I’m on Lesson 3!

Posted on November 11, 2009 by HappyGoth

And that’s the short form of my language lesson progress.

The long form is that for the past week and a half (two weeks?) I’ve been plugging away at LiveMocha, and have made some decent progress. I can now:

  • Say hello, thank you, and you’re welcome (Namaste, Dhanyavaad, Aapka swagat hai)
  • Refer to people in the positive and the negative (yeh larka hai, larki nahin hai)
  • Describe the colors of things (Gari chandini rang ki hai)

I can also carry on very simple conversations, and I correctly pronounced a fairly difficult Sanskrit word, along with reading the Devanagari for said word (वृक्ष; I won’t spell this in English, because it involves special phonetic characters that I don’t have on my computer, but it sort of sounds like “vrksha” and it means “tree”).

So, based on my post yesterday about my new/old Indian clothes, here’s the culmination of my learning to date- Meri sari laal rang ki nahi hai, hari hai. (My sari isn’t red, it’s green.)

I still need some practice with the vocabulary; I’ve forgotten the words for brown, gold, building, and door, but I will learn these eventually. The biggest difficulty I’m facing is that the lessons on LiveMocha aren’t terribly descriptive when it comes to gender – I struggled with how to use adjectives and their gender endings, and did poorly on the writing test. I have a great tutor, though, and he explained things to me a little, so that I kind of understand. I think that I need to spend some more time with the Snell books, off-line. They do a great job of explaining the structure behind the usage, which helps (I’m an academic learning, as  opposed to a conversation-based learner; I want to know how things work).

If you can figure out how to find me on the site, add me as a friend (I can’t find anybody, even people whose user names I know and who I’ve friended already). We can practice. The CG has been practicing with me a little, but we’re both so bad still that we’re not making too much progress. However, my accent is good, and the few native speakers I’ve interacted with face-to-face have understood me so far.

Another interesting side-effect of using LiveMocha has been the chat conversations – you use them to converse with somebody who knows the language you’re trying to learn, and you get practice that way. I’ve found them quite useful. However, inevitably my marriage status comes up, since it’s a pretty general topic of conversation. The first time it happened, I was asked what my views were on marriage. After a bit, I managed to explain them pretty well. In the future, I think I’ll let Grover do it for me:

Happy belated 40th birthday, Sesame Street. You’re a big part of who I grew up to be (I blame you for my language obsession, but it’s a good sort of blame).

Posted in Cool things, Hindi | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Tuesday fashion show!

Posted on November 10, 2009 by HappyGoth

A while back I mentioned that I had received some Indian clothes from the coworker of my father-in-law. Last night, I set up the tripod and we took some snazzy photos (wow – that sounds so suspicious when I type it out like that).

Firstly, we have the Salwar Suit of Immense Floweryness:

Lea will be the recipient of the kameez, and I’m keeping the rest; I have a white kameez that will look good with it (and will make the flower pattern a little less overwhelming)

Next, there is the Salwar Suit of Surprisingly Well-Suited Grey and Coral:

So named because I honestly thought it would look ghastly on me, but it really doesn’t!

And then, the most intriguing of the whole batch, The Sari That Could Also Potentially Be a 1970s-Era Prom Dress:

This is also the same sari that was on the CG at the Halloween party. It looks a lot better on her.

And finally, the one that’s the best, which is the green sari with gold embroidery:

I will actually get a lot of wear out of that one, as the embroidery is tasteful and it goes pretty well with my skin tone.

Although it is not of the above gift lot, I had to share my birthday sari:

I would so totally wear this every single day, if I could. It makes me feel like a princess. I will post more photos when the blouse is done.

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Why I knit, #32

Posted on November 9, 2009 by HappyGoth

Because I am never bored, as long as I remember my knitting.

Yep. So we went to get an emissions test, and while we waited we stood outside in the sun, which was lovely, and I started to get bored. And I thought to myself, “Self, I wish we had something to do.” And lo and behold, I had had the presence of mind to stuff my knitting in my purse, and I got three rows done while waiting. Sadly, the camera died before I could get any detail shots, but the photo above is indeed proof that I am still a knitter and that it occasionally is useful, above and beyond warm toes in a drafty old house.

