#though since I was very close to real fluency when I stopped studying it I can probably at least start with intermediate or advanced lmao

[opisasodomite]

During my weekly Thai lessons with the husband my roommate sometimes eavesdrops, and has recently observed that my Thai is improving - because now I’ve upgraded from complete incoherence to, sounds like a 3 year old 👶

[zaffrenotes]

[TRR] Kairos

Kairos - Part 12

Pairing: Liam x Riley, Liam x OC Series Rating/Warnings: 18+; language; series will include ns*w 🍋 scenes Chapter Rating/Warnings: G Author’s Note: * All main characters belong to Pixelberry, I’m just borrowing them * Kairos (καιρός) is a word in Greek that translates to “the right time” or “the right moment to act” * Liam’s wife asks about “the one that got away” one night over dinner, and Liam recounts a relationship from his past * This is my submission for @wackydrabbles​​ Prompt 89: This isn't what I had in mind, but okay. * Author’s Note 2: * I apologize if this chapter feels choppy; I haven't updated this story since January, and writing is H A R D, but I want to finish this AU. I know how it ends, I just have to *gestures at the air* get there. * Word Count: 1708

Catch up with previous chapters here

Taglist (let me know if you’d like to be added or removed for this series): @ao719 @blackcatkita @debramcg1106 @ofpixelsandscribbles @callmeellabella @smalltalk88 @aestheticartsx @bbrandy2002 @burnsoslow @choiceskatie @darley1101 @dcbbw @gardeningourmet @iplaydrake @liamxs-world @rainbowsinthestorm @riseandshinelittleblossom @superharriet @texaskitten30 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @the-soot-sprite // @alyssalauren @clairexoxo100 @cordonianroyalty @cordonian-literature @gkittylove99 @gnatbrain @jared2612 @kingliam2019 @mom2000aggie @pink-diamond13 @princessleac1 @queenjilian @sfb123 @txemrn @yourmajesty09

The evening carried on, and it was nearly impossible for Liam to pull himself away from one conversation to the next. Most of the new suitors vied for his attention to make a good impression, various nobles edged their way into conversations to discuss official business, and his friends made every effort to steal him away for short reprieves. He was dancing when he caught a flash of Max’s dress near the edge of the dance floor.

Brief glimpses and glances of a link to Liam’s almost-love was all The Fates seemed to grant for the duration of the ball, despite his best efforts to carve out a moment with Max. The irony wasn’t lost on him; having found a connection to Elia after years had passed, without a way to speak with her sister. His hand warmed against his dancing partner’s palm as they waltzed with other couples.

“What’s troubling you tonight? Besides the obvious farce of this whole ordeal.” A pair of cherry red lips curled into a sympathetic grin, and Liam nodded in silent agreement. “Something other than counting steps is running through your mind.”

Liam adjusted his grip on Olivia’s hand as he led her across the floor, quickly scanning the crowd for another glimpse of Max. “I require the assistance of a dear friend,” he answered quietly, twirling her in a circle. “Someone who knows of secret passages in the palace to remain undetected, who can also speak with one of the new ladies at court.”

One of Olivia’s brows arched in Liam’s direction. “Has someone managed to catch your eye already?”

“Not the way you think,” he replied. “It’s a long story, and right now I’m grasping at straws, but it’s…something.” As Liam twirled his childhood friend in another circle, the expression in his eyes conveyed the seriousness of his request.

Olivia’s back tensed when she looked up to meet her friend’s gaze, though they moved effortlessly through the song. “What do you need me to do, Li?”

“There’s a young woman here, wearing a peacock ballgown. Her name is Max.”

“There’s some irony,” Olivia giggled. “Maxwell’s probably talking her ear off over her dress alone.”

“I haven’t been able to speak with her since we were introduced.”

“Tell me when and where, I’ll make sure you converse with her before morning.”

Liam shook his head at the suggestion. “That’s not the kind of conversation I need to have, Liv. I do need to speak with her though. It could mean cancelling the rest of the social season before it’s had a chance to begin, in a good way.”

Olivia arched her brow at Liam again, as the music began to come to an end. “I’m going to need a full story about this very soon, if she’s a means of ending the season.”

Liam let out an anxious laugh. “Soon enough, of course. Get her as close as possible to my office without being seen.” He looked over Olivia’s shoulder to see Bastien by the ballroom doors, nodding at him just before Bastien said something to another member of the Kings Guard. “Enjoy the rest of the ball, I’ve got to go over details for tomorrow’s events. Shouldn’t take longer than an hour.”

--

Nearly an hour after Liam departed the ballroom, he sighed with relief to enjoy the silence in his office once Regina and her team of event planners were satisfied with preparations for the garden party. He poured himself a bit of scotch in a glass as a nightcap, glancing at the clock on the wall. Most of the guests had ventured home while he went over checklists with Regina, minus the suitors and their sponsors that would live at the palace for the next several weeks.

