What Language am I Learning Next? (Japanese, not Ojibwe, nor Cree, apparently)

just the last couple of months I have
told people in a very piece by piece step by step way that it seems that I am now learning Japanese and I don't really have a choice in the matter and it seems that my future is going to be linked to Japanese as a language of scholarship and I don't really have a choice the better and obviously I have not been saying that with a lot of pride or enthusiasm for learning Japanese because of the circumstances that I've kind of cornered me into this that are in large part beyond my control but it's funny man I mean some people are optimists and you know if you manage to grow to adulthood and to hold onto that optimism I think in some ways it's beautiful thing just two of the people have told us to people i mentioned that yeah you know i'm now learning japanese looks like this is what the future is gonna be for me to different people responded that by saying oh are you in love are you getting married laughs their default assumption or explanation for this was oh wow you know you you must have fallen in love with japanese woman like man hey if you made it to this age and you still got that out to visit video yeah I'm happy for you oh I guess that optimism for me it disappeared a long time ago but if you still got it I'm happy for you man so no I'm not in love those are not my reasons for networking Japanese that's funnier to me that it should be I guess look you know immediately before coming back to Canada this time i was living in taiwan and i was working on chinese my reasons for he on chinese is to be a really long video to get into it but that too was not what i wanted to be doing with my life one of my professors here who actually is a Japanese guy he asked me he said look what do you want to do if you won the if you won the lottery tomorrow what would you be working on a my answer then as now was actually first nations languages well anyway that was my answer then I don't know um I mean I've when I came back from Cambodia to Canada at that time I really made the decision that working on first nations languages what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and it's needless say it's not just a matter of language it's the politics of the language it's the political struggle to try to prevent these languages from going extinct all kinds of questions around government policy and education and the production of new knowledge at a very forward-looking engagement with these languages whereas by contrast obviously like when I was working on an ancient language like pally that's a lot more like working on ancient Greek so your interest is backward-looking you're interested in ancient philosophy and each and history and then a series of stages through the medieval the colonial unto the modern but a lot of that is ultimately backward-looking and my interest in first nations languages was forward-looking it's about making a positive difference now and for the next generation and actually a lot of the people around me when I was at first nations university learning Cree and i also had one course that stayed a little bit of a jib way a lot of them were surprised that because they were so accustomed to people people who were devoted to these languages they were so accustom them having the historical and backward looking emphasis they really expected you to be for example fascinated by reconstructing traditional shamanism you know religious aspects of the religion from a few centuries ago or looking at I guess particular historical battles from the colonial period from a century ago or two centuries ago what have you so when they were talking to me a lot of them really got excited and we're really surprised interested to hear someone talking in this very forward-looking way I remember I mean like the only historical research project I proposed had to do with the Cold War had to do with what it was like when you were living on a reservation in the 1970s and 1980s and listening to the radio and trying to figure out what was going on in the outside world if you were Korea or a jib way you know like if your first languages career first language is a jib way and you're trying to imagine what is this the radio was telling me about nuclear war or in the Russians and so on and of course again even that even though it was historical my interest wasn't looking forward was in talking to people now understanding the culture and what's going on on the reservations and in rural Canada and in urban Canada now in the future I just mentioned the significance of urban canada for First Nations is always underrated people want to think it's happening far away but the real geography of where minority languages exist and where they go where they got to struggle to survive is always an economic geography people go where there are employment opportunities and so actually one of the biggest concentrations of Cree speaking people in Canada is in Vancouver BC not because Cree is a native language there it isn't if you look at a map Cree are not the native people in Vancouver but Cree people move to Vancouver from all over Canada because that's where they can get a job as they can get ahead etc so still to this day I mean I say this partly because even the people who know me personally they may not get this about me still to this day I'm trying to get into language programs for create a jib way still to this day a couple of weeks ago I was planning to buy an airplane ticket and visit one of the few universities that still teaches a jib way so both created GA are part of the same language family both algonkian languages and you know I said an email well look the round trip cost is going to be like two thousand five hundred dollars so can you confirm for me that the professor's