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.

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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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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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I should probably start here for today. In the past 2 weeks my proactivity online has really dwindled. Usually when I get the free time online I’ll be running around contributing on forums, networking with other bloggers and doing a whole bunch of that stuff. But lately I have felt a lack of motivation for participating in these areas. I’ve been preferring to sit back, unnoticed and just read and investigate issues instead of participating in discussion. I’ve also realized that my posting frequency over at my Gamer blog has been pretty solid, I have some how got into a rhythm for posting up an article once every two days. Also I feel that my writing style is shifting as well, less software driven and more industry and issues driven.

Chinese Exchange

This is in converse to my regular life which has been bouncing along at a fruitful pace. I have been feeling exceedingly pressured lately by the prospect of this Chinese exchange in September. My problem is that I am running out of time and I keep on hitting dead ends.

You see my original plan and it’s back up plan have been thrown out of the window. Fortunately I have secured a second back up plan which should guarantee me a spot in China this September. You see my original plan was to go on an exchange through a program set up with my home University. Unfortunately I have not heard astounding (but still okay) things about the only University in which I can study at through my home Uni. But even worse I cannot go on an exchange this year as I missed the cut off back in November which is ridiculously early. Of course I could just go next year but unfortunately it doesn’t work in well as the Chinese institutions start school in September (hence a year abroad doesn’t work when I only have ½ a year).

So my second option was to check out what my second University offers (I only study Chinese there). They have a fantastic selection of Universities, unfortunately as I am not a full time student I cannot participate in any of these. Now just yesterday my Chinese tutor told me that it is possible or at least it has been done before with other cross-institutional students. So I still have to check out that.

Finally my last option was recommended to me by some one in one of my linguistics classes. They have a son which undertook this program with great success. Essentially I can go to China and teach oral english, I get accommodation, fantastic support (like a dedicated person in Australia who I can contact 24/7 for help) and a lot of help with the whole process (flight, visa etc.). One of my Chinese friends also knows someone whom successfully par took in one of these exchanges. I teach for 15+ hrs a week and get my own pay. This is only for 5/6 months.

So, I am unsure about what to choose be it this or next year. Essentially I can’t do an exchange with my home University this or next year. I already missed this year and otherwise it doesn’t match up. Also judging from the listings of previous exchanges no one at my University has done an exchange to China for some time. Hmmmm

I don’t want to pay my own way either so just forget that. This leaves me with two choices either teach over in China this September or see if my secondary University will allow me to do an exchange. I’ve been stuck on the idea of the teaching program as I out of all the options it gives me the best support and a lot of free time to explore, make and spend time with friends, do some photography. Where as studying over there either binds me to:

• a pre-planned language course
• a full on regular course

One runs the risk of being a waste of time and too easy, the other I guess would be suited well to my level.

The Long Haul

In the past year I have had this constant idea ringing in my head and it continually frustrates me beyond belief. You know, this year is the seventh year of me studying Chinese? This fact frustrates me exceedingly because I am currently an average student in a class of students whom this year is their third. I feel as though the 5 years of study at school almost counts for nought. I feel very frustrated about this because I feel that I am continually being overtaken.

The majority of my Chinese study has been in the past 2 years which I have soley focused on the study. Before that my study involved 4hrs a week of classes at school for several years. I guess if I look at it like that then I should not feel as bad as the majority of that time has not consisted of concentrated study and infact is quite forgettable.

Theres two other things that I want to factor in; firstly my progress over the past ummm 8 months which has been huge, seriously leaps and bounds. Secondly is the prospect of over seas study, I think that this will help me continue on the trend of leaps and bounds and will help me make the next leap to fluency. I can feel myself slowly closing in on this goal, so it shouldn’t be too long before I get there. Probably less than 2 years I suspect.

Still, having this weight of 7 years around is just so infuriating.

Well thats what I’ve been doing over the past week. Well not really, but its what has been on my mind lately.

