#NOT ONCE DID I THINK HEY WAIT A MINUTE MAYBE MY AUDIO PROCESSING SYSTEM IS A LITTLE FUNKY

[baycitystygian]

I already know I’m autistic but if I didn’t already then the fact that I noticed the difference in mixing between the version I’m used to of “White & Nerdy” and the Dolby master on apple music wouldve for sure tipped me off

[youvebeenlivingfictional]

I’m Always Curious Part Seventeen

Previous Part | Next Part |  Masterlist Notes: Not beta-read. Also messages with the dash and italics indicate Reader's messages/responses Merry Christmas Eve to those of you that partake! To those of you that do not, happy Thursday! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! 💝 Warnings: Some fluff? Seems like not much of a warning but here we are.  Summary: Given the day’s events, I was more than a little scatterbrained.

Hearing a communicator go off was like throwing a bucket of ice water over the two of us. Chris and I separated with soft, frustrated groans. “Whose?” He mumbled. “Mine,” I was already disentangling myself to retrieve it from where he’d set it down on the table by the door. I flicked it open, and before I could even speak, Una was asking, “Where are you?” My eyes darted to Chris, who was sitting up a little bit. “I’m fine.” “That’s an emotional state and not a physical location.”

“Una,” I sighed, scrubbing my hand over my face, “I just… Need some time to process some stuff, alright?” “... You’re sure you’re fine?” “Yes. Are you?” “The tea had no effect on me, of course I’m fine.” I lowered my hand from my face, rolling my eyes a little. “Thanks for checking in.” “I’ll see you at your station tomorrow,” Una added before closing the channel. I shook my head a little, clicking my communicator shut. Neither Chris or I spoke for a moment. Just like that, the bubble had been popped - the world had been let in. We’d known, of course, that we had jobs to return to, ranks that we’d have to adhere to, but it had been nice to bask in one another for just a little while. “I should get back to my quarters and get some real rest,” I finally said. Chris didn’t fight me on it, just nodded and stood. I turned, collecting my water bottle as well. “We should talk about some things,” He said, “Not now, but…” I held my communicator up, giving it a wave, and he chuckled.  “Yes, things like that.” “We’ll talk about it,” I agreed. Chris’ hands rested on my shoulders, and he kissed my cheek. “Do I get one more kiss before you go?” He murmured. I smiled a little, turning to face him and leaning up. I sighed at the feeling of him cupping my cheek, the now familiar (but still exciting) press of his lips against mine. I pecked his lips once more, and he sighed. “You’re sure you can’t stay a few more minutes?” He murmured, resting his forehead against mine. “I shouldn’t,” I mumbled. I didn’t leave for another hour. -- When I finally returned to my quarters, I was sleepy. The time I’d spent in the gym, followed by the couple of hours of lazing around with Chris, letting the tea burn out of our system, had worn me out. I’d more than earned myself a Klingon poem. Maybe a cup of tea-- No. No tea. Hot cocoa? I settled down at my desk with my PADD and a notebook and pulled up an audio file of the latest poem I’d been working through. My grasp of the language was getting better. What had initially started as a pursuit to keep my mind off of the Captain was turning into a legitimate skill. I worked through significantly less of a poem than I typically would’ve in one sitting. Given the day’s events, I was more than a little scatterbrained. I found myself spacing out, my mind drifting to the conversations I’d had with Chris; to the way Chris had touched me; to the way Chris had kissed me. I was a little giddy with it, but I was also a little worried. He hadn’t seemed upset by the way I’d handled Una’s questions, and I’d known that we’d have to talk about how we’d handle being discreet sooner rather than later. The fact that he wanted to discuss it rather than working it out as we went had to be a vote of confidence, right? It meant that this was more than a fling to him. At least, I hoped. I pushed the thought away, setting my pen aside and rolling my wrist. I turned my head at the sound of the door opening and smiled when I saw Thira. “Hey! How was your shift?” I asked. She waved me off. “Oh, you know, the usual. Tell me how Koutov was!” Thira said, coming to lean against my desk. “It was… Fine. Barely used me, I kinda just stood there.” “Did you get to try any of that tea Spock was talking about?” I nodded slowly, “You know… I did and uh… Not rushing to try it again.” -- Thaleh was back on board by the time we were on our way to our next destination. We had a short debrief, discussing the planets that we had visited while she was off of the ship. She had very few questions about Koutov, which was a relief (but apparently she’d already spoken to the Captain about it). I spent most of my shift working with Ensign Paledore, helping him get ready to beam down at our next stop. -- “You got my message, then.” “I did.” I settled on an armchair in the lounge across from Una’s. She’d sent me a message on my PADD shortly before the end of my shift. “I would’ve answered, but Pal was kinda panicking,” I added, giving her a small smile. Una nodded a little, looking me over. I waited for her to break the ice, and as usual, I didn’t have to wait for long. “Have you spoken to the Captain?” “Yes, we had a… A chance to speak.” “And?” “We’re fine. I don’t have to transfer to the Hiawatha.” Una’s brow furrowed, her head tipping to the side. “Was that an option?” “Only briefly, and, uh, only to myself.” Una quirked a brow before she leaned back in her seat, arms settling on the arm rests. “Slush-os and Koutovian tea. What will you swear off next?” “Time will tell,” I chuckled. “...Why the Hiawatha?” “I have a friend in engineering on the Hiawatha.” “How is it you always make friends with people in Engineering?” “You’re not in Engineering, I managed to make friends with you, right?” “Barely.”

