| Sakura | Hey, I heard that Japanese girls give chocolate to the boys they love on Valentine's Day. Did you know it? |
| Madison | Yeah, you're right. I remember the hearing that a snack company started it for their sales strategy. |
| Sakura | Is that how it all began? |
| Zachary | No, no. The chocolate giving custom started many years prior. |
| Sakura | Are you sure? |
| Zachary | Yep. In Edo period, this samurai imported chocolate for the first time in the history of Japan. He heard that in the central Africa they used chocolate powder to fall into a trance, channeling the spiritual world. |
| Madison | Oh, it's kind of like some guys intoxicate someone with the chocolate in which they put aphrodisiac agent or something. |
| Sakura | Hoe? |
| Zachary | Ooh...^^; Anyway, the samurai succeeded in calling the spirit of his mother who had died a few years before. Then affected people started to offer chocolate to condole on someone precious when they died. And as the time went by, the tradition changed, so they gave chocolate to someone they were in love with. |
| Chelsea | OK, thanks for a nice lecture. Come with me, jerk! |
| Zachary | Aw! What are you doing? |
| Chelsea | Stop lying, or else I'll send you into the spiritual world. |
| Sakura | Uh, Madison, I was fooled by his story again, wasn't I? |
| Madison | Heh, I suppose so. |
| Madison | Oh, my gosh! That again, give me a break. |
| Li | What happened? |
| Madison | Oh, Li and Sakura, these virulent mails have been annoying me these days. Four or five a day with Novarg, Mydoom, and somthing like that. |
| Sakura | What a bummer. |
| Madison | They say that an anti-virus company is ready to pay $250,000 for information to arrest the creator of the computer virus. |
| Sakura | Wow! |
| Zachary | But this time is a complicated case. |
| Li | Why? |
| Zachary | This time the virus spread more rapidly than any other cases in the past. This is not just a computer virus. |
| Madison | What do you mean? |
| Zachary | Some scientists say that the source of infection was in Asea. As a matter of fact, some experts believe that it's complicated by the bird flu in Vietnam. |
| Li | Are you saying the bird flu infected computers? That's impossible! |
| Zachary | Don't take the flu so easy, Li. There are a lot of possible carriers to transmit virus to far-off places. It's well known that migratory birds carry flu a thousand miles. However, there was this report that another bird flu was found in the U.S., more than 10,000 miles from Asea. That's beyond the reach of migratory birds. In that case, what could carry the virus so far away? |
| Sakura | The internet. |
| Zachary | Yes, Sakura, you have a good guess! The bird flu infecting a computer turned into a variant such as Novarg and Mydoom, and spread all over the world. And then it infected a chicken in the U.S. |
| Sakura | Horrible. So can it infect humans? |
| Zachary | There's no worry on that score, Sakura. It was originally a bird flu that doesn't infect us humans. |
| Sakura | That's a relief... |
| Li | Hey, I guess it's just one of your untrue stories, isn't it? |
| Zachary | Why, Li? How do you know? |
| Li | Just because Chelsea behind you is about to hammer your head. |
Names of the characters in this skit are of Japanese version.
| Sakura | Tomoyo's mother's company being built in Hong Kong—you called it Doidohji Gunsi(1), in Chinese, right? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Syaoran | Uh-huh. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tomoyo | I just check it out with this handheld that can pronounce
Chinese, but it pronounced it like Dadaosi Gongsi.
| Syaoran
| That's Mandarin.
| Sakura
| Hoe?
| Syaoran
| China is so huge that there're some dialects much different than
each other like foreign languages, such as Mandarin, Shanghainese,
Cantonese and such. For example, Shanghai which we call is pronounced
Shanghai in Mandarin, but it's originally Sanghai in Shanghainese.
| Tomoyo
| Then your pronunciation was...
| Syaoran
| Cantonese. It's spoken in Hong Kong.
| Sakura
| Is that so.
| Takashi
| Speaking of Cantonese...
| Sakura
| Whoa!
| Takashi
| Cantonese was named after Mr. Canton who devised the language.
The Republic of China was founded in 1949, when they chose
Mandarin as their common language to unify different dialects
spoken in China. In addition, the Chinese they teach at schools
in Japan is Mandarin in general.
| Tomoyo
| So my handheld spoke Mandarin.
| Syaoran
| You know a lot about Chinese.
| Takashi
| However, Mr. Canton, one of the rebellions who founded the republic
was the only one who objected against making Mandarin their common
language. So he devided a secret language to communicate exclusively
among their clan—the people who selected Mandarin were
annoyed with the strange language they don't understand.
It was the Cantonese.