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Just want to disperse a few ideas that have been on my mind in the past two weeks.

Lately

Lately my studies and life have been traveling at a manageable pace. Thanks to the Easter holiday weekend I have already completed my 3rd week of Univeristy. I used the word manageable as I can feel the presence of strain from many out of study pressures slowly mounting. I hope that I will be able to continue to keep them at bay at least for a while longer.

I am not sure but I am continually finding that I have less time on my hands to meet my own personal demands. Some of which I will talk about later. I am trying to balance University studies with additional language study with my Chinese friends, marketing and writing for my Gamer Blog as well as par taking in other social activities in and around Uni. Maybe I have alterered my perception of the time it takes to do things but it seems that everything that I work on requires a dedicated chunk of time.

For example, some of the blog articles (lets say the 3-4 page articles) that I write can take about 2-3hrs to write, another hour to proof read and then another 2 hours to gather any additional media or links and finally post on the site with a bit more uploading. It is a challenging task.

It is a similar case with Chinese, although I am continuously improving, I don’t find that I have enough time to fit everything that I want to in. Even though I practice with my friends for 8+ hrs a week I still find that we don’t manage to plough through all of the pre-prepared material. It is not a case of inefficiency but rather time not matching with demand.

Maybe this is all a sign that I am doing too much which is probably true. In anycase I have to figure out a way of managing myself under these circumstances.

Beyond my daily pressures life really has been fine. I am enjoying my classes and am continually finding myself surrounded by more people I know which as I mentioned previously is very pleasing. I enjoy good conversation and for most people I feel that it is what is taking place.

A Demand For Better Writing

I feel somewhat enlightened and inspired by some of what is going around me. In the past 3 weeks I have felt a move in me to push for a high quality of writing within my Gamer Blog. I have been enlightened of course by some of my fellow bloggers whom are constantly raising the bar in terms of writing quality. But it hasn’t just been these guys that have shifted my perception on video game writing.

In one of my courses at University we study language, technology and the relationship between the two. The whole vibe around this courses has encouraged me personally to think about how I can improve my own level of english when sharing ideas under these fields, one pre-existing outlet of this is obviously my gaming blog. As our course director puts it this course is really our own, we navigate the ship in terms of what we want to cover in some areas. An example of such is our major assignment where we choose an a topic of interests, we study and research this ourselves and provide a report on our findings. Our tutor even talked about the University possibly publishing these as journals if the quality was there. I find this so whole course so exciting because the study of language and technology, conversational analysis and technology, language as a second language tool all of these things are something which I am familiar with as a student of language and an enthusiast of tech and yet the research into these areas is lacking. I feel somewhat motivated into contributing into this area of writing despite being only a lowly blogger.

From this idea I have been thinking about what I can do to make my gaming blog much more intelligent. I want to raise the profile of writing but ensure that my writing is still accessible to the masses. Under my niche of video games I feel as though there is a divide among smaller video game blogging niches. There are enthusiasts blogs like myself, from there the next level comes in talking about game design and philosophies etc. So in following the previous model I would have to move my focus to a more philosophical way of talking about video games. Which is fine, unfortunately this is not exactly what I want to do.

With exclusions in mind I find that most video game blogs of this, high profile nature are simply unaccessible. I have read through hundreds of video game blogs dedicated to game design, creation and the like and they all have one thing in common. They all speak of a foreign language of which I am unfamiliar with. I find this deeply offensive as someone whom has been gaming for his whole life why is it that these game design blogs are simply nonsensical to me? Maybe I am too stupid for my own good but what is the point of having a niche of blogs of this nature if they are inaccessible to others wanting to pick up and read about this topic.

