beep bip boop
nao's blog thing
Annual summer goals list
- Develop a conlang
- Reorganise apartment
- Brush up on C
- Program something useful in C?
- Integrate WordPress into http://www.nowme.ca
- Eat out at most once a week (exceptions for friends in town, etc.)
Sonorant Summers SssSSssSSss
I know I have a big Tokyo trip post due since coming back two weeks ago but I’ve been putting off processing some of the remaining photos. I promise that will come soon.
In the meantime, I’ve been checking out some of the concert listings for Toronto this summer. Can I just say that I feel blessed to live in such an musically fortuitous city? I’ve lived here all my life but never really appreciated it before since I was too young for most of the good shows, I didn’t bother getting a fake ID, and downtown was a little ways away anyway.
Anyway, I’ll probably be updating this list as time goes on and more shows are announced. Bolded will mean I’m confirmed to go (i.e. tickets bought), otherwise only expressing interest.
- 27-May – Gogol Bordello @ Sound Academy – $30.00 (Seeing as how soon this is, the ticket price, and fucking Sound Academy this is highly unlikely …)
- 12-Jun – Wintersleep @ Lee’s Palace – $25.00
- 18-Jun – Mogwai @ Phoenix – $30.50
- 06-Jul – Dirty Projectors @ Music Hall – $34.00~$39.00
- 28-Jul – The xx @ Phoenix – ??? (Are tickets on sale yet?)
- 01-Aug – Sigur Ròs @ Echo Beach – $52.00 (that price @_@)
- 04-Aug – Justice/M83 @ Fort York – $49.00 (I’ve already seen M83 and that ticket price…)
Some of these are definitely more than I usually pay for the little concerts I’m used to going to, so I’ll have to decide which I’d like to see the most I suppose. More to come, most likely. In the meantime I will shut myself up at home while I recover from this cold.
are all mornings this surreal?
Woke up early this morning to head to the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre on University. I made an appointment to hand in my application form at 10:00 and I got there neither too early nor too late by walking.
On the way there, Edwin and I noticed some Japanese signage on Elizabeth St by Dundas and the back of City Hall. It definitely wasn’t there before but we didn’t have time to check it out until after I finished my business with my visa application.
When we went to explore, we noticed that all the established were suddenly … Japanese. We wondered if the neighbourhood was trying to artificially create a “Little Japan” in Toronto, but that just seemed sudden and unlikely. Anyway, the signs were cut off at the top and nothing was open and the signage looked kind of old.
Only then did we notice there was piles of debris on the cars parked on the road and it was generally pretty dishevelled looking. And then we saw the police and the pylons and the fake Tokyo bus stop. Ah! I know a lot of movies are shot in Toronto, but this is the first time I’ve actually quite literally walked upon one.
One of the police officers was friendly enough to tell us a bit about what was going on. Apparently Guillermo del Toro has a new movie he was shooting called Pacific Rim. I don’t know if they left the set fairly visible and accessible just because of people like me but … I am probably curious enough to see the film now. I’m sold too easily.
Also in keeping in today’s theme of hidden gems: Kelly Library has more personality than originally anticipated.
To digital infinity and beyond.
To digital infinity and beyond.
We just started introduction to formal language theory in one of my theoretical Computer Science courses. Found this article on Wikipedia and thought there was a certain poetry or romance behind the idea of digital infinity.
Elevators.
Before this year I’ve never lived in an apartment complex before so I never knew how frustrating elevators can be. Having to take account elevators into my schedule is not something I’ve ever had to do before … I think it depends on your building, but especially since mine is undergoing floor-by-floor renovations right now, sometimes elevators are out of order, and there because major elevator congestion.
I’ve had to wait at least 10 minutes for an elevator, and when your class is only 15 minutes away, those 10 minutes can make a big difference. I shouldn’t normally have to expect a 10 minute elevator wait, so if I do leave 10 minutes earlier I will often get to class much too early.
I live on the 10th floor, so I should maybe just start taking the stairs? (Taking them down isn’t so tough, and it’s usually when I’m leaving the apartment that I’m in a hurry.) It’s not faster than if the elevator arrives on time, but at least the time is constant. O(k) all the way.
In reality I’m lazy and will probably continue letting the elevator get the best of me and my day’s schedule. Sigh, error handling in real life is annoying.
Schizo-blogging.
A girl I know once tweeted about a correlation (whether scientific or artistic, I do not know) between keeping multiple blogs and schizophrenia. It’s embarrassing to say the exact number, but I own a lot of blogs. (Although I guess what constitutes a ‘blog’ these days is blurred, since the management of a microblog such as tumblr can be very different from a ‘serious’ blog like this one.) I guess I can see the reasoning. I think most people who have many blogs are like me and do so to compartmentalise their blogging. Maybe that extends to a comparmentalisation of our lives? I dunno, I think my life needs more compartmentalisation anyway so I’m not too concerned.
Back to banality: I really can’t wait for this school year to end.
Tongue and brain.
Had my first exam of the December 2011 exam season today. Language classes are normally the least of my troubles when it comes to grades, but today’s Japanese exam was not easy by any means. There are some general rules that can be applied to any language learner, but on a more detailed level, language learning will always boil down to the individual learner profile. I know many students in particular struggle with grammar, but that has never been my weak point. Vocabulary always proves a greater challenge since, at this level, it’s less pattern-based and will involve more memorisation skills. This is perhaps why I was so comfortable with French; much of the vocabulary was intuitively easy to remember for an English speaker. It still tended to be my weak point, but if I had put in the effort I put in now with Japanese … On the other hand, expectations are also different. Armed with similar “amounts” of grammatical knowledge, I could generate a lot more in French than with Japanese.
Well, rambling aside, my performance in Japanese this year has led me to reevaluate my language studying habits. I did not do terribly well on the oral test; I sat just at the median and the average, which is not up to my usual performance when it comes to language learning. Speaking is perhaps the ultimate difficulty for me since it’s somewhere where you cannot get by on passive knowledge alone. I need to readjust my study habits to exercise my active language skills. Active language skills can be described as skills that require me to generate my own usage of the language. For Japanese in particular, this means writing kanji (Chinese characters), speaking, and writing (all with the sophistication I should be capable of, armed with the vocabulary and grammar I should know).
I should write in my Japanese blog more often, but I often find it difficult to find things to write about. I guess I don’t consider my life interesting enough. Or for subjects I would actually blog about, my own thoughts tend to be fairly abstract and disorganised so it’s beyond the scope of what I’d be capable of in Japanese. I should consider using writing prompts, perhaps.
As for oral and listening skills, my university has a Japanese conversational language exchange once a week that is accessible to learners of all levels. And, although many beginning learners are chastised for it, I do think I’m at a level where I could actually gain something from watching more Japanese media, such as anime or other TV shows. (I agree though that this is not particularly useful at a very novice level, especially if the learner considers the media to be anything more than a supplement.)
If anything, I’m glad Japanese this year is moving at the pace it is. It’s definitely good mental exercise for me, allowing me to both learn and meta-learn. Meta-learning is good!
