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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5802 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 97 of 276 03 March 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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That was a pretty epic rant, I was impressed! Sounds like you are better off staying away from RTK3 for now, what is the deal with all those trees? I guess RTK3 must cover a lot of names kanji or similar? The Heisig method is not for me anyway, although I do wonder if it's not about time I actually properly started learning some of the radical names etc.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6440 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 98 of 276 04 March 2012 at 12:10pm | IP Logged |
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Log for 2012.02.26-2012.03.03 inclusive
This week wasn’t so great either. I’ve had a bit of difficulty with work. In itself, my job is fine and I like my coworkers and my boss. However there is one higher up that has it in for me and is in a position where he basically has control over me. He’s power-mad and willing to do anything to get what he wants. He’s also my so-called counselor. So he lies about me and uses intimidation tactics over me. I was rather upset and stressed to the point where I started hallucinating this past week. Otherwise I only hallucinate in the deepest depression. Anyway, when I figured out that he was the source of my hallucinations and nightmares, I thought, he’s not worthy to be in my head and cause trouble, so I threw him out. Now it seems to be much better already. I’ve also figured out several things I might be able to do to get around him. So bad week, but getting much better now. I've actually felt happy today. Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 2:42. New kanji = 26. As I mentioned before, I’m skipping RTK for now and doing the supplement instead. And before I get off the subject of Heisig, I have one question for everyone. Maybe I should have made a poll, but I thought that might be a bit much. So here is the question: How many of you own a straw raincoat? I have some interesting things in my wardrobe, but this particular item is missing. Of course, I’ve never been one to follow the latest trends, so maybe that’s the problem. I imagine Heisig must own several since he included the kanji for it. Read the kanji: Time = 4:04. ANKI review: Time = 3:46. Reading: Time = 2:30. Even reading suffered this week. Usually, when I don’t feel like doing anything else, I at least read. iKnow: Time= 4:08. I’m starting to remember the words much more easily, though I haven’t finished any decks yet. Part of the thing with remembering the vocabulary is remembering which word is in which deck because some of them are rather similar in meaning. Textbook/grammar: Time = 0:51. I’m still way behind on this, but I read a bit on the train so I’m not as behind as I was. I really have to buy the next two books soon though. I’ve just been too lazy to get to it. Total for period: 18 hr, 00 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 218 hr, 37 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 412 hr, 59 min Only 2075 hours, 31 minutes and 10 seconds to go! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4617 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 99 of 276 10 March 2012 at 7:28pm | IP Logged |
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Hang in there! It's difficult having to juggle work and study, not to mention when there
are mean bosses existing in the picture. I've had one a few years ago that I just can't seem to forget. He was such a narcissist. Oh well :) Keep fighting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6440 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 100 of 276 11 March 2012 at 2:14pm | IP Logged |
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Log for 2012.03.04-2012.03.10 inclusive
I’ve pretty much avoided this forum all week, which should be good for my language learning, except that I never seemed to get around to much of that either. Plus, I’ve found a new time-waster, namely Facebook. I had to convince my computer to let me change it to Norwegian. It had very helpfully changed it to Japanese for me, but I’m having enough trouble figuring it out in Norwegian. So far I have 6 friends! And I know all their names. I don’t intend to be one of those people with hundreds of friends they barely even know. Of course, I never intended to be on Facebook either. My nephew talked me into it. Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 1:29. New kanji = 0. I’ve ignored this for several days in a row, so I’d better get back to it soon, or I’ll have a big mess. Read the kanji: Time = 3:36. This is something I can do at work on my lunch break. I usually do a bit at home too. ANKI review: Time = 1:04. I’ve decided to give up on Anki for a while. It was starting to become a fiend. I think when you avoid studying because of one chore you are starting to hate, it is time to give up on that particular chore for a while. Reading: Time = 1:29. Even worse than last week. Ugh. And I actually like reading. iKnow: Time= 5:42. My new toy. As soon as my internet connection comes up, I dive into this. I have to be a bit careful though. Once you open the review window, it continues to work even if you lose the connection. However, if you get to the end of the review and there is no connection, it doesn’t always manage to save your data. You can get it to try again later, but it doesn’t always work. So I’ve learned that when I get near the end, I should check the connection. If I’m not connected, I just pause it until the connection comes back and then do the last question at which point it ends the session and saves the data. LR: Time = 3:10. I’ve decided to start on the second Harry Potter book, but before I do, I thought it would be a good idea to LR the first one again to get warmed up. It’s kind of cool. In these past few weeks, I must have learned something. I’m noticing all kind of vocabulary words and grammar points that I never really thought about before. Especially the grammar is interesting to catch. The grammar book I have explains all sorts of subtleties that I’d never have noticed otherwise. Of course, you only have a few milliseconds to catch these things. He reads so fast. I don’t think I could read that fast even in English. I can in my head, but I don’t think I could do it out loud. Total for period: 16 hr, 32 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 235 hr, 8 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 429 hr, 30 min Only 2058 hours, 59 minutes and 34 seconds to go ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6440 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 101 of 276 02 April 2012 at 2:39pm | IP Logged |
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Hi! I’m not dead. I’ve just been hiding out for a while. Part of the problem is that my internet connection is still not that great, so that whenever it works, I use it for studying. The other is my continuing problems with work.