I should be there this during the summer break a lot of professors are not at the University during the summer break there were a couple people the University were nice to me and saying yes we want you as a student yes you should make this trip but they never really got back to me confirming there would actually be somebody there to meet me and talk to me what got the university so I didn't do that something else that you know certainly there's an email trail for you know when I first got here University of Victoria I was beating down the doors linguistics Department trying to work on first nations languages here here at uvic because you've it claims that has a robust department of fur stations language sorry first nations languages and they had one temporary professor you know a member of faculty is not a permanent professor who is specialized in Algonkian languages including the jib way so i was saying them look I've studied Cree in the past I want to study a jib way now you've got a professor who can do it let me at least do an independent study course where I get credit for studying at your boy sitting on my desk with a stack of textbooks I can come in and write tests I can do everything and do it all myself give me the opportunity to work on a jib way so that was just couple months ago and I said also look if any of your professors are teaching any First Nations language including the the west coast versed in languages i want to know about it i want in and I had email with a couple of the professors who could teach those languages in theory but none of them actually are doing it within my lifetime it is not possible to study any indigenous language at the University Victoria whatsoever despite some very misleading hype that's on their websites anyway but I did kick up a fuss about that largely through email talk to go professors face to face but even when I got here direct off the airplane from taiwan i was still looking for any opportunity to work on first nations languages because as i say not too many years ago that was vision i made for what i want to do with the rest of my life now unfortunately he in practical reality my my options to study those languages my ability to actually study these languages was destroyed by my wife who is now my ex-wife so don't worry that story as a happy ending but we got divorced it's okay um but I was enrolled in a language program for Cree and even though that program was not great if that program had not worked out if my wife had not made the terrible decision she made I would have proceeded to go to a different program for Cree or for a jib way or for some combination thereof so that was what I wanted to be doing with my life and if I had any choice in the matter it's what I would be doing now so came to university of victoria for reasons that would make this video too long to explain i was working on Chinese at that time you know what I mean to give a long story short the basic reason why I was working on Chinese is that my ex-wife spoke Chinese she is not a Chinese person she's French ethnically and in citizenship and so on but uh for her own PhD research she learned Chinese so basically because I was married to her I started working on Chinese that is simplifying the story massively but for now we're gonna leave to that and again there's a happy ending to that story because that marriage ends a divorce and it really is true that in a completely cold and objective way at the end of that marriage there wasn't any reason for me to continue learning Chinese but I did for time and I came here to uvic to work on Chinese because I thought well I've done so much work on Chinese already I don't want that to go to waste because I've already had so much hard work on so many other languages goes to waste it's heartbreaking every time every time you put years or hundreds of hours and hard work you know you go through this tremendous process of suffering like waking up at 6am and working on a language before you go to work at 8am you know it's hard and it's dramatic in ways that are never shown in movies it's dramatic in a subtle way all right and it's heartbreaking in a subtle way the whole process okay um so I came to the University of Victoria thinking that Chinese was going to be my language scholarship with the rest of my life and I did have offers to go to graduate school get PhDs and so on that presume that was now going to step up and become a son I'll just work on Chinese politics Chinese history possibly Chinese Buddhism a little bit because i have this robust background relate to punish philosophy blah blah blah it's not what i want it what I wanted was working for a stations languages and that's why I say the minute I arrived here was still looking for that it's not what I wanted but it seemed to be what was possible for me to do unfortunately to make another very long story short the Chinese language program here at University of Victoria was garbage and a lot of the people involved in that program directly and indirectly were nice to me and a lot of them are people i personally like just people that I talked about politics with talked about history but even talked about my divorce with talking to one person alive with there were a lot of people who I really like as individuals who are connected that program make it happen but right now in 2015 it's a terrible program and it is in a state of disarray and a lot of the people a lot of the professors that I vote acknowledge to me yeah this program right now it's a bit of a disaster it's instant disarray and I gotta tell them you know even though many of those conversations were friendly I got to keep it real with these people and say look man like I'm 35 I'm 36 whatever AJ was we had the conversation I ain't got five years to kill here all right I'm not on