Raven King

Recent fiction rendition/references of Raven King

Bran: Irish name that means "Raven"
Raven/Crow -> of the family Corvidae; genus Corvus

Hood by Stephen Lawhead:
- Rhi Bran the legend of songs, meaning "King Bran" -> "King Raven"
--> from Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran) from Welsh folk of Bran the King
- Rhi Bran the character --name morph--> Robin (Hood), note: robin's a bird...

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell:
- Raven King: ruler of Britain; mage/magician with ability to cross between human and farie worlds
- Original name? John Uskglass (making of S. Clarke?)

Charles de Lint's Newford novels:
- Corvae: the beings that brought the world to existence
- Sort of confusing... cuz now there is a distinction between the ravens and the crows
- I gather (didn't relaly pay attention before, so I might re read) ravens > crows?
- Raven... Raven King. also mentioned I think but forget exactly how
- Partly based in folklore from several native american groups (err... american meaning canada inclusive... de Lint is canadian)

Jack Whyte, GGKay (Fionavar Tapestry):
- There is some relation between Arthur and raven.

Coincidental ? George RR Martin:
- Bran the boy named after someone famous... ugh. been a while since I read this.


.. HMM...

AND from quick google search I found that Bran the Blessed (Raven King of Welsh folk) used to carry a cauldron that brought dead back to life. Some think that at the entry of Christianity the cauldron morphed into chalice... a grail... FUN

Incidentally... In the same legend of Bran the Blessed, Cerridwen is the keeper of the cauldron of rebirth (and wisdom). And Cerridwen is the mother of Taliesin... who IS (according to Whyte.. dunno how the legends hold) Merlyn. Same Merlyn (a bird also, no?) from Arthurian legends.

Now the name Cerridwen is sort of nagging at the back of my head. I've seen that name borrowed in another novel... I just can't put my finger on it.

And listen to this about Bran's cauldron Lawhead "Hood" p213: "whateer living creature, man or animal it matters not, though he were dead and dismembered, mutilated, torn into a thousand pieces [...] if any part of the corpse is put into the cauldron when it is on the boil, life will return and creature will emerge hale and whole once more." This rings Harry Potter! Voldemort! in my head.

Anyway...Basically put these books together and you get to draw relations amongst Arthur, Robin Hood, Celtic folklore, Irish faerie stories, historical data (maybe?), holy grail, and native american folk .... MUWHAHAHAHA

---

I know next to nothing about Celtic, Irish or Welsh myth, which I am sure to fix in no time (given how interesting this is getting). What I have here is just something that was crowding my head so i had to spit it out and write.

I think this just goes to show how much of current fantasy fiction is based on western folklore...

In the next 10 years...

I am going to take a full 6 months off of my regular routine life and go to a country I've never lived in. There I'll learn to cook their cuisine.

Possibly I could go to...
China
Italy
Turkey
Greek

Or sojourn around the SE asia and get: Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, Phillipino, and Indonesian.

Just the thought of it, makes me so happy.

Summer

I can't seem to work at home.
I can't seem to work at the office either.
Today I'm sitting in the coffee shop, attempting to work...

I don't think it's distraction to blame.
It's me. And I'm in need of motivation. Where do I get it?

It's already end of June... And there's lots of things I thought I'd have started by now but haven't; amongst the numerous things I SHOULD have started there are the prelim and planning for Ling Circle.

Last year was hard enough for me. I really need to get myself in gear so that I am ready to start my semester when end of August is around the corner. I can't handle another nightmare of a semester.

Doesn't it make you pause?

From Susan Brown's poster

HE DREW A GUN
... with a crayon.

HE DREW A PICTURE
... from his coat pocket.


Draw (v).

• trace: make a mark or lines on a surface; "draw a line"; "trace the outline of a figure in the sand"
• bring, take, or pull out of a container or from under a cover; "draw a weapon"; "pull out a gun"; "The mugger pulled a knife on his victim"

I love myself. Ha.

You know all that stuff about "you are beautiful just as you are"? I've never been able to swallow that. It always sounds like an excuse or a stand in for those who feel that they aren't and wish to be. Whatever beautiful is.

Normally, probably, most likely, saying stuff like this would for me be too much about myself to say it on a blog. But after a few months of talking to a friend about self esteem related to such prescribed social notion of what makes you pretty, I realized I haven't yet told her "I'm right there with ya". Not in a truly honest way.

What I wish I could be, but I'm not? Here's a few: tall (*snicker*), pretty, smart, poised and elegant, socially outgoing, not afraid of strangers, good conversationalist, more optimistic, possess that natural ability to embrace others.... on and on...

Instead I am short, average looking, not all that smart, silly and clumsy, not that outgoing, afraid of strangers, terrible conversationalist, pessimistic in a lot of ways, and not all that healing and embracing (qualities I admire in others).

