Over My Head
June 15, 2008
Originally Written on 10th June 2008
Well it’s the 10th today and I am surprised that despite what I wrote in my last post I am still on the hard slog, hardly relieved from my University duties. As I said last time I had a bit of a sore throat which kept me at bay from doing much work. That weekend I spent mostly on mastering my Chinese presentation and my Grandpa’s surprise 70th in which I was the photographer. I took some good shots and should be pleased.
My presentation went okay, I was surprised at how basic a good majority of the presentations were, they were either quite basic (subject + verb + object sentences!) or quite colloqial. I suspect that the colloqial ones were that way due to the student’s being of Chinese decent or something like that. Whatever the case it was above the vocab and grammar of the class.
I was really quite surprised at how simple some of the speeches were. I’m not attempting to gloat or talk myself up as some kind of hero. But I had genuinely led myself to believe that our class was capable of more than that.
In anycase, I had a meet and greet exchange function on Wednesday night at some bar in town. The event ran smoothly and I guess I enjoyed myself as much you can enjoy yourself at these sorts of functions. You know, the sort that they force new employees of a business to endure to build up team working skills. Replace team work with cultural skills though.
On Friday I went down to my Chinese friend’s place for a good portion of the day to run through some music and exercises.
The last few days have all been study orientated with the plan on making a clearing in the scrub for a few self indulgent days with Metal Gear Solid 4. I spent most of the prior 3 days doing a 101 on Marketing which really wore me down. Today (Tuesday) I rewrote a major assignment which I hope that I’ll be able to post up on the blog under a new segment in due time.
I have 2 weeks until my final two exams, I cannot wait until they are completed as the rest of the year will be located in ShangHai void of anything really troublesome. I just hope that I get my approval package soon as I need to apply for a Chinese Visa and I’m not sure how long that will take…
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Over the Hill and Out the Door
Originally Written on Friday 30th May 2008
These last few weeks have been a hard slog. I’ve been investing a good amount of time on my studies with my usual semester intent. Every semester I try to finish most of my major assignments as early as possible leaving me with plenty of time to relax and revise for future exams. Last Tuesday I managed to get over the hump leaving only 2 exams and one major assignment left with a month beore they are due. This is fantastic I think and I am very pleased.
Unfortunately since Wednesday I must have caught a cold and have had a painully sore throat. This is terrible for a few reasons; it restricts me from orally recieiting my upcoming Chinese speech (work is done just need to memorize) and my throat has been so sore that it has interupted my sleep which overall makes me feel even worse. It seems to be clearing up though which is positive.
I feel very lazy as in the past few days I haven’t done as much work due to my throat and the way things have worked out. I guess, from now until March next year I should have more time to blog as I will be in ShangHai for the later half of the year doing only Chinese language study which is not extremely taxing work as it is exactly what I want to be doing (work wise).
I’ve also been playing through the Syhpon Filter trilogy on the PSone for the 3rd time. This time I want to capture video and write a ew entries on it on the blog. Beyond that I haven’t been playing much else.
I’ve also reorganised Opera’s RSS feeds and the blogs in which I have subscribed to and the ones that I have bookmarked. This will be convenient for when I finally get around to sharing my blog with more people.
What else, of yeah I have officially been accepted into my University in ShangHai which is awesome. I will be living in the city centre which is completely rocking as this city is such a metropolis. I have been figuring out flight and travel plans as well as doing some general research.
I’m sorry that I haven’t kept this blog up to date, I have been so busy trying to complete my work that it has been hard enough updating the gaming blog let alone this one. Hopefully I will get better soon.
I’m really not use to having this free time, I’m use to pushing stuff aside and doing it later.
Tags: Life
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Fed Up Commentaries
May 13, 2008
Written on 9th May 2008
So I have been thinking about what I said before and want to provide a rider to that. I think that I should probably be putting a conscious effort into focusing on more of the course work in my Chinese study and less so on spoken language and relevant dialogue.
One of my weaknesses is remembering characters and writing them out which is what the exams are based on. So I think that I should concentrate my efforts on this weakness for the sake of the course. This element of language learning has been neglected a little bit lately.
