Switching My Gym in June

Today is the last day of the long weekend of the Good Friday holiday. Aside from writing this journal entry, I only have some mundane tasks planned for the rest of the day, like shopping for groceries and hitting the gym.

Speaking of which, I have a membership at the gym located in the shopping mall near my apartment. I’ve been going there since July of last year on a one-year contract. Although I’m happy with its facilities and services overall, I’ve decided not to extend my membership when it expires at the end of June.

The reason is that my new office has its own gym, which is open to the employees at about half the price of what I’m paying at my current gym. Given that I only ride the treadmill and never lift weights, I only require the most basic facilities for my workouts, so I’ve decided to switch to the company gym.

Like many gay guys, I admit that I find muscular guys more attractive than guys who are lanky or chubby, and I have previously harbored a desire to become muscular myself. However, it didn’t take me long to figure out that building up muscles is no easy task–it requires total dedication, where I should be prepared to work out daily for about 90 minutes, as well as tailor my diet to maximize my protein intake.

As I’m currently focusing on my French studies, which take up a substantial amount of my free time, dedicating an hour and a half to muscle-building on top of that is an impossibility for me, so I have no choice but to give up on the idea of acquiring a beach-body physique–at least not anytime soon.

However, that doesn’t negate the importance of exercising twice a week or so, especially walking vigorously to the point of breaking a sweat. I’ve read that moderate exercise like walking is hugely beneficial in terms of maintaining the health of your brain and slowing down the overall aging of your body.

Accordingly, I am determined to keep up my current exercise routine of a 60-minute uphill treadmill ride every time I visit the gym. As the saying goes, health is priceless, so while I’m pretty busy with my language learning, I’m going to do whatever is necessary to stay healthy, regardless of whether or not I look attractive to the other gay guys.

Should Have Perfected My English Vocabulary

Yesterday was a public holiday here in Singapore for Good Friday. I spent a good part of the day studying French words.

As of today, I am 28 percent of the way through my dictionary. Typically, I spend about three hours a day learning French vocabulary, allocating two hours to learning new words and another hour to reviewing the words I’ve learned during the preceding two days.

Not many people try to study vocabulary by going through their dictionary from beginning to end, but I have done it for French at least twice before, so I’m quite used to the idea and also know very well what to expect.

While it’s an efficient method to acquire an extensive vocabulary in a relatively short period, you also forget many of the words you’ve learned. It sounds like a largely wasted effort, but I’m not dismayed by this phenomenon anymore as I’ve experienced it so many times before.

The important thing is that you shouldn’t feel disappointed by the number of words you forget; instead, adopt a zen attitude about it and continue learning a new set of words every day without worrying too much about retaining them in your memory.

Since I’m not too concerned about forgetting words, I don’t use flash cards in my attempt to secure them in my long-term memory either. All I ever do is peruse the dictionary entries meticulously without explicitly trying to commit them to memory. As a result, while certain words will stick in my head, other words will inevitably be forgotten, but I'm perfectly fine with it. 

When I am done learning my current dictionary, I intend to either study the same dictionary again, or switch to another dictionary and learn the contents from cover to cover. Either way, I should be prepared to spend a few years repeating this cycle of studying an entire dictionary to acquire a vocabulary extensive enough for reading French novels without feeling frustrated.

By the way, when I was learning English earnestly during my first two years of college, I also studied tens of thousands of words and expressions, including idioms, slang, and phrasal verbs. Sometimes I spent more than five hours a day studying, which certainly helped to boost my ability to understand English. By the end of the second year, I was already able to read English novels comfortably.

Little did I know back then that my English learning journey would be far from over. Although I read dozens of books, somehow it didn’t contribute too much to my spoken fluency in English. Since then, I have tried various methods, such as shadowing movie dialogues and English broadcasts, as well as memorizing novel passages verbatim, in which I’ve achieved varying degrees of success. I’m quite fond of my current learning method, which is writing a journal entry and having it proofread by ChatGPT, as I find it quite effective in identifying problem areas in my English.

If I could start all over, I would have persisted a bit more in perfecting my knowledge of English vocabulary before starting to read novels. Up until now, I still encounter a few unknown words or phrases when I watch an American movie or series on Netflix, especially slang and colloquial expressions. Although I can still follow the general flow of the story, I feel slightly uncomfortable when I come across unknown words, and get a bit jealous of native speakers for understanding the content perfectly.

