Tower of Babelfish - A Language Learning Site is now up and running! In anticipation of my book, the site features free info about language learning, with resources for specific languages:
The final spreadsheet is here I've changed my Anki tests to teach me the order of the locations, and where I should jump if I want to skip to a specific year. I did this with two types of cards: 1. Given one location, tell me the next several locations. (Given bed, the next locations are nightstand, robe hanger, chair, bedroom door, piano, chair, desk) 2. Given a year range (1000-1099), which locations are within that range? (Bed, Nightstand) For all the special jump locations (The first location in the 1800s, for example, or 1875-, etc.), I've started to learn the exact date/images. (The first location after 1850 is #70, the front door to Billa, whose exact date/image is Flour/1854)
So now that I'm done with school, I've picked up a new hobby: memorizing stuff. My latest project involves building a list of composers. I'll document and explain how it works and my progress here. You're welcome to join in! It's a great way to learn a bunch of mnemonic techniques at once.
So!
This project takes advantage of 3 mnemonic techniques as well as spaced repetition to get it all into my head. As you'll see, the hard part isn't really memorizing all this data, it's converting it ahead of time into a storable format: pictures and stories.
To memorize names, I will be converting each name into an image. Chopin -> Shopping bag, Mozart -> moats, etc. The images must be as vivid as possible (a paper shopping bag from Trader Joe's, for example)
To memorize dates, I'll be using the Major system (insert wikipedia link here) which converts numbers into consonants. I've been practicing this for a few weeks and now it's coming pretty naturally. For Mozart (1756-1791), I convert 56 into L + Sh, and 91 into B + T. So leash is 56 and bat is 91. So now I link the name to the dates and I get a couple of castles with Moats filled with a bunch of Leashed Bats.
Now to make my chronological list, I'm going to use the method of loci, one of the oldest mnemonic techniques. I need to design a mental journey with 150 stops. I'm going to do this with the help of a camera, and I think I'll be taking the trip from my bed to the conservatory. If I don't get enough loci, I may leave the conservatory and go to the other building on Singerstrasse, and if THAT's not enough, I may go to Stephansdom. But I found 50 locations just on the way from my bed to the front door, so I might be fine. I've never made one this big, so we'll see how it goes. The method of loci involves placing image markers along the route you've picked. So my first location is my bed, my first composer is Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). Because so many composers have the same birth years, I'm going to link the location to the date first, then to any composers during that date. Hildegard is alone for this date, so it's a little simpler. Birth Year: 1098: S P F - so we'll go for high SPF sunscreen. I'm in bed, I wake up and grab my high SPF sunscreen. Name: hildegard -> hilt guard (top part of sword handle). I take the sunscreen and smear it on my hilt guard. Death Date: (My main goal is to do birthdates and names, but we'll do a death date here for fun) 1179 - th g p - The Gap - in my substory about my Hilt Guard, I grab my well-oiled Hilt Guard into The Gap and slay the well-attired staff.
Last step, review and decoding. I need to practice going through my route (1-5 would be Bed, nightstand, robe holder on wall, chair with clothes in front of bed, bedroom door), I need to practice the initial hooks (Bed - high SPF sunscreen), each substory (bed - spf - hilt guard - the gap) and decoding back to useful data (#1 - 1098 - Hildegard von Bingen - 1179). I'll do this in my favorite memory tool, Anki, which will quiz me at regular, manageable intervals and figure out how easy or difficult each part is and adjust accordingly. Given that I have a week off, I might get the major body of the work done (150 coded stories like the sunscreen hilt guard one) this week, plug it into Anki, and get that into my head within a month or so. Once that framework is there, I'll be able to add to it without much trouble (if I want to add some facts about Hildegard, I can put them in at The Gap)
Wee!
As I go, I'm going to make an excel file with the data I'm memorizing and the stories it codes into. Here's where you can join in; feel free to grab the file and make your own changes. While I'm going to be publishing a slideshow of my 150 stop journey, if you want to do this too, you'll probably want to make your own journey (though you're welcome to take the same journey, just start from your own bed, not mine!)