vacation right now I'm 36 I got a two-year-old daughter I gotta think about getting this university degree getting the workforce earning a living as soon as possible yeah if this if this institution is a disaster it's my problem now I'm not talking about this in the abstract like oh yeah maybe in there 15 years this academic program getting proved no no no no I need action and I need it today hey I'm working hard I'm working like my hat is on fire cuz having come out even though like you look at my resume look my CV luminor I've led a fascinating life my life was not boring living in Laos living in Cambodia living all the rest of it but then you come back to can at the end of that process and you need results today I got a look at the next one year the next two years no I'm not looking at a ten-year timeline so if your institution is dis organizers in disarray I can't help you I came here and I'm paying thousand dollars in tuition so you can help me let's keep it straight so it's cool like I had a lot of great conversations coming out of that went through a whole formal complaint process in dealing with what was wrong with the Chinese language program that went to the Dean that went to the Ombudsman that went to Parliament pc parliament what up total population british columbia is less than the total population of laos we got an elected democracy here if you got a problem in it's serious take it to Parliament they want to listen three different members of parliament her my complaint and at least two of the three got back to me and a couple other employees / because it's a real problem so look man I moved here with the only worldly possessions I've got this blue blue tin cup pair of shoes the very few things I own in this world are in Victoria BC chinese-language turns out to be a dead end here the First Nations language program turns out to be a mirage there is no First Nations language programming error despite what you'll see on the web sites if you google through it only option left for me is Japanese so I wish I had a lot of optimism about the future am i use the Japanese language the professor's I've spoken to hear connected Japanese again I like them as people great people my professor for my first semester of Japanese was talented and hardworking and sympathetic but it's terrible program it's terrible and when I was talking about the problems the program with the professor she said to me look I can't change it I'm just the language instructor and she said to me you're right like what you're pointing out that's wrong with this program they're real problems but she said if you don't take this complaint forward to the head of the department to the Dean and nothing's going to change so I was really reluctant do that because it said we look just a couple of months ago I went through that process for Chinese I don't want to go through it again now for Japanese I don't you know I'm not paid to do this I'm not a paid consultant trying to improve the quality of education here at you it but she asked me to and I got her to write a formal letter saying that she is a professor asked me to do that and I did I went and I had a meeting with the Dean and the head of the department and we talked about what's wrong with Japanese program and during that meeting I said to them straight up because again i don't have years to burn here so look I came here thinking you guys had your act together thinking this would be a world-class language program and it's not it's a mess and I'm not here to tell you that I'm like on the verge of giving up that I'm considering giving up or that I'm like losing confidence I've lost confidence I've given up like for me in this department it's over and I would have already dropped out of this program gone to another university and started from scratch again because you're Chinese program is garbage japanese program is broken just say that the only reason I'm here now is because I asked my parents permission to leave go to the University again and they said no they wanted me to stay here and finish this program so long story long I'm leaving out a lot man this is making a long story short but hey um look man only reason I was studying Japanese in the first place is because Chinese at this university was a disaster was a dead end and now the only reason why I'm staying in Japanese after that also turns out to be a pretty lousy program because I ain't got a choice so I'm going to complete this diploma in Japanese and when people talk to me now about what I'm doing the future I gotta say hey I am painfully open-minded I have no idea what I'm doing after this diploma is open and I'm considering the most diverse options imaginable am i considering getting a PhD yes am i considering going straight into the workforce yes I'm considering have you got any ideas send me an email I think I am open-minded to a fault so for me this is very unusual I'm a very driven person I'm a highly motivated person like when I talking about getting up at 6am and studying a language for i go to work man I've lived that life I've lived that life in Hong Kong when I had a high-pressure job I've lived that life in vientiane laos when I had a low pressure job but I was having to get on my bicycle and sweat out several liters of water in order to go and buy mangoes at the market every day you know different kinds of pressures living in different places but yeah man I know what it's like I generally I've lived as a highly focused goal oriented objective driven person and right now I'm at a time in my life where I have no choice but to be the opposite of that because I don't know what my objectives are I I can work hard but I have no way of knowing what it isn't working at words so I I'm trying to find the reckless joy in what could be considered somewhat the present situation