“That hurt me.”

I grinned as I saw Una fight back a smile. --

C. Pike: Busy? I glanced down at the message that popped up on my PADD, obscuring the Klingon dictionary I’d been looking through. I smiled a bit. - Terribly. C. Pike: Kidding? - Mostly. Translation exercise. C. Pike: I thought your shift was over. - It is. C. Pike: ?? - Personal translation exercise. It’s like counting sheep for me. C. Pike: Nerd. I snorted, shaking my head. - Good shift? C. Pike: Fine. Yours? - Also fine. Still up for a rematch tomorrow?

C. Pike: If you think you can handle it. I laughed, shaking my head. - You’re so going down. I’m not going to pull my punches again. C. Pike: Understood. Looking forward to it, lieutenant. - Me, too, Captain. Tag list: @angels-pie​ ; @fantasticcopeaglepasta​

[rhainontheshelves]

Remember

Member: Bang Chan {Stray Kids}

Genre: Fluff, semi-smut? Not full-blown but it’s still there, angst towards the end

A/N: I’ve had this in my WIPs for a while and really wanted to release something! If anyone is interested in a prequel or a sequel I can certainly do that. Happy reading! - Rhin

    “... How long are you going to stay on my lap?”

    “However long it takes to finish this melody. Deal with it.” I said, plunking out a string of notes on the keyboard. Figuring out a concrete sheet of music was difficult when all you had was some sound clips Chan had come up with years ago. But, nevertheless, I managed to connect them and came up with a pretty good composition. I saved the file with a little “Yay!” and leaned back.

    Chan groaned as my weight shifted further back on his legs. “Damn (Y/N), how many cheeseburgers did you eat today?”

    “Not as many as you. How many did you order, four?” I smirked.

    “It was only three, excuse me! And they were singles, you can’t blame me for cheating the system and getting three singles for less than a triple.”

    “Only because we’re broke and ordering off the dollar menu,” I said, twisting around to face him, “and two medium fries! Who are you, an unhealthy version of Gaston?”

    “Hey, don’t compare me to that jerk!” Chan tried hard to keep a straight offended face. “And I’m very healthy, thank you very much.”

    A couple moments of silence was enough to break my mask and burst out laughing. Chan’s face was too good not to. He chuckled along with me and stroked my hair as I leaned into his chest, trying to pull myself together.

    “Wow, I’m tired,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “What time is it?”

    Chan glanced over to the computer. “Midnight on the dot.”

    “We have officially spent five hours in this dumb room.” I got up and grabbed a Pepsi from the minifridge. “Want one?”

