Trismegistus

...makes a post!

Job stuff! February found me commuting to a new worksite that requires 2+ hours in the car each day, which has significantly cut down on the leisure time things I'm able to do in a day. That said, the work is awesome, and I'm having a blast doing it while I'm onsite.

Concerts! This time, Falling in Reverse and Disturbed.

I knew more about the drama surrounding Falling in Reverse (even predating the Paige/Suraya connection) than I did their music, which turned out to be...fine. It wasn't bad in a concert venue setting but also wasn't anything distinguished enough that I'd seek it out again on my own. What did distinguish the band was the lead singer publicly berating a member of his stage crew, at length and by name, after something apparently went wrong toward the end of the show. Like, dude, you have just generated a lot of sympathy from me for someone, and it isn't you. Super gross and unnecessary, particularly when it became clear the lead singer wasn't even capable of generating entry-level stage patter to fill the silence after he'd finished dropping f-bombs on the stage hand.

Disturbed, on the other hand, was excellent as ever. We'd seen them live last summer (with Jinjer and Breaking Benjamin), so the stage set and much of the set list were pretty familiar, but man they put on a good show. Just a ton of energy and excitement, which is exactly what I wanted from the experience. The audience energy was great: people were as into it as we were.

Side note: the Baltimore concert tee bootleggers' game is fabulous. Por ejemplo: they didn't even bother to photoshop out the vendor "low tix" warning icons out of screencap they used for the dates on their Disturbed bootleg tee. These guys dngaf and it's great.

Bonus beer: We had dinner at The Brewer's Art, whose Resurrection abbey brown ale I'm a big fan of. The food was great and so were the other beers, particularly their GPT green peppercorn trippel and Daytrip to Yorkshire English old ale.

Building Bullshit! Has been so egregious and frequent I've stopped posting about it as it happens. Suffice to say that the building was on fire three times in February, the upstairs tenants flooded our kitchen and closet again when they got high and failed to turn off the faucet in their kitchen again, and our bathroom flooded again after the management company failed to fix the crumbling pipes in our again. We called maintenance at 3:00 in the afternoon when we came home and discovered the problem, but wouldn't you know? The maintenance number listed on the building website and provided to the concierge and answering service was wrong—as has been the case since January when the building manager was first notified of the issue.

But wait! There's more!

On top of that, the management company erroneously sent out notices informing tenants that we hadn't paid rent and that the management company was going to initiate eviction proceedings, again. (Seriously, this is the third time this has happened in the last six months, and the notices to go pretty much everyone in the building, including people like us who religiously pay rent on the 1st of each month.)

This is especially ironic given that the management company didn't think to position the cameras they finally agreed to install in the lobby in such a way as to cover the rent drop box, which was robbed. (Following the robbery, the management company helpfully sent letters to tenants saying that we were responsible for making sure management company received our rent on time, would need to submit payment again if our payments were among those stolen from the rent drop box, and that tenants were responsible for assuming any costs associated with cancelling checks that had been stolen from the rent drop box, which management suggested that we do.

TL;DR—you would think that after this, the management company would reposition the cameras to cover the rent drop box.

WELL. THEY DID NOT.

And it was robbed again. Rinse, repeat. Following this, the management company informed tenants that they were doing away with the rent drop box and that everyone would have to submit payments electronically in the future. This is fine for us, but not for other folks in the building, for specific reasons. Following intervention from the Tenants' Association and city authorities, the management company has informed us that they will be installing a new rent drop box behind the concierge desk. Hopefully they don't put it in a camera blindspot this time.

D&D! Season Three of Oldest D&D Group's homebrew campaign reconvened. The party continues to be as ineptfective as ever. Por ejemplo: across two sessions, we somehow ended up guarding a caravan, ambushed the brigands who were trying to ambush us and defeated them by, among other things, conjuring octopi to drop on their heads, lost half the caravan to hobgoblin raiders, and then ended up with twice as many wagons after we raided the raiders, in a process that happened to involve polymorphing various party members into horses and setting a lot of things on fire.

