So, last night something strange happened to me. A native French ex-colleague with whom I used to work in the UK, wrote to me from his new job in Paris... To say that his company was desperately looking for a skilled PS3 programmer. Before moving back to Sydney due to the imminent arrival of our first child, games programming had been the focus of my career for the better part of 8 years, including working mainly on the PS3 for the last 3 years. In Sydney there are no real games jobs, so I've ended up doing something else.
Now, I'm not devoted to the games industry - it has LOTS of problems. High pressure, not great rewards financially for the hours, erratic workplaces, lots of instability. It also has plenty of rewards... Coupled with the prospect of a job in a city I would love to live in (Paris) - it is certainly very attractive.
This has thrown a little spanner into the works, so to speak. Especially for my German studies, as you can imagine. I wonder if I should bring forward my plans for studying French Assimil-style instead. I'm not even sure I'm seriously consider the possibility of a job overseas again - we just finished setting up back in Sydney! What if we don't like it there? We would just be ping-ponging across the world, and my job prospects outside of games will only get worse as a result.
Well... To hell with it all :-) I've decided that, in the absence of better information, the best course of action is to push on with my original plan, at full speed!
What am I doing now? Well, I've done lessons 51 and 52 active phase of Assimil's German with Ease. It feels as if I should be able to do 2 of these lessons a day without breaking too much of a sweat. Perhaps once I get into the higher lessons it will slow down again (the sentences get longer, and the constructions a bit more involved) but for now I should be aiming for 2 per day.
I have now ordered "Using German" - well, the French-language version (all that's current it appears) called "Perfectionnement Allemand". I shouldn't have too much trouble following it given my knowledge of German and French, but I'm sure some idioms will escape me. I'm not worried though - if you think you will encounter a problem, chances are someone before you has already encountered it and posted about it on the internet :-) In this case, because Assimil doesn't appear to sell an English version of the advanced German course (and it sounds like they never did), people have been forced to make do with the French version regardless of the fact that they don't speak French. That's how good Assimil is! If someone who doesn't speak French at all didn't let that put him off advancing his German knowledge, then neither should !
Once it arrives, I'll mix doing a passive phase lesson from the advance book with an active phase lesson from the beginner's book, as though it were just a direct continuation. I'll report on how that goes once I start it.
The only other book I ordered is one for reading practice in German specifically for the B2 test. I figure this is one of the main parts where they test out your vocabulary and understanding more than many other sections (as far as I can tell, at B2 level, the listening comprehension tests, and speaking tests, are more forgiving in terms of actual complexity of the material) and I really don't want to stress about this, especially given the time limits. It's definitely something you can just sit with a book and practice, so I will soon be doing just that - if I can find the time!
As for speaking German, no upcoming plans to meet up with more native speakers, but I will definitely need to find more time for this. Not sure how! This week I'll be doing some complete last minute training for a 1km ocean swim event which a friend just rang me up about today. I've swum about 3 or 4 times in the ocean since returning to Australia in July last year, each time about 800+m. Despite that, I'm sure I can do it. I just also want to make sure that I make some sort of decent effort to prepare in the 6 days I have available to me :-) I REFUSE TO COME LAST!
Now if only I could somehow practice German while swimming. Hmmmm...
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