Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Apr 23, 2023 9:42 pm

Week 16 update
Ridiculously busy week preparing for and then attending the British Esperanto Conference. Just got home from the event and I'm looking forward to going to work tomorrow for a rest :lol:

Russian
  • My brain is scrambled by a weekend of Esperanto so I can barely remember what I did in Russian at the start of this week. However, my spreadsheet tells me that on Monday I watched the final Varlamov episode in the series about the countries of the former USSR. It was called Почему распался СССР? and at the time I do remember thinking it was interesting, but I don't remember a whole lot about it now.
  • I managed to watch an entire four episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо this week, mainly because I was too tired and/or lacking in time to do anything more intellectual than watching TV in the evenings. The more episodes I watched the more I felt myself getting into it though, which was good. And I definitely feel like my comprehension is improving slightly.
  • I've been persevering with Memrise and finished the Russian 2 course (out of the official Memrise Russian ones) over the weekend. Have moved on to Russian 3 now.
  • On the train home this evening I listened to two recent Russian with Max podcasts. One was about Chat GPT and using it to help you learn Russian and it's probably a really interesting topic but I got a bit distracted from it in the middle because my next train was replaced by a bus and there was mass confusion at the station about which buses were going where. Once I got onto the bus I listened to the second podcast which was about music, especially rock music, and the impact that's had on his life. I really enjoyed that one and might even listen to it again at some point because there were some recommendations of Russian bands to listen to.

Croatian
According to my spreadsheet I spent 11 minutes clearing Memrise reviews in Croatian and that's all I've done this week. Oops :oops:

Esperanto
  • In preparation for going to the conference I started reading La kurioza incidento de la hundo en la nokto during the week. I was planning to finish it before I went but I failed at that. Never mind. It feels like a pretty easy book to read in Esperanto. I enjoyed reading Anne of Green Gables but that felt harder, because there was quite a bit of obscure vocabulary (names of trees and flowers, for example) which I didn't know and had to look up. This book seems to stick to more routine vocabulary, which is good.
  • I've spent most of the weekend running the libroservo (book service) at the conference and wow, it's been hard work. I've just been adding everything up and I think I sold 270 books over the course of the weekend :shock: Luckily I sold them all via card payments because I think giving change in Esperanto would have been the death of me. Numbers in Esperanto are extremely easy but I am rubbish at numbers and prices in any language, so every time I was telling someone how much they owed me I had to really concentrate to make sure I didn't say "dek du" (12) when I meant "dudek" (20) or something similar. I survived anyway, got lots of number practice and hopefully charged everyone the correct amounts :lol:

YTD totals - Russian: 134.0 hours, Croatian: 66.1 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 35.9 hours
11 x

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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Apr 23, 2023 9:48 pm

Radioclare wrote:Russian
[*]I managed to watch an entire four episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо this week, mainly because I was too tired and/or lacking in time to do anything more intellectual than watching TV in the evenings. The more episodes I watched the more I felt myself getting into it though, which was good. And I definitely feel like my comprehension is improving slightly.
I watched a film on the BBC's iPlayer thingy recently that had a fair bit of Russian, Mr Jones, I thought it was pretty good! :-)
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon May 01, 2023 5:28 pm

Week 17 update
Updating a bit late this week :oops: This Monday is a public holiday in the UK and so I've been away on holiday in Spain (Murcia region) for the weekend. It's been amazingly warm and sunny, which is just what I wanted :)

Russian
The first half of this week feels like a bit of a blur now. I spent Monday and Tuesday feeling fairly exhausted after having been at the Esperanto conference all weekend, so I spent a couple of days just watching TV to get my Russian 30 minutes of, clocking up two more episodes of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо.

I really wanted to finish reading Когда прилетит комета before I went away for the weekend, because I've got a beautiful edition of the book which I didn't want to dent by carrying it in my luggage. In the end I did manage to get to the end of it on Thursday evening, making it the seventh book I've finished in Russian this year. It was only a short one - 189 pages - but I really enjoyed it :)

I decided to take an Agatha Christie in Russian on my travels, so for the past few days I've been reading Смерть в облаках. This is so refreshing after the terrible Agatha Christie (Пассажир из Франкфурта) which I read last month. This one feels like a "proper" Agatha Christie with a traditional murder scenario and Poirot to solve the crime, so I'm having a lot of fun reading it. I'm going away again next weekend and then staying away the following week with work, so I'm going to try not to read too much of it this week at home so that I've got it to bring on my travels again.

