Days 1-3 of Japanese

Days 1-3 refer to Monday to Wednesday.

So yeah, being lazy and relearning hiragana at my very slow pace.  I know the basic characters, but haven't really looked at the combination ones.  Be proud guys, on Wednesday I studied for a whole 12 minutes!  This really does signify the philosophy I have.  What is the point studying material for hours upon hours on end?  Sure, the recall may be better, but it isn't worth it.  If I can mostly remember something the next day because of 12 min. of studying, then there is no point putting in all that extra time.  It would make learning tedious, going through drills over and over again.

So yeah.  I'd say 15 min. a day is good enough to retain the information the next day.  I have a month, so there is no point to spend one day and pour over the material for hours. A little time everyday is much better.   The only thing I really use to learn this script is flashcards.  There is this program I have called Anki, which is a flashcard generation.  The cool thing about it is that after you answer a flashcard, you can say if it was easy or hard.  Through that, the program can tell when to show you the flashcard again.

Anki is the reason my study times are so low.  If I answer a card right on the second day, it will show me the card four days later.  Now this seems bad since I will not see this information for four days, but if I can remember it after four days, then it is probably in my brain.  If I don't get it right, then it will show it to me the next day.  A counter-intuitive algorithm that works.

Back to the Learning of the Japanese

It is almost August an I haven't learned any of the language.  People have stated online that UVA east asian languages are crazy hard.  I better start preparing now.  So far it seems my plan is to study for about...5 min a day everyday until I go to UVA.  Based on what I've read and heard, going in with hiragana, katakana, and some basic Japanese phrases memorized is a good plan.

So first thing is first, time to relearn hiragana, the most commonly used Japanese script.  It shouldn't be too bad since I learned it before, like 4 months ago.  Just need to relearn it now.  This week's plan is to learn hiragana completely and then slowly start on katakana, which I don't know at all.

I don't really know how I would provide updates unless I just write everyday like "guys I learned 10 more hiragana!"  I'll probably just talk about what I'm doing and stuff like that.

If you thought I was joking about that 5 min thing, I'm not.  I get through about two songs on my iPod before I get bored and do something else.  Sigh this is going to be a pain to learn.  Languages are cool but take a lot of effort to learn.  I need incentive...or negative feedback in the form of a bad grade.  This is why I need the structure of a class, at least for a language.

PAVAN: Day...THIS WAS MY ONLY DAY!

Time to do one of those posts about my day. So I went to PAVAN on visitor's day, fun stuff.  It felt like old times.

PAVAN starts at 9...

So I got there super early as usual.  Since Sherando is a 5 min drive for me compared to most of the kids who come from Loudoun County, I end up at this time seen in the pic compared to 9.  So I chilled and played guitar and waited for the famed guitar teachers, Michael DeLalla and Keith Filppu, to arrive.  After talking and making jokes about Jorge Cardoso aka The Most Interesting Guitarist in the World, people arrived and we got to class.  

There is the man himself

In the beginning, we did an hour yoga session with our very own coordinator AJ Ikner.

 

Embracing my inner yogi (me on the left)

She knew exactly the problems that plagued a guitarist because our instrument is so awkward.  Our hands and wrists are weirdly bent, our shoulders are never straight, posture sometimes get in the way of playing, and a guitar on the chest and stomach doesn't help with breathing.  Other than that, she wanted to fix our mental ideas.  In classical music, mistakes are evil, but she wanted us to get past that.  She talked about her own insecurities and how she overcame them.  She realized her problems were mostly caused by herself that cycled and escalating into failure.  She told us to think neutrally instead of negativity.  She said, instead of saying "I suck" say "That isn't what I intended."  that neutral tone will allow us to get past our mistakes and be better players. 

Improv skills over here

Enough of that.  After yoga, we did improvisation.  The worst thing for me.  I can't hear notes so I don't know if what I'm playing fits with what everybody is doing.  At one point Michael (guitar teacher) told me to start the improv.  Boy did I just play some random notes.  According to my friend Alex, it had "no rhythm, was too classical, and goddamn slow." Oh well, somebody else grounded it with some arpeggios.  