Apologies for the forever without updates; maybe I'll start this up again someday. For now, here's a customer service nightmare from our cell phone provider that I'm hoping will show up on google searches for Bob Telekom in Austria.
I've been a Bob customer for about 1 year now. They screwed up my request to keep my old phone numbers (AND my wife's request, actually), their pay-for-service policy is kind of irritating, I've noticed some billing glitches whereby I was charged €12 or so over the summer when I should have been charged €0, but overall, I was getting decent phone service for a good price.
Three weeks ago, I called Bob at their €1,09/minute service line to request data service for myself and my wife. The service representative seemed more or less fine, and the call was over in 3 minutes or so. I enabled data on both of our phones, and October began swimmingly.
Two weeks ago, my wife gets an SMS: "Warning! Your Bob bill is €91!" My wife calls me, panicked. She made a call or two in Germany, but nothing longer than a minute or two. I look up her account online and see the €91 bill and I don't see data service enabled on that phone. I call bob service and explain the situation, and my concern that perhaps data wasn't in fact enabled on her phone when I requested it to be. The service representative told me that he could see nothing of the sort on his side, and that sometimes these glitches happen but they fix themselves rapidly and I probably won't even see it on my bill at the end of the month. If I do, I can just call and those costs will be removed immediately. I asked about the data service and he said that it was enabled and it must be a glitch on the website that's telling me it's not.
The following day, my wife gets an SMS: "Warning! Your bob bill is €162!" I call bob service immediately. The lady there explains that she's being charged €150 for data usage and there's no data service on the phone. She enables data service so that the phone won't keep accruing costs and suggests I send bob a letter asap about the situation.
An hour later, my wife gets an SMS: "Your bob bill is now €164 and we are locking your phone for security reasons". She can no longer text or call out. Two WEEKS later, I have called nearly every day and been told nearly 5 times that a manager would get in touch with me to discuss the situation (2 weeks, no manager). The bill is now €0, but the phone is still locked. I have been told that the phone would start working in: 'A week ago', 'A few hours', and 'A month or so'. I finally told them to send me a NÜV Bestätigung so I can change to a new phone provider (BTW, Drei has some EXCELLENT offers going on right now!), and was told that I can't get one because her phone is locked. When I explained that her phone being locked for the last 2 weeks was the whole reason I'm switching providers, the lady asked if I couldn't just wait 3-4 weeks longer for the phone to get unlocked so I could switch without losing my old phone number. When I asked for the costs of this more or less useless service call to be refunded, she said that I've been calling the bob service line too many times in the past few weeks and that she wouldn't be willing to refund that call. Maybe I could discuss that with the manager that would (ha!) call me.
We're switching to Drei today. They're offering slightly better prices than bob, they have stores where you can talk to customer service representatives without paying €1,09/minute, and where ridiculous customer service disasters like this one surely couldn't possibly be this bad. Also you can use your phone in Italy, Great Britain and a few other countries as if it were a local phone (no roaming fees). Wish us luck.
Well we sure haven't updated THIS in a long time! I guess noteworthy is that Gabe is now a tenor (flavor of tenor to be determined in time), Melanie just did a lovely job with Pierrot Lunaire at the Musikverein, and we're both going to be learning French this summer at Mills college in Northern California. Oh yes, and Melanie's website has been launched. Melanie Henley Heyn www.MelanieHenleyHeyn.com That's all for now!