A couple of weeks ago, I had a meeting with my therapist, a doctor, someone from the employment agency, my counselor from work (from the regional office), and my boss from the local office where I actually work. This meeting is mandatory when someone has been on a full or partial sick leave for over 8 weeks. Anyway, according to the “counselor,” I am pretty much useless. The only thing I am capable of is purely mechanical tasks and so the company only has work that I can do for two months out of the year. I am also incapable of communicating (so if you can’t read this, that’s why). I can’t understand anything that isn’t said directly, clearly and in simple language. Clients complain about me (odd how several clients have asked for me by name, and others have personally thanked me). Everyone else is out to clients almost all the time, while I can’t be sent out (at my office, everyone, including me is out for about 2-3 weeks in the spring and 1.5-2 weeks in the fall). And “even if her bipolar disorder is medicated and under control, she will always be autistic and that doesn’t fit into our business.” That is pretty much a direct quote, translated of course. So now I am on a full sick-leave again. As my therapist says, if I’m “totally useless,” there is no reason for me to be there. She says I should just stay home and study Japanese and that it serves them right if I’m away during the busiest part of the year. (She calls the counselor “the slimy snake.” She hasn’t liked him since the first time she talked to him on the phone and he kept trying to trick her into giving him confidential information about me.) I did go to work one day when the boss was out and talked to the others. No one could understand how they could say these things. None of them had ever heard that clients complain about me, not even the girl who always knows everything about everybody. They couldn’t understand that I have problems with communication. And they agree that none of us is out all that much. We all, including me, work really hard in the spring, and then struggle to find something to do in the fall. Everyone, even the boss, frequently sits around chatting for an hour or two, and then reads online newspapers and such. In fact, almost every time I go past the boss’ office, he is either reading a newspaper online, or watching golf videos. I’m beginning to think they are out to get me. The best part is that the day after the meeting, when he heard I’d been put on sick leave again, my “counselor” wanted to call me to check how I was doing and make sure I was all right. He called my therapist first and pretended to be nice (which didn’t fool her), and she told him not to call me. She said that if he absolutely had to contact me, he should send a text message or an e-mail. I’m starting to wonder if this guy is a bit of a psychopath. He loves to rip people to shreds and then pretend to be nice afterward. My problem is that I assume everyone is nice. Even if they aren’t nice to me, I think that maybe they didn’t mean it that way and so I give them a second chance, and a third, and a fourth…… Even now, I don’t dislike him at all. However, I’m a little afraid of him and I don’t trust him very much. I’m going to try to switch counselors. I tried before and wasn’t allowed, but I will try again. I wonder what excuse they’ll give me this time. I’m not the only one that has been treated badly there. There was another girl there who was one of the best, but never got raises and was generally treated poorly. Eventually she found a job that paid a lot better, and left. Another girl got cancer (just a tumor, easily removed) and was out sick a lot. There was talk about how a person like that didn’t really belong in the company. Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find another job around here that pays as well or has such good benefits. The base salary isn’t much, but all the overtime makes it pretty good. Last year, I was able to save 40% of my net income because I had so much overtime. This year won’t be that good because I can’t work overtime since I’m sick. Anyway, enough complaining. Here is what I’ve been doing these past 3 weeks: Log for 2012.03.11 - 2012.03.31 inclusive I’ve had a lot of trouble concentrating lately for some reason, so I haven’t done nearly as much as I could have. Mostly, I stuck to easy, fun stuff. Even Harry Potter suffered. I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over. Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 2:50. Read the kanji: Time = 5:08. Reading: Time = 43:19. My reading speed has probably dropped to about half due to my inability to concentrate, but even so, I’ve managed to get most of the way through Harry Potter # 2. Harry is currently fighting the Basilisk, so it’s time to buy the next book. I should probably just buy all of them, instead of doing it one at a time. I have to wait until after Easter though as I’m not home right now. I’m cat-sitting :-) I love cats, but I can’t have one right now. iKnow: Time= 14:19. This one of those fun and easy things. Plus, even if my internet connection disappears in the middle, I can keep going and it usually saves my data as soon as the connection comes back. LR: Time = 7:29. Finished Harry Potter # 1 again. Total for period: 73 hr, 25 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 308 hr, 33 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 504 hr, 36 min Only 1983 hours, 54 minutes and 28 seconds to go ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sunja Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5905 days ago 2020 posts - 2295 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 102 of 276 04 April 2012 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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It's hard to do what's expected of us all the time. It sounds like you're not getting much of anything positive out of work right now. I hope that you can find Japanese as a sort of retreat -- emphasize the "treat" part -- and let spring pass. Reading about your troubles at work reminds me of how much it's an employer's market. It seems like workers everywhere are feeling the pressure from their jobs.