    All Chan had to do was hold a hand out for me to toss one to him. Together, we unscrewed the lids and took huge swigs. We were in for a long night, so we needed all the energy we could get.

    “Let’s take a break.” Chan said, rolling over to the couch and propping his feet up. “My brain is tired from trying to pull feelings and experiences from years ago up for lyrics.”

    I flopped on the couch, thinking of a way I could help out. To be honest, I hadn’t done anything of that nature since I graduated, and that was just about a year ago. The memory was pretty hazy (it was a black-out type of night), so that wouldn’t help out a lot.

    “(Y/N), do you trust me?” Chan asked out of the blue.

    “What is that supposed to mean?”

    “Well, if this song is truly about sex, wouldn’t we need some moans in the background or something? The good ol’ bed creaks are getting a bit overused in this industry.”

    It took me a minute to process what Chan meant. “Wait… you want me to-”

    “No! Not if you don’t want to,” Chan’s cheeks turned red, “we can always pull audio from porn or something!”

    I looked at my best friend, sighed, and shook my head. “You’re lucky we need to get this track done by tomorrow afternoon,” I got up, turned off the lights, and went into the booth.

    “Why did you-”

    “So I can still have some dignity by the end of the night,” I said into the microphone. “Can we just get a series and cut it into the song? It’s too tedious to do stuff at exact moments.”

    “That’s fine by me.” Chan affirmed. “Just say so when you’re done.”

    I awkwardly stood in the booth for a bit, trying to figure out the logistics of this. The microphone that was hooked up wasn’t omnidirectional, so getting into the right position for the audio to be captured was a big problem. Also the fact that Chan was here made me extremely nervous. I didn’t know why; we could usually talk for hours about this stuff. Maybe it was because it was for real instead of the usual imaginary scenarios.

    Pulling up the chair, I sat down in it and carefully reached out toward the mic stand. I found the knob that adjusted the height and brought it down to its lowest position. Then, making myself as comfortable as I could be, I unbuttoned my jeans and slid a hand down to my clit.

    “Anytime now, (Y/N).” Chan’s voice boomed. The sudden fracture in the silence scared me and made me lose my start.

    “Damn it Chan, I was just getting warmed up,” I muttered. “I was just starting to get focused.”

    “Oh, sorry.” His voice sounded tiny over the speaker system.

    “You’re good, just don’t do that again, okay?”

    “Got it.” With that, the static of an open line cut off, leaving me back at square one.

    I sat there for a bit, trying to bring up a picture in my head that I could jack off to. Nothing in particular was coming to mind, except feeling something hard as I sat on Chan’s lap just a couple minutes ago. I zoned in on that feeling, and started to find something I could associate it with… and then my brain betrayed me.

    “Hey Chan… do you remember that party we went to a couple years back? You needed to blow off some steam from being cooped up with the guys too long and I needed some relief from college?”

    Static started buzzing again. “Yeah, I remember that. It was a fun night.”

    “I don’t know any other way to say this, but… I can’t get this image of you out of my head… I think we did something that night.”

    “I wouldn’t be surprised if we did. We were pretty drunk.”

    “No, you don’t understand. All I can remember after the sixth shot of whiskey is undoing someone’s belt while they marked me up. Their shirt was red, like that one button-up one you have that I like so much.”

    “Oh… that… yeah, that was me.”

    “You remember?” Honestly, I was shocked. I was certain that Chan got even drunker than I did.

    “Yeah, every second. I wasn’t as drunk as you then.”

    “Well, tell me about it then, since I obviously don’t remember.”

    “Um, okay.” There was some hesitation there. I knew Chan well enough to know that this was important to him for some reason; he would have told me about it sooner if it wasn’t.

    “Hey, it’s okay Chan.” I soothed him. “It won’t mess up our friendship.”

    “Are you sure?” his voice was shaky.

    “I’m absolutely positive.”

