18 SeptemberSpent a reasonable amount of time on housework today. I did a few things I'd been procrastinating for a very long time, like cleaning the oven.
RussianI listened to a few more episodes of the podcast 'Что это было' while doing the cleaning. The first episode I listened to was about “умное голосование” which (if I understood this correctly!) is like a tactical voting system that tells people who they need to vote for in their constituency to have the best possible chance of stopping the ruling party from winning the seat. We had something similar in the UK at one point which told you who best to vote for to prevent pro-Brexit candidates winning your local seat (not that it worked
). The difference in Russia is that the government is trying to block the "smart voting"; if I understood it correctly, they're trying to stop Google showing it in search results.
I'll be honest - I don't know much about Russian politics and the theme of this podcast was a bit above my head. So after that I went back and listened to an episode from April about the death of Prince Phillip. Not a theme I was madly interested in, but at least one where I was familiar with the concepts that were being discussed, so I felt like my comprehension was a lot higher. Then I listened to a third episode about Russian relations with Turkey. I wasn't 100% concentrating on this one, but I think the gist was that the Russian government had recommended people not to travel to Turkey for their holidays in May and officially this was because of the Covid situation in Turkey, but there were suspicions that it was also related to the fact that Turkey had expressed support for Ukraine joining NATO.
After that my head hurt and I did the rest of the housework in silence
Later I cleared my Memrise reviews, read another short story and finished the chapter in my B1.1 textbook about healthy lifestyles. I started the next chapter actually, which is about sport. I read the opening text, which was about how doing sport could be dangerous/result in you injuring yourself and so it would be better just to eat less. Not quite how I expected a chapter on sport to open
After dinner I watched two more episodes of 'Кухня' too.
Total - Russian: 185 mins, Croatian: 53 mins, German: 52 mins