All Change!

I’ve been quieter than intended. Mostly due to the fact that we moved house, shifting from our South Melbourne abode to a wood-fired home up in the Dandenong hills. I guess I should bust out the YouTube video I made to show it off to friends and family. Whack the HD button for a super-swanky view.

So what of other hobbies?

I’ve done almost no diving for some time now. That’s set to change with a trip up to Queensland next weekend on a live-a-board. It’ll be great to do some ace diving in warm water, and this time I’m going to bust out a video camera having recently acquired one (as used on the above shot) and a suitable waterproof housing. That’ll be fun!

On my Chinese studies, my classes stopped and I wasn’t inclined to enroll in any more since, as discussed earlier, I think I’m well past the point where these sort of casual hobby classes can work. There simply isn’t a market for them so virtually no schools. I enrolled to RMIT part-time next year but that doesn’t start until Feb or so. Private tutoring is definitely on the cards but right now I’m quite enjoying self-study – particularly due to the amount of extra time I have on the lengthy train journey to and from Belgrave.

I’m also reaching a sort of critical point, I think, where I call myself genuinely intermediate although with a heavy bias on the written language. I’ve started reading Tin Tin books in Chinese, which is pretty awesome. I’ve also signed up to QQ and hang out in English chat rooms with Chinese people where I can help them out and they can help me out from time to time. During walks I tend to listen to Chinese Pod podcasts, less so Popup Chinese purely because the CP ones are generally lengthier and I get value out of trying to understand the reasonable amounts of improv Chinese in each one.

When things settle down a bit, I’ll probably look harder for a tutor. In the mean time there’s a million things to do with the new place not the least beginning preparations for the upcoming fire season. Well, that’ll be interesting…