The planned itinerary: 2 days in Venice, 1 day in Ravenna with a stop in Padua, 2 days in Bologna, 2 days in Milan. The actual itinerary: 2 days in Venice, then a lunch in Padua, a dinner in Ferrara and a night in Ravenna, Ravenna by day and Bologna by night. Modena by day and Bologna again by night. Friday started in Bologna, went to Modena, then to Spilamberto, then Parma, then a harried drive through a snowstorm to Milan. 2 exhausted weekend days in Milan and back home. Italy was lovely, cold, fun, tiring and delicious. We ate without relent, eating again and again when either the clock or our stomachs or our eyes gave the slightest clue that there might be something delicious around the corner that we could possibly cram into ourselves. Which is not to say that we did nothing but eat; we did an absurd amount of things, up until we ran out of feet and wakefulness in Milan, but the thing that we never stopped doing was eating. Some highlights, on that front: In Venice, you can expect to find relatively mediocre food, for relatively high prices. That is, until you try the Fritelle. Crunchy, deep fried sweet balls of donut dough and cream or ricotta filling, these are so ridiculously good that the raisins they stick in them somehow only make them better, and I detest raisins. €1 each at the Majer bakeries in town, these are worth the train ticket to Venice. Ferrara is home to tortellini filled with sweet pumpkin in a sage and oil sauce. This is delicious and well worth getting stuck in Ferrara waiting a couple of hours for your train. The Grom gelatoria chain is a bit overrated, according to our gelato- snobbery, but they make a lovely caramel and salt flavor. Hot chocolate in northern Italy was the weird characteristic of tasting as if it's not all that hot, until you swallow too much of it. I think they make it with foamed milk. It's very good, and somewhat dangerous. Bologna, we hear, has outstanding food on every corner. All we know is that we only ate at Osteria dell'Orsa, which was so ridiculously good (and cheap!) that we went back the following night. I suspect we will only learn about Bologna's other offerings if dell'Orsa is closed or we get sick of insanely good pasta, bruschetta and fresh desserts. Unfortunately most of Bologna's famed gelatorias close when it's freeIng cold outside for some reason, and we were unable to try them all and compare them. La Sorbetteria Castiglione was pretty good in general. They make an amazing crema di latte and an excellent pistacchio. Their dark chocolate is too dark and their various mixes of pine nuts and almonds and liquours and things are kind of too complicated to be amazing, but hey, they're still ice cream. Yum. Modena's Hosteria Giusti provides some of the best food either of us has ever had, consistently from the beginning to the end of the meal. Their saffron pasta with pork cheeks is worth a flight and a train to Modena. They have 4 tables and typically a 2 month wait for reservations but we found an opening and took it (yay February!) Federica, of the Parmeggiano-Reggiano Consortium, is a wonderfully enthusiastic tour guide and lover of the cheese. The dairy at Caseificio Castelnovese produces the best panna cotta you will ever eat until you're sick. They sell it in single servings (ha!), half liters (aka single servings) and full liters (aka single servings). Their yogurt is also hella good. Balsamic vinegar of Modena is apparently not real balsamic vinegar unless it says "tradizionale" on the bottle and it comes only in 250ml glass bottles. The production process is fascinating and the results were somewhat surprising to us. The flavor changes drastically over the aging process: 5-year old stuff (which is not allowed the "tradizionale" marker) is sweet and delicious (to me). 12-year old stuff is acidic and complex (and delicious, to Melanie). 25 year old stuff has a texture like molasses, and it's not as acidic tasting, with a crazy complicated mixture of sweet and sour and bitter. We didn't get to try any 50 year old stuff, but it certainly exists. Prosciutto di Parma is amazing. With a wonderful, tender texture and delicious flavor that somehow has notes of Parmeggiano-Reggiano in it (maybe from the whey they mix into their feed, or maybe because both the cheese and the ham are in the end, products of the grasses and grains that grow in the Parma region). If you go to Pane e Vino in the touristy Garibaldi square in Parma, they will give you a wooden platter called a Tagliere just covered with prosciutto and accoutrements. Wonderful. Gelato at Odeon Gelateria across from Milan's Duomo is really quite good. Chocolate and pistachio are both excellent. Avoid the semi-freddi; they have a weird texture - they taste..oddly warm and squishy (and too sweet!). Luini Panzerotti, also near the Duomo in Milan is spectacular, making fresh fresh fresh savory and sweet pastries sort of resembling calzones and giant hamentashen, respectively, but much much awesomer. Lastly, the Mozzarella bar Óbiká in Milan serves up various forms of DOC Mozzarella, some of which we've never ever seen. The dripping-with-cream liquid mess that is Stracciatella di Burrata is wonderful and weird. They have a location in New York, but I can't attest to the freshness of the stuff, which I assume doesn't last very long. Now I'm going to go make some burgers and stick them on a salad, because as wonderful and perfect as Italian cuisine is, we've had enough of it to last a good while.