(Stay with me on this one) I have recently been thinking a lot about game design and soon enough I will post up numerous posts on DP’s Gamer Blog about this. Something which I find so fascinating is casual gaming and how I believe all games can benefit from taking the soul of the casual gaming design principles; that is accessibility. I think that a game like Super Mario Galaxy represents this mantra perfectly; the casual player can pick this game up and feels welcomed, they can understand the fundamentals of this game and enjoy it yet someone like me a ‘core’ gamer can pick this game up and play it and also feel completely satisfied but on a different level.

I wish to adopt this scheme to DP’s Gamer Blog. For as many articles as possible I want people that don’t play games to be able to read my blog, understand it and feel satisfied. I also wish that more thoughtful gamers can read my blog and also feel satisfied.

Talking about video games requires at least some background knowledge of software in order to understand which will be my biggest issue. But with this in mind I want to talk more on game design and industry issues as well as my usual observations and thoughts of new and old gaming software. My main goal is to ease people in, to draw them in with writing that makes sense and keeping them in all the while not only speeding up the linguistic rhythm but also increasing the depth of industry and software relevance.

It is all a focus on understanding which I see as crucial. The more people understand the reasoning behind why we play video games the better our industry will be. I think that the rise of bloggers like News Week’s N’gai Croal are pushing video game journalism into new, more intelligent areas. I want to be a part of that but I also want to ensure that this type of writing can still be accessible for everyone. To greater improve understanding among classes of readers.

I want the enthusiasts, the casual players, the non players and of course the people that write for these game design blogs to all be able to get something out of my writing. Such a movement obviously is a difficult task and something that I honestly wish to pursue. It is something that will take me a long time to think about and understand what is required to write in such a way. But it is something which I find is improve and will drive our medium forward.

BTW I have also found the work of MIT’s Henry Jenkins to help push me towards this idea.

Study Abroad

Well I am glad to get all of that off my chest, now I just need the time to be able to write those types of articles. The other thing which has constantly been on my mind is studying abroad. After much though I have realized that my time has come for me to finally study abroad in China.

I am planning on enrolling into a Chinese University and hence obviously living in China tarting this September. Clearly it is a while off which is why I am trying to get ideas of where I will study. I have 3 main opportunities, I can apply for a University in ShanHai with my main University, I have applied for a scholarship for a second year University or I can find my own University and enrol hopefully grabbing a grant in the process to save me some coinage.

Whatever the case I feel as though this is the necessary step. I have built up a clear foundation of Chinese grammar, you know I am just ready. I have the language skills, enthusiasm and money in the bank to do this. I know that it is my time to take this challenge which I have been supported by friends whom agree that it is my time.

I am always pushing for new frontiers in my life. Co-developing and selling my first video game with my twin brother, building a series of websites, most notably a video game blog in which I have had to learn the ways this medium works and have adapted to it and come to a point in which I am thriving off this type of culture. In year 12 I proved that I can actually hold my own in a series of subjects which had indeed been taunting me for some 9 years (long story that one). Then finally crawling my way back to where I wanted to be with my Chinese study.

I don’t like to wank over myself or proclaim that I am better than anyone else because I am not, I am actually extremely modest in real life. What I have found though is that all of the aforementioned examples are all milestones. Are all instances in which I never thought that I could amount to. Returning to Chinese classes this year has starkly reminded me of my efforts(studying Chinese) over the past 8 months. Its alerted me of my progress but much more importantly it has set in stone and made perfectly clear what is required of me to continue down this path. I feel that this trip to China, which will be at least a year of study abroad (from there it depends) is the next logical step.

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Its Sunday morning, the last day before the holidays start again. Fortunately if I remember correctly there are two preceding long weekends on the way in the coming weeks so its not too bad.

Today I am tieing up all of the loose ends. Which means that I will be compilating the 10 pages of entries which I haven’t uploaded over the past couple of months. I’m also putting together all of the other articles, videos and media that I have to sort out for other projects.

