Funny letters

My dear audience;

Should you ever consider learning Russian, I recommend you do it. It is a beautiful language. It has a flowing quality and it opens your world to the many opportunities available to Russian speakers: caviar salesperson, judo instructor, and oil/gas magnate. Theoretically one could be a spy as well, but I think we're probably looking more towards Arabic and Mandarin Chinese there. And American English...I don't trust those guys.

But if one of those three career paths calls to you (and you may choose only one, like the beginning of Pokémon) then Russian is the language for you. Be warned, however, that it is not easy like English. After all, in English we have poems that are child's play.

Um. Moving on...

In Russian there are two alphabets: the printed one and the handwritten one. Not quite as bad as Japanese, as my friend Rachael would attest (it has three, which is an absurd number of alphabets (though of course they're not technically alphabets but syllabaries)), but still more than us common Western folk. And some of it's not too problematic...

Mostly the same...odd handwritten t's though...

and then it goes a bit

From top to bottom: v, ye, r, s, oo, ch LOL WHAT

and then all of a sudden it's

Russia no. Russia why. (l, p, f, e, yu, ya)

all the same, while it's a harsh learning curve I'm enjoying it. I'm picking up plenty of vocab and Anna's leaving notes around that have familiar shapes on them. Don't get me wrong, comprehension is still a distant, blue-white-and-red-waving flag, but at least the shapes are vaguely familiar. So that's good.

First three hours at the job; I have remembered all the names (which is a pleasing and useful skill, and is sure to impress your mother, future mates, and spawn) and some of the names of people I'm not sure I was supposed to remember: Gary, Neil, Edward, Thomas, Paulina, Margaret, Simonas, Robert, Jakob, Joshua, Shannon and Majika. I may be wrong about the last one

In any case: my life is stumbling on in the standard, shambling way that it does. I had a pretty good interval run today, with an average pace hovering around 4.20 minutes/km for my fast paces and 8 minutes/km for my slow. I've also been introduced to Welcome to Night Vale, which is gloriously creepy and weird. If you're not listening already get stuck into it, and if you need further convincing check out these very unsettling tweets. Then listen to episode 1 right below.

So until next time...goodnight.