Faoiseamh

Japanese Days

2009-07-03T09:23:00.000+02:00

Sometimes you just have to go with the what you body and mind are telling you. Despite my long learning wish list the only thing I am doing with any regularity is studying Japanese. Watching television, reading novels, listening to music, all of these things are taking second place to my interest in Japanese. The reality of how much I need to learn even to operate at a basic level in Japan was brought home on my trip to Tokyo a couple of weeks back. Although I could say plenty of words I am still nowhere near a basic conversational level for the simple reason that understanding even basic Japanese demands a knowledge of both how things are being said and what is not being said. Japanese is an ultra-efficient language that leaves out many things which are already implied. To follow a conversation you often need to have understood what has already been said to get the next sentence.
Personally this period of Japanese learning has been a revelation in the learning approach I have taken. As I have mentioned previously the web provides so many supplemental materials that I can just switch from one approach to another whenever I get bored. Every day I listen to podcasts, watch videos and read my text books. Undoubtedly I am forgetting 90% of what I am reading or hearing but I am relying on the 10% factor being good enough because I have got so much exposure to Japanese that I do not have to try hard, I can just relax and take things as they come.
My trips to Japan and my increasing knowledge of the language and culture has opened a new chapter in my life. Part of me is sad that I cannot really make more of this interest and actually go to Japan for a few years, it would probably be possibility to do an exchange within my company. At the same time my unswerving belief is that children need stability and so we are committed to staying in Holland until the kids are grown up. Although a period in Japan might be a great experience for children I don't think it weighs up against the happiness and security of living in one place for your childhood before going out into the world later.

Temporary Loss of Service

2009-06-22T10:02:00.000+02:00

Things will be very quiet here for the next couple of months. Between holidays and very buy works schedules I have no time or energy for blogging but I am sure that I will be back soon.

The Friday Weigh-in

2009-06-12T09:55:00.002+02:00

After 35 days of my 37 day alcohol free challenge I am certainly feeling very refreshed physically and the results on the weighing scales are not too bad either as I weigh in at 75kg. That weight really seems to be my bottom limit now unless I drastically increase my training or change my diet. I would like to reach my ideal weight of 72kg but I see that happening any time soon.
I have been learning a lot of Japanese lately but I am not sure that my progress will be so apparent in Japan the week after next. Basically my vocabulary has increased significantly (I must know about 1000 words) but my ability to express myself in Japanese is still very limited. My reading these days is either in Dutch or French. I finished a short novel in Dutch yesterday and I am currently working through two books in French. During the summer holidays I will probably read more novels in English though as it is still far more pleasant to read a novel in one's native tongue.
Classes will start again in September so I must start thinking of which evening courses I will do. I think that a course in Japanese or Spanish at a high level would be good to give those languages a boost. First though I think that I am going to enjoy the summer vacation.

Generation Pain

2009-06-11T10:43:00.000+02:00

There is an interesting thread on the Property Pin about the welfare gap that has developed in many western countries between the generation in their forties and fifties and those in their thirties.
As the Ireland faces the consequences of the property bust it is clear that those most likely to have bought at peak prices are in their twenties and thirties while many of the older generation cashed in nicely during the boom years. I think that it is a mistake to try to apportion generational blame as economic circumstances are largely out of any individual's control and anybody with the right to vote can influence which politicians make decisions in his name. My observations from the outside are that Irish people of around my age should look at their own actions during the property boom. I know of many people who were engaged in property flipping or of gratuitously increasing the selling price of their house if they sniffed a greater profit. In my view many people smelt that something was amiss but ignored the obvious and joined in the collective madness.
One thing that I will say in relation to this is that a paradigm shift is needed in people's attitude to entitlement. For example, the Irish state gives a free travel pass to retired people so that they can travel without charge the length and breadth of the country. Of course this is a nice retirement perk but is it really necessary to give the rich older generation free travel while the poorer younger generation pays the full whack. The assumption that older people are poorer and need to make do on a state pension is just wrong. Clearly there is a sector of society that needs a helping hand but universal benefits are not the way to do this efficiently. Ireland will have a major challenge tackling this thorny issue because the main political parties are full of those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo. In the Euro elections Irish people made a move to the left to punish the government. If Ireland wants to get its house back in order a younger centre right party is needed. Perhaps Fine Gael can be that party but I very much doubt that it can be anything more than a replica of its larger revival.

