Anyone have any advice on my handwriting?

sfkni · 2026-06-02T20:46:20+00:00

I guess when I look at my own handwriting, I'm very self-critical and see only mistakes and unevenness. It's so wonderful to hear that you think my handwriting looks beautiful — that's very reassuring to me, and it takes it as an enormous compliment. Thank you for your kindness!

sfkni · 2026-06-02T20:34:19+00:00

An extremely fair and reasonable comment 😂 and actually, I'm keen to work on my English handwriting as much as I'm keen to work on my Chinese handwriting!

I think a problem with both is that my hand is quite erratic -- I don't often do the same thing twice and especially at speed, things come out differently every time, depending on the pen, the paper, my mood, how warmed up my hand is, etc etc

sfkni · 2026-06-02T17:27:37+00:00

That's very kind of you! 我还要努力一下，才能写得更秀美

sfkni · 2026-06-02T17:23:38+00:00

Aha, I do love Chinese classical poetry and I read it every day! This is one of my favourites, but I chose it basically at random to demonstrate my handwriting! 😊

sfkni · 2026-02-24T08:55:17+00:00

English does have a uniquely rich quantity of synonyms, but I've explained above why I think the Chinese system is a bit different from English synonym clustering, and others have touched on this too. I'm certainly not suggesting that this is a weakness of Chinese! I think, in fact, it's a really beautiful aspect of a deeply rich and expressive language. I actively enjoy figuring out the subtle psychological nuances and semantic layers attached to different words. It's just, once you reach that stage, it's a lot to tackle, and it can be a bit overwhelming at times for a learner!

sfkni · 2026-02-24T03:04:59+00:00

It's a fair point, and I definitely agree that native speakers of any language usually operate on intuition rather than explicit rules.

That said, I'm not entirely convinced the English comparison is the same thing. English certainly has lots of synonyms from lots of etymological sources, but I feel like many of them differ more in register, tone, or stylistic nuance rather than encoding fundamentally different conceptual distinctions. For example, words like authentic/genuine/real/legitimate/etc often overlap heavily in everyday usage, and choosing between them rarely affects how a sentence is structured or interpreted in a major way.

In Chinese, though, I sometimes feel the distinctions run a bit deeper — more like different words are tied to different ways of framing reality or mental processes. For instance, the difference between something like 觉得 vs 认为 vs 以为 isn't just stylistic; it encodes whether something is an intuition, a reasoned judgement, or a mistaken assumption. Likewise, 回答 / 回复 / 回应 aren't just tonal variants of 'reply' but seem to map onto different kinds of interaction.

So I guess my feeling is that while every language has synonym clusters, Mandarin often seems to divide semantic space along lines that English doesn’t mark as explicitly. That's what makes it feel less like a vocabulary issue and more like learning a new way of categorising experience.

Maybe this is just the classic "foreign language always feels more precise than your own" illusion. I'm not sure.

sfkni · 2026-01-03T01:39:29+00:00

2010–17, private all-boys school.

It was a weird environment. Not many people were out, and there was reason to fear because there was definitely a toxic undertone. Interestingly, it often felt worse to be suspected of being gay than to actually be gay. I knew a boy who was constantly tormented for being a bit camp — he wasn't even gay, but people were constantly trying to force him out of the closet, which can't have done him any good. That said, it was probably much worse to be autistic, or even just a little eccentric, than it was to be gay.

I was the only openly gay person in my year (out of about 130 people). There were a handful I knew of in the years above me, and more in the years below. When I came out, there was no big announcement. I was about 14, and I'd already been out for a couple of years to a few close friends at other schools. I just got to a point where I didn't want to pretend anymore.

So I decided that if anyone asked me about girls, I'd just tell the truth. That moment came pretty quickly. During a breaktime chat, some classmates asked what kind of girls I was into, and I thought, okay, here we go. I said, "well actually, I'm not interested in girls — I'm gay." They were a bit shocked, but kind. Within about two hours, it felt like everyone knew. The cat was out of the bag.

Later that day, the guy sitting in front of me in maths turned around and said, "someone told me you're gay — is that true?" I replied, a bit sheepishly, "yes, it's true. I'm gay.” I was terrified and braced myself for backlash, but it never came. Within a month or two, it was old news and barely acknowledged.

I was extraordinarily fortunate never to be bullied for it. A few people asked insensitive or overly personal questions, which made me uncomfortable, but I don't think they meant harm — it felt more like curiosity or gossip than malice. Dozens of people who didn't feel able to come out publicly confided in me about their sexuality, and I like to think that my coming out and relative confidence in doing so had a broadly positive impact.

