Learning Chinese

I've studied three years of Chinese, but I've forgotten just about everything I've learned. I never learned enough that it would've been useful for much anything, but I have a thing for languages. I think it's kind of magical that you can scribble something on a piece of paper and it actually means something. I never get tired of wondering that basic thing. Written words fascinate me.

Anyway it could prove to be useful to know Chinese, so I'm determined to try again. It would be really stupid of me to just let all the work I've already done go to waste. Unfortunately you don't hear and see Chinese every day everywhere like English, so it really is very easy to forget all you've learned.

I'm rather tired of my old textbooks, so I now got myself a new one, and I find there's a lot of useful things online too, tools to learn. It's interesting to explore them. Below is one link that anyone can check out just for fun. It's a little introduction to Chinese characters, entertaining and maybe little exaggerating on some points too.

Learn To Read And Write Chinese Characters - Animated Tutorials - Dikk Kelly

Self Portrait Challenge

Self-portrait challenge is an art project who aims to encourage self-analysis, self-expression and challenging of personal boundaries among other things.

I'm not participating in it, but if you want to, it's rather simple. The main thing is to post a self portrait on your own blog every week according to the guidelines. You can find more info from the site.

The funny thing is that my own self portraits accidentally fit the challenge of the month: "Self portrait as ...". (Of course almost any portrait would fit in the current challenge.)

But even if you wouldn't want to participate, the site is worth taking a look at. The whole idea is interesting. Instead of being afraid of how other people see you, you can try out new ways to look at yourself. It's quite liberating.

It's inspiring just to look at the portraits others have taken. And it's rather educational too. We see many images all the time, and here is a fun way to think about compositions, technics and the like. And with the world full of pictures of models and celebrities, it's nice to look at pictures of other kinds of people once in a while too.

Congratulations to Italy

So Italy won the World Cup. Well done, I'm rather pleased with that. I wish Cannavaro would've won the Golden Ball instead of Zidane, because in this World Cup defenders were the true stars. I also wish Zidane wouldn't have ended his carrier the way he did, but oh well. (I've never really liked him as much as I should have anyway.)

It was my grandmother's funeral on Sunday as well, so I wasn't really as thrilled about football as I might have been otherwise. My grandmother died at the age of 89, and she was ready to leave this world, but still it's quite sad.

So I watched the games, but my heart wasn't always in it. Still I find sports events like this rather comforting, the ones that have long history give me a rare sense of continuity in this fleeting world.