My Family in Japanese

2009-06-11T09:01:00.000+02:00

At the moment I am developing a mini-obsession with Kanji, the Chinese characters imported into Japanese. One little thing I have been doing is matching Kanji to my family's names. Most Kanji have several readings and a Japanese person will know which one is meant based on the context of a sentence. When Kanji are used in names a Japanese person will not know for certain how the Kanji should be read. That makes it quite convenient for a westerner to take a Kanji for their name and then decide themselves how it should be read.
Western names are normally written in the syllabic Katakana script. My name would be written as E-I-DA-N which is エイダン. My name means little fire so I can take the kanji for little and fire and say that this is my name 小火. A Japanese person would read this sho-hi or sho-ka in a normal sentence but names are more flexible so I can just say that the Kanji meaning is 小火 but it should be read as エイダン.
So here is my family in Japanese:
Aidan - 小火 (little fire) read as エイダン
Aga - 清 (clean, pure) read as アガ
Luna - 月(moon) read as ルナ
Daisy - 雛菊 (daisy) read as デイジー
Nadia -望 (hope) read as ナディア
I think that the next step must be to get some t-shirts printed, I am sure that there must be plenty of kanji t-shirt specialists out there.

Thin Lines

2009-06-03T13:37:00.001+02:00

Just as there is a thin line between love and hate or pain and pleasure it seems to me that the difference between a superiority complex and an inferiority complex is marginal. Lacking an arsenal of psychological definitions I must say that I am often dumbfounded as to whether somebody is acting in a superior manner because of an inferiority complex or if their behaviours are linked to a real feeling of superiority.
The relationship between a foreigner and his host country is always complex and in this domain these types of behaviours can be readily observed. As a foreigner your history is basically a clean sheet, for good or for bad. In your own country you may have had a certain position, your family or your schooling may have bestowed privileges, even your accent may have meant something to people. When you come to a new country many people have to leave that behind. Nobody knows nor cares about the details of what you were, they care about what you are and what you can become.
For some people this new start is invigorating. They embrace the ability to redefine themselves, they reshape themselves to meet the needs of the new environment and before long it is hard to see that there was ever another version of this person. The before only reveals itself when they speak their mother tongues, when they are amongst their own. The new society forgets that this person is a foreigner, the highest level of integration.
In my life in The Netherlands I see very few people who match the above profile. Most of us find it harder to let go of our past certainties. People come to this country for all sorts of reasons, from asylum seekers to drugs tourists, from the employees of Shell and international organizations through to love and family immigrants. Many of the foreigners are in this country by chance, the host country is a fact and not a choice.
Faced with this situation people from poorer countries seem more likely to demonstrate an inferiority complex towards the Dutch. Although they sometimes resent some of the cultural proclivities of The Netherlands they rarely seem to shun them actively. Complaining about the host country is done amongst your own, to the outside world you are a good burger, drawing attention to yourself is unwise. Of course I have most experience of observing Polish people in this context. I sometimes find them overly deferent towards Dutch people. I sometimes wish that they would speak up and not always agree to doing things in the Dutch way. At the same time the immigrants from poorer countries do seem to integrate far better than their rich world counterparts.
In The Netherlands there are also many immigrants from rich countries. The Hague and Amsterdam in particular have thousands of well-paid international foreigners. Many of these might be described as reluctant immigrants. The tides of international economics or politics have washed them up on Dutch shores. The Netherlands is certainly a manageable and familiar host country. Everything is available to live an international life without needing meaningful interactions with the host culture. It is precisely because of this lack of real contact with the host culture that a curious superiority complex seems to emerge. Living in an expat bubble the language of contact with the Dutch is English, any news consumed about Holland is through English, the children go to international schools etc. Without learning anything beyond the superficial about the country around them many people seem to go down the road of stereotypes and generalizations. The Dutch seem to be the 'other', the only acceptable Dutch are those who have travelled, who have been internationalized.
I sometimes wonder at the arrogance of the expat superiority complex. The Netherlands is a wealthy, advanced country so where does this haughty attitude towards the host culture come from? My own theory is that some of the superior behaviour derives ultimately from an inferiority complex. In the beginning the expat is full of the adrenaline of being in a new country, earning a master of the universe salary and playing the international citizen. However, the longer you live here, the more years you and your family put in, the more cracks start to appear. It starts to get ridiculous that you are living a parallel life to that of your Dutch counterparts. Maybe then a defensive feeling starts to emerge which manifests itself as a superiority complex.
To speak for myself I have always been an immigrant of the 'poor country' ilk. Maybe I am also somewhat too deferential towards Dutch mores and too willing to defend the way things are done here. Although I mix happily with Dutch people in social settings I often feel more comfortable with the foreigners like myself who have become Dutchified, not part of the expat bubble and yet not quite Dutch either. It was ever thus for me though, wherever I lived I was always outside looking in with my nose squashed against the window pane.

