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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "tyggerjai" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:44 pm
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Yay!
And to top off a great day, my favourite Quebecoise fly-in is coming back to Macau to work on another show here.
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10:17 am
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It's about time for this again.
Today, life is beautiful, for so many reasons. Tell me about them.
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12:55 am
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Dear English; It's not funny or clever, you know.
"My favourite meal is a fish. I like a salt-water fish".
It is hard enough to explain why we wouldn't use "a" here. "But I only eat one fish at a time. A fish". "Yes, but ... there's no particular fish that is your favourite." "Right. If there was a particular fish, I'd use 'the fish', like you taught me!" "Yes ... no. Conceptually, you eat fish, in the abstract. So your favourite meal is fish, because you're talking about what you eat, not what you *are* eating...." I dunno. You try, see if you can do better. I didn't have the heart to say that later on I will confess that I am LYING, and that we do say "Oohh, I like a salt-water fish, me". But not *here*.
Пиздец.
It's a wonder anyone learns English at all, really.
Oh, but I have a new trapeze, with a thinner bar, and narrower between the points, and with threaded rod on the end for weights and it's solid and shiny and I love it!
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02:47 pm
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More linguistic oddities.
Though this one is somewhat meta. The exercise I'm doing at the moment is described as follows:
"Describe the objects you learned about in this lesson. Use both positive and negative characteristics to explain what they are like. Ex. There are five buildings. Two buildings are green. Three buildings are not green. They are black."
Now. What's interesting here is that in English, we overload the phrase "There are". It can mean either "five buildings exist", or "that location has five buildings". The meanings are almost identical (even "5 buildings exist" implies a location - obviously there are more than 5 buildings in the whole world), but there's a subtle difference.
In Russian, there are (see what I did there!?) two distinct words for the two meanings. "Есть" for the first one, "Вот" for the second.
So for the exercise, which meaning would you go for? I'll ask a Russian what they would say, but I suspect the answer is "It depends". So in English, would you say "There are 5 buildings" is a statement of existence, or location?
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03:24 pm
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And I thought Russian was crazy.
So I got a response from one of my Russians saying:
"Hello. Russian is more difficult than English. I Wonder how people can learn it. The Russian grammar is awful."
So now I have to write back saying "Ah. You know how I said we always use "a" or "the" when talking about a thing? "Russian grammar" isn't a thing. Uh, kinda."
And let's not explain that you *could* say "The grammar of the Russian language", or perhaps even "The grammar of Russian". But not "The Russian Grammar". Or could we? A language has a grammar - that is, a body of rules. The Russian grammar *is* quite complex....
Oiy.
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10:24 am
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Очень сложно!
So. I've been playing with LiveMocha recently, and correcting submissions from a few Russians, and there's a consistent problem most of them have. The Russian language has no equivalent for "a" or "the". No definite article, no indefinite article. It has "that" and "this", but mostly in the context of "This is my pen" rather than "this pen is mine" (actually, for neuter nouns those two sentences are exactly the same!).
And if you've never thought about it, you may not realise just how complex the use of "a" and "the" is!
So help me out here. I need a simple, canned explanation of "a" and "the" for people who have never even seen the concept before. I basically explain the difference between "general" use ("Do you have a cat?") and specific use ("Where is the cat?"), and try not to talk about edge cases ("Let's take the bus!"). But I could use more perspectives on it :)
(The title, I hope, translates as "Very complicated!", which is how I describe it to the poor dears.)
jai.
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11:56 pm
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Melange.
( State of the everything. )
That's about it, I think. Any questions?
jai.
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12:04 am
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Bollywood nights.
Or, _How to confuse Americans_.
Stuey, Timmy and I are standing backstage waiting to do our bit for the recent IIFA awards. And somehow we've managed to convince a couple of people that there's an elephant backstage somewhere. One skeptic goes to actually look, and comes back to say they can't see it. "Must have got lost." says Timmy. "Of course, you know why the elephant got lost?" says Stuey. "Yeah Stu" says I, totally deadpan. "Jungle is massive."
Result: 3 Australians literally rolling on the floor - Stu and I because of the perfect setup, Timmy because he really hadn't seen it coming. 3 Americans standing there saying "What?" "Which jungle?".
Apparently Jungle is not so massive in the U.S.
Anyway. Istanbul. I'll update about that any day now, honest.
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02:33 am
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Not Constantinople.
First impressions - this is a lovely city. The mosques are outnumbered only, I think, by the stray cats. The 350 year old spice market smells like the Vic Markets back home. Except for the bit that smells overwhelmingly of roasting coffee. I could have stood there all day, just sniffing. The rest of the old city smells surprisingly often of flowers.
More tomorrow when we actually start the tourist bit, now that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) _ryn has arrived. And it's just dawned on me we can try a different Turkish bath every day!
jai.
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12:44 am
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Chagall is my bitch.
I have no idea how to actually spell that, or if anyone other than my straps coach even calls it that. But it's my first real trick on straps (half-angel doesn't count on straps, half angel on straps is kinda pointless). My straps coach introduced it a few weeks ago, and I had nothing remotely close to enough control or strength to even meaningfully attempt it. Tonight, not only did I pop right into it on my good side, but on my bad side as well - strong, controlled, sometimes you just *get* a trick.
Because I have no idea how to spell it, you don't get pictures, because you can't Google something you can't spell, and even Google handy alternative suggestions fail me tonight.
But it's my bitch. And then I had sushi with the crazy Russians, although not the really crazy Uzbekistanian, because they don't talk to her, because she's crazy. Or something. Crazy Russians.
jai.
