A Way to Quickly Learn Foreign Vocabulary

I have done around 19 pages of my French grammar book (small hurray!) and I realized I am facing a problem with vocab.

Each topic starts out with a vocab list, this is one of the lists of verbs: 

How am I going to learn all of it and stick it in my memory?? And then repeat this for every topic? I'll probably spend more time memorizing verbs than anything else. 

So I remembered one of my own tips: Keep it easy. 

Now this looks more manageable. I choose 5 verbs from each list, small enough to seem easy, and many enough to make it a little bit challenging. I write them on a sticky note and I transfer them to each chapter I advance to. 

How do I choose the words? I set some simple guidelines: (always keep it simple!) 

1. It must be a word I am likely to read or use. So the word 'tordre' (twist) is out, but 'attendre' (wait) is in. I am more likely to use 'attendre' in a sentence than 'tordre'.

2. It must be a word that I cannot understand easily. Some words in French are close enough to their English equivalent that translation is not really necessary. You don't need to learn French to guess that 'descendre' means 'to go down', but you may need to know that 'pretendre' means to claim. That puts 'pretendre' in my list. 

3. Very common words that I have encountered before are out. 'Manger' (to eat' is a word I have seen many times. So are 'je', 'tu', 'il' and 'elle', so I won't bother with them. 

Lastly, as a motivation, 

4. I want to learn positive words. 'Perdre' fits all the criteria mentioned above, but has a negative connotation. I'd rather learn 'gagner' (to win) first. That is a much more positive meaning to learn! 

Idiot's Guide to Keeping Resolutions

We always have personal goals in our life we want to accomplish. And we always have obstacles that get in the way of those goals. 

One of my ongoing obstacle is work. It takes up so much of my time and energy that when I get home, all I want to do is fall on the sofa and do nothing more exerting than reaching for the remote. That's when a lot of my goals start falling by the wayside. At the end of the year, I feel so sad when I think of what I could have done and didn't. 

I'm thus interested in reading articles about goal achievement, and after reading a few, I think I have managed to narrow it down to something easy that I can keep to: 

This is a super-primitive note to remind myself how to keep going. In these few words, however, are some powerful takeaways.

1. Plan. 
I do this well already for the gym. I will plan the days I will go and pack my gym attire the night before, thus ensuring that I actually carry out my gym plan the next day. It's not foolproof, because there are times that coffee at a cafe is that much more appealing, but 9 out of 10 times, I do carry out my plans. So why not apply that to the other stuff I want to do, like French? Plan a time to do it and stick to it. Look at the day and see where you can schedule in time for work, time for gym, time for cooking and time for hobbies.

However, I also know that time is really short on some days, especially with marking and gym and cooking, so this comes to my next point:

2. Keep it Easy.
I know I'm kidding myself if I say I want to be 100% fluent in French in 2 months. Not only that, but if I set myself a big goal and I don't reach it, it can be discouraging and I may not try again. 
So I keep it easy for myself, especially when I know I have heavy markloads. Maybe I can't finish 10 pages of French grammar *horrors* but I can do one exercise a day, which is maybe half a page? That's a small step that is accomplishable and it's not that daunting that I will be put off by it, but yet it brings me one small step closer to my goal of learning French. 

The last part is one of the hardest in keeping resolutions, which is to

3. Keep to it, already. 
Now I have a plan. I've made it so easy even a child could do it. Now the hardest part is just to stick to it. 
The problem with this is distractions. TV is a big distraction. After all, TV requires no effort out of me other than to flick the remote towards it and choose a programme. But TV also gives me nothing in return other than entertainment and a TV belly. Learning French is harder and will drain my brainpower, but the sense of accomplishment is unlike anything that TV gives. 
So I have to stick to it. When I switch on the TV after work, I can stay there for one episode and then I have to do something else already or risk vegging out totally. When I watch one of my taped episodes, I have to remind myself of what else I'm missing when I'm sitting there. When I'm flipping channels, I remind myself that there is more I can be doing than just this. 
And this is the weird part: When I stopped watching TV after a certain time, I realised that there is actually so much time in the day for other stuff. (caveat: I can only do this because I don't have kids yet.) By the time I finish washing up all the dinner stuff, it's usually around 830pm. That's around 1-2 hours I have before getting ready for bed! I then have a choice: Watch TV or Do Something. I know which is the better choice. 

That's my Idiot's Guide to Resolutions. Of course, talking about it is always easy than actually carrying it out, but by typing it out and writing down even that little scrap in my journal, I take the effort to solidify my motivation for my goals. Hopefully, by the end of 2016, I will have more success to blog about. 

Fear and Big Magic

I just started on this book, as part of a resolution to read more non-fiction and reflect on them. I have only just finished the first chapter but already have a few thoughts.