The next day was  my birthday, and there was much eating of foreign food (so much food; remind me that all-you-can-eat-thali plus lassis plus japanese is an uncomfortable me the next morning), and my husband bought me the most lovely sari from Raneez Boutique. I will share a photo, but the choli is in the process of being stitched and you really don’t get a feel for how lovely it is without the choli. I will share as soon as I’ve got both pieces. Thanks to the CG and Jennie (plus their SOs) for sharing my birthday with me!

Main bilkul khushi hoon.

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Camembert is a perfect end to this week

Posted on November 6, 2009 by HappyGoth

sheep in the process of being shorn by that blonde girl.

(just look at that curly mop!)

I have just a little left, and I am happy about that.

So I had intended to be all sorts of productive last night, but then I got online and had a real conversation with somebody in Hindi, and then it was 1am and I got nothing done. However, it is Fiber Friday, so here’s what I’ve got:

Yarn CSAs

Yup, you heard right. Yarn CSAs. What’s a CSA? Well, it’s a fancy acronym for Co-Op, wherein you purchase shares in something and then get a bit of the spoils. For example, we participated in a farm CSA a while back, and for a whole two months we got a surprise assortment of delicious fruits and vegetables once a week. That is how I learned to love fresh figs.

A yarn CSA works the same way, except that you buy a share of a sheep and when it is sheared you get either roving or yarn from that sheep. Most of them do between 6 and 8 skeins of yarn (or the roving equivalent) for a full share. They’re on Etsy and they’re independent. Some only do a specific yarn weight and some do whatever you need. All in all, I think it’s a great way for those of us knitters who are also city people to access awesome wool.

The one I’m fondest of at the moment is Juniper Moon Farm. Apparently part of the deal is a visit to the farm and a chance to meet the sheep, which is pretty cool.

(And this is also something that’s a good gift for that knitter who already has all they need. Those people are so hard to buy for. Stop buying the things you need, knitters! )

Posted in Fiber Friday, knitting | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

[Navel-Gazing] The learning curve

Posted on November 5, 2009 by HappyGoth

Well, more specifically the variations between learning curves and my recent experience with them.

I find that mental things have a much steeper learning curve than physical things, depending on previous experience with similar physical things. For example, if you’ve played a woodwind-type instrument, it’s probably easier for you to switch to a brass instrument and pick it up fairly quickly, even if you haven’t ever played one before. On the other hand, although there are some similarities between the various romance languages, you probably can’t go from French to Italian with the same sort of ease as going between similarly-fingered instruments (though I imagine there’s somebody out there for whom this is contrary).

In my case, I have lulled myself into a false sense of security about learning. Point the first – I am a knitter. Point the second – knitting and crochet are very similar. Point the third – crochet and tambour are very similar. (Point the fourth – tambour and Kevin Bacon are very similar, natch). So while I am somewhat amazed at the speed at which I picked up the tambour embroidery, I am not all that surprised, since I’ve been doing similar things with my fingers and knitting needles for several years.

This led me to believe that I can do anything this quickly. I somehow forgot that it took me four years and roughly 12 college courses (one of which was an intensive graduate-level reading and discussion class) to get me to the level I’m at with French. And on top of that, I spend over a week in France (not ideal, but it’s something) speaking primarily French with native speakers.

So when I started Hindi, I was really upset to find that I am slow at learning it. Well, not completely slow. There is some knowledge of conjugation and whatnot, but I can’t remember vocabulary to save my life. And so I got really frustrated.

Last night, the CG and I had a really tiny, stilted conversation in Hindi (we are both abject beginners) and it rocked. And then today I logged on to my LiveMocha account and did some higher-level coursework in French, and I felt better. Tonight will be the test of whether or not I have retained any of the Hindi. Maybe if I did some little muscle memory thing at the same time? It might work, but I’d have to be so twitchy to speak properly that I probably will take a pass on that idea.