Second Oldest D&D Group's Saltmarsh campaign reconvened, with a marathon seven-hour battle session that honestly was a bit of a slog, at least for me. (I'm the only player in the group who doesn't use my phone during sessions. In a bid to get the others to pay attention, the DM gave them four additional units to control. This did not lead to less phone usage but resulted in my having one attack per the other players' three to nine, each turn. Ugh.) Things picked up in the following sessions, however, once the DM rebalanced the play mechanics. Subsequent sessions have featured a lot of great combats against some pretty tough critters, as well as the chance use do outside-the-box tactics to defeat them.

D&D Pt. II! We randomly ran into two of the players from Third Oldest D&D Group while out preparing for Geek BBQ Mardi Gras (for which, see below). This group's campaign has been on hiatus since last summer, but will be starting back up again. That was welcome news. Furthermore, as it's an online campaign, I hadn't actually seen these guys in the flesh since the Beforetimes, so it was delightful to have run into them.

D&D Pt. III! Boy, I was not in the headspace to handle BG3 last summer. Last month, I jettisoned my previous games and started fresh. I am definitely in the headspace for it now. I'm really enjoying the tie-ins to Escape from Avernus, and wondering whether any of the Shar/Selûne stuff that's being hinted at ties back in any way to Shar/Selûne developments in BG/BG2 EE. Also, holy crap, this is a great game.

Deadpool 3 Trailer Release Party! Which also apparently involved some sort of major sporting event? IDEK. 😛 At any rate, the food and company were fabulous. I brought a ginger carrot miso dip that people seemed to really like, and people really liked the Aslin sour—Durango Doug—we brought.

Bonus beer: I also picked up a four-pack of Aslin's Orchid imperial stout + vanilla that may be one of my favorite things they've done since Padrino.)

Gaelg! The mid-February holiday meant I was actually able to join in to an online speaking thing. It was exceptionally fun, especially because this is one of the nichest of my niche interests. (Prior to a few years ago, I figured this was a language I would never actually get to, you know, speak to anyone with.) It's weirdly one of the languages I find most intuitive, and I was able to make some decently complex sentences. I got complements on my accent, too. And again, it's just a bunch of fun to be actively using it.

Geek BBQ! Following on the heels of Geek BBQ Friendsgiving, Geek BBQ whiskey white elephant, and Geek BBQ dessert potluck, Geek BBQ put together a Mardi Gras potluck. The music was excellent, the decorations were excellent, and I probably ate my body weight in homemade jambalaya and gumbo. Very good stuff with a very good group of people.

Ice Skating 2.No! Geek BBQ friend called out of the blue one morning to invite us to a free skate at the ice complex. We were skeptical we'd be able to make it in time but were ultimately won over by friend's enthusiasm. Fast forward a hectic 40 minutes later when friend called back to say that they + friend 3 weren't going after all. Luckily, we had not actually paid for the skate yet. We had, however, jettisoned our lazy day in to trek out to the suburbs. What to do? We ended up having brunch at a favorite old venue, which happened to be showing a Scotland vs. Wales rugby match to a probable majority of the area's very enthusiastic fans. It was great energy and a lot of fun.

Karaoke! We decided to eat dinner at a newly opened Thai place before going to Geek BBQ. The food was excellent. We were the only people in the place aside from the server and the manager, who coincidentally happened to be there. Which was amazingly fortuitous and cool, because they invited us into the basement, which they had converted into a karaoke bar, and we got to sing. For free. Whatever and for as long as we wanted. I knocked out a significant portion of Roxette's back catalogue and it was spectacular.

LNY! We went out for dim sum with second oldest D&D group. Our intended destination was a bust (pro tip: do not try to go eat somewhere in a busy shopping center during a major holiday where the parking lot has been converted into stages, seating, and booths). Luckily, we knew of a second dim sum place nearby with really great food, went there, and ate ourselves silly.

What's my language progress look like?

This month I primarily blew through the supplementary hangeul lessons. These are surprisingly useful because I learned Korean directly through hangeul, which means that I never actually learned how to romanize it.

