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Lest any of you think I exhibit your writings just
to show you up, I promised last week to display a revised version of my
own work to illustrate the benefit of rewriting.
In a way, books are not written, but re-written. Ernest Hemingway once
said: "I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was
satisfied."
I'm not suggesting that you re-write your thing 40 times to out-do
Ernest. What I am suggesting is that we all of us should be as earnest as
Hemingway in attitude at the very least, so that even if we fail, no one
can fault us for not trying.
With that spirit, you'll actually succeed because, you see, the secret
of success in writing (and in life) lies in just doing it.
Now, once again, 'Stormy Weather' from Lady Day (Read it along with the
original version published on Wednesday, March 22 for comparison):
I listened to Billie Holiday while roaming the web in the small hours
of Tuesday morning. She was crooning "Don't know why there's no sun up in
the sky. Stormy weather, since my man and I ain't together, keeps rainin'
all the time", when I came upon this story:
"Tropical Cyclone Hits Australia
"CAIRNS, Australia (AP) - The most
powerful storm to hit Australia in decades laid waste to its northeastern
coast on Monday (March 20), mowing down sugar and banana plantations and
leaving possibly thousands of people homeless."
Well, it being autumn down under, Australia is prone to tropical storms
this time of the year. That is hardly surprising. What struck me was the
word "cyclone" in the headline. That word gave me trouble many years ago.
It was this way. A beat reporter had written that a certain hurricane
hit Taiwan, Guangdong and Fujian provinces, causing injuries, damages and
so forth. By hunch, I, working as a copy editor at the time, changed
"hurricane" to "typhoon" which led to this question from my puzzled
younger colleague, who thought the two terms meant the same thing and were
therefore interchangeable.
"Don't both mean tropical storm, or cyclone?" he asked.
They do. Just that hurricanes don't ever visit this part of the world.
Typhoons do.
However, at the time, I couldn't explain it so well, only saying meekly
that the safe thing to do was to stick with "tropical cyclone", or better
yet, "tropical storm", i.e. "a tropical storm with winds up to 120
kilometers an hour hit Taiwan Tuesday morning."
Truth be told, even today, having done more research on the subject, I
am not sure that I have come to definite terms with the lot of them -
cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, and all that jazz - except that I am quite
convinced that either weathermen throughout the world are collectively
insane or that they don't mind driving the general public (laymen like you
and me) that way.
One of my biggest findings is this: Hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons are
indeed more or less the same thing. They are all tropical storms (everyday
language), or tropical cyclones (jargon), the worst stormy weather on
earth.
Stormy weather is easy to grasp when meteorologists are ushered out of
the room so that common sense can prevail and we are allowed to call a
spade a spade.
The word "storm" itself comes from Old English "styrian", meaning to
stir. Hence we understand a storm to be severe weather caused by an
atmospheric tumult. It is Mother Nature's way of getting things back to
normalcy, even though it behaves not unlike a pampered Chinese
single-child, going on the rampage and throwing tantrums left, right and
center.
At any rate, when a storm is marked by strong wind, we have a
windstorm. When it also rains, we have a rainstorm. When it's coupled with
thunder and lightning, we have a thunderstorm. When hailstones are
involved, folks in the city are delighted to duck under the roof and to
observe a hailstorm. In winter, when the rain is replaced with ice, we
have a snowstorm.
When dust is whipped by the wind, as is normal in Beijing in all four
seasons, we have a dust storm or a sandstorm when the situation becomes
extreme. Beijingers accuse, often unfairly, the northern lands from Inner
Mongolia and beyond of being responsible for the loss of visibility in
their beloved city. In my view, littering local construction sites are the
main culprit.
So far so good. But, when it comes to tropical storms (the most
tempestuous of all storms) and when we let meteorologists back into the
picture, well, the picture begins to blur immediately.
In the eye of the pro, all tropical storms are cyclones (caused by
rotations of a volume of air of low atmospheric pressure in a certain
area). The word "cyclone" is derived from the Greek word "kyklon"
(circle).
Fair enough.
However, when a tropical cyclone forms in the Western Hemisphere, it is
by tradition called a hurricane (from Spanish "huracan" meaning the Storm
God). When formed in the Western Pacific, it is called a typhoon (from the
Chinese term Tai Feng - 颱風 - The character "颱" possibly means wind from
Taiwan, 台湾, as typhoons are indeed blown in from the direction of Taiwan,
as observed from the standpoint of people on the mainland). In the Indian
Ocean and the South Pacific, including Australia, it is called a tropical
cyclone.
Since all tropical storms are graded by their sustained speed (a
hurricane referring, for example, to winds of 119 kilometers per hour or
higher), you and I wonder why weathermen won't make their lives (and ours)
easy by addressing them thus. That way, reporters can readily say, for
example, a tropical storm with winds up to 100 kilometers per hour is
going to hit the southern coast later today.
However, this is decidedly not what weathermen of the world intend to
do, not for the time being at least. You should look at the way they name
all their lovely hurricanes and typhoons to fully appreciate the great
lengths they go to in order to impress people of all other professions -
only to make a fine mess of it, if you don't mind.
According to WMO (World Meteorological Organization, the international
governing body of global storms - I like this description, if you don't
mind), in the Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific regions, feminine and
masculine names are assigned alternately in alphabetic order during a
given season. The "gender" (if you don't mind) of the season's first storm
also alternates year to year: the first storm of an odd-numbered year gets
a feminine name, while the first storm of an even-numbered year gets a
masculine name. Six lists of names are prepared in advance, and each list
is used once every six years.
All the names are Greek to us too - Alu, Buri, Dodo, Emau, Fere, Hibu,
Ila, Kama, Lobu, etc.
And of course, don't forget Katrina, which wrecked havoc to New Orleans
(the Jazz town, come to think of it) in 2005.
Yes, please remember Katrina. She could be "retired".
Yes, as though things are not complicated enough, they "retire" names
too (so that future practitioners will HAVE TO come up with even stranger
names if that were possible).
I'm not making any of this up. According to WMO's naming schemes, names
of storms may be retired by request of affected countries if they have
caused extensive damage. The affected countries then decide on a
replacement name of the same gender (if you don't mind) and if possible,
the same ethnicity (if you don't mind) as the name being retired.
Ah well, my point is, for more mazy rules and information, send no
questions to me.
Send them instead to the World Meteorological Organization directly.
I'm sure their men all have the time, while working in between cyclones,
to explain everything to you.
Me? I'm going back to Billie. Having weathered the storm (if you don't
mind), I find the voice of the melancholy Lady Day even more soothing.
In fact, just "Fine and Mellow".
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