Created Saturday 29 December 2007
Today I looked at the Internet (YouTube) to music clips (english songs). And i notice that the song that I didn't understood at the first time listening it, watching the video, the meaning becomes clear. So the images help to understand [every ord of] the song.
The sont is Avril Lavigne's When You're Gone. It talks about an American soldier that went to war (apparently) and miss to his family.
As you may know, Robert Jordan passed away few months ago. So he won't be able to finnish the last book of the Wheel of Time series that I love. So I checked out on dragonmount.com (his official blog) and I saw that Harriet, his wife, picked up someone (Brandon Sanderson) to write the last book. That is just great. It is planned to be published in 2009.
Harried choosed him after reading his book “Mistborn”. So I think as soon as I finnish reading the Wheel of Time, I will just read his books that seems to be as great as Robert jordan's. I'm relieved now that i know what to read next :)
Today, I finnished New spring, the first prequel of the Wheel of Time series. That also means that I finnished the eleventh book few days ago (let's say the 31st of december). Now, I don't have anything more of the Wheel of Time to read except read again the first books. Since I bought the last book, I also bought the first books in English so I will be able to read the beginning of the story in English. Then, I will have Mistborn to read from Brandon Sanderson ... And the last book of the Wheel of Time series in 2009.
Finnishing the Wheel of Time (or at least all published parts of it) made me thing of what i wanted to do in the life. So i wrote it down in English (the natural language that comes out after spending the whole day reading English). But it is far too personal and i won't disclose it there.
I would like to knw something, and I write it down here to ask a teacher as soon as I can. On Wikipedia?Magick I saw the text:
Invocation is the bringing in or identifying with a particular deity or spirit. Crowley wrote of two keys to success in this arena: to "inflame thyself in praying"[15] and to "invoke often". It is important to note that for Crowley, the single most important invocation, or any act of magick for that matter, was the invocation of one's Holy Guardian Angel, or "secret self", which allows the adept to know her True Will.
Why is the word her used here ? Is the adept a woman ? How do we know ?
Today, we had another day of teachings. This is the last one spent on the Refuge and it was dedicated to summarize it. We also had a teaching on the level of Dzochen talking about the 4 seals of Refuge which are:1. ...2. The qualities of the Refuge
And of course a summary of everything studied so far. We also discussed a lit (in French of course)
I remind anyone reading this that the videos are in English translated in French (unfortunately, the translation covers too often the English). i plan to create a system to be able for the ones interested to hear only the English but I have to build it. Also, all my notes are taken in English
Yesterday evening I read the Liber ABA (Liber number 4) from Aleister Crowley part 1 in English. And Today I read the part 3 until Chapter III. I skipped the part 2 as wasn't interested in it.
Today we had an English lesson ... and because out teacher was stuck in a foreign country (because there was a problem with airplanes) we had to group together with another group (the 3rd I think) and with Glenda. I loved it.
We all had to prepare some piece of news to present to everyone. At first I thought about talking about a fake conflict between India (because I love India) and Pakistan about Cachemire ... But then we settled to group together and talk coherently about a strike at the SNCF. I was interviewing a train operator and two consumers that told me (and the whole class) what they thought about the strike. it was fun.
Then we tried the Arabic phone ... The sentence "pigs are blue" were transformed into "the pig is hungry". Personally I understood that the one telling me the sentence didn't understood it at all, and I told Octavio next to me "pink is angry".
Today, we started the listening module. First, the teacher wanted to know what we did last time with Glenda (while she wasn't here) and we had some difficulties to tell her exactly because we all have forgotten about the precise news we invented that day ... and possibly also because we were all tried after having sports. Well, it can't really be that since everyone from the 3rd year is mixed together and only a tried of us were having sport just before. But for me is was the reason why I was so ... dull. Then she talked about the four skills necessary when we learn a language (any language) that are: listening, reading, speaking, writing. The first two are passive and the others active; Two are about the speech, and two, the writings. Because we are now in the listening module, we also talked about the special skills required when we listen, and the reason why we may not understand every word sometimes. To cut the story short, it was the word stress, the sentence stress and the intonation. At the end, we had to listen a CD and write down what we understood ... answer few question. The last exercise was an interview of someone who managed to create a large fast-food company in Spain. Something I really disapproved in that interview is that he claimed, as if it was a good thing, that he was going to change the habits of home cooking by enrolling women in is fast-foods. Eat a pizza sometimes is a good thing, but every day, eating pizzas (even if they taste good), I don't think that is really a good idea.
Last thing I want to say, is that I think I prefer English teachings that are spontaneous ... that involves the student. That's why I did like the speaking module with Glenda and I did not liked so much the following module about writing (CV, cover letters, how boring !). i don't know how the listening module will be, I hope I'll enjoy it much.
Today, we focused on word stress ... I find it difficult (at least more difficult than any other thing I can do in English lessons). I believe it is because I don't really have a spoken practice of the English language. That is so true, sometimes when I talk in English, I wonder how to pronounce a word I have in mind. And this information, I can only hear it from English speaking people and in the dictionary (and I don't read it everyday).