And he started an activity with a declaration “Propagate
Cantonese over China, or even over the world.” Not only
the language activity but a political activity had he stared,
and Canton's clan ended up causing terrorism...
| Sakura
| Psst, Takashi, I'm afraid it's one of your untrue stories?
| Syaoran
| Right. Canton is a place name. But how did you know it wasn't true?
| Sakura
| That's because Chiharu is ready to hit him with a metal bat
with a fierece look hehind him.
| |
(1) See Shorty-Shorties 13.
| Rita | Hey, guys. Did you know the news that the Pluto, the outermost plenet, is no longer a planet? |
| Madison | Yeah, that's what scientists' commuttee decided, but I kind of miss something when there's one less planets. |
| Sakura | What? What's it all about? |
| Zachary | All of us belived that there were nine planets revolving around the sun like the earth. |
| Eli | Huh? I suppose the earth is just a huge flat piece of ground that is supported by elephants, standing on a gigantic turtle. |
| Li | Are you sure? |
| Eli | Don't take it so seriously. I was just kidding. |
| Li | Yea... I know. |
| Zachary | Oops... I should've started the story like that. You know, the International Astronimical Union has stated the pluto was not a planet, and now the number of the planets is eight. |
| Rita | It revolves around the sun like the others, but why did they have to demote the Pluto? |
| Zachary | Scientists knew that the planet-like object is different than planets in some criteria. |
| Sakura | It's like... Meilin had to leave the show in the middle of the series just because she did not appear in the original manga? |
| Madison | Oh, Sakura... |
| Zachary | The Pluto was discovered much later than any other planets; that's because it hates being watched. When someone trains a telescope, it hides away, so it was never discovered until 1930. |
| Chelsea | Beginning to sound nonsense... |
| Zachary | It's so badly-behaved that it sometimes breaks inside the Neptune's orbit, and that once it gets going it wouldn't come back to where it was at least for 248 years, and such. That's why the astronomical union decided to take its name out of the planet list, as undesirable. |
| Sakura | I didn't know the Pluto was such a bad guy. |
| Chelsea | And, I found one more bad guy here. Come with me jerk! |
| Chelsea pulls him by the earlobe, dragging him away. | |
| Zachary | Talking about planets, they spin on their own for a profound reason. To tell your the truth, in billions of years ago... |
| Chelsea | Stop spinning your stories, or I'll blow you up with Plutonium. |
| Sakura | Hey, guys. Did you know that Shinjo who once played as an outfielder for the New York Mets retired from the baseball league back in Japan? |
| Madison | Yeah, I know. Plus, his team, the Fighters, won the championship of this year's Japanese baseball. |
| Chelsea | Is it true that the team won the championship for the first time in 44 years? It's amazing. |
| Li | True. It was his glorious retirement. |
| Rita | He's such a poster guy of Japanese baseball that I can't believe he retired. |
| Zachary | Talking about Shinjo, did you know that he once attempted to retire 10 years ago? |
| Sakura | Huh? Are you kidding? |
| Chelsea | Absolutely he is. How come he knew about what happened 10 years ago? |
| Eli | No, it was true. |
| Sakura | What? |
| Eli | In 1995, Shinjo, a slugger of the Tigers, decided to retire as a result of the discord with the manager Fujita, when he himself announced, “I have no sense of baseball.” But he just changed his mind in two days. |
| Sakura | Wow, you know a lot about Japanese baseball, Eli. |
| Eli | I'm a big Shinjo fan since he played with the Mets. |
| Zachary | He likes to amuse people... like he appeared in an animal costume, rode a Harley-Davidson into the stadium. |
| Eli | Like he appeared down from the ceiling, and performed an illusion and things. |
| Zachary | And there's more. He started his brand new luxury car with the hand brake on; the car had to go for scrap. |
| Eli | When he took the French exam in his university, answering the problem to transform “Monsieur Cirac est le président” into the past tense, he wrote “Monsieur Cirac est le pharaon.” |
| Sakura | Sounds like Shinjo is such a freak. |
| Chelsea | Once Eli joined him, it's hard to tell if it's true or not. |
| Li | That can't be true. University wasn't his academic career. The exam and the luxury car were the stories of Shigeo Nagashima, the Mister Japanese baseball. |
| Rita | I know... |
| Madison | How did you know it wasn't true. |
| Li | I like to watch Japanese baseball. |
| Sakura | Then, it's just untrue about his attempt of retirement in the past? |
| Li | It was a true story. He changed his mind in a few days. |
| Sakura | Oh... I wouldn't be able to figure out what he has in mind. |
| Madison | Shinjo's like an extraterrestrial, don't you think? |
| Chelsea | And... how should we do with this lying ET? |
| Nikki | How 'bout handing him over to the Majestic 12? |
Sakura's BME Clinic © 2002–2006 Yuki Neco
