Look, look, a new update!

Immigration

1) Rachel, the recruter from Christchurch, seduced me to try one more position. She sent my CV, and we are now waiting for a feedback from the company representative. The company itself seems very promising, I can already see a challenge to grow as professional and to give it my best! So, fingers crossed. Maybe they'll like me for the job. Though I must say, the position implies perfect verbal English skills, and I am not so sure in mine. I mean, my English seems decent, but I have never tested it in real life with lots of accents, fast natural speed and few people talking at the same time. I'll probably need few weeks just to get used to English around me. And it's not even the biggest problem! I forget words and mix times when I speak. I write much better, and as you can see, my writing is also far from perfect. Huh... but maybe it's okay and they are used to this kind of problem. After all, New Zealand is a country of immigrants.

2) We arranged a meeting for tomorrow with the recruter from Auckland to talk about next steps in finding a job for me in Auckland. Auckland stays the city of choice for me, though I am not opposed to starting in some other New Zealand city as long as the job is interesting.

Writing

1) This morning I spent some time and moved all the words (vocabulary project) from here to my WorkFlowy account. They are now listed in few nice categories that hopefully will help me to find a word I want to use more quickly.

2) My article on testing is finally ready and approved for publication. Three parts will be published on the Ministry of Testing site on August 18, 19 and 20. Thanks to Simon (the editor) and his enormous patience and friendliness text actually looks not that bad. I made so many mistakes though, that I was ashamed to read edited text today. Really! I'm not proud. Is this how I write when I don't have anyone to edit my writing for me? Frustrating... but motivating too! When I see my writing published, I might want to write something else! Especially if I get any feedback from the readers. That would be awesome. :-)

3) And there is also one thing I noticed that isn't about writing in English, but is about writing in general. Last few weeks (maybe more) I don't feel the urge to have long discussions with people on my blog. I am happy just writing something and leaving it there. If somebody disagrees, I'm okay with that. If somebody adds an interesting angle to the topic, I am glad to read it, and think about it, and say "thank you". But I want to run from actually writing a long thought-through answer. That is not very good of me. Maybe it's just one of those times, when I don't really need any people around me.

I suppose in few months I would regret not using this few weeks in Omsk in fullest, for meeting everyone here I know.

New words and new writing

Another week, another non-written part of my draft... my writing course started yesterday, and in a week a course in quantum mechanics starts. So now I have 5 of them simultaneously. I fight very mild panic attacks when I think about it, it feels like a huge pressure is applied to me by all these courses since I try to attend to all of them. This weekend I was supposed to finish the last programming assignment for my Algorithms course, but I procrastinated. And yesterday I felt so sick I didn't even go to work, and I didn't study either. :-(

But I did wrote first assignment for the writing class. It's an introduction essay. I think I did pretty good, and it's also delightful to see how many people are there in the course who are enthusiastic writers just like me.

I am a writer of my life

First time I felt like a writer was in elementary school. Our music teacher gave us a task to write a poem about feelings we had while listening to Vivaldi's "Seasons". I wrote a short poem about spring. That was my first. It felt amazing, it felt natural, and I liked it so much it never wear off to this day. I'm twenty six now.

I enjoy writing. It helps me to think, and it helps me to express myself in the most precise way possible since I'm not that good in talking or touching. Writing gives me freedom and strength to be who I am. Through the years I did all kinds of writing: school papers, university projects, technical documentation, love poems, fairy tales, letters, reviews, co-writing games, fanfiction... I also have a daily updating blog since 2003. Lately I became interested in writing in English. It's my second language, so I don't feel confident with it yet, and I take every opportunity to learn. English is beautiful, and I love it almost as much as I love Russian, though it is completely different in rhythm and in spirit. I believe that writing is to some degree independent of the language itself, though I am ready to be proved wrong.

Sometimes I feel that I not as much live my life, as I write a story of it, picking dialogs and laughing at irony, assessing my troubles for dramatic effect rather than full heartedly suffering through them. Whether this is healthy or not, I am forever grateful to have such gifts as a language and a written word.
***

New words for today:

discomfited

confounding

cumbersome

incredulity

infinitesimally

Wondrous

Also, the words

debilitation

to sweep

surreptitiously

hootenanny

mesmerizing

Procrastination is clingy

So... I've done absolutely nothing for my writing in five days. :-( And I'm not going to do it today, either. But at least today I made up my courage to admit the problem. It's always like this with me and problems: whenever I meet one, I just lay low and hope it'll go away, and no one will ever notice. I know it doesn't work like this... but that knowledge doesn't change the strategy. I'm pathetic like that.

I can at least post new words I managed to write down:
famished
hollered
evade
woolgathering
embellish
galling
smidgen
surreptitiously
disdainfully
fretting
conniption
disconcerting

And wow, I doesn't remember what any of these words means, except for a vague understanding of "disconcerning". I'm so bad at this. :-(

But I promised not to give up, so I won't. I'll try to get up in time tomorrow and to have my half an hour of uninterrupted writing. Good luck to me.

New words

Flabbergasted

Speechless

perennial

vindictive

seethes

cronies

scoffing

finagles

shrewd

cloyingly

scowl

linger

brooding

mesmerizing

cackles

succinctly

segueing

hinder

Also, spent 40 minutes on my writing today. Today's excercise was "archetypal characters".