    “Well, it started when you pulled me away from the dance floor. Apparently I was grinding on some girl you didn’t like. I could tell you were getting faded, so I didn’t take it too seriously. As you were ranting about it, you started to say peculiar things. Like, “you have no right to look that fine” and “if you had another button undone and your sleeves already rolled up when you picked me up we would have never left the house”, things like that. Obviously I had turned you on and drunk (Y/N) gets really bold and horny. I don’t really remember what you said next, but I couldn’t stop myself from kissing you.”

    I was starting to remember, and as I recalled the atmosphere and how Chan looked that night, I started to get wet. That was one of the top times where I just wanted to hop on his dick and ride the night away. I wasn’t proud of it, but it happened. My hand started rubbing circles around my clit.

    “You backed me up against a wall and started unbuttoning my shirt. I realized where we were going at that point and quickly picked you up and headed towards the nearest room so we could have some privacy. Luckily it was a bedroom and the door was able to be locked. You started working on my belt and I gave you two hickeys on your shoulder. Once that belt was gone, you started unzipping your dress and I lost it. Lust just burned through me and you seemed pleased that you brought it on.”

    Chan was slightly caught off guard as whimpers came through the other end of the mic. (Y/N) must be remembering and getting off on that. He couldn’t deny that his mind was roaming back to then as well.

    “Chan, don’t stop talking. I want to remember everything.” (Y/N) whined.

    Chan could feel the lust creeping up again. It made him cocky, it made him want to hear what (Y/N) had to offer. “Everything?”

    “Everything.”

    “When your dress hit the floor, I picked you up and threw you on the bed, trapping you under my body. You pulled me down for another kiss, but I was already there. As we made out, my hands traveled around, unlatching your bra and pulling your underwear down. We pulled apart for air and I swear you looked like an angel, all out on display for me. You begged for me to do something, anything… so I got on my knees and pulled you forward until I could eat you out properly.”

    Chan described the rest of the encounter in graphic detail, and that was more than enough to help me out. By the end of it, I had cummed twice and moaned up a storm. I was confident that I had recorded good material.

    “Alright, that’s a wrap.” I stated as I buttoned up my jeans.

    Chan didn’t answer.

    “Chan?” I called as I exited the room.

    He wasn’t at the soundboard. The door was wide open though.

    “Chris?” I called again, sticking my head out of the door.

    No one was there to hear me.

    Concerned, I picked my phone off of the coffee table and there was a notification for a text - from Chan.

    Went out to grab some food. I’ll be back soon

[chineselanguageblog]

To Learn Chinese

So you wanna know where to start when learning Chinese, or how to gain momentum and push through to fluency? Read on, dear reader…

Despite being only a mere mortal like yourself (in that I am not yet fluent in Chinese, - but it is only a matter of time) I am quite experienced in learning languages and have developed strategies and techniques that have saved me literally hours, days, months, maybe even years. These I will share with you today, so that you may learn from my past mistakes and less time studying and more picking up Chinese chicks!

Mentality

Okay, so, if I could impart only one thing on you it would be that confidence is half the battle.

If you spend too much time worrying about whether you will ever reach fluency, firstly, that is time you will not be spending injecting Chinese into your brain, but secondly, and most importantly, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – you won’t enjoy the process, will associate Chinese with stress and essentially never become fluent.

This ‘blind faith’, as an atheist, is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. But you really have no choice but to take my word for it that if you:

Put in the time (listening, writing and, eventually, speaking)

Enjoy yourself

Believe you will become fluent

Then fluency is an inevitable result.

“But, Chinese is such a hard language compared to French or Spanish!”

Don’t get sucked into this idea.

Chinese is not harder, Chinese is just far more different to English than most European languages are. Plenty of Westerners have managed to tame the beast. Off the top of my head, take Steve Kaufmann or Luca Lampariello, for example.

In fact, I would argue that Chinese is actually objectively easier and more logical than any other language I’ve come across (with the exception of Chinese characters – logical in theory, but struggle city in practice for anyone trying to learn it who doesn’t use it every day).