If I can work on this then I think that I will be more well rounded. Judging from some recent feedback from friends my speaking has reached quite a good state, really listening is my major communicative issue. So if I can focus on:
- listening
- writing sentences
- pronounciation
then I should be good to go.
Tags: Life
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Fed Up
Originally Written 9th May 2008
To be frank, life has been going down it’s usual route and I have been quite content but as of writing I feel downright frustrated and annoyed.
Fed Up
This week I have fortunately been on top of my blogging which is great, I have a nice stash of banked articles and plenty of ideas that I waiting to jot down. One of those ideas has been on my mind probably everyday this week and that is the stigma of video games.
Without trying to ruin the main article that I plan on posting, this topic has been brought to my attention over a recent incident. I feel like I may be boring readers of my gaming blog when I incorporate such stories but it looks like I will be giving it another shot and reoffending.
It doesn’t matter what happened, you can wait for the article but it has me re-examining the stigma that I and many others face. The more I think about the past issues and friction that I have faced with being stigmatized in such a way the more I feel frustrated and angry. The incident that I will later explain is a perfect example of how certain people look down on game players such as myself with frankly unjust justification.
My frustration of being someone stigmatized as a social inadequate (I don’t feel that this is the case anymore, it seems that some people have made it past the gap of a peer pressured institutional context, others haven’t) has snowballed with various other issues that also make me feel very frustrated. The issue of binge drinking is one of those, a past time in which I cannot see reason for. Maybe my vision is blurred somewhat but I struggle to understand why my lack of interest in drinking myself to death, for many people ties in so nicely with that previous mentioned stigma of playing video games (boy that was bitter). It baffles me, I guess one day when I grow up and be a man and decide to buy a large exhaust for my car and throw up in a not-so-innocent friend’s toilet, maybe then I will understand.
More wood of frustration has been tossed onto the fire with a recent exam mark from my Chinese class in which I got a rounded 60%. Yeah I know, I passed, yay. Unfortunately I feel pretty disappointed with myself, considering the extra effort that I put into my Chinese language. This is where the light bulb of resolution switches on.
When I get to an issue like this I begin writing and then as I am writing I am already concluding the article before I even get there, making what I am doing slowly become more and more redundant. This is the point where I am now.
You see, I am right, what I said was correct. I do put in a lot of effort in my Chinese study but what I have found recently and especially this week is that I don’t really set this around the course work. Over the holiday period I saw, set and achieved my goals in language learning and I am still working on getting to the next level of acquisition. I have already mastered the art of self teaching to a tee. What I have found now is that, I am not systematically learning, I am instead learning with intent. I use the classwork and resources as a tool to develop the skills that I myself want to gain form the course. I am not interested in this University qualities rubbish or getting distinctions anymore, I am just learning what is relevant and useful to me.
With this realization I have found a certain disengage with in many of my classes. Particularly Chinese and Marketing. I no longer focus my Chinese work around the curriculum, I just use the tools provided to achieve my own personal goals (in this case become as fluent as possible before my exchange) and as long as I achieve sufficient results and learn what I want to learn then I am happy. I feel that my benefit lies in a different area to that of the courses. So as of late, even though my Chinese, trully has been pushing to new heights, my interest in the course work has dwindled. It is monotonous, uninteresting, unegaging and not very useful. A total disconnect.
As such I have been using classes to develop relevant skills, Chinese classes as a resource for grammar and vocab, linguistics classes to create cultural understanding and to improve literacy quality and marketing classes well for yeah marketing concepts. To be frank the style of fact by fact learning in marketing is just completely tangent to the way I have been learning in recent years, it is less systematical and memorization which is just how I like it because where is the skill in memorization? Maybe this is my issue with Chinese so many characters continue to escape me. Maybe I need balance.
In anycase I feel a total disconnect in these two classes and I guess the results speak for themselves. I really have gotten sick of this whole charade and I would rather spend the next year and a half progressing in areas that suit me. The main goal, call it an occupation is still very unclear. Whatever the case may be I’d like to do something that focuses on my core aspects and distances itself for all of that social stigma.
Man, that makes me sound like a social nazi but allow me to reassure you that this is not the case. I am by no means a withdrawn, isolated create. I just feel frustrated by these very contradictory social particles.
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