FIGHT! (the secondary one after the first one; I was laughing to hard to take a pic of the  real "fight"

Then lunch.  Only thing cool that happened at lunch was that a "fight" broke out.  I say "fight" because it was an act staged by the drama wing of PAVAN.  It was so funny.  Girls fighting while the boys kept trying to intervene.  I think one girl accidentally got a bloody nose, that or she is a really good actor and faked it even when she didn't have to.   

A pic of my main man Joe Kane tuning his guitar

After lunch was music theory.  Went over the circle of fifth, major and minor scales, keys, stuff like that.  Mostly how they applied to guitarists while accompanying a singer or just transposing a song. Man I forgot how good a lecturer Michael was.  Teaching, proving examples, helping students when they don't understand, what a boss.  

Small Ensemble

After that was small ensemble.  Students are in groups for three and four and learn a trio or quartet piece.  I roamed around and heard what they were doing.  One of them for some reason couldn't count music right so they were all our of sync.  I counted outloud with them and told them which beats to play on, but they couldn't do it.  I gave up and called Michael in to deal with them.  Went to another, which was playing Mango Tango by Jurg Kindle.  Just for the record, Kindle is one of my all the favorite guitar composers.  I played that piece back in the day so I could at least give some pointers to those guys.  

It was cool to talk to students who view guitar not as a hobby but as their lives.  They are way more dedicated to it than I am and have a passion I wish I could have.  It was so great to be in that environment after such a long time.  How I miss being in PAVAN.  I'll definitely be at the final performance on Friday, but in the audience instead of on stage.  I wish I could just sneak in...as long as AJ doesn't see me.  All jokes aside, probably the best day of my summer.

Orientation

So as you well know I went to orientation Monday and Tuesday. Of course it was all a joke and pretty worthless.  Still I got a feel of the place, which is what I wanted to write about.  My overall impression of the place was pretty wary. Much more wary than when I went to St. Louis.  Don’t know why I felt that way, maybe because there were streets in the middle of the campus, which I thought was strange. 

I don’t know why I felt that because whenever I go to these situations, I always feel it isn’t reality.  It is a break from my normal daily life that I know will go back to normal again in two days.  In that circumstance, how can I think of it otherwise?  I don’t care about what I eat, how much sleep I get, who I talk to, because in the end, my life will be back to normal and all that stuff will not matter anymore. 

But there is a difference between this case and the others: UVA will be my home for four years.  In that sense, orientation isn’t productive.  It gives a false sense of living there.  The fake reality we all created for those two days, where everybody is joyful and talkative to everybody, where it feels more like a vacation than a place to go to school, all of it is just wrong. 

This is the seed of my worry.  I don’t want to be miserable my four years of college, and I don’t expect myself to.  But I hear people praise college and over exaggerate it so much, it is hard to know what it really is like.  I go to orientation and see people act that way, even though I know that can’t really exist.  I guess people can’t really come to terms with reality until they realize later they are in it.  I am probably going to be the same way so I guess I’ll wait until August to see what college is really like.  

Emotions Are So Much Fun...

There comes a point in life where stuff isn't just passed on to you.  Eventually a person has to move on from receiving and become the person giving.  We grow up and it is expected that we take some of the responsibility of the world.

Why am I saying this?  PAVAN started this week.  PAVAN is a 2 week music program that I have participated in for four years. My time with it is over and I can only witness the next generation going through the molding process I went through.  It is strange and makes me horribly sad that I'm sitting here and not playing guitar with a group of my friends.  Instead of feeling proud and happy I'm sitting here irritated.  Why do I have to move on?  I hate it so much that I can't even do anything today.

PAVAN was probably the greatest experience of my life and I miss it too dearly.  I feel that most of my anger stems from me feeling like I'm still empty after leaving it.  In the end, what did I really get from the program?  My guitar skills haven't greatly improved, the friends I made I never talk to except at PAVAN, and the lessons I learned never stuck with me.  The educational program was great, but my internal flaws prevented me from progressing.  I can't even say it is time for me to become the person who gives when I'm probably worse than the person who is receiving.

I'm chatting with the PAVAN guitar teacher as I write this blog.  It is weird to have both emotions present in my mind.  Both of anger I have mentioned above but the joy of reminiscing.  Maybe I didn't learn what I was supposed to in PAVAN, but it was still an experience I want others to have.  In that sense, I have to step aside from receiving and allow others to take my place.  I don't know if where I'm heading will be any better, but I'll have to try to find fun in it.

