After all those religious ads that showed up in the AdSense boxes (which I managed to get rid of eventually) , now I am faced with yet another problem. Not ad related though.
Let me tell you how I picked up the name "The Yoboo". I wanted to create a thing that was mine, something where I can put anything I want, my own corner of the Internet. And I ended up with this crappy thing :). Just kidding. At first I thought I should pick a name that was very descriptive, that would say what my project is about right from the start. I soon realized that I was unable to do such a thing. Not because all the good names out there are taken. It's because I didn't know what I was to write about, what was my main target audience, my strong point. You see, I have very many things that I consider interesting, such as graphics (any kind of graphics: drawing, painting, spray-painting, computer generated, body painting, and any other form of graphical interpretation), sculpture (although I don't practice it, I like the idea that you can create something so beautiful out of raw material), pottery, electronics (I like playing with all sorts of gadgets, commercial or home-made), programming, and probably others that I can't remember right now. I will surely place at least an entry here about them, as I stumble into them. So, as you can see, I have relatively many hobbies. It would have been impossible to choose just one of them and use it as a main focus point for the title. So I had a real dilemma.
A few days I said that I won't start anything until I find an appropriate name. Then I changed my mind and I decided to focus on graphics, that being one of my favorites. And I picked a corny name, "Talk About Graphics". As I said, corny. I posted a few entries (not more that 5 I believe) then I got bored with it. I believe it's because I don't like doing something for too long. It gets monotonous and thats one of the things I hate more. So I decided to change things. I started with the name. I thought about it for a few days but I came up with nothing. Then , in a moment of despair, I used one of those word generators you can find online. I gave it a few letters and it spit out about 100 results. It is there where me and The Yoboo first met. It was love at first sight. Isn't that a beautiful love story?
But back to my problem. A few days ago I did a Google search for "The Yoboo" to see whether or not it's indexed by the search engine. I don't care about the others, like Yahoo or MSN Live. I especially don't care about MSN, but that's another story. Anyway, after that I did a search in Google's Blog Search - BETA. I was surprised to see something I saw a few times before, but didn't bother to give it some importance. It appears that 'yoboo' is actually a real word and from the types of results I'm getting when searching for it, at appears to be Chinese. OK then, off to the dictionary I went. And I had no luck. Then I found that there is a registered domain, http://www.yoboo.cn. But I don't know Chinese and that didn't gave any helpful informations. All in all, I think I'll just pretend that The Yoboo is unique and that there isn't anything that even remotely resembles it. But if anyone can find out, please let me know what the hell does yoboo mean?
1 comments:
Hey, Andrei.
I guess, ask and ye shall receive, yeah. I got home about an hour ago or so, fiddled about with sundry for a few, and eventually sat down and logged in.
I have Traffic Swarm set as my default browser window, and before getting into the nitty-gritty, I kicked back to relax over a few clicks and The Yoboo popped up with "I am (not) one of a kind?" as the first article. So, I'm like, "Hmm.", and begin reading. Enough said there.
I'm a long-time expat Oregonian residing in Taiwan. I came here in the middle of January somewhere in 1979 with a BA degree in Chinese to work on my Mandarin conversation skills and ended up pursuing a career "facilitating" English acquisition by Chinese-speakers. How's that for irony?
Fast forward to Nov 30th of ought-seven and I guess things have worked out all right, despite the bumpy road and the requisite misadventures. I mean, hey, it's Friday!
Maybe more on that later but right now here's where I'm at. Yoboo. Yeah, like people are gonna be seeing this (this is my first time to run across you in the traffic exchangers, but welcome, by the way) and going "Yoboo, what's a Yoboo?" Most cool, man, it's growing on me as I type. Not like a fungus, more like a concept.
So, I went to www.yoboo.cn, and here's the skinny. The "Yo" part of "Yoboo" represents 運 (which is the traditional form of the character as used in Taiwan, the Mainland simplified version looking like this 运), meaning "transport, carry by means of transportation technology", something like that. The "boo" part traditional character looks like 寶 (simplified, 宝), and so "boo" means "precious" as in precious stone (寶石, 宝石), and you guessed it, "stone" is already simple enough in Chinese. I guess stone is pretty simple in English, too. I mean, what's more simple than a stone. It certainly wouldn't be a simpler stone, if there's such a thing, but sorry I digress. You know, it all gets so . . . complicated . . . .
And so. I would tend to romanize the Mandarin pronunciation of 運寶 as "yunbao", where "yun" has a hard and sudden falling tone, like telling your dog "No!". The "bao" thingee sounds like your saying "Ewww!" as if your nostrils have been enticed by something less than smelly, meaning more smelly, as in, more simplier, smellier, but again I digress. Where was I? Oh, yeah, wait a minute, I messed up. Hey, that's pretty funny. That's a lot more funnillier than that other stuff, whatever it was.
But getting back to "bao", if I may borrow from the canine motif again, it's kinda like what your dog sez after you pass poochie that aforementioned negative wave in a serious and commanding tone. However, this time you intone the phoneme as if you are saying "Well." in English when you can't make up your mind and it gets all long and stretched out. This is the third, or "falling-rising", tone in Mandarin Chinese. It's funny to watch first-year Chinese students in a language lab, sitting in a row along a line of consoles, headphones moving up and down with their heads as their noggins nod up and down trying to learn the third tone.
But getting back to my miscue on "Ewww." I told you about the tone on "yun" but not the pronunciation, which is what makes "yoboo" fun. Or, uh, do I mean funny. There I go getting all complicated again. But now that I'm on the subject, and I'm just being rhetorical here , but which one do think is more funner, anyway? Ha ha.
So. Right. Okay. "Yun" in Mandarin is pronounced like you're saying a combination of that "Ewww." sound when your dog gets revenge in your shoe and not the "no" but the "on" part of "noon", so it comes out really fast and pushed together, "Ewwwnn!!". Okay?
I can see that "Yoboo" and "yunbao" might be similar to somebody in China who thinks it's fun, or funny, or whatever, representing the two words in Roman script this way, or maybe it's some other dialect. Who knows? As Jack Nicholson is told at the end, "Forget about it, Jake, it's Chinatown."
Anyway, I hope this helps.
And by the way, are you familiar with the scenario involving Taiwan and Mainland China (as the folk on the isle refer to the giant panda looming to the west)? If not, you might find another interest of sorts. It is, for sure, another global flashpoint at any rate. The difference in writing is just one factor, a very minor one. Oh, well, as the world turns, so does the stomach.
I don't spend an awful lot of headspace dwelling on that sitcom though, I've got more immediate matters on my plate. For one, binaural beat brainwave entrainment, holographic visualization, remote viewing, et cetera, you know, like traveling the time/space continuum. Fun stuff. Ha ha.
Later, Dude.
Iago de Otto
www.chaoschasm.ws
www.chaoschasm.org
Post a Comment