Month: April 2007

Snapshots

Jon6 Comments

Just some quick notes on what’s going on now:

  • Peaceful Warrior was great. My teacher’s Zen and martial classes saw it together on Sunday. Everyone loved it. The audience as a whole seemed very appreciative. Hopefully, it will stay in theaters a few more weeks and the word-of-mouth approach will bring more people to see it.
  • I’m doing fairly well in Spanish, now. I can make myself understood on a variety of topics, although I make tons of mistakes, and understanding spoken Spanish is still pretty difficult. I can read simple books, like The Alchemist (El alquimista, en español) fairly easily. On the other hand, books like El arrecife, are still quite intimidating.
  • I’ve begun studying Catalan as well. Catalan is the everyday language of most people in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands of Spain, as well as of Andorra, a small part of France, and one city in Sardinia, Italy. Catalan is very cool! It sounds something like French, but without the nasalized vowels. It’s almost a cross between Spanish and French. Pronunciation rules are regular, though more complicated than in Spanish, but actually pronouncing words seems to be easier to me. Catalan uses an L like the English L after vowels, single S’s are voiced between vowels just as in English, and it has plenty of schwa sounds so you can relax a bit instead of having to keep every single vowel pure. Also, Catalan words are amazingly short for a Romance language, and often even shorter than words in English. Consider: bo (good), vi (wine), mà (hand), nu (naked), xei (lamb), mòn (world), net (clean).
  • I got a press kit and CD in the mail today to review a movie called “Simple Things.” I might not have time to do it till the weekend, but I’m looking forward to it. When I was in college, a friend of mine said I should become a movie reviewer. Well, after doing a number of reviews on this site, I guess I am one of sorts… still, WTG is just a modest personal site and blog; I never thought I’d be contacted by a media company to do a review! Move over, Ebert! 🙂
  • My car is in the body-repair shop for a few days. (It got hit while parked a little while back.) So some more opportunity for car-pooling or bike-riding to work.
  • I am happy. I am very happy. I hope you are, too.