"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

2009-06-02T09:02:00.003+02:00

I watch the film "In Her Shoes" at the weekend on television, it was certainly better than most films of its type. The film featured a couple of poems prominently. One of the poems was "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop which I had not come across before. I am always heartened when poetry is used to good effect in movies because, at its best, no other medium seems to bring poetry so richly to life.
This poem is very interesting because it portrays the authors inner struggle with her emotions. On the one hand she wants to convince the reader that losing is an art that you can master. She outlines a strategy whereby you start by losing something insignificant like keys and gradually your tolerance grows so that you can afford to lose something as large as a continent. The last stanza gives her true feelings away. Losing a friend that you love is not an art you can master, it always hurts. You can imagine the poet stabbing her pen in to the table as she writes the last disaster.
This is a very fine poem and reminds me once again how little I have discovered of that great continent that is American poetry.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster

The Friday Weigh-in

2009-05-29T10:40:00.002+02:00

Dangerous weight loss strategies are not to be encouraged but an unusual thing happened last weekend. I was feeling very ill on Saturday so I couldn't stomach any food whatsoever. As a result I seem to have lost a kilo. All of the training and careful dieting have resulted in very little change in the last weeks but a one day bug seems to have delivered some progress on the weight front.
Anyway, I am still busy with my 37 day challenge and I have now clocked up 21 alcohol-free days. To be honest it is not really a challenge because I don't think about beer so much and a nice mug of tea is still the nicest drink there is. When I go to Japan next month I will probably drink with my colleagues as is wont there so my challenge will not be extended. I might try another, longer challenge after the summer holidays though.
My language learning is really back on track. I have been making a lot of progress with Japanese, maybe the approaching visit to Japan is giving me that extra push. I finished one French novel and I have begun another. Right now I daren't start reading in English in case I will lose the French vibe. I have also been reading the latest Punto y Coma magazine so that I don't forget my Spanish. On this front I couldn't be doing more.
Dutch children have to see a speech therapist when they are about 5 to check on their language development. Luna had her meeting this week and the result was very positive. The therapist says that her Dutch is at a good level and that we just have to keep doing what we are doing to make sure that she gets enough exposure to Dutch. Nearly every day we have different children coming in and out of our house so I don't think we need to worry about the girls exposure to Dutch from now on.
Next weekend Aga will be going to Poland for a weekend to stay with a friend so I will be home alone with the kids for three days. That will be another big challenge, life keeps me pretty busy.

The Woman in Me

2009-05-29T08:51:00.000+02:00

I tried out the GenderAnalyzer tool which uses artificial intelligence software to guess if a blog is written by a man or a woman. They claim that the tool is quite accurate but it guessed that my blog is written by a woman with a 62% certainty score. I imagine that the algorithms used look at word counts and map them to domains associated with the respective genders. Though of course I take the result with a pinch of salt I can't say that I am surprised as I am clearly not particularly masculine.
It is an interesting question though. Is gender a relative thing? Is our physical body merely a repository that can be labelled male or female while our emotional and mental selves can be all things in between? There was a phase when I was younger when I seemed to have a particular attraction for bisexual women. I found it quite hard to deal with their sexual orientation because of my inherent conservatism. If I had have been more open in my thinking at the time it might have made more sense. At that time I was too busy trying to fit in with my male peers though so I wasn't willing to deal with anything outside of the box.

If youth but knew

2009-05-28T11:53:00.000+02:00

If you asked me if I would like to look younger I would undoubtedly answer in the affirmative. I would particularly love to have my hair back; when I actually had hair I wasted it. I never dyed it or permed it or even wore a pony tail. I get annoyed when I see young lads with shaved heads. "You might be bald for most of your life!", I think to myself, "Grow it back you idiot!" Grey hair I can deal with better, salt and pepper works as a look just as long as there's plenty of pepper and not too much salt.
I wouldn't like to be younger though. For me my thirties have been an oasis of calm compared to the emotional instability of my twenties. I remember when I was about 27 talking to my brother about the ten best events of my life and ten worst events of my life. At that time almost every great experience involved drinking and partying and plenty of the worst experiences involved drinking too. Maybe you just revise your priorities as you get older but now none of my top ten best ever experiences would be overtly linked to drinking though almost all my worst experiences would be.
I think that getting married and having a family has given my life an anchor that it never had before that. I was a very rootless person, always building things up only to smash them up in due course and move on. It has taken me almost all of my nearly 37 years to actually start to be myself. The biggest thing I have let go of is the tendency I had to really fight to maintain relationships that would otherwise maybe have faded away. If people want to be with me they know where to find me, if they don't there is no point in forcing things. As they say in French say "If youth but knew, if old age but could."

