Judging by the news that the Russian Senate unanimously approved Putin’s request to send military forces to the Ukraine, I wondered what the US might do? Send a sternly worded letter? Sanctions?
Sending ships into the Black Sea might be one possibility, but I also thought Russia might give up Edward Snowden if the US agrees to back off regarding Russia’s plans for the Ukraine.
Far-fetched, I know.
I’ve been using OS X 10.9 for awhile now and one respect it actually seems a bit slower than the previous versions of OS X. After I login, it takes a lot longer for the Dock and the Desktop icons to appear. I’ve noticed this on two different Macs.
It’s nearly five in the morning, and I’m awake after feeling some indigestion. It’s subsiding now, but it’s a very potent reminder of what happened to me on Friday.
Last Friday, I was tired and went to bed early, and around 5:30 pm or 6:00 pm. I woke up around 11:30 because of a feeling of indigestion. I took some generic Tums and sat at my desk awhile, waiting for the indigestion to subside, but it didn’t exactly. Instead, I felt nauseous. Shortly before midnight, I was in the bathroom, vomiting heavily. I felt terrible. I tried to go back to bed, but about half an hour later, I began to feel nauseous again. A little after 1:00 am, I was back in the bathroom, vomiting. Sadly, this became a routine over the next several hours. Between 11:30 pm Friday and 7:30 am the following morning, I vomited seven times.
I’ve been sick before; with the flu, food-borne illness, and alcoholic over-indulgence, but I’ve never been as sick as this. In the past, when I’ve been sick, I might vomit two or three times over the course of a few hours. This weekend, was much worse than any of those previous episodes.
Vomiting can lead to dehydration. Knowing this, after the first time or two I vomited, I rinsed out my mouth with water (spitting it all out), then drank some water. I also thought it might help calm my stomach. It didn’t. By the third time, I decided to try some coconut water that I had in the fridge. On the container, it says it’s good for rehydration, so I figured it couldn’t hurt. It didn’t help either, since I vomited again later on. After that, I didn’t drink anything, but still used water to rinse my mouth, trying to console myself that it must be over soon.
Knowing that vomiting can lead to dehydration, and unable to keep any water down by the traditional route, I knew I would need an IV to get rehydrated. After vomiting for the seventh time shortly after 7:00 am, I decided to walk to the Methodist Hospital ER, six blocks away. I was there for a couple of hours and got an IV of saline, and they also gave me a shot of some anti-nausea medication (anti-emetic). They discharged me with a prescription for Zofran, a sub-lingual tablet for nausea treatment.
I picked up the prescription, along with some ginger ale (a good home remedy for nausea), and went back home. I felt better, but still wasn’t great. I felt a bit feverish, and my body ached all over. I went to bed around noon and woke up around 5:00 pm. It felt great to sleep that long without being nauseous. I had a fever of 101ºF, and my body ached, so I still felt miserable, but at least I wasn’t nauseous. Around 6:00 pm, I went to sleep again, and woke again around midnight. Around 1:30 I went back to sleep again, and woke up around 8:30. That morning, for a few hours, I had some diarrhea, but I was still glad it wasn’t nausea.
Throughout Sunday, I gradually started to feel better. My back still ached, but I attributed that to all the vomiting (it felt a bit like I had done too many sit-ups, and the bouts of nausea were definitely an intense workout).
This morning, since waking up, I’ve taken a Zofran pill and drank some coconut water. I’ve had some diarrhea, and haven’t decided if I’ll go into work or not (probably, yes, I think).
I suspect that the reason I got sick was due to something I ate, but I don’t know what. The brands of food shall be nameless, but I’ll be leery of trying them again for awhile. It’s also possible that I had the flu, though I got a flu shot in September. In the past, when I’ve gotten sick from bad food, I don’t remember getting a fever, which makes me think it was the flu. However, according to Wikipedia (caveat emptor), fever can sometimes accompany this illness.
One strange side-effect I noticed after first vomiting was that the skin on my face got all blotchy. I washed my face, but it didn’t go away. My face is still a bit blotchy in places, but not as bad as it was on Saturday. I also have sub-conjunctival hemorrhages in both eyes, but that’s not surprising given the frequency and intensity of the vomiting. Luckily, those cause no pain, and go away on their own.
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I think goals are a good idea. Goals seem to have more specificity, in my mind. I’m sometimes been asked why I want to learn Chinese, but there’s no simple answer for that. However, I have come up with some simple goals for my Chinese studies that I want to accomplish over the coming year.
These are just the goals for this year. I don’t anticipate becoming fluent, or even very good, but I hope to understand and be understood.
Classes started again this past week, so that means I started in the next level Chinese class EALC-C132. EALC is East Asian Languages and Cultures and the second C stands for Chinese. They only have Chinese and Japanese, which is a shame, since 我觉得 it would be cool to learn Korean or Thai. The Bloomington campus of IU has a much larger selection of language programs to choose from. But, I digress…
This class looks like it will be more interesting than other language classes I’ve taken. Some of the required assignments include using QQ (a Chinese instant messaging app) to engage in conversation with our 同学们 (classmates), and submitting audio and video recordings to OnCourse (a IU website for classes). If I understand correctly, the recordings will be of us using Chinese. We’ll see how that goes.
