You wouldn't know it by looking at this website, but I have been productively busy the last two weeks. (Only 9 posts in May. How sad!) But instead of writing here, a different side project (in addition to my actual job) has taken up almost all of my free time. Not that I am complaining, because it has been fun.
As I mentioned in my last post, I have started taking Thai Language lessons. The class meets two times a week (Tuesday and Thursday), which I find to be not enough. From Tuesday to Thursday, I can hear my instructor's words and tones in my head. By Saturday, however, I can't.
So, I decided to go ahead and sign up for the intensive course that starts in two weeks. That class will be every day Monday-Friday for four hours a day. I am expecting it to be very challenging. Just getting up every day for an 8 AM class across town should be challenging enough on its own!
My side project that I mentioned earlier plays into all of this new Thai Language learning as well. I am working on a website that will help me to learn (for now) Thai vocabulary and (soon, I hope) grammar. I am doing the development in PHP and using mySQL on my Mac Mini. As soon as I can get to a workable "alpha" version, I will post it to a public website. Of course, I will leave the link here when I do.
I haven't programmed anything since I graduated in 1998, and I have never done much PHP or any mySQL but I have really enjoyed learning and solving problems again. For the last couple of years, in the back of my mind, I have been thinking about how this website would work, so it has been very rewarding to actually build it. My dream is to use some of the "intelligent tutoring" ideas we developed at NC State with some web technologies to make a "Thai Tutor" web application. I think I can create something very cool and very useful, and so far, things are going well.
But until I have more to share on that front, I think I will have some interesting stories to tell in the upcoming weeks. I will be doing some travel writing for an online travel site, and that means I'll have the opportunity to hit the road for some research. As soon as I get my assignments, I'll give a preview of upcoming attractions.
Enjoy!!!
What is the online travel website?
Love you!!
Sounds great! Good luck with all your projects Stuart.
It's funny, I was considering the idea of starting to write in a blog whatever I learn of Thai. I'm trying to learn by myself, so, as you can imagine, my Thai is very basic. But I think that writing it down will help me, and, if I do it in Spanish, who knows, it may help others too. Can you believe that there is absolutely no resources for learning Thai, written in Spanish? Ok maybe it's not so surprising because any Spanish person wanting to learn Thai, for sure would have learnt English before, but it's as I tell you: even the best Thai-Spanish dictionaries that are sold in book stores are oriented to Thai students only (they don't include Thai pronuntiation, for instance). The only exception are a couple of tourism-aimed phrase books.
EnJoY your project!
So proud of/for you!
Being paid to travel. Pardon me drooling. Now that's my kind of job. Hope everything goes well for you, and good luck with the language studies.
Beth, the travel site is http://www.travelfish.org. I'm still waiting for assignment #2 and the pay for #1, so hopefully it will all work out.
Alex, yes I am not surprised that there are no "Learning Thai" books written in Spanish. It's similar to my complaint that there's not very much good Mexican food in Thailand. I guess the Mexican expat community is very small. hehe. I think starting a blog detailing your experiences is a great one. Send me the link if you do it.
Morrie, Yes, I hope that the travel writing will be a good experience. Granted, it's not a lot of pay, but I'm traveling anyway, so I might as well make a few bucks.