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I never knew that grandfather had learned German until today, after I had read his diary. It continues:

S often uses the expression baka [literally, horse-deer, translated as stupid, idiot, fool, or even bloody, according to the circumstance] that is therefore the subject of others’ reprimand behind his back. Among the Japanese that I know, S is surly rude. Yet, I never feel anything repulsive whenever he uses baka to me, on the contrary there is an affinity in that usage. Such way of employing language, makes me recall when I was in Kiyomitsu [Qingshui, Taichung], the town people would use familiar and vulgar words to tease others, yet without anything maleficient. The very moement that S said that I am ‘helplessly honest,’ however, his tone is full of some sadness. I still could not make it out even at the present time, keeping this diary.

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lukhnos :: Apr.30.2004 :: :: Comments Off

What followed in that afternoon, I still could not comprehend well till now. I walked all the way from Sumida-ku to Bunkyô-ku. It was not really a long walk, but I deliberately took a detour to walk for some more time, until midnight. Yet, even given such burning midnight, I could not stop. I walked and walked, until finally I felt my legs heavy, only then I went back to the dormitory. And that act alone had waken up Mrs. Yamamoto, and I thought I had been very impolite because of that.

S and I sat against each other. As I was having such thirst, I bottomed up the water S handed to me. I didn’t feel so beforehand, yet as I gulped the water, I sweated even harder. Persipration was now found in my forehead, and I had but to took out a hankie from my pocket to wipe it.

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lukhnos :: Apr.27.2004 :: :: Comments Off

A diary that I found at my grandparents’ house in Qingshui (Kiyomitsu before 1945, a town in Taichung), written by grandfather in a strange form of Chinese, which I hereby translate into English:

July 20, 1948. The afternoon of Tokyo was scorching, and the streets of Hongo Area [belonging to Bunkyô District] were deserted. S-kun [hereafter S] and watashi [hereafter I] had finished the final on thermodynamics. After having lunch at the shokudô [university canteen], I returned to the dormitory located in 3-chome [third block of the Area]. At about one p.m., Mrs. Yamamoto came and called me. It turned out that S came to visit me. S didn’t go home after lunch, but instead spent some time in the Western bookstores in 6-chome, and then went to the vinyl store. I saw a brown paper bag in his one hand, and a copy of André Gide’s Fruits of the Earth [Les nourritures terrestres] in another. S asked me if he’s got the pleasure to invite me, and I thought, it was unbearably hot anyway, and there was nothing I could do staying at the dorm, and above all the last final was over, it was a boring time, and an invitation out was surly a good idea.

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lukhnos :: Apr.26.2004 :: :: 1 Comment »

常常覺得，看一個地方的公共事務廣告，就可以對這個地方的公共事務心態 (mentality on public issues) 有比較深的了解。我經常跟朋友們抱怨的是台灣遮遮掩掩的保險套廣告。前陣子看到的誇張例子是坐台鐵自強號的時候，LCD跑馬燈的宣導廣告是「防治愛滋，人人有責，台鐵祝您健康」。我們的公共部門，以及許多公共服務的組織，對於「文宣」的概念，似乎還有很多可以演化的空間^[1]。

今天我又看到一個廣告，是經濟部放在捷運站的大型燈箱廣告，主題是拒絕盜版。圖像的內容是數張骨牌，上面寫著像「電玩公司倒閉」、「歌手無法生存」乃至於「經濟成長倒退」等等一張張訴求「使用盜版的後果」這樣危言聳聽、幾近威脅的用語。在廣告最下方，則是一句令人皺眉的英文slogan:
"(Piracy.) You take. You fall."

如果廣告內容不論，最起碼最起碼，那句英文slogan也應該改成："Take it, and you fall." 或者是 "You
take it. We fall." 再怎麼說take都不可能是孤立存在的動詞吧。

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lukhnos :: Apr.24.2004 :: :: 6 Comments »

祖父曾經學過德語這件事，我是一直到今日，讀到了日記才知道的。

「S君經常把馬鹿一詞掛在口邊，偶然引來旁人非議。以私所認識的日人之中，S君可言是相當魯莽無禮的。然，對於S君以馬鹿一詞來形容私之事，卻未曾有過嫌惡的感覺，反而是十分親切。那種言語的使用方法，讓私想起在清水的時候，鄉人間用親狎的字詞，攻訐對方，而沒有半分惡意那般。只是，S君言私《誠實得無望》的瞬間，語氣中卻填滿了一種哀傷，則是私寫日記的此時，仍不能理解的。