Another weary sigh slipped past Liam’s lips as he returned to the ornate desk in the office, and he removed the cufflinks Madeleine had given to him as a gift. He rolled up his sleeves, trying to ignore the soft ticking of the clock, wondering if Olivia had managed to get a hold of Max. Princess Maria Amelita Xamira Basilio, who had a sister that went by the name Elia. There were too many similarities in her siblings names and the fact that Max looked so similar in appearance to Elia.

He’d opened the laptop on the desk and was about to type Elia’s real name into the search window, when there was a knock at the door. Liam rushed out of his seat to answer, loudly whispering a name when he turned the knob. “Olivia? Is that you?” He was surprised to see Max in the hallway by herself. “Your Highness, please, come in,” he said, stepping aside to let Max pass. “Did anyone see you?”

Max bowed her head to Liam as she stepped into his office. “No, Lady Olivia led me through a number of passages from my room, and distracted the very tall, silver-haired guard down the hall.”

Liam chuckled softly. “That would be Bastien. He’s always had a bit of a soft spot for Olivia, ever since we were children.” He closed the door shut before walking towards the liquor cabinet. “May I offer you something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” she replied, taking a seat in one of the small couches. “To what do I owe this clandestine invitation?”

Liam sat down in the matching sofa across from Max, clasping his hands together as he carefully chose what to say next. “Max, you and I are both aware of the reason you’re here, participating in the social season. Under other circumstances, I’m certain you would have caught my eye, just as you did earlier this evening.”

Max chewed a tiny spot of her inner cheek. “There’s a ‘but’, isn’t there?”

“The reason you caught my eye was because you bear a striking resemblance to someone I met several years ago, before I met and married my first wife, Riley. Someone who, until tonight, I thought was lost to me.”

“Are you saying I’ve got a secret twin you’ve already met? This isn’t what I had in mind, but okay.” She grinned conspiratorially at him. “Who’s this doppelgänger that’s stuck with you?”

Liam sucked in a breath before answering. “As it were, it’s your sister. Elia.”

Max blinked at him silently, her eyes welling up with glossy tears at the mention of her name. “You…you knew Elia? When? When did you see her? Have you heard from her?” The questions tumbled out all at once, as Max tried to compose herself.

He picked up a gilded box of tissues from a side table, offering it to her. Max pulled two from the box, dabbing at the corners of her eyes, waiting for a response. “It’s been a number of years,” he began. “She was vacationing in Greece, just before she was supposed to return to university to study law.”

Max stopped dabbing at her tears to look up and study Liam’s face. “Oh my god, it’s you. You’re the guy.”

Liam’s brows pinched together. “She mentioned me?”

“Very briefly,” she responded. “Only that she met someone that gave her a reason to laugh every day, and seemed to understand what she – what we,” she paused, motioning to herself, “were going through, being…high profile?”

“That’s one way to describe it,” Liam chuckled softly. “She never said outright that she was a princess, but after we parted ways, many of the things we shared in our conversations made sense.” He looked up to see a puzzled expression on Max’s face. “Her fluency in languages, the way she could tell stories about growing up in vivid detail while overlooking things like ‘I grew up in a palace’ or ‘my parents were especially strict with me and my siblings’…”

“Oh by the way, that’s because they’re the king and queen?” Max scoffed lightly, shaking her head.

“I tried to look for her, for quite some time after that trip,” Liam added. “Only…my efforts were in vain, as the names she used were all nicknames. Even her own name wasn’t fully hers. Elia de Leon.”

Max sniffled and the puzzled expression returned to her face. “De Leon? That’s…our great-grandmother’s name.”

“I suppose that makes sense as well, now that I’m familiar with your family name. Had I searched for Elia Basilio, I might have found out about the royal connection, not that it would’ve changed my opinion of her.” Liam ran a hand across his face, his jawline and chin already rough with stubble. “You haven’t heard from her since that summer either? Anyone in your family?”

“No,” Max answered. “When her personal guard called the morning he was supposed to escort her home, he told my parents the apartment was empty…that she must have snuck away the night before.”

“But I was with her until morning.”

“What?”

“I…” Liam hesitated, taking in a breath. “I had dinner with Elia the night before she was supposed to leave. We talked long into the night, and I told her I was a prince. I even offered to let her stay with me here to take more time and consider alternative options to create some distance with your parents.”

“Because they wanted to marry her off, right?”

“Correct,” Liam nodded. “She only told me it was for a political alliance, to put your family name in a positive light after Mariela’s marriage to someone caused trouble.”

Max sighed with indignation. “That guy, ugh. That’s a story for another evening.” She began to wring the tissue between her hands. “But you saw Elia the next morning?”

“Yes, in fact I was the one that slipped out while she was still sleeping, long after dawn. I stopped for a coffee in the café below where she’d been staying, on my way to return home as well, and I…” Liam paused, recalling the man in the café that morning, remembering the other patron. “You said she had a personal security guard assigned to her?”

