In Which I Fail To Come Up With An Appropriately Witty Title
Sorry for the delay in an update - all I can say is that I've been pretty busy without actually managing to achieve very much. Not in terms of progressing through the multiple layers of bureaucracy in this place, at any rate. Have I posted since I got my AIDS test result last Monday? (I don't have it, as I'm sure you were all on absolute tenterhooks to know.) Well, then, on Wednesday I finally handed in my registration form at the university but to no tangible result since I didn't actually have a sufficient number of passport photos. My month for applying for an iqaama expires on the 7th, so I rather need to get moving on this. But, apart from that, I've been going to class and doing work and this weekend went to Latakia with four others, on the way to which and where we had some 'majnoon' (crazy) experiences and gained some good memories.
Today was pretty good, too. It began shakily but evened out and improved steadily. I feel contented. I picked up my passport photos; got falafel with some of the guys from my class; sat outside the internet cafe eating it and working and listening to people and watching them play with Mungo, the child of the diplomats who live in the house opposite; went to do my homework with Jess at the side of the weekly football game; came back and did more work outside the internet cafe and talked some Arabic (Jess is under a self-imposed rule of no English except on Sundays, because there are so many foreigners in Bab Touma now, which I think is an excellent idea and may have to try adopting at some point - it's already encouraging those foreigners around her to talk more Arabic, too); then had two and a half hours' conversation with Samah, a Syrian student with whom Manal put me in contact. We've only had two meetings so far (the first was last Thursday, but crossed wires and the trip to Latakia impeded a second until this evening) but it's really useful practice speaking-wise and in terms of gaining vocabulary. So that's good. Then I wandered back into the internet cafe and ended up going for food with Charlie and Nikki in Shadi's place (Alarisha), and having a quiet meal there. Which is sometimes just nice, you know. Nikki's a bit under the weather so it was good to keep her company. Then we said goodnight and dispersed, and I have now come to the internet cafe to do some e-mail checking and get some photocopies of this iqaama form I borrowed from Charlie in order not to have to visit the hole that is apparently the immigration office before I absolutely have to. I'm making progress on the admin!
Anyway. I've got to stop there, as I have a bucket-load of work still to do (this is a regular occurrence) and it's twenty past midnight. I'm sorry this hasn't been an amusing update, not that I think the usual ones are particularly, but this one feels particularly perfunctory. I will write another post about Latakia if I can because I really had a good time and as I said, there were satisfactory dollops of bizarreness, hilarity and enjoyment, which I couldn't possibly have you miss out on the satisfaction of knowing about.
Love to you all. Thanks for the comments, everyone who leaves them. I really appreciate them. I confess that I couldn't resist the call of sisterly sarcasm, James, but you know how little effort that requires. :p The truth is that in general, I like to take time about responses and that's something I'm lacking in at the moment, or I would reply! I'm really sorry about that. (Also, I did think it was an excellent picture. Kudos, Chris.)
Okay, it's not even twenty past midnight any more, it's nearly one o'clock because I went back to edit and add things in. I really must go. Hasta luego!
Today was pretty good, too. It began shakily but evened out and improved steadily. I feel contented. I picked up my passport photos; got falafel with some of the guys from my class; sat outside the internet cafe eating it and working and listening to people and watching them play with Mungo, the child of the diplomats who live in the house opposite; went to do my homework with Jess at the side of the weekly football game; came back and did more work outside the internet cafe and talked some Arabic (Jess is under a self-imposed rule of no English except on Sundays, because there are so many foreigners in Bab Touma now, which I think is an excellent idea and may have to try adopting at some point - it's already encouraging those foreigners around her to talk more Arabic, too); then had two and a half hours' conversation with Samah, a Syrian student with whom Manal put me in contact. We've only had two meetings so far (the first was last Thursday, but crossed wires and the trip to Latakia impeded a second until this evening) but it's really useful practice speaking-wise and in terms of gaining vocabulary. So that's good. Then I wandered back into the internet cafe and ended up going for food with Charlie and Nikki in Shadi's place (Alarisha), and having a quiet meal there. Which is sometimes just nice, you know. Nikki's a bit under the weather so it was good to keep her company. Then we said goodnight and dispersed, and I have now come to the internet cafe to do some e-mail checking and get some photocopies of this iqaama form I borrowed from Charlie in order not to have to visit the hole that is apparently the immigration office before I absolutely have to. I'm making progress on the admin!
Anyway. I've got to stop there, as I have a bucket-load of work still to do (this is a regular occurrence) and it's twenty past midnight. I'm sorry this hasn't been an amusing update, not that I think the usual ones are particularly, but this one feels particularly perfunctory. I will write another post about Latakia if I can because I really had a good time and as I said, there were satisfactory dollops of bizarreness, hilarity and enjoyment, which I couldn't possibly have you miss out on the satisfaction of knowing about.
Love to you all. Thanks for the comments, everyone who leaves them. I really appreciate them. I confess that I couldn't resist the call of sisterly sarcasm, James, but you know how little effort that requires. :p The truth is that in general, I like to take time about responses and that's something I'm lacking in at the moment, or I would reply! I'm really sorry about that. (Also, I did think it was an excellent picture. Kudos, Chris.)
Okay, it's not even twenty past midnight any more, it's nearly one o'clock because I went back to edit and add things in. I really must go. Hasta luego!
posted by imeander at 3:23 PM
12 Comments:
Hm, that's strange. Was sure I'd posted a comment here (in which I confused the word sycophant with the word sophist, while ironically enough discussing underused vocabularly, but there you go). I guess I'll post it again when I get back from work.
In the meanwhile, take care!