私對S君說，不管怎麼說，有些東西是已經決定，bestimmt。即便在日本生活數年，受到許多人的照顧，終究不改私來自異鄉的honshitsu 〔此處祖父用片假名代替「本質」的漢字〕。S君不也喜歡嘲諧私所謂的九州腔嗎。

－－確實是這樣，沒錯。那麼，顏終有一天會回去台灣了。

從來都是這樣說的。私的家人也如此期望著。雖然，偶爾，家人也表達了如果能多留下來也無妨的意見……

－－顏是指只今台灣的狀況吧。

誠然。從住京都的ba-san〔此處應是指我曾祖母，也就是祖父的母親，在京都終老的妹妹彩子〕帶來家鄉的消息。

－－顏怎麼想。

非常不氣味。

－－但就算是這樣，顏還是會回去。

時間早或時間晚。然，是吧。

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lukhnos :: Apr.15.2004 :: :: 1 Comment »

You know the piece of software called BitTorrent. For me, the program’s concept is rather more like a wizardly act: a shamanic figure in her cloak, waving her hands murmuring some spells, so that the spirits of Earth and Heaven would come to put together into a whole. I was thinking of Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä. Calling pieces of other-wordly existing software to assemble together into a Frankenstein. But of course you’re assured that what you get is a clean, error-free chunk.

The other day I talked with a friend, and we came to the notion of “distributed past”: we always leave traces, voluntarily or involuntarily, and pieces of our past, into others’ memory. Some time later in life, when we meet those people who seem now to come from another world, they begin to feed us back those pieces and traces, and we begin to reassemble our past — a social software that I call, in a copycat fashion, PastTorrent.

Sadly, though, instead of a clean, error-free chunk, what you piece together from PastTorrent is full of misrememberances, CRC errors, questionable or uncertified derivative versions, revisions, modifications, and even new lines of code that did not even exist in the original version.

不少人應該聽過BitTorrent這套軟體（我喜歡那「位元暴雨」的大雨形象，讓人想起米蘭昆德拉的小說《不朽》）。我總覺得BT的概念更像是某種巫術：穿著袍子的修道人，揮手唸咒，祈求四方諸靈前來，合體成形。我聯想到的是宮崎駿的《風之谷》。將各方的軟體片段合成一隻巨獸。不過，當然，BT掛保證，你收到的東西是乾淨、沒有錯誤的大塊文章。

有一天，和一位朋友聊天時，我們談到了關於「分散式過去」的說法：我們總是有意無意地將我們過去生活的片段和足跡，留在別人的記憶之中。多年之後，當我們再次遇到那些如今看來有如從另一世界而來的人們，他們重新送回過去的那些片段和足跡，而我們以此重組出我們的過去－－我將這種社會軟體，很沒創意地稱之為 “PastTorrent”。

不過，悲傷的是，從PastTorrent重組出來的過去，不但不是乾淨、沒有錯誤的整塊東西，反而充滿了記憶錯誤、CRC error、令人質疑未經簽章驗證過的衍生版本、增訂版、改寫版、甚至是從未在原始版本中存在過的新程式碼。

lukhnos :: Apr.14.2004 :: :: 1 Comment »

偶然在住家附近的書店，看到這本在架上的《沃爾瑪王朝》(The
Wal-Mart Decade)^[1]。書腰上寫的導讀人中，赫見南方朔也列名其中。南方朔會為商業書寫導讀？不單純。

南方朔的導讀可以在這個網址上讀到。

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lukhnos :: Apr.06.2004 :: :: 2 Comments »

看上去是要來講述人文學科的某些議題，其實是想要講和電腦有關的事。

有時候我會驚覺──突然回首，才發現身旁的軟體也已經進化到如此的程度。用來預測積體電路發展的摩爾定律，應用在軟體上面似乎也有一定的準度。1985年，第一版的Microsoft
Word（麥金塔版）約莫只有200 KB的大小，可以裝在一張400K的磁片上面。到了1995年，Microsoft推出給自家Windows 95用的Word
95的時候，Word的主程式，連同和其他Office軟體共用的部份、使用者範本，算一算也需要200 MB才安裝得起來。1024倍的差距：正好是十年的悠悠歲月已過，2的10次方。

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lukhnos :: Apr.05.2004 :: :: 2 Comments »