The Language Update

Things are not going to be done. But at least we could say we have a plan for it.

I self identify as a man bearing some traits of ADHD. Or at least who has difficulty concentrating on a task for a reasonable period. Maybe I'm just distracted and should gather everything up and do the work.

The thing is, there is a plan, a promise to the future self that I will eventually do these things. But the plans I made are often delayed and procrastinated. That's either because I suck at planning things. Or maybe there is a much deeper reason which I cannot figure out for the moment.

The priming factor of me writing this Rant is I picked up the Language Update -- for the third time. I didn't disclose the Plan so I have to make it clear now for future evaluations and references.

The Language Update is a plan set in circa 2012 when I was still in junior. The objective is to master another language other than Chinese (L1) and English (FL). The new language of choice is no other than Japanese. The reason for selecting Japanese as the new language is a) I was in a school which has Japanese as the foreign language class and b) I was also interested in anime as my peers do.

Despite I might receive formal education from the school for my Japanese learning, I didn't succeed because I failed the entrance test. I was just dumb at that time. So that means I would have to step on the journey alone, in the dark. Back in time when Duolingo wasn't even conceptualized. Life was tough and I gave up almost instantly.

And the second attempt was made when I finally made my way into a university. And a supplementary course was offered -- it was Japanese 101. I saw it and took the course without hesitating if I even had any time to make it. I passed the course, of course. (As you generally don't fail any supplementary courses unless you just don't attend to them or quit the exam.) What I've learned? Well, not much. But at least I knew the general structure of Definitions and Boolean Query, i.e. 'A is B.' and 'Is A B?' I have already forgotten if the Set Query is covered in the course as I don't have a recollection of learning it. I knew there is so much more to learn but we only had a couple of hours before the course ends. I cannot count it as a failure but it didn't yield a satisfactory result. After that semester, the interest in learning a third language has faded and I didn't pick up the thing for a while.

And after a year of silence, the gears meshed again. It was a chain of coincidences, sort of an accident, to be fair. I would elaborate on the chain of events in the appendix. But the thing primed me again to resume the unfinished business.

So, why? Why I have to write about it? Maybe it's just a reminder that I still have something to pursuit. Maybe it's just fun to etch your goals on stones -- now disks, as a marking of being ambitious or sometimes being incompetent. But this is a nature of Rants. I write something strange and baffling to let out my recent distress in a 'carefully controlled manner' without hurting anyone including who is reading it.

The chain of events. For you who are curious enough, and for the future reference. We hardly remember how we made friends, right? The first meet is a thing that would get blurry swiftly.

Everything started with Mr Quin. The one who plays games and make walkthroughs about Halo and Dark Souls. A strange day struck and a meme emerged stating that Mr Quin is the one behind of Minato Aqua. Of course, it was just a cheap joke out of nowhere. But Minato Aqua turned out to be a member of Hololive, a Virtual YouTuber (VTuber) organization.

For the one who is not familiar with the concept of VTuber, it is a practice of using a virtual character animated by a person typically with motion capture as the presentation layer. The advantage of VTuber is the appearance of the character is not bound to the actor/actress or even the real world. The actor/actress who animates the virtual character is also referred to as the person behind (the character) and their identities are usually confidential as it might break the facade.

So I watched some content made by Aqua and other VTubers in Hololive. And I quite like it. And as you may have guessed it, the content is in Japanese. Thanks to the community translators, I can still enjoy some of the content with subtitles. But I figured it won't be viable if I wanted to watch live streams. Albeit there will be a community translator doing a real-time translation session. The kindling was ignited by this spark. But I couldn't figure out how long will it last.

And please don't judge me for watching multiple streams at once. Thanks. I am not a fan of parasocial relationships. I will prevent myself from forming such a relationship with any entity. Tom Scott once talked about this in There is No Algorithm for Truth that liking someone's work is different from liking someone even in the current context they mean virtually the same thing. But I do have only one VTuber on the subscribe list. So technically it is not a violation.