Sonic Generations

I know it's been about two weeks or so already since Sonic Generations got released on PS3, Xbox, NDS, and PC... but, hey! I haven't gotten my copy of Sonic Generations yet.

Now, with all the spiffy game releases at the moment, Sonic Generations is probably the last thing on the mind of most gamers. For me, however, I played Sonic platformers way back when I was a young little kid. And I really loved those times as a kid—the little hedgehog leaping around, landing on Badniks, and whizzing away in an a blue ball of awesomeness! That, was childhood.

I wouldn't call myself a die-hard Sonic fan, because honestly, after Sonic graduated from the 2D platform, it just didn't cut it anymore. I remember when I was playing Sonic 3D Blast—sure, the controls were hard, maneuvering was not simple task—at the end of the day, I made it though. Then came Sonic Adventure DX, which wasn't really all a bundle of fun, but seeing the cool hedgehog getting the better out of everyone else was quite satisfying anyway...

Then there was Sonic Riders, and honestly, I really don't like this game, as much of a Sonic fan I am. It doesn't give me the thrill of a racing game, and neither is it satisfying in any way. It just didn't appeal to me in any way.

But hey! I've never really given up on Sonic. I still remain a Sonic fanboy deep within me. If any one of you out there actually played Sonic the Hedgehog 3, you'd probably remember this...

Yeah... that's the Sonic fanboy I am, remembering the little funny things that I really enjoyed as a kid... ;) I'm so looking forward to giving Sonic Generations a go!

Oh, if you haven't checked out OCRemix, do give them a go. Click here to pay them a visit. Basically, they give game soundtracks their own remixed renditions... with all the funk and iffiness to go. It's pretty cool; I mean, just listen to the following track, and you'd understand what I mean.

I'm so looking forward to giving Sonic Generations a go!

French vocabulary

I won't try to deny it, but French vocabulary is probably more important than grammar. Fluency, on the other hand, is how someone carries the whole package together. Grammar is like the architecture—without it the whole building falls. Vocabulary is like the materials: the better materials you get, the better buildings you can build. Fluency, then, is how the whole thing is put together, and involves the intricacies—the nuances, of the language.

I wouldn't say that learning French vocabulary is easy. It's probably far easier than Japanese, or Korean, however. When learning a new language, I subconsciously try to find similarities between my strongest language (English) and the language I'm learning... and boy, I've got to say that similarities between Asian languages and English are few and far between.

Now, I'd like to ramble more and pretend to be the language master that I'm not, but I'm gonna try to talk about certain things I've noticed...

False cognates
libraire—bookshop
actuel—current
monnaie—small change (yes, it's money, but we use argent to refer to money en general)
chair—flesh (fauteuil, or chaise is used to refer to chair)
course—races (not really a false cognate, because it also refers to course; faire des courses: do grocery-shopping)
robe—dress
sang—blood

Similar words
toilette—toilet
épouse/époux—spouse
amour—love
morose—gloomy
lieu—place
soudain—sudden
lien—link, bond (doesn't alien mean somebody without bonds?)
ligne—line
sang—blood (sanguine anyone?)


Direct translations (sort of)
surtout—above all (sur: above; tout: all)
parfois—sometimes (par: by; fois: time, occasion)
malheureuse—unfortunately, unhappily (mal: bad; heureuse: happy)
en general—in general (en: in, preposition)
en ligne—online (en: on, preposition; ligne: line)
longtemps—long time (temps: time)

Words that have hardly any link
bibliotheque—library
pécheur—fisherman
magasin—store
pomme—apple
vert—green
apitoyer—pity

There are probably many other words, but these are stuff I can write off my head (and bien sur, with the help of Google Traduction). I'm definitely not a maître de langue, but there many things that interessent moi—the fact that langue means both "language" and "tongue". Now, when you talk about mother tongue... and speaking in many different tongues, it makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? ;)

All the best to any language you're learning. Wish me all the best, too. Would trade French fluency for my left nut.

