Archive for March, 2010

After years and years of  educating ourselves in schools, and later colleges or universities, I believe many of us would have heaps of textbooks collecting on the shelves or store rooms.

Some people may prefer to just donate them, while others may find it better to sell them off and with the money they can buy new books. Talk about recycling.

If you are not into selling on ebay or amazon, here is another place online where you can sell textbooks or any other books that you would like to rid off. Visit sellbackyourbook.com. They even offer to pay for the shipping, on certain conditions of course. Find out more about how and what type of books they accept on their website.

Being a SAHM has its advantages and disadvantages. One main advantage is that you are a little bit more flexible when it comes to planning your day. But with that, there may be a little disadvantage too. You may digress a little from what you need to do. Well, at least for me. So for some days now I have implemented a new regimen in my daily life – write down a to do list.  I may not accomplish all in a day, but at least I can track down the things that I do everyday and the list reminds myself not to waste too much time on things that aren’t on the list.

My to do list for today:

• Learn and memorize 5 kanji characters.
• Post a package to friend.
• Complete my Japanese language homework.
• Look for job vacancies and submit my resume.
• Submit my sites to a free web directory
• Clean up the small store cabinet.
• Update my blogs.
• Re-organize my desk, drawers and shelves.

Having a to-do list is a good way to keep myself productive and avoid procrastinating. Further, I feel a lot better too seeing what I’ve achieved in a day.

Although I’ve started learning kanji some months ago, I must admit, I slacked. But with the regular Japanese classes that I am attending, I started doing kanji again. I have the kanji & kana revised edition by Hadamitzky & Spahn, but it was a bit too boring, a good reference book though, but boring for me. Cause all I did was just writing the characters down without using them in context. So I went and borrowed a book at a Japanese library here in my city.  The book, “Write now! Kanji for beginners.” Now this book is different.

The book introduces you to 323 kanji characters which includes those that are tested in JLPT level 4 & 3. It is divided into chapters and each chapter there are about a dozen or so kanjis.  They would first start introducing the characters with the history or the development of each character i.e from pictographs to the current character form. I think this way it sticks better in your memory. At the end of every chapter there will be tests or exercises where you can practice the kanjis.  Practically using them in contexts of everyday words that you use in Japanese.

For a preview of this book you can check it on google book here.

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My husband and I are nomