#clala

Dis is ma cat.

Clara.  

Update on my Life

So I have been so bad at keeping this blog up-to-date I know.  Somehow even with my lack of updates I have acquired over 1000 followers now.  Just Crazy!!! But so great!  Now more than ever I feel like I really need to update my journey.

New Job

I have had so many exciting things happen over the past few months.  I have changed jobs twice... that has been fun.  I left Guess and returned to Forever 21 for a quick 6 months gig as lead project manager over the design of European and Asian market stores.  Few months ago I took a job with PATINA-V a mannequin company with HQs and factories in Los Angeles, New York, Paris and yes Xiamen... that is of course in China and is a rather lovely city with a what I think of a beach vibe.  I would recommend checking it out.

MeetUps

lostinChinese is back and we are starting to host MeetUps again in greater LA and SGV (that’s San Gabriel Valley for you non-SoCal people.)  If you think that there is not good modern Chinese food in the US well you haven’t been to the SGV!!!  For the past year I have been wanting to put up my list of favorites and I just might get to it this month.  I think we are now at almost 30 members.  Check out our free MeetUp this Saturday the 26th.  We have the extremely cool LA based Chinese Teacher Sarah Liu as part of our group... so you should join us for some extra study and practice.

http://www.meetup.com/lostinchinese-com/events/225024040/

LGBT language learners and friends is a new Chinese MeetUp group I have recently started.  In just a few weeks we already have almost 20 members.  We have a private wechat group and are looking to establish a verified network of AirBnB / Couchsurfing hosts to further expand the opportunities to learn Chinese.  We are looking for LGBT friendly hosts to provide travelers with a safe place to stay when traveling and learning some Chinese in the process.  Checkout our MeetUp page for more info!

http://www.meetup.com/Chinese-LGBT-Language-Learners-and-Friends/

zhimuLA... somthing NEW

I have started a new creative venture known as zhimuLA.  For those of you that know how to pronounce Mandarin that is 2 fourth tones zhi4 mu4... and well the LA part is just L....A.... :).  So a year ago I selected Zhimu as my Chinese name.  I picked it myself from a list of names I discovered while “googling”.  zhi4 志 means; purpose, will, determination... while mu4 means; long for, desire; admire.  To be honest I just liked the sound of the name, when I asked Xinwei and my Chinese friends they all told me that this was a really great name and seemed shocked that a laowai 老外 would have pick such a name on his own. 

With my recent career shift zhimuLA will serve as my creative outlet.  I’m very instrenstred in exploring creative ideas between East and West.  For the first major project I have partnered up with the up-and-coming Chinese artist DonnieDuan.  We will be working on a art project and documentary exploring the impacts on Western stereotype of Asian males and the impacts they have on people's personal lives.  We are very preliminary but do look out for us on Kickstarter very soon.

Current CHINESE Study

Chinese study has been great... Yesterday I just purchased another 100 classes from SpeakUpChinese.com.  Their CEO Henry Su has been teaching me a lot of great chinese and helping me prepare for HSK 3 & 4 tests.  I have just started their intermediate level course and I must say I am very impressed.

In addition to SpeakUpChinese I have continued using FluentU.com.  I have been taking my keywords from my lessons with Henry and creating flash cards in the FluentU.com system.  It provides me with additional video/audio study that really helps me retain the new words and grammar patterns.  I wouldn’t recommend it as your only study course... but I would say if you are not using this in addition to your current Chinese study you are missing out.

I’m still using Anki everyday.  I have started making cards on the fly from my keywords from lessons to words I can’t remember when having Chinese conversations.  Another app called Evernote has changed my life.  All day long I note words I might need, words I forgot, something that stood out in a song that I didn’t understand... It updates on all my devices, so when I open my MacBook air I have the list ready to review, lookup and the add to Anki.

Last but not least as of today I have decided to also enroll in a 12 week course that the Chinese Language Academy in West LA.  I had a look over the course work for there CLA 3B secession and it looks very complimentary to what I will be studying with SpeakUpChinese.com.  As I understand it... they have modified their 6 week schedule to 12 weeks based on students request.  2.5 hours a week of classroom instruction, one night a week should be fun!!!  With my continued 4 hours a week with Henry Su, I will be in active learning environments 6.5 hours a week... over a year later and still so crazy about Chinese!!!

I was going to try and do it tonight but my head is spinning and I honestly just can not come up with a solid proposal idea. Hopefully tomorrow will give me some inspiration but I will get it done tomorrow or the next day!