Killing Two Birds With One Stone

You know, I have never quite understood that phrase.  Why would you want to kill two birds to begin with?  Oh well.  Just another strange English colloquialism I guess.

Anyway... I was so incredibly efficient on set today!  The first week of this shoot I would just watch movies on my ipod to kill the time (sound usually has a lot of downtime) but honestly, that was kind of boring.  I mean it was good to kill the time, but not very productive.  I'd already seen all the movies anyway.  I noticed a bunch of people (and by that, I mean almost everyone) brought their computers with them almost every day.  I'm overly protective of my computer though, and so I was a little leery about bringing it on set, but the mixer has a sound cart that I could safely place it on, so I decided I would test it out.  Today was Day 3 of bringing it on set and it is awesome.  For those of you who don't know, I have wanted to learn Russian for years; and a few months ago I finally started.  I use this program called byki and it is awesome.  The 'trial version' is absolutely free and well worth a download!  The full version is $50 and soon, I plan to upgrade.  

So instead of watching movies, I have begun to use all my free time on byki learning more Russian!  It teaches you in a cool flash card form and goes through about 5 or 6 different 'levels' or 'steps' for each set of new words you are learning.  First it gives you the Russian above (quite often with a picture - which actually helps a TON), and the English below.  Then, it gives you the Russian and you have to remember what it means in English.  After you flip it, it will ask "did you get it right?" and if you didn't, it will drill that one even more into you until you remember it.  Then it does the same thing, but gives you the English and you have to remember it in Russian.  After that, It gives you the Russian and you have to type it in English; and after that, you have to type it in Russian (it gives you a cool keyboard map for Cyrillic at the top of the screen).  By the time you're done with all those steps, you've pretty much mastered a new set of 10-20 words or phrases.  I love it!  

So today I learned all the days of the week as well as more basic phrases like "This is Mr. ..." etc.  I even taught a few words to one of the cast members who thought it was insane (but cool) that I was 'learning Russian in my spare time.'  I don't know why, but I love the Russian word for 'purple.' (It looks like this: фиолетовый) It just sounds cool.  So I tried teaching it to him.  He had a hard time with that one, but surprisingly enough, he successfully pronounced a seemingly hard one.  It's the formal way of saying "hello," but it's usually a mouthful for beginners.  That one looks like this: здравствуйте.  I also discovered this cool 'keyboard language switch' thing on my mac and as you can see, I am having way too much fun using it now!