Tea With Tarvos - Tarvos' Log 2019

[tarvos]

Yay congrats!

I didn't manage to get very far with Japanese. So you're still ahead of me. :p

[tarvos]

I've booked some Chinese lessons. I want to eventually interpret Mandarin, after I've added English (piece of cake) and Russian (a little tougher, but still a language I could reasonably add within a short period of time). Mandarin will be the other long-term project for my interpreting skills.

If you're going to ask: "why not language xyz, you speak it!" the answer is that I could and might, depending on what happens after my course. I can, of course, start improving my French or German and interpret that instead. In fact, for German, that might only really just require some work on my German oral and written expression, as my understanding of that language is excellent. It also depends on where I get a job, when I am done.

But Mandarin will need significant work (my Mandarin is in the b-levels somewhere).

What I actually was most happy about was that I passed the entrance exam with top marks. It feels good to be good at something, after all these years of feeling like a miserable failure, of feeling hopeless and burnt out. Clearly I should be an interpreter; it's obvious that I'm going to be good at it, but it's still going to be hard work to finish the one-year-course that I am doing, and then even harder work to get a job in a labour market that doesn't like chronically ill trans people, given my health especially.

I've actually also taken the liberty of congratulating myself for my effort on the exam, and bought myself a ticket to see Lana del Rey in February. I deserve to be happy

[PeterMollenburg]

Good news: I passed the entrance exam and have been admitted to the interpreting course. The verdict was that I clearly had an aptitude for interpreting and that I well cleared the bar for my Spanish and Dutch language skills!

This means that I am supposed to become an interpreter in one year. Oh yeah, baby! All that Spanish wasn't for nothing! And the best part is that once I'm finished, I can probably go and add another few languages to my list of working languages... so I get to work with my hobby now. Isn't that great?

Fantastic news! Good luck with the interpreting course, Tarvos

[tarvos]

I just got a recording back from my Chinese teacher and my god do I ever hate my Chinese pronunciation

It's just... off. The tones are off, everything is off. The funny thing is the conversation flows for the most part (except when I go uhhh because I'm looking for a word, which happens more often than you'd think in Mandarin, but hey, I'm not perfect), but the pronunciation is so off! So clearly it is understandable *somewhere*, but somehow it just sounds horrible.

Although in terms of the actual sounds it's fairly ok, I just notice I swallow a lot of sounds when I speak quickly (which you shouldn't do in Mandarin) and that the tones are off. Funnily enough, I can hear that the tones are off... I just don't really know how to produce them 100% correctly in connected speech yet...

[tarvos]

Tengo que escribir algo en castellano, por si me olvido:

Qué se siente, olvidarme que se siente
Hacer sufrir a una persona
Como lo estás haciendo ahora?

Sé que ella ni habla media palabra de español, pero aún así se atrevió a hacer un cover de una canción salsa en su propio estilo. (Los demás cantantes participando en esta emisión se quedaron boquiabiertos, pero ella suele cantar tan bien que los demás no saben lo que les ha tocado...) No suena a salsa, es rock sinfónico, por supuesto (ella es cantante de heavy metal), pero ha reinterpretado una canción totalmente diferente de lo que hace normalmente en un idioma que no conoce. ¡Qué grande eres, Floor! ¡Y qué voz de oro tienes! En Holanda, nadie te conocía antes de esta emisión. Espero que después de (ya) tres grandes actuaciones, los holandeses te darán el amor y el reconocimiento que mereces.

Y para mí, esa canción habla de estos momentos cuando ves a tu ex-pareja con otra persona, y te planteas lo que piensa tu ex. ¿Cómo hiciste para hacerme sufrir tanto, qué te crees? Algo que he vivido yo en el pasado. Sentirse inferior porque tu pareja ha encontrado a alguién que le va mejor que tú. Claro que hay que olvidarse de eso, que no eres inferior ni nada, pero ese sentimiento nos atraca a todos alguna vez. Es una emoción bastante universal, y verla encapsulada y reinterpretada de este modo tan poderoso me pone los pelos de punta.

Echad un vistazo a esa mujer y esa canción, no os lo arrepintáis, os lo prometo.

[tiia]

Muchas gracias por ese video! No sabía de ese programa (por supuesto), pero conocí a Floor como cantante de otras bandas.

[tarvos]

Ella es muy popular en Finlandia, no es así? Sería lo normal con lo grande que es Nightwish por allá...

[tarvos]

So a couple of things have happened lately.

One is that yesterday I turned the big 3-0, and have now truly moved on into adulthood. All my decisions from now on must be wise, with my future in mind. Of course, that is never going to happen, because this world doesn't have a future and I have no idea for how long I will be in it, so adult decisions can go $!@& themselves, etc etc etc. Buuuut, on the plus side, I got an e-reader, which is good, because it means I will be forced to use less paper and not destroy the Amazon. Also the e-reader came with tons of books already downloaded... which were not all in English. HMMMM I WONDER WHAT I THINK ABOUT THAT HMMMM I AM SOOOOO DISAPPOINTED HMMM. I did buy some more books in English, but these were all non-fiction (they're about a Gulag survivor and about a member of Pussy Riot) and they weren't available in Russian so I went to get them in English. In any case, this means I've got stuff to read which can only be a good thing. Now I hope I will be able to read something besides my study books the coming year (interpreting is hard) so we'll see how it goes.