A Great Dutch Tradition - De Avond Vierdaagse

2009-05-27T09:34:00.000+02:00

One of the nicest Dutch traditions can be observed in June of every year when hundreds of thousands of walkers take to the early evening streets to join the avond vierdaagse (evening four day event). For four evenings in a row children and adults walk distances of 3, 5, 10 or 15km, mostly wearing a school or club t-shirt. This year my Luna will join the walk for the first time so we feel quite excited (and integrated!).
The tradition dates from the Second World War when groups first started organizing these events to encourage physical exercise. The walks were banned by the Germans by the occupation but they resumed after the war when local walking groups and town councils began to organize them again.
In our town you see hundreds of walkers following the route for these four June evenings. Nowadays it is seen as a very good way to encourage children to get off the couch and to put away those dreadful gameboy thingamajigs. However, the positive aspects of the tradition are somewhat undermined by the fact that lots of the children seem to walk with bags of candy and cookies or downing sugary drinks. God forbid that the kids might actually burn some energy ;-)
Another very amusing habit that has emerged during the avond vierdaagse is that many children suck on a half of a lemon or orange with two or three peppermints stuck in it. The children suck the juice through the mint. If you don't believe me just look at this link; it is a very weird tradition. I won't be preparing this treat for my daughter unless she specifically ask for it though.

Language Choices

2009-05-26T09:46:00.000+02:00

As I mentioned before I have been tormenting myself with the idea of starting a degree in French this year. Currently I am inclined not to go through with this idea because it is just too big a commitment financially and in terms of time. In the last while I have started reading far more in French and watching French television much more regularly. Ultimately I might be a lot better off trying to push my French to the next level by living part of my life in French than exposing myself to the stress of exams and commitments. I also worry that studying might lead me to give up somewhat on Japanese and Spanish and that would be a shame considering how far I have come since I took up those languages.
I guess my big personal issue is that I have a pathological need for validation. At a certain point though you have to do things for good reasons. I have an MBA to my name that I really have not used and that involved a lot of commitment on my part. With a young family I can't risk short changing others unless there is an overall gain for everybody in the end. Whatever happens I think that I need some new goals for the next year or so. I have a real hunger to set myself some targets and achieve them.
My main focus languages are French, Spanish and Japanese. With French I plan to read more and more novels so that my specific vocabulary can increase without much effort, at this stage reading in French is getting very natural. With Spanish I need to keep reading my Punto y Coma magazines, listen to podcasts and revise the grammar because my level is only intermediate so I still need to embed many grammatical points that I take for granted in French. Japanese remains a big challenge, I am gradually progressing by listening to podcasts but what I really need is to finally learn all the kana and start learning kanji. Reading any language is a key competency and right now I am in nowhere city with Japanese.

Facebook - How to engage and interest people.....

2009-05-21T10:17:00.000+02:00

I have been a Facebook user for a couple of years with somewhat mixed feelings. I like being able to peek in on the lives of old acquaintances but generally people's use of the tool is limited so it's not like there is too much to keep me interested.
I have joined a number of Facebook groups but again I notice that they tend to be very dormant and I haven't yet worked out how to subscribe so that new posts come to my mail box. Basically that leads to inertia and Yahoo groups seem to offer a more dynamic experience.
The one killer functionality on Facebook for me is the ability to become a fan of a product, musician, writer etc. This is the only aspect of Facebook that works for me because I am finally getting a lot of new and interesting content. The Irish social networking guru Damien Mulley has pointed out many times on his blog that there are countless commercial opportunities to engage and interest potential customers using Facebook. Luckily people from many different domains are now getting that message. The three top pages on Facebook for me are that of my current favourite band The Veronicas (see pic) (updated with photos, videos and posts daily), the language learning provide JapanesePod101.com (regularly updated with content that is not always easily visible on the website) and the Irish clothing company Hairy Baby (product updates, discounts, requests for ideas).

When you know how Facebook can be used you start getting a bit annoyed with bands, artists and companies who are behind the curve. If I am interested in you I am at your disposal on Facebook, feel free to engage me and keep me interested in what you are doing.

Blessed are the breadmakers

2009-05-20T11:04:00.002+02:00

I have had a breadmaking machine for quite a while but up until recently it had only been used twice and that was with a breadmix. In the last week I have got the machine back out with the full intention of honing my breadmaking skills. Now, breadmaking machines are like automatic, self-parking cars, there is only so much that can go wrong. The key to success is getting the ingredient choice and proportions right. If that goes okay then the only other variable factor is the choice of program the baking time might be too short or too long for a given loaf.
On Sunday I made a rather delightful Hovis wholemeal loaf using flour and bread yeast I sourced in an expat shop. The bread was delicious but not really better and certainly not cheaper than buying a loaf in the supermarket. The pleasure of (partly) making it myself did give me a buzz though. The breadmaker comes in very handy though if you can make breads that are not available in the local baker. Last night I tried my first brioche. It went well enough but the baking time was too long for the size of the loaf so the crust was too thick and slightly burnt. The next time I will make a bigger loaf and see how it goes.
I am also going to try making muesli breads. These are the holy grail for me as I can combine my love of bread with my love of cereal. I am going to scan the net for more delicious bread recipes, this is one delicious hobby.

