minus English

I started frequenting the HTLAL forums again. Every once in a while someone will post a useful resource that they've encountered, and recently, a post led me to some interesting listening...

Japanese podcast teaching Korean. The Korean is very slightly accented, well, at least to my ear when I compare it with the Korean spoken by natives on KClass101. But, it's fascinating to hear!

Japanese podcast teaching Mandarin. Very basic survival Mandarin, so I'm not actually learning any Mandarin through it, but the Japanese is good listening practice. And since there's quite a few cognates between Japanese and Chinese, it's cool to pair the two.

"Mission Europe" radio adventures. Each of Mission Paris, Mission Krakow, and Mission Berlin form a 26-episode story. And you can choose English, German, Spanish, French, or Polish as your native/source language. I listened to ep 1 of Mission Paris in Spanish (nope, not English). The target language of Mission Paris is, of course, French. It's like watching a movie without the visual (or reading a book, adding on sound). I guess it's probably similar to what they had back in the days before TV. I want to listen to the rest of the story, but for now, I should stop myself from being too much of a language flirt.

It's not that I have anything against English. It *is* my native language after all. Not by birth though. By birth, it would count as my third native language. That is, it's the third language I acquired, at the age of almost five. It's specifically because English is my native language (strongest) that I want to remove it from the language-learning process if I'm able. I think if I leave it in too long, it becomes a crutch. The eventual goal is to achieve in Japanese what I do with Mandarin -- not translate to English (at least not consciously, and hopefully not subconsciously either). (Though I'm not really sure... I don't know why I'm learning Japanese haha.)

Yay for the web for bringing me engaging material! ^o^

updated library concept

I was happily bouncing along the shelves of one of the three libraries I frequent when I came upon an unexpected section. Video games!! PS2 games to be exact. Since when did libraries start carrying video games to borrow? If we still had our PS2... but we don't. Good thing. I don't want to be wasting my time caught up in some silly, addicting video game right at this moment.

The whole library with video games thing feels odd to me though; it just doesn't fit in with my concept of a library. Nevertheless, I suppose I should feel fortunate that my library has enough extra money to spend on video games when there are probably libraries out there struggling to just keep their collection of books complete.

sibs

After D&R left, it took a couple of days for me to get back into my swing of things. やっぱり, even though I'm the probably the most independent out of us, I'm also the most likely to have been affected. I think it's because I've never really ever lived alone -- the curse of having grown up with siblings, then living with roommates, then always having K around (or friends *really* near during our times apart).

We thought a week was a long time, but it went by too quickly. Good in a way, because there's plenty more to see for their next visit. We did the usual things that I've done with other visitors:
- golden gate bridge
- crooked section of lombard street
- muir woods
- chinatown

We actually saw the bridge from an entirely new spot for K and me. We were aiming for the spot we visited with V way back when because it was a nice viewpoint and had no people, but we ended up at a different one. In this new location, we discovered crabbing. Plenty of people of all ages were out catching crabs in nets. There's regulations, too -- the crabs have to be at least 4 inches in size, otherwise you're required to toss them back in. I think it's something my dad would find fun the next time he visits... though I'll have to find a place to rent nets.

We also visited places that I've either never been to before or really fit D&R:
- japantown (their fav spot, for the stores -- items bought? pencil case and hair wax)
- pet cemetery (K mentioned it as a joke, but D&R actually wanted to stop there)
- monterey 17-mile drive (visiting the Diamond's on Padre Ln ^_~)
- tech museum

Oh, and of course, G-lunch =)

Their visit reminded me of J's visit a few years ago, maybe because of the tailored-to-D&R-uniqueness. J and I had walked from Powell BART station to Pier 39, stopping at random parts of union square, chinatown, north beach, lombard st, ghiradelli square, and fisherman's wharf along the way. I don't think anyone else would prefer an entirely walking let's-stop-at-whatever-we-feel-like-along-the-way tour of SF hehe.

Anyways, will be back to back-posting the rest of the KJ trip shortly ^o^