Elle me dit

Here's Mika's first French single, entitled "Elle me dit":

I'm sure many of us here has heard of his song Grace Kelly. It's another fun, light-hearted song that gets him sailing breeze-like past his falsetto, and back down. It's nice, actually! just not my cup of tea. All the while I thought he was an English-only singer, but, well, this song proved me wrong.

"Elle me dit" means "She tells me" in French. When I first heard the song, and read the lyrics, I thought it was a song about a naggy girlfriend. After all, the chorus goes "pourquoi tu gâches ta vie", very much like an irritating hoe trying to change her boyfriend's direction in life.

I was wrong though! In his life performance, he said that "it's about all the horrific things a mother could say to her son to get him to fuck out of her house".

Whatever the meaning behind it, it doesn't really matter. This song is great. It has a very colourful melody to it, light-hearted lyrics, accompanied by a dynamic beat. It has so many flavours to it, it's actually hard not to like it! ;)

Man against the virus

Now, this man Timothy Ray Brown, a HIV patient, received a bone marrow transplant from a guy who was immune to HIV. Soon after that, the HIV virus inside Brown disappeared.

Take a look at this article.

Magic? Perhaps not. The bone marrow is a flexible tissue found in our bones that produces red blood cells. While I'm no expert at viruses or medicine, it's safe to say that the blood the new bone marrow produced triggered this cure. In rare cases of a bone marrow transplant, the blood type of the person changes.

HIV is a worldwide epidemic that especially affects the poverty-stricken. HIV has no known cure. HIV will eventually lead to AIDS, and AIDS will eventually lead to death. The virus demolishes a person's immune system, such that even the slightest flu bug can be fatal to him. AIDS isn't exactly the harbringer of death, but rather more of a messenger.

While this piece of news is probably not much of a cause for celebration to HIV patients worldwide, at the very least, it brings the human race a glimmer of hope against this dangerous virus. At the very least, we all now know that the virus is not invincible, and there is perhaps some way to counter it. That, is some cause for celebration for humankind.

In Man's battle against the virus.

Freelancer.com

While having a nice sweet walk (or surf, if you wish) around the interwebs, I chanced upon this extraordinary website.

While I already know that freelancing is a pretty common thing (perhaps not so in my country), I've never thought that such a website would exist! A website which allows freelancers and paying parties alike to come together and find each other: in economics this would be the reduction of frictional unemployment. Or maybe not.

Anyway, I got a shock when I took a look at what other people are paying. Fifty bucks for a C# task to be completed in a day or two. Fifty measly, mediocre dollars. Being a student of C# myself (and I probably don't know any other language well enough to do a proper job), I was a bit confused for a moment or two. My prospects for the future if I continued in this IT industry... they suddenly looked pretty dim. I wouldn't want to go to work at the office, type code all day long till my head is about to explode, and then bring back home a pathetic grand and a half!

However, with the supply of IT professionals being so abundant (what with people from India, Russia, places I've never heard of), prices are sure to be driven down low. This would be especially so if companies were to take a broader stance and look beyond their own countries, and outsouce from freelancers from all over the globe. Maybe not so in Singapore, perhaps--I believe our culture is still much too conservative and not so risk-taking. Indeed, outsourcing from people you don't know poses a large potential risk... how if? the person fails to deliver?

Still, such websites are very disheartening to a soon-to-be young adult such as me. Take a look at this list: 25 whopping websites to find your dear freelancer... this is, this is, certainly not the direction I want this world to take. So many people offering to do professional jobs for half the money I'd like to do them for! Malevolent job stealers! Voleurs! Je deteste vous tous! Putains!

Let me enjoy this lifetime, oh dear God, and not thrust me into the depths of apocalypse.

Real Steel

I just got to watch this show: Real Steel.

