. What’s up with that, America? Are we that conceited that literally the only thing dominating almost every other channel is our oh-so-phenomenal accent? That we even expect foreigners to perfect our accent when we can’t even say something as simple as, “Hey, mate.” with a decent imitation of an Australian twang?

*sigh* This makes me sad.

Answer to riddle: Both of them! Kevin is from Scotland and Simon is from Australia. Gotcha didn't I? Haha.

Post #11 4/21/09 The Real Life in the ER

4/21/09

Enter Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, Princeton, New Jersey.

45 year old pregnant Caucasian female is undergoing exploratory surgery. Suddenly, a monitor that had been beeping regularly only a second before, emits a warning. Doctors look up in alarm.

DOCTOR 1
It’s the mother. She’s in v-fib.

DOCTOR 2

(with defibrilator)
Charging! Clear!

DOCTOR 3
(steps away)
I’m clear.

Doctor 2 administers one shock. Nothing.

DOCTOR 1
Looks like asystole. Paddling isn’t gonna do anything.

DOCTOR 2
It’s fine v-fib. I’m going again. Clear!

DOCTOR 1
We’re gonna loose them both. Clamp!
(takes clamp)
The surgery’s not doing this to her. The fetus is.
(moves to cut umbilical cord)

DOCTOR 2
Step away, House. I’m going again.

DOCTOR 1
The only way to save her is to cut off the anchor holding her
down.

DOCTOR 2
You keep going, you’re gonna get electrocuted. Clear!
Doctor 2 administers second shock.

DOCTOR 1
(jumps away from table)

Nothing.

DOCTOR 2
Going again! Clear!

Doctor 2 administers third shock. Normal beeping resumes.

DOCTOR 3
Heart rate’s returning to normal.

Believable? David Shore and Katie Jacobs sure hope so. And why do they care? Because, they’re the creators of House, M.D., the show from which the above scenario was taken. No, there really isn’t a Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey and no, there really wasn’t a 45 year old pregnant Caucasian female that went into full cardiac arrest 15 minutes are being put under while her attendings worked furiously to revive her. The entire thing is completely fabricated.

This is just one example of the many medical dramas that air on our primetime channels. As procedurals, these shows more-or-less strive for one thing: medical accuracy. “We want to be as accurate as possible," says Marc Platt, executive producer of ER. Unfortunately, these shows often fall short of their so called goal. “Experts say medical dramas often inaccurately portray organ donation, the range of doctors’ expertise and nurses’ roles, not to mention the level of hospital romance that takes place.” Yes, Grey’s Anatomy fans, that’s right. Hospital life isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as the show depicts. The same goes for ER, House, Private Practice, and whatever other medical dramas there are out there.

You can try your very hardest to make your show as close to the facts as possible by having on-site medical advisors who are real doctors but the truth of the matter is that the only way you’re going to make that happen is if you shoot at an actual hospital with actual doctors. Because Drs. Gregory House and Derek Shepherd aren’t real people; they’re fictional characters played by actors and it doesn’t matter how many years their show has been on the air. They don’t have a medical degree. QED: they usually have absolutely no clue what half of the words they say on screen really mean. Like… “He could just as easily have too much dopamine as serotonin, but if it’s dopamine the cyproheptadine will kill him.”

Now, you can imagine how crushed I was to learn that there really isn’t a Department of Diagnostic Medicine in actual hospitals like how there is on House. Because if you know me at all, you’d know that I adore that show and it was actually all of those hours spent watching House berate his team for their so called “idiotic ideas” then miraculously come up with the diagnoses in the final act of the show that prompted me to seriously consider becoming a doctor.

But alas, as my mom likes to say, “It’s about 25% fact and 75% entertainment.”

3/7/09 Forum #5 Homemade No More

At the end of "The Restaurant Owner", Huang Xiaoqiang is depicted making chaoshou. Not with a machine or an army of workers slaving away in a factory but with his own two hands and a chopstick. This brought to mind an episode I saw of "Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations", a cultural food show in which Bourdain travels the world, sampling various regional dishes and delicacies. In this particular episode, Bourdain travels to China and witnesses a quickly fading art: the creation of noodles. Like Huang Xiaoqiang, the man making the noodles uses no modern technology. With his bare hands, he creates a slab of dough with flour and duck eggs then uses a giant bamboo pole as a sort of rolling pin to flatten the dough so that he can form the stringy substance. Just as his father taught him and just as his father's father taught him, and so on for as long as the family had been making noodles.