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| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6440 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 103 of 276 14 April 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
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I've decided to sign up for the Super Challenge which involves reading 100 books and watching 100 movies in 20 months (from 1 May this year to 31 December next year). I will be keeping track of my progress here in this log.
I wish it was starting now, instead of in May. I've got some Harry Potter due to arrive next week. Edited by Brun Ugle on 14 April 2012 at 7:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6440 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 104 of 276 15 April 2012 at 8:45am | IP Logged |
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The past two weeks I’ve been cat-sitting for my ex-husband. I love my ex-house, which is where he still lives. It is in the countryside, nestled between two farms, with a little stream running beside it. I always sleep in a bedroom on the side with the stream and listen to the water. It’s very relaxing. The only negative thing about the location is the crazy road to get up there. At one point, it goes up at a very steep incline and makes a turn just before the top. It’s fine in summer, but can be terrifying in winter, especially for someone like me who hates to drive and only does it a couple of times a year.
When I got there, it was spring, then suddenly winter came back. My ex left by train, so he drove down to the station early in the morning. He drove because if I did it, we would have had to leave much earlier. (Third gear is my friend. I sometimes flirt with fourth. Fifth is just for decoration.) It was snowing slightly and the wind was blowing a bit when we drove down, but it wasn’t too bad. BUT, when I had to drive back home again, nature let loose its fury on me. It starting snowing hard and the wind was blowing great gusts of snow around. I could hardly see a thing. In Norway, they put small poles with reflective tape along the road in autumn so that when the snow comes, you can find where the road is. I had to follow them. I could never see beyond the next two poles. When I came almost up to them, I could see the next two. So I drove slowly from pole to pole. At one point, the road took a turn without me realizing it. I saw two poles in front of me and thought they were on opposite sides of the road, but they were on the same side. Fortunately, I realized my mistake just before driving off the embankment and managed to turn in time. The snow fell almost constantly while I was there. I went out and shoveled every day so the car wouldn’t be buried. And of course, I had to shovel a path up to the car and a path for the cats. They usually love to go outside, but they refused the first few days. The one of them is an adolescent boy, fixed, but still full of energy. When he gets bored, he teases the others. After a few days, he was making everybody crazy, so I tossed him out. The rest of us (me and the two other cats) sat inside by the fire and watched QI and studied Japanese. The other nice thing about staying there, in addition to the peace and quiet, the cats, and the TV, was that the internet was much better than mine. If I sat in a certain corner of the house, I could mooch off the neighbors, who haven’t bothered to secure their wireless internet. Log for 2012.04.01 - 2012.04.14 inclusive I’m still having trouble concentrating. I’m very stressed and every time I start to relax, my “counselor” sends me an e-mail saying he’s so concerned about me and asking if I’d like to talk. Considering the trouble talking to him has brought me, that isn’t likely to happen. My ex-husband thinks he must be a sociopath. He is very good at manipulating people and pretending to be nice until he gets you where he wants you. Then he rips you to shreds. I’ve been trying to switch counselors, but he says that that isn’t something employees are allowed to decide. So I’ve taken it to a higher authority and sent an e-mail to someone who hopefully will be able to help me. I only sent the e-mail on Friday, so I haven’t heard back yet. Reviewing the Kanji: Time = 5:16. After a few weeks of almost ignoring this, I had a huge pile to go through. I made myself review each day until the pile was a little smaller than the day before, or until I had 20 failed cards. So gradually I managed to reduce it until I had zero due cards at the end of each day. Now I only have to review between 50 and 70 cards each day, so I will probably try to add the rest of the kanji from the supplement soon. Read the kanji: Time = 7:57. Reading: Time = 12:37. I ran out of Harry Potter early on in my trip, so I had to read something else. I’ve been trying to read a book on Asperger syndrome. I understand a lot more than I expected, but I think I will have to read it 4 or 5 times before I really understand. iKnow: Time= 19:53. This is usually reasonably fun so I tend to spend a lot of time on it every day. Plus, I pay for it, so I want to get through it as quickly as possible. I only bought 6 months, and I’m starting to realize that it will be impossible to get through it in that time, but I’d like to finish within a year anyway. Grammar: Time = 3:28. I can only read a little at a time. It’s just too hard to concentrate on this kind of thing right now. Total for period: 49 hr, 12 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 357 hr, 45 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 552 hr, 7 min Only 1936 hours, 23 minutes and 3 seconds to go ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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