Random Thoughts....

The river outside my apartment is rising fast. Months ago a dead tree washed down from upstream and got wedged against the bank - a few minutes ago it broke free and floated away. I've seen other debris come down from upstream too.
 
After going back to India I realized that while my Tamil improves when I'm at home, I still struggle to get my message across. And if we go outside of Tamil Nadu I feel lost as I cannot speak to anyone in anything other than english.

I'm wondering if at some point I should take a course in Tamil to relearn it. I also have CDs on learning Hindi. This would bring my total language count to 4, and 4.5 if you include knowing some phrases in Japanese. I also have a thing on spanish which I should have probably taken instead of French in HS considering my location.

Am I nuts? How easy has it been for you guys in terms of relearning or learning new languages at this age (if you're a polyglot).
 
katwalk said:
The other one won't boot from it's internal drive AGAIN (second time in the last 4 days) and I ran all the disc repairs and checks and it says it is fine. It will however, boot from the install disk and the external drive.
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If you boot up from one of the other discs, can you read the normal hard drive okay?
 
Naw English will do - all educated Indian people speak it: so long as you are not staying too long.

If you intend to stay there for a long time then learn your home state language (Tamil I take it?) and Hindi obviously. I know the South do not really like Hindi but jobs may need it.
 
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LP said:
After going back to India I realized that while my Tamil improves when I'm at home, I still struggle to get my message across. And if we go outside of Tamil Nadu I feel lost as I cannot speak to anyone in anything other than english.

I'm wondering if at some point I should take a course in Tamil to relearn it. I also have CDs on learning Hindi. This would bring my total language count to 4, and 4.5 if you include knowing some phrases in Japanese. I also have a thing on spanish which I should have probably taken instead of French in HS considering my location.

Am I nuts? How easy has it been for you guys in terms of relearning or learning new languages at this age (if you're a polyglot).
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Honestly, if you have a strong foundation, I'd go for it. I'm in a similar situation with French, used to be able to speak it conversationally but I've lost a lot of it through years of non-exposure. Still I feel like I could pick it up again if the need arose, and it's something I've toyed with.

Of course I can't speak for the difficulty of Tamil specifically, and I may be too young to be considered part of "this age."
 
LP said:
After going back to India I realized that while my Tamil improves when I'm at home, I still struggle to get my message across. And if we go outside of Tamil Nadu I feel lost as I cannot speak to anyone in anything other than english.

I'm wondering if at some point I should take a course in Tamil to relearn it. I also have CDs on learning Hindi. This would bring my total language count to 4, and 4.5 if you include knowing some phrases in Japanese. I also have a thing on spanish which I should have probably taken instead of French in HS considering my location.

Am I nuts? How easy has it been for you guys in terms of relearning or learning new languages at this age (if you're a polyglot).
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Personally I would relearn it, I feel my most identifiable mother tongue is Greek and if my fluency slipped I would do anything to relearn it because my grandmother wouldn't speak to me (she's fluent in English, but a stick in the mud about Greek). I've also toyed with the idea of learning something like Hindi or Mandarin to future proof myself :D.
 
Man-maths is playing a solid role in calculating what I can afford this summer. :lol: With 3 holiday trips, 2 of them being driving ones, its not looking good...
 
Cobol74 said:
Naw English will do - all educated Indian people speak it: so long as you are not staying too long.

If you intend to stay there for a long time then learn your home state language (Tamil I take it?) and Hindi obviously. I know the South do not really like Hindi but jobs may need it.
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Most educated people in India speak English to an extent. Sometimes even beggars speak better English than people who have masters degrees. It's really funny. I don't intend to stay in India for long, I only intend on visits once in a while or when an emergency occurs. It just sometimes feels difficult to not be able to go out and roam the streets in my hometown without depending on someone to help with speaking Tamil. You're spot on with Hindi, Tamilians don't like to mar their language with Sanskrit, Hindi, or English as it's the only thing we have left that has connections to the ancient dravidian language (quite possibly the oldest language in the world). However there's a lot of discrimination against southies because of this lack of Hindi, and when you step out, if they don't know English, chances are great that they know Hindi. My dad tells me Hindi is easy to learn, so that's why I put it up as an option.

thevictor390 said:
Honestly, if you have a strong foundation, I'd go for it. I'm in a similar situation with French, used to be able to speak it conversationally but I've lost a lot of it through years of non-exposure. Still I feel like I could pick it up again if the need arose, and it's something I've toyed with.

Of course I can't speak for the difficulty of Tamil specifically, and I may be too young to be considered part of "this age."
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It's like riding a bicycle I guess. If you have a good foundation it'll come back with re-exposure. I only managed upto a 3rd grade level in Tamil before I left for the states. That doesn't mean I can't converse as my family babbles in Tamil all the time at home.

Learning Tamil isn't difficult per se, it's just vocab and grammar.

Clockwerk said:
Personally I would relearn it, I feel my most identifiable mother tongue is Greek and if my fluency slipped I would do anything to relearn it because my grandmother wouldn't speak to me (she's fluent in English, but a stick in the mud about Greek). I've also toyed with the idea of learning something like Hindi or Mandarin to future proof myself :D.
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:lol: @ future proofing. We're all going to be a mix of gold, black, and brown. My grandmother is like that as well, she speaks in Tamil mostly and it's hard to converse with her or follow her on the phone sometimes. There are lots of good people around in the neighborhood and the desire to speak to them and share and laugh with them has compelled me to want to relearn. I think I'll stick with Japanese for my East-Asian language :p.



My dad also is curious now in wanting to learn Arabic letters and sounds. We might dive into that at some point.
 
http://www.360cities.net/

so cool, spherical panoramas from all over the world. You can see them in google Earth, but it's hard to track them down unless you load up a massive kml that'll make earth run really slowly.
 
NoNeedForAChestWig said:
If you boot up from one of the other discs, can you read the normal hard drive okay?
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Yeah it keeps corrupting the system files or some shit. It fixes if I reinstall the OS but doing system repair doesn't do anything. Second time in 3 days, really fucking annoying considering the dvd drive is also half dead so it takes forever to install.
 
FruityLexia said:
It isn't out today, a day earlier than planned.
Tomorrow isn't the original release date.

Oh fuck it, it came out today a day earlier and it's full of detectivey goodness.
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Noooo... I'm blaming you if I fail! But much love for making that fail awesome! *Runs out and buys*
 
I just remembered, I saw Bryan Callen live in LA last year.


/random.
 
George Takei kicks ass

 
BlaRo said:
This just in: George Takei is goddamn FABULOUS.

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I really admire Takei for putting himself at the front of the equal rights issue.
 
Blind_Io said:
The river outside my apartment is rising fast. Months ago a dead tree washed down from upstream and got wedged against the bank - a few minutes ago it broke free and floated away. I've seen other debris come down from upstream too.
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I feel your anxiety about the water level rising. It has rained a ton here the last couple of weeks, and the sump pump starting not starting up and it was getting worrisome. At one point last night, the pump ran for more than 20 minutes because the water was coming in so fast it could not keep up. I had to babysit it until I could get a new one installed. I have standing water all over my yard, and my neighbors both have ponds that don't belong there. I had the pump changed today, so no more worries about it, but I don't know how much more it can rain, doesn't the sky eventually run out of water to drop on us?
 
If you have an upper level, you might want to move anything irreplaceable up there.....just in case....

/Queensland nervousness
 
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