I'm leaving on a jet plane...

[FunKay the Inevitable]

The question I'm sure that's on everyone's minds; will you be seeing your lady friend once more?

 

[Gelgarin]

Why else would anybody move to Siberia, like... ever? That's more or less the entire point of the exercise.

 

[Pay Per Ghost]

Do they have fruit squash now ya geezer?

 

[The Butcher]

Why else would anybody move to Siberia, like... ever? That's more or less the entire point of the exercise.

Could be on the lam. Only other reason I can think of. Anywho, best of luck.

 

[Gelgarin]

That's fair. I will be escaping once again from a not inconsiderable tax bill if it helps.

 

[Gelgarin]

So that job I had... don't exactly have it any more.

I'm not entirely sure what happened, but as best I can glean, the woman who hired me no longer works for the company, and nobody else at the school seems to have the slightest clue who I am. So on Monday I'll be interviewing for a job that I've technically already been offered twice.

This is a bit of a bugger, since I turned down other offers for this place - and now that September is approaching (it usually takes 30 days for a visa to process) the pickings are going to be much slimmer if I get turned down. I guess the silver lining is that for a very complex series of reasons, if I get accepted again I'll be entitled to rather more money and benefits than I was being offered to do the exact same job a couple of days ago.

 

[Pay Per Ghost]

Did you atleast bag the Nikita?

 

[Gelgarin]

So the job is looking promising - I haven't got it yet, but they're checking my references post interview.

Short version; because I really don't need the money, and rather do need proximity to my young lady, I offered to pay my own way to Russia, arrange my own accommodation and work for £300 a month (which is astonishingly low even for Siberia).

The company originally accepted my proposal, but then cruelly snatched the offer away from me and are instead insisting that I allow them to fly me to Russia, find me a place to live and that I agree to work for over four times the salary. Life is confusing sometimes.

In other news, I literally just spend close to three hours reading my own posts from years ago and concluding that I'm starting to deteriorate due to old age. I haven't called anyone a bigot or disgusting human being for months, whereas back then I could manage one a week when I was on form.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

You and I, we shall become closer soon. We will be the only two in that timezone.

Ho is your russian coming along? Im planning on learning as much as I can this time around (I have a dialog of roughly 50 words from the last go)

 

[Gelgarin]

I can manage the important stuff like "Where are the potatoes?" "Excuse me, do you have any potatoes?" and "Can I have some potatoes please?"
When it gets away from food I'm completely useless - I can read Cyrillic pretty well, and a lot of words stay the same, but in spoken conversation I'm not significantly better then I was twelve months ago.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

I can manage the important stuff like "Where are the potatoes?" "Excuse me, do you have any potatoes?" and "Can I have some potatoes please?"
When it gets away from food I'm completely useless - I can read Cyrillic pretty well, and a lot of words stay the same, but in spoken conversation I'm not significantly better then I was twelve months ago.

Other way round. I can communicate fairly well, but I cant read that shit for the fucking life of me. Goddamn backards C's and E's

 

[Tastycles]

I realised a while ago that Russian is remarkably similar to latin languages, except with the wrong alphabet. Fortunately, thanks to knowing the Greek alphabet and what "Динамо Київ" says, I worked it out. Never even tried to speak it though.

 

[Барбоса]

Cyrillic is a somewhat peculiar script. It seems to conform to the Ancient Greek alphabet almost exclusively for the first 75%, complete with Latin characters used for different letters, but then it goes off on a complete tangent for the far earlier Slavic letters. And then you have the numerous alphabetical variants in the different languages that use the script, such as Ukrainian.

I quite enjoyed the few dealings I had with Cyrillic during my Byzantine Studies course at university as those similarities with Latin and Greek script make it something of a puzzle to unravel but not an impossible one.

 

[Gelgarin]

Speaking and listening are much harder than reading for one accustomed to a European language like English. Since Russian eschews nearly all articles and prepositions in favor of affixes, a lot of the language is incredibly polysyllabic, which I at least find very difficult to deal with - particularly as I'm not yet at a level where I really understand most of the grammatical rules governing the affixes.

 

[Gelgarin]

Got the job! (again)

I think, think, that there are no more ways for life to decide to mess with me. I'm going back to Russia.

All you guys are pretty worthwhile people even if you don't properly appreciate Greg Gagne or TNA.

 

[Tastycles]

Congrats..

Speaking and listening are much harder than reading for one accustomed to a European language like English. Since Russian eschews nearly all articles and prepositions in favor of affixes, a lot of the language is incredibly polysyllabic, which I at least find very difficult to deal with - particularly as I'm not yet at a level where I really understand most of the grammatical rules governing the affixes.

I grew up speaking welsh where the words mutate based on the previous word, adding random letters, or changing them entirely so can imagine the difficulty with that. E.g.

"clywais i" - I heard
"dim" - nothing
"Chlywais i ddim" - I heard nothing

 

[Remy LaCroix]

Congrats, Gelgarin.

I have terrible listening skills and find reading Russian much easier than listening to it. I never really had an issue speaking it, or in my case reciting how to order a screwdriver.

"clywais i" - I heard
"dim" - nothing
"Chlywais i ddim" - I heard nothing

Is the extra d silent?

 

[Tastycles]

No. Dd is its own letter in welsh, it sounds like a soft 'th' sound in English, e.g. In the word 'the'. Ch is harsh, like in German.

 

[Danger Burger]

No. Dd is its own letter in welsh, it sounds like a soft 'th' sound in English, e.g. In the word 'the'. Ch is harsh, like in German.

Ll for a 'chl' sound? No? That one always impressed me.

 

[Uncle Sam]

I got an e-mail at work in Welsh the other day. Is Thom, as a surname, a Welsh name?

 

[Tastycles]

Scottish, I think.

No, Ll is not a chl sound, but the sound it actually is doesn't exist in English, so that's the best approximation. A better approximation still is this:

 

[Nate DaMac]

Are there black people in Russia?

 

[Gelgarin]

No.

 

[shattered dreams]

Compared to some of those former Soviet countries the Southern US isn't particularly racist.

 

[Gelgarin]

So in case the absence of snark aimed at KB failed to tip anyone off - I'm presently on my way back to Russia. Well... presently I'm in a rather nice London hostel (pub), but tomorrow I'll be flying 2000 miles to the land of the never rising sun.

I wish I had a lift from the airport or place to stay once I arrive sorted out - but the school have not been performing their duties, to the point where my girlfriend has actually started phoning them up to complain on my behalf (which I'm sure will have won me no end of favor).