“Beni…Benigno, yes,” Max replied.

“Do you have a photo of him?”

“I can do better than that,” Max answered, pulling her phone from the pocket of her cardigan. “He’s here as my security and chaperone for the duration of my stay.”

[rigelmejo]

Found this tool for “how long to learn a language” and I think its fairly useful? 

https://autolingual.com/study-time-calculator/#hmotivation

Below is just me contemplating how long things took me, will take etc. Feel free to ignore lol.

I just tested it by putting in “absolute beginner” to low intermediate, and how long that would take for mandarin at 2 hours study per day, it gave me 1 year 10 months. That isn’t too far off of how long its taken. I’d say I’m around low intermediate - maybe upper beginner. Certainly what I consider possible at low intermediate for me personally (what I could do in french in reading, when i stopped studying it) is close to where I am now with chinese. So like: convos about basic topics, maybe a little word lookup, reading general gist of everything (and dictionary for specifics if needed), general show watching without subs (miss some details), some audio listening (for me french never got any listening or show stuff so that parts much better in chinese - though my french reading is a bit easier since i can generally get away with no dictionary even if there’s a lot of unknown words just because of word similarity to stuff i can figure out). So anyway the calculator’s estimate of 1 year 10 months is pretty close! It’s been 1 year 8 months since I started studying. It will probably be a few more months when I feel I’m happy with my ‘basic’ reading ability. 

When I put in “very high motivation” it put me at 1 year 7 months to go from absolute beginner to lower intermediate - which is super close to about how fast I progressed. I’d say I’m probably somewhere on this calculator’s estimate between “very high motivation” and “high motivation.” 

For absolute beginner to upper beginner, it put me at 10 months for how long it would take if I had “high motivation.” That also lands pretty close to how long it took me - it took me about 8-12 months to do ‘upper beginner’ stuff as I consider it (texting people in chinese for general convos, browsing weibo, reading stuff i wanted with a dictionary, reading manhua, starting to watch shows without subs and just get the bare minimum gist and look up words for more details). The calculator guessed I would take 9 months from absolute beginner to upper beginner if I had “very high motivation,” which again I suppose is close to where I was at lol. 

This calculator thinks from absolute beginner, to upper intermediate (B2) will take me 2 years 6 months if I have very high motivation, and 3 years if I have high motivation. That makes sense to me. Moderate motivation would be 3 years, 9 months. Low motivation would be 4 years 6 months. This was all at 2 hours a day of study overall. I figured it would take me 4 years roughly to get to where I wanted to be when I started  - although I figured 4 years would be “where I am right now skill wise” so lol. What will upper intermediate even look like? 

5 years, 6 months, if I have very high motivation but only 1 hour study time a day.

I also tried out if I put “have learned a language to fluency” and that lined up better with how long it actually took me to hit each milestone as I felt it? (8 months upper beginner, 1 year 4 months to hit lower intermediate?). And if this is the option I put in, then upper intermediate would be achieved around 2 years 2 months into studying (aka for me that would mean around this coming winter). Also - this would not include listening/speaking skills, for me, because I already know hands down those skills lag for me (they probably would not be whatever level my reading is, instead a bit under it). And writing would depend on how much I worked on it. So I’m mainly aiming for the reading goals timeline. 

What is interesting to me is based on this I probably have been studying roughly 2 hours a day overall? I am fairly sure I study at least 1/2 to 1 hour a day (I read almost every day in chinese if nothing else). Then some days I know I’ll watch some eps of a show (thats 2-4 hours probably), some days I’ll read a lot (2 hours?). So like I figure my days I do a lot add up? And apparently they must, since my progress seems like I’m doing about 2 hours a day according to this caclulator. Or else my study sessions are ‘really’ effective for me and 1 hour i can make as useful as 2, but i doubt it... although it could be likely, its more like ‘since i’m mainly focused on reading THAT is improving at this speed, but if i looked at ‘overall’ then i’d still be an upper beginner who studied maybe 1 hour a day (as in, taking in all skills i’d be upper beginner, but taking in only reading i’m higher). Which could definitely be the case, as i don’t think my listening is past upper beginner, and my writing/speaking is definitely upper beginner At Best (could easily also be worse lol). 

Anyway a point for myself: looks like if i vary study from 1-2 hours a day, its going to take between 9 months to 2 years to hit upper intermediate. Which is the goal - i think after that my reading will be plenty good for what I want to do without a dictionary. So 3-4 years total study time, which is about what i expected... except i expected year 4 was going to feel like what i can do now ToT so anyway. Follow your dreams! Passions! Goals! you know what i mean! ToT I did not think reading with a dictionary could be possible so quickly in chinese! Certainly not within a year, but it did happen by a year! And I’m starting to venture into reading real stuff without a dictionary more, so that’s also doable much earlier than the 4 years I expected!

---

For fun I put the other languages I ‘studied’ a bit of in the calculator. 