Plot outline

Today I spent another hour on my writing! I continue to read articles on how-to-write-a-book-now.com and to do exercises, and so far it seems highly helpful. Today I wrote a brief plot outline for my story, based on plot details I wrote down yesterday. That's another 800 words, and while these are baby steps, at least I am moving. :-)

I think I'll finish the "How to Write a Novel" consequence before I start to really write the draft, because so far every article helped me to understand the structure of my story better, and I want to start a draft with a structure in my head. Currently I'm on "creating archetypal characters" stage, and I'll probably spend some more time today reading articles and and doing exercises.

Also, these are the new words I liked in my reading:

churlish

affable

blithely

Waylaid and more

These are the words for today.

incandescent

to sneer

flippant

solemnly

Ribbit

pandemic

to ogle

pudgy

prejudice

horrendous

jolt

jab

chafing

contrition

waylaid

Waylaid. I love how English works in words like this!

Words from yesterday, which I forgot to post:

abundance

Inconceivable

quaint

smudged

to clonk

obtuse

Downward

Soot

grouchy

Also, me and my friend spent the whole afternoon communicating by text messages in English, so that was a practice.

Words continued

Almost missed a day. Almost! But not quite since I'm not sleeping yet, so it's still Sunday for me.

Here is a list of new words:
32) surly
33) frolicking
34) haughtiness
35) benevolently
36) innocuous
37) chagrin
38) scintillating
39) belligerent
40) callow
41) assuage

I stopped copying my posts from here to lang-8 because no one commented me there and I don't like waiting for comments. If I don't get feedback, I'd rather not get it on my terms, i.e. where I don't expect it to begin with. I'm a sucker for feedback, yeah.

Anyway. I have to admit that I did nothing useful for my English practice this weekend. I didn't read any articles or manuals, and I didn't read chapter two of the "Little women". I did, however, finished "Circles of Fifths" and wrote an appreciation comment to an author of that beautiful fanfic. And I got all of these words too! Oh, and I just watched first episode of "The good wife" without subtitles. I guess, that means that I did do something useful after all. Yay for me!

And now I'm going to listen to "The life of Pi" and sleep. In that order. Have to get up in six hours. I intend to do it. I can do it! I'm a grown up woman, I can get up and go to work in time! Like a true jedi! Go, Hali!

More words

I started re-reading "Little women", and I enjoy every phrase. This must be my favorite book, though I only read it once so far. Most of the books competing to be named my favorite have male main characters. This one concentrates on women which makes it even more precious in my eyes. There aren't too many books with great heroines (cannot remember any except Shakespear's stories). And even when they play active role in the plot (like Hermione in "Harry Potter"), we don't know as much about their inner world as we know about that of male characters. Which is a pity.

Anyway, I picked up some words I liked from the chapter one (and also from a fic I read yesterday):

19) to fret

20) to plague

21) to libel

22) a reproving look

23) to pervade (as in "atmosphere of love pervaded the house")

24) to sit up (half-rise or straighten)

25) (to trot) to and fro

26) crumpled (back to the pillow)

27) a lark

28) to no avail

29) unfathomable

30) ordeal

31) whimsical

"Life of Pi", Dickens and classic Russian literature

Yesterday I asked my friend for an audio book recommendation, and she said that she loved the "Life of Pi". I listened chapters one to eight yesterday before sleep, and I loved it! Though I must admit I didn't understand some words (zoological introduction part was really hard), but hey, I enjoyed the book anyway!

My new word for today is "shoth". I had fun time trying to understand what animal Pi researched, and I kept hearing "toad", but then the animal was sleeping on trees, which I am pretty sure toads don't do.

I loved the scene where Pi describes his first day in a new private school. He made such a show of introducing himself with a greek letter! Hillarious! In Russian translation his name is pronounced as in "pea", not as in "pie", and now I know why! Because in Russian it's what we call that greek letter. Good job, translators!

We also discussed Charles Dickens novells with my friend yesterday evening. She listened the audio version of "The posthumous papers of the Pickwick club" while I read about one fifth of the "Great expectations". She enjoyed her time much more than me. Looks like I've chosen a bad Dickens's book to start! Or it's just me. Well, my taste in books is equivocal at best. I actively don't like Dostoyevsky's books (though I admit he is a great writer), and I don't like most of the Russian classic literature, all for the same reason: they are too hopeless for me. Heroes are often miserable, but they don't try to change it, they submit to their fate. To accept your fate is often considered to be a virtue in Russian literature. That's depressing. I love American literature for the always present hope for the better. Even in stories with depressing plots (like most of Hemingway's stories) I can feel that characters don't give up. They are in charge of their destinies, and they know it. It gives me hope.

Returning to "Great expectations": I dislike that book for reasons completely different from the ones responsible for my distaste for Dostoyevsky's books. I dislike it because I dislike the language. There are many characters in the book who talk... well... not right. There is a lot of slang there, and not the kind I like. And I cannot like the book if I don't like how characters talk, though I can see why Dickens is a great writer.

New words here:
16) sloth
17) equivocal
18) posthumous

Building a dictionary

One piece of advice for writers I hear constantly is: "build your own vocabulary by writing down words you like and want to use in future". Who am I to argue?

These are the words for today (I know most of them, but I keep forgetting them. And some words are completely new):
1. colloquial
2. resigned
3. to devise
4. booby traps
5. wistful
6. to irk
7. enquire

8. sycophantic
9. haberdashery
10. vehemence
11. ineffable
12. insouciant
13. ennui
14. winsome

And of course THIS:
15. pulchritudinous