Tomorrow, we're going to the lake nearby with a friend or two, and we'll hopefully get to see the weird boat race on land that just happens to occur the last sunday of July. Crazy video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqhI89YipTw
While I've learned a lot of Italian, I haven't learned as much as I'm hoping to by the end of this process, which makes it weird to have classes ending right now; we're getting ready for exams and stuff and it's just a bit weird, since I'm certainly not done with what I set out to do.
Today we had a lazy day around the house. Fabio, Loan and their family are here now, which I was a little worried about initially (7 people in 1 house with 1 bathroom!) but has turned out to be great. Fabio's daughter Alice is a real sweetheart and has taken to following me around the kitchen and telling me how to say everything in the kitchen. Every time I say the word 'coltello' (Knife) ("Non colTRELLO, colTELLO! colTELLO!") I'll think of her. Spent an hour today talking about career and work and all sorts of things with Fabio in Italian and English (he in english, which he's trying to learn, me in italian), which was super cool.
What else, what else...looks like we're going to Rome next weekend. A quote from the owner of the B&B we're staying at: "I thank you very much, and I tell you that your holyday in Rome will be unforgettable,because Rome is wonderful!! Giovanna" aww
Meredith and Bryan were thinking of dropping by on my last weekend here, but looks like that's fallen through, so we'll just have to go to Florence or something and have a REALLY GOOD TIME WITHOUT THEM. And stuff.
That's all! Hope all's well with ya'll
-Gabe
Prima, ancora una link a Google Translate!
Questa fine settimana, abbiamo viaggiato alle Cinque Terre, cinque città che sono qualche le bellissime città nel mondo. Alle Cinque Terre, quale cose sono nate come Pesto, Focaccia, il famoso Vino Bianco delle Cinque Terre, e Sciacchetrà (come 'Port' - un vino rinforzato e dolce). Le città sono tutti al mar (Quattro delle cinque hanno una spiaggia), e sono, come ho detto, bellissime! Purtroppo, non vi posso dare le foto, perche la mia macchina fotografia è senza carica, e la mia macchina di carica è nella posta perché l'ho lasciata negli Stati Uniti (Ops!) Invece vi do alcune foto dal Internet! La prima città che abbiamo visitato era Vernazza, #4/5: (Wow nice translation; i left my camera charger at home, so i only got pics of half the trip and can't upload them)
Vernazza è una bellissima città con un naturalistico porto, che è molto importante per trafficare il vino bianco delle Cinque Terre da molti secoli. Come ho detto, stiamo andati li prima, e abbiamo dovuto trovare un albergo o una camera per affittare. Questo era purtroppo impossibile, perché c'era una festa importante questo fine settimana, e non c'erano camere libere. Per ciò, dopo un'ora di cercare a Vernazza e solamente abbiamo trovato una camera cara (expensive, not dear) e libera per Domenica, stiamo andati a Monterosso al Mar, città #5/5 delle Cinque Terre.
Monterosso è anche bellissima, ma non ci abbiamo visto niente, perché abbiamo domandato alla donna chi lavorava nella officina turistica se c'erano camere libere, e lei ha detto 'Assolutamente no!'. Mannaggia! Stiamo andati a Riomaggiore, città #1/5:
Finalmente, abbiamo trovato una camera - forse l'ultima camera nelle cinque terre. Al fine, abbiamo speso 200% più del nostro bilancio, ma avevamo un letto per noi, e questo era più importante del nostro bilancio (more important than..)! Abbiamo mangiato nel Ristorante Marina Piccola, dove ci sono le ottime cozze del questo mondo. Dopo Marina Piccola non posso mangiare ancora un'altra cozza. Dopo siamo andati al Bar Centrale a Riomaggiore, dove abbiamo bevuto Mojitos e mangiato un po' di gelato. Cosi è finito il primo giorno.