• Chinese — 1/5 through Unit 5; legendary through Unit 2
• Dutch — 4/5 through Unit 3; legendary through Unit 1
• Gaelic — 4/5 through Unit 6; legendary through Unit 3
• Hindi — 1/2 through Unit 2; backburnered until I wrap up a physical textbook
• Indonesian — 1/5 through Unit 11; legendary through Unit 6
• Japanese — 1/5 through Unit 21; legendary through Unit 16
• Korean — 1/2 through Unit 8; legendary through Unit 5
• Latin — 4/5 through Unit 2; legendary through Unit 1
• Welsh — 1/2 through Unit 1; backburnered in favor of a physical textbook

これで以上です。

I was pretty lackadaisical about language stuff last month; hopefully I can keep on track better from February one. And so far, so good.

Mango Indonesian: Chapter 2: Units 4-5; Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Yup. This follows the Mango Bengali course progression exactly, and I am now learning how to ask someone’s sister out/how to set my sister up with some dude I know. The native speakers go heavy on ‘k’s at the end of words, whereas I’d learned (and have always heard) them pronounced more as glottal stops.


Mango Japanese: Chapter 4: Units 1-5
This is far and away the best of the various Mango courses I’ve used, both in terms of breadth (it’s going to take me the better part of a year to complete this at my pace of a unit a day) and in the depth of instruction. Unlike Mango Korean, this course teaches learners when to use particles—and uses them consistently—in all the examples. It also offers regular explanations of nuance, politeness levels, and in what situations it’s appropriate (or not) to use certain grammatical constructions or phrases. True beginners will be much better served by this course than many of the others.


Mango Korean: Review flashcards
I fluctuate between days with 3 or 4 cards to review, and days with upwards of 40. I wonder what (if?) the upper range on their spaced recognition algorithm is.


Mango Scottish Gaelic: Chapter 1: Units 1-5
I did this one seven or so years ago. They’ve added a bunch of content since, so I’m reviewing from the beginning and it’s pretty easy going. Right now I’m just enjoying the spelling differences between Manx and Scots Gaelic cognates (e.g., my ta versus ma-thà, fastyr versus feasgar).


Podcast Gaelgagh: 91-98
This week’s lessons focused on the grammatical form that I think of as corresponding to the だ in Japanese. At any rate, I'll have finished the entire podcast by this point next week and need to decide what I'll pick up next: current contenders are the 1000 Words challenge or possibly the Glossika course.


これで以上です。

Language Learning

Mango Indonesian: Chapter 1: Units 1-3
Being the next Mango course on my list now that I’ve wrapped up Mango Korean. It’s early days in the first chapter, but so far the course has done a good job of introducing various greetings at different levels of formality, which is a smart choice.

But.

For once. Just for once, I’d like to encounter a course or language textbook that does not assume the Default Male^TM student, that features example conversations with or between women, that uses feminine forms and speech patterns in the main lesson while treating their masculine equivalents as an afterthought.^*
*These points apply to Mango Japanese, below, as well as pretty much every other textbook or course I’ve used.


Mango Japanese: Chapter 2: Units 8-10 + R/L, Chapter 1 review, Chapter 3: Units 1-3
Again, I’m struck by how much better written this course is than its Korean counterpart. The grammar explanations are fuller and more frequent, and the course wisely includes particles in all the forms it teaches.


Mango Korean: Chapter 10: Units 9-?, Chapter 1-9 reviews, Placement test
I finished! All 10 chapters, in order, plus their review units and the ‘placement test’ at the end. I found the course useful for drilling basic compound verbs of giving and receiving at the polite and humble registers, expressing prohibitions, the sentence-finial particle ‘네’, and basic embedded quotations.

There’s a lot about it that isn’t great, such that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone hoping to learn the language from scratch. The course:

• Assumes ability to read hangeul
• Provides paltry grammar explanations
• Features example sentences and constructions that seemingly contradict one another due to the paltry grammar explanations
• Inconsistently uses/omits particles
• Makes mistakes in the lesson review sections
• Asks questions in the review/test sections with multiple correct answers, but only accepts one

And then, you get things like this, which ( encapsulates the course's weaknesses in a nutshell. )


Podcast Gaelgagh: 77-83
Last week’s episodes really drilled down on the first- and second-person constructions for “do/don’t like” and “do/don’t prefer,” which was a smart choice as there are several moving parts to each that are easy to confuse. The instructor simultaneously reintroduced verb tenses, additional constructions, and vocabulary the podcast hadn’t touched on for dozens of episodes, for a really useful review.