I also want to use to time to fill in some of the gaps over the past few weeks. Theres been some interesting stuff going on, some of which I am afraid that I would prefer to keep to myself. But for everything else, heres the spill:

A few weeks back I went to my Chinese friends 22nd Birthday. We went to a Chinese restraunt out of the city. There were about 15 people in total, 13 Chinese people, 1 Japanese guy and me. As you might expect this was a great opportunity for me to practice my Chinese which I did.

I should probably mention that I didn’t like the restraunt, it didn’t even look like a restraunt, the price was incredibly expensive, the staff were terrible and I think that I got sick from the food there (even though I only managed to eat one small plate of food).

Despite the awful restraunt I had a lot of fun, I met a lot of friendly people. Unfortunately I often found myself completely overwhelmed with the situation at hand. I’d be talking to someone in Chinese and could barely hear them because it was so loud in the restraunt furthermore other people were interrupting saying that I couldn’t understand etc. It was hardly the ideal place to converse in a foreign language.

Fortunately someone moved seats and sat next to me so it was much easier to talk. We were there for maybe 3 hours I think and I only managed to eat a small plate of food because I was too busy talking and listening.

Afterwards we went back to my friends place and did some stuff and then people slowly started to leave. Two of the guys had a PS2 set up, my friend told me to bring some games so I chose KOF XI and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology. I only played a few round of KOF and got my ass handed to me. I don’t think that it was my fault though as my controller was busted and I couldn’t pull off some moves.

I spent more time to become acquainted with the people around me and we talked until quite late. By that time I was so exhausted, I don’t think that I have ever felt so drained. Translation requires so much brain work and when you have to constantly keep that up for an extended period of time its exhausting. So I almost gave up speaking Chinese.

I also gave my friend her present and she liked it very much. I was woken up 2x in the night or should I say in the morning. The Japanese guy couldn’t find the bus stop back to the city and the second time someone poked me asking if I was cold. I wasn’t cold but I was frickin’ asleep!!! Infact I was having a dream about this shmp on the Xbox 360, Raiden Fighters I think it is. ><

From there I just got up and went home with some of the others. I had heaps of fun and made some more Chinese friends which is great. I don’t really want to add any more as I am currently writing a Chinese article about what happened. It has lots of difficult situations for me to put into Chinese so I want to write about it. Currently 800 characters thru, will probably be a pretty large article as I am still no where near getting to the restraunt yet.

Yeah so by the end of the weekend I was exhausted, I had realized that I had probably eaten something bad an got some kind of bug because over the past week I was not feeling very good. Sick in the stomach, tired, sore eyes etc.

I also had a pretty tiring week beforehand as well. Lots of running around, meeting people.

So for the past 2 weeks I have been trying to recover from whatever I caught and doing the usual business; Chinese revision, catching up with friends, writing blog articles, playing games. I guess with a lean towards writing blog articles and Chinese revision. I have been on a roll with my blog articles and I have a fantastic selection of some of my best articles yet on the way. So I am looking forward to posting those.

I have also been organizing my stuff for Uni which starts tomorrow. But beyond that, thats it.

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One of the reasons why I write for this blog is to keep an account of what I am doing for previous reference. I think that this post is one of those which fits this bill perfectly.

In the past hour I was looking over my Rainlender calender app. For those whom aren’t familiar with Rainy its one of those small calender desktop applications which you can pin dates to etc. I use mine quite a bit and mark down any important dates on it. Because I reformatted my laptop several months ago Rainy goes back to just about when I believe that my holidays started.

Cut to the chase, I was looking over what I have done over the long holiday break and decided that I should clarify a lot of it. You see I love looking back at who I was at various dates etc which is partly why I have this blog. For me the holidays are a huge opportunity to make a lot of progress across the board. So I want to run through how my holidays have progressively played out:

Prelude

I like to think that my holidays started on the 5th of November 2007 and will finish the 3rd 2008. So I have (had) 4 months up my sleeve which is huge. There are two reasons why I have such a long holiday firstly because I am a Uni student and Uni holidays rock and secondly because I started mine earlier. You see on the second point, most Uni students probably finish up from around the 12-25th Novemeber but I consider that my holidays started on the 5th.