It is, however, in the realm of navel gazing to contemplate why it is that some things are easier to learn than others and why languages seem to be easy for some folks and not others. I heard somewhere (real legitimate, I know) that people who are good at pattern recognition are also good at languages, which sort of makes sense and sort of not. I am decent at math but good at languages. My husband is really good at math (he’s a physicist) but pretty ok at languages (lie: he took ancient Akkadian in college). Weird.

And if anybody figures out how to add friends, other than emailing them, that would totally rock. I can’t find anybody on there.

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Keep me to task

Posted on November 4, 2009 by HappyGoth

Guilt is a powerful motivator, especially coming from anonymous internet people.

Really, that’s why I’m blogging – it keeps me honest. Those analytics make me feel bad, when they’re bad, and it’s a good kick-start.

Like the embroidery, for example. Here is the finished sampler:

Dang. It’s blurry. Oh, well. Anyway, I am really really pleased with how it turned out. I think it needs to be slightly bigger, to get all the detail in I wanted, but all in all it’s not a bad first attempt. I’m going to test a little with a single-ply thread on this same fabric, and then a triple-ply (the way it comes on the spool) on a thicker fabric. We shall see. It’s not too stiff and didn’t pucker as much as I expected when I removed it from the hoop. I will be adding pearls soon, just so I can see how that looks.

The task portion is once I get all the calibration over with, and move on to the actual skirt fabric. If this is 4 inches across and I have 2 yards of 45″ cotton to embroider, that is, oh, say 80 of these to do, plus a bottom border. I’m going to need a lot of guilt motivation.

The second thing is the Hindi. Luckily the people on LiveMocha are really engaged, so I have been motivated to keep checking back. However, knowing that people are following my progress is also a good  motivator. I will feel guilty if I don’t say anything about the language learning for a while.

Here’s my goal for the Hindi:

By the end of this coming May, I want to be able to find a pen pal and write to them in Hindi. I’d also like to be able to shop in Hindi.

By the end of 2010, I want to be able to watch Bollywood movies with the subtitles turned off. I’d also like to start reading books in Hindi.

In 2010, I’ll hopefully have learned enough that I can start learning Sanskrit, which will be helpful for the SCA.

 

So far, I can do really simple things, like introduce myself and ask someone if they speak Hindi. I cannot, however, continue the conversation any farther. I do feel that I can get to my goals fairly smoothly. Keep me honest.

Posted in General stuff, Hindi, sca | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Back to the books again.

Posted on November 3, 2009 by HappyGoth

So I am back to learning Hindi again, a little more so this time. I had given it up for a while, as I got almost to learning new verbs and the couldn’t memorize them or remember postpositions or remember plurals, so I put the books on the shelf and watched a lot of Bollywood, and am a little better at listening comprehension but have atrophied with respect to reading and speaking. Which is to say I’m almost back at square one.

However, I’ve been following Gori Girl’s RSS feed and she posted a beautiful gem of a website, LiveMocha. I spend a couple of hours on it, doing the Hindi 101 course, and I’m feeling a little more confident, in that I learned a few new vocabulary words and have apparently retained some of my basic grammar. I even got some feedback on one of my exercises! I am planning on picking it up at least three times a week, so that maybe I’ll learn it sooner than 2012 (because as we all know, the world ends then, or something; it’s a good goal). I figure that when I was in school and learning French, I had three classes a week for four years, plus conversations and reading books, so even if I can’t get to a fluent point in three years, I can at least be competent enough to eventually do that whole volunteering in India thing I’ve been thinking about. Well, provided that I go someplace where they speak Hindi.

So if you want to learn a language but are cheap (like me) and don’t want to buy Rosetta Stone, go visit:

LiveMocha

My username is legosnell. Friend me, please. I’m lonely.

(The only downside is the usual problem with non-Roman-character-based languages; the transliterations do not match what I’m familiar with from the Rupert Snell books, so I’m doing some double translation sometimes.)

