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After spending most of the week without human contact (and going slowly mad as a result) due to lockdown conditions in wintery Melbourne, the weekend has featured multiple such contacts. On Friday cycled up to Bulleen Park to take an absolutely lovely walk along the Yarra River with Li F. We have a rather lovely friendship that spans over thirty years, although there was a gap of more than a decade. In our youth, we were partners on a couple of occasions for a while, and apropos previous entries I do make an effort to ensure lasting friendships among those who have shared that slice of life to me. As I undergo further packing for the move, I also chanced upon a photo of us shortly after we met; we met as teenagers at a gay bar dancing to Bananarama's cover of "Venus", 'cause that's what pop kids would do, right? The following day I dropped off groceries to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya and chatted through the doorway at a minimum safe distance, and then caught up at Flagstaff Gardens with Jac and Damien. These multiple experiences of meeting with flesh-and-blood human beings has provided a necessary boost to oxytocin levels and has improved my mood somewhat in these rather dark days.
As regular readers would know, I recently have experimented with the online dating world, and bless the algorithm it has found a lecturer of philosophy who shares an interest in transcendental pragmatics, which one must admit is a pretty rare match. In a somewhat less salubrious experience, Linda (46) simply left me the message of "Go live in China you moron", clearly taking umbrage at my profile that says I would like to meet "Xi Jinping, as the single person who could probably do the most good in the world if they make the right decisions", which seems to be just a statement of fact, really. I might be single at the moment because of my own decisions some eighteen months ago (albeit with much hand-wringing), and more recently because my former partner had a rather dramatic change of expressed opinion at a critical juncture (sad as it can be, we allow people to make poor life choices). But never, I can thankfully say, have I trolled members of any website to leave insulting and racist remarks. I think we know why you're single, Linda (46), and I am sure you will find the man you richly deserve.
But there is a sense in which racist Linda is correct. I will go live in China, or at least try to! The Flying Geese project continues to gain some wings, and I give a special thank you to some of my new Facebook friends who are pointing me in the right direction for this construction project that dominates my future life. With my strategy of extensive language learning first and then intensive study afterward, I have also appropriately finally completed the Duolingo tree for standard Chinese (read: Mandarin). Of course, with this caveat I have but only a basic understanding of the language, but at least I have been exposed to some moderately more complex phrases. I still don't expect any degree of real competence for at least another three to five years, as there's an estimated 2,000 hours of active learning required for us English native speakers. Like most things in life, genuine success is not an exciting, rapid, impulsive, all-or-nothing affair, but rather something that is gained incrementally and carefully over time.
caseopaya and chatted through the doorway at a minimum safe distance, and then caught up at Flagstaff Gardens with Jac and Damien. These multiple experiences of meeting with flesh-and-blood human beings has provided a necessary boost to oxytocin levels and has improved my mood somewhat in these rather dark days. As regular readers would know, I recently have experimented with the online dating world, and bless the algorithm it has found a lecturer of philosophy who shares an interest in transcendental pragmatics, which one must admit is a pretty rare match. In a somewhat less salubrious experience, Linda (46) simply left me the message of "Go live in China you moron", clearly taking umbrage at my profile that says I would like to meet "Xi Jinping, as the single person who could probably do the most good in the world if they make the right decisions", which seems to be just a statement of fact, really. I might be single at the moment because of my own decisions some eighteen months ago (albeit with much hand-wringing), and more recently because my former partner had a rather dramatic change of expressed opinion at a critical juncture (sad as it can be, we allow people to make poor life choices). But never, I can thankfully say, have I trolled members of any website to leave insulting and racist remarks. I think we know why you're single, Linda (46), and I am sure you will find the man you richly deserve.
But there is a sense in which racist Linda is correct. I will go live in China, or at least try to! The Flying Geese project continues to gain some wings, and I give a special thank you to some of my new Facebook friends who are pointing me in the right direction for this construction project that dominates my future life. With my strategy of extensive language learning first and then intensive study afterward, I have also appropriately finally completed the Duolingo tree for standard Chinese (read: Mandarin). Of course, with this caveat I have but only a basic understanding of the language, but at least I have been exposed to some moderately more complex phrases. I still don't expect any degree of real competence for at least another three to five years, as there's an estimated 2,000 hours of active learning required for us English native speakers. Like most things in life, genuine success is not an exciting, rapid, impulsive, all-or-nothing affair, but rather something that is gained incrementally and carefully over time.
