Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

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Cavesa
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Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 29, 2017 11:46 pm

Dear friends,

this is my new log. As I wrote in the closed previous one, this new beginning is meant to reintroduce fun to my routine. The guilt "I haven't fulfilled my learning quota last week, and the one before, it's not worth it anymore" doesn't have place here.

This is a spontaneous idea. Language learning is a big part of the fun section of my life. That's why it is important, not just because it is necessary for my future. So, I've been collecting ideas during the last days and asking myself: "What approach would make me happier?" The answer was: "More fun. More reasonable goals, compatible with my life. Many more fantasy books. More tv series. Learning Italian again. Revieweing French, so that it doesn't rot and I can enjoy how familiar it is."

The second question: "What goals should I really stick to?" And that is not so bad. "I still need my language exams, but just one will suffice this year, if I can't take both. German trullly needs improving the most of them all."

And the third, as there are always three questions in the fairy tales, is an obvious one: "Which bits of my methods should I keep and which should I get rid of?"
Keep: Super Challenge, lots of extensive reading and listening, readlang, courses I like, grammar I like, Memrise in reasonable doses, Course Completion Challenge (but with reasonable deadlines)
Throw:6WC, any other short term challenges without wiggle room for problems, courses or grammars that I don't like (yeah, even I sometimes get the "I should finish it, as it cost me money" feeling, leading to procrastination), weekly hours quota

In the following posts, there will be books and movie list (copied from the previous log and continued), and the progress bar garden.

The only goal to stick to: some language learning every day. No matter the langauge or activity.

Any plans for June? I am suffering enough at the uni now, just fun here.
Last edited by Cavesa on Mon May 29, 2017 11:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 29, 2017 11:47 pm

the book and movie list
(SC/my crazy challenge; after completion not counting anymore)
Updated the -5th March (page 16, if you are confused)
Updated a day later
11.7.

Spanish 1968 minutes and 13569 pages left
Una pizca de muerte, Ch.Harris, 184 pages
Muerto en famila, Ch.Harris, 320 pages
Águila Roja 823 minutes +80 +240 +8x75
El día del juicio mortal, Ch.Harris, 408 pages
En punto muerto, 416 pages
225 minutes and 12241 pages left
Muerto para siempre 456 pages
Águila Roja 3x75 minutes
FINISHED THE MOVIE PART, 11785 pages left
Águila Roja, temporada 7
El mapa del tiempo, Félix J. Palma 660 pages
11120 pages left

German 9000/18000 minutes and 5000/20000 pages left

Italian4576/13569 minutes and 4315/19315 pages left
Licia Troisi: Cronache del Mondo Emerso II: La missione di Sennar 391 pages
4576 minutes and 3924 pages left
Marvel series, 2 seasons, 13 episodes each, 50min =1300min.
3276 minutes and 4315 pages left

French not counting anymore
M.Robert:Chiens de guerre
Henri Courtade: Loup, y es-tu?
Fabien Clavel: Homo Vampiris
FC: Nephilim 1 and 2


English3845 pages left
Aaronovitch: Rivers of Londen, Moon over Soho, Whispers under Ground, Foxglove summer, Broken Homes
Last edited by Cavesa on Tue Jul 11, 2017 10:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 29, 2017 11:47 pm

the Progress Bar Garden

Spanish
GdUdE B: 79 / 116 (66 completed before 2017)
Fiesta 2: 2 / 18
Usš 2: 0 / 18


German
Themen Aktuell 2: 2 / 10
Last edited by Cavesa on Sun Jun 25, 2017 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Xenops
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Xenops » Mon May 29, 2017 11:56 pm

I realized that I needed more fun stuff, too, in my language study. So I resubscribed to Netflix.

I also like it when members restart their blogs, because I have a higher chance of following them. :lol:
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jun 01, 2017 6:38 pm

Enjoying languages.

Music: my main reason to return to Italian. They have so many good songs! Modern, classic, pop or other genres, there are tons. There are suprisingly many on my songlists these days.

French: just my medical textbooks. Another one arrived by mail today. As I've been waiting for two deliveries, I was curious and asked my mom whether she got the brick-like one, or the larger package. She said "It looks like a pile of two or three books, yes, a brick." Well, it is one textbook. And a great one. And expensive.

Spanish: one episode of Aguila Roja

English: a rare sight in my log, I know :-D Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch is a miracle. Not only it is a great, original, and intelligent urban fantasy. It is a book that showed me some new challenges in English comprehension, and I loved that. Lots of slang, the hero is a cop. And nice words like surreptitious. I love it! I must buy the other books in the series before the end of the 25% sales in the bookshop I got it in.

Some serious studying planned after the 15th
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jun 01, 2017 10:48 pm

Following the new decision, that lead to this log, I have deleted majority of my plans on the pacemaker.press website. I made a new one, for a short term studying project (preparation for an exam). And I kept the SC related ones, as those were not stressing me.

Lessons learnt:
1.I must not give myself time goals. Too easy to mess up and stay behind the plan. And, the quality of the time spent studying varies.
2.Better units for me are pages or chapters (the only exception being the SC listening)
3.I may profit from sticking to shorter plans, rather than the huge ones. It is pretty obvious I suck at planning, so why make it harder than it needs to be. I'll just chop the long term goals into manageable chunks one month or just a few weeks long.
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:28 pm

You may have noticed I am horrible at answering pms. I apologize, it is not intentional. It is a character trait (or fault), that extends to sms, emails, facebook, and so on.

