Well, ladies and gentlemen, we are at the end of another quarter, known in the mouth of the people as Q3 – 2011. You can call me a typical accountant if you like, but I always tend to be aware of these quarter ends and I tend to have certain aims and goals for what I like to achieve both professionally and in my hobbies each quarter and so days like today are an opportunity to take stock of where I am.
Doing so generated just a couple of thoughts which I thought I’d like to share with you.
I had a nice long time in the UK, and was supposed to be taking time off, but in the event work kept me fairly involved even though at a distance, and I made little progress on the writing projects I had in mind, especially the Goldlist book and the workbook for the Huliganov Russian course. Hence these are not really ready to show yet, apologies to those of my viewers and readers whom I may have led to hope that they would be. Work has to come first, I have to be able to look after my family.
It’s also three quarters through the 400th anniversary year of the KJV and I also didn’t get far with the readings of the KJV I wanted to do – this is all in the last quarter now if I’m going to do it at all in this year.
In Japanese I made a slight breakthrough while discovering a way to adapt goldlist principles to working through the Heising book and getting the best of both worlds – more on that when I get further on with it. In any event I registered for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, level 5, which is on Decmber 4th in Warsaw, which is a target to work towards,
World events seem to be leaving something to be desired, with hurricanes in the UK, people defrauding UBS out of money that makes Nick Leeson look like a small timer, and the continuing threat of the EURO going down the tubes at the hands of defaults by Greece and other weaker countries, as well as a few nights of crazy behaviour in the UK by vandals and malcontents out for some fun at the expense of working people have made the last quarter a very strange time. We are edging nearer and nearer to a precipice. Winter will draw in soon, the nights will be longer, the days colder, and we are going to be in for a long and hard winter.
Last winter I wrote an article explaining to UK people and others from places where the winters are normally mild how to go about surviving a Siberian style winter. I recommend you read this once again and think about it.
http://huliganov.tv/2010/12/16/huliganovs-winter-hinters/ is the place to go for it.
Many thanks again to my loyal viewers and readers, which here on this blog currently number 96. Thanks especially to those of you who join in on discussions, I hope for more of that. If I am sometimes slow in getting to moderate them, sorry. I have to keep the mod thing on because otherwise a lot of spam will get on, which thanks to the new technology is not the case at the moment, and sometimes I don’t have the ability to go online every evening.
Every comment is valued, even if I don’t have anything to say back to some.
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Thanks for sharing this — I look forward to reading about survival in the Siberian climate, as I intend to relocate from my place of birth and upbringing (California!) to much colder climates in northern Europe / Eurasia and, while I love snow and cold, unfortunately tend toward the small and frail in the face of frost and freeze 😮 I will also be taking a language level exam, in Chinese, at the end of the academic semester, and am looking forward to having a more contained and coherent body of material to focus on in preparation for that… Alas, there is never enough time for all of the interesting projects and work we would like to do! Just yesterday I was mentioning to a friend that my days would be better suited to about 35 or 40 hours, rather than the measly 24 which never seems to be enough. So this is probably why I have not been extremely active in this forum — But I will try to jump in a bit more often in future. Thanks tremendously for your online presence and offerings – Always enlightening and enjoyable. -Whitecat
The reference here to the London rioting (and the malcontents) led me ponder more on the problem of evil in society. It seems to me that evil is not just the absence of goodwill, sympathy or compassion but a palpable hatred and resentment of constructiveness. A constant force ever-ready to destroy the positive and resist any attempts to build a more meaningful society. There would appear to be an almost tangible malevolence which is more readily felt than would be the case for the argument that it is impossible for anything to exist without its counterbalance. It doesn’t seem to be the other side of the same coin but an independently existing malice. And whilst I would hesitate to call it a devil it can often seem that there is some validity in belief in an evil force.
Any other views on this ?
DevaDog
I wasn’t aware of the KJV anniversary, although I should have noticed.
I’m looking forward to hearing more about this newfound compability between the Goldlist and RtK! I tried to figure out a way to combine them once, but it didn’t work too well for me, so I gave it up.
Also, good luck on the JLPT! I did level 4 last year, and if your experience is anything like mine, it’ll be a breeze. Have you fully goldlisted all the words and characters for this level? I’m considering learning all the characters and words for the Chinese counterpart, the HSK, and go straight for the highest level. Do you think that would be a good idea?