Meme with intent: day one

[la_marquise]

I need to blog more.
So, in this spirit, I've picked up this 10 day meme from ladymoonray.


Day 1 - Ten random facts about yourself
Day 2 - Nine things you do everyday
Day 3 - Eight things that annoy you
Day 4 - Seven fears/phobias
Day 5 - Six songs that you’re addicted to
Day 6 - Five things you can’t live without
Day 7 - Four memories you won’t forget
Day 8 - Three words you can’t go a day without
Day 9 - Two things you wish you could do
Day 10 - One person you can trust

So, about those
This is surprisingly hard. I suppose it doesn't specify that they have to be things people don't know about me in general.

1. I sometimes swear in Cantonese. Badly
2. I've been studying Chinese on and off since 1996 and wish I was better at it and had more time for it.
3. I've never read a line of E. E. 'Doc' Smith.
4. I can't finish Middlemarch. I've tried several times and each time I bounce off.
5. I have, however, read Clarissa.
6. I first read a novel in translation when I was 5 or 6. (Heidi.) I was an early and avid reader.
7. I used to have Radio 1 on all day. At some point in the early 2000s this transitioned to Radio 4: I may be turning into my mother. (This latter is fine with me. My mother is a splendid person.)
8. I both wish my Welsh was better and feel anxious about learning it, because the circumstances in which I began studying it were very pressurized.
9. I think Hong Kong is the most beautiful city in the world.
10. I've never been to the southern hemisphere.

Skirt of the day: denim

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'd love to learn Welsh, but I bounced off it. I can say "Bore da" with the best of them, though. Kind of. I have been to the southern hemisphere, barely, visiting my mother in Rwanda.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

It's a complicated language in certain ways, and the grammar enshrines some archaisms in the written form that aren't used much in speech.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I somehow can't imagine you swearing in any language. :o)

I have some fairly choice Algerian French phrases!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I can't finish Middlemarch, I dislike everyone in it and their problems bore me.

I can't swear in Swedish at all. I ought to remedy that. It's always just some version of "Oh, the Devil!" though. Swedes are very big on Satan in swearing.

I am surprised you have the radio on all day, so there you go! Facts I didn't know.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I've read Middlemarch twice (the second time in case I had got it wrong the first time) and found it extremely dull. I have however recently read "The Road To Middlemarch" by Rebecca Mead which is not dull and has at least explained to me why people enjoy it, even if I don't. If interested you can probably get it out of the library.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I loved Middlemarch. But then I once wanted to be a Hardy scholar, so perhaps very depressing novels of the Long C19 are just part of my constitution :-) I agree, though, that the characters are tiresome. In fact, I don't much like the characters in any of those novels -- they're all like Greek tragedy to me.

On the other hand, I could never get through Clarissa!