NO, I have not forgotten about this site. I’m working on making this space more catered to mobile users by making some design tweaks to the sadgrl layout and turning it into what I have now but better, cause mobile and stuff. It’s taking me a bit, but I think I will have the main page done next week if I have time.
Anyway, I had my first Indo class today and its humbled and boosted my ego in different ways. Going in, I already suspected my talking would stumble a bit as I rarely get to practice conversation, but my pronunciation seems to be at least better than a few of the other students: rolling Rs and have an idea of the accents and letters from family interactions. What’s really getting my hopes up is that I’ve finally found a spot where I can practice speaking, which is hard to find (at least for free). It reminded me a lot of high school German with assignments and everything, and I remember doing decently well in the class, mainly just because I was only taking the class for a requirement. I still have some understanding of German and continue to look back at the class for ways to learn Indo, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
I’m considering trying to hit up one of my cousins to see if he’d be willing to practice with me. One of them, for the longest time, I had childhood memories of having little trouble talking with, but after meeting him last summer, I realized he was just talking through the other. He’s very shy about his English. I’ve tried in the past to expose him to the language while we played some Minecraft, but he’d rather type than try speaking. In the Indo class, we’ll eventually have to talk about someone from Indo, so maybe I can try getting him to talk again once he sees how far I’ve gotten. IDK
This whole thing just another self-reminder that just using Duolingo is kind scheiße: have multiple learning sources
Yap Yap Yap,
Mr. Yep
Selamat malam/good night greetings! It is 10:50 p.m (yesterday). as I am writing this, but I want to make this a regular thing, so here we are. Those of you who’ve seen the anime Nichijou probably know part of that opener, but, in case not, I’ve been trying to learn Indonesian. I’ve been at it for a few years now but only really took it somewhat seriously within the past year having done some lessons on The Indonesian Way course and got Anki on my phone for convenient flash cards. Anki has been the best help in my vocab. I used to exclusively use Duolingo like your usual bule, but there’s no good way to do a holistic review of the entirety of the learned vocab. Now, I just have the entire Duolingo list on Anki and just take flashcards sessions whenever I’m waiting for class.
Speaking of classes, I was looking through r/Indonesian one day and ended up finding free online classes for Indonesian by the Indo D.C. embassy. Honestly, there have been some learning opportunities on my campus that I have been letting pass by because my conversational skills are very single, simple sentenced, so I’m hoping that this opportunity ends up being like my experience taking German in high school: having assignments that encourage student conversations and really exercise proper grammar. I have tried basing how I learn Indonesian on how I learned German (well, I wasn’t fluent in to, and I certainly am not now), and while it has helped me find the current resource I use now, I’ve always felt having a dedicated class helped just that bit in immersing me in the language. The classes start in February, and no matter what happens, I’m going to try and pull of some conversations once the classes are over. My mom taught me scheiße and I refuse to continue sitting quietly in on the family Lunar New Year calls.
Today, though, I watched a video from maigomika, very slice of life type channel, and it brought back an epiphany I’ve had many-a-time: its those little things man! Like, not just in your home but everywhere that makes scheiße real. I always think back to my trip to Cancun as the worst vacation. When we first arrived, it was looking to be a fun time: staying at a nice resort and eventually we’d be going out to see the ruins, but as the week, went on everything slowly became more noticeably off. This resort burger is . . . hammy, there’s people who are “natives” as their job, HOLY SCHEIßE CHICHEN ITZA IS JUST A GIANT CRAFTS FAIR. I’m sure most people who go through are just looking to relax at the resorts, but all these small aspects piled up and made everything seem like a façade. Even on my trip to the Gili islands, a very touristy trio of islands in Indo east of Bali, there were Indonesians living right behind the small resorts in the center of the island. One of them even helped fix a bike we had borrowed from the place we stayed at.
These experiences have given me a longing to go somewhere no one ever talks about going. I’ve talked with my a few times about various trip ideas like a road trip to Alaska or a pilgrimage to the Bill Clinton statue in Kosovo, but there are two places that have really been on my mind: the Philippines and Kazakhstan. Both could involve people I know as a local guide, but the Kazakhstan one is the most interesting as I have only met my buddy from there online. We met on Ome.tv, talked and called occasionally over the past year, and I’ve shown him this website, so he might be reading this (Hi!). Haven’t told him about possible coming over, but it is a fantasy that you hear a lot about on the internet that, yes, has many dangers to it but could be really fun, maybe, hopefully? Nah, he’s a chill dude. I also really want to go there just so we can do a personal exchange of culture. When my cousin from Indo came to America for the first time last summer, she was excited to see things I took for granted. Looking back, there really aren’t a lot of places like your local American Target or Costco in Indo, and now I am wondering what I might find for myself in an average Kazakh town if I came to see my online buddy. Until then, I’ll be playing the points game towards the trip and remind myself the everyday things my cousin once only saw on Big Bang Theory.
Yap Yap Yap,
Mr. Yep
Yep, this site had been one of the main things on my mind as of late, despite having abandoned it for about a year. I have finally started coming back once my winter break hit, and while I obviously wouldn’t consider myself competent in site building, my complete vision of this site has started to seem ever more plausible. It’s gotten to the point where I’m looking through other sites’ source code and questioning the foundational code on my site. Codecademy’s courses were, and still are, fairly useful in getting to where my knowledge is today, but the pacing definitely contributed to my lack of interest for a while. First you learn html, then having completed an entire course you learn that you need to do another course to learn a whole other language to do all the cool stuff. I’m still mid-way through that second course, Codecademy’s CSS course, but I have little desire to continue right now after learning the box model. After figuring that out, most of what I wanted to do seemed possible and everything else has been searchable.
This website in general has brought me a lot of joy and self-worth as I have tried learning to code on-and-off many times and I get to create something of my own. Back in high school, I was obsessed with helping build-up our student media site, especially the news magazine’s segment which I was a part of. I was on there whenever I could looking at article analytics and aiding in the site’s design wherever I could. I want to grow this site into a project similar, if not better, to that experience but with a focus on me and my interest. Once this site’s more complete, I’m a go full blast on my socials and really get this going.
Yap Yap Yap,
Mr. Yep