Puttin' It Back Together... (Again!)

I'VE BEEN TRYING to put my life together of late. I'm learning Japanese again. (Dropped Arabic. Me and Semitic languages do not get on.) As some of my longer-term friends will know, I've been circling around the Japanese language for years. Trying and learning a bit and stopping... But finally I gave up on the Teach Yourself type book/CD combos and went for the type of books they use at evening classes and beginner's uni courses, ie: Japanese for Busy People (the most frequently recommended textbook but not necessarily the absolute best), Yōkōsu! An Invitation to Contemporary Japanese... and so on. Japanese for Busy People came complete with stuck-on 70-minute CD and is completely in Japanese kana. Book 2 is in kana + some kanji, which are the Chinese characters...

O I'll shut up about this. Suffice it to say I've learned so much I can understand entire written sentences in full adult-style script. Wow! Even the introduction to the advanced-level dictionary I found in Sainsbury's carpark years ago is no longer just an exotic mystery of characters, I scan through and see 新語、古語 etc  which means new words, old words etc... or in more dictionarian language: neologisms, archaisms etc... So wow I can read Japanese! (A Bit!)

But I'm still feeling kinda lost, miserable, depressed deep-down... and not so deep-down... I really want to get a dog. A furry waggy doggie with a piggly curled-back tail. A Japanese 忠犬, an Akita-inu or a shiba-inu (which is like a baby akita that never gets big...)

I don't even know what to write now because I just want to get offline. But isn't this cute? It's an Aussie marsupial called a quokka. About the size of a housecat, it's only found on certain small islands off the Western Australian coastline... (not far along from Perth):~~~

This is what came direct to mind when I keyed in that title Putting It Together... 

This is live (studio) singing in real time... 

... Pretty Professional, isn't she!...

This Aussie documentary dates from 1994 when Burma was the world's biggest poppy-grower... which stupefied crown is now of course proudly worn by Afghanistan...

This is a stupid portrait of Mozart but I love the tune.

It's Lacrimosa from the Requiem Mass, which of course means tearful and sad, but it doesn't sound sad to me... More uplifting &c...

OK I have to go now. Sorry I haven't got a lot of stuff to say but hi to y'all and I hope y'all are doing well...