In today’s German class, the teacher offered us some bubbling wine to celebrate her admission to UBC education program. It seems that we have alcohol in every one of the past few German classes. It’s nice to have beer or wine and learn at the same time. The environment is really friendly, much better than class room style of teaching. We held lots of conversation in German, but due to my lack of ability, I can barely follow the talks, never mind taking part in it. I read out allow my composition and had it corrected by the teacher. I made lots and lots mistakes, especially on word order and the use of preposition. My vocabulary is still very weak, really need to memorize more verbs, nouns and adjectives. I can understand all the grammar rules well, just often forgot to apply them in my sentences. My pronouncation is the worst of all, but I couldn’t really help on that part, I have no one to practice German with. Hope with my beginner level German, I can survival the two weeks World Youth Day trip in August.
social sense
Maybe I am a person really lack of social sense, according to Pat’s complains. She had come up with examples that I’m can’t deny, thus I’m convinced that I have problems in this area. Am I social challenged? In some sense, yes. To come up with cure, first I have to understand the context of social sense. According to Pat, the first rule of thumb is consider others feeling. In some occasions, I lack the awareness of others’ response to my action. That part is easier to fix, just have to run a several thread in my brain to always simulate others reaction. In some other case, I just don’t expect they will have that kind of response, at least I won’t. They are weird to me as I’m weird to them. The principle of not being selfish can no longer apply. I guess I have to start watching more TVB series, especially modern ones, to take samples on how a normal stereotyped person will react in different circumstances.
First speech
Finally, I had completed my first toastmaster speech. I don’t think I’m doing very well. I can feel my legs was shaking for the whole time. It is different than doing a table topic, where is more careful and have no expectation. My time management is really bad, run out of time half way and my mind went blank because I don’t know what to say in order to cut my speech short. I can imagine my pronunciation and grammar has some problems, due to the lack of sleep makes my mind slow. Anyways, it’s done and I have to think about the second speech planned in next month.
Time is running out before my trip to Germany, and I have less than 2 months to reach the milestone I had set for my thesis. I found talking an extend period of time on phone with Pat every night become a big distraction to my study. Especially when I have to spend energy to ‘tum’ her all the time. My goal is to cut down the duration of phone call from over 45 minutes to 15 minutes a day. The extra 30 minutes may not seems a lot, but the time it takes for me to focus make the big difference. In addition, the timing of call make a big difference. Have an hour of solid work before the phone call helps productive, so I could use it call as a welcome break. Unlike the current habit, I got interrupt when I just about to begin my study. My mind on the work is lost after the phone call, and it usually take an hour to regroup.
One last thing, although I agree not to sleep again in church to avoid more nagging from Pat, sleeping in church itself is NOT an immature behavior. There are many valid reasons to fall asleep in church, and it doesn’t imply disrespect to the priest, fellow church goers or God. It may worth the time to write a serious article on the true nature of sleeping in the church, but that would take quite some time to a proper research. I’ll definitely put this topic down on my to do list after I had finished my thesis. For the time being, let’s use the reason that sleeping is a from of prayer, quoted from this article written by Maurice Bellet, a Catholic author.
self introduction
I was preparing my ice breaker speech for the toastmaster meeting tomorrow. I found that it is quite hard to condense all the material into 5 minutes. There are so many things I want to talk about myself. I had picked school as the mean to describe my character. I always believe the importance of education in shaping the personality of a man. I had picked a few anecdotes from Lasalle days, Appleby and Waterloo days to illustrate the real me. At this moment, I’m still struggle to organize my speech. Maybe I’ll just give it one more practice and then go to bed. I had already spent 2 hours but still couldn’t speak fluently. To become a good public speaker really require lots of hard work and practice, unless you are born with this talent.
Freedom
What is freedom? Does a person has the right to think freely and act freely as long as it doesn’t cause any harm to anyone? In a relationship, why both partner had to think alike and act alike? Can two people with totally different character be in love and live happily and peacefully together? I think such relationship can exist, if both partners learn how to respect the other half. One of the evils of religions is that even though they all claim they are teaching tolerance, but in fact they all decline the right to exist of any thoughts contradicts to their core believes. Why can’t a good christian fall asleep in church if the priest is boring and he is tired? If God truly don’t want people fall asleep in church, he should simply keep everyone awake with supernatural means. I just couldn’t understand why Pat make such a big fuss about me sleeping in mass?