The Friday Weigh-in

2009-05-15T10:47:00.001+02:00

This week was the famine after the feast. Whilst on holiday in France I really let go and ate and drank like a modern day Bacchus. These days I just can't get away with that behaviour so this week my diet has returned to normal and I have been training almost every day. My weight has more or less stayed the same but I think that my waist size has expanded a little so I need to get that back to where it was.
I also decided to give my body a break from alcohol for a while and I said to my wife that I was thinking of giving myself a 20 day challenge to stay off alcohol for that length of time. She came up with a counter-suggestion that maybe I should go for a 37 day challenge to match my next birthday age and so it has begun. I am currently on Day 8, it's not like I go in to any kind of craving mode except at the weekends when it is always nice to have a few beers in front of the television. Anyway, I think that my body will appreciate the time in detox so I can easily manage 37 days.
I am reading a French book called "Je m'appelle Élisabeth" right now which is going very well. In fact I am considering if I should start reading two French (or Dutch) books for every one in English. Although I still prefer reading in English I have to say that I am quite comfortable with French and the best way by far to increase you vocabulary in a language is to read and watch as much television as you can in that language. Furthermore, I have my application form filled out to begin a BA in French through the University of London external program next year, I still have to make the final decision but putting French at the centre of my life can only help if I do make that choice.
I have been keeping up the Japanese podcasts but I feel that I am starting to drift so I am changing things about a bit. I have relearned the Hiragana character set in as far as possible and I am going to work on my Katakana next week. Once I can read these characters I can stop only looking at romanized (romaji) texts. I want to buy some children's books in Japan in June. I am also going to go back to my Teach Yourself Japanese book so that I can start to follow a more linear approach again.
We are going to Poland for three weeks in the summer, ten days at a holiday house at the lake resort of Lagow and the rest of the time at the in-laws in Zielona Gora. It ain't exactly my ideal holiday but summers in Poland tend to be sunny and the children will appreciate being around their Polish family and using their mother tongue. Daddy's challenge will definitely not go beyond 37 days since my ideal holiday involves a water, books and beer and there will be much of all three when we get to Poland.

Here's some I read earlier

2009-05-14T10:42:00.000+02:00

In the last while I haven't posted any book reviews here so I thought that I catch up somewhat by mentioning some books that I have read in the last while.
"Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill is quite a brilliant novel set in New York, London and The Hague with cricket, rather unusually, featuring prominently throughout. The central character is a Dutch cosmopolitan thirtysomething searching, drifting, wanting. This is novel is very much of its time. (9/10)
"Zugzwang" by Ronan Bennett was a major let down, a thriller that didn't thrill. Considering the quality of his other work I was taken aback at the looseness of the plot which follows a psychologist up in intrigue and conspiracy in 19th century St. Petersburg. I can't verify the accuracy of the Russian setting or the use of chess terminology but this seemed authentic. The whole book is just ruined by a boring and disjointed plot. (5/10)
If "In the Heart of the Country" by J.M. Coetzee had have been a film I would have either fallen asleep or left long before the end. As I almost never abandon a book I persevered through to the finale but the novel meant nothing to me. It is a story set around an isolated Afrikaner country girl who murders her father out of spite for his taking a black lover. I must be missing something that Tom Paulin found considering his gushing praise on the back cover. (4/10)
"The Secret Scripture"by Sebastian Barry is a wonderful novel. The quality of writing is excellent throughout and the story itself is quite gripping. The historical detail is quite challenging for any Irish reader who may be in denial about some of the less salubrious aspects of our history. The only downside is that the conclusion is quite predictable and lacks a real twist. As novels go this is as close to perfection as it gets. (10/10)

