Tag: Travel

900 Days of Deutsch

This weekend, I hit a new milestone – 900 consecutive days of practicing German using Duolingo.

Upon sharing the news with a friend, he asked how fluent I feel. Truthfully, I still feel like I’m pattern-matching. I’m fairly decent at decoding messages and generating approximately correct statements, but I don’t feel that I could carry on a conversation.

That’s not to say there is no value in what I’ve invested so much time in. Last year, my wife and I spent a few days visiting her family in Germany, and I knew enough from practicing on Duolingo to utter a few sentences and follow along on some simple conversations. However, it was a valuable lesson that just because I unlock levels, it doesn’t mean I’m gaining competence. Sometimes, what you think you are learning doesn’t match what you are actually practicing. It’s good to keep this distinction in mind.

Stay Awesome

Ryan

Multi-Lifetime-Spanning Projects

While on our honeymoon, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit Rothenburg ob der Tauber and received an excellent tour from the town’s tourism bureau. Our guide was a local (born and raised), and was a fantastic wealth of knowledge. Among the sites we visited was St. James’s Church.

While standing in awe of the church’s medieval design, our tour guide noted that the church’s construction started in 1311, and the final product wasn’t completed until 1484, 173 years later. The church was built in stages, with the first one spanning 1311-1322, then 1373-1436, and the final portion lasting from 1453-1471. It required the work and vision of four master-builders to see the project through to completion, and our guide remarked on what it might have been like for the first builders to start a project for their town that they knew they’d never see the completion of.

That has stuck with me since returning home. It reminds me of a Greek proverb (“Society grows great when men plant trees under whose shade they’ll never sit”), but seeing the results of this in the form of the church was deeply moving.

Our timescales are often limited in scope, and the rapid changes in technology have only accelerated our perceptions of change. I’m listening to Thomas L. Friedman’s book, “Thank You for Being Late,” and he remarked that prior to the last century it would take about 100 years for innovation to change society enough for people to feel the difference in their everyday lives. Now, that scale is measured in mere years for the developed world. I often take for granted how much things have changed over my life so far and I lose a sense of perspective in my sometime seeming doldrum existence.

I can barely imagine what it’s like starting a project like St. James’s Church knowing that not only will I not see the project’s completion, but that no one alive who will have seen it will likely have known me either. Everyone who had known me while alive would also have slipped away in the sands of time. Our tour guide mentioned that there were four builders who oversaw the project, and we only know the name of the last one. All that remains is that name and the building to persist through time.

At least in the case of buildings and churches, it’s easy to see how the final product will be used and valued by the future.  I think it’s harder to have the same faith of vision (pun somewhat intended) for a project that’s less well-defined as a public good, where not only will the thing be of use to future-people, but it will outlast you, everyone who ever knew you, and likely everyone who knew your children.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

Going Out Of Our Way To Vote

A few weeks back, my wife and I were preparing for a then-upcoming vacation.  Our voting cards had recently come by mail and I was listing off the voting information (location, date, etc.) when she realized that election day was happening while we were out of the country.  This was the first time I would be physically unable to vote on the day, so we started looking into what one does when this happens.  I had heard in the past about early voting, though never needed it.

Turns out, the early voting days would start the day after we departed for our trip (of course).

In cases like this, you need to contact your local elections office to request a special voting kit that would allow you to send in your votes early.  Thankfully the elections offices are open during the week until 9pm, so we were able to go in person to fill out the paperwork to pick up our kits and vote.  It required us to write out our candidate of choice on a blank ballot, then seal those votes in an envelope, which was then sealed in a separate envelope to track that we had voted but not track who received our votes.

I’m glad these kinds of provisions are in place to allow us to exercise our civic duties.  While we know our votes would not be missed if we had skipped this election, and even though we had to go out of our way to vote, my wife and I nevertheless feel it’s important that we do our part to show up and participate in the process.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

What I’ve Been Reading (As of October 29th)

While it’s only been a month since my last reading update, I’ve turned-over a fair number of books in that time.  Here’s what’s on my nightstand or playing from my speakers this month.

If You’re In My Office, It’s Already Too Late by James J. Sexton

No, I didn’t get this book because my relationship is in trouble.  In fact, it’s the exact opposite.  My relationship with my wife is great, and I want to keep it that way.  I first came across Sexton in a Lifehacker podcast along side Esther Perel and I thought he had some interesting perspectives on relationships as a divorce lawyer.  This book distills his 20-years of law experience and covers a gamut of reasons why relationships fail.  The thinking is that while he doesn’t know what makes a good relationship, he knows all sorts of reasons why they don’t work, and the reader of his book can learn from the mistakes of his clients.