Allowing myself to be who and what I am without ridiculous expectations is probably one of the hardest things I had to do and the hardest things I'll ever have to do. It's like being able to look at photos of myself and think about my day without criticisms based on things irrelevant to me... I've been on this earth almost 30 years now. What took me so long to allow myself to deal with such things? I don't know. But I don't think it will be something that will stop being tough at some point.

Maybe loving ourselves as we are told to do, is not an easy job after all. I bet not even the most selfish people have this down.

Anyway, i better be going back to work on my projects.

Fortunate Mistake and Missing Plane (?!)

I'm standing at gate A6 in the Vienna International Airport waiting for the plane to Toronto to leave. As many of you already know, I had made the mistake, unknowingly, of purchasing a ticket with a 23 hr layover in Vienna, Austria -- something I realized in Amman. In vain, I tried yesterday to get an earlier ticket out of Vienna. No such luck. All planes that leave to Denver leave before noon and my plane had arrived at 1pm.

Luckily for me though, Abi's roommate Stephanie hooked me up with a friend of hers. And what supposed to have been a very confusing 23 hrs in a city I didn't even plan on, much less speak the language, turned out to be a short but amazing visit. Thanks to Sebastian, I got to wander through downtown Vienna and even sit in a picturesque courtyard by a fountain sipping on a nice cup of coffee. Peaceful :-) *sigh* I'll have to return to Vienna again sometime. It's a beautiful city. The quintessent "european" city as depicted in US movies.

--

Today, I was up at 7:30am, in the bus by 8:30am, and at the check in counter at 9:15am. I think the check in counter took me about 15 minutes. The check in counter sent me to the ticket counter which took about 20 minutes. Then I was at the baggage counter for another 5, to find out I need to visit another counter in Toronto upon arrival.

Why the redirecting? Har... United had booked me on a Austrian Air flight that didn't exist! The guy at the check in counter looked confused and the ticket counter lady smiled politely at me before booking me on a flight in a "real" flight (as they called it). Fine, now I'm on my way to Denver on real flights. What I'm worried about now is the luggage... What mess will they make of them?

All in all I'll be in Boulder by 10pm tonight if all goes well.
I certainly hope it will.

Jordan Pictures

I tried uploading every picture I had, and realized that might take me years to get it done. So here are a select few. I've still another couple more albums to upload (Amman and Madaba -- including Mt Nebo where Moses stood to look at the promised land) but it's, again, taking me forever.

So here are some to start you off with. These include some of my pictures and some of Abi's. I'm still waiting for Ari's album. When I get it, I'll up load a few of those too:

Wadi Rum: an impossibly beautiful desert south end of Jordan. I felt I was in a dream the entire time....
link: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhwang90/07JordanWadiRum

Petra: absolutely and breathtakingly gorgeous. Got to ride a camel!
link: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhwang90/07JordanPetra

The Dead Sea: pinch me... am I dreaming? As Abi and Ari, they'll tell you I became quite intimately aquainted with the dead sea. Make sure your lips aren't chapped when you decide (most ungracefully, if you are me) to do the head dive into the salty waters of dead sea.
link: http://picasaweb.google.com/dhwang90/07JordanDeadSea

Oh Wow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoApBDZLvn4

Personality A or B?

I took a couple tests to see which I am to find that I turn out to be a case of a profile that "cannot be clearly categorized". Apparantly I'm a AB leaning more on the side of A.

You seem to fall somewhere in the middle between a Type A and Type B personality. Sometimes you are as laidback as a Type B; in other situations, you can be a high achiever or express impatience and hostility like a Type A. Either you adjust your behavior depending on the situation, or you tend to have a moderate attitude. In other words, you have some of the good and the bad associated with the Type A Personality. With a bit of drive, perfectionism and competitiveness to keep you going, you likely are able to achieve many of your goals in life without pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion. However, you also have some of the negative emotionality associated with the TABP as well - you may find that you become a bit hostile, impatient, or stressed in the face of obstacles and frustrations. Your moderate score however, means that you possess a healthy balance, so long as you keep your negative emotions in check.

Hostility, frustration, impatience.... Hmm. One of the questions I had to answer was: "In heavy traffic on the way to an airport, your cab driver keeps taking bad 'shortcuts' and then turns and says, 'Nice day isn't it?', as though nothing was wrong. How do you feel?". I answered that I'd be furious. But who wouldn't be? Or.... am I wrong?

Don't ask why I'm taking these tests when I should be doing my class reading. Weird part of it is that the mere fact that I'm taking these tests and procrastinating while my to do list gets longer and longer.... isn't that a sign of type B? Oh I don't know. Maybe I'm a A with tendency to procrastinate.

On a side note... It's amazing just how many people in the academia are A or strongly A.