The suggested french timeline matched up pretty well to my own progress when I put in: very high motivation (i guess i must have that lol?), some knowledge of different languages, study 1 hour a day. I hit A2 around 6 months in, B1 around 1 year 2 months is what the calculator says (I remember it being around 1 year into studying), B2 around 1 year 10 months the calculator gives.. I think personally around B1 in french I got less motivated, and i know i stopped studying as often... and i think somewhere mid B1-B2 I quit studying and just coasted on what i knew, since it was enough to read what i wanted. So I personally remember, about 2 years into studying french, that’s when I gave up using a dictionary or formally studying at all for the most part (years 1-2 i read a grammar site in french, which helped, and was still occasionally looking up words in french and reading french weekly). So I think at 2 years i didn’t actually hit B2, just a personal point where somewhere mid B1-B2 I felt i no longer had a need of a dictionary, or grammar explanations, for what i wanted to do. I know at some point after year 2 I picked up french again and just worked on listening/pronunciation (to try and drag them up closer to my reading skill) for a couple months. Idk how much it helped, but i know it noticeably improved my accent (which went from Really Bad to Somewhat Bearable, and my listening skills went from ‘can’t understand anything’ to ‘basic words i know i can now recognize fairly easily in listening, and i can now HEAR the real bad spots in my own accent and fix them at least’). So like... I’d personally put my french as somewhere in B1 mostly comfortable, with a lot of room for improvement. With writing at A2 maybe (with grammar mistakes), speaking also around there, listening if I’m lucky also around there. I do like that if i DID want to improve my french skills to all B2, it says 8 months to 1 year (depending on if i’m starting from A2 like my speaking or B1 like my reading), studying 1 hour a day on average. That’s about what I expected - that it would take a while but not too long to push them all up to more useful. 

With japanese, putting it into the calculator? Looks like maybe I only studied 30 minutes a day on average? The calculator estimates upper beginner to take 2 years 3 months, if that’s how much per day I studied. That or 45 minutes a day - 1 year and 10 months. I know in reality, It took me about 2+ years in japanese to get to reading basic manga for main gist, playing games for very basic main gist understanding which I did sometime between 2 years and 2.5 years. I did not get past upper beginner, at BEST, because I know I was still a beginner. So maybe that’s something that held me back? Just how little time I was dedicating to japanese? I know I was splitting time between french, japanese, and sometimes russian. So that could definitely have been it (also abandoning japanese sometimes for weeks at a time - which I did with french too, but french was already like B1 reading which was close to my goals with it so i didn’t need to focus on it as much).  I also wonder how much the last study from year 2-2.5 helped speed things along - its when I noticed the most progress, and I was doing flashcards and immersing a LOT more. So its possible then I was studying closer to 2 hours a day. 

Mmm. From this calculator, I’d guess: my chinese is on track to be able to do what I want by 3-4 years (much better than I expected lol). With a chance of me being able to do it by the end of this year (that would be amazing but lets not get too hopeful). As for speaking/writing, I do expect that to still take 3-4 years (and slower if I stop studying as much). 

my french I can probably drag up the other skills, and maybe even drag reading up to B2, in about a year of work if I wanted. So the other skills I could probably drag up into B1 in several months. Aka around half a year if I wanted to just get them all similar, and probably a year if I wanted french GOOD as good as I’d probably want it for general use without issues (since i still have listening and production issues).

my japanese? i’m going to go ahead and guess 1 year for lower intermediate, 2 years for upper intermediate, IF my chinese gets good at the faster rate. aka if at the end of this year my chinese reading is where i want it, and i can switch from 30-45 minutes a day on japanese to 2 hours because chinese will no longer need to improve as fast. Since currently i’m spending an average of like 2 hours on chinese a day, and i do NOT plan to lower that until my reading and listening are where i’d like them and i can read/listen generally without a dictionary (like french, i’ll probably end up wanting to improve production randomly on an as desired basis so i don’t think that will be as big a priority unless for some reason it becomes one). So japanese will probably at most be getting 1 hour a day while i’m still focused on chinese (and realistically less like 30 minutes on average). But i might be able to give it more after this winter. although also it really depends on wtf i feel like doing? as always. if i do japanese ‘as desired’ who knows how many hours that will end up being. i do think though doing it as i want now will help make that time take less in the long run overall timeline of things. the calculator gives “2 years” to lower intermediate if i only study 45 minutes a day, and 4 years for upper intermediate in japanese if i only study 45 minutes on average a day. Which really isn’t so bad (that’d be like 4-6 years total of time i’ve spent studying it, to get where i’d like in japanese ultimately - 2 more years after the 2 i’ve already done on an optimistic timeline, and 4 more years if i go very slow and keep not being able to prioritize it... and somewhere in between there if i don’t prioritize it but at least find a sweet spot i can do what i want in it like french). 6 years to learn japanese is not surprising... especially considering it took me 2+ years to push into upper beginner “can do a little basic stuff” in the language. So 2 more ish years for each milestone step makes sense unless i get better at studying lol or dedicate more hours into it. 

