大家好！
How’s everybody doing today? I’m fine, thanks for asking!
Things here are going well. I actually managed to listen to a few lessons today on my lunch hour while I walked a few miles on the treadmill. I find that I don’t notice the passage of time when I do those two things at once. Information comes in, my brain is engaged, and I’m able to completely ignore any sort of protest from my underutilized muscles.
All of this, of course, is not helping me with my problem in writing or reading the characters. I’ve been having this weird thing lately where I look at a character and I have this immediate recognition, but I can’t identify it. It’s like seeing an old friend from high school, the one you used to hang out with all the time, but now you can’t remember his name.
In the meantime, I’m hard at work on the movies. I’m still shooting one of them (today’s call time was cancelled due to inclement weather), one of them is in post-production, and my next film is officially in pre-production. I only mention this because my next film will actually have some Chinese in it. This tickles me in all kinds of ways. 
That’s it for me for tonight, kids. I’m going to go study a bit. Have a great evening, people!
Technorati Tags: chinesepod
Frank! Hey, sounds like your movie career is taking off!
I need your help:
Ok, you mentioned a mental block about Charactors, I have a similar mental block, except it’s with the whole language. Yikes! I am taking a entry test to see what level of Chinese I am at when I start school (beginning of October). I KNOW I should brush up, I KNOW it! And yet….I just cant bring myself to study, for fun, in my own time now, knowing full well I am about to embark on the hardest year of studying in my life. Yuck, what a mess. I don’t want to end up in the beginners class, please, offer me some inspirational ‘Frank-brand’ advice!
Miss you!
你好朋友！ 好久不见！ 我也很想你！
First, stop stressing. It’s not helping.
Second, accept that no matter what the outcome of that exam is, it’s going to serve you well. Why? Well, if you go in there and tank the test, chances are you’ll ace the beginner course while leaving you with enough mental resources to dedicate to your other classes. If you do great on the test, then your Mandarin was obviously good enough to put you in a higher class, and while it will be a harder slog, the end result will be worth it!
You have a win/win situation staring you in the face! Embrace it!
Also, I have always found that giving yourself permission to do nothing is a great motivator to make you do something. Try it.
Haha, i am not very good at ‘giving myself permission to do nothing’ maybe I will try that one out:)
And you know what, I havnt gotten a cold in a few years, and that was the only time I really said ‘ok girl, lets be lazy and watch movies all week’, so I am kindof missing the forced laziness!
You make a good point - if I bomb the test, then I probably need some more thourough teaching on that material anyways. Just last night I started looking at characters again - it’s quite satisfying how fast they come back:)
When are your vids going to start showing up leaked on the internet?
Nice to see you back, Frank!
One thing I’ve found helpful for bulk forgotten characters, is to do an activity for relaxation without trying to remember. Take some easy well learned lessons from the past, and copy out the dialogue. Don’t look at the characters as Chinese language, they’re just shapes. Work fast, work messy, use the back of some junk mail or the white spaces on a torn sheet of newspaper, then throw it away when done because it’s meaningless scribble. Just get them down while thinking of something else like your plans for tomorrow or watching something interesting on TV.
If those characters want to get back into your brain, they’ll have to fight and scream their name for the right to get your attention. And gradually they will. Meanwhile you’re relaxing with an activity less taxing than a magazine crossword puzzle.
I hope it works for you too!
Colleen - It’ll be a few more weeks before you start to see the fruits of my efforts. Hopefully it’ll be worth the wait.
Aunty Sue - Nice to be back! And thanks for the tip! That’s a great idea.