I wanted to start my holidays as early as possible which I could do and did end up doing. You see, the majority of my courses don’t have an exam but instead major assignments. Fortunately with the help of fore sight I managed to plan out my assignments well enough so that I would be basically finished by the 5th which is actually the earliest possible date. Otherwise I might have finished u two weeks later.

I started my major linguistics essay as soon as possible because well it was the most dreaded and dull assignment that I had to finish. So I finished the essay maybe a month or more early. This left me with design and Chinese work left and although Chinese is hard work and design takes a lot of time but they were easily much more painless than the linguistics work. So once I finished all of those all I had was a Chinese, two man presentation and the final Chinese exam. My presentation finished on the 5th which is where I want to start the holidays.

Now you are probably wondering about that exam right? which was about 12 days later..I think. Well It didn’t really bother me because I was going to be studying Chinese over the holiday period anyways.

Beginnings

This long holiday period is simply so generous. I’ve never had such a long holiday period before. I’d been hanging out for the holidays for so long that I wanted to make the most of it.

This meant that I started setting goals and planning what I was hoping to do right from the start. The day after I’d finished my Chinese exam I spent the day catching up with my friends from high school. We’d all finished our exams in the last 2 days. That weekend was my last shift at work as well. 3hrs on a Sunday. It had been about 3 weeks since I had last worked and they had rearranged the department I was working in. It was a terrible final shift which showcased the lack of communication and relevant in store training from other staff members.

The following week I finally got to meet up with my Chinese tutor. To provide some context, my Chinese teacher before the exam sent an email out to the class asking if anyone was interested in being tutored by a fellow Uni student fro China. Only two students decided to take it up. Not sure about the other student but I’ve been practicing with my tutor almost every week. Its the usual he helps me with Chinese and I try and help him with English.

It was election week as well which I tried to follow in the news. The two people that I voted for both got in. Yay. I also continued my Chinese revision throughout this time and up until now. My first goal was to cement last years(2007) grammar, I’d already been working on this before the exam so it was a natural continuation. That Friday I had the new gaming blog up as well.

The next week I spent doing the same thing; practicing with Chinese friends, catching up with other friends, tweaking the new blog, and revising Chinese. I believe that it was around this time that I was eBaying quite a lot as well.

In December I got to catch up with one of my favourite Chinese friends. Originally we had planned that over the holidays we would catch up and practice almost every weekday. Unfortunately he was taking on additional work (he writes for a Chinese basketball site) which was messing up his timetable and sleeping patterns.

Video Editing

Up to the 10th it was usual business. From then until almost Christmas I was spending a couple of days a week trying to figure out how to capture, crop and edit video for upcoming video reviews and video content for DP.com. You see my capture card only captures in Mpeg2 format. Because of the PAL letter boxing in our games I had to crop out the ugly black border. Just figuring out how to do this for free was god awful and so damn frustrating. Basically my production flow runs like this:

Capture video at I dunno about 576i in MPEG2 format. Then convert and shrink to 480 resolution thru Cyberlink Power Director. From there load Windows Media Encoder and alter the crop dimension to crop the frame. From there I can export it and use the video.

I’d been speaking with my mate Matty Jay about doing the voice work for all of this stuff. He decided to take it up and w were discussing ideas regularly. I did this for two reasons, firstly my voice just does not work well for recording. It sounds too muffled and unclear. I really would like to do the voice work but it just doesn’t sound as clear. Also Matty Jay has always been interested in doing some voice work, so I threw this opportunity his way.