---

What’s curious to me is how chinese has been taking me about 6 months to hit each milestone (for reading)? 6 to get to beginner, 12ish to get to upper beginner, 18 ish months to lower intermediate (which is april, me rn), so possibly 22 months to upper intermediate - 1 year 10 months maybe? 8 more months of study, potentially. (Again this is for reading skills only). 

I just... when I started I definitely did not thing progress could be made at this speed for chinese? But to be very fair... i spent less time on french, and i think that’s a big reason it took longer to hit milesones than it could have - and why ultimately french and chinese are much closer in terms of ‘how long it took me to make progress’ than japanese to either. Because french simply takes less study time, and chinese i just studied so much MORE per day than i did with japanese. I definitely think if nothing else that ADVICE to immerse often helped me so much. While its not as quality study time as when I go through tone drills, memorized 2000 words, read grammar, listening to my audio ‘flashcard’ files, or practice shadowing - it really MAKES me ‘study’ chinese regularly in a way i did not with french or japanese. Even though there’s less active study being done, i’m engaging with chinese every day because of it. Practicing every day, and practicing often. With french i practiced daily for maybe 1/2 hour to an hour, then for that long per week, and my active study i either did for a month or didn’t do at all - so less study time in general. In japanee i REALLY did less study time per day, since i didn’t even try to read/watch/listen to japanese - it was active study or nothing. Simply the advice to immerse... while yes it helps you with skills, like learning to comprehend what you’ve studied, more than that it simply keeps me ‘trying to learn’ on a more frequent basis.

Part of the reason I think year 2-2.5 of japanese i made the most progress i saw the fastest? I was trying to read manga every week, trying to play a game every couple weeks, listening to audio in the background every few days (audio flashcards), trying to do srs flashcards every few days. The last 2 activities were active study increases (though only 30-45 minutes a day overall so no more than usual). but the manga days - that would be a full extra 1-2 hours a day! The video game days, 2-4 extra hours that day! and those added up i think! and resulted in me seeing much faster progress than in the whole 0-2 first years combined. if only i’d been trying to do those things sooner, it could’ve been adding up sooner.

whenever i look back on my french, the period that helped most was month 3 to the year 1 mark - i was reading every few days. Yes, I also studied common words, took a beginner class and did my homework. But the reading regularly was time spent using french ADDING UP. It added up to a lot of extra time IN french, and i think that’s why about a year in i felt pretty comfy texting on basic topics, reading things i wanted to with a dictionary with ease. Then the year after, i did more intensive study, but with months in between where i did NOTHING in french - so i think i got to B1 with reading, or somewhere a bit past it, because i read french every few months for bursts (whenever i felt like it but not regularly). And instead of progress every few months, it took about another year to go ‘ok no more dictionary needed.’ If i’d still been engaging with french more days a week, i think it would’ve added up faster.

And when i started chinese, the big reason i TRIED ‘do a little something’ weekly in chinese is because i remembered in french i used to try, and that helped me so much at the beginning. and it DID help me so much at the beginning with chinese! it was a solid idea!

and, as much as i have some issues with aspects of massive immersion approach (now Refold), mainly just that i don’t do it all the same lol. i DO think i am SO happy i found it if ONLY for the advice it gave “immerse as much as possible, as little as you comprehend, start NOW.” That was good fucking advice. And it helped me not be such a chicken - i know i was scared, back when learning japanese, TO immerse at all because i thought i needed the basics understood before i even tried. With chinese - although i was trying reading (and it was honestly helping), i only tried once a month. And i was way too scared to try shows without english subs, or AUDIO. 

Reading the mia advice, i went fuck it, and tried. it helped SO much. Literally, watching shows in chinese first to build up the endurance to SIT through a whole episode, then to watch multiple episodes in months 4-8, helped SO much. and i was way too scared to try until i’d read someone else tried and it helped. also people who did mia suggested audiobooks and dramas - again i was way too cowardly, thinking i’d know too little to manage it. And YET, once i started doing it more i noticed a lot of improvement! I know right now, i can watch shows and be comfortable because i made myself try it back then and keep trying. i know i was able to push into reading with a dictionary at month 6-8 because from month 3 i was trying and kept trying. i know i can listen to some audio dramas FOR FUN and even pick up some stuff, because i tried to listen to audiobooks of chapters i’d read in english and practiced parsing sound. (also Listening Reading helped a ton i can’t say that enough - it helps so much with listening skills). Trying to watch shows without ANY subs including chinese, also helped. And it really was the advice “try doing it all, and doing it often, it will help” that helped me improve. I cannot get myself to do formal study every day - and if i can, some days i can only do 15 minutes to 1 hour (and occasionally longer). but i CAN make myself do SOMETHING in chinese every day. And me being so lazy? It is in fact EASY for me to make myself do something in chinese if it doesn’t have to be study - reading a book? I’ll try. If i have it open in pleco, i’ll try and click words i don’t know. If its audio - yeah i’ll try listening while i walk or work. if its a show i wanna watch, yeah i’ll try watching even though there’s no english subs. if i see a manhua i like, yeah i’ll try to read it. if im on weibo, yeah i’ll browse. it is such a compatible way for me to DO more stuff in chinese, which helps me improve even if its not always as effective as study-time sessions. its always better than doing nothing, and wow does it make a difference how often i ‘study chinese’ if these moments of immersion count. 

