Nine typical themes in language courses

With Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Italian, French and German audio language courses under my belt, I get an appreciation for people who devise and script these courses. I also noticed some odd similarities that keep popping up in each course, no matter the language.

1. A man and a woman book a room in a hotel, but they have different last names. Considering they meet and greet each other just one or two lessons earlier, and that they do not have any big conversations in between, you'll have to assume that they are not boyfriend and girlfriend. Could they be committing adultery? Or are they just enjoying a nooner?
2. When going out to dinner, the woman always eats a mixed salad as an appetizer. Why doesn't she get a nice chorizo? She's not anorexic is she? The man always has a soup, which is always too cold. When they "complain" about this, the people speak slowly, rationally and do not shout. (Yes, I always complain in this way...) Also everybody drinks a red wine. Nobody drinks bitter lemon, or Sprite.
   
3. People in language courses always go to a bar. No matter how many drinks you order, it always costs under ten euros. Probably because at this point you haven't learned any numbers over ten yet.
   
4. People always shop for fruit, souvenirs, a short sleeve shirt, and a packet of aspirin. People in language courses never buy stuff like CDs, a newspaper, sun glasses, tanning oil, box of tissues, condoms, KY jelly... you know... stuff you'd actually buy on vacation.
5. There are no children in language courses. Everybody you speak to is an adult. In fact, people over 65 do not exist in language courses. Everyone sounds like they're 24.
   
6. In any course, whatever location you are asking for, you're always only ten minutes away, and it's only down the street and to the right.
7. No language course has people dealing with the police, justice... or any kind of authority for that matter.
8. Except for one instance in the Japanese course, everybody has a job in an office setting. No one is a farmer. No one is a construction worker. Yes, there are desk clerks, waiters, shop assistants, but that's about as unambitious as it gets.
9. Every language course tells you four different ways to greet someone and three more to say your name, but none of them give you any clue how to tell someone to sod off.

Me, Jealous; You, Jane?

It has to be a great feeling for parents to see their children succeed and prosper. Even more when they receive high praise and are lauded for their performance in whatever field they accomplish. In sports a coach is more than happy when one of his players achieves something great. A teacher too should be over the moon when one of his pupils becomes a star.

But for some reason this doesn't really work in business, especially if the environment is competitive. Suddenly the guy you brought in, trained and groomed as your replacement, becomes bigger than you could ever imagine, and surpasses you.

I hope I can be as virtuous as Aeschylus put it: "It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered."

Five fundamental differences between US and European Sports

Sports in the United States is big, brash, loud and above all extremely rich. Contrast this with sports on the European continent and you'll notice a truckload of differences, so much so that it's easy to understand why European sports will not take off in the States, while American sports will never be accepted fully here. Here are five reasons why:

1. Americans cannot handle viewing a sport, unless it's divided in byte-sized chunks. That's why NBA games are divided in quarters, Indycar races are interrupted by yellow flags, NFL moves along play by play, and baseball goes from out to out. Sports with longer, uninterrupted flows of play, like soccer and rugby don't appeal as much to the average American viewer. Likewise a European sportsfan can't stand the continuous breaks, which he would always chalk up to unnecessary commercials...
   
2. In Europe debating the referee's calls is a given, but to an American it's outrageous, and always exciting. In Europe referees control the contest in the calmest way possible; in the USA referees can get mad, make wild, excessive gestures and send the coach off the field.
3. Unless it's an international contest, very few European sports events open with the national anthems. In the States every sports event starts with the Star Spangled Banner... even your backyard touch football game.
4. A commentator in the United States is always supported by a sidekick, the color man, who keeps the viewers, listeners, fans entertained with useless facts, side stories, rumours and general mockery of the best paid player on the team. Nowadays washed-up has-been athletes provide in-game real-time analysis on the events. That's three people employed by the network. In Europe sports commentators during the game are practically always alone, and frankly - apart from Jack van Gelder - extremely bland and boring. Analysis is something you do during half-time or after the game. The network only employs one guy to do the talking, and he often doesn't even get to go to the game at all.
   
5. Aah, statistics. The American loves them, because it allows otherwise menial athletes to achieve feats of epic proportions, thanks to a mathmetical coincidence. For a country that's only been around for slightly over two centuries, it's a quick way to fill up a person's history and trivia sections in wikipedia. Stats also improve viewership when a record is broken or a milestone is reached, so statistics have commercial benefits as well.
   Fans in Europe... are less enthused about mindless numbers.
   

Addendum to P990 review

A while back I had something to say about the Sony Ericsson P990, but I didn't mention that my WLAN went missing for about six months. So I was forced to drain my account with a GPRS, or I could not use the mobile internet at all...

Until I came across this gem... "turn off the power safe feature of the WLAN".

And now my WLAN is back?! I can internet at no extra cost again!

This officially drowns the P990 in my book. If you build a feature with an economy mode that negates the feature DON'T BUILD THE DAMN ECONOMY MODE.

Change of venue

Getting bored is as much a choice as it is a condition, but there are ways to stimulate boredom easily. Going out to the same location or bar or café each and every week is the one that does it for me. I like a change of venue every once in a while.