Consider these things:

1, Rather than having completely separate words for related concepts, one character in Chinese will represent a ‘concept’ that will manifest itself in a huge number of multi-syllable words, ie: 工 (gōng) – representing the idea of ‘work’, present in other words such as 工作 (to work), 工厂(factory/plant), 工地 (workplace), 工匠 (craftsman), 工力 (craftsmanship), 工业 (industry), the list goes on.

2, No conjugations. No tenses. No cases. No plurals. No gender. Therefore, no memorising ‘je peux, tu peux, il peut, nous pouvons’. ‘Nuff said.

3, No long words – say goodbye to ‘anticonstitutionnellement’, ‘Unkameradschaftlichkeit’ and ‘electroencefalografistas’.

I could go on for ages about how simple and logical Chinese really is. Also, don’t be afraid of tones. They can be learned naturally through extensive listening.

Approach

Although the sometimes vicious debate present amongst the language learning community would have you believe otherwise (I’m looking at you, Steve and Benny), there is no hard-and-fast rule to language learning. What works for some may work for others. What seems to be unanimous is that a lot of input in the form of listening and reading is needed at some stage, with output (speaking) following either once a good level of comprehension has been achieved or from the start, in addition to input.

Here is what I would advise for those beginning their Chinese studies, and for those already on the path.

Beginners

Learning Chinese can be struggle city. But only if you don’t have fun while you’re doing it!

1, Get some materials. Textbooks are okay, as long as they have dialogs with a recorded version. If you’ve got the dough, ChinesePod is great.

2, Do a significant amount of input (reading and listening) with this beginner material. This is the hard bit, where the language gradually becomes less ‘foreign’ – in other words, you get used to the language. To make rapid progress, try to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day (an hour is better).

3, Work the language into your life. I’m not really an advocate of ignoring your friends and family who don’t speak the language, or listening to the language while you’re talking to them and while you sleep (per AJATT), or changing the language on your computer and phone into Chinese - this is too annoying for me. Instead, make use of dead time. Do you daydream on the train/bus? Now you listen to Chinese. Do you wait in lines? Now you listen to Chinese while you wait in lines. Do you walk the dog? Paint your house? Daydream? Listen to Chinese while you do these things. You’ll see how easy it is. I would estimate that the average person has about 1-2 hours a day of dead time, this meaning time they do NOTHING else. If you studied Chinese only in the time you otherwise would be wasting, you will see massive progress. Now imagine if you fit some Chinese into your free time, too?

4, Two words. Mini goals. Learn 30 words a week, and then step it up after a couple of weeks. Listen to 30 minutes of Chinese a day – then step it up to an hour incrementally. I’m soon to write an entire post over on my own blog dedicated to explaining the importance of mini goals.

5, Characters. Forget about them for the first month. After that though, they are important. Spend 15 minutes a day learning them. Although it may seem tedious, it’s worth learning the radicals first, or as you encounter them – this will enable you to quite accurately guess new characters later on.

6, Get an SRS. Do your reps daily, and add sentences whenever you can. Also, I’ve found sentences are better than words, as you learn grammar and new vocabulary simultaneously – it also seems much less boring than just drilling single words. If you have the option/can be bothered, add sentences with audio so you don’t get a botchy pronunciation (or just do a lot of listening). Where to get sentences? Mine them from the dialogs in your textbook, from ChinesePod, wherever. Just make sure they are correct!

Intermediate Learners

1, Enjoy. This is the best part of the language learning journey. The language is starting to become familiar, and you can start doing fun stuff in the language! Like, watching TV shows from YouKu (the Chinese version of YouTube, but with full episodes) and actually understanding them! Or, reading authentic, interesting content and books. Or making friends, or…

2, Get a girlfriend/boyfriend. Now this may be a difficult and in some circumstances unethical task (if you are just using them to practice your 中文). The truth is, that at the intermediate level you need to actually increase the amount of input you’re getting in the language in order to step it up and push through to the advanced level. At the very least, get some friends! If you live in a cultural melting pot (like my own city, Melbourne, or like, NYC, etc) then you should have no problem meeting Chinese people. Or go study overseas (this may not be practical for you – but if you’re at Uni, go on exchange like I am!) Or, hey, why not get some Chinese roomies? Instant friends that have to hang with you!

