A new habit is slowly forming. This morning I packed my things for work and took my ipods with me too. Wearing them makes it much easier to hear what is being said when I listen to podcasts and other spoken material in the car. It’s quicker and cheaper than going through the ratty old thing and installing a bunch of insulation too. I wondered whether the active noise reduction would be a problem, especially in terms of driving the manual car, or in terms of road safety.
However, I don’t think there is much of an issue. I can feel the engine through the clutch almost as easily as I can hear what it is doing. I also realise most of the indicators about my surroundings come from what I can see as well. The noise reduction is also just that, reduction. I can still here what is happening around me, it’s just a lot quieter and calmer.
So this morning I listened to an HSK2 vocabulary tape. I am not sure why I call it a tape. It’s actually a track on an album on Spotify. I will use Claude to find some more things to listen to later. But this could easily give me five or six more hours a week of listening to and repeating Chinese vocabulary. It won’t be magical but there is no way it can avoid having a positive impact on my recall and comfort both listening to and producing Chinese.
I did briefly toy with whether you could install some kind of heads-up display to give me the written characters too, but that’s definitely veering into the unsafe. Perhaps not veering, because on second thoughts I realise you are reading things all the time when you are driving, from the road itself and the other drivers through to the signs and indications both inside and outside the car. Each of them is just a small unit of information.
I talked to I and J this morning about some of my political principles. This just reminded me that talking to real people is really important. First because they have their own views and opinions and changing those is hard. I said he wouldn’t have more children even if that made him income tax exempt. This was a surprise to me as because its my idea I naturally thought it was a good one. I think I would consider it a great deal if I could get some help with my income tax in return for having some more children.
I suppose there would also be issues about who has the children. My initial assumption is that British people would have the children. But that word itself has changed as it now includes people from a very wide range of ethnic groups. This isn’t the case for words like Chinese, Korean or Japanese, which still align very closely with their associated ethnic groups.
That poses and interesting problem in terms of national identity and surely means a strong set of institutions and ideas is even more important. How can you know if the person next door is your neighbour unless there is some visible or tangible sign?
There are many things I have started. De-papering a room, fixing the car, buying appliances. I think I need to make a list of the things I have started and then commit to finishing them in a prioritized order. For example, if clearing the two front rooms is important then I should get on with it!