Using Mandarin
Jan. 2nd, 2026 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
disappointed_lesbianI have headache and I don't know why. I've been trying to get rid of it for hours. Maybe looking at this computer screen doesn't help. I tried reading instead, but looking at a page of small printed text isn't very comfortble. I've gone through all the things that have helped get rid of headaches before: dimming my computer screen, coffee, greasy food, rizatriptan. I had a surprisingly delicious meal of oven-roasted Japanese yam.
Ok. Four pm and the headache is finally gone. I've been feeling weak all day as well; no solution for that. I've had coffee twice and the caffeine hasn't done much for my energy level. I slept almost not at all last night; maybe that's the problem, but I don't feel sleepy. I managed to get into a dream state this morning, but I cannot remember what I dreamt, probably because I didn't dream for long. Wait, I remember. A little.
I was in some sort of public transportation station, for a subway or something. I'd dreamt of this station before, or maybe being in that station made me remember the other station I'd dreamt of. Then I left on foot and ended up in or near another small station or bus stop, deeper in town, where there seemed to be a lot of old white buildings, which gave the town a clean look that felt deceptive, as if there was filth lurking if I were just to look more closely. The brightness of the station contributed to the clean look. It was an unfamiliar town, one that felt large or maybe just spacious but didn't have a lot of people walking about. Towns like that feel weird. I almost always dream up imaginary places.
It's raining again and the darkness of the day plus my low energy makes things feel a bit dreary. I just need to focus on something to keep my mood up. Fortunately, there are effectively endless minutes of Mandarin podcasts that I can study. Making flashcards takes forever, so I have a double eternity of things with which to fill my day.
I'm low on protein and hungry as hell. The amount of tofu I buy each month has been going up, and it needs to keep going up. Twelve or thirteen blocks is what I'll buy this month. I suppose I shouldn't buy forty dollars worth of walnuts, as I've been doing, so I'll have money for other things. More tofu and more veggies is what I need. Excess fiber is not what I need. I don't know what I'm going to do about omega 3, though. That's what I was having the walnuts for. Maybe hemp seeds are enough.
According to cronometer, a fourth of an ounce of chia seeds provides more than 100% rda of omega 3. Maybe my 1oz. of walnuts a day was overkill.
By this time next year, I'm going to go back to either Czech or Korean. I've been asking myself why I'm still studying Mandarin, and I haven't come up with a good answer. There are good reasons for my indecision, but it's still indecision, which is unacceptable. So I'm setting a little goal for myself. I don't have to quit; I'm just planning to focus on Mandarin less. By this time next year, I will have been studying the language for two and a half years, and, given my progress thus far, will have reached a point at which I can defocus the language without losing all my progress. It'll be like my Spanish: not great, but good enough for me to understand non-specialist podcasts, to maintain my comprehension with little effort. No, it won't be quite that good, but it'll be close enough. I hope.
I'm afraid I won't get well enough to go to Taiwan for school, but, if I do, and if I cannot parley that into a life in the country or it's too unsafe to do so or I just don't feel safe enough to do so, I hope to have the option to parlay it into a career here. Or it'll just be another skill that earns me nothing, like my Spanish and French.
Or maybe I'm too scared of homelessness to go. I'm finding that my time homeless has affected me more than I previously noticed. It's really shitty to be so poor that going to study, even with a full scholarship, will send me back into homelessness. I should look into how long I'd have to wait to get another housing voucher.
Ok. Four pm and the headache is finally gone. I've been feeling weak all day as well; no solution for that. I've had coffee twice and the caffeine hasn't done much for my energy level. I slept almost not at all last night; maybe that's the problem, but I don't feel sleepy. I managed to get into a dream state this morning, but I cannot remember what I dreamt, probably because I didn't dream for long. Wait, I remember. A little.
I was in some sort of public transportation station, for a subway or something. I'd dreamt of this station before, or maybe being in that station made me remember the other station I'd dreamt of. Then I left on foot and ended up in or near another small station or bus stop, deeper in town, where there seemed to be a lot of old white buildings, which gave the town a clean look that felt deceptive, as if there was filth lurking if I were just to look more closely. The brightness of the station contributed to the clean look. It was an unfamiliar town, one that felt large or maybe just spacious but didn't have a lot of people walking about. Towns like that feel weird. I almost always dream up imaginary places.
It's raining again and the darkness of the day plus my low energy makes things feel a bit dreary. I just need to focus on something to keep my mood up. Fortunately, there are effectively endless minutes of Mandarin podcasts that I can study. Making flashcards takes forever, so I have a double eternity of things with which to fill my day.
I'm low on protein and hungry as hell. The amount of tofu I buy each month has been going up, and it needs to keep going up. Twelve or thirteen blocks is what I'll buy this month. I suppose I shouldn't buy forty dollars worth of walnuts, as I've been doing, so I'll have money for other things. More tofu and more veggies is what I need. Excess fiber is not what I need. I don't know what I'm going to do about omega 3, though. That's what I was having the walnuts for. Maybe hemp seeds are enough.
According to cronometer, a fourth of an ounce of chia seeds provides more than 100% rda of omega 3. Maybe my 1oz. of walnuts a day was overkill.
By this time next year, I'm going to go back to either Czech or Korean. I've been asking myself why I'm still studying Mandarin, and I haven't come up with a good answer. There are good reasons for my indecision, but it's still indecision, which is unacceptable. So I'm setting a little goal for myself. I don't have to quit; I'm just planning to focus on Mandarin less. By this time next year, I will have been studying the language for two and a half years, and, given my progress thus far, will have reached a point at which I can defocus the language without losing all my progress. It'll be like my Spanish: not great, but good enough for me to understand non-specialist podcasts, to maintain my comprehension with little effort. No, it won't be quite that good, but it'll be close enough. I hope.
I'm afraid I won't get well enough to go to Taiwan for school, but, if I do, and if I cannot parley that into a life in the country or it's too unsafe to do so or I just don't feel safe enough to do so, I hope to have the option to parlay it into a career here. Or it'll just be another skill that earns me nothing, like my Spanish and French.
Or maybe I'm too scared of homelessness to go. I'm finding that my time homeless has affected me more than I previously noticed. It's really shitty to be so poor that going to study, even with a full scholarship, will send me back into homelessness. I should look into how long I'd have to wait to get another housing voucher.
