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Solar Revolution, Feasts, Languages
Jan. 20th, 2017 10:18 pmIt's pretty clear that I'm going to have to get back into the habit of posting to this journal at least twice a week, for the sheer sake of having a somewhat succinct personal record of events and links to various thoughts and considerations. Today apparently is the point of my forty-ninth revolution around the sun, which I'm hardly going to celebrate hard; a small lunch gathering at Timiao courtesy of my manager at work. Received some great books from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya, which will keep me busy for a while. The day however will live in some infamy however - not for the inauguration and speech of President Trump (which happens at 4am January 21st AEDST), but rather of rampage in the Melbourne CBD (caseopaya's office was in lockdown).
This aside the week has had some other highlights. Last Saturday's Cheesquest day withser_pounce and hathhalla went very well. I made two cheesecakes, with the baked vegan one surprisingly working out quite well (crazy but true, I can cook vegan food with some competence). It was also the first attempt at porron drinking games, being an item I'd picked up the week prior. We played Asterix: Das Kartenspiel, a rather clever and quick bidding game. The following day was the AGM and BBQ for the RPG Review Cooperative, which was very much enjoyed by all present. Other gaming related events for the week included Laundry Files on Wednesday evening. Tomorrow is another BBQ I'm preparing for; this time for Linux Users of Victoria.
The week Zhou Youguang died, known as "the father of pinyin". His passing providing a psychological impetus (this often happens for me) to start learning Mandarin on Memrise which I must admit is bloody hard. Unlike European languages (even Russian, which I started again this week) there is nothing in terms of lexical similarity. Then there is the simplified logographic script and hanyu pinyin to learn with the vowel tones ("mā ma mà mǎ", "mother scolds the horse") which can lead some stunning writing (e.g., Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den). I've been led to believe that the grammatical structures are a lot less complex than English (let alone German etc) but I'm hardly at that level yet.
caseopaya, which will keep me busy for a while. The day however will live in some infamy however - not for the inauguration and speech of President Trump (which happens at 4am January 21st AEDST), but rather of rampage in the Melbourne CBD (caseopaya's office was in lockdown).This aside the week has had some other highlights. Last Saturday's Cheesquest day with
ser_pounce and hathhalla went very well. I made two cheesecakes, with the baked vegan one surprisingly working out quite well (crazy but true, I can cook vegan food with some competence). It was also the first attempt at porron drinking games, being an item I'd picked up the week prior. We played Asterix: Das Kartenspiel, a rather clever and quick bidding game. The following day was the AGM and BBQ for the RPG Review Cooperative, which was very much enjoyed by all present. Other gaming related events for the week included Laundry Files on Wednesday evening. Tomorrow is another BBQ I'm preparing for; this time for Linux Users of Victoria.The week Zhou Youguang died, known as "the father of pinyin". His passing providing a psychological impetus (this often happens for me) to start learning Mandarin on Memrise which I must admit is bloody hard. Unlike European languages (even Russian, which I started again this week) there is nothing in terms of lexical similarity. Then there is the simplified logographic script and hanyu pinyin to learn with the vowel tones ("mā ma mà mǎ", "mother scolds the horse") which can lead some stunning writing (e.g., Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den). I've been led to believe that the grammatical structures are a lot less complex than English (let alone German etc) but I'm hardly at that level yet.