Croatian/German/Esperanto
Nothing this week.

YTD totals - Russian: 139.6 hours, Croatian: 66.1 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 35.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun May 07, 2023 7:22 pm

Week 18 update
It's a busy time of year. I got back from Spain in the early hours of Tuesday morning (3am!) and then I left again on Friday evening, this time for the Isle of Man. I'm working there next week, but as tomorrow is an extra public holiday in the UK for the King's coronation, I've travelled over early to spend a long weekend on the island first.

Russian
Because I knew I was going to be working away next week, my intention was to spend this week focussing on listening activities (which are easier to do at home). Imagine my surprise when I went on my treadmill on Tuesday evening, intending to watch an episode of the telenovela Обручальное кольцо and found it had disappeared from the platform where I normally watch it :shock: I was literally just starting to get into the storyline as well!! :x It may still be available online elsewhere; I'll have to make a decision about whether I want to watch it strongly enough to track it done. But I was quite annoyed on Tuesday not to be able to watch it!

Instead I watched a recent Russian with Max video, which was interviewing someone about life in Argentina and particularly about the economic situation there. That was interesting, though I am now in the slightly strange situation that almost everything I know about Argentina I've learned via Russian :lol:

On Wednesday and Thursday, instead of Обручальное кольцо I watched a Varlamov video on YouTube which was about the USA. It was called Бедная Америка and it was about different standards of living throughout America, so interviewing some very rich people, some very poor people and quite a few people in the middle about their housing, their salary, what they could afford etc. I found it particularly interesting when he went and interviewed people who lived in trailers because trailer parks are something I've read about in American books occasionally, but never really understood what they are or why people live in them.

Otherwise, over the course of the weekend I've mainly been reading the Agatha Christie novel Смерть в облаках (Death in the Clouds), which I'm really enjoying. I've brought it to the Isle of Man with me so I'm actually trying to restrict my reading of it so that I still have some of it left to read on the plane home at the end of the week.

Esperanto
Last night I finished reading La kurioza incidento de la hundo en la nokto which is a really fun book to read in any language. I started reading this in the run-up to the British Esperanto Conference a couple of weeks ago, with the aim of bringing Esperanto more to the front of my mind before the event, but then I ran out of time to finish it. The translation is really, really good and it's not a particularly difficult one to read in terms of vocabulary, so definitely a book I'd recommend to people who haven't read much in Esperanto before.

YTD totals - Russian: 144.0 hours, Croatian: 66.1 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun May 14, 2023 9:12 pm

Week 19 update
My busiest week of the year from a work point of view. Worked at a client in the Isle of Man from Tuesday to Thursday which was pretty intense, plus involved out-of-hours socialising with colleagues etc. Flew home on Thursday afternoon and then it would have been really nice to have a quiet day on Friday, but unfortunately I had a 9am meeting with one of my most important clients to look forward to instead. The weekend has been a bit more relaxing, except that I had some voluntary bookkeeping work to do (including my first ever VAT return!) so that took up a fair chunk of Saturday. All in all, limited time for languages.

Russian
Limited time means limited achievements! The main achievement of this week is that I finished reading the Agatha Christie novel Смерть в облаках. It was such a good story; I really enjoyed it :) It was 320 pages, so takes my total Russian pages read this year to just over 1500. I also just realised that is the 8th(!) book I've finished in Russian this year and I think my goal was to read 12 in the entire year, so I appear to have at least one goal where I am ahead of schedule!

Otherwise, I spent a reasonable amount of time clearing Memrise reviews. And I listened to two Russian with Max podcasts, both from the back catalogue. One was about attending a motivational seminar with Arnold Schwarzenegger and one was about perestroika. The latter was much more interesting but I was so tired when I was listening to it that I didn't really make the most of it. I really need to find another series to start watching when I'm tired.

Croatian
I managed to watch one episode of the telenovela Kumovi at the weekend.

