But Things Change, and that’s the Way it is

April 20, 2008

It’s been a pretty exhausting week this last one, infact its been like that over the past few. I’ve really turned it up a notch this year and am starting to feel it. In anycase I am a very pleased man. I want to talk about what I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks.

Firstly there isn’t much new to report on for my exchange plans, I’ve just been submitting forms and seeing the doctor for my medical examination. Since I need to complete a full physical examination (thats blood test, ECG, X-ray and a general inspection).

Five Outta Six

I would like to talk about a new coincidence which has taken been in full effect over the past term, that is what I call the 5 out of 6 rule. I hope that I haven’t mentioned this already on the blog. It plays out like this; I have to do a lot of traveling to get around at Uni and essentially for every piece of transport that I take (buses, trains, walk etc) and every place I go, 5 out of 6 times I will run into someone I know; a friend of mine. The strangest thing about this set of coincidences is that I usually meet different people, it isn’t as though the same people are traveling in the same direction each week, oh no, its never like that. Which is why I can’t understand this.

This is all well and good but what has further baffled me is that this same rule has applied for the holiday period. Over the past 4 or 5 days, everyday I have been heading into town, every time though, without fail I will run into someone that I might have not seen for a while that I can talk to. Its always someone different as well. It all really is quite bizarre.

I feel as though this may sound much like an unreasoned attempt for me to justify that indeed I have friends (ah, just made myself laugh). Which is reasonable as this blog is almost entirely about me planning out my working life. But the funny thing is that since the start of the semester this rule, week in, week out the applies. I really am incredibly overcome by this strange phenomena. Of course, it is of great benefit to me so no worries there.

Generally Speaking Though

It has been a busy, productive and successful few weeks. I have managed to go out a few times with my friends, meet people at Uni and of course that 5/6 rule. Fortunately this holiday break I am not pinned down with mountains of homework which has provided me with some spare time for me to throw myself at.

This spare time has primarily been spent with friends and the last 5 days have seen me moving in and out of the city from dawn to dusk everyday. Namely seeing my international, Chinese friends whom I always enjoy spending time with. I’ve also managed to seize this opportunity to catch up with people whom I haven’t caught up with in a while.

Between this time I have been working on my blog, playing games, relaxing and spending time with my twin brother, the usual business. Same deal before the break as well, long days dedicated to pushing forwarded mixed in with such recreational activities.

In fact this has all been very pleasing. Even though the majority of this time has been pushing me to new levels of exhaustion, I feel as though its the happy kind of exhaustion. I am totally loving everything that I am doing, my courses at Uni, my friends, my blog everything has reached that point where there is nothing bad left to fret over. Each week there are no painful tasks or classes, only the anticipation of reaping the rewards that I have planted for myself. All very rewarding.

Some Points Worth Mentioning

I would like to highlight a few latest occurrences that have been particularly notable. I will start with my Chinese, over the past few days I have been meeting with my Chinese friends a lot. On Tuesday I met with a friend whom I haven’t seen since last holidays. I was very pleased meeting with this friend because it made something click.

You see, from my experiences, when you learn a second language you learn it in stages and every now and then you will feel your ability click over to the next notch. In this instance, I feel as though my spoken language has made the next progressive click.

To add further context, I find that often in my head I start to speak Chinese with myself. I mime out these sharp utterances to myself which are both complex but also hasty. I speak to myself(and back) in Chinese at the speed of a regular Chinese person. The problem is and I suspect that it is a problem for many language learners is taking that dialogue from my mind and putting it into speech. It is this process which I struggle with and it is this process which I have improved on.

This friend of mine is an extremely nice guy and meeting with him again has presented me with another cultural dilemma of uncertainty. One about the friendliness of Chinese people in contrast to westerners. This also became apparent a few days later when I did some karaoke with additional friends. I may bring up this observation in another entry though.

In anycase, to the point at hand, we spent most of a day; maybe 5hrs, talking to each other about various topics and for a good majority of that we spoke Chinese. Infact most of the first few hours was predominately Chinese. This I guess is nothing too out of the ordinary but it was as things progressed and when I caught up with him two days later that I firmly noticed the ‘click’.

He speaks to me just like any other Chinese person and I respond back to him as such, at the same speed etc. We can hold a conversation like this for maybe 30 minutes with no real major hitches with the exclusion of some word clarification. I am not sure but speaking with him, followed up with the other 4 days of large chunks of oral language has pushed me up. I now feel like my words flow much more smoothly from my head to my mouth. I have also become conscious of the volume of grammar I use (and use correctly), I am impressed with this step up.

Lastly, I wanted to share my thoughts on a game which I bought only yesterday with some friends. Jeane D’arc is a strategy RPG for the PSP and is exceedingly similar to one of my favourite strategy games; Final Fantasy Tactics. The two are very similar, two gorgeous SRPGs made by two respectable Japanese developers. What grabs me about Jeane D’arc is its vibrancy, everything in this game is lush and beautiful. The colours burst out of the screen, the music shares this same synergy. The gameplay is indeed similar to FFT but unique in it’s own right. Level 5’s knowledge of good design seeps through, the game is very intuitive (much more than FFT) and is overall a joy to play. Theres been a few niggly balance issues but overall this game has been buttering my bread. I don’t even care if this game continues to largely play out like a prettier version of Final Fantasy Tactics. Look forward to some more coverage on my Gamer Blog.

That is it for me. I apologize for the delay in posts I just write these things and forget to post them up.

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