and i’ve been noticing already, how it helps in japanese too, now that i’m freaking applying the concept of “don’t be a chicken” lol. I’ve watched lets plays the past few months in japanese (yeah only 20 minutes at a time, but it will add up as i’ve learned from french and chinese). I tried playing games for 2 hours (brutal, but manageable, and who knows how much i learned in that time!). I watched a 2 hour play with no subtitles of any kind (again who knows how much i learned trying that!). I even tried reading a bit of japanese - a few 15 minute sessions probably. Again, this is all not a lot, but its like french - its MORE than just my dedicated japanese study time where i do flashcards or read my grammar books. its extra time spent, and i know it adds up. i am Already seeing it add up to making games even bearable to do (which took 2+ years last time!), to making WATCHING something with only japanese audio bearable to do (extremely hard, but bearable if i know the plot, which is a fucking FEAT i did not imagine i’d be able to do). it is adding up to making trying reading bearable to do with a dictionary. It is all these things that took 2 years to become bearable last time, made doable much sooner (if only to tolerate for now, but eventually to improve). the hours spent just trying to do things in the language DO add up. 

so anyway advice for my future self is just: DO it. do stuff in the language now. i know you want to be prepared, but just start trying now and with anything you’re interested in even if you think its ‘too hard.’ it WILL add up and help you. 

[momentskrp]

SACRED HEARTS SPOTLIGHT:

today we’re showcasing our 3C tenant kim hyunwoo, who has been with us at sweetheart since august 2018. he’s currently a chef, but we hear he has big dreams of becoming a celebrity chef someday. turn to page 5 to read more!

PAST.

seoul, 2012;

“you can’t talk to her like that.”

“what’d you say to me boy? do you know who the fuck i am?”

the entire pocha goes silent, and suddenly it seems as if all the drunken customers in the place have sobered up. they all stare stupidly at the teenage boy in the middle of the tented stall. he’s tall, lean, cheeks flushed in a slight red, though it’s hard to tell whether it’s from the cold night wind outside or by his own temper. he’s still dressed in high school uniform, though his tie is loosened, blazer unbuttoned, and cuffs drawn. they’d wonder why he wasn’t already home studying or asleep at such a late hour, but there’s a mischievous gleam in his eye that gives away that he must not be a very good student anyway.

there’s a harsh clattering as the boy’s opponent rises from his stool. using both hands, the staunch, balding man shoves the table away from himself as he rises, and his mindless minions follow, stumbling in drunken daze as they do. soju glasses and beer bottles clink loudly against the food platters. soup spills over the bowls and onto the table.

“i don’t give a fuck who you are. you can’t fucking talk to her like that.”

the larger man steps towards the boy, slurred explicits seething from between his teeth. but the boy doesn’t budge. he can smell too many bottles of soju on the man’s breath.

“hyunwoo-yah, what are you doing? just listen to me and leave now. i will take care of things, but you just get going now. it’s really okay.”

the other women have emerged from behind the kitchen now, and they join the customers — drunk college students, salarymen, the brokenhearted — in idle spectatorship. they watch now as a small, wiry woman in her fifties yanks helplessly at her adamant son’s jacket, eyes desperately pleading for him to stop with his reckless stunt. her back is hunched, hands wrinkled from countless years laboring away in the crowded kitchen, keeping alive her pocha in an age when they were going extinct. why couldn’t he see that his opponent was not someone to be messed with? this was the first time she had seen her boy in weeks now, and the last thing she needed was for him to be dead at the hands of the local gang. it’s not like this was the first time she’d have to plead the goons to pay for their meal before leaving… why couldn’t he see?