Just before the first class, I mentioned to 吴老师 that I thought I did fairly well on the HSK level 1 practice test, then she suggested I try the level 2 practice test. The HSK exam isn’t until March 16th, and registration doesn’t begin until sometime in February, so I have a bit of time to try it out. 0_o
I’ve tried a couple new recipes for 包子 which I’ll post sometime.
While there are a lot of porn tube sites, there should be a fight tube site. There are sites that show professional and amateur bouts (MMA, boxing, etc), but that’s not what I’m thinking. The fight tube site I want to see is one with fights taken from films and TV shows.
There could be categories, like gun fights, martial arts fights, one-on-one fights, one-vs-many fights, sword fights, aerial dogfights, epic battles, car chases (which I think of as a type of fighting with vehicles), and so on.
I thought about this while watching Bruce Lee’s Game of Death. 李先生 died before it was finished, so the producers cobbled together a storyline to paste together a bunch of Bruce Lee fight scenes. Basically, the film is a bunch of Bruce Lee fight scenes interspersed with some scenes to let the audience know there’s a plot, too. Then I started wondering how those fight scenes compared to fight scenes from other movies. It probably wouldn’t be fair to compare a fight with Bruce Lee to a fight with Clint Eastwood (Epic Rap Battles of History, notwithstanding), but it would be easy to compare his fights to those in more modern martial arts films, such as Ip Man.
As the old song says, “The weather outside is frightful.” I’ve lived in Indy 14 years and this is probably the worst storm I’ve seen in that time. Work (IUPUI) is closed tomorrow. That’s not such a big deal, since they’ve closed the campus because of weather on previous occasions. However, those previous closures were called around five or six in the morning on the day of those closure. This time, they closed it more than twelve hours ahead of time.
While I’m not one to complain about closures, I’ve been on vacation the past two weeks and have stuff to do. Some of the things might be easier to get done if no one else is around (i.e. a computer/device inventory), but other stuff will be hard to do, such fixing people’s computers when they’re not around to tell me what’s wrong.
At the moment there’s a lot of snow on the ground, it’s about 10ºF with gusty wind. Sometime tomorrow (er, today), the wind chill is supposed to be around -24º. The snow doesn’t bother me so much, but the temperatures make it a good day to stay home.
At different websites online, I saw mentions of a Chinese language test known as the HSK, but for some reason I assumed it had to do with Cantonese and Hong Kong. Turns out it’s a test of Mandarin – basically a Mandarin Chinese version of the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) exam.
HSK stands for Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì (汉语水平考试), which is translated as Chinese Proficiency Test. It’s administered by Hanban, an NGO in mainland China. The HSK exam has different levels, with level 1 being the most basic, and level 6 being the most advanced. My goal for the coming year is to take and pass the HSK level 1 exam in March and the level 2 exam sometime next autumn or winter. It’s offered at locations around the world, including here in Indianapolis. Based on the number of characters and the size of the vocabulary to learn, I think it might be possible to take the HSK level 3 exam in Spring of 2015, but it may be 2016 before I’ll be ready for the level 4 exam. By that time, I’ll have finished all of the Chinese language classes offered at IUPUI.
There are a lot of places online to find stuff to help prepare for the HSK. There are apps, flashcard sets, as well as regular websites with the HSK character and word lists. After the bump, I’ll list the level 1 character and word lists, which I found here. It’s mainly for my benefit, though if it helps anyone else, that’s nice too.
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Anki is a flashcard application, but unlike paper flashcards, or some basic flashcard apps, Anki does some things they don’t. The formal term for applications like Anki is “spaced repetition software”, which is sort of like flashcards on steroids. With Anki, you can add images, such as photos or diagrams, but you can also add audio. You can’t do that with regular flashcards.
Anki works a bit like this: You add a bunch of cards, then start studying them. If you think a card was easy, you mark it as easy and it won’t show you that card for a few days. If you think a card was hard, you mark it as hard and it will show it to you again in a few minutes.
Another ace up Anki’s sleeve is the statistics it tallies. It totals how many cards are in your deck, how many you’ve marked as easy or hard, how many you’ve seen, how many you haven’t seen, and it calculates the average number of cards per day, the average number of easy or difficult cards, and it forecasts for the future. It looks like it will also “suspend” cards, which I presume means it will stop showing you certain cards if you keep marking them as easy. Since I’m still new to Anki, this hasn’t happened to me yet, so it’s just a guess.
For me, the most useful part of Anki is the ability to create templates. It comes with some basic templates, such as front/back flashcards and cloze statements (missing words statements, i.e. Washington, D.C. is the ________ of the United States.). Those are okay, but I felt they weren’t really helpful for me to try and learn Chinese. What I needed was a three-sided flashcard with one side for the Chinese character, one side for the pinyin, and one side for the English tranlation. With Anki, this is possible. Since it would also be useful for others learning languages with non-latin characters, I’ve put the steps below.
