…that is the question. At the beginning of this week I made a plan of everything I needed to get done and when, which is very unlike me, as I tend to just muddle through on a wing and a prayer. I set myself realistic tasks (bearing in mind I’m fairly lazy), and it had been going quite well. But today the plan has completely gone to pot. I overslept (and missed yoga) and then spent a large part of the afternoon at the Lansdowne (for those that know Leicester) discussing the planned relaunch of the Museological Review with the rest of the editorial committee. After that I spent a couple of hours in the office just dossing about really, because by that point I’d decided that there was no point starting anything, and now I’m at home thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner. Perhaps I’ll be up for a bit of reading later on…
February 22, 2007
Chinese: a break through!
I wrote about the difficulties I’ve been having learning Mandarin the other day and how my goal was to be able to read and understand slogans on propaganda posters (and how I thought that was a long way off). Well, this morning, I received a new book through the post that I ordered from abebooks.co.uk (I love Abebooks – not sure what I’d do without it): Paint it Red by Stefan Landsberger – a collector and recognised authority on revolutionary posters. And guess what? I realised that I could pick out several characters. The key ones (rendered in pin-yin and without tone marks – sorry) are ren (people/person), da (big/large), xiao (small/little), xue (study) meiguo (America) and zhong guo/ren (China/Chinese people). I reckon all I need do is learn the characters for ‘Lei Feng’ and ‘Mao Zedong thought’ and I’ll be laughing. 
Seriously, it’s a big confidence boost and given me the necessary motivation to get on with revision for my exam in about a fortnight’s time.