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The Dead Man’s Party

Posted on November 2, 2009 by HappyGoth

Last year, HusbandofLea (HoL) and I threw a party at my house for Halloween. And it was pretty awesome. I unknowingly told everyone it was a pirate theme (I put a picture of a pirate on the invitation, which apparently means it’s a pirate party), so we got a bunch of pirates. And Yul lost his grass skirt gradually all over the house, which was kind of amusing. All in all, it was a decent success.

So this year we were more focused with the theme. After deliberating for a few months, we settled on a Dead Man’s Party, which in this case meant a wake for a fictional dead guy, given by a bunch of people on the other side (that is, dead folks). The idea was to get people to dress as people who are dead/immortal, so nobody had to guess on a costume. I was so excited to see what people decided on.

We sent out invitations, too, with a picture of Mr. Percival Ignatius Aloysius Myron “Neckbone” Smith, Jr (HoL put in the Neckbone part), and then did this great little display on my mantle to commemorate ol’ Neckbone:

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I went to the wholesale florist with a coworker on Thursday and picked up all the floral bits. This is actually still in place, because I like it so much. We also draped black cloth over all the pictures on the walls, and I pinned up my vast collection of antique photos. Those are in place, too.

That was the bulk of the party prep on Saturday afternoon, plus making salsa (I totally made it up, but it turned out great) and getting in costume, and also a bit of trick-or-treat. HoL had a blast scaring trick-or-treaters with Jennie. We knew that there were kids at the door not because they knocked, but because periodically we’d hear a crowd of screams. It was awesome.

And we didn’t lack food or drink (I ate Robin’s seven-layer dip for lunch – yum yum).

We had at the party:

Lucretia Borgia (Lea)

Satan (HoL; he made a baby cry,  but felt really awful about it)

two Deaths

Brett Favre (because he is dead to us)

a Dog-God thing

Frida Kahlo (me)

a virgin sacrifice (Jennie)

Johnny and June Cash

a ladybug

a vampire

Albus Dumbledore

Cernunnos (he had real antlers! and he brought us a pirate! it is two feet tall!)

Gaia

two monks of the Order of Snuggy (it rocked – it looked like robes from the front, but from the back, it was totally open)

Elliot Ness

Mama Cass

Annie Oakley

Doc Holiday (I think; maybe Tesla? Does anybody know?)

a slain dragon (went well with Jennie’s costume, even if he was three feet tall and ran my dishwasher; he’s only two)

a flapper

the Tropicana guy

the Blue Fairy, Puss in Boots, and a Harlequin (I think); they had another theme party to go to later on

the Hitman and a dude in a kilt (hey, can’t go wrong with dudes in kilts)

So, yeah. It was pretty successful. Alas, Abraham Lincoln and Sharon Tate (+1) were feeling unwell (separately – they don’t actually know each other), so we missed them. We also missed Billy Mays and the Tub of OxiClean, but Katy came earlier in the afternoon with a bottle of wine. So that was cool. She also introduced me to mascara facial hair, which made a great Frida eyebrow. The husband has been working late hours, so he came home late, ate some dinner, and then crashed in our bedroom, oblivious to the party.

The most exciting part was when we were telling stories about Neckbone, and then Crazy Yelling Guy (the drunk, crazy neighbor) came to the door and yelled at us incoherently, demanded a beer, and refused to leave until the Devil came and showed him out. Apparently he came back again at 2 am or so and stood on our lawn, yelling at the house. He does that.

Here are some photo highlights (taken from friends’ Facebook pages):

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Yul, in his rockin’ Dog God costume. His eyes glowed red! It was awesome.

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Man, I remember when I could sit under tables like this. I miss that.

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Me as Frida, the Siblings of Snuggy, and Mama Cass. This is what happens when SCA people do Halloween.

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The ChickenGoddess (of Snuggy) got really warm in all that fleece, so I put her in the peach sari. Bizarrely enough, she looked lovely in it. I envy her this, just a bit. I mean, the sari is really really weird (did I mention that the sequins are holographic? well, they are). I think it’s just her certain charm and obvious good looks.

