Step 21 - Humper-knuckles and Griffin-flows

 I love balloons. Or at least, drawing them.

It's another one of those days where I find myself struggling for an appropriate title, and so we have this. I'm not entirely sure how it came to be - perhaps I subconsciously stole it off something?

Alright, getting down to the thick juicy meaty content of this post... we find ourselves actually quite disappointed. Today I'm going to post up some doodlings I've been drawing in my notebook while bored. After that, my increasing feelings of homesickness.

I wonder what could have possibly inspired this one?

Where am I finding the time for these doodlings? Class, of course. I also find myself writing out pages of thoughts at a time. Other people in the class sometimes find this quite curious, as I'm generally pretty coy about the whole operation. 'Hey Liam, what are you writing there...?' with the inevitable reply, 'Yeah, just thoughts. Nothing important'. And I'm right, it's nothing important, but I do find it a somewhat therapeutic exercise. It's an exercise I picked up from creative writing back in highschool - basically keeping pen to paper and writing every thought that comes to mind. This is related to why I don't let people read it - half the time I end up writing a page about the latest event and/or person to give me the shits. It's really not worth the drama of letting someone read it.

Patagonian Tooth-fish?

You could raise the point that if I'm writing private stuff, I should probably do it in private, as I'm very aware it's going to attract the attention of the various other bored elements in the class when of their kind is furiously scribbling away when nothing is occurring in class. Am I doing it as an attention seeking activity? I don't think so. While I know it's noticed, I'm doing it to keep myself occupied and because I actually enjoy it. Why don't I do it outside of class? I don't do it on my own time because I generally place a low-priority on it an, or rather, I've got better things to do. At least, I like to think I do.

Giant ninja heads will mess you up.

More doodlings here.

With my parents arriving in... about a week, I've been finding myself increasingly missing those back home. Friends, family, pets, vehicles, foods, beaches, skylines, sounds, smells... you get the idea. In part I guess this is because my world is still back in Australia. In my day-to-day life, I probably talk to as many or more of my friends back in Australia than I do here in Chengdu. What does this mean for me exactly? Well, in one area it's pretty clear - I really need to be more proactive and expand my social group here. This might be helped when I move out of the dorm - but not necessarily.

Where am I magicking these people from?

I think the best situation for my Chinese study would be having my day-to-day friends being Chinese. That's a no brainer, really. But it's not necessarily easily done. Where am I magicking these people from? Let alone people that would be generous enough to hang out and chat with me on a daily basis. I have Chinese friends online that I'm chatting to every day, but that's not even nearly the same thing. And it really shows - while I find my language improving, it's most noticeable in a MSN window - in real life I'm finding myself performing quite poorly and in a very shy manner. There's some pretty obvious reasons for this, on MSN there's no pressure on me to respond immediately, and I understand exactly what words they're saying; a character is much harder to mistake than a sound. And if there's a word I don't know, I can easily look it up.

This doesn't make it any less forgivable that I'm essentially not improving in the area I want to improve - face to face conversational Chinese. I end up feeling a slight feeling of awe/jealousy as my friend engages very easily and casually with Chinese people, in Chinese. Invariably, they're also very impressed. He has taken pleasure a few times in telling them that my Chinese is actually much better than his, and they look at me with somewhat surprised expressions. Can it be true? This guy with a concentrated look on his face and whom has barely spoken; he is the better one? I tell them I'm not, and in the very process of doing so they already know I'm not.

Bad Liam, bad bad bad

I wouldn't say that it gets me down, I just know there is a lot of work to be done. This recently has been a bit of a problem, and somewhat relates back to homesickness - with my parents arriving so soon, I'm finding myself less and less motivated to do... just about anything. It seems I pretty much want to kill time until they arrive, through any means other than study. Bad Liam, bad bad bad. There's a bunch of new policies I want to engage, New Year's resolutions if you will, but I'm finding myself in a sticky position as to when and how to implement them. I'm planning on moving in to an apartment around mid-late January, and the fresh location would work well with some fresh endeavours... or re-commitments... whatever.

My issue here is that.... while it would be convenient to start things then, another part of me tells me that there's no reason to wait. Sure, it will mean more stuff to pack up and take away and reorganise once I move, but that's not a huge issue. There's no reason to put it off, is there? Easy vs hard, wrong vs right (or perhaps, perceived worse vs perceived better. Maybe they may as well be the same thing). I'm still deciding.

In other news, I now have mutton chops. You may leave offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh neatly at the door, thank you.

Oh, one more thing. Apparently it's common for young people to congregate in the centre of town on Christmas Eve and bash each other with inflatable toys - I haven't found anyone that knows how or why this got started as a tradition, but apparently it's been running for 5 or 6 years now. I hope to be there with camera in one hand and maybe even a giant inflatable mallet in the other

Yes, my chin is getting fatter. Yes, I do need to get back to the gym on a more frequent basis.