The Audio Blog of Steven Sirski

They changed my keyboard again and now I lost the autocomplete functionality Ukrainian and Russian anthems, what's the difference? Some notable history behind each, particularly the Russian anthem. March Motion to start, am I even in the mood for this? Restricted eating keeping me away from the bottle, which I don't mind. Show notes n tracks up on stevensirski.com. Try to have a good weekend.

Where did the evening go? Checking in on people. Russia has now officially invaded Ukraine, what a surprise that was to see at 11 am this morning. What are the repercussions for us over here? Should we be packing? How will this be resolved? Building up an online presence in case there is another gap in employment. What else to prepare? Investment maxim: buy when there's blood in the streets. Does...

Some DELTA books arrived, will start studying Sad to hear that some more colleagues are thinking of leaving after being here for only a short time. I don't blame them. Why keep studying Chinese? It's just become a goal of mine. Donetsk and Luhansk were recognized as break away republics from Ukraine, several other countries (all Russian allies) lauded the move. Question becomes, how would you unif...

Palindrome and ambigram day! 22.02.2022, or how do you write it? Russia declares parts of Ukraine as now part of Russia. Read Sergy Plohii's book Gates of Europe for some background on this. World War 3? I read George Friedman's work on geopolitics for a better understanding. Hope this isn't the end of the freedom we've had to travel wherever for so long. Is it easy to avoid these discussions as a...

Olympics are over! Canada is fourth in terms of total medals! Eleventh according to gold medals! Paralympics start March 4th. Want to go see Olympic Park to see what's open. Will Russia invade Ukraine (again? still?)? How will that affect future work plans? Still worth doing the DELTA? Interesting they played the Greek national anthem at the end of the ceremony. Monday morning workouts are hard to...

What do you do while you're editing a podcast? Make banana bread! Done and done with Episode 28 of my podcast. Featuring writer and comedian Donnie Fan, we talk about life in China, the state of comedy, and what's planned for the future. Now available on my website for download. Took much of the day to fix up some issues but was also able to publish some video clips from the Episode so that is a s...

This Episode, recorded on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, sees me sit down with writer and comedian Donnie Fan. A self-described “mixed blood of Chinese descent” hailing from New York, Donnie has found a new home here in Beijing China. Fresh off of the production of his first tragedy, Medea , based on the play by Euripides, Donnie is now focusing his efforts of developing his own hour-long stand up r...

What's going on in Canada? Is it true they can just take the money out of your bank account? Iunno, I thought it was a bunch of truckers protesting in the capital like the USAmericans did last year? In other news, TEAM CANADA WOMEN WON GOLD IN HOCKEY! Why is this not being talked about more? That would be because... no one is talking about the Olympics at all. Even here in Beijing. Episode 28 in t...

Out for dinner with a former colleague who is moving to Hong Kong for a new job. Talked about job transitions, education and what I would have done differently in my 20s! (Ok Old Man!) HSK studied a bit, vocab and text reading. Worked a bit on Episode 28, wait for that later this week. Sometimes we forget, being an expat can be pretty cool if challenging, and we have to make the best of our situat...

Reading and learning, management and other responsibilities. Do you have any books you read that, even after a sentence, it spurs you into action? Those are the inspirational books we need more of. Thinking of the DELTA and how best to approach it, do I even need to do it or could I just read the books? How else can I leverage it? Podcasting, hope you're enjoying. New Episode should be up soon. Ho...

Well Happy Valentine's Day! Roses are red, violets are blue, it's cold outside and so are you! Hahaha DELTA research, apparently a lot of people have done it, I'm one of the few who hasn't Tiananmen Square Sunday afternoon, COLD! Police checking passports of foreigners Today was better with bluer skies Physio appt, can't proceed till confirmation from another specialist... who works across the cit...

Automation automation automation... for voice, text, video, photo, computer and phone. But how? Looked into using an Android automation program but doesn't look like anything really feasible. Final Cut editing can be done with XML files, but can also use more keyboard shortcuts through the program CommandPost. How to build an online chat bot that could be a value added service for language learner...

