We must stop with the stupid fascination with royalty, stop awing at every appearances of Kate Middleton and her children or an anecdote about Japanese emperor’s family. Stop thinking about them as the epitome of sophistication, of elegance and grace, stop idolize them. That is naive and even racist if you really think about it, with all the ideals of Western upper class and Japanese people. The royals don’t represent the fairy tale wonder life. If there is anything that they…
So piano, I wouldn’t say there is a new craze but lately I see more people get their kids piano lessons. This is where Vietnamese middle class stands now. We can afford an old upright acoustic piano if we really want it, or a good electronic one like I have. And our kids can finally learn to play piano. Piano has always been an object of prestige. The instrument is expensive, the music has excellent connotation: it is the music of…
So I was reading this: Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma. I don’t have any reference in linguistic, although I did have some lessons at university, so I don’t even know if this author is legit or not. I have forgot the majority of what I have read from this book already. But the things that I learn from it is not its strictly speaking content anyway. He said something about Principle of Substandard Southern Speech, basically according to this, Saigon speech, just like the…