It is really easy to escape from this responsibility, scarily easy.  There is nobody who can say they have always been prepared for responsibility.  I still don't want to leave this comfort of receiving.  I don't want to look after others.  Maybe when I'm fully in that position will I enjoy it.  That is how parents feel when teaching their children, maybe it is the same.  I don't really fully understand my thoughts on this subject, but I'll figure it out eventually.

Happy

I've never blogged while happy before, but I'm happy now so let's see what happens.  Sudden bouts of happiness are really weird.  Usually they are generated from music in my case.  I consider myself realistic, but sometimes people need those moments of happiness.  A period they feel like they are on top of the world and can do anything.  Have ambitious dreams that may never comes true.  Sometimes it isn't worth dwelling on the fact that those things are not possible.

But I think that is why I seek out people who are different than me.  None of my friends are like me, and I'm happy about that.  Don't know how they put up with me.  My friends are quirky, thinking in ways an analytically kid like me couldn't naturally manufacture.  Many of my friends have traits I want to adopt because I know my mentality is lacking.  There are more ways for me to change than what is learned in a classroom.  Yes I have regressed through this process a few times, but I have move forward as well.  I don't know it if it wrong that I introject the traits of others into myself, but I can say it is natural.  We learn and grow because of others.

People have said I sound confident in my ideals, which I guess is true.  It is the viewpoint I have established through the process seen above.  Still, I can see the flaws, because my minds don't coexist properly.  One mindset I cannot seem to find a way to get into myself is determination.  I'm so willing to give up; it is pathetic.  Things have fallen into place too much for me that I have never learned how to struggle.  This sort of works with my lack of passion.  With passion I would have the guts to fight against adversity.  Maybe in college I will be able to gain that as well.

Back to being happy.  Chatting with people now in a way that when I look back will sound insane.  To one girl who was one of the lower students in my English class I'm leaving my English legacy to her while another I'm explaining how, at her party, I will slap anybody who is too shy and will not devote themselves to the party.  This is the perfect mindset to give a speech or something, I'm just so pumped.  If one thinks realistically all the time, then there is no hope for true improvement.  It is making me happier that I can learn things while being happy.

Fourth of July

Today was an interesting day, not because I did stuff really, just because it was.  In the morning I helped my dad paint the hallway.  My job was to tape everything, which is a very tedious task.  I'm a perfectionist so I kept retaping until it was perfect.  It was the perfect time to listen to Exit Tunes Kamikyoku wo Utattemita.  Some I could tell were vocaloids while others sounded really awesome.  Slow and fast songs mixed together; it was fun to listen to while doing tedious labor.

After watching a filler arc of Naruto and playing some Pokemon, I did was is required on a day like this: watch marathons!  I have a lot of channels I don't want to I started watching this show on the ID channel about bad marriages.  It told stories about one of the spouses doing something insane that ruined the marriage.  For example, one husband trafficked cocaine for the Mexican mafia.

I knew it was happening in my heart so I had to do it.  Sure enough, Syfy was having a Twilight Zone marathon.  This show is my all time favorite show.  This show is the first show to make me actually think.  It plays on the fears of the post-WWII generation: Cold War, communism, nuclear weapons, space, discrimination, class, society. It also utilizes the innate human fears like loneliness and ambition.  It takes those ideas and puts them in a science fiction show.  The show's intelligence is what drives it.  Many episodes involve a single character going about the plot, purely driven by the music and the person's acting.  The cool part about the show is the language is sounds, well the only way I can call it is Shakespearean.  Not in the sense of not understandable but in the sense of always high brow, dense with information, and utilizing a variety of literary techniques to make the point across.  I have seen every episode and I can praise this show forever.

After all that I went outside and saw the fireworks.  The weather was awesome.  Hot but with a breeze.  I hate the cold so much, so the heat was nice.  Also, the fresh air of outside was way better than the paint smell of my house.  From my balcony I can see the fireworks at Sherando Park so I pulled out a chair and started watching.  It was going well until I started to see flashes of light but no fireworks.  After a while the breeze started to pick up and I realized it was a storm.  The weather was too awesome for me to go outside so I sat there watching the fireworks in front of me and the lightning  to the right of me.  Amazing experience.