Before coming to Japan, i managed to read Alice in Wonderland. It was great. It would be fun to have such a dream at least once in a while. It’s just so crazy… Now i only have another mad book to read: The Wizard of Oz.
Title: ::X-Down-Alice::
Creator: =rannsama
The meaning of this primitive is obvious from the first moment you look at it, though just what it will be a drop of will differ from case to case. The important thing is not to think of it as something insignificant like a “drop in the bucket” but as something so important that it can change the whole picture—like a drop of arsenic in your mother-in-law’s coffee.
James W. Heisig – Remembering the Kanji vol. 1
This last comment almost made me fall of my chair.
Today i started learning kanji again, with the method Robert suggested: flashcards. I managed to learn a few new today, and i hope i won’t forget them until tomorrow. The Anki app is really useful, a lot more, than the pdf books… I haven’t really tried this method before–or well, maybe i have, but that wasn’t a success at all, guess because i wasn’t taking it seriously. I wasn’t taking anything seriously… But now it’s really important to learn as many kanji as possible as quickly as possible, and i think this is still the best method. Daily at least ten minutes spent with them, and i think that time will just increase as time goes, since i set it to “teach” me daily 10 new ones. That should be enough i think…
I’ll have to learn new vocabulary as well. That means, beside memorizing the kanji, i’ll learn the readings and compounds as well—now that’s the more difficult part, as i still have to figure out how i’ll do it. Though probably when classes start, i’ll figure it out quickly enough, as i’ve heard the language education here is pretty tough but effective…
I was planning to buy a few more stuff now in the first days: a bike, a camera, an electronic dictionary and a guitar. I probably won’t yet buy myself a bike for two reasons: i can borrow one for free from the university, at least the romanian girls said so, and it would be just a trouble when i’ll be moving at the end of the year to my new dorm or flat, however it’ll turn out. The camera is not so urgent either, as the compact HP isn’t doing that bad a job (though the video quality is crap), but i really want to get myself something more serious, a cheap dslr or something along that line, with which i could make really good photos. Any idea which one would be the best for a (nearly) beginner like myself?
The electronic dictionary is pretty important, one with a touchpad, so that i can draw kanji on it i see and don’t know. That would be very useful to figure out what the signs or texts actually say, at least until i learn all the 1945 common kanji. And a guitar… Well. Many of you who know me for a long time may smile at this… But it would be fun to learn that as well. Knowing the way to make or at least to play good music would be great… And it brings people together somehow. That’s on my mind nowadays.
Remember that bird in the Naruto anime that always flies in the background crying out “baka, baka!” whenever everyone’s favourite main character is even more stupid than usual? Well. There’s indeed such a bird, and it’s always around the dorm. I almost fell of the chair laughing when i heard that very same “baka, baka!” cry as in the anime.
Yesterday evening i watched an episode of Skins (season 3) and a couple of the first season of How I met your mother. There were so striking similarities to a few events in my life that i couldn’t help but write them down here. (Please don’t read forth if you haven’t seen Skins s3e8 and How I met your mother s1e12-18 and don’t want to be spoiled. Please don’t read if you were playing a great role in my private life in the past time and don’t want to read about yourself.)
I so much want to see that movie, but couldn’t yet manage to. The important thing is that before Japan.
Title: Lost in Translation
Creator: `gilad
Today i visited the dentist, hopefully last for a very long time. I almost got used to sitting in the waiting room for hours, and then the sharp pain as the drill touches the teeth, or as today, the buzzing sound of the x-ray machine. About the last: i only needed that because two of my teeth are mysteriously missing (the funny is that one of my sisters-in-law has the same two teeth missing too) and the dentist wanted to check if they are still there in the bone hiding or are totally missing (luckily it’s the latter). Since then i’ve had lunch (i could, because there was no serious drilling today) and listened to the new HammerFall album while reading feeds. And reading cocktail recipes.
One more problem with me having left my phone at home: there’s nothing to wake me “early”. Since i’m not going to any classes anymore (once again: just the Tolkien course every wednesday, next one will be the last), i don’t need to wake up, but still it annoys me if i sleep just because i can. I like to wake before nine, else i feel washed all day. Like now. Though this inactivity may be just as responsible, also that i hardly have anything to eat in the past day, but yesterday when i tried to write a german essay about traditions, i failed miserably after the second paragraph–and the same happened when i tried to practice japanese (even though in two weeks i’ll need it more than any of you probably ever will). I’ve been listening to music all the way. Alternative, as much as possible, up till today noon only Kaukázus, mostly because of the gig on tuesday, but since then others too, with Boffin (i realised that i have pretty cool alter music, for example Cigaretta, that Vlad showed me during the american exchange).
But i haven’t been entirely inactive all day, i helped my friends still working hard at the uni with the scripts homework. I really enjoy writing such small stuff, especially in the new languages (Python and Perl), and they’re happy too because they don’t have to work much with them. Now i think i’ll take a leave from the machine, now listening to remotelife podcasts (no. 11 by Aurus and no. 28 by Zsukov)