Introduced to me by a friend of mine, I have to say that... it's really not a bad show at all! This is just coming from an ordinary cinema-goer, so you don't have to take my review as seriously as a professional movie critic. Well, here's the trailer for the movie:

 

First impression when I took a look at the trailer was this: it looked like Transformers, just not as impressive. I have to say that the Transformers franchise is really very appealing and spectacular, with all their bells and whistles--totally great CGI altogether, coupled with a not-too-bad storyline. Real Steel is unable to top Transformers in any way at all, and I guess the producers knew that from the very beginning, so they decided to take another direction. The movie is sophisticated in its own manner.

While I wouldn't say that this movie is a must-watch, I wouldn't say it's a bad movie altogether. It's the kind of movie where... it's great to watch, fulfilling, you get the bang for buck, but it doesn't leave a profound, lasting impact on you like Christopher Nolan's movies (Inception, Dark Knight), or Avatar (I've not watched that show however). Anyway, from this point onwards, I'll be talking about the movie, so there will be...

Spoilers. Having said that, let's move on. ;)

In this movie, there are two protagonists: Charlie, someone who seems like a good-for-nothing, irresponsible chap yet charming in his own way, and Max, his ballsy son whose mom passed away. Charlie used to be a professional boxer; however, the advent of robot boxing took away his career altogether, and now he's just participating in robot boxing (but he's not too good at it!). His long-lost son comes along, finds a trashed robot at the edge of a cliff, and keeps fighting his way through, together with his dad!

There are times where emotions swell, because you can just feel the desire for the Max's robot, Atom, to win, and Atom does just that. Some matches are very much like those in Hajime no Ippo, I would say, where the robot is about to lose... and yet he returns with a great comeback. Those would be the first and final two matches. The matches in between, however, shows how Atom devours his opponents quickly and skilfully. Unlike other fighting movies, however, Real Steel does not have the same action, thrill, and excitement that you get from martial arts movies (those China ones, where the fights are so well-choreographed it is such an amazement to watch).

Other than that, Real Steel brings to the viewer the emotions of love (fatherly love, mostly), fear (they lose, they lose everything), and justice (especially when beating down Zeus), put together with a subtle tinge of humour (those two make a great team!). This movie might not be a must-watch, but it is certainly not a bad movie. The ending... felt a big lacking, though. In French, I believe the word for it would be manque!

Why "Je t'aime", and not "J'aime toi?"

I'm not really good at French or anything like that; I'm still learning, and trying my best. Right now my French standard's pretty low, I can perhaps make out the gist of a news article, but nothing other than the gist. This article from About.com would give a rough idea about your fluency of a language (any language, not just French!), and right now I'd think that I'm still a survivor... moving on to a conversationalist!

Alright, so aimer in French means to love. One of the first few phrases I learnt in French was j'aime jouer le foot, which basically means "I like/love to play soccer". And then, from a beginner's point of view, to make a sentence "I love you" in French, it would simply be j'aime toi.

• Je is shortened to J' because it is followed by a vowel.
• Aimer is conjugated to become aime.
• Toi means you.

However, apparently j'aime toi is wrong! I didn't understand this until I learnt about reflexive verbs: je me lève (I raise myself, i.e., I wake), je me lave (I wash myself)... in these case the word me refers to myself! From a beginner's point of view, I never knew such a sentence structure existed in French... I always thought it had to be "[subject] [verb] [object...?]". I never knew it could be "[subject] [object] [verb]"!

Indeed language is very surprising. Je t'aime would then consist of the following:

• Je, which means "I".
• Te (you) is shortened to t' because it is followed by a vowel.
• Aimer is conjugated to aime (taking je into consideration).

Another way of saying "I love you" in French would be je t'adore, but I've no idea which one expresses a deeper sense of affection. For that, you have to ask someone who's better in French, someone who knows the nuances and subtleties of the language. I'm just learning and trying to share my experience right here, and I doubt any of it makes much sense anyway!