YTD totals - Russian: 149.8 hours, Croatian: 66.9 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun May 21, 2023 9:52 pm

Week 20 update
Another busy week. This is definitely my busiest time of year for work. I also had to attend some training on Tuesday, the funeral of a distant relative on Wednesday and a trustee meeting this weekend. So I still seem to be struggling to prioritise languages at the moment.

Russian
Still keeping up 30 minutes a day of Russian, but not in a very targeted way. I still haven't chosen a series to watch, so this week I've probably done more reading than listening. I watched an episode of the travel show Орёл и Решка on Monday because it was about Greenland (and I'm going to Greenland next month!). It was quite a fun one to watch; the guy who lost the toss and only had $100 to spend ended up having to walk from the airport into Nuuk and convince a lady in the tourist information office to let him sleep at her house (because he couldn't afford transport or a hotel). The girl who won and had the unlimited credit card struggled to find any luxury experiences to spend on; there were no fancy limousines available for her to rent (and even if there had been, there's nowhere to drive them) and although she stayed in the most expensive room in the main hotel in Nuuk, it just looked like what would be a pretty average hotel room anywhere else.

Later in the week I watched a couple of short Varlamov episodes about Stalin which were also interesting, if not quite as light entertainment as the travel programme. Otherwise I've been trying to clear some out-of-control levels of Memrise reviews and also started reading Серебряное кресло (The Silver Chair) from the Narnia series. I remember finding this story absolutely terrifying as a child but so far I'm enjoying rereading it as an adult :)

YTD totals - Russian: 155.4 hours, Croatian: 66.9 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Tue May 30, 2023 10:10 pm

Week 21 update
Oops, I'm a bit late at updating :oops: Mon - Thurs last week were a blur of work and then on Friday I flew to Italy for a weekend away (because yesterday was another public holiday in the UK). Sat in the sunshine, drank a lot of Aperol Spritz and realised that although I cannot speak a single word of Italian, my understanding of Italian train announcements is pretty advanced :lol:

Russian
I should update more frequently so that I can actually remember what I've done...

During the first part of the week while I was at home I made a bit more progress with reading Серебряное кресло. I feel like this is definitely one of the better Narnia books. Unfortunately, my combined volume of the entire Narnia series is way too big and heavy to pack when I travel. So for the second part of the week while I was away I had to start reading a smaller and more portable book. I chose another Agatha Christie, Раз, два — пряжку застегни (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe). I've read this one in English but not since I was a fairly young teenager, so I have absolutely zero idea who the murderer is going to be. I read it for at least half an hour a day while I was in Italy and had a lot of fun with it :)

On Tuesday and Wednesday when I went to the gym I experimented with listening to Russian with Max podcasts while running rather than listening to music, which is what I normally do. Honestly, the conclusion of this experiment was that I'm not good enough at jogging to do it without the additional motivation of music. In other words, attempting to jog to podcasts made the jogging more of a chore. But the podcasts themselves were really good. The first one was about the Transsiberian railway, which was very high up on my bucket list before the war. I didn't necessarily learn anything new from the podcast because I've read quite a detailed book about it before, but it's definitely an interesting topic. The second podcast was even more interesting because it was talking about Interslavic. I might listen to that one again some time when I'm not attempting to jog.

YTD totals - Russian: 162.4 hours, Croatian: 66.9 hours, German: 16.2 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jun 05, 2023 7:14 pm

Week 22 update
Life isn't getting any quieter. Had a family wedding this weekend which involved two nights away from home, a lot of socialising and not a lot of languages :D

Russian
I continued to do quite a lot of reading last week. My main achievement was to finish reading the Narnia book Серебряное кресло yesterday afternoon, which is the nineth book I've finished in Russian this year. It was only quite a short one, though; 150 pages. I enjoyed it anyway and that just leaves me one final Narnia novel to read in my enormous collection. I'm going on holiday in just over a week so I'll probably hold off on starting that until I get home again.

Otherwise I've continued to read the Agatha Christie novel Раз, два — пряжку застегни, which was a nice small size to bring with me when I went away for the wedding. I'm over 50% of the way through that one now so again, hoping to finish it before I go on holiday so I can bring a different book with me when I travel.

