Waiting for green light

[topum]

Orchard Road, Singapore

Comments

[ascending-fire.livejournal.com]

That little girl is so cute :)

Do you have pictures of yourself? I looked in your tags once, but didn't really see a "about me" sort of tag. And if you'd like, add me over here, I took everyone off the other journal.

[topum.livejournal.com]

No, i haven't posted pictures of myself here yet.
I think I forgot to add your new journal but added you now.

[ascending-fire.livejournal.com]

Ok, thanks! :)

I was just curious to know a little more about you :) not to sound creepy, lol.

[erychan86.livejournal.com]

No one seems in a rush and the little girl is absolutely adorable... Look at that smile! And look at the hair of that guy with the burgundy shoes, the hat and the black bag on his shoulder!

[topum.livejournal.com]

Those two guys were wearing identical hats. And you can't see the Warhol tomato soup top the woman behind the girl with the phone was wearing. I have another shot though, here it is:

[wanderipity.livejournal.com]

All the feels of your Singapore post. I want Laksa now.

I stumbled upon a brand called "Pull and Bear" there and they havd it there and in Europe.. but not in USA. Haha

[topum.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, I would pay a lot of money to find myself at Lau Pa Sat or Maxwell Court or any other food court really for an hour. Unfortunately no amount of money can get me there and back in less than two days, which is too long. We need to bring the concordes back.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Nice.

Always wanted to ask - do you speak any of local languages (mandarin, malay)?

[wanderipity.livejournal.com]

I need some hawker food.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Not fluent in any of them, no but can get by in Bahasa Malaysia / Indonesia. Singapore is English speaking. Did not learn Chinese, I knew I could not invest enough time to become good at it anyway.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Don't we all.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

I knew I could not invest enough time to become good at it anyway

Yes, I heard that it´s an extremely tough language...

[topum.livejournal.com]

Malaysian / Indonesian on the other hand is definitely considered one of the easiest languages to learn.
I am trying to learn a bit of Russian now and it is so tough it is maddening. At some point I even had thoughts like "Wow, no wonder the Russians have always been so unpredictable and difficult to explain, hard not to go mad with that language" ).

[beautesauvage13.livejournal.com]

I like that black and white shirt dude has on.

Athena

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

Now you understand a misterious Russian soul!

Mark Twain wrote a comic novel about learning German. He had very similar feelings...

The point is that Russian grammatics was created by German linguists, who wanted total Ordnung in everything. So they fought the intuitive nature of the language by creating enormous number of rules. Accordingly, all these rules have still more exceptions... This is what makes studying it twice as harder than it could be.

[topum.livejournal.com]

i don't know about the rules. They seem so detailed and complex and with so many exceptions that having them is not much help compared to a complete mess without any rules. Everything is not what it seems, everything can be done in a million different ways and everything is an exception. I am enjoying it though even though I still can understand and say very little.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

"They seem so detailed and complex and with so many exceptions that having them is not much help compared to a complete mess without any rules."

This is exactly what I mean.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

My daughter from her 5 y.o. is growing abroad. No Russian schools, no grammatics. Only talking to me and reading books. And her Russian is perfect, she writes poems and long novels and doesn't make mistakes in grammar or style.

So maybe you'd better just talk to me and read some books in Russian? In several years, you'll write something like War and Peace or Eugene Onegin, I promise.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Haha. Man, writing even simplest essays in my native language has always been a huge pain for me (and I sucked big time) but War and Peace, let alone Onegin, haha. When I took GMAT, I got a perfect 800 score (including verbal) which is top 0.0001 percentile or something but my score on the essays part was something like bottom 10% percent, outrageously low. Luckily bschools did not care about the essays scores almost at all (but I did get asked about it at all admission interviews). So getting me to write well (and like it) would take some serious brain surgery on top of talking to you I am afraid.

So is Spanish native for your daughter? She does not have an accent different from the locals?

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

"would take some serious brain surgery"

(with a hypnotiser's gesture) Trust me!

For her, Russian is still a preferable language - for reading, writing, thinking. Spanish is OK, she talks (she is 14) but it doesn't feel like native at all. Costa Rica is a good place to live: but it's difficult to feel "native" here. A very different mentality.

[topum.livejournal.com]

I know a girl in Norway, she is Norwegian but she came to Norway from Latvia when she was 4. Her Norwegian is native, she does not have an accent. She is also fluent in Russian but I cannot judge how good and accent free that is.

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

If local culture satisfies all your needs and gives you a vocabulary to express all you have in mind, than it's easy to become a part of it. If there's a gap, you'll need something else. Here, Spanish culture and language are reduced to a very primitive vocabulary of middle-class TV-watchers. So when people need something else, they move to the territory of other cultures.

Here aristocracy and cultural elite practically don't exist (or just don't differ from others), the society is very homogenic, no alternative ways of life and thinking. So, to save some wider horizon (art, literature, and general "Weltanshauung"), we instinctively keep Russian language and culture. And add a good deal of British to it. In UK, or Germany, or Italy, or US, we wouldn't need to.

In spite of all written above, I love this country. It satisfies my need of freedom (overheated by Russian experience) quite fully.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Does she go to a local school?

[diejacobsleiter.livejournal.com]

No she is at a special musical one. General studies - home school.

[topum.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I get it.