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Brun_Ugle flies again (TAC 2012 team い) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4609 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 161 of 276 11 August 2012 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, teammate! How have you been doing? Been wondering where you're off to. Hope all's
well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 162 of 276 14 August 2012 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been in the US. I mentioned it in one of my posts, but you probably missed it because there were a bunch of other posts after. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 163 of 276 14 August 2012 at 1:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Looooooong post. Really long. Forgive me.
The past three-and-a-half weeks I’ve been in the US at my parent’s house going crazy. I got almost nothing done (with Japanese) as you will soon see. I did manage to clean my parent’s house somewhat and I got some of my stuff out of the house. I left home rather suddenly, so I’d left a lot of stuff behind. It’s all jammed into a closet. I am trying to figure out what to do with it since I can’t leave it there. I removed literally several hundred pounds of stuff, but it hardly looks like I touched it. Really I probably removed about half of it, but what’s left seems to have expanded and taken over the whole closet. I also got a good bit of clothes shopping done. My sister always takes me out shopping. She’s my “fashion consultant” which is kind of funny since she dresses like a slob herself. While we were out, I also bought about 4 kilos(!) of candy to take back with me. There are a lot of kinds of candy you can’t get around here (like Reese’s pieces and Reese’s cups, both of which I love, and tootsie rolls and skittles and hot cinnamon candies) and I needed them. Don’t worry; I won’t eat them all at once. While I was out with her, we also stopped at her son’s (one of them) house. I spent a good bit of time playing with my great niece on her Wii. I actually managed to beat her at basketball and bowling, which is odd since I can’t do either in real life. But the game I liked best was Mario cart. I came in eleventh or twelfth almost every time, but it was so much fun. My great niece liked it too since she could beat me. She hates to lose and she’s not a very good winner either since she tends to gloat, but I didn’t mind. She’s twelve, but her little sister is only two. The little one is OK with other people when outside her own home, but not when they come into her territory, so she screamed and howled when she saw me and my sister. (Even though my sister is her grandmother, she lives a little too far away for them to see each other very often.) She did gradually get used to me and by that evening she was comfortable enough to give me a hug and kiss (a very wet one) before going to bed. The next day, we went there again and she walked back and forth from the kitchen to the living room with imaginary chicken nuggets for me. Every time she came out, she walked in a wide arc around my sister to get to me. During the last week I got to see my Uncle who lives in Philadelphia. We always spend a day together when I am in the US. He is 83, but still very youthful. The reason we couldn’t meet until the last week, was that he was on a bicycle trip from Albany to Brooklyn. He loves to ride his bicycle and often takes these kinds of trips either with his son-in-law or with a group of others. I spent one day with another nephew. He is a great artist. He’s painted several murals and he did chainsaw sculptures for a while until the vibrations got to be too much for his arms, then he turned to making artistic furniture or practical sculpture, whichever you prefer to call it. We went to the Wharton Escher museum together. Wharton Escher was a very eccentric artist who did work similar to my nephew’s. There is a funny story about one of his chainsaw sculptures. My father said it was a statue of Uncle Sam, but I can’t be sure since my father often gets his stories mixed up. Anyway, this statue was owned by some business and stood in front of it. One day another of my nephew’s, the artist-nephew’s older brother, “stole” the statue. He was going on a year-long trip around the country with his wife and daughter and they took the statue with them. They took pictures of it in front of tourist attractions all around the country and sent these pictures to the owner. No one knew who’d taken the statue or how it was traveling to all these places, so it turned into a big mystery. It was even on the news. When I was a teenager, my brother and his girlfriend (now his wife) used to invite me for pizza and a movie. We haven’t done this since about 25 years ago when I went off to college and they got married, but we decided to resurrect the tradition. It was lots of fun to do it again. My brother and I also spent some time on several occasions talking together about my parents. They are both 81 