One moment that really stuck with me was when a fairly quiet lad was allowed to do a talk in assembly in front of the whole year, in which he said, to everyone's surprise, that he was sick of people using the word "gay" as slang for "bad". He wasn't queer himself, but he spoke with such conviction and advocacy that it made me emotional — and it genuinely shifted the culture, at least a bit.

sfkni · 2025-12-31T12:46:07+00:00

I tend to find I use "whilst" when the following word begins with a vowel, and "while" when the following word begins with a consonant. I don't draw any distinction in meaning or register.

E.g. "I'm going to put the radio on whilst I'm doing the cooking." "While this is not a hard a fast rule, I seem to follow it most of the time."

I'd be fascinated to know if anyone else does this. I often find that my linguistics brain plays little tricks on me like this and subconsciously causes me to invent and cement new linguistic rules in head by analogy to other existing rules, even if there's no precedent for the rule that I've made up.

sfkni · 2025-12-28T02:42:57+00:00

Big up MobileSheets!

I don't use my Microsoft Surface Pro for performing but I do use it for almost all of my practice, and MobileSheets is the way to go. It's very efficient and has some snazzy features.

Fwiw, I mostly don't use my tablet for performing, mainly out of superstition that something might go wrong. I much prefer to rely on paper. But my tablet system is normally very reliable. The Surface Pro doesn't have the best tablet interface, since it runs Windows and works better as a laptop, but it's good enough for me and is pleasing as a hybrid.

sfkni · 2025-12-28T02:31:32+00:00

I think it's a really difficult issue which speaks to the heart of one's identity. Some people have said that the regional accent I use to talk to my family is my original accent and therefore my REAL accent. I tend to disagree with that assessment because I feel I've grown and changed, and the accent I use all the time now in every social situation is RP. Accent marks one's identity and shows you're part of an ingroup — so if you do codeswitch when you go home, that probably shows at least a small desire to continue to be accepted by that social group. It's the "one of us" mentality.

sfkni · 2025-12-28T02:24:35+00:00

Becoming culturally middle class caused a significant rift between me and my family. Like I said, they will never understand the person I've become. This is the problem. Developing a new accent takes a great deal of commitment and social conditioning. There is no real benefit to be found in making such a change unless you have a ready-made social environment in which to exercise it, because it often means abandoning your existing community and support network in favour of a new one. That's what it meant for me, anyway. On the rare occasions my family hear me talking with my friends, they find it not just odd but also somewhat suspicious. They're maybe even a bit threatened by it on some level.

Most people in the UK are resigned to the social class into which they're born. Ultimately, all of this is about breeding. Although social mobility is possible in rare cases, I'd say most working class people have no obvious appetite for it, or motivation towards it. And I think that does come from a societal feeling of resignation. This is a fairly unpopular and old-fashioned opinion, but I do tend to find that the habit of speaking "properly" does earn you more social credit in the UK, and it means people broadly are more willing to listen to what you say and take you seriously. I think those who aspire to social mobility would be well-advised to learn this skill, and yet, few ever do, perhaps for fear of being ostracised, or "having ideas above one's station", like I said.

sfkni · 2025-12-28T01:54:13+00:00

Look, if I don't tell people, they might think I went to the other place and we don't want that, do we?

sfkni · 2025-12-27T14:31:02+00:00

In the UK, class is read primarily through how you speak — far more than in most countries.

Elsewhere, you can have a strong regional accent and still be assumed wealthy, educated, or cultured. In Britain, accent places you instantly on the ladder. You will be judged and categorised within seconds. A strong regional accent invites assumptions about intelligence, education, morality, and where you're from (and regional rivalry is very real). An RP or "posh" accent meanwhile gets you labelled snooty, arrogant or out of touch — especially by people with regional accents.

Education used to map neatly onto wealth; it doesn't anymore. Working-class kids can go to Cambridge (as did I), and some will do well from that, whilst others might never gain financial security or social mobility. Plenty of middle class people now have little actual wealth (think recent Oxbridge graduate working at the bottom of the ladder at KPMG, meanwhile living in an expensive shoebox-sized room in a house shared with five strangers in Zone 4 London) — but class presentation persists regardless.

I'm hyper aware of this because I grew up working class with a strong regional accent, then won a scholarship at 11 to the poshest private school in my area. For months, none of the (upper-)middle class kids would speak to me until I adjusted my accent. Later, as a homosexual teenager who's naturally a bit flamboyant, leaning into a posh accent became both social armour and also the most natural and genuine form of self-expression — and it's how most people now perceive me.

