Welcome to the choose and collect festival.

That’s right folks, it’s a good old Aussie election. Which not only is a chance to wow you with my literal translation of the Burmese word for election (see title), but is also a great excuse to post this:

Which is not the best Radiohead song, but it’s still pretty great.

This is all by way of an overlong introduction to the main point, I have been working (yes, paid employment) for the last two weeks as an issuing officer, thus fulfilling my two lifelong dreams: 1) working at an election; 2) wearing shoes for the first time in months.*

Continue reading Welcome to the choose and collect festival.

The fear of a female tiger, and other language lessons.

The last two weeks passed in a blur of confusion and panic, as I pitted my wits against a somewhat-too-advanced Burmese course and won lost survived. It was very good for my Burmese and I learned an overwhelmingly large amount, although my biggest realisation is just how much I still have to learn. There has been a big shift from my “unknown unknowns” into my “known unknowns”.

And now I shall regale you with some things that I have learnt. Mostly in the “humorous literal translation” category.

Continue reading The fear of a female tiger, and other language lessons.

Burmese is hard.

As part of my ongoing quest to learn this language, yesterday I started a two week intensive course with the famous John Okell.*

If yesterday was indicative of the course as a whole, the two hours of daily lessons need to be accompanied by seven hours of study, and I am going to spend the next two weeks desperately struggling to keep my head above water.

The rest of the page is covered in my tears.
The rest of the page is covered in my tears.

 

*If you don’t recognise his name then you are probably not involved in the fairly niche world of Burmese language study. But he quite literally wrote the book on learning Burmese.

Not quite a month.

Apologies for the extended absence. In my defence, it hasn’t even been a whole months, and in that time we have:

  • moved house (again)
  • received and unpacked our shipment of house things from Australia
  • restarted Burmese lessons (Jono)
  • travelled to Rakhine (Esther)
  • travelled to northern Shan (Esther)
  • travelled to Bangkok (Jono)
  • worked very hard at a great many things (definitely Esther)
  • set up a media server and found lots of TV to watch (Jono)
  • baked some bread (Jono)
  • learned how to make mohinga (Jono)

And when I type it all out like that it doesn’t actually seem like much, but to quote Calvin “the days are just packed“.

Which is all to say, I hope to follow this up with some more frequent posts over the next days/weeks.

HK 3, wandering around (and some photos I forgot from day 1).

In the interests of not bombarding you with a single page containing 100+ photos, I’m splitting them up into arbitrary and fluid categories.

And then bombarding you with multiple updates, each containing fewer than 100 photos.

Impulse-buying a bed sheet comforter is often what I think about when I'm waiting in a departure lounge.
Impulse-buying a bed sheet comforter is often what I think about when I’m waiting in a departure lounge.

Continue reading HK 3, wandering around (and some photos I forgot from day 1).

Hong Kong in photos, part 1 (wherein I mostly get excited about signs and advertising).

As previously mentioned, we spent Thingyan in Hong Kong. It was very exciting and I took lots of photos which I will share in the coming days. But here are some to kick it all off.

One of the things I find distressing about living in Yangon is the inability to recycle anything. When we saw this in Hong Kong airport I was disproportionately excited.
One of the things I find distressing about living in Yangon is the inability to recycle anything.
When we saw this in Hong Kong airport I was disproportionately excited.

Continue reading Hong Kong in photos, part 1 (wherein I mostly get excited about signs and advertising).