Four weeks in: Things are looking up!

I think I may have turned a corner. Terrible Thursday turned out to be a fantastic day. Starting off with a return of my first assignment, minor as it was, scoring 4.5 out of 5, which was the highest in our tutorial group. This was a minor piece but it feels symbolic, certainly posting about it on Facebook and the resulting encouraging comments was very nice. I felt as well prepared as I could have been, having engaged in herculean study over the weekend and my spare day. It felt pretty satisfying to hand in a Lit & Perf assignment on Othello which I think is pretty damn good, and the monster 300 character homework for Chinese.

So the Chinese… Terrible Thursday has the hardest class with the dreaded listening comprehension class with the stern task master Mrs Gou. It seems I’m still utterly crap at it despite listening to the recordings from previous lessons over and over again, transcribing them. That was kind of disappointing, I hoped to do better but I studied my hanzi 10 times longer than I did listening comprehension, largely because I know I’m getting marked on it and because I had a major piece of homework. Re-listening to listening comprehension tests is a bit like podcasts, when you’ve worked out what something means it’s pretty easy to follow when you hear it again. I think this helps with phrases, I pulled off an impressive save purely on something that was in a Chinese Pod podcast once.

I did so well at writing this week, and still so bad at listening comprehension, that I think I’m going to switch the priority for the upcoming week. Strangely phrases I can bust out with fluency are actually things from podcasts too, they seem to have had this profound impact on me which I didn’t even register before.

There is one markable bit of work done in this listening comprehension where the teacher dictates some words and you have to write them down in Chinese. So it’s a test of listening and writing. I did very badly last week (only because I didn’t have enough time to write down the damn characters, I could have teased them out) but my intense study regime paid dividends and I got most of them right this time which I was pretty damn chuffed with. No telling off this week, I think she even said “well done”. Blimey!

The second Chinese class is very hard core on writing. It’s basically an excersize in translating a bunch of sentences of ever escalating complexity into Chinese, writing it in Chinese. This is hosted by the wonderful Chinese coordinator Dr Zhou, I always thoroughly enjoy his classes. Notably he doesn’t bang on for minutes in Chinese when it’s apparent the class isn’t following. Dr Zhou had kind words to say the week before even though I was utterly painstaking at writing handzi. My improvement in this area was pretty dramatic, knowing most of the characters, writing them a hell of a lot quicker and in a somewhat legible manner. I was so busy at the task that I hadn’t really noticed how well I was doing, Dr Zhou pointed out how much faster I was and he’s right… I basically steamed all the way through and answered them all in the time we had.

I like this class even when I don’t do so well because I really enjoy sentence composition. Later I’ll type up the sentences properly and take a note of my mistakes. Incredibly the longest and hardest one of all I got 90% correct, only missing a 的. I’m still kind of shell shocked that I got it right, much less actually hand wrote the damn thing in Chinese. For posterity I think I’ll include it here.

E: The clothes that my mother bought me in China is nice on me, but a bit of loose. I would like to exchange it for something else but I don’t have the money to buy a flight ticket.

C: 我妈妈在中国给我买的衣服我穿着好看，但是有一点儿肥。 我想换别的东西，但是没有足够的钱买飞机票。

The marathon of  Terrible Thursday rounded off with a couple of lectures which were pretty interesting, occupying my usual first or second row  seat like a proper ‘square’. Inevitably this ends up meaning I sit right next to the tutors. I don’t really understand why you’d want to sit up the back but then I’m paying bloody thousands to be here so I’m a little more interested in what’s going on than chatting to my mates. (Not having any probably helps in this regard).

4.30 and it’s knock off time, down to a pub to swill a couple ales before the wife shows up. Then off to a gig to see one of my favorite female artists Imogen Heap. This was an absolutely amazing gig. Curious how I’ve gone to see a couple of gigs at The Billboard (a great venue in Melbourne to be sure) and they’ve both been female vocalists with a stage packed with innovative backup musicians. It was hands up right up there in the best gigs I’ve seen in Melbourne. After the disappointment of Massive Attack the week prior (they couldn’t be arsed to turn the music up, you could literally turn to the person to your left and just speak to them in a normal voice), I’m sworn off big gigs. They’re expensive and have mostly been a disappointment while smaller gigs have just been vastly better value for money. Up close and personal, surrounded by easy to get to bars and a fraction of the price. No brainer isn’t it?

Even the crappy rail replacement service that meant we ended up getting home at midnight couldn’t really put a downer on what was actually an exhausting but fucking excellent day. A better day, I might add, than I ever would have had if I was doing my old job. So for awhile at least I feel pretty good about this course. Jeannine also had her contract extended so our money woes aren’t apocalyptic and are merely disastrous. A good week then, all told