The first chapter is about fear and how it stops us from having a more creative life. We have many fears in our life that are valid, eg, fear of getting mauled by a bear. At the same time, we also have fears that do not help us but instead keep us back. These are fears like "I fear I will not be successful", "I fear people will see me as a loser", "I fear that I will fail". Elizabeth Gilbert singles these out as fears that we should not harbour, as they hold us back from having a more interesting and creative life.

This I am all too familiar with. For example, my film photography hobby. If I want to take good photos, I have to, well, take photos. If I want to take photos, I have to use film. But film is getting rarer and good film is especially hard to come by, like my favourite Lomography XPro 100, which is out of production. (Sacrilege and travesty!) So whenever I think of taking photos, I will think,

"Are you sure you want to do that? What if your whole roll sucks? You would have wasted an entire roll! Keep it there until you are sure of your skill."

This goes against the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom I admire:

"Your first 10,000 photographs will be your worst"

This is the part that keeps me back from fulfilling my full potential. Cartier-Bresson's point is that we have to keep practising and practising many times before we start to take good pictures. My fear doesn't want me to start at all, instead preferring that I do better first before I take more pictures. But then,

How do you know when you are actually good enough?

Do I wait till I get 10,000 likes on my Lomo or Facebook account? Do I wait till I hold an exhibition? Or until I sell my first photograph?

Put these words on paper or a computer screen and they seem ludicrous. Yet the fear of failure in them is palpable enough. Stand a few minutes with this ping-pong ball in your head and no wonder lying on the sofa with the TV seems preferable. 

So yes, sometimes you have to tell your fears,

"I acknowledge what you are saying, but I am going to go ahead and do it anyway." 

Take the example I mentioned of film photography. One of the very first photos I uploaded on the Lomography website was this:

Can you even make out what the photo is???

No point of interest, too dark, no flash used... A pretty bad photo. 

What if I had stopped there? Concluded that I sucked and that buying film was a waste of time?

I might have never started to get good stuff, like:

From The Missing Lomograper series taken in Dakota Crescent

Taken with the Rensha and Lomography XPro 200

From The Girl in the Red Hat series

This was my most liked album and it was taken with Lomography XPro 100 film.

I had plenty of failures after that first one, but if I had stopped at those early failures, I might have never taken the better ones too. 

Success is never just in terms of awards or number of likes. Success can also be seen in terms of where you have come from and the progress you have made. Over the course of my photographic journey, I realised that choice of camera, film and a lot of things count before you even take that first shot. I met with like-minded people who gave me advice, accompanied me on photowalks and inspired me to do more. All these I would never have experienced if I had stopped at that first roll and left it at that.

So the next time I listen to my fears and insecurities about my creativity, I'm gonna tell myself:

"Thanks, but I'm going to do it anyway."

January's Book I Read

#booksiread

Out of all the resolutions I ever made, the one I successfully held to were the ones for reading. At my age, in my comfy house and sofa, there really are few pleasures better and rarer than curling up the whole day with a good book and a stuffed cat. It also helps me to unwind and sleep at night and has become part of my weekday sleep routine.

It doesn't help much if I happen to be reading a particularly gripping thriller, but.......

Anyway, looking through my list, I realised it would be too long-winded to blog about every book, so I've decided to choose the best one I've read this month, and that is...

http://www.goodreads.com/work/editions/44508961-arcadia

This book was designed to be read as an iPad app, but it works as a linear storyline too, if you don't get confused by all the different characters and points of intersection. I've read Stone's Fall and Instance of a Fingerpost by the same author and they were all magnificent stories. Arcadia combines the genres of science fiction, fantasy and spy thriller into the same book, along with 3 different worlds which exist at 3 vastly apart points of time, past, future and way-into-the-future future. It sounds confusing but Iain Pears does a good job of spinning solid characters and immersive storylines out of all of them in one solid tome. Great read and worth the reservation fee I paid on it. :)

February's book plans include a slowly growing pile of library books (oh oh) but I also want to read at least one self-help book of my own. Can I continue like that for the rest of the year???

Manifesto 2016

It's been a long time since I was on this blog. Reasons/Excuses include work, life, etc etc... 

So why did I decide to come back to the blog? 

1. Stuff in my life
Just because the blog is empty doesn't mean that nothing was going on with my life. I travelled a bit, I crafted, cooked, sewed, read, took photos, socialized, got crazed by work, ate, ate some more, visited fleas, watched shows etc, etc, etc. Out of all these things I did, I did some great stuff, I did some not-so-great stuff and I did stuff that looked like my primary school art projects. Out of these stuff I did, I learned some about the way to do things, which leads me onto...

2. Journalling
A lot of times, I have too many thoughts and ideas whirling through my head and nothing I do can keep it still. I have ideas for photo projects, craft projects, writing projects, books to read and I cannot settle on one! And even sometimes when I finally start something, I stuff it away somewhere and what I learnt out of it is lost. So my other idea for reviving the blog is to treat it as a journal, to journal my successes and failures.