Open Anki and from the Tools menu select Manage Note Types (NOTE: I’m writing this based on version 2.0.8 for the Mac. Older versions, and Windows and Linux versions, might be a bit different.) Click on the Add button. Select Add: Forward and Reverse from the list and click on the OK button. Enter a name for the new note type (I used roman, non-roman, translation for mine.) Select your note type from the list and click on the Fields… button. You may want to rename the default fields to make them more precise. For mine, I renamed Front to Non-Roman, and Back to Roman. Click on the Add button and give a name to the new field. I named my third field Translation. Click on the OK button, then click on the Close button. Select your note type from the list and click on the Cards… button.
Near the top of the window, you’ll see two buttons marked Card 1 and Card 2 and to the right of that is a button with a plus sign. Click that and a new card will appear. Click on the button marked Card 1. On the right side of the window are two preview panels, while on the left side of the window there are two panels for templates and one for styling. You don’t have to make any changes, but for my deck, I edited the back template. I typed <br> next to {{Roman}} and added {{Translation}} on the next line down. On Card 2, I edited the back template the same way. For Card 3, I deleted the entire front template and added {{Translation}}, while for the back template I changed {{Roman}} to {{Non-Roman}}, added a <br> next to it, and added {{Roman}} to the next line.
Close the Note Types window and you are set to start using the new type. When you go to add a new card, you will have to select the card type from the list, but it should default to that type for every subsequent new card.
When studying with Anki and it gives me a card with the Chinese characters, I try to pronounce them, either out loud or in my head, and I also try to figure out what they mean (What is the English translation?). After that, I click the Show Answer button to see if I was correct.
When it shows me the Pinyin, I try to write the characters on a sheet of scrap paper, or if I don’t have any paper, I use my finger to trace the character on something. It’s not as satisfying as using paper, but it gets the job done.
When it shows me the English word, I try write the characters on some paper and try to remember what they sound like.
During the semester, I just had one deck for everything I learned in class. After the end of the semester, I created two new decks in Anki. One for the individual characters, and one for the character compounds. Then I started from the beginning of the textbook and added all the individual characters we learned, then all of the character compounds. The beginning of the textbook has a section with a few dozen radicals, which we didn’t cover in class. In class, the teacher would sometimes point out a radical in whatever character we were learning, but it wasn’t all the time. I think learning and knowing these radicals will be useful when I try taking the HSK exam, so I added them to the deck with individual characters, even though I don’t know them yet.
I’m still new to Anki, so there are almost certainly things about it which I haven’t discovered, but as far as free programs go, this is very useful. It’s available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. There are also companion apps for iOS and Android, Ankimobile and Ankidroid, respectively. The iOS version costs money, but it’s used to pay for Anki development, so you may find it worthwhile.
(NOTE: For those who want another take on creating templates for Anki, check out http://remembereverything.org/anki-2-vocabulary-flash-cards/. BONUS, they have pics of the process.)
Since there is about a month between the end of one semester and the beginning of the next, I had to devise some way to keep my meager 中文 skills fresh, or at least keep them from being lost.
One way is to watch Chinese language film and videos. During the semester, I felt like I was doing well with knowing the characters, but not as well with listening. Now it seems like things have changed and I’m doing slightly better with listening than with 汉字. That’s probably because I’m not using the flash cards as much. Still, it’s reassuring when I can watch a movie and understand a word or a phrase, even though it sometimes takes me a few seconds to get it.
A recent example was when I was watching some video with a man and a woman in a bedroom. The woman said something, and it went in one ear and out the other. Then a few seconds later I realized she asked, “你爱我吗？” – “Do you love me?”
Anyway, here are some of the tools I’m using to help me learn Chinese:
Pleco – A Chinese-English dictionary app for Android and iPhone. This app is probably the most indispensable tool I use. It allows users to enter English words, Pinyin, or Chinese characters to look up entries. The best part is being able to draw characters that I don’t know the meaning of, and it will show me several options for the character it thinks I want. It also seems like stroke order isn’t so important. Pleco has a free basic application, and add-ons that can be purchased.
Anki – Spaced-repetition software (SRS), sometimes known as “smart flashcards” or “flashcards on steroids”, take the idea of flashcards and updates them for the 21st century. Anki is one of the best SRS apps out there. Not only does it allow you to create your own flashcards, and not only does it allow you to add images, video, and audio, it also allows you to create custom flashcard templates. An example is the “three-sided” flashcard template I created for Chinese. One side is for the English word, one side is for Pinyin, and one side is for the Chinese characters. I’ll post an article on how to do this soon. Anki is available for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, and for any device with a web-browser. The iOS version requires payment, but those payments fund Anki development, so that takes some of the sting out of it.
Mandarin Popup – This is a Firefox add-on that I recently found out about. It hasn’t been updated since 2011, but it still works well on the current version of Firefox (I’m using Firefox version 26.0). If you hover over a Chinese character, it shows the meaning of the character and the Mandarin pronunciation. It also does well with word compounds of more than one character.
Aside from those specific tools, I mainly just go to Chinese language websites (中文网站), watch Chinese language films, and review the textbook from my Chinese class. These should help keep me from forgetting Chinese for the next few weeks.