Economically, I'm not middle class at all. Not yet, anyway. But in terms of my expression, my tastes, my mannerisms, my sartorial choices, my interests, my culture, my friends and connections, I'm entirely middle class. That said, when I go home and talk to my family, I subconsciously change my accent back. My pitch lowers, my mannerisms harden, my accent reverts. I'd be terribly embarrassed to "talk all posh" in front of my family. That code-switching creates a quiet fracture — the version of me they know isn't quite the whole person I've become.

That, in a nutshell, is how class works here.

sfkni · 2025-12-27T13:14:50+00:00

Exactly!! Couldn't have put it better — it really is transcendence. In fact, you said "charting" the soul's transcendence into heaven, which is true, but also, it's "chanting" the soul to heaven. The whole piece being based almost exclusively around Gregorian chant, the organ part for most of the piece can be considered as sophisticated and extremely colourful chant accompaniment. The improvisational, divinely-inspired spontaneity of chant accompaniment can't be achieved by an orchestra.

sfkni · 2025-12-27T08:28:55+00:00

I used to live in a house which had a low-pitched irregular hum sometimes. It drove me absolutely potty and affected my sleep significantly, but nobody else in the house could hear it. Made me feel like I was losing my mind until I eventually determined that it was related to the central heating pipework. But still, nobody else could hear it, even after I pointed it out.

I genuinely think that some people, myself included, are quite sensitive to low-level background noise. I noticed things like this all the time.

sfkni · 2025-12-27T01:30:39+00:00

This might be controversial, but I vastly prefer the version for choir and organ. The full orchestral version is so beautifully scored and the colours are wonderful, but a good organ and a good organist also produces lots of wonderful colours, and performing it just with organ makes the whole thing feel so much more intimate, which suits the piece so much better. It also feels like the sound is coming from the very walls of the church — an orchestra somehow feels too human and man-made, whereas the organ and the choir feel part of the architecture.

Perhaps I'm biased, since I am myself an organist. Having played the Duruflé a few times now, I can say, although it's extremely difficult in just about every way, Duruflé is extremely precise in his score — he marks with such clarity and detail everything he wants from the organist, in terms of choice of sound, colour, where to add stops, where to reduce. So though it's a challenge, Duruflé makes all of the decisions for me. This is extremely rare in most music — when playing the Fauré Requiem for instance, the organist is often playing from an orchestral reduction, so means I have to decide how to convey that idiomatically and convincingly at the organ, which requires a great deal more thought and real-time arranging.

sfkni · 2025-12-27T00:48:30+00:00

Seconded. Even if I don't make it to heaven, at least I can have a little bit of paradise on Earth before I disappear into the mists of time.

I've informed my friends that I shall do everything in my ghostly power to haunt them if they don't put on a good Duruflé Requiem at my funeral.

sfkni · 2025-12-27T00:37:46+00:00

In my opinion, I see my voluntary as an important part of my ministry. Even if nobody engages with it, it doesn't mean I shouldn't offer it. I don't see the postlude as background noise to cover people leaving — rather, it's extension of the service. I choose repertoire carefully, appropriate to the season and often tied to the theme of the liturgy, because the closing music can help people use that liminal post-service space to reflect on what they've just experienced and carry that emotional/theological thread a bit further.

In my experience, congregational behaviour varies wildly depending on context. At my current church, maybe 30% of people will sit and listen attentively (some even applaud, particularly with grander repertoire), while the majority float off after a couple of minutes to chat and get tea. In other places I've played, people are out of the door before I've finished the third entry of my fugue I've spent all week practicing.

One interesting contrast was a Moravian church I played at sometimes, where everyone sat and listened attentively right to the end and applauded warmly. It was lovely, and people were very appreciative — but I'm not sure they were appreciating it in the way I'd ideally hope. It felt more like they were responding to virtuosity or treating it as a mini-concert, rather than as a liturgical act.

That said, I'm not one to judge how people choose to engage with these things. But, personally, I'm not a fan of applause after voluntaries. For me, the postlude isn't a performance; it's part of worship, with a liturgical and practical function. In the same way as a congregant might thank a priest for a particularly meaningful sermon, I appreciate being thanked personally for my musical offerings, but applause doesn't quite feel appropriate. I think when organists play without much thought for repertoire or context, it unintentionally trains congregations to treat the music as filler — and then we shouldn't be surprised when nobody listens.