and getting too old to take care of such a big house and grounds. My mother is like her brother (the bicycling Uncle) in that she would probably would be good for another 10 years or so if it weren’t for the fact that she has some mysterious eye disease that is making her go blind (she’s been seen by some of the greatest eye-experts in the world and no one’s seen it before). Because of the blindness, she is quite trapped. They live in the country, so there is nothing nearby and most of her friends who could take her places, live a bit too far away. Anyway, she would like to move to a home where one of her friends lives. She could live in the “independent-living section” and mostly take care of herself except that she would be able to take dinner in the cafeteria. That would be perfect for her since she struggles to cook because of her eyesight and because it gives her pain in her back, but otherwise she can manage everything herself. My father on the other hand, seems to have aged 15 years in the past three years. He’s always refused to admit that he’s getting older and now he’s losing his mind as well. He is becoming very forgetful and confused. My mother is very dependent on him because of her eyes, but I’m afraid that he will soon be in such a state that he will forget how to do simple things and get lost on the way to the store, etc. My mother is trying to work on making some arrangements for their future, but has to do it in secret when my father is out of the house. My brother and I are also trying to work on these things because my sisters probably won’t be able to, or simply won’t, give much help. Most of it will fall on my brother since I live so far away, but I will try to help with the things that can be done from here, and will try to go there if something happens and help clean out the house when it’s time. My father is a pack-rat, so that will be a big job. Also, my mother is afraid they won’t be able to afford it, but my brother and I have talked together privately and we figure we can both contribute a little. After all, they took care of us for many years and sent us to college, so now it is our turn to take care of them. Anyway, I can see that the next few years will be very stressful for my brother and me. I’ve already had a few stressful years because of my job situation and depression, so I hope I will still have some hair left by the time all this is over. My brother is already nearly bald, so losing the few strands he has left probably won’t make any difference to him. Log for 2012.07.15 - 2012.08.11 inclusive As you might have guessed, with all that’s happened the past few weeks, I got almost no studying done. Reading: Time = 19:43. I’d planned to do a lot of reading while I was in the US, but it turns out I hardly got to do anything. My parents are home sitting in the living room all the time and there aren’t so many other places that are comfortable for me to sit and read. I couldn’t concentrate with them in the room since they make too much racket, especially my father. He can make more noise doing nothing than anyone I’ve ever met. He breathes too loudly, sniffs, snores, swallows, all of it really loudly. He can’t do anything quietly! So I wasn’t able to concentrate on anything as difficult as Harry Potter. I ended up doing a lot of house-cleaning since my parents are too old to get it properly clean. Since my mother is almost blind, she can’t see the dirt, and my father never notices anything anyway. Anyway, I got less reading done in three-and-a-half weeks than I usually get done in one. Listening/movies: Time = 0. iKnow: Time= 3:41. The computer is in one of the main rooms and it isn’t easy to get anything done on it with my father walking around and looking over my shoulder, so I soon gave up on this. Writing: Time= 3:14. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do any writing while in the US and I’m really behind on my writing, so I quickly threw something together before leaving. RTK: Time= 0. Total for period: 26 hr, 18 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 791 hr, 0 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 985 hr, 23 min Only 1503 hours, 7 minutes and 25 seconds to go ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 164 of 276 15 August 2012 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was in the US I barely did any work on iKnow and gave up completely after a few days. Now it’s just scolded me for my laziness. It told me, “Your last session was 19 days ago. A little more effort will get you back on track.” I feel like I should go stand in the corner.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 165 of 276 19 August 2012 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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It’s not been a very good week for studying. Sunday and Monday I didn’t get to do anything because of traveling. Tuesday, I was groggy all day after having slept for 12 hours. And since then, I just haven’t been able to settle down to it.