Now that I’m learning French intensively, I don’t have the time to relearn English vocabulary for the foreseeable future. However, if and when I get tired of my French studies and need to take a break, I’ll be more than happy to plunge back into learning English and deepen my understanding of its colorful colloquialism.

Sticking to My Current Learning Method

More than three months have passed since I began learning French vocabulary from a dictionary in earnest. As of today, I have covered about 26 percent of its contents - a remarkable achievement, if I do say so myself.

I study French vocabulary almost every day, not out of a sense of obligation, but because I genuinely find it enjoyable. 

At first blush, studying words directly from a dictionary might sound like a silly and quixotic idea, as the popular belief has it that the meaning of a particular word tends to stick to your head more firmly if it’s memorized in the context of a story.

However, as I soon discovered after I started this undertaking, there are huge benefits to studying words in alphabetical order, even if the method seems mechanical or robotic.

One benefit is that the words that are derived from the same source tend to be shown right next to each other in the dictionary, so that I can study them all at the same time.

For example, the basic verb “déchirer” (to tear up) appears right after the noun form “déchirement” (tearing up), which is preceded by the adjective form “déchirant” (heart-breaking), allowing me to observe the patterns in which a word changes its form depending on its grammatical attribute.

Another benefit to this learning method is that it helps me identify the so-called “faux amis” (false friends), which have very similar, if not identical, spellings to English words and yet have radically different meanings from their English cousins.

For instance, while the word “affection” can mean a feeling of fondness in a way that’s similar to English, it can also mean an ailment or disease, which is hardly imaginable to an Anglophone. The same goes for the word “allocation,” which can be understood as a distributed amount as in English, but it can also refer to benefits or subsidies granted by the government.

If I faithfully follow the sequence of words in the dictionary, I can easily detect such various nuances of a word and obtain a comprehensive understanding of its possible meanings in a matter of minutes.

Conversely, if I stick to learning words strictly through a contextual method as advocated by some language learning specialists, it can literally take ages before I can grasp the whole picture surrounding a particular word, tiring me out in the process, with no end in sight.

Accordingly, I will gladly stick to my current method of studying and keep learning the dictionary entries word by word, page by page. At the rate I’m going, I expect to finish learning the entire contents by the end of the year. Even at that point, my French will still be far from perfect, but at least my reading and listening comprehension will be greatly enhanced compared to now, so it’s definitely something to look forward to.

Reading "Just Keep Buying" Now

 

This morning, I woke up naturally around 8 a.m. without needing the alarm. Typically, on Friday evenings, I have a tendency to stay up late, mostly watching YouTube videos in a leisurely way, but last night, I took the precaution of going to bed around midnight because I had to get up early enough to make it to my hairstylist appointment at 10 a.m. today.

After having my morning coffee at my apartment, I walked to the hair salon instead of taking the bus. It took me around 30 minutes, and I reached there just in time for my appointment. It was a pleasant walk, but the weather was rather hot, and I perspired quite a bit on the way. It was a good thing that I had put on the sunblock before leaving home. This time, in addition to a haircut, I had my hair dyed dark green, my favorite color.

I was expecting to spend around two hours at the salon, but the entire process only took around an hour, freeing up an extra hour for me. So, I headed over to the Starbucks in the nearby shopping mall to relax. Although the coffee shop was somewhat crowded today, I managed to find a table and sat down to do some reading over a cup of latte.

The book I am currently reading is titled Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways to Save Money and Build Your Wealth, authored by Nick Maggiulli. This book is about how you can efficiently save and invest your money in preparation for your retirement. 

The most intriguing part of this book is what the author thinks about buying a house as opposed to renting, as a means of growing your wealth. He doesn’t give a definitive answer as to which is the better option, as the soundness of a real estate investment depends on market conditions and your specific financial situation.

Whether you are buying a house or renting, each option comes with its pros and cons. In view of my current situation and the recent high interest rate environment, I am tentatively leaning in favor of renting, but I’d really like to buy my own place one day, because I want a slightly bigger space for myself.

By the way, I am reading the Japanese version of this book. I bought it last year at a bookstore in Japan during my vacation. As I haven’t read the original version in English, I can’t comment on how good the translation is, but in terms of its readability, it’s written in natural Japanese and in a style that’s straightforward and easy to understand, so I believe that the translator must be very skillful.

Overall, it’s an enjoyable read, so it shouldn’t take me too long to finish it. I’m curious to find out what other interesting tips the author presents in the remainder of this book.