I've reacted very late to feedback to my French conjugation course
https://www.memrise.com/course/738096/c ... -complete/
and I fixed the mistake. I cannot find the pm anymore, so I apologize for not naming you, who told me about the COUDRE being mistakingly couser (a stupid mistake), and I thank you!

If anyone else is using my course, thanks in advance for any feedback.
But if the one already pointed out was the only one, I've achieved the impossible :-D

A funny article in Spanish
https://www.redaccionmedica.com/seccion ... checa-7813 :-D :-D :-D

Pues a los checos, no nos sorprende. Los médicos, las enfermeras, y todos los otros sanitarios están huyendo el país o al menos los hospitales. Se ferman los departamentos, se agravan las condiciones del trabajo ya infernales, y las cosas no cambian. El ministerio prefiere mentir al público. Y muchísimos checos creen que los médicos son los egoistas que tienen mucho dinero y jamás tienen bastante, y que los estudiantes deberían quedarse en este infierno, porque "nosotros paguemos las carreras suyas". No. No somos esclavos. Y la facultad no es financiada solo de los impuestos (de hecho cobra menos y menos cada año), y los otros estudiantes no deben ruinarse las vidas para pagar, ni siquiera los de carreras inútiles.

Sé, que la medicina en España está pasando una crisis. Pero las cosas son aún peores aquí. Id al Alemanía!

Now, I'd love to put this in the FB discussion. But I'd like to pass my exams, if you know what I mean.
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby blaurebell » Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:22 am

Cavesa wrote:Sé, que la medicina en España está pasando una crisis. Pero las cosas son aún peores aquí. Id al Alemanía!


I wouldn't call it a crisis when it's always been bad! And of course, no matter where you go it's just different degrees of hell. I could actually tell you some veritable horror stories about German doctors too and what they did to me, my relatives and my friends over the years. I won't though, because you need to study and become a better doctor than I ever had! :)
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Cavesa
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jun 04, 2017 3:31 pm

Curiously, there is already one reaction like "let's go" under the article. My fingers almost tingled but I resisted the temptation to be publicly and internationally funny about this before finishing the degree :-D Oh, you sweet summerchild. Stay in Spain or go to Germany like the Czechs.

I am studying for exams, having real trouble with sleep and all the usual stuff. So, today, I had to buy some new highlighters (several were sacrificed last night, the yellow team suffered the largest losses), and it happened to be in a bookstore (one of the few open on Sunday morning). I looked around, trying to improve my mood, and it worked. But some points were unsettling a bit.
1.There is a new Watch by Lukyanenko!!!!! But I wanted to postpone the rest of his books until I could read them in Russian.
2.There was the last part of the Lord of the Ice Garden (or what was the name in English) by Grzedowicz. But I wanted to postpone it until I could read it in Polish.
3.This cannot be a concidence. One Chinese sci-fi author is conquering Europe and following me around bookstores :-D. The Three Body Problem by an author nicely illustrating the marvels of various Mandarin latin trancriptions: Liou Cch´-Sin (cz), Liu Cixin (fr) (en), 刘慈欣. Why must the czechs always be original in unnecessary and counterproductive ways, instead of agreeing with the rest of the world? These two versions are so different even Google doesn't connect them! I got only Czech results for the first one! Highly praised, published in several countries, he won various Chinese sci-fi awards and a Hugo. Some weird click in my brain made me want to start learning Mandarin. But don't worry, I still haven't lost ALL my responsibility.
4.I browsed the Czech fantasy/scifi section too. I'd like to read some of the authors, it looks like there is a lot of good stuff, that has been written since I mostly abandonned Czech as a fun reading langauge. I should try some of them. However, one author got me more curious. Dan Vyleta. Why on earth was a german-canadian author put to the Czech section? That's like taking Pablo Neruda for one of ours. (If we tried to steal him, even the ocean couldn't protect us enough from his compatriots, I believe)
5.There are five more books following the awesome Rivers of London. But I also need to keep some budget for food, shampoo, electricity, and similar stuff.
6.I need money. Lots of money. My boyfriend has recently sent me a photo of a beautiful huge public library and joked about me collecting a similar one.
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blaurebell
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Re: Con calma, a new and better log for 2017

Postby blaurebell » Sun Jun 04, 2017 5:54 pm

Cavesa wrote:Watch by Lukyanenko!!!!! But I wanted to postpone the rest of his books until I could read them in Russian.


Oh!! I'm looking forward. It's on my Russian list too and I've been using the audiobooks for sound system training!

Cavesa wrote:One Chinese sci-fi author is conquering Europe and following me around bookstores . The Three Body Problem by an author nicely illustrating the marvels of various Mandarin latin trancriptions: Liou Cch´-Sin (cz), Liu Cixin (fr) (en), 刘慈欣.


Have you read it? The first one was simply mind-blowing! Haven't yet had the time to read the other two, because there is no time for reading in English in my schedule and that's the translation we have lying around here.

Cavesa wrote:6.I need money. Lots of money. My boyfriend has recently sent me a photo of a beautiful huge public library and joked about me collecting a similar one.


We have more books than we could read in a lifetime because my husband has a serious book buying "habit". Not complaining :D By the way, one day you should travel to Buenos Aires - it is the city with the highest number of bookshops per capita. One time we came back with 53 new books :oops:

And since we're talking sci fi: Do you maybe have some French Sci Fi recommendations for me?
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