The first letter to Rubel

Today, I wrote a letter to Rubel, who I'm sponsoring.

I heard that he likes playing football, so I found a letter paper and envelope template with football illustration in the Internet, which a cute tiger cub is playing with a soccer ball. I also looked for other templates with cute characters, because I wanted him to be pleased. However... I came up with something.
I was wondering if he has seen a real soccer ball and cartoonish illustration.
I think there aren't TV and cartoons in his life. Japanese kids are pleased with cartoonish illustrations, but it's because they always see TV, cartoons or books.
I had something mixed feeling. I can't imagine about his life at all.

I hope he enjoy my letter, and also the letter paper and envelope.

The Golden Week has started.

In Japan, there are some national holidays from the end of April to the beginning of May, and it's called "the Golden Week."

This year, the dates in red are holidays.

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
.	.	.	4/29	30	5/1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Many Japanese go to somewhere for pleasure during the Golden Week, so everywhere is TOO crowded. The worse thing is everything is TOO expensive. So I usually don't go anywhere in the Golden Week.

This year, I'm going to concentrate on preparation for job interviews, university studies and learning English. It's very good environment that I can stick to those things without being bothered with my work. Usually I can't help centering my life on the work.

I want to spend a quality time.

Meditaion Class

I attended Tibetan meditation class today. It was a bit disappointing. I'm now thinking that I should keep going the class or learn meditation myself by books.

I'm going to reading some books and at least attend the next class, then I'll decide.

The job opportunivy closed to my ideal

I was introduced two job opportunities this week, and I've just finished an interview for one of them.
I'm strongly interested in the position. It is quite close to my ideal in various aspects. Very high level English is required though.
I hope I can proceed to the next step.

Why do people wait in line so long?

About three years ago, the fist Krispy Kreme Doughnuts in Japan opened in my neighborhood, Shinjuku.
My article back them:

http://sandfriend.blogspot.com/2007/01/krispy-kreme-landing-to-japan.html

There used to be a long line, but now, you can buy or enter the shop without waiting in line.

A new shop opened in a local city, Nagoya last month. The news said that people had to wait in line for 9 hours. 9 hours!!
I can say for sure that doughnuts of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts are NOT worth waiting for 9 hours.

Always tired after English conversations

I'm always incredibly tired after speaking English. Too exhausted like just after running a marathon.

Today, I attended a workshop provided by a bilingual Professional Network Group. It was for about 3 hours and half of it was conducted in Japanese. That means I had English conversations only for an hour and a half. But I'm very tired.

Ahhhhh! I want to be able to speak English without any stress!

My English isn't so bad?

I'm not confident of my English at all. That makes my English conversation worse.
But, I recently started feeling that my English is quite well, given that I've never lived abroad. Most of Japanese people who can speak English well have lived in an English-speaking country, or even grew up there.
But I need to be able to speak English like them, so although I started feeling that way, the fact that my English is still not enough hasn't changed.
I just gave myself a small praise about my English for the first time.

The cherry blossoms

Sunny day today! I have short-sleeved T-shirt now on.
The cherry blossoms season almost finished, but I still can enjoy them.
The photo is the cherry blossoms in my neighborhood.

Calvin and Hobbles came back!

About 4 years ago, I was subscribed English newspapers only for 6 months. In the newspaper, there was a cartoon I really liked. It's "Calvin and Hobbes."

My article back then,
Bye bye, Calvin

The other day, I found a website which Calvin and Hobbes is written!
Here it is:
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes

I can read a new cartoon everyday. I' really enjoying it, and actually it's very useful to learn English expression.

I wonder if Calvin and Hobbles is famous cartoon in the US and everyone knows it.

I'm going to see the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

I always write about big sports events on my blog excitedly, such as Olympics and World Cup soccer's World Cup. But during my absence from the blog, The Vancouver Olympic Winter Games started and ended.

Of course I watched many games, but I was less excited than usual Olympics. I don't know why though.
But I was very impressed with the opening ceremony as usual. I wonder why the opening ceremonies of Olympics are always so impressive. I've always wanted to see it live. After seeing the ceremony of the Vancouver Olympics, I took a firm decision to go to see the ceremony of the London Olympics!

By the way, a Japanese figure skater Mao Asada, I was cheering for, missed the gold medal. It was a pity. She was crying hard.

Update on my job hunting

I have been looking for a good job opportunity for a while. After *"Lehman Shock", number of positions decreased. Especially, my specialty, HRD/Training is very narrow area, and it's the first target for cost cut.

I went all out to get an ideal position a couple of months ago.
Last month, I met several recruit agents and they introduced me 3 positions. I was selected for an interview on one of them and had the 1st interview the other day. On the same day, an agent introduced me another position. My job hunting seems to start taking off.


Today, I heard the feedback from the company I had the 1st interview with. They decided not to proceed to the next step with me. Actually I feel a bit relieved, because I had some concerned about the job opportunity. As a company, it's a great company. But as a working place for workers, I hear a lot of negative stories. I also had some concerned about the interviewer who would be a direct boss. So it might have been a good result. I was also introduced one more new position today. Goody, goody.

My preparation for the interview this time wasn't enough. I'm going to prepare to perfection next time.

*"Lehman Shock"

In Japan, we call Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers "Lehman Shock." However, I haven't heard this word in English conversation or writing. I wonder if it is only used among Japanese people. We often say, "after Lehman Shock, blah-blah-blah."