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Well, I suppose this is the natural outcome of a virgin sacrifice.

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Another Frida photo, because I’m stuck on myself like that. The flowers stayed put, awesomely enough.

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All in all, it was pretty great, and it is nice to have a full house every now and again.

Thanks, folks, for a great Halloween.

Posted in Cool things | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

It is so totally Halloween already!

Posted on October 30, 2009 by HappyGoth

I challenge you to say otherwise. Okay, so you probably will. But I have evidence to the contrary! Observe:

EXHIBIT A

I wore a costume to work today. It was so blingy. And I had a blast. I even got 20% off at lunch, although the waitress didn’t realize I was in a costume (how cool is that?). I thought it was rather obvious, but whatever. Anyway, it was like this:

Yesssssssss. I wrapped that sari this morning, all by myself, in roughly the same amount of time it takes to put on a pair of jeans and a nice shirt. The sari is not as blingy as the peach-colored one I got in the mail, but it’s pretty dang blingy. I also have blingy earrings to go with it (you can kinda see them in the photo). I thought I was appropriately retro Bollywood.

JJ wanted in on the photo, too:

He didn’t really care how accurate the costume was, as long as I scratched behind his ears. Which I did.

And then I got silly and did the obligatory fashion pose:

I won’t quit my day job, don’t worry. I know that a future of sari modeling is probably not terribly reasonable. It was fun, though.

And then, all of us got together for a group shot. We had a soldier, one synchronized swimmer (my favorite costume ever) and a character from Super Smash Brothers (and I’m lame and don’t remember his name; I will correct this later):

Incidentally, I totally forgot that my sunglasses were on my head by the time we got to these photos. Oh, well.

Then the photographer got in on things, dressed as a creepy clown:

(Notice how the soldier’s boots are very large; she borrowed them from her husband)

And then somebody had the idea that we should all jump. We got ready:

And then WHEEEEEE:

Happy Halloween, everybody.

 

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Schwag

Posted on October 29, 2009 by HappyGoth

My in-laws are truly spectacular people. For every holiday, we get a box full of nifty/weird stuff, and on occasion these boxes come without a holiday.

The box that came to the office yesterday was for Halloween, and was as large as Christmas boxes have been in the past. It was glorious. It contained several bags of Halloween candy, including (but not limited to) Tootsie Rolls, Goetze’s Caramels, these weird New Moon-themed chocolates (which are kind of creepy), York Peppermint Batties (tee hee), cocoa almonds; a DVD of The Pit and the Pendulum; eight VHS tapes of The Incredible Mr. Wong (starring Boris Karloff); Halloween ornaments; best of all, a bag full of secondhand Indian clothing from the father-in-law’s coworker.

Oh, yeah. Second-hand Indian clothing. Two salwar suits and two saris. One salwar suit is a sort of mauvey grey kameez and coral-colored salwar and dupatta, and the other is gigantic, cotton, and a beige-y floral (its dupatta will most likely become part of my SCA kit). The saris are glorious. The first is like a 1970s prom dress. Seriously. It is peach, gauzy, and trimmed with cabuchon-style rhinestones (plastic ones). It’s kind of like this:

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(from the Sydneys Vintage Clothing website)

Only as a sari. It has a matching choli. I feel an overwhelming need to figure out a place to wear it in public.

The above photos was as close as I could come to an example; nothing I found on the internet quite captures the sari’s essence. This dress is at least all once color (sort of); the sari’s rhinestones are white and green and red and yellow and set in more peach thread embroidery.

The other is lime green chiffon, with zari borders. It also has a matching choli, which fits me nicely, and a matching petticoat. I will certainly find a place to wear it.

And all in all, although some of the items are… interesting, I am thrilled with all of them because, as I told my husband, “I never would’ve bought any of this for myself!” Well, except for that green sari. The green sari is really quite lovely.

I promise to post photos just as soon as I take them.

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