Guess what I'm doing? That's' right. Doing a paper I've had two weeks to do and is due in two hours. And you know what else? Drinking coffee. Alas, I am in the school library, so there is a spurious lack of pirates. I'm not sure if I used the word spurious correctly or not, though.
It is on Spanish colonialization of Latin America, which is not my favorite subject, so I had a legitmate reason to put it off. I think. But at least part of it is in the Caribbean, so that means in a few centuries there will be pirates. Unfortunately, that is after the course ends. Pfft. Who cares about Cortes.
Er, that was me.
As if you wouldn't have guessed.
I guessed it was nb. I win!
So, where was I?
Oh yes, my previous comment which failed to post properly.
First of all I worried about you getting home, given how it was 1am or something.
Then I reckon I said I was glad you were feeling content, but sorry you were finding yourself with so much work to do.
And then I mentioned that I'd only found the underused vocab thread today and had been entertained by it!
That was about it. So yes, look after yourself.
I guessed it was NB, too. I win, too!
Poor James, worrying about whether I was going to be all right going home on my own. The internet cafe is just down the street from my house. :p Literally. Thank you, though.
Ho hum, I'm glad you've been interesting yourself in vocabulary. One can never have too much vocabulary. Although, incidentally, today I was trying to explain some rudimentary English phrases to my Syrian conversation partner and actually failing abysmally. I couldn't for the life of me remember what we say. I think when one learns another language all the new words you learn actually push the words of your own language out. Or else I can't speak English properly.
So, when we go camping, and we make? set? set up? strike? raise? camp for the night, what is it that we say we do? And also when we have a campfire, you know, so we can sit around it and sing songs and do all those stereotypical camping-type things - do we light it? make it? build it? I think it's just make, isn't it? But other languages have special phrases for this type of thing and so I'm confusing myself considerably...
So, should this be a weekly thing, or whatever? I post something rambly and you guess if it was me, or not? But then that wouldn't be much of a contest. Still, it would be kind of silly.
I think that happens when you think too much about your language. It is very weird to be thinking hard about what you would normally say, or how a simple word is spelt. I was thinking about this a while ago, and whenver I think about a word too much, it doesn't look like it should be a word.
I read this somewhere, kind of long
"fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55% of plepoe can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!!. "
but if you you stop and pay too much attention that's when you trip up. Though if you are confused already, that might be an issue, too. :P
Huzzah! Found you! Glad to see you seem to be having a good time, though I haven't read all your posts yet. Keep up the good work, it's wonderful to hear what you're up to.
We're going camping? Cool!
I'd say raise a camp and light a fire.
NB (we'd better call you NB so I don't get confused about all the Sarah's, also, hi, Sarah, no, not you, the other one) you'll be very disappointed to know that your comment prompted me into thinking some serious thoughts.
I was thinking about character names and wondering if one could give someone a name which would suggest another word, with the same letters rearranged.
So, in my original fic, I've got someone called Linda Erpetan, which is meant to suggest serpent (in fact, as Linda is spanish for pretty one, it's meant to be 'pretty snake' which is a bit geeky, even for me), but I was wondering if the effect could be achieved better.
So I thought about calling someone Sperent, to get this effect, but I'm not sure it works. What do you think? It'd be pretty cool though to kind of have people thinking subliminal words which would attach to a name.
Wow, so many comments. NB, I vaguely recall reading that (or something like it) somewhere before, too, but it still boggles my mind a bit how I could read and understand that entire paragraph without difficulty. Sarah, hello!!! Hooray! It's nice to see you. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. James, thanks for the camping clarification! You have bropught a bit of calm to the confused currents of my poor mind.
Also, I'm doing a bit of Wikipedia-ing on the 'snake' question and I found some other interesting-sounding names for snakes. You probably already did this but it's interesting so I'm going to ramble on... (Talking about playing around with sounds of words, you could also have snake -> skane or hm, any combination, I gues, really.)
The word 'snake' is from the old English word 'snaca' from proto-Indo-European base 'snag-' or 'sneg-' which means to crawl. They're also known as ophidians and a part of the order Squamata (doesn't that remind you of the word 'squeamish'?) Serpent, the synonym, comes from 'serp-', to creep. (Creepy-crawlies! Serpy-snaggies?) And,
"The Ouroboros or Oroboros is a snake manifesting its own tail in a clock-wise direction (from the head to the tail) in the shape of a circle, representing manifestation of one's own life and rebirth, leading to immortality." (That's from the Symbolism section.) Ouroboros sounds like it could be a cool name.
And in India 'snake' is 'nag' and the cobra is sometimes called the 'nagraj' or king of snakes. And in the Bible Moses made a bronze snake on a pole which cured people of bites from snakes and that was called Nehushtan (I don't know why) which sounds cool.
Anyway, it's all really interesting, you should check it out. And that's my spurious ramble done for the day!
Hurrah! I am glad you are having a crazy time. I am having a crazy time too, IN MY MIND.
Hullo Natalie Uni Friends!
Also, possibly the best type of snake variant is Lamia, as Natalie will remember; the irony of my mother - specifically her name - also springs to mind, since she is snake-o-phobic and yet her name means "snake" - in some Arabic-derived way? Natalie?
So, hope you're getting the work done, but make sure you've got that work/living balance up to 30/70. Work will always happen, Syria is for now!
Lamia!!! Of course! *hits head with palm of hand* There had to be an important one I was forgetting. I can't believe A-Level English Lit faded so quickly.
James, have you read 'Lamia'? You should! It's a poem by John Keats. Who is must-read for would-be English teachers.
Nicki! hurrah for having a crazy time! in one's head or out of it. (ha, or off it) I'm not sure off the top of my head how Linda might be derived from the Arabic (I know it's Spanish for 'pretty' though?) or in what way it might be related to snakes, but I'm looking into it...
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