In Search of the Pope's Children

2009-05-13T10:10:00.002+02:00

Last night I watched the first part of David McWilliams' documentary "In Search of the Pope's Children" on BBC4 (it was already shown on RTE a couple of years back). The documentary was made in 2006 and as the last throes of the Irish economic boom were being enjoyed. As anybody who was reading his journalistic output at the time will know he had already been predicting the bust for quite a while but the style of the first part of the documentary was quite gentle. Rather than offer too many opinions on what was happening he let the cameras do the talking.
Anyway, the Ireland he presented was recognizable to me from visiting home these last ten years. The extreme materialism of the country always gave me quite a nauseous feeling and seeing it portrayed in this documentary brought back that stomach churning feeling. One interesting thing for me was the categorization of people into the Decklander and HiCo classes. Having been born into the middle classes I can see a lot of parallels between myself and the HiCos. Their search for something more than just an Irish Americana or Anglia strikes a chord. However, the portrayal of these people shopping for organic and luxury foods is also quite alien to me.
Nearly all of the people interviewed said that Ireland was a better country than it had ever been. The archival clips shown as part of the documentary clearly showed why. Though I didn't appreciate it when I was very young I grew up in a miserable country. Of course it is a better country now, it could hardly have gotten any worse. At the same time being better is not saying that the country is a success. The whole point of accepting the partition of the country was to set up an Irish state where the Irish language and culture could prosper. The state has not been particularly successful in that aim. Perhaps the recession years will allow the Irish state to develop a new ethos. Materialism seems to have replaced Catholicism as the dominant ethos in past couple of decades. I wonder what will take its place now that the state must go back to first principles.

Cereal Killer

2009-05-12T16:00:00.002+02:00

There are some things that home truths that are just too hard to swallow. The Irish Times pointed once again today to research which indicates that most breakfast cereals have sugar and salt contents which are just too high. This is not news to me but I still try to deny it. I cannot accept that the most delicious, wonderful food there is can be bad for me. As the poet once said "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams".
I have a selection of about fifteen different cereals in my kitchen cupboard. Every time I go to a new country I scour the supermarket shelves to see if there are any undiscovered cereal gems I can bring back home with me. I eat cereal every day for breakfast and quite often in the evening too as the last snack of the day. If cereal is bad for me I give up altogether. Although my wife is no great cereal eater my kids have caught the bug and also eat it at least twice a day.
The solution for sure is for the manufacturers to bring down the sugar content, gradually reducing the sweet stuff will wean us off the sweet stuff without any cold turkey and we can keep on eating the food of Gods every day. I could live in a world without hot food, just don't touch my Corn Flakes.

Back

2009-05-10T11:51:00.000+02:00

I was in the north of France for the last week without an internet connection so that will explain why things have been quiet chez-moi the last while. We were staying in a holiday house in a small coastal resort called Fort Mahon Plage. The place was pretty quiet at this time of year as the French did not have school holidays and the resorts around there cater very much for the French market. The children really enjoyed being there which is the main thing.
I got to road test my French again after a long time out of action. French is one of those languages where lack of practice causes rapid deterioration of your accent. I notice as an English speaker that it is very hard to speak French both correctly and at conversational speed. In shops and restaurants I went for speed above quality and things went well enough though I know that they must have thought that I had a most awful English accent. I enjoyed listening to French radio and Fun Radio is already added to my internet radio favourites.
Ironically my ability to read French at speed is improving all the time and I made my way through half of a novel called "Je m'appelle Élisabeth" by Anne Wiazemsky. That novel is set around a psychiatric hospital and as things would have it I am reading "The Secret Scripture" by Sebastian Barry in parallel which shares the same setting. To keep the momentum up I bought some novels in French by Yasmina Khadra and Florian Zeller.
One thing we love about France are the hypermarkets which we do not have here in Holland. We came home with a whole load of delicious French produce. One brilliant range of juices, jams, biscuits etc. is called Reflets de France. I really think that that has major export potential.
In our house we only had British satellite tv so that meant a rather different televisual diet than usual. The dish did provide Irish radio which was great and the kids had loads of cartoon channels. I watched a fair bit of S4C, the Welsh channel, and BBC Alba (in Scots Gaelic). The latter was not so interesting though I could understand a fair bit, there were too many programs about the language rather than it from what I saw. Welsh is almost incomprehensible to me but after watching a bit (including the Heineken Cup highlights, thank you Wales!) I thought that I was hearing conjunctions like ach and mar as in Irish but I cannot be sure. I was really impressed at how alive Welsh is and I want to learn more about how Welsh has done compared to Irish despite not having had the same state support or preferential status as Irish.
Anyway, duty calls so sin a bhfuil for today.

Degree or not degree that is the question.....

2009-04-30T20:33:00.000+02:00

For the last few years I have been considering starting a French degree through the University of London external program. Now, some might call me a glutton for punishment considering I finished an evening MBA through Webster University in 2006 and that was quite a challenge considering how many hours of study that took combined with work and family commitments.
At the same time there is always something gnawing away at me because I have never studied something that satisfied me intellectually. The best elements of my Materials Science degree were the mathematical subjects outside of the core degree and the half module of French I took in the final year. I did a masters in Manufacturing Systems Engineering with the goal of becoming less generalist and that helped me out of engineering and into IT so it worked. However, robotics and scheduling are not what I think about in my spare time. An MBA takes a lot of effort but the academic side of things is not the main challenge with that type of business degree.
Throughout the years I have done many language courses and sat many language exams. I have gone the furthest with French, having passed the DALF Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française and there are no more evening courses I can take at a higher level. The next step would be to do a degree in French and since it was by far my best subject even at school part of me regrets not having studied it in the first place.
On the other hand starting another degree might end up bringing a lot of extra stress into my life. Last year I definitely didn't want to start this because Aga was expecting Nadia. I will be thinking this through in the next while, the beauty of the London program is that you can take 7 years to complete if you like. That might make it easier to fit in and maybe I will find a channel to quench my thirst for learning more and especially developing my language abilities. To be continued.