しっかり学ぶ韓国語―文法と練習問題: Units 1-4
From the Japanese publisher Beru, to whose offerings I lowe most of my Korean ability. Because my goal this year is to continue to work systematically through the language resources I own, I’m starting this one from the beginning and can unsurprisingly blast through the early chapters. That said, I’m pleased to discover that I can easily distinguish 에and 애, which I couldn’t do for years, but have some trouble distinguishing the consonants ㄱ and ㄲ when they’re attached to vowels other than in the practice questions.


これで以上です。

...to those who celebrate it!

I celebrated by heading outside to see the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction, which last occurred before the time of Marco Polo and that’s pretty cool. Initially, I was worried that the clouds that rolled in after sunset would spoil the view, but there was a 20 minute break in the cover where I got great views of the thing. (Not, however, as good as the livestreams.) I didn’t get to see the Geminids last week, but this, along with NEOWISE this past summer, has made for a pretty cool sky viewing year.

Aside from that, I've been keeping on top of the month's language learning.

Mango Japanese: Chapter 1, Units 1-9 + listening and reading
Because I’m already logged in for Korean, and it’s free, so why not?

Already, I can see some major differences between the two courses. There’s about four times as much content for Mango Japanese, for one, and it’s introduced in an even slower and more rote fashion. I also tend to disagree with their choices more, even as I understand that they have to start beginners somewhere and leave some things out to avoid overwhelming them. But some of the choices (e.g. introducing three different forms of 'thank you' and linking them to different levels of politeness, without including past tense conjugations or apologies that function like expressions of gratitude) seem primed to confuse learners when they're introduced later down the line.

Mango Korean: Chapter 8, Units 1-8; Chapter 7, Units 3-6; Chapter 9, Units 1-8; Chapter 10, Unit 1
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this should not be anybody’s first introduction to the language. Be it pronunciation or particles, the course asks students to check their knowledge against questions without providing the information they need to correctly formulate the answers the course gives (or worse, explicitly says there is one definitive way to do something and then introduces new examples that don’t do that thing, without explaining why). It frustrates me; I can only imagine what it would be like for beginners, many of whom probably give up.

Having said that, I do like how the later units present humble and honorific forms, so even my mileage varies.

Podcast Gaelgagh: Lessons 49-69
The instructor’s introduced enough grammar and vocabulary by this point that he can start to have some fun with it, which he does in a wickedly delightful, deadpan fashion. (My favorite example thus far: “How would you say, 'I ate your dog. Sorry. I didn’t eat your cat, though.'”) Both he and the students seem to be greatly enjoying it. Recent units have moved from simple past tense and alienable possession to grammatical constructions for preference, which I’ve always found fun. It’s crazy to think I’ll be finished with the entire podcast in just around a month.

これで以上です。

...my life has been ( consumed by puzzles. )

Before I had any idea that November 7 was going to be anything other than A Day, I engaged in a marathon ( stress clean of the living spaces. )

These efforts were assisted today by the delightful ( surprise acquisition of another shelf. )

And finally, last week's ( language learning. )

これで以上です。

Actually, language learning is not hard. When people say it is, they're almost talking about all the stuff that surrounds language learning, but not the process itself.

To master any language (even a first!) a learner needs to understand the material and then practice it. If a resource introduces something--a writing system, a verb conjugation, a grammar irregularity--without explaining it, many learners will give up in frustration: I don't get what's going on. Heaven help the learner if it introduces an element--spelling, conjugation, irregular verbs--incorrectly, because then they've absorbed something they don't even realise is a mistake and will have to spend time and effort and confusion to 1) realise it's wrong, and b) learn it again, correctly.

Which is why it's insane to me how shitty so many language-learning resources are--to say nothing of those created with self-study in mind. For instance, I dare anyone who's ever even briefly studied Chinese to tell me ( which of these four answers is correct. )

これで以上です。