Radioclare's 2020 log (Russian, Croatian)

[Radioclare]

16 November
Today was okay for a Monday, I guess. I managed to get through it without too many phone calls.

Russian
I made it through the remaining of the 14 core genitive prepositions this evening. There are a couple of pages of exercises, which I've saved for tomorrow, and then the book continues with approximately 21 additional prepositions taking the genitive. It's going to be a fun week

Croatian
One more episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'

Total - Russian: 37 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

[overscore]

16 November
Today was okay for a Monday, I guess. I managed to get through it without too many phone calls.

Russian
I made it through the remaining of the 14 core genitive prepositions this evening. There are a couple of pages of exercises, which I've saved for tomorrow, and then the book continues with approximately 21 additional prepositions taking the genitive. It's going to be a fun week

Croatian
One more episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'

Total - Russian: 37 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

ko'ko ima ukupno?

[Radioclare]

17 November
I had to step in to help with a recruitment day at short notice today, which was a little bit frustrating. But at least Tuesday is over now. I don't like Tuesdays.

Russian
I had a glass of wine with dinner to celebrate the end of a long-running problem, so I didn't feel like any proper grammar study this evening. I watched a video on YouTube by a Russian who lives in Sweden reacting to the Антон Птушкин video about Sweden that I watched last week. I thought maybe she was going to dispute some of the things that he'd said as being inaccurate, but actually she pretty much agreed. Then I watched a video by a Russian living in London, talking about office life in the UK. She was explaining things like the importance of making small talk at the start of meetings rather than getting straight to the point. It sounds like talking about your salary isn't such a taboo in Russia as it is in the UK. And it also sounded like in Russia people don't normally eat lunch at their desks, which I guess must be nice

Total - Russian: 72 minutes

[Mista]

And it also sounded like in Russia people don't normally eat lunch at their desks, which I guess must be nice

I'm learning a lot about the UK here (I was going to comment on the separate hot and cold water taps too ... my great grandmother had those, but I haven't seen them since)

[Radioclare]

16 November
Today was okay for a Monday, I guess. I managed to get through it without too many phone calls.

Russian
I made it through the remaining of the 14 core genitive prepositions this evening. There are a couple of pages of exercises, which I've saved for tomorrow, and then the book continues with approximately 21 additional prepositions taking the genitive. It's going to be a fun week

Croatian
One more episode of 'Drugo ime ljubavi'

Total - Russian: 37 mins, Croatian: 45 mins

ko'ko ima ukupno?

Koliko epizoda ima serija? 175, pa još nisam blizu kraja!
Koliko prijedloga ima ruski jezik? Nemam pojma, ali previše

[Radioclare]

And it also sounded like in Russia people don't normally eat lunch at their desks, which I guess must be nice

I'm learning a lot about the UK here (I was going to comment on the separate hot and cold water taps too ... my great grandmother had those, but I haven't seen them since)

I think lots of people prefer mixer taps these days and separate taps are probably more common in older houses, but it does seem to crop up as a common complaint in these Russian videos about London! I do see their point - it's not hugely convenient to have to choose between freezing and scalding water when washing your hands

[overscore]

And it also sounded like in Russia people don't normally eat lunch at their desks, which I guess must be nice

I'm learning a lot about the UK here (I was going to comment on the separate hot and cold water taps too ... my great grandmother had those, but I haven't seen them since)

I think lots of people prefer mixer taps these days and separate taps are probably more common in older houses, but it does seem to crop up as a common complaint in these Russian videos about London! I do see their point - it's not hugely convenient to have to choose between freezing and scalding water when washing your hands

there's a thing here in Serbia (in addition to "promaja", but that one is found all around europe i believe) about needing to turn off the boiler (bojler) when taking a shower. it is surprising (terrifying?) to serbs that its not a common practice in, well at least Canada, i dunno about other areas. Why w'd you turn off the boiler at the precise moment when you need hot water....?

https://www.krstarica.com/zivot/vas-dom ... se-kupamo/

[cjareck]

And it also sounded like in Russia people don't normally eat lunch at their desks, which I guess must be nice

I would extend it to all Slavic countries. My wife forbids me from eating anything on my desk. She is also unhappy with children bringing food to their rooms. We have to eat either in the kitchen or at the special table in the living room.
But that is changing - I heard saying that "good informatician has more food on his keyboard than in his fridge" ("Dobry informatyk ma więcej jedzenia na klawiaturze niż w lodówce"), but it may be just a translation of an English phrase.

[Radioclare]

18 November
I spent most of today remotely reviewing some work via screenshare on someone else's computer. One of my more bizarre lockdown experiences I think. It was quite awkward because I didn't have control, so had to keep telling the other person when to scroll etc.

Russian
This evening I tackled the exercises on core genitive prepositions in Schaum's Grammar. There were 33 sentences in total, into which I had to insert the correct preposition. It sounds simple but it was surprisingly difficult and in the end I only had about an 80% success rate.

Total - Russian: 36 mins

there's a thing here in Serbia (in addition to "promaja", but that one is found all around europe i believe) about needing to turn off the boiler (bojler) when taking a shower. it is surprising (terrifying?) to serbs that its not a common practice in, well at least Canada, i dunno about other areas. Why w'd you turn off the boiler at the precise moment when you need hot water....?

https://www.krstarica.com/zivot/vas-dom ... se-kupamo/

I've never heard of that before, that's so strange

[Radioclare]

19 November
I had another 3 hours of webinar training today, with the final session not finishing until 20.30. Not very exciting stuff.

Russian
I didn't feel like doing grammar study after that, so I watched an episode of 'Татьянин день' instead. Татьяна 1 is now engaged to the hero, but still doesn't know that he's been dating her best friend, Татьяна 2, behind her back. Татьяна 2 is not very impressed at being dumped for Татьяна 1, so is trying to steal back the guy whilst still pretending to be Татьяна 1's best friend to her face. I'm not 100% convinced this plot is interesting enough to sustain another 200 episodes, but we'll see

Total - Russian: 45 mins