Besides that, I've continued with Catching Fire in Chinese and I've now finished, at long last, the first six chapters. If you think I'm a slowpoke you're right, reading Chinese is an immensely arduous task and I wish I were somewhat more efficient at it, but I'm getting better with character recognition every day. The real trouble is I should be reading Chinese daily, and I have so many other things to do and read that I can't split my attention THAT much. But yeah. I'm learning to do it and I should keep it up if one day I do want to reach a similar level in Chinese as compared to say, my Russian or my German. I'll get better, but I'm very unsatisfied with my Chinese, even if it's not that bad and there is a definite base to work with (I have pretty good listening comprehension and my speaking may be iffy tonally but it's certainly all right in terms of semantics).

Another fun note: I'm conversing with a girl from Finland and she said she thinks speaking Finnish to me is fun because I know some slang. Now this surprised me because I don't think I've ever used slang in Finnish, because I don't even think I've ever been able to use more than a hundred words in that language without it sounding both crap and grammatically incorrect. So where she pulled that from I don't know, but she must be imagining shit because I certainly did not do that on purpose (and I try to avoid speaking or writing Finnish because guess what, I'm no good at it). I wouldn't even call my Finnish A1 at this point. But OK, I must have used a word correctly and this must have impressed her. Well, if I can impress people with it I should probably take advantage of it... The advantages of polyglottery.

Anyway, that all being said, this is a gentle reminder to those reading this log that I *do* actually welcome entries in foreign languages here and that you *can* (nay, should) write here in languages other than English. If you write to me in Albanian, though, the answer might be slow because I don't speak Albanian. So do have a look at the list on the left and be a little considerate in what you pick. I may have to use dictionaries to respond to you, but this is a forum so I have the time to do so. (Or you could be lazy and write to me in English, but you do not want to be accused of complacency, now do you?)

[tarvos]

I have nearly finished the first part of 燃烧的女孩， which is great, but it means I haven't had time for much else besides Chinese study and waiting for my interpreting things to begin. I'm in the middle of a big turbulent period when it comes to that, so much effective study isn't happening. I'm also busy with meetings for my chess club and other things that have to be done (busy life), so there's no rest for the wicked. Come calmer times, I will make sure to reduce my involvement in some things a little so it becomes more manageable, but it also depends on how I handle studies etc.

Apart from this I have spent today reading about 太鼓(taiko), which is a type of drum used in traditional Japanese music. Well, actually taiko is just the Japanese name for drum according to Wikipedia, and the actual drums are called 和太鼓。(wadaiko) I'm not familiar with much Japanese anything (I didn't study it and I have a science, not a history background), so it's interesting to read how these drums are made.

I've never been to Japan, but I did witness a Chinese drum performance in Beijing back in 2015, and that was great (and loud!). The Japanese drums were brought to Japan through China and Korea, so they're quite similar, although I think the cultural performances differ notably. Anyone here on the forums familiar with Japanese culture (thinking of brilliantyears and VonPeterhof here) should correct me if anything I said is wrong.

Speaking of Asian things, some people who have met me may know that I have a set of Chinese-inspired tattoos on my left upper arm. I say Chinese-inspired particularly because they're not done in a traditional Chinese or Japanese style (not trying to steal from another's culture here), but instead they represent the Chinese influence on my life viewed through a western lens. So they've been done in a much more western, old-school style of tattooing that my artist is good at. This combines the Asian part of my life with the Western girl that I am. I actually added further to that arm today (though it was more embellishment as I just added some weather patterns to the landscape), and eventually the idea is to create a Western-Chinese art fusion - Chinese thematics, but western art. (Don't worry, I didn't tattoo any hanzi, and certainly none I don't know the meaning of). People actually often think those tattoos are Japanese-inspired, but since I've never lived in Japan that's not the case - they just think that because one of the tattoos is a watchtower with traditional Asian architecture - which could be equally Japanese or Chinese since the Japanese style leans so heavily on the Chinese one. I know that in Japan tattoos are often frowned upon because they are so frequently associated with the yakuza, which is another reason I tried to avoid that style. In any case, in terms of language and culture, I tend to mix everything into my personal life - as someone who grew up in more than one country, I don't actually feel that I am 100% Dutch in outlook, even though I'm clearly of Dutch heritage. But since I don't want to be disingenuous by saying I am part Chinese because I lived in China, that's the explanation for why I turned to such a western style instead.

[MorkTheFiddle]

First of all, congratulations on making it to the big three oh! May the world have twice that much time left and may you have a fulfilling time in it. (Guess what language I'm using to write to you. )

Second, will attending a Lana Del Rey concert cause a change in your avatar any way? And I say that proud to announce I am probably the only person on the planet my age who recognized the avatar right away, and, truly astounding, has heard the song and liked it!

Third,

It feels good to be good at something

is worthy of being in a book of quotations.

Fourth, you're amazing.