More new classes and Typhoon Jangmi

Today, I had my first sessions of my Japanese conversation and Japanese calligraphy, along with the second session of my Japanese grammar class with a different teacher (I have four different teachers for the grammar class). Apparently the homework that I was trying to do for so much of yesterday wasn't due today, it was to be started today. The schedule sheet didn't specify whether it was listing due dates or "do" dates, so I assumed the path of more work. I imagine it would have been much easier after today's class, but who knows. It might not be a bad thing to prove myself serious about things; I may wind up needing some slack later on.

Anyway, so far, I'm liking my language classes a lot. I got more speaking practice in my classes today than I usually got in a months' time back home. It actually does seem possible that I could hold a decently fluid-sounding conversation in a month or two. I will have to stop acting so shy about things outside of class though. But, an exciting thing that may help even more, even with that last bit: we can get free Japanese tutors! We just have to sign up for it and say when we're free, and the International Center will try to match us up with a tutor on-campus during class periods we have off. Awesome.

In other news, Jangmi has done its damage to Taiwan. Even now, I can't find any reliable news on the storm's effects. There are such conflicts of information as "Torrential rains and strong winds have detroyed more than 86 thousands households" vs another news source saying 86 thousand homes are without power. I can't find any two English sources that say the same thing as far as what effects there are, except that they all agree there are a lot of mudslides due to the island still being saturated from Sinlaku.

Apparently Jangmi is only the fourth most powerful storm to hit Taiwan this year. I'm starting to realize the extent to which American media sources keep us in the dark at home. If anybody reading this actually heard anything at all about Jangmi besides on my blog, please drop a comment and let me know. I'm curious.

edit: proving the news sources writing Jangmi articles in English are crap, the 4th most powerful storm thing should actually just be 4th storm. July 13th Kalmaegi as a tropical storm, July 23rd Fung-Wong and September 13th Sinlaku as category 2 typhoons, and September 28th Jangmi as a category 4.

By Wikipedia's stats, which sadly enough seem far more consistent and reliable than the general media's, the 2008 Pacific typhoon season has claimed at least 1612 human lives and "1.366 billion USD." The Atlantic season has done in 944 and "~52 billion USD." I guess that's the real reason the US media is ignoring the Pacific; they just don't know how to blow things out of proportion and defraud insurance companies over here yet.

Lazy Sunday

I woke up this morning and eagerly checked my mailbox for news of my new toy, not really expecting anything since we're not supposed to have a manager in on Sundays. But, the manager was here, as was a note saying that I had a package waiting for me in the office.

My first internet order in Japan! Somehow that makes it seem more exciting.

There it is, the ultimate quick reference for learning a foreign language. A writing pad for characters, variable speed text-to-speech, and tons of other useful things will make it a worthy replacement for the two dictionaries I've been toting around.

The only snag is that the interface is entirely in Japanese. This is Japan, after all; these toys are made for the Japanese to more easily learn and understand English, Chinese, Korean, etc. Still, it contains all the information I need to know, it's just slightly more difficult to learn how to use it.

With that in hand, I finally felt some motivation to do some homework. Even with the help of my new gadget, it's slow-going and difficult. There are a couple of new grammar items in there, and trying to figure them out with the usual English narration I'm used to was difficult. The guided compositions are also significantly harder than what I've been doing in Albuquerque, requiring a lot more creativity to do without sounding completely amateur. I have been surprised and pleased to run into and be able to use a lot of the new kanji I learned last weekend. Being able to remember them was also surprising, since I haven't been reviewing like I should since last Monday. I think that says a lot about the spaced approach Anki uses.

I took a break from my homework due to hunger, and fixed up some curry and rice. As an experiment, I sautéed an onion and added it to the beef curry sauce, then decided to throw in a healthy portion of crushed red pepper to give it some kick. The idea was sound, but the execution was flawed... I cooked way too much rice, and added way too much pepper. I really need to get these basic cooking things down so I can move on to learning how to make awesome Japanese things.

In other news, Typhoon Jangmi's position as of about 2 hours and 20 minutes before this post was about 100 miles southeast of Taipei, moving NNW at just shy of 14 mph--the eye is going to hit within a few hours of now, and the storm is already over the island. It's been 17 days since Typhoon Sinlaku hit Taiwan as a much weaker category 2, and caused massive flooding, moodslides, and agricultural damage from over 5 feet of rain. I doubt they've recovered from that one yet. This one is expected to hit as a category 4 and currently has waves around 30 feet. This is not going to be good.

Typhoon Jangmi

Typhoon Jangmi is about to nail Taiwan. I know Pacific Storms get no coverage whatsoever in the US, so I thought I'd call attention to it. Currently it's on the border of a category 4 or 5 storm; winds at 155 with gusts to 190. Its appearance on satellite is as flawless as Hurricane Andrew was. The current computer model shows that the storm might do a funny U-turn and hit Japan, but that it would be a tropical depression by that point. Meanwhile, Taiwan is about to get smashed, and I doubt too many people in the US will hear a single thing about it.