The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

I pre-ordered this a few weeks back and it just came in the mail, so I haven’t had a chance to get very far into it.  I first encountered Greene through a book recommendation from a friend of mine for his book, Mastery.  I was intrigued with the material in Mastery, so I’ve kept an eye on Greene since.  I listened to a the audiobook for the 48 Laws of Power, and I listened to a bit of his Art of Seduction (though I never finished it).  Greene, like his protege Ryan Holiday, is a master of research synthesis.  While his books are a bit of an animated bibliography, I think it’s the best representation of the genre.  He digs into history to learn lessons from key figures to articulate his thesis.  Instead of reporting on the achievements of others, Greene feels like a chronicler of insights.  I’m looking forward to what this book has to offer.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read this one until now.  I’m familiar with the well-known courtroom scenes from the movie, but I was never assigned this while I was in school.  Since I’ve been reading a steady diet of non-fiction, I thought I should dig into some quality fiction.  I’m less than an hour into the audiobook, but already I find Scout to be an intriguing character (narrated by Sissy Spacek).

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling

While my wife and I were heading off on our mini-honeymoon after the wedding last month, we found it difficult to talk about anything that wasn’t about the wedding.  The planning and lead-up to our nuptials was over a year in the making, so in the afterglow of the party, we didn’t have much to talk about.  Instead of riding in complete silence, we bought a copy of the Deathly Hallows on audiobook for the drive.  I’ve only read the book once, and that was way back in 2007 when it was released (I bought it during a layover in Heathrow Airport on my way home from Kenya).  We only listen to the book while together in the car during long(ish) drives between cities, and it’s funny how often we shut it off to talk about the story, or how stupid Harry (the character) is when you really think about it.  It’s honestly among my favourite times spent with my wife.

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

I bought this book with high hopes, but sadly I’m finding it a bit of a let down.  The Ikigai concept has floated around the interwebs and on my radar for a little over a year now.  It got picked up in the blogosphere (mostly on Medium for me), so when I saw the book I thought I should check it out.  This particular book is a hard animated bibliography.  I think its greatest sin is that it talks about Ikigai by first covering other well-known philosophical ideas, such as Frankl’s work in Man’s Search for Meaning.  I had hoped the concepts would stand on their own, or at least be situated with the original Japanese contexts that they were born out of.  Instead, it cobbles together a bunch of summaries of other publications and presents them in digest format.  Because the book is short with big font, I’ll slog through it, but it’s not what I had hoped it would be.

Stay Awesome,

Ryan

What I’ve Been Reading (As of September 24th)

I haven’t posted a reading update since the summer, so now seems like a good time to check in on what’s playing out of my speakers or sitting on my nightstand.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

This list must have the mandatory update on where I am in Pratchett’s Discworld books.  I’m only a little ways in, so not a huge update here.  Thus far, it’s a Witches story, sans Granny Weatherwax and involves vampires appearing to try and usurp a kingdom.  In other words, awesome.

What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton

I’ve drifted more towards memoirs as of late, choosing to distance myself a bit from the animated bibliography and instead listen to the stories by people reflecting on their life and either providing insight in retrospect or attempting to provide an explanation for why things unfolded (also see Catmull’s book below and my recent completion of Knight’s Shoe Dog).  As with many of us here in North America, I watched the US elections in 2016 with interest, and was disappointed in the results.  I was interested to hear Hillary’s story of what happened and am not disappointment by what I’ve heard so far.

Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull

Another memoir, this book is from one of the founders and heads of Pixar.  What I love most about this book is that he’s discussing the behind-the-scenes decisions and goings-on of creating the films that I grew up on, which adds a new layer of awesome to my childhood memories.  The values and lessons he learned from their failures and successes are incredibly interesting, and I find the book captivating.

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

Junger starts with an interesting observation from the American Frontier: if “advanced civilization” is so wonderful, why did so many white American settlers abandon their communities to join and live among the indigenous peoples that were so backwards and savage to them?  Junger’s speculation is that it comes down to how people feel accepted within their communities.  To Junger, this is an example of how “civilization” and technology can be so alienating to a person, which diminishes their sense of worth and place.  I’m not very far into the book, but it’s quite a good read so far.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

I’ve been watching the Outlander series on Netflix with my wife and have been loving the story so far.  It didn’t hurt that the first season took place in Scotland, which reminded me of my trip there in 2016.  Fun fact, the scenes of Inverness in the series were actually filmed in a small town called Falkland, which I visited on my travels, long before we had started watching the show.  The book is huge (over a 800 pages!) so it’ll be a long read.

 

Image may contain: sky, tree and outdoor
If you watch the first episode, this is the town square of “Inverness” where Frank encounters the ghostly Scotsman.

No automatic alt text available.

 

Stay Awesome,

Ryan