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07:10 pm
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On the day I went away....
So, don't get your hopes up, but riddle me this.
If you currently live in rental accommodation in Melbourne ....
a) Which suburb?
b) How much do you pay?
c) most importantly, how did you find it?
[Edit to avoid confusion with regards to c). By what means were you made aware of the existence and availability of said accommodation?]
jai.
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12:01 pm
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Gym.
7K in my best time ever yesterday. 33k this week. (7/7/x/5/7/7/x), plus 3 weights sessions. No straps, alas, but some trapeze as well.
Therefore.
I thought there was a more visible change, but apparently not. Still, the meat puppet is starting to look and feel good.
jai.
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Tags: gym
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09:31 pm
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Скажите, пожалуйста ....
I get a lot of spam in Russian. Which is nifty, it means I can practice my alphabet skills. But I'm wondering if it's normal for the modern netizen, or if it's affected by having my display languages in facebook, LJ *and* Gmail set to be Russian. Though I'm not sure how anyone would know that.
So! Assuage my burning curiosity.
Poll #1406480 Спам!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: AllHow much spam do you get in Russian?
For me, it's creeping up to the 50% mark.
jai.
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02:00 pm
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As your attorney....
Well, I know what my wife is getting for her next birthday.
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11:52 pm
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Circus hurts, redux, redux.
So tonight, coach was in late, and I got him to take a quick look at the stuff I've been working on. One knee hangs are still iffy, but I got pointers on the half-angel (though the only thing he said was "flex the rope foot a bit more"), and the kneehang/swing/sit-on-bar/drop-back-to-hang combo. The swing up is fine, it's the getting back down. He said "Just tuck in, slide your hands down the rope, stay tucked and lower yourself slowly through the stomach muscles, don't drop back down". At which point we identified the problem. But that's ok, lots more ab work and I will one day be able to hold myself in tuck while hanging by my knees, and then gently lower myself.
( And then I scared the shit out of us both. )
Tags: nastyushka, trapeze
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03:02 pm
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Just when I thought I was out ....
Things I could be doing with my time:
Ab workout - I got slack over the dark, and I felt it last night on trapeze.
Building a new trapeze, though that would involve going into work early.
Juggling
Learning Russian
What I am doing with my time:
Drawing up a db schema for a perl script to track my jogging performance.
*sigh*
Of course, I should extend it to handle lifting performance as well. If I'm going to bother.
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10:12 pm
[Link] | I am suddenly terribly, terribly homesick. Partly thanks to fizit and her care package, and partly thanks to this.
I want to come home. But I want to bring my angels with me.
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10:59 am
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The Universe taunts me....
I have 3 days off starting today, and then 4 days work/rope access course. I'll probably keep running, but have deliberately decided not to lift for this week, and I won't have a chance to do trapeze/straps.
So of course today my copy of both New Rules of Lifting *and* Starting Strength arrived.
Still. That gives me a week to read and think about them. The trouble with the Rippetoe is going to be rest days - even if "I only ran 7K!" counts as a rest day, trapeze and straps won't. And Rippetoe is a program I'd like to follow fairly strictly, if I'm going to bother doing it.
But rest days are going to be a problem with anything I do. And let's face it, lack of rest doesn't seem to be a problem for my angels, who perform 6 days a week....
jai.
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This entry was originally posted at http://tyggerjai.dreamwidth.org/247572.html . Please comment there using OpenID.
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01:23 pm
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I am.
There's a long post brewing about motivation, and focus, and ... why we do the things we do, and how that affects who we are. I might never make that post; I have a feeling it might dissipate - or rather distil - into actually doing things. Because at the moment I'm in awe of how much I am become the person I have always wanted to be. Today, my rope arrived, so I can complete my new trapezes. Today, I understand the imperfective aspect of the past tense in Russian. Today I have bruises and callouses from straps. Today I brought breakfast for the inimitable woman who made me coffee. Today I can juggle. Today I fixed Nastyushka's bike and smiled at Squeaky Toy, not in the hope that they will sleep with me, or be my girlfriend, but because they are human beings - and angels - that I love.
Today the sun is shining and the world has so much potential. Reach out and grab it, y0.
This entry was originally posted at http://tyggerjai.dreamwidth.org/247347.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
jai.
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12:22 am
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Trapeze, Russian, moments, etc.
So the Russian continues apace, crazy language though it is.. I cannot recommend Livemocha enough, assuming you're ok with the "social" aspect. Basically, the lessons seem to exist to put you in touch with native speakers, so there's a lot of emailing, and submitting, which is definitely a strength, but not so good if you don't, y'know, like people. So between LiveMocha, and breakthroughs in grammar (perfective past tense! Imperfective future tense! Adjectives!), it's coming along nicely.
And, oh, trapeze. On the way to straps class after work today, I felt tired, and weak, and uninspired. But Coach Warren had agreed to look at me on trapeze first, and see where I was at and where I could go. And now I have a trick to practice! A real actual trick!! It's called a half-angel, and I will forever remember it as my first ever trick! And Nastyushka looked briefly like she was about to look impressed, but possibly only because she wanted me to fix her bike.
Ну, ура, у меня <<trick>> на трапеция. And then I sucked on straps for an hour, but I sucked with greater strength and flexibility than I had 2 weeks ago. Опять, ура!
And the quote of the day goes to Sylvia: "If I open my hips any more my crotch really hurts ... and I don't even have a penis!"
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