Orientation begins

The first thing that I feel like I should mention is that Sinlaku did pretty much nothing here. The tracking maps show that it passed as close as the forecast had said it would, and it actually strengthened back to a category 1 typhoon from a tropical storm while it was about even with the Kansai area. We got a negligible amount of rain, cloud cover that wasn't thick enough to make it look gloomy, and a breeze that was just strong enough to feel good. I was kind of looking forward to things getting hectic, but it just didn't happen.

Anyway, yesterday's activities kicked off with the placement tests, listening first and written second. I have no idea how I did on the listening portion; for a good deal of that, I felt I was on the edge of understanding, and I think I got the meaning right, but there was a good chance I misunderstood a lot. The written section was much more clear-cut and less stressful. It was in several successive sections that got harder and harder, presumably each one representative of what you should know at the end of a semester of language study here. So, the test was easy, easy, easy, easy, easy, and then suddenly I didn't know a single thing. Past the first question that I had to guess on, I think I knew one question without guessing. So, as far as placement tests go, I think it was quite well-designed.

While we won't know our placement until Thursday, I'm happy with how I did. There wasn't anything on the test that I felt I should know but forgot--after generally neglecting to study or review over the summer, I was worried about that. Ironically, if I hadn't done my massive study session Thursday, I would have done exactly the same on those tests. Oh well though. I should get placed right where I need to be.

After the test we got a free lunch at the cafeteria. The food was spectacular. I had pork, fried rice, a bunch of things I don't know names for or what they were made of, and some orange slices and pineapple. I met a lot of people and promptly forgot most of their names. There are somewhere around 80 or 100 students in this program, so it'll take me a while.

After food, we went back to boring things--handing out information and whatnot. I've got a bunch of paperwork that I need to do, and right now I don't even remember what most of it is for. Following that and a campus tour, we all headed back to our dorms, and then post-test festivities kicked in. The people here are really fun. There was lots of laughter, and everyone is getting along quite well. This should be a good year.

I put up a few pictures from yesterday in my Picasa gallery, in the Orientation album. I'll continue adding photos to that one as the orientations continue. I've now got a permanent link to the gallery up, just below my profile on this page.

Study day

I'm proud of myself. I actually did study most of the day. Since I woke up 14 hours ago, I spent about 4 hours doing things that were not studying. I drilled away with Anki the rest of the time. I have pretty intensively studied 266 kanji within the last day, and 495 flash cards total (some of them are just words). This is way past what the designers recommend. I also cut down the intervals a lot; instead of waiting 8+ hours between viewings of harder kanji (meaning ones that I either didn't know, or forgot/screwed up), I told it to show me again within half an hour. Even easy ones are set for a 2 hour interval. So it took a long, long time to get through the card deck, as I was constantly reviewing along the way. I'm at a 73% correct rate for reviews, so it's working as a cramming tool.

Perhaps it was the caffiene after having basically weened myself off of it for the last month or so, but I was actually getting really excited while studying. Every time I learned a new kanji well enough to get it right, it felt like a huge victory. If I had known about this program earlier, I could have been studying and reviewing like this (but at a more sane pace and schedule) all summer, and made huge progress. Alas. Anyway, in the realm of immaturity, I have a new favorite kanji: 脱, ね (nu) in ねぐ (nugu), which means to take off clothes. The left component of the character by itself means moon, the right component by itself means one's older brother.

So far Sinlaku has produced only very light rain, and not very much of it. The forecasts keep bumping the onset of the winds by more and more, but they also now forecast higher winds than they did previously: 57 mph, up from the previous 31 mph, which was down from the initial 46 mph forecast for today. The storm did strengthen; right now its sustained winds are 70 mph, with gusts to 85, so it's just shy of being called a typhoon again. All I know is that unless I get an email from the school saying otherwise, I'm not allowed to be late for my test tomorrow. :)

The calm before the storm

I'm in the group of students that get to go in for their Alien Registration tomorrow. It'll take a few days to get a temporary, and then about a month before my permanent card is here. Once I have the temporary, I can open a bank account, which will help to ease my mind and let me have a little bit more fun. I brought probably way more than enough cash to hold me over, but until my account is actually open and I can wire money over from the US, I'm living like I'm unemployed (appropriately). So once that's taken care of, I'll be a little more willing to do things like ride a bus around and see more of the city. Most of the interesting sights have admission fees, too.

Friday, the orientations and placement tests start, and continue on Monday. Next Wednesday sees the welcome ceremony and info sessions. Thursday, placement results and class registration. Friday, classes begin.

But, possibly complicating this schedule, Sinlaku is supposed to hit Thursday, a day later than the original forecast. The winds are supposed to be the highest Friday. But, it's not supposed to be a direct hit; the forecasted winds are 46 mph. I don't yet know how this will affect the orientation schedule, or everything in general. I've ridden my bike in worse wind before, but it sounds like this storm is packing a lot of water, and I'm not sure how resilient the plant life is to wind here. If I do have to ride in it, at least the rain will hurt a lot less than Albuquerque's dust.

For now, I feel like I'm in the calm before the storm, figuratively as well as literally. I'm looking forward to getting things started.