“no mom, it’s really not okay. what about this is okay to you? why do you always say everything is fucking okay when it’s not?!”

he angrily rips away from his mother’s grasp, viciously slapping her hand away when it reaches for his arm again. he doesn’t get why his mother puts up with this bullshit day in and day out. it made him sick to the stomach how she always acted like everything was okay when it clearly wasn’t. when she’d be verbally abused by drunken customers, struggled to pay the bills, when he’d only come back home once every few weeks — even when his father left them ten years ago: “it’s okay”.

he’s too caught up with his mother before being harshly reminded of his other opponent by a heavy blow to the jaw, but he feels no pain. with naive courage, he shoves the drunken man backwards into the table, sending dishes and drinks clamoring to the floor as the audience gasps. he picks up a metal stool, swinging it over his head and slamming down with strength of all the injustice he’d felt in the world. in the midst of the chaos, he flees, running from the tent through crowded streets, lungs heaving against the cold winter air, a hollering gang chasing after him like a pack of hounds.

the metallic taste of blood fills his mouth from the deep gash in his inner lip, regardless of how many times he spits. It’s the last taste of home he’ll remember.

tokyo, 2014;

“so when are you going home? there can’t possibly be that much to learn in a kitchen.”

he shifts his head in the girl’s lap, giving a flirtatious tug on the hem of her skirt as he shoots her a fake look of hurt. her fingers stroke through his hair, and she giggles a bit. after graduating high school, he took the first flight out of korea he could find, eventually taking a job in at a rising restaurant in tokyo. If nothing else, the years he had spent helping in his mother’s kitchen had left him with solid culinary fundamentals, and though the pay wasn’t much, he was a quick learner, pocketing as many tricks of the craft as he could. plus the restaurant owner figured that the korean boy’s good looks were a sticking point for female customers of the restaurant.

“you really want me to leave you that bad?”

he was slowly starting to lose count of the number of months he’d been in this foreign city. obviously enough to where his japanese had improved to the level of fluency required for flirtation and persuasion. but now his female companion had him thinking. she was wrong about there not being anything to learn in the kitchen. he’d learnt that cooking could be pleasant, when not serving up food to drunken bastards in a pocha. that the top chefs could live lives of glory and pleasure beyond what his poor mother could ever imagine. that everyone has hunger, and everyone has taste, even if they don’t realize it. life is just a constant quest to satiate.

and so maybe she was also right. he couldn’t stay here forever. he had nothing to lose, so he might as well just shoot for more. he made up his mind to leave. an unreadable grin takes over his lips, and he gets up, gently laying her down now.

“well i’ll make sure you miss me when i do.”

paris, 2018

“get the fuck out of my kitchen!”

his french was still a while away from fluent, but he understood enough to get that much: he was being fired. grabbing the hat from his head, he hurls it to the ground, the other hand angrily working on the knot of his apron. he grabs the giant knife he had in hand, furiously slamming it point-first into the slab of lamb he had been working on. he’d put on display more of his recently erupting temper if he didn’t know how skilled his boss also was with a knife.

it had been close to four years now since he’d taken a one-way flight out of tokyo, converting his entire savings into euros before backpacking through the continent of europe. an endless chain of worn down hostels in italy, spain, and france had left him penniless, but deep in rich culinary experiences, pleasures of life, and the romance of the region. he was now utterly convinced that a chef was the world’s most honest, worthy occupation. the world was full of illusions and bullshit, but good food, and a matching glass of wine. what else was as undeniably good in the world?

is it good? does it give pleasure? the only two questions he was interested in answering when doing his craft. ironically, he found himself waltzing his way into the prime of 21st century hedonism. he had no idea what a drug-fuelled culture chefs often indulged in, and the restaurant industry’s high-stress, fast-paced culture would only fuel his appetite for drugs, alcohol, and sin. shit, sometimes he couldn’t even taste his own food right. honestly, it was fair that he was being fired from the best restaurant gig he’d landed thus far.

he bursts out the back exit of the restaurant, shooting an empty glare at some of his ex-colleagues chilling by the loading dock. fuck, he should’ve never taken up their offer to “try something new” a few months back. they yell something at him in confusion, but he doesn’t look back and continues to walk into the paris streets. he wishes he had somewhere to go.

PRESENT.

comfort food: food that provides consolation or a feeling of well-being, typically associated with childhood or home cooking. it was a pity how nothing about his childhood or home cooking was anything close to what he associated with consolation or well-being. rather, it’s what he retreats to now that over-indulgence has left him trashed and starving for any bit of hope and pleasure.

he’s lucky to have found a rising restaurant in seoul that will give someone like him a chance. they were impressed by his expertise of foreign cuisine, especially for someone who had no formal technical education and clearly lacked the financial means to have naturally developed such a fine palette. he doesn’t tell them it’s because he’s a bad son who ran away from home, abandoning his mother and ashamed of her cooking, which was for sustenance, not pleasure. he doesn’t tell them that he’s back home because he’s an ex-addict, fired from his last gig, and really has no other option.

he’s been living in the sharehouse for a few months now, and it’s honestly not bad at all, especially for the rent. if anything, it reminds him of his backpacking days staying in crowded hostels. new people, new stories. it’s less lonely that way. he’s glad to cook for the other residents when he can, as they make fine testers for new recipes and innovation that he can’t try on real customers back at work. the rooftop is a fine place to wind down too, especially on days when he’s allowed to sneak home a bottle of fine wine or liquor left over from the day. and although he hates to admit, he’s missed the irreplaceable charm of korean food. after all, food is everything someone is. it’s an extension of identity, personal history, culture, family, friends. it’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

[rigelmejo]

I’m just at the stage in my chinese where I can listen to something and IF I have some prior familiarity with the plot/story (saw an english translation, read an english summary, heard about it discussed before on social media or from friends) then I can catch maybe 70%+ of which scenes might be which scenes (that I would know in english, read in english, or that I’m aware might happen based on context I know). If I have no context/prior familiarity, I may be at 30-50% gist comprehension at minimum, only half the time being able to guess at the gist of what’s going on, and higher if its words I mostly know.

