I slept a whole lot last night. Might have been because I didn't get enough sleep the night before, but the workouts at the gym are getting a lot harder. Other than overall toning and body shaping, I think my main fitness goal is to improve my ability to do chinups/pullups. I'm terrible at them.
Chinups are one of the military exercises that could be measured should I ever deploy with the Marines. Because Marines are Marines, they can't do things the way everybody else does, so they don't do pushups as a measured exercise on their fitness test. They do chinups/pullups instead.
The other typical measured events are pushups (which I should be able to max out with little difficulty) curl-ups/situps (which I think I may be able to max out this time) and running.
The run? I'm working on it. In fact, working on it about as hard as I possibly can. Still, progress is slow. I ran on the trail yesterday (a paved, multi-use trail), and as could be predicted, I ran faster than normal. I also ran a full 5 miles, which is maybe a quarter mile further than the treadmill workouts. My legs are a little stiffer than normal, today. I can see that I'm going to need to take advantage of those two rest-days during the week for recovery.
In the mean time, it's a struggle for me to run and the plantar fasciitis is flaring up a little bit in my left foot, now. I'm retiring my current pair of trainers to casual wear. That should help a bit, not only because I'll have newer trainers for running, but better cushioning in my daily wear shoes. (I wear sneakers pretty much every day.)
Arabic class is going well. So far, I'm ahead of the class, and I think this is something I can do. There's a professor of German in the class. Also, a lot of people from Arabic families. I think I have a shot at being first in the class, though.
Arabic is sort of nice in that it's a vocal language, and the phonemes are all easily pronounced by a western speaker. Personally, I found Korean hard to speak and learn. It developed independently of all the influences that created English and although there were sometimes analogs to our language, it was an entirely foreign tongue.
I never really learned to speak it, other than a handful of phrases. I also only got to where I could understand a handful of words. Oddly, I did basically master the alphabet, and that helps with Arabic.
Not so much that it carries over directly, but that I know what it means to learn a foreign alphabet. It is charming to see the kids in the class ask the same questions I did when I was 18: "What is the letter for 'b'? What is the letter for 'c'?"
As anybody who has studied a non-latin based alphabet can tell you, the answer is basically, "there isn't a letter b, per se. However, the letter 'ba' indicates a hard 'b' sound."
I don't believe that excessive transliteration, or trying to find english equivalents is a good way to learn a language. Trying to learn Korean that way was probably my biggest mistake. You have to stop thinking of 'ba' as 'arabic B', and start thinking of it as 'ba'.
Of my mountain of regrets in life, one of them is that I wasn't a military linguist. Honestly, I didn't know the option existed. The story of how I picked my job is a long one that I might go into in a different blog post, but for the most part, the guys in the military who studied the hardest languages (arabic, russian, chinese, korean) were the brainiest guys in the military. I had respect for all of them.
My goal in all this is to take the Defense Language Proficiency Test and score a 2/2 (a measure of proficiency). In that way, I can call myself a qualified military linguist.
A lot of people think I'm a bit of a jingoistic, America-first, America-only kind of guy and I can see where that opinion comes from. However, I've always been a person interested in world affairs and other cultures. It's just that when I think our culture is superior, I'll say so. However, I can easily name ways that England, Canada, France, Korea, Japan and Germany are superior to the US.
I think a person can't ever speak too many languages. I'm essentially monolingual, but I have a basis in French and Korean and if I spent a year in France, I'm sure I could attain good proficiency. I took it for 3 years in High School and can still speak, read, write and understand very simple phrases.
It'd take me longer in Korea and I would probably need some instruction, but I probably have the equivalent of half a semester of Korean under my belt.
Fortunately, I speak English, which I consider one of the hardest languages to learn for a foreigner. However, even there, I only learned it when I was 3 or 4 years old. Prior to that, I spoke Korean.
So, it'd be nice to officially gain proficiency in one other language. The more I look at the issue, when it comes time to mobilize, I may have to request Iraq, since they speak Urdu and Pashto in Afghanistan. In Djibouti, they speak French and Arabic, which would be interesting, since I'd have a smattering of a basis in both of them. However, the primary language spoken there is Swahili. So, I don't think I'd get the immersion I'd be looking for to bring my Arabic or French into the "proficient" category.
This is a bit of a renaissance period for me. I'm trying to improve both my body and mind. Also, I get my military ID card replaced today. So, I can get back to studying for my DAWIA certifications. (Defense acquisition certifications.)
The other aspects of my life: Logan is getting ready to try out for Mavericks this weekend and I'm sure I'll be more nervous than he will. He's looking really sharp, though. I think he'll do fine.
The business is going, but we're entering our slow season. We have a ton of A/R, but a lot of slow pays. Once all the money comes in, we'll be okay for a while. I am sure hoping that the weather is a lot nicer to us over the next 12 months than it was over the previous 12.
Enough blogging myself... time to go run.
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