The four immeasurable ... Equanimity and Love.
The most important thing we did was sentence stress. I never realized that the stress was on meaningful words in the sentence, but it is logical. I already worked on that at the IUT, the teacher told us that there should be a rhythm and that between each word stressed, a fixed time length should be present (thus accelerating or slowing down the speech). I think this part may be easier for me than word stress where often I don't pronounce correctly the words.
We also looked at the pronunciation of the past form of irregular verbs. And I realized that i had no problem differentiating words that end with /t/ and those that end with /Id/ or /d/ ... But I mix together the /Id/ and /d/ verbs (they both finish by /d/). So there is a rule I have to learn (and be able to repeat like a parrot, I don't like it much). Verbs that end with the sound /d/ or /t/ fall in the /Id/ category (and I also remembered that vowel sounds fall in the /d/ category).
After a month without writing anything (I hope someday I'll have time to fill in the blanks) I'm here again. We just started the marketing module with Luc Bardolph... Ans while he talked about the portfolio, I just realized that I was supposed to work at home on specific subjects i would choose at the beginning of the module. But I'll tell you. i don't have time for that. I mean, pick an objective in the list and then work on it. What I can do, is use the English language as much as I can, doing things that i like. I don't want to find on the Internet someone to befriend just because he or she just speak English with me ... I wouldn't have anything to say.
So I realized that there was an objective that i could choose ... and work (well, it wouldn't be seen as working) with it... It involves listening skills ... and listening at podcasts :) Great ! You know why ? Because I just know the perfect podcast for that task. It is called “The Fourth Age” and can be found here: http://www.dragonmount.com/Podcast/ It's about the heel of Time, the book I already finished before its author (may he find peace where he is) ... But now it's 1 AM and I wouldn't do that this night (I need to sleep).
What else happened during this month ? Well, quite many things. First i'll have to tell you that I ordered Brandon Sanderson's books:
I received those books ... I think it was the 26th of February (and I ordered them from Amazon US at the beginning of the year) ... On Friday, I came back at home (my parents' home actually) and discovered the two books ! I started reading the first one ... And i finished it during the night between Sunday and Monday (the end of the week-end). Well, when I finished the first book, it was about 6:30 AM ... So there is no need to tell you that on Monday, I was pretty tried. And I finished the second book during the week. Gathered together, they represent more that 1,000 pages.
That was wonderful ... unfortunately the third book is only planned for next October, and with the shipping delays ... I think I could be happy if I can read it before 2009 :/
And because I had nothing else to read, i started the first book again (a little bit more slowly though).
Well, I spent 15 minutes to write down this ... and I can't wait to continue the book, so please excuse me, but I'm going to leave you now :) Good night.
Well, excuse me, I'm just coming back to say that Brandon Sanderson also have a podcast ... more things to listen and enjoy
I'm currently watching (at 1:54 AM) videos from Oprah.com. Oprah will be soon (in a few minutes) start free classes with Eckhart Tolle ... and his book A New Earth. Apparently, there will be archives that can be seen afterward (and I'll try downloading them). More information about Eckhart Tolle on <http://eveilimpersonnel.blogspot.com> (but elsewhere also, that's the blog of a friend)
Hi, it's been quite some time since last time when I wrote here ... hope you don't mind.
What happened ? Well, it seems I haven't talked about another book I bought (of course in English): The Joy of Living by Mingyur Rinpoché. Mingyur Rinpoché is a Tibetan master I met few years ago at Lerab Ling, a Tibetan center near Montpellier. That was my first Buddhist retreat. At that time I didn't valued much his teaching but with the time, I really come to think like my farther, those teachings were wonderful !
So i bought his book two weeks ago, received it one week ago and started to read it. I like it (even if I don't read it as eagerly as novels).
About the English modules we had in class ... i would have to say I found it borring ... Well, i'm not going at English classes to hear about Marketing. I'd rather do things I like to do using the English language ... but well ... that's not what was said we had to study.
Anyways ... This night I think i'm gonna view the fourth Oprah class ... And it will be wonderful of course (by the way, iI downloaded the three first classes and watched them).
A month ago or so i talked about podcasts ... but well, unfortunately I didn't had time to listen to them.
Today I learnt what exactly the meaning of give in. I knew that its meaning was somewhat special but I didn't knew about it. Now I know that it means something like surrender. In particular, I could find it in the sont Keep Holding On from Avril Lavigne that I found by chance on Youtube.
This evening I finally setteled to start my grammar homework. Talking about commas mainly. And I must say I don't like it at all. Why ? Because I was never good at grammar, and I don't understand half the words I find.
Not that i don't have a French equivalent, but rather that the equivalent I get makes no sense for me. For example I could not define what's an adverb, or a preposition. So for instance I can hardly tell the difference between a prepositional phrase and a participal or infinitive phrase. And the rule for commas is slightly different. How should I be able to tell the difference, and present it to others ? I really don't know. I think I'll just say what I found on the Internet and if someone asks, I'll just say that i don't know. It seems the best choice for me. But then, how am I supposed to make the exercises ?