Coming back to places I've been to - also a change of venue - can sometimes surprise you in a good way. Back in the college days me and my friends have been going to this live music bar on a fairly regular basis. It was quite good for a while, but it got boring (not too mention too expensive for a student budget).

So I have not gone there for a number of years, until recently. It was a nice change of pace, and it was good. To tell you the truth, I might actually fit better there now, than a couple of years ago...

So all in all, change is good. Even if you're changing back.

We just can't get a break

Ok, so car manufacturers are finally getting the hang of making engines that run on bio-engineered fuel, home electricity and so on. And now we find out that actually growing the damned stuff is costing us farmland, and burns acres worth of trees. This is just unfortunate: we trade one terrible thing (CO2) for another (no more Amazon).

I completely agree

This site is supposed to be a light-hearted humour website, but once in a while they post an article that hits truer than anything that I can come up with. And believe me, I tried.

It's quite a long article (as in you have to spend about five minutes reading it), but I'll just give you the Cliff Notes:

• thanks to our electronic tools, airplanes and interweb people in current society are less able to effectively communicate face-to-face. There are less opportunities to meet new people in person, because everything is so damned conveniently near your home.
• not being able to meet in person, reduces the communication channels to e-mail, text messaging and so on. That's stuff that one could easily misinterpret.
• the people we meet in our MSN, Hyves etc. share common interests. In retrospect this means these people are already alike, and you won't find out anything new. That doesn't breed opportunities for conversation. (here is also where you'll find the showstealing lines of the night:

"I've been insulted lots, but I've been criticized very little. And don't ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. (...) Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing. Tragically, there are now a whole lot of people who never have those conversations. The interventions, the brutal honesty, the, "you know, everybody's pissed off because of what you said last night, but nobody wants to say anything because they're afraid of you," sort of conversations. Those horrible, awkward, wrenchingly uncomfortable sessions that you can only have with someone who sees right to the center of you.")

• the very notion that we have MORE control over what we do, when we do it, and whom we do it with, is killing for the social capacity of man. Mankind's social skills are grown through unpredictability, through dealing with people who are unlike you, and you do it face to face, with total fear of repercussions.
  

... ah, just read the article.

Moving the speed trap forward

I've noticed that once highway speed traps get reported in on the radio, their location seems to backward opposed to the flow of traffic. Now I've been told this is to discourage people from speeding all the way to the speed trap, then slow down and then get up to high speed again.

Why is it not the other way around? If those traps were to go forward, a driver would never be able to tell if he was about to approach the trap or not. And in practice this behaviour is not any different from the current situation.

Square Pegs In Round Holes

Trying to uproot something completely local, and move it overseas trying to make it popular over there is not that straightforward. Phenomena like Formula One, Madonna concerts, McDonalds are blissfully similar and recognizable wherever you go, and they each become that way seamlessly. Considering these you take for granted the effort that it takes to become a globally accepted occurance. Doing something truly global in a manner that appeals to people of every nation, is very, very hard.

ChampCar for example is a very Americanized version of the open-wheel formulas we've grown accustomed to in Europe. Now if one would try to bring this back to the old world, you'll encounter some peculiar things:

• In the US you have to be thankful to your sponsors... every single one of them. "So thanks to the Sony Ericsson Toys 'R' Us Swatch EA Sports Shell Peugeot British Airways Nintendo SKW Racing Team I'm finally able to buy that engine upgrade."
• In another country you can sing the national anthem like you want it, even if it's so off-key, the Naked Gun series would be ashamed to air it.
• Europeans need their sports flowing and long-running, with a few highlights in between. Americans need their sport in short, manageable pieces, and they want to cram in as many meaningless high spots as possible. That's why the American ChampCars have the yellow flag rule, which serves to bring fields back together, if the leaders moved too far away from the field; to have ample opportunity for commercials; and for no other discernible reason than a pebble near the entrance of the pit area.
• Preceding every race with a Christian sermon is kind of presumptuous in a non-US country.

Luckily some things remain universal, whichever side of the Atlantic you're on:

• Bad commentators will still rattle over their mistakes, pretending they never made them.
• Women in tight, skin-hugging clothing are good.
• The roar of a V8 engine still rules.

All about the girls

It's sad to see the end of a good thing. The Admirals were for all intents and purposes a small team in a sport that's hardly followed in the Netherlands, apart from a small, rabid fanbase. And it's for this group of people, the team decided to bid farewell one last time.

(Well... the team... just one of the popular star players and the head coach made the trip overseas, so you can't really speak of the team at all.)

When it all comes down to it, it's truly all about the girls. By far the most popular sights at the scene were the members of the Admirals Dance Team, who performed one last time at the venue. And by far the biggest pop of the night was for the popular cheerleaders' manager. And at times it was a pretty emotional experience.

The night also displayed who the Admirals as an organization were most grateful to. The party was not just for the team and front office people (yes don't forget about them),
and not just for the fans. The organization paid tribute to a group of young women, who quite rightly took center stage, and danced the night away.