Favourite Posts

2009-04-29T12:50:00.000+02:00

After publishing a few hundred posts on this blog I thought that I would try to pick out what I think are my best posts even though some of them were read by only a very few people. My most popular post ever by far on the Dutch word of the year was by no means a classic but it got picked up by Reddit so it got more than ten thousand hits, unfortunately the readers didn't stay to read any other content, I guess that's the cruel world of the web.
Writing about my wife's accident three years ago this week was very emotional and brought back the horror of that day and the difficult subsequent weeks. I am glad to have written that one for the record.
Inspired by what my cousin had written I wrote a post on the oil men of West Clare, the bizarre tale of how my grandfather sold his land to an oil company and got two of my uncles a start in the oil business.
In terms of humour I think that the funniest thing I have written (or more accurately arranged) was the Icelandic phrase book.
Of the post on the Irish language I think that Whose Language Is It Anyway and Lessons From Moominland came the closes to capturing the essence of my beliefs.
I have posted most on issues around multilingualism. I think that the Bridging Technique post has been the most useful to other language learners though I have since read many other blog posts suggesting similar techniques. I always enjoy writing about language issues so it is hard to pick out real favourites.
Two things I like from my own creative work are the poem "Correspondence" and the children's story Danny the Smelicopter.
All in all it is great to be able to look back and see that I have written so much about so many things when the alternative would have been that those words would never have been written. For myself at least that makes this blogging lark a worthwhile pursuit.

The Polyglot Dream

2009-04-28T10:39:00.002+02:00

As any language enthusiast will know one of the main factors that prevents progress in your target languages is the tendency to get sidetracked by fleeting interests in other languages. The growth of the internet has led to an inexorable push of personalized content towards me as my language learning tastes become known to Google and other information providers. Most language addicts will recognize the dilemma, should I specialize or should I generalize? If you keep losing your focus you just cannot spend enough time working on your main target language to reach an advanced level reasonably quickly.
There was a great post over on the foreign language blog about the full immersion technique whereby you more or less give up your mother tongue. You create a bubble in which your target language is your language. As I pointed out in the comments section though this is not necessarily the best way to go if you are maintaining other languages. By going forward in the target language you may fall back in the other languages.
So the key to progress for a polyglot is to divide your time efficiently between maintenance of your existing languages and acquisition of new languages. If you use up your language learning time flitting from one language to another you will make little progress in your target languages and maybe even lose what you have gained in other languages. From my own experience here are a few tips:
1) Embrace the languages around you - Very few places are truly monolingual. Even if the country itself is not officially multilingual it is often easy to access more than one language. For example, living in Holland you can quite easily access the large English speaking community though the country is Dutch speaking. In my case I am an English speaker married to a Pole and I live in Holland. I use Dutch and Polish every day so that these languages are maintained at the same level. I do not devote any language learning time to these languages because they are living languages for me.
2) Remember your old friends - You know when your wife wants to watch a program that you're not in to or when you find yourself with fifteen minutes to have a cup of tea. In that case the internet and digital television can be your allies because it is just so easy to watch a news bulletin in one of the languages you speak. I have gotten into the habit of watching yesterday's news in Irish on TG4 every day. It is amazing how quickly the old language has comes back to me but a little effort helps. In the morning if I have to get up to feed the baby I stick on the news in French or Spanish. Maintaining your languages is just as important as learning new ones.
3) Find time - Rather than drive or cycle to work I normally walk. It takes a bit longer but I get the chance to listen to Japanese podcasts on my way there and back. I have listened to up to 100 hours of Japanese in the last few months, listen-repeat-listen really works. The time I spend on Japanese podcasts is time I am consciously freeing up and walking is a lot healthier than driving anyway.
4) Don't forget your mother tongue - Total immersion techniques are great for your target language but it can be very dangerous for your ability to speak your mother tongue properly. I find it embarrassing if I cannot remember the word in English for something and have to look it up in a Dutch dictionary. For that reason I advocate spending at least 30% of your time using your own language.
5) Reading your languages - In my opinion reading is crucial to building and maintaining your vocabulary in any language (including your mother tongue). Here is an area where I believe that the language learner has to make sacrifices. Very early in my time in Holland I cut my subscription to The Economist and instead I subscribed to the Dutch weekly Elsevier.
Last year I had a subscription to Le Point(French) and I still subscribe to Punto y Coma(Spanish). I try to limit the time I spend reading in English and use the freed time to read in other languages. Sometimes I am a bit lazy but not a day goes by when I do not read something in another language than English.
6) 'Real' learning - Right now I don't attend any language classes (through lack of time). I do spend time at home studying Japanese and Spanish with various learning aids. I also dip into Italian from time to time but I would describe this more as a distraction than anything else. Basically I find formal learning boring outside of the classroom so I do far too little 'real'learning. I know that I really need to learn all of the Hiragana and Katakana but still I found myself learning the Cyrillic alphabet last week. Instead of looking at an Italian lesson I started listening to a children's story in Afrikaans. Talk about losing focus.
As any language enthusiast will admit though its not the destination (perfect fluency) it’s the journey (learning to crawl and walk in a new language) that is really where the enjoyment is. Still, with a degree of focus you can become fluent in many languages and still find time for new ones and the great thing is that you have a whole life in which to pursue the polyglot dream, what a wonderful world this is.

