Year of the Rat and recent events...

Happy Chinese New Year all and happy bday to all rat babies!

I didn't really do anything much this CNY... Sydney had stormy weather again, my housemate went out to have a nice dinner with her aunt, my ex-housemate and now coursemate, M, went out with her cousin for dinner... but at least there was So You Think You Can Dance so I managed to watch that. The week after next I'd probably have to tape it because exams are around the corner.

Today I'm working at SBS! How exciting! Can't wait! It's an observing shift so I won't really be doing much... just need to know how to supervise over there because I'll be supervising some time.

Was doing phonemic transcription last night and I think I'm getting there. My errors are shifting around which is really annoying but apparently my lecturer said it's good that it's doing that. I just want to have one exercise error-free, and it's so tough. It is a real struggle... It's like another language whereby some people just get and some people like me don't get. Grrr!! I know I shouldn't think too negative but I have to really think what if I do not pass this you know... I have to think alternatives. I guess it isn't really a loss because it would be that I at least tried and gave it a go. And if it doesn't work out, I'll continue working in Sydney for a while - am sure the big bosses here would love for me to go full time! For now, I just have to keep working at phonetics or try to squeze in the time for it. Apparently I keep transcribing American-nish - that's what my lecturer said. It certainly doesn't help that the closest people that talk to me everyday are M, TY and my sis who all sound American-nish. And I did ask my lecturer, "Does that mean I'll probably do well in America?" And she said, "Yeah, probably." It's a really bias system I reckon because here we are in Australia meant to learn the Australian system - the IPA... and suppose if we wanted to go to America to work, it would be more of a struggle because we have to relearn the symbols compared to the Americans who already know those symbols... But having said that, they are thinking of revamping the system to make it more universal which is good I guess... Bad news though that they might change over to this new system sometime when semester one starts for me, so yeah, how frustrating...