Domenica mattina siamo camminati da Riomaggiore a Manarola. Li c'è un sentiero dei vigneti, che è molto bello. Dopo abbiamo preso il treno per Vernazza, e li abbiamo lasciato le nostre valigie e pranzato al Ristorante Taverna del Capitano, dove c'è una dolce buonissima - semi-freddo panna con salsa di fragole. mmm! Dopo pranzo siamo andati sulla spiaggia di Monterosso. Abbiamo nuotato per un mezz'ora e corso alla Barca per ritornare a Vernazza (eravamo stati tardi!) La gita per Vernazza era bella e non ha fatto troppo nausea, e siamo tornati a Vernazza con abbastanza tempo per fare le doccie e cambiarci prima cena.
Cena era sopra un grande colle a Vernazza, dove è possibile vedere tutta la città e il mar. Bellissimo! Li, abbiamo avuto buono cibo, ottime viste del tramonto sul mar e brava conversazione con 4 Americani. Due di questi ci hanno invitato a suo appartamento, che era nel questo colle e aveva un terrasse dove è ancora possibile vedere tutta la città. Forse la prossima volta, che saremo alle Cinque Terre, resteremo li!
Siamo tornati al ristorante e ci seduti, per aspettare i fuochi artificiale, che ci erano per una grande festa della santa patrona di Vernazza, Santa Margherita. Erano buonissimi! Poi abbiamo mangiato troppo (veramente troppo!) gelato al centro di Vernazza, e siamo andati al letto.
Lunedì mattina ci siamo alzati presto, e perché avevamo abbastanza tempo, siamo andati al café Il Pirata, dove ci sono paste buonissime. Abbiamo mangiato un perfetto cannoli, due panzerotti freschi e caldi (come donuts, ma meglio!), e una granite di fragole. Con questo collezione (breakfast) siamo partiti a Perugia per lezione, e così è terminato una gira buonissima!
Well our first week in Italian is over (we ended it a little early since it's just the first week and we did pretty well), and we haven't killed each other or ourselves yet, so things are going pretty well! :)
The google translation of the post below is way better than anything I could come up with, but I'll stick my direct translation there for your amusement. I have attempted to retain any errors in the Italian, but have not unfortunately introduced new errors due to Google Translate. For more humor value, please click the link down there.
We're going to Assisi tomorrow, because, why not? it's 25 minutes away by train. Pictures and report forthcoming.
Our classes and teachers are very good, the city is beautiful, and pretty much the only source of stress is the language itself, which is plenty stressful, but overall, I'd say things are going really well. Italian is coming much faster than German came; I think I(/we) have a much better idea of how languages work now, and I think I'll probably come out of this summer with a pretty good working knowledge of Italian. A great help in that direction is the satellite TV system, which provides a good 1-2 hours a night so far of Italian-dubbed american TV/film.
Currently the Umbria Jazz festival ("OOM-bree-a JETS") is going on in Perugia, which means all over town, inside and outside, for money and for free, there are jazz concerts going on most of the day and all of the night. We went to the center of town and followed around a marching band from New Orleans and then listened to a set from the Roosevelt High School jazz band next to the city's 800 year old fountain. Pretty awesome.
That's all I got! Send poorly translated comments! (or if you send them before monday for me, I shall read them in English)
Prima, ecco un link a Google Translate.
Dopo, mi scusa! Non ho fatto mio Blog, quando posso scrivere Inglese, e il mio Italiano è molto male adesso. Allora, faccio una Traduzione a Sabato. Puoi aspettare a Sabato, o puoi usare Google Translate.
Sono adesso in Perugia, dove è troppo bello. Da qui, posso vedere a qualch'una direzione, e la sarà una vista dalla cartolina postale. È ridicolo bello.
