Life Lately (July/August 2018)
With the house move frenzy finally over, I’m now free to come back to a resemblance of normal life. Still a lot of boxes floating around the house of course – but ALL LANGUAGE LEARNING BOOKS ARRIVED SAFE AND SOUND and that’s what truly matters. 🙃
So before jumping back to a regular blog schedule (hopefully), I would like to make a brief update on what has been going on in my life lately so that I can pick up from there.
Language Learning
Needless to say, during the house move LL has not been my primary focus (especially since all my study resources where packed away). I managed to keep my streak on Duolingo though [I’m now on my 147th consecutive day of practice], which is fine. I’m growing increasingly dissatisfied with D tbh, especially with its Chinese version (the Japanese one has fewer skills but works much better), but I still keep going. Right now a not-so-great study practice is still better than no practice at all, so in a way it has been serving its purpose.
I’m now ready to get back to some more serious study engagement, and as of yesterday I’ve already retrieved my listening practice [though for the moment is a kind of passive activity with Chinese dialogues playing in the background while I’m doing other things – mainly, unboxing]. I was also thinking about doing a proper two-day Chinese full immersion experience with a lot of concentrated reading and listening activities. I’ve been reading a lot about the Listening-Reading method lately and I’m kind of intrigued – so much that I’m eager to give it a try. Maybe over the weekend if things slow down a bit, it’s more a feeling than a plan for now tbh.
Tv Shows
Before moving to Edinburgh I managed to finish watching Reply 1997 and I really, really enjoyed it 😀 it was exactly the kind of drama I was in the mood for. Since then I’ve been watching a few episodes of Midnight Diner with the plus one [though I would like to rewatch them by myself with Japanese subtitles as I feel like it could be an excellent listening practice], and kind of binge watching Orange is the New Black (for some reason I keep watching it every year when a new season comes out even though I don’t particularly like it).
Now that things have somewhat settled down I’m motivated to pick up a new Asian drama for my entertainment. I surely want to watch Reply 1994 before the end of the year, but I would like to mix up genres a bit since I know I tend to get bored easily. I was thinking about Black since it has been on my TBW list for a while now, but there’s also a new Taiwanese drama (On Children) on Netflix which has a super intriguing / disturbing plot AND is also in Chinese, so it gets double points for language practice. Hard to choose! #firstworldproblems
Books
If you are invested in culture and general intellectual / artistic activities, Edinburgh is your city. One of the first things I did once I grabbed my proof of address here has been subscribing to the Edinburgh Libraries System and OH BOY THERE’S SO MUCH CHOICE HERE (of both digital and physical resources). I think I already reserved something like 7 items between ebooks and paper versions, and dowloaded a couple.
In these last months of quite intense reading activity, I’ve unconsciously established a sort of pattern for my reading choices. What I usually do is reading 3 books at the same time (I swore for years that I couldn’t bare the idea of reading multiple books simultaneously, which goes to show how we really shouldn’t use words like ‘always’ and ‘never’ and ‘everything’):
1. one ‘serious’ novel, either a classic or a contemporary author
2. one non fiction
3. one ‘entertaining’ novel (crime, science fiction, fantasy, YA etc)
I discovered that more than 3 books make things unmanageable as I end up focusing on just a couple – meaning, I’m not actually reading 5 books at the same time. Three seems like the perfect number to keep me entertained enough and supplied with the necessary amount of variety, but without overdoing it.
Music
I’ve been branching out a little lately, especially with all those hours of unpacking and re-shelving (I needed to be entertained, and I needed it badly). Synthwave and Retrowave are still my absolute favourite, but this month I’ve also been listening quite a lot to シティーポップ, or Japanese City Pop, which yes, it kinda make sense from a consistency point of view. Many tracks also have lyrics (in Japanese), which again is super good for listening practice. I’ve been also delving more into K Indie music (I did the same last year, it must be a summer thing) and I’ve found some very nice playlists on Youtube [there are tons of good mixes out there, but this one has been my absolute favourite since the beginning of summer].
Beverages
Chai tea & chai latte all the way!
Planners
It’s been a while since my last post on the topic of planners. What I can say is that 2018 has been one of my best planner years so far, even more so since 2017 was probably the worst -.- I have a planner-related post that I’ve been willing to write for a while now, so I’ll save all the juicy details for that one; for now I can say that my planning system is becoming increasingly simple and goal-oriented, with less and less apps and notebooks used and a much more functional approach to the whole idea of planning.
Routines
There’s nothing as disruptive as a prolonged period of scattered schedules for the good functioning of regular routines, but I’m getting back to them one by one and I’m also working on implementing some ameliorations. The significant other will be working in another town for a few days per week during these first 6 months, which gives me room to be a bit more experimental with the way I want to structure my days. I’ve managed to keep my early-bed=early-rise schedule, which is good good, so now the main focus will be on Chinese study and yoga practice.
How is everyone’s summer going? I hope you’re having a fulfilling and relaxing time with your family and friends, and also some good moments of language learning of course 😉
Walhallavagen 