What else? Two days this week I did over 30 mins of Memrise because I've been totalling neglecting it and have a huge backlog of reviews. I listened to one Russian with Max podcast, which was a really interesting one. It was about words which people avoid saying in Russian and what to say instead. So some the first part of the podcast was talking about words which people avoid for superstitious reasons. And the second part was focussed more on euphemisms for words which might be considered offensive. I definitely learned loads from it.

I also watched a Russian with Max video on YouTube the other day. This one was a vlog, documenting a bike trip to visit some Orthodox churches in Serbia. Obviously Serbia is a place I'm interested in, so that was cool to see. My other YouTube viewing has been Varlamov, where I'm still slowly making my way through one of his videos about the USA.

German
I've started reading a novel called Erebos 2 by Ursula Poznanski, which is a sequel to one of her books which I read years ago in German but re-read earlier this year in Croatian. I've been meaning to start reading this one for ages so I finally bit the bullet and did it yesterday. I've only read about 50 pages so far so will comment more next time :)

YTD totals - Russian: 166.7 hours, Croatian: 66.9 hours, German: 17.2 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Jun 11, 2023 9:12 pm

Week 23 update
Still busy. I'm anticipating that life will calm down a bit after the second week of July. I'm going on holiday (to Greenland!) on Tuesday and I'm not expecting to have much internet access while I'm there, so I may not update next Sunday.

Russian
I finally finished the Varlamov video I was watching about the USA. It seems to have taken me about two weeks, but never mind. I also watched a couple of shorter ones about the Ukrainian dam situation.

Otherwise, I've mainly been reading and doing the odd Memrise review. I'm trying to finish the Agatha Christie novel Раз, два — пряжку застегни before I go to Greenland so that I can pack a new novel to last me for the trip, but not sure whether I'm going to make it (still got about 40 pages to go).

YTD totals - Russian: 171.1 hours, Croatian: 66.9 hours, German: 17.5 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
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Re: Radioclare's 2023 log (Russian, Croatian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Jun 25, 2023 11:08 am

Week 24 and 25 update
As predicted, I didn't end up updating last week. Greenland was absolutely incredible; such a stunning place. This time last week I woke up on a ferry sailing past icebergs :shock: I did have some travel disruption getting there, with my flight out being cancelled two days in a row due to bad weather, but all the hassle was worth it in the end.

Russian
I kept up my 30 minutes of Russian a day, despite all the travelling and changing of time zones. On 12 June before I set off, I finished reading the Agatha Christie novel Раз, два — пряжку застегни. I then packed a different Agatha Christie novel - Приключения рождественского пудинга (The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding) to read while on my travels. This one is a collection of short stories (although they're quite long short stories, if that makes sense; some of them long enough to be subdivided into their own chapters) and mostly featuring Poirot. I think it was a good choice for travelling because it wasn't mentally taxing and I could read it even when on planes or in airports on less than ideal quantities of sleep. I didn't quite finish the book on my trip but got to the end of it this morning, which brings me to 11 books read in Russian this year (2,393 pages).

I didn't listen to any Russian while I was away. Often the internet were I was wouldn't have been strong enough to support that anyway. Yesterday was obviously an interesting day for Russian politics so I did listen to a bit of news in Russian, but forgot to time it to add to my totals.

German
While I was away I finished reading Erebos 2 by Ursula Poznanski. This is a sequel to Erebos, one of her young adult novels, about a sinister computer game which takes over the lives of participants. I really enjoyed the original and the sequel was pretty cool too, picking up something like a decade after the action of the first novel when the original characters (who were in school at the time) are now adults. It's one of those that's only worth reading if you've read and enjoyed the first book though. I've been a bit rubbish at reading in German this year, so that's only the third book I've finished.

Croatian
I also read a novel in Croatian while I was away. This was Čavke, a translation of "Jackdaws" by Ken Follett. It's a really exciting book so great fun to read. I listened to it as an audiobook in Serbian years ago, so it was fun to read it in Croatian. It was quite a long one - 456 pages - and brings me to 3 books read (1 166 pages) in Croatian this year.

YTD totals - Russian: 182.1 hours, Croatian: 75.7 hours, German: 22.7 hours, Esperanto: 38.9 hours
8 x


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