General Update

[hils]

This has been a particularly difficult month. I don't know if it's just the time of year, the fact that we're approaching the one year mark of working from home, or all of the above. I'm just feeling drained, apathetic and generally fed up. I don't think it's just me either. Tempers seem to be short in our group chats with people falling out over nothing or silly little misunderstandings. Everyone just seems to be particularly unhappy at the moment and it's not a fun time.

Boss was off work last week so I had to cover for here which is always stressful. It calmed down towards the end of the week but the first few days were awful.

I'm trying to keep going with my daily routine, though. Because I remember what a mess I was when my days didn't have structure.

I'm in week 6 of learning Mandarin and it's ticking along. The hardest part is learning to recognise all the characters. The grammar rules are actually pretty straightforward compared to other languages I've learned and I can understand more than I can read, I think. It's still very basic stuff like counting and saying my name and where I'm from but progress is being made. It's nice to be learning something new and I get excited when I hear a word I recognise that I didn't know before in one of my dramas. That was the main reason I wanted to learn :D

I can't remember if I mentioned we were reading the Heaven Official's Blessing novel for our online book club. The book club has kind of dissolved (see above about people getting upset over stupid things - that one was me) but I'm still reading. It's kind of a slog but I think I'm starting to get back into it now. I'm only about a third of the way through. It is a LONG book.

Fic writing is going well too, mostly. I'm sticking to my goal of writing a minimum of 500 words per day. I've completed two treats for sundial_exchange which just need editing, and I've started a third and have an idea for a fourth. I really need to get my most recently completed one to a beta because I don't think it's good, and I need someone to either tell me that I'm being overly critical or to help me identify what's wrong with it.

We finished Tomb of the Sea/Sha Hai last weekend and have made a start on Ultimate Note. I loved Tomb of the Sea a lot. The actor playing Wu Xie was amazing and it was kind of darker than the other tomb shows which I found strangely appealing. Ultimate Note is almost at the other end of the spectrum. It's bright and colourful and full of nonsense. It's by far the most shippy of any of the tomb shows and I'm loving it.

Nirvana in Fire continues to be excellent although I haven't had time to watch any this past week. Hoping to get back to it again on Monday.

Our lockdown is getting reviewed next week and I can't see anything changing because as far as I can tell our number of cases hasn't changed. They might go back to the tier system but that really didn't help last time. We seem to be doing okay with vaccine rollout although from what I'm hearing the north seems to be doing better than the south in terms of how much vaccine is available. No idea why that is.

We're certainly nowhere near ready to go back to anything approaching 'normal' yet so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

Comments

[laireshi]

*all the hugs for you* it really is a difficult month, isn't it? Here's hoping March will be easier!

I get excited when I hear a word I recognise that I didn't know before in one of my dramas.
Same! Or I understand something in hardsubs and I immediately get so happy.

(insert obligatory "I love UN SO MUCH" comment here too ;))

[hils]

I understand something in hardsubs and I immediately get so happy.
I can't wait to get to that point! :D

(insert obligatory "I love UN SO MUCH" comment here too ;))
Wow, really? I had no idea ;)

[rebeccama]

I think the one year anniversary is getting to a lot of people. I have been struggling more than normal this month. I am going stir crazy.

[laireshi]

I can't wait to get to that point! :D
Oh nooo, I'm only a beginner! I mean lines like 你是小哥吗, haha ;) But it's still progress from my previous Absolute Zero of Chinese. (You can see which scenes I rewatched.)

[hils]

I didn't recognise two of the characters but now that I've looked it up of course :D

[tinny]

Ah but you have a lot more vaccine than we do. It'll be a longer wait here. *sigh*


Yay for learning Chinese! I recommend the anki deck "Spoonfed Chinese", once you've got a few characters down and can handle the sentence structure. It's a great deck with only sentences (no lone characters) and with native speakers reading the sentence to you.

If you like anki, there's also a Guardian deck, in case you're still interested in Guardian things. It's available at guardian_learning. The main effort was nnozomi's, she collected the vocab for the deck. 20 words per episode, 800 total, all from HSK1.

I'm still working on the version that includes writing characters, which I personally find integral to actually remembering and recognizing the characters, but ymmv. And I'm afraid it'll be a while before I can publish it, there are still a few kinks to iron out.

[naye]

Yeah. This month? Has been a lot. I think it's just - a year. It's been a year, and we are all Tired. I know if the option was given to me I would hibernate until I could get vaccinated.

But yay for the learnings! I love that feeling of things clicking, of your brain recognizing new patterns, of understanding what I couldn't previously understand.

[hils]

It's not so much going stir crazy. I've found plenty of thing to do that don't involve going outside so I'm kind of used to that now. It's just tempers are short and people are feeling miserable

[hils]

Ooh I've never used anki before. Totally going to check it out after work! Thank you!

I'm still working on the version that includes writing characters, which I personally find integral to actually remembering and recognizing the characters, but ymmv
Absolitely! I've actually got a chinese character practise book and whenever one of the apps teaches me a new one I write it out a bunch of times. Doesn't seem to help with making it stick though. I need to start writing sentences and phrases I think

[hils]

It's been a year, and we are all Tired
So very Tired.

[rebeccama]

I am keeping busy. It is that I would like to interact in-person safely and just hang out.

[tinny]

The only thing that helped me was breaking the characters down into their component parts. That way they're much easier to remember for me. But it takes time and practice. *sigh*

I bought a children's book at starandrea's advice, and that is really good in that respect. The series is called "Big Chinese Workbook for Little Hands".

I have this one: https://www.amazon.de/Chinese-Workbook-Little-Hands-Level/dp/1539101843/

Not that I've actually gotten through all of it. :P