To start out our series of blog challenge stories, I thought I would present this one, sent to me by long time Skritterer Pto. He had quite a good yarn to spin about why he took on the challenge:
I own a Samsung Q1 Ultra. Its a mini PC running windows XP with a touch screen, which is a bit bigger than a DVD case. It was a present from my future inlaws and its been fantastic for skritter. My fiance is chinese, but has lived in Australia since she was 4 so can’t read/write chinese very well at all. She doesn’t like holding the Q1, its a bit heavy and awkward for her so she said she would use skritter when the iPhone app came out. When the competition was announced I asked “How about if I win you a wacom? Would you practise on that?” to which the reply was “haha, sure – but you won’t manage it”
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!
So it was a matter of honour that I complete the challenge. Not only did I want to complete it simply because it would help my studies greatly, but the complete lack of faith shown by my sig.other was more motivation than I needed. I love proving people wrong when they doubt me (infact learning chinese at all was prompted by someone telling me I shouldn’t bother it was too hard).
The competition itself started well. I usually skritter for half an hour before bed, so to make up the full hour I started skrittering before work every morning. It worked really well until I had a bucks night then a wedding about a week into the challenge and I lost about an hour and a half. From then on it was a struggle to make back the time. I was fine with doing the 1 hour (which for me was about 1:30 real time) but having to work off the extra time was a bit of a struggle. Mostly I kept the hour per weekday going then squeezed in extra time on weekends to make back what I’d lost. Guess I made it all back 😀
All in all great success. Like a lot of people posted on the forums I learnt quite a few characters I don’t know how to use yet during the competition, but since I was learning from the HSK lists I’m quite sure they’re all worth while things to know. My usage will take a while to catch up but definitely overall a big win.
Thanks heaps to skritter for proposing the challenge, I had a blast.