And if I am watching, then with context again, 70%+ at least I can comprehend, usually I can comprehend ALL scenes for their main ideas/plot gist meaning, and then if I have prior context OR the scene is majority words I know then I can also get 90-100% of the meaning of specific details in each scene. If I don’t have any context, I’m usually still at around 70%ish gist comprehension - I can follow the main plot usually, fairly okay even with no background context, and sometimes its better if I know most words (so a lot of romance dramas my comprehension is 85-100% even if I know nothing prior about them, just because most words are high frequency words and most conversations are daily life enough I can follow a majority of the specific details). 

My reading is somewhere closer to my listening, but a bit better. With no prior context its sort of hit or miss on how well I can follow the main gist based on how many words the author uses that are unknown, and how many of the keywords for meaning are words I know (so short weibo posts on say a topic I barely know words for like pottery sculping I may not even recognize what the main topic is, but with posts about something I know the topic of I may catch the gist or even every single detail depending on what’s being discussed). For books my comprehension is actually A BIT BETTER because I have more words to draw from to make myself some context - more chances I’ll run into some sentences/dialogue I DO understand, and can use retroactively to figure out the unknown parts a bit. When its reading something I have no context for, understanding is around maybe 30-80% comprehension of the gist - if the topic is REALLY DIFFERENT than anything i know about, then i might only catch a few bits I know the words of/can relate to my knowledge. If the topic is in a realm I know more about, I can follow usually MOST of the gist of the main plot without a dictionary, but whether I pick up details and how many is highly dependent on if I had prior context or if I know more of the words. If I for sure have context, novels I can follow maybe 50-90% and it GREATLY depends on each individual scene’s topic key words and on if I know them/know what to guess they are (based on having familiarity with the eng translation or a drama’s version of the scenes I can visualize). Comprehension even if its pretty damn good for some passages, I wouldn’t put up into a comfortable level even if I occasionally can follow pretty close without a dictionary - because I still read very slowly (think 3-5 minutes a page usually). If the book is artificially easier because it is a graded reader, I am much speedier and comprehension is generally 98% or better - but that’s not the eventual goal material I want to read, just the stepping stone. 

I’m just getting to this point where... in most immersion type activities I can catch at least around 50% of the main gist of what’s going on. But it’s frustrating because I do know I can understand more when: if it’s a show I pause more, if its a book I slow down and really contemplate, if its an audio then if I replay sections line by line. I don’t want to do those tasks though, because I know part of WHY I need to do them for greater understanding right now is exactly because I need to build up my skills of catching word meanings better in real time/interpreting as much info as I can in real time. So if I can’t catch the words on the first watch/read through/listen then I need to practice the task of catching them more, without relying on slowing down all the time (which doesn’t allow me to practice catching the words better). I already know I’ve IMPROVED in catching the words, because a couple months ago I had to pause most scenes over and over to catch the main gist, and now I can catch the main gist in real time - its just details that require me to pause. 

So theoretically if I just practice interpreting in real time more, I will eventually get better at catching details without needing to pause as much too. It’s also... been frustrating because I am at a point where if I do slow things down, I know just enough I could usually look up some key words for details I don’t catch... but that process slows me down just enough to make me feel burned out. But it burns me out slow enough, that I feel like I ought to be looking up stuff - since it only slows down things by an extra couple minutes per material (like per scene in shows/audios, or per page in a book). It’s not taking me 20 minutes per chunk since most words I DO NOT need to look up, but it is adding a noticeable amount of minutes that stop me from the flow of enjoying the material whenever I do it. I think at this point... looking things up is something I should only do when I’m studying intensively, and purposely actively trying to get greater vocab out of it/sentence mine. Whereas I should be trying to deal with tolerating immersion in real time as much as possible, to really consolidate what I know and pick up the words from context I really COULD pick up from context once I have a solid foundation to notice it around words I do know - this is where I’m weak rn. I’ll see words I know, and maybe 1-2 I don’t, but I take so long recognizing and putting together the words I know that I have little time/effort to spend on trying to figure out the meaning of the new words from context.

I think if I built up my fluency with what I DO know, then these easy new-words to pick up would be things I could learn quickly in context. Right now in my graded readers, because reading is 1. slower pace I can control and 2. since I can slow down I can quickly notice new unknown words and figure them out from context, picking up new words is super easy and effortless when I read the graded readers. So yeah...