3, Everyday. Even more important than in the beginner stage, at this level you need to be having contact with the language every day in order to incorporate it into your psychic. This is because the language needs to become part of the fabric of your mind, which is just not possible if you only study on the weekend. There’s a saying that goes ‘learn a language and gain another soul’. This is because you develop a borderline personality disorder when you learn another language – you will find your thinking and personality will be heavily influenced by cultural elements of the target language.

4, Don’t give up. At this point, you have got it in the bag! The hard yards are almost over. Like I said, this is the best part, it is all downhill from here. You don’t have to agonise over mind numbingly boring hospital-grade artificial learning materials, and can get onto some juicy stuff. It’s simply a matter of continuing to consistently expose yourself to the language, and talk as much as possible. Language acquisition is a natural process, and we are inherently good at it by virtue of being human. Just don’t stress, it will come!

Anyway, that’s all from me, for now.

There is an abundance of resources out there to help learn Chinese, yet it can all be very confusing and time-consuming for the new student to find the best way and the right materials to help.s

Wanting to provide some assistance to students, at one of the regular meetings of the Learn Mandarin Now team, we decided to commission a survey to find out the preferred methods savvy, modern, Chinese language students use. After some thought on how to do this, we agreed to ask 50 or so top bloggers what resources they use to get ahead with learning Chinese - after all…, they should know!

Just who did we ask?

Actually, we asked a wide cross-section of people including teachers of Chinese, native speakers, new and experienced students of the language (both Chinese from overseas and foreign students) and, of course, top bloggers.

The aim: to get a wide variety of opinions and suggestions.

The top 10 recommendations

For reasons such as ease of being able to study whenever the student wanted to and the variety of options on offer, the results, perhaps not surprisingly, showed that the preferred methods to learn Chinese are primarily web based. Other students, however, still preferred to learn and practice with other students or people in their day-to-day lives or via hard copy items such as books.

With 42% of votes Pleco, an integrated Chinese-English dictionary/flashcard system, which not only allows students to learn via Smartphones, but also offers a variety of other features such as being able to look up unknown Chinese words ‘live’, came out on top.

22% of respondents went for human interaction, either learning or practicing with Chinese friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, work colleagues or via other social interaction with native Chinese speakers.

Multi-media captured 20% of the votes, and this included watching Chinese TV programs, dramas, documentaries or movies, or even listening to Chinese songs in order to listen to tones, and learn more common words and colloquial phrases.

The MDBG Dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary which offers the ability to look up a huge number of words in Chinese, Pinyin or English was also a popular choice-easy to use and readily available and it garnered 14% of the votes.

Both also polling 14% were:

(i) WeChat (Weixin), “the new way to connect with friends across platforms”, offering voice and group chat, free calls, video calls and the obligatory message stickers, and thereby especially popular with the younger generation looking to instantly chat in and learn Chinese; and

(ii) Anki, a spaced repetition software programme which makes remembering things easy. As it’s considered more efficient than traditional study methods, time spent studying can be decreased or the amount learned greatly increased. The programme is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific mark-ups.

Skritter which is suitable for Smartphones or PC’s and allows the student to learn how to correctly learn to write Chinese characters—even suggesting corrections to any mistakes if they appear, scored 12%, as did Memrise which offers a wide variety of on-line courses and aims to make learning joyful and exciting.

Rounding off the top 10 with 8% was Line Dict, a very useful on-line Chinese dictionary which translates both words and phrases from Chinese to English and vice-versa, using Chinese characters and Pinyin—plus offering handwriting recognition and the ability to view stroke orders for characters, and also Chinese Pod which promotes itself as a site offering “Chinese learning for busy people”, with over 3,000 short, self-contained, award-winning lessons.

It was both exciting and rewarding for us at Learn Mandarin Now to do this survey and we may well repeat it at some future date. If you’d like to know more about the results in detail you can also read: How to learn Chinese: great tips from 50+ top bloggers, one of our other related articles.

Happy learning!