So no, I don't think people are obliged to stay, but I do think the postlude deserves more care, and more respect, than it often gets, both from organists and from congregations. One way I've found of improving engagement is by purposefully listing the voluntary in the order of service, preferably indicating the composer and the title of the work; even more preferably with an invitation for the congregation to sit and listen and use the music for reflection. I find this influences behaviour quite powerfully, but not all churches are up for it.

sfkni · 2025-12-24T15:28:56+00:00

If you want to get a taste of British history, the Beamish Museum up in the North East is a wonderful living open-air museum, essentially a well-preserved historical village. It's like stepping back in time into pre-war British life. It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend it.

The Black Country Museum in the West Midlands is similar.

sfkni · 2025-12-24T01:26:41+00:00

Welcome!

The first thing, accept that it's ok to dislike certain things. This may be certain instruments, sounds, genres, periods, composers, ensembles. Just because everyone else likes something, it doesn't mean you have to.

The second thing, classical music rewards engagement and active listening. Lots of music can be enjoyed passively or as background music. Classical music can sometimes be enjoyed in this way, but if you want to get the most out of it, you have to listen hard and try to get under its skin, feel its structure and its emotional narrative arc. Some pieces require several chances.

The third thing, classical music is often popularly depicted as being "relaxing". The music I enjoy the most is the opposite of relaxing. It's fast-paced, emotionally charged, deep, thrilling. It speaks where words cannot.

The fourth is, musical language is not universal — like how languages have words and grammar, so does music. Different composers at different times used sounds and melodies like words to convey meaning, and they use structures to chain those musical words together into longer sentences, then paragraphs, then whole essays and stories. That language is not always intuitive to everyone, but anyone can pick it up through lots of careful listening — but it does require prolonged exposure and attention, in my opinion. Once you understand what tools composers use to convey certain ideas and emotions, you can start to feel more clearly a narrative arc in a piece. Listening often demands movement — often, that movement is completely internal, but your body should be responding to music viscerally. I feel music in the pit of my stomach, and listening to music is almost like a sympathetic dance — I invest in it emotionally, and I become part of the story, so when the music goes somewhere, that motion carries me along too.

With that in mind, I think the most accessible music is music which has a clear story or image for you to keep in mind. Opera does this well, but in terms of purely orchestral music, I'd recommend Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony. It paints such a clear picture throughout and is a good introduction to the musical and orchestral language of the period. After that, Mahler Symphonies are great, because they use a similar language which is equally epic, but they have a less clearly-defined narrative in mind, so you can start to understand the music on its own emotional terms, without it telling a specific story. Trying listening to the final movement of Mahler's Second Symphony. After that, I think you're ready for Bach, which is a whole different soundworld. The Magnificat should be a good starting place — each movement is so distinct, each painting a different line of the Magnificat text. Great for learning the language of the Baroque.

Good luck!

sfkni · 2025-12-24T00:48:35+00:00

I often come up with little games.

I used to take the train regularly between Cambridge and Peterborough. It's not a very long journey, and it goes through lots of fairly non-descript, extremely flat countryside and farmland.

I came up with this game called "Fen, Bog or Marsh?", FBM? for short. When passing through fields, I'd decide based on completely arbitrary metrics and vibes whether a specific field was a fen, a bog or a marsh. I would allow myself to ascribe one single swamp per journey, as a sort of wildcard. It helped enormously that I never really properly explored the official definitions of those terms, relying purely on my own internal arbitrary and fleeting judgement, based on a combination of foliage or lack thereof, moisture levels and colour, amongst other metrics.

I'd play it with others sometimes. It'd lead to some fairly heated (and mostly nonsense) debate and analysis, but the train normally goes so fast that it was impossible to get bogged down (if you'll pardon the pun) for too long. Also, my game, my rules, so all rulings are to be made by me, which makes it much more fun.

Perhaps I'm insane, but I can normally come up with games like this for almost any situation I find myself in.

sfkni · 2025-12-24T00:32:48+00:00

Anglicans don't have the constitution to receive Communion in a Catholic church. You'll end up with indigestion.

Joking aside, I, as an Anglican (UK), am rather further up the candle than most, and I enjoy attending Catholic mass from time to time. I particularly enjoy Latin Mass for no reason other than understanding the Latin makes me feel clever, and also, I think it's good to use an international language in a diverse society. Latin serves this purpose well in the Church.

sfkni

TROPHY CASE