Routine

Today was a bit challenging. I had class from eleven in the morning to eight thirty, including commute. I managed to get one pushup set in before leaving in the morning, but at the cost of breakfast. Not that I normally eat breakfast, but if I did...hypothetical props to me.

When I got back from my last class, I went to the hostel to get my keys from the Key Master, one of Yuan Yuan's more formidable English names. Roxie is her receptionist name, and Big Bear is her name in bed. Not that I think about it, I could be calling her Ursa Major, with fewer repercussions and 差不多的 humor content.

Little did I know that I was walking right into an ambush. The Key Master was only willing to part with the keys if I could fight my way through all the obstacles, namely the five pages of English she wrote that I needed to translate into English. Regular translators have it easy, translating from one language to another with their fake poetic licenses. Us sleeping dictionaries are the real victims of linguistics. I did pushups between the pages to vent any violent urges.

Pushups are almost done now. French: 20 minutes to go. I've noticed that I can often go through a hundred or so flashcards, not know half of them the first time and know 90% by the second run-through, which is very confidence-inspiring. I'm not sure what it is that gives me the edge, my indomitable luck or the six years of French I took. I doubt it's those memory-enhancing drugs I'm taking. Either way, I'm dreading the moment of brain saturation.

Anyway, all that's really left on the menu is drawing, which I've sort of resigned myself to. It doesn't even seem to take forever anymore; it's definitely got nothing on my high-school French class which was in some kind of gravity well where time was on a permanent lunch break.

Knot of the day, sheet bend:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

The last few knots all kind of look alike. Tomorrow I'm going to try something cooler looking.

The Consequences of Knowing English

I feel like I haven't done anything productive in days, the 30 day trial aside. Yuan Yuan has her English tour guide test coming up, English being the key word, and so my days are full of palaces and halls and walls, all dressed in creative spelling in grammar. She'll read a few pages in her book and try to boil it down to a few paragraphs. Then I read those paragraphs, unscramble the grammar, which is encrypted with something that would make SHA-1 blush, and scrap all the words I think she doesn't know, replacing them with the words "has," "with," or simply deleting them. Thus something like "the hall features the unparalleled Wall Of Communist Righteousness, which consists of several frames in which Chairman Mao disembowels the Great Dragon with his purple scepter," becomes "the hall has the Wall of Communist Righteousness which has some photos of Chairman Mao killing a dragon." Then Yuan Yuan files away the finished version to its rightful spot on the floor and proceeds to put the next item on her tour guide menu through a similar process. Nothing is ever reread, which baffles me slightly as it doesn't follow any test-taking strategy I've encountered in the Gamma Quadrant.

In any case, I spend my day between studying French--which I'm doing a few hours per day the last few days--and translating materials from Yuan Yuan's dialect of English to my own. It's a rough life. No one ever tells you when you're single: "dude, forget it, that girl's going to make you learn all about Beijing's tourist spots." But no worries, the test is just 10 days away.

Today's knot, the square knot:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

Just one step different from the granny knot, the one most people use to tie their shoelaces. Although I guess some people use the square knot without realizing it.

Yuan Yuan's English pronunciation of the day:
frodo (feudal) society

Okay, time to go draw...

Superyesterday

1 superday down, 29 to go. Yesterday I had to hustle a bit since I only committed to the supertrial in the late afternoon and still had 160 pushups to go at 10:30PM. But it all happened, even the drawing, which was as torturous as I'd expected. It was truly a moment of wisdom when I chose 20 minutes over half an hour. I might still be in a coma if I'd chosen the second.

Yesterday's knot was the figure 8:


image borrowed from animatedknots.com

It's pretty easy to do, unless you're attempting to replicate it from a set of written directions and a single poorly cropped picture, which half the how-to's on the internet seem to think is enough. The people who wrote them must know how to tie their own shoelaces or something. Luckily for those of us whose mommies still fly in red-eye to tie ours in the morning, I found animatedknots.com which shows pictures for all the steps.

The French studying went pretty smoothly. Months ago I downloaded every pirated book on French grammar and vocabulary on this side of the galaxy and yesterday I blazed at 5mph through one of them. The memorization part of my brain is having trouble getting off the couch after its nearly year long respite, but that's what 30 day trials are for, getting your potatoes off the couch and onto the treadmill.

Which leaves...the blog. No big problems there, except that getting on Blogger is a nightmare with the Great Firewall of China. My browser needs some bandaids and a shower.

Yuan Yuan learns English, phrase(s) of the day:
"Oh no! We almost finished that toothbrush." Translation: we're almost out of toothbrushes.

Yuan Yuan's creative spelling of the day:
"Dystrus." If you can guess what the intended word is, you deserve the Nobel Luck Prize.

Answer: "dynasty." When Yuan Yuan defied the odds and pronounced it exactly right, I was more proud of her than shocked at her epic violation of the rules of spelling.