The Friday Weigh-in

2009-04-24T10:23:00.000+02:00

Normally at this time of year my healthy diet and training takes a big dip because we normally have visitors for Easter and beyond so this tends to lead me into all manner of bad drinking and eating habits. This year has proved no exception but the big difference is that I have maintained the same level of training so my weight has not fluctuated particularly. Now I am back in healthy mode and I am going to have a period with far less alcohol so that I get can get back to peak fitness.
This year is certainly the year of the podcast as far as I am concerned. Almost daily I listen to Japanese podcasts repeating the episode again and again until I hear and understand everything. I have covered 70 of the Beginner lessons on JapanesePod101.com and I feel that I have made a lot of progress in my comprehension of Japanese if not with my ability to reproduce the language. My motivation for Japanese seems to be inspiring my interest in other languages and I watching far more films and television in French and Spanish as well as listening to Afrikaans on the net as a little hobby.
We have a holiday coming up in France on the Côte d'Opale, I am looking forward to that. France is so close to us but it might as well be half the world away if you never go. It will be a good chance to practice some spoken French again too, should be good.

Language Shift

2009-04-22T10:48:00.001+02:00

The last months have seen a major language shift occur in our household. As we always expected Dutch has gone from being an outside language which only entered family life through the television screen to being a living language in the home. Luna and Daisy now use Dutch as their primary language when they are speaking to each other though they do regularly code switch to Polish and very occasionally English. They have also developed a habit of incorporating Polish words into Dutch grammatical structures so that Dutch is the framework language but where they lack the correct word they just use a Polish one. When the girls are around their mother they still generally speak Polish to each other but Dutch will certainly take over here too as the language of intra-sibling communication. They still exclusively speak Polish to their mother and English to me so the core foundation of our One Parent One Language strategy has not been affected.
For me personally the only difference is that I listen to them speaking Dutch instead of Polish and interject when I want to say something. My wife's Dutch is also good enough that she understands anything they are saying to each other but their Polish grandmother (who is visiting right now) finds the use of Dutch more difficult. Whereas before she could follow everything they were discussing in Polish now she is excluded from the conversation. They are not doing this on purpose but over time they will appreciate how language can be used as a weapon.

The Hidden Poem

2009-04-21T09:56:00.000+02:00

We were married by a priest who is also a personal friend of my wife's. As a wedding gift he gave us thick book about the teachings of the Catholic church which is not an unusual present to get from a priest. Although my wife is quite religious the book was put on our bookshelf and left untouched until a couple of years later. One day I was browsing through unread books on our shelf and I picked out this book. I was surprised to find a poem pasted on to one of the blank pages at the start of the book.

The priest had chosen a very beautiful poem about love by Janusz Kofta which we appreciated very much even though we missed it at the time. I haven't translated it literally because I wanted to try to capture more of the meaning in Polish.

"Miłość"	"Love"
Co to jest miłość?	What is love?
Nie wiem	I don't know
Ale to miłe	But it's lovely
Że chcę ją mieć	That I want to have her
Dla siebie	For myself
Na nie wiem	For how long
Ile	I don't know

Gdzie mieszka miłość?	Where does love live?
Nie wiem	I don't know
Może w uśmiechu	Maybe in a smile
Czasem ją słychać	Sometimes I hear it in
W śpiewie	A song
A czasem	And sometimes
W echu	In an echo

Co to jest miłość?	What is love?
Powiedz	Tell me
Albo nic nie mów	Or maybe don't say anything
Ja chcę cię mieć	I want you to have you
Przy sobie	With me
I nie wiem	And I can't explain
Czemu	Why

Janusz Kofta