Anyways heres the rest of my work flow:

1. Choose a game to review
2. do any further research if necessary
3. finish the game
4. write the review
5. send review text to Matt
6. gather the appropriate images and media
7. capture the video
8. crop the video to the correct size
9. record the voicework with Matty Jay
10. work with Matt to output the best voice
11. take all of the recorded files and stick them together and tweak the levels and any slight niggles with Audacity
12. now I can start producing, import the video and media
13. edit the video to match the voice work and flow of the review (this takes a few hours)
14. export, get some critque from my brother
15. upload and review strengths and weaknesses

Matt and I recorded on the 21st and I did all of the editing that night and the following day. The video was uploaded on the 23rd. Matt did the whole 5 minutes speech in one take which is why it didn’t sound that great. Unfortunately doing it all in one take was my idea which is why I defended his voicework because he did a stellar job.

Christmas Period

Because Christmas was on the way I was also organizing what to buy people and did the usual bit of shopping. By early December I had made my way onto writing a few Chinese essays, all of last years grammar was much clearer so the essays allowed me to further improve my writing. I think that I wrote about 5 essays that month ranging from 500 -2000 characters each. This, my video editing, planning with Matty Jay and buying Christmas gifts were taking up most of my time.

There is a gap for the Christmas week on my Rainy calender which is a little confusing. I think that I had decided to calm down on the work load. I had already got the new blog up, done heaps of Chinese work and was building up my video game collection. I also had a week off from meeting with my Chinese friends. So I think that this was the week in which I just relaxed, built up a few blog posts and was reunited with my old friend video games.

New Year Week

My new year started off really well. I spent New Years Eve with my high school buddies. It was a great bonding session. The day after we went into town and also went to the arcades for a few hours. I beat all of them at air hockey which I am very pleased about. That Friday we also caught up again.

Mad Season

The next three weeks were tough but necessary and because of them I have made a lot of wiser, smarter decisions for the future. The second week of January was dominated we me enrolling into my Uni courses, it sounds like a lot, to spend one week to enrol but unfortunately this is basically what it is like. I had to first figure out what I wanted to study that year based on the year’s default template (my program is extremely flexible and not just set in stone). Then I had to figure out which tutorials and lectures to enrol in so that I wouldn’t end up with a clash (I have two clashes in total). Then I have to enrol cross institutionally for Chinese. Which means running from one University to another to fill out forms and stuff.

That weekend we had a party we was a relief. Umm yeah after enrollment I had been brainstorming ideas about releasing a new site. It had seemed as though I had basically lost my job at work so I needed to think about the future. I spent a series of days pondering what to do when eventually it hit me. Once I got the idea I straight away planned and designed the site and started working on content. Unfortunately all of this was brought to a halt as I had to and am still waiting for my brother to program the content management system. I need a special system to deal with this new site and it is something that I am going to have to wait for.

Throughout this time I was still doing the usual Chinese studying and tutors. In January I had moved onto intensive reading, I was going through my additional readings book and ensuring that I full understood every sentence. If I ever had any problems then I would write them down for vocab and grammar lists. Which I have produced a few of so far.

Throughout this time I had decided to step up my bloging and see what I could do with it. I went on a long hunt for other blogs to read and affiliate with. I nailed down which forum communities I wanted to be a part of and started posting. I was basically on a complete blogging blitz. I also was tweaking like mad, adding tags to all of my posts, tagging images, reworking the design.

The Wind Down

I was grinding myself against a wall and needed to apply the breaks. So one day I decided to get back on track. This was at the start of January’s last week.

I cut down the blogs in which I was reading to only the essentials, from 60 RSS feeds (mix of blogs and other sites) down to about 35. I put all of this work for this new game website on hold (because I couldn’t really do anymore anyways). I finally decided to go for my drivers license and finally quit my job at Myers.