3. Plain creativity
Last year, I downloaded an app called Grid Diary, which supplied journalling prompts to document what goes on in your day. After I started, I realised that I really miss writing for the sake for writing. So this is one thing I want to start again with the blog. 

4. Just to be me
With all the shit that went on last year, I think it is important also to remind myself of all the other things that make me Me. This is what I plan with this blog, as a reminder that there are all these other great stuff that I do with my life, and that my work isn't really the only thing that defines me. 

So here are my plans:
1. Document as much as I can the creative pursuits in my life. Whether I did well or whether I sucked or totally failed, these are still the little Legos of Life and I should not forget them. 

2. Publish my plans, to make me accountable (dirty word) and to make me do them. (already started with this manifesto, hehe)

3. Journal my life and the stuff I do. Get out of the daily grind every now and then. 

Will this work? Like all NY resolutions, you just have to give it a go. At least I can say that I've tried it once rather than never having started at all. Wish me luck!

I hate it when we have to do a workshop on something I already know. it feels like a waste of time to sit through this kind of enforced lesson.

On the other hand, it's also not too bad if I charge my iPhone before that. Oh smartphone, what did I do before you?

A Year In Photos

Been a long time since I blogged... So much stuff I've been putting on FB but not here...

And yet there was so much that happened during the past year...

Inspired by the Lomography website and other bloggers, I decided to select one photo from each month of 2012 and compile it here.

Note that due to failing memory, some of the months may be slightly wrong. Just close one eye and accept it on my behalf. ;p

Dec 2011: Another glorious turkey. We will feast on another tomorrow.

January 2012: We celebrate a birthday and eat steak. We also decide that the little red place on Ann Siang Hill serves the best steak and fries. 

 March 2012: Remember this?

 I also attended the baptism of my first Godson. And he totally doesn't look like this now. -_-! How they grow!

March 2012: Called to Australia suddenly for Grandfather's funeral. It's funny that the sky can be so cheerfully sunny on such an occasion.

In other happier news, we also go to Malacca and eat chendol and chicken rice balls. I walk what seems like the entire circumference of Malacca and Yenn sleeps till we think she's unconscious.

The Baba house and its entrance foyer with free Wifi. We spent a lot of time here surfing.

May 2012: My cousin got married. Spunky wedding car!

The purchase of my Instax camera. My camwhore-hating friend groans.

 

June 2012:
 Remember the craze that was Draw Something?

I attended Shakespeare by the Park. Great show.

Oh, how we had fun, Poulet.

June 2012: The picture says it all. Gym starts in July.

Everyone loves a good Cosplay event. Yenn and I went for 2 this year, Cosfest at Downtown east and Anime festival at Singapore Expo.

July 2012: The purchase of my first Lomo camera, the Diana Mini. And the start of a collection of prints and empty film cannisters.

 Exhibitions: Andy Warhol and Harry Potter were fantastic.

Food discovery 1: Grass Jelly in Milk Tea really, really tastes good.

Food Discovery 2: Lil Papa's Wieners is an evil place if you like the unholy duo of hotdogs and beer.

Lil Papa bad. Very bad.

 Food discovery 3: The Bar and Billiards Room teaches me why you should pay for good food and service. YUMZ!!!

July 2012: There are people who are willing to build shackety excuses of a vessel, do a stupid dance, and push them off into the sea for fun. The ERP gantry one I'm rooting for doesn't win. :(

 August 2012: We take up Krav Maga and do each other copious amounts of injury. Actually started around June, but on the first lesson, I sprain my ankle and it is only around July/August we start to do the class regularly.


September 2012: Our house keys finally make us homeowners. And starts a long relationship with the HDB loans dept.

 October 2012: Another Lomo camera, the LC-A, joins me. I am approaching the dark side.


November 2012: The Turkey Tutorial in preparation for Xmas.

December 2012: Us 2 kentangs head to Taiwan and test the limits of our Chinese.

The year always doesn't seem like much till I look through the photos and realise that actually so much had been done. Of course aside from all these there were so many other incidents, cold jokes, insider jokes and much rolling of eyeballs. ( Mostly from Yenn ) 

The year has been good for me. Next year, who knows? More responsibilities, more stuff, more people... Let's see how. See you all next year. :) 

Illustration Friday - Round

Am I the only who thinks the idea of a puffer fish balloon is darned cute?

Illustration Friday - Vanity

Mirror, mirror, on the wall
Who's the vainest of them all?

Mention vanity and the first person thought of was the Wicked Queen and her magic mirror. For vanity's sake she arranged to kill and poison an innocent girl. Who can be more vain than that?

Illustration Friday - Silent

Illustration Friday - Stripes

This came to mind when I saw the <a href="http://illustrationfriday.com">Illustration Friday</a> theme, stripes. What is a tiger without his stripes?

Rwr Rwr Rwrry!!!

Yes, I was a little upset at work.

Fuel

Here's my contribution to this week's Illustration Friday theme, Fuel, inspired by my hub who is rushing a paper... :p