These two instances really got me thinking. There really aren't too many things nowadays that can honestly bear the title of being "homemade". Because now, no one makes apple pie from scratch. Who does that? That's what Marie Calendar's and Baker's Square are for. But this is also a sad reality. The fact that these traditions are slowly but surely being erased from our world. The fact that there will definitely come a time when we rely solely on machines or on others to create what would once be considered as "homemade". The fact that we are basically loosing our ability to create something that has been passed on from generation to generation.

And that just makes me sad. Because I love homemade lumpia as do many other people, I'm sure. And if I'm the only one who can make them in some 30 odd years (because my mom made sure that I can make them), that won't be too much fun.

Post #10 3/31/09 When East Meets West

3/31/09

So I was flipping through the latest edition of Newsweek over the weekend, trying desperately to find something, anything that wouldn’t be such a pain in the butt to blog about. And as I was flipping the pages into the late hours of the night, a single word caught my eye.

Irish.

Admittedly, that one word wouldn’t spark very much interest from many people but with me it’s a completely different story.

I did not fully understand the dread term “terminal illness” until I saw
Heathrow for myself. ~Dennis Potter, 1978

I guess if you’ve never been to Heathrow International Airport you wouldn’t really get that quote. I have though. Back in the summer of 2004, I went on a trip to the British Isles as part of the People to People Student Ambassador Program. I’ve always loved traveling so naturally I jumped on this opportunity to see a part of Europe in a heartbeat.

So, I flew into Heathrow with a group of about 20 other students on June 23, 2004. Then, get this, we had to take a bus just to get from one terminal to the next. That’s how big that airport is. People use mass transport to get from one place to another. Anyway, in that other terminal we hopped on our connecting flight to Dublin, Ireland, the country of potatoes, U2, whiskey, and Colin Farrell.

Now, I’ve been to many different countries in my life but Ireland is definitely one of my favorites. Why? Well, that’s an excellent question and in all honesty, I don’t think I can even do my own answer justice in this post. I only stayed in the country for four days before boarding a ferry for Wales but in that small amount of time I completely immersed myself into the Irish culture. Food, sports, dance, you name it.

Like Peter Hessler after being thrown headlong into the very heart of China, I was awkward at first, hesitant. Despite the fact that I had traveled internationally in the past, the thrill of being a foreigner in a strange country once again took me by surprise. I didn’t know the customs, places, or even the strange jargon spoken by the locals with their sharp, distinct accents. I mean, yeah, it was English but try making sense out of something like, “Leave your rucksacks in the coach, please and be sure to pick up your rubbish.” while suffering from jetlag after an 11 hour flight.
Yeah. Exactly.

I was, quite literally, a fish out of water, gawking and gaping at all the different sights and sounds. And if that wasn’t enough to clearly mark me as a tourist, my conspicuous American drawl stuck out like a sore thumb among the slew of Irish accents. I can’t even remember how many times a friendly and inquisitive Irishman came up to me and asked, “So, you’re American?” Aye, sir, I sure am.

Nearly five years later, as I sit reading River Town back in a more familiar setting, those feelings of being completely out of place come rushing back. True, I didn’t need to learn a totally new language just to communicate with the locals (although British English is arguably its own language altogether) nor was I stuck with only one other American in a foreign country but I understood what it was like to be the foreigner everyone talked about with the accent everyone was fascinated by. I got that. Because while Hessler was one of only two white men in the Chinese province of Sichuan, I was one of a few Asian students traveling through the strange country that was Ireland. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?

But amidst the sideways glances and passing smiles, I found myself mesmerized by the land and scenery. Reminiscent of Hessler’s own attitude toward the Chinese countryside, I reveled in the majesty of Ireland’s lush hills and brisk seaside. Coming from an area in which nothing remained green for long, seeing the verdancy of the land amazed me beyond all reason. It really was like stepping into another world altogether. A world that I wouldn’t mind at all being stuck in for the next 100 years or so. There were no electrical lines, billboards, or any other reminders of 21st century life. Just…the simplicity of the land.

One particularly striking memory I have is of a hike I took one day in a place called Glendalough, literally “Glen of Two Lakes” in the Irish language, “renowned for its early medieval monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin”. Dusk was barely settling over the lake, the mountain fog slowly creeping down the hills. The temperature was dropping but despite this, my friends and I were determined to continue our trek. So, we kept walking, right through an ancient cemetery with crumbling tombstones and unkempt grass until we reached the lake’s edge. By then, the hazy mist was hovering over the water’s surface, the biting cold fiercely attacking any inch of exposed skin. But as I stood there, taking in the rolling hills poking over the top of the fog and the murky water below, I forgot all about the screaming protests of my freezing body and realized that this was about as good as it was going to get.