Siamo insieme in una bella casa con Fabio e la sua familia, ma non abbiamo trovato la sua familia, perche siete adesso al mar. Anche è Fabio adesso al mar, e siamo soliti fino a domani.
Informazione importante:
-Nostro indirizzo postale è:
Gabriel Wyner/Melanie Henley Heyn
Via Brunamonti 19
06123 Perugia
Italy
-Nostro numero telefonico è lo stesso:
818 935 5039
-Sono qui 7/1 - 8/19, e Melanie è qui fino al 8/31.
-Parliamo, Sentiamo, Scriviamo, Leggiamo solo in Italiano eccetto Sabato (e forse Venerdì sera)
Basta! Ecco delle Fotografie:
First, here a link to google translate.
Then, excuse me! I haven't done my Blog, when I can write English, and my Italian is very bad now. So, I do a translation on Sunday. You can wait on Sunday, or you can use Google Translate.
I am here in Perugia, where it is too pretty. From here, I can look at some direction, and there will be a view from the post card. It is ridiculous pretty.
We are here together in a pretty house with Fabio and his family, but we haven't met his family, because you are now at the ocean. Also Fabio is now at the ocean, and we are alone until tuesday.
Important information: Our postal adress is:
Gabriel Wyner/Melanie Henley Heyn
Via Brunamonti 19
06123 Perugia
Italy
Our telephone number is the same:
818 935 5039
I am here July 1 - Aug 19, and Melanie is here until Aug 31.
We speak, hear, write and read only in Italian except Saturday (and maybe Friday night)
Enough! Here the photographs:
Following Melanie's Jewish escapades, we began to get lots and lots of visitors. Krysta and Kenneth arrived in mid May with lots of Reese's peanut butter cups, snickers and peanut m&ms (thank you!). Also they were nice to have around. We did touristy things, ate sausages (well Kenneth and I did), and generally had a great time.
During their visit, and the two weeks after, we were gearing up to our big performances of Così fan Tutte. Rehearsals had moved into the Odeon Theater, a very very pretty, church-like venue, and we were getting our final few dress rehearsals in before the big day(s). Shortly before our first performance, Chuck and Andrea (Melanie's parents) arrived from their travels across Europe. There was much merriment had by all.
For me, Così was a great, difficult, great experience. It was nice, if a little weird, to perform with Melanie on Monday (one [necessarily, I think] distances oneself while preparing and doing something as nerve-wracking and demanding as an opera role), and Monday night was a really good performance. For me, though, I spent much of the time trying to get laughs and it wasn't really natural or fun. After a couple of days of thinking and recovering, Wednesday night was just what I wanted it to be. I had fun, I actually got the laughs I had been trying to force from Monday's audience, and a good time was had by all. I spent a lot of Monday making sure I was doing everything right, and Wednesday I just enjoyed myself. (Melanie would rightly point out, a second performance can make a big difference all on its own, just from the repetition). Anyway, it was a great experience, and I learned a lot. Looking forward to the next time.
On Wednesday afternoon, Noah arrived from London to visit for a few days. We went to Schönbrunn gardens to relax a bit before the show, drank heavily after the show, and spent the next few days tiredly doing touristy things with Chuck and Andrea. 'Twas lots of fun (I believe Noah might still be travelling, currently in China now!)
Since the opera, things have been somewhat slow. To me it feels a little like graduating; things go slowly and awkwardly and there's a touch of postpartum depression going around. This will last for, say, a week or two, since then the Summer of Insanity begins, which will end in late October.
The Summer of Insanity begins on June 13th, when I fly to Los Angeles for Josh's wedding. After a very busy time at home, I fly to Italy to study Italian in Perugia for 2 months. This will be cut short because I need to be in Vienna in late August to rehearse for Rigoletto chorus, which will put me touring throughout Japan for 5 weeks in September and early October. As soon as I get back, I fly back to Los Angeles to have a big meeting of the parents to discuss our own wedding, and then I fly back and start catching up on the month+ of school that I've missed. Oh yeah, and Melanie will be in Venuzuela, performing Così fan Tutte in June.
Insanity.