Attending an English conversation Club

To improve my English conversation skills, I've always thought that I should have more time to speak English outside of my work.

I tried to attend an English circle today for the first time. People who want to improve their English gather and speak English.

Attendees were divided into 3 groups, beginner, beginner-intermediate and intermediate-advanced. I joined the intermediate-advanced group.
What I need to improve most is listening skill. I know I can't improve it in the circle, because all attendees are Japanese people and their level is not so high. But at least, it's useful for speaking. And the fee is only 500 yen for 110 minutes.

I'm thinking about going to an English conversation cafe. I've never gone such a cafe though. According to the info of its website, there is one native speaker for every table.

Speak, speak speak! and Listen, listen listen!

Child Sponsorship

I think I often wrote that I aim to make the wold where all children can receive education. I have been checking NPOs, but I haven't find one which is perfectly match to my thinking. Anyway, I thought I should do something. So I decided to start with donation and child sponsorship program.

I applied for child sponsorship the other day through a NPO, World Vision.
http://www.worldvision.org
The money is used not only for a child but also for development of his/her community.
I became a sponsor of 4-years Bangladeshi boy, Rubel. Very cute!

We can exchange letters, but I don't know Bengali, so I'll write it in English and the local people in charge will translate it. I hope he and other children in his community can have happy life and receive enough education.

It's very small help, but I thought it's much better than doing nothing.

I'm a university student again!

I'm not sure that I have written about my entering university here. I have been thinking about studying more details of my job academically. I was looking for a distance university because I'm working, but it narrows down my choices. However, fortunately I found an ideal university!!

The textbooks arrived the other day. Look at this. There are too many textbooks!

It must be very hard to study such a lot of things while I'm working , but I'm very excited!

Using my credits which I got at my previous university (very long time ago), I entered the third grade this time. (<-- I don't know how to express this sentence!) So I will graduate in two years. I aim at graduating top of the class!!

Long time no see.

I haven't written any articles here since last December. It's been a while. It's already spring!

I came back here and I'm going to write articles often.

Have you heard the word "meatware"?

English textbooks introduce a lot of words, idioms and expressions, but native speakers often point out that some of them are not used so often or not common expressions. It's often the case, so I'm not surprised.
However, it's the first time that nobody knows a word. It's "meatware."

This word was in my textbook, but it didn't exist in a dictionary. From the explanation in the textbook and information on the Internet, I found that it means "human relationships" or "human element."
The sentence in the textbook is:
All the software and hardware is one thing, but it's the meatware that counts.

I asked about it on Lang-8.
http://lang-8.com/sand/journals/310842
Almost all of the native speakers who posted comments in my entry haven't heard this word.

Do you think that it's OK to put such a word in a textbook?

Movie: A Christmas Carol

I watched this movie wearing 3D glasses. Here are the 3D glasses.

It was a bit annoying to wear them whole the movie, but 3D images were amazing. When I was a kid, "The Wizard of Oz" was on TV with 3D. At that time, we had to wear a cheap paper glasses with blue and red cellophane in order to see 3D images. However, even though I wore them, I couldn't realize 3D. Now that I think about it, the technological advance is tremendous. I think we will able to see 3D images without glasses sometime in the future.

As you know, in this movie, the technology called "performance capture" is used. Actually I don't like humans described by it. They look very scary. They are like dolls that are too much close to humans. Look at this.

S,s, scary!!


By the way, the original book written by Charles Dickens is very hard for me to read, because there are too many words I don't know. I feel that I don't know about 70% of all the words in the book. Does Charles Dickens tend to write with a bit difficult words? It might be just because of my poor vocabulary.

Rock and Roll?!

I'm using a business English textbook for my English study. All dialogues in it are conversations at work. In a dialogue I was studying yesterday, there was the phrase, "We are ready to rock and roll."

Rock and roll?!?! I was surprised because I couldn't associate "rock and roll" with a conversation at work. However, the sentence was taken up as a useful phrase.

According to the explanation of the textbook, it expresses the situation that everything is prepared and just waiting to get started, like a band has already prepared for everything and is waiting to be on stage. It's a colloquial expression that is often used in the US.

I see, but... Do you often use it at work? What is the difference from "We are ready to go"?

The draw for the 2010 FIFA World Cup

It's 2:20am in Japan.
The ceremony for the draw is being held. It's too long and unnecessary! There is always such a excrescent superfluous sideshow. I think it a waste of time and especially a waste of money.
I wish the draw started soon.
----------
3:10am
The draw has already started.
The opening game will be South Africa vs. Mexco.
----------
3:30am
Finally, the draw was finished.
Here is the result.

I think England and Denmark, which I root for, can advance to stage 2. Goody!
188 days to go until the World Cup!

Charlize Theron at the World Cup draw

FIFA announced that Charlize Theron, who is one of my favorite actresses, will serve as co-host of Friday's World Cup draw in Cape Town. I thought why she, but now that I think about it, that's because she is from South Africa.

I'm very interested in the result of the draw, but in Japan, it will be broadcast on TV during midnight, so I planned to see the result on news next morning. But Charlize Theron will appear, so maybe I'll watch it.

By the way, I have no idea how I should say for the second sentence in this article. I feel that the title is also strange. I'll ask about it on Lang-8.