Part of my problem is that I’m way behind where I wanted to be at this time. When I find myself failing at something, I tend to give up rather than accepting a slightly lower standard or changing my goal to something attainable. However, I’m not going to give up this time. I’ll just get back to reading and maybe even catch up again. What happened was that I was already a little behind on my reading and thought I could catch up again. Well, if you read my last update (kudos to you if you made it through all that), you know I got even further behind. This made me very disappointed, but I’ve decided I have to bounce back. Also, I’ve been reading Harry Potter which is an incredibly dense book. It’s jam-packed with words on every page. Most of the other books I have are a bit lighter than that so maybe I’ll be able to read a little faster. Plus my reading speed will increase eventually anyway, I hope. It might be a little difficult at first since these other books don’t have as much furigana and aren’t familiar stories, but I’m sure it will gradually get easier and maybe I can even catch up. And if not, I can accept that and be satisfied with finishing the Super Challenge according to the new rules instead of the old ones. Then there is the diet and exercise program. I’d been trying to exercise before I left. I was even starting to get in a bit better shape though my body seems determined not to get back to where it was before my depression. And now, I’ve gone backwards again and have slipped even further back than where I was before the vacation. I was also trying to lose some weight. I had a nice little schedule for how much I was to lose every week, and had even made a graph in Excel. Everything was right on track until I went on vacation. I always knew that I would gain weight there, but I didn’t calculate that into my graph. Actually, I should be satisfied that I only gained half a kilo since I thought I would gain even more. But now that I’m no longer where I originally wanted to be on my diet, I find it hard to start again. So I changed my graph to reflect where I am now, and how much I should lose each week. Anyway, on to my update: Log for 2012.08.12 - 2012.08.19 inclusive Reading: Time = 14:32. Only 5 hours less than I did during my 3.5 week vacation! Wow! Listening/movies: Time = 0. I need a few movie-marathons to get me back where I should be. I really have to start doing the drama thing. It would be fun too, I’m sure. iKnow: Time= 1:09. Obviously, I haven’t taken iKnow’s scolding to heart, but I will. Again, it’s hard to get back on track when I’ve fallen so far behind. Writing: Time= 0. I’m way behind on this. Considering how slowly I write, I should be working hard at this. RTK: Time= 0. I have over 1000 reviews. o_o Total for period: 15 hr, 40 min Total since start of TAC 2012: 806 hr, 41 min Total since I started keeping track (2011.11.06): 1001 hr, 3 min Only 1487 hours, 27 minutes and 3 seconds to go ;-) By the way, Twitter misses me :( It sent me an e-mail. Poor thing. I didn’t mean to make you sad. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5794 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 166 of 276 19 August 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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So iKnow is scolding you and Twitter misses your company. The internet is getting a little creepy, isn't it?
It must be tough to see your parents change from being old but independent to being elderly and in need of assistance. I hope everything goes smoothly in working out how best to take care of them. In terms of your study, its probably best to try and treat the break in the US as a pause and not worry about the lost time. I think sometimes my mind works in a similar way to yours so I can appreciate how frustrating it is when you've had everything planned out. I keep telling myself that plans like these are only a guide which are meant to be helpful. When they stop being helpful, you should change the plans. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 167 of 276 22 August 2012 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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More Fun with Idioms
English speakers and Japanese speakers alike seem to be interested in the sleeping habits of other animals and enjoy emulating them. While English has catnaps, Japanese has raccoon naps. They don’t mean exactly the same thing however. The English catnap is a short doze during the daytime. A raccoon nap on the other hand, means pretending to be asleep. 狸寝入りをする = たぬきねいりをする = pretend to be asleep Now, on an entirely different subject: You know how doctors always say, “this won’t hurt a bit,” and then proceed to pull your liver out your nostril or something equally horrible. Well, I was to the doctor today and afterward, I needed some of my favorite tranquilizer --- chocolate. Actually, more than some. Which doesn’t bode well for my diet. And after torturing me, he wasn't even able to accomplish what he was supposed to be doing and has to send me to someone else. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6432 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 168 of 276 24 August 2012 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tears of the Sparrow
Sounds like a good title for a book, doesn’t it? Well it’s not a book. I’m referring to a new idiom I found while reading today. Here it is: 雀の涙ほどしか払わない： すずめのなみだ ほどしかはらわない Literally: to only pay (someone) as much as sparrows’ tears Or, in everyday English: to pay someone a pittance Isn't that a very poetic way of describing something as mean as taking advantage of someone like that? I do love idioms and metaphors and the like. I sometimes tell my therapist about the different ones I find in Japanese. Most autists have a lot of difficulty with these kinds of expressions because we tend to take everything literally, probably due to having a mind that thinks in pictures. Anyway, perhaps it is my life-long interest in languages and words, but I've always been pretty good with metaphors and other figurative expressions. I sort of collect them, as you might have noticed. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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