It sounds like it wasn’t all worth it but I have to say it was totally worth it. My blog subscribers jumped up substantially. I now have a strong list of blogs on my Blogroll and my Alexa rank has gone way up. I have produced some excellent articles which I am very proud of. Many of which have been praised by other bloggers which I admire. With some continued dedication I have a promising website in the pipeline which is almost all set up for me to just do the content and upload it. This site (and possibly my video game blog) I believe should also supplement the lack of a ‘real’ job. And my Chinese is continually getting better and I had enrolled into Uni.

Chinese New Year

I realized that because of all of this work I hadn’t seen two of my special Chinese friends for a while. I was still doing the usual weekly sessions but only with one of my friends. So I started trying to catch up with my other friends. One of them had actually gone home for the Chinese new year so that wasn’t possible. But it was okay as I was busy as it was.

I had actually forgotten but the week after was Chinese new year so I celebrated with my friends. One of them did a traditional dance thing and the other had a group meal. I’d also been practicing with them more. I also nabbed my L plates.

Conclusion

Well that is almost all of my holidays. I still have 2 weeks left and haven’t written a full entry about last week which was very exciting.

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A few weeks back I enrolled into my 2008 Uni courses. I would have liked to have said that I had less trouble than last year but I didn’t. I have another unavoidable clash with Chinese which I can’t fix, I also almost flipped out when trying to enrol into Chinese, classes were quickly filling up and I had to wait a few days to enrol while this was going on. I think that in the end I was the second to last person to enrol.

Just yesterday morning I was woken by my phone going off, it was someone from UniSA ringing to tell me that I had to switch a tutorial time as I was the only student in that tutorial. Basically I have another clash, both on linguistics tutorials. So basically I miss out on a 2hr tutorial and on about 20minutes off another tutorial. Great, at least it gives me more free time. ^_^

What else has been going down with me, umm not a lot. I’ve been working hard on this new website idea, I have almost finished a design and am slowly building up content. It looks as though it will take me even longer to build up a strong database of content before I launch. Its not all bad though, it should give my brother plenty of time to work on the CMS.

I’ve also been meeting up with Matty Jay to do more video reviews for danielprimed.com and doing the weekly Chinese tutorials. I probably would have met up with a friends from Uni this week but my mind has been devoted entirely to this new project and has sometimes been occasionally distracted by the excellent Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam on the DS. I’m kinda pissed as I feel as though I have been very insincere by allowing my work load to get ahead of me.

Now that I’ve realized that its going to take a while longer to get this site done, have completely enrolled into Uni and quit my previous job, I’ve decided to relax a bit. I’m looking forward to spending more time with my friends and sleeping in some more as these other activities have been way too time consuming and straining lately. They’ve really distracted me over the past 2 weeks but were essential to what I need to get done.

I think that I’ll try to spend the last month of the holidays getting back into a healthy routine where I balance my spread of: blogging, spending time with friends, gaming and Chinese.

You see last year(at the start of Uni) my uncertainty surrounding my Uni choices, girl friend trouble and overall newbieness to Uni life threw me on a complete discourse which took a few months to figure out. And I don’t want to get back into that mess again, I just felt completely out of wack.

I ought to just throw out some rough goals to keep me on track:

Blogging
Continue the quality blog posts
Spend extra time (due to no job) to bank additional posts and improve overall quality
Advertise effectively through social bookmarking, foruming and continue network with other bloggers

Friends
When Uni is back on catch up more during the breaks
Spend more time at the arcades
Ensure that we continue to do stuff on Friday nights and on weekends
Work on other projects with Matty Jay
Continue to make more friends at Uni this year

Chinese
Spend just as much time as last semester practicing with Chinese friends
Do more intensive reading and listening
Fully understand all of the vocab, grammar, main text and additional texts each week

Website Work
Prioritize the spare time on weekends and days off to work on the upcoming websites

Games
Play more games, increase well being thru gaming
Round of the collection, dive back into eBay buying
Organize import games, arcade sticks etc.
Continue to learn more niche gaming

Personal
Relax a bit more
Keep blogging for yourself
Sleep enough

Yeah that ought to do it.

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