Korean grammar, Aeneid, Three Kingdoms, Rurouni Kenshin

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

I love my mother. I've been nagging at her to start using email so I can practice writing in Korean (since my Korean class focuses too much on speaking and listening, which I'm more than capable in). I asked her to help me with verb conjugations, and she just sent me this incredibly precise and systematic description of one of the irregular forms.

No, I'm not being sarcastic. I really do love her for this. Our professor, intelligent though he may be, operates on this "concordance" theory of language education where we're supposed to divine grammatical rules from reading many, many different and random examples. Now...while this may be a great inductive exercise, all it does is build up an intuitive knowledge of grammar, which I already have. I need to systematize my intuition right now. I mean, that's why we sit through grammar lessons in English class, after all, as boring as they may be. It's to refine and make precise the grammatical rules that we've already internalized.

Mother was actually a Korean grammar teacher, so she knows how to explain them in terms of an overarching grammatical structure rather than conversational principles. It's really delightful...I've actually always loved learning conjugations in French. It's sad, but when I say I want to learn a language, I usually mean learning grammar more than learning how to speak it fluently.

In other news, I wrote a Spiral fic for the temps_mort challenge. Actually, it's been up all day. It looks rather weird in retrospect, but that's what you get when you are struck by "inspiration" at two in the morning. Here's the link: Brothers.

I finished the third book of the Aeneid in time for tomorrow's lecture, and when I got to the part where Aeneas finds Andromache on the shore, mourning for Hector, I suddenly got this beautiful image of the Trojan women in black veils, their backs bowed, their once-beautiful faces marred by tears, their ears still full of the dying screams in burning Troy...I wanted to write fanfic for the Aeneid. Honestly. How sacrilegious! Someone slap me before I commit such blasphemy. But I was suddenly struck by the tragedy of that image, Andromache on the shore, because it wasn't the destruction of a single fort or castle, a strategic dot on the map. The ancients destroyed cities, whole polises; these buildings burned and collapsed into ruins, never to be restored again. I can't imagine something like that happening to New York. Of course, the Caput Mundi is probably a hundred times larger than ancient Troy, but still, it's an entire city. It happened to Carthage too, with the proverbial salt sprinkled on its burnt earth (apparently that never actually happened according to my textbook).

Speaking of classics, the San guo zhi, or The Three Kingdoms, is now an anime series. Or should I say, "another anime series"? I downloaded the first episode, and it was so horrible that I could just cry. Zhuge Liang, or rather the character who made a brief cameo in the opening credits and whom I assume to be Zhuge Liang because all the other main characters were accounted for, is old and ugly and weird. I'm so upset and disappointed! Isn't he supposed to be younger than Liu Bei, Lord Guan and Zhang Fei? Why the heck does he have such an old face then?! Oh, my poor Kongming, how could they do this to you who had a scholar's forehead and eyebrows that arched like the sweep of a crane's wing? ;_;

On the other hand, I downloaded all of the Rurouni Kenshin manga and the first six anime episodes. ::feels proud:: I have finally seen famous Kenshin! A senior at kendo club who likes anime asked me if I watched it, and a girl on our floor also lent me the first episode last week. After wasting hours of precious homework time searching for the rest yesterday, I finally found a BT site that still has .torrent files for it. So happy! Kenshin reminds me vaguely of Vash, or should I switch that around? Who came before anyway? Well, in any case, since I watched Trigun first, I'll just say that Kenshin's a lot like Vash. Except with red hair, a cross shaped scar and with hakama and katana instead of a red coat and silver pistol.

I really like Kenshin though. The Meiji setting is new to me and terribly interesting.

...Tari

In which Tari undergoes a quick panic attack

Ad Mundo Exteriore,

I haven't studied for the Rome of Augustus "short, factual quiz". This is very bad. In fact, I haven't done any homework today except write the first installment of the HGDRP paper. So yes, while I'm technically prepared in the reading for tomorrow's, or rather I should say, today's lecture, I'm not prepared for its accompanying quiz. You've got to love my time management skills.

(Although, by my estimates, while I was wasting 75 percent of my homework time on Sunday, I've only wasted 33 percent of it today. That makes an average of 54 percent, which is slightly better than half.)

So, um, Battle of Actium, check; IMP = Imperator, check; cursus honorum, check...

By the way, should I sign up for the Putnam? It's the intercollegiate math competition, note emphasis. I know Nathan K. took it last year at Columbia, though the rest of us were sensible and avoided it. Technically, it's an utter waste of time for someone at my level to attempt it, but on the other hand, it was an utter waste of time for me to take the AIME, the AVASC, the Mandelbrot, and who knows what else for the past four years. I'm continuing my grand old personal tradition this way, right? On the other hand, it is six hours, and I will have a huge headache afterwards. If I had a paid account, I'd make a poll, but since I don't, why don't we take an informal vote?

Oh, and please disregard my flagrant violations of the "avoid unclear antecedents" rule in the recent entries. After all, it is late at night, or rather unpardonably early in the wee hours of the morning, and as you can see, my sentences grow convoluted and vaguely ungrammatical at these times. -_-

...Tari