Life as an expat, is it that easy? Learning languages to help with culture shock. How do we classify different languages? Working on automation both for now and the future. Why I don't post earlier. Show notes and tracks up on stevensirski.com. Have a good one!

At a comedy show, recorded podcast Episode 28, look for that next week. Met some other expats who don't teach, some good stories. Small success with Automator getting a calendar event to then open up a webpage so I'd be forced to at least look at some Russian studies each day. Why don't I host my podcast on Spotify? I'll tell you why... Show notes and tracks up on stevensirski.com. Have a good one...

TCM places are closed so no go for acupuncture atm. The other place needed a recent negative NAT result. Guess I'm home-remedying this back ache. Olympics, is it too warm already? Lots of people seem to be falling and crashing. Livestreaming and music, which is the best platform? Bandcamp, Single Music, Mandolin or the old favs of YouTube and Facebook? Are NFTs really worth it? Next Episode of the...

Olympics officially underway but is China, is Beijing, really a winter sport place? Not much snow left on the ground but maybe they are trying to stimulate a new healthy lifestyle? Chinese studies continue, 49% on my practice test. Pinyin Wordle keeps me edutained. Looking to do a livestream of my tracks sometime soon as I've now uploaded all of the December Drumming and Jamuary tracks to Bandcamp...

Friday night, the night of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Too bad all we can do is watch it on TV like the rest of the world! Though the sport-specific instructional videos are cute. Might take a wander up to the Olympic Park later in the week to see how it looks. Some Chinese done today but not much, focusing on vocab and idioms. Borrowed a book from my neighbour, Interior Chinatown, written like...

Thursday already?! Hope this isn't a hernia. Will get up to do my workout anyway if only at half power. Olympics have started, Chinese female skip speaks in Chinese but screams in English! They are a pretty good team. Spent the day mixing around December Drumming tracks, fixing the metatags associated with the track info. Spent some time going through the Russian grammar book written in Chinese, i...

An homage to a famous song about not wanting to work but to bang on the drum all day. Simple, but it's appropriate for this month's challenge! Show notes and tracks up on stevensirski.com

Back pain from the morning gains. Take care out there when swinging the kbells. Chinese studies for the day included vocab review, HSK test prep work and... the Chinese version of Wordle! Takes some time but it's a good review of the language and culture's idioms. Finished up December Drumming with Shchedryk, you can find that on my website. Jamuary done, and website updated. Hope you're having a...

First day of the Lunar New Year, the Year of the Tiger! Gong xi ni fa cai! Xin nian kuai le! Hu nian kuai le! Health wealth and prosperity in the new year of the Tiger! Busy day as I spent much of it updating the website. All of January's audio blogs are up and so are the tracks for Jamuary. Ninety days of creative output (NaNoWriMo, December Drumming, Jamuary) are over for now, next one starts in...

Last day of the Lunar New Year and the first day of the week! Is Beijing any different? What do you do for the Lunar New Year? End of the Ox Year and into the Tiger New Year which means... ? A week off and able to get some things done. Jiaozi done. Yuanbao done. Penzi done. Eating early and then onto the Gala tonight! Show notes n tracks up on stevensirski.com!

Out to the pub we go, or is it a watering hole? Pint house? Local brew bar? Anyway, night went on longer than expected but that was because we were just so smart! Ended the night with some fantastic Korean fried chicken doused in sauce! Automating work, automating life, how much can be done and using which tools? Read up on using Apple Automator and Apple Scripts, how can these work with Python? J...

Thinking about... how to automate myself as an ESL teacher? For all of the month-long challenges I've gone through, would it be possible to build a program to at least deal with the introductory back and forths for a language learner? Not just an English learner, but a language learner in general? What questions would you ask? How would you know when they've stopped speaking? How would you know wh...

Reading JP Getty's book again, what does it take to succeed? What is success? What habits do I need to form? A podcast for ESL learners to supplement class? An extra service to students? The job will end, it's not a matter of if, it's when and how prepared I will be for that. Jamuary continues with new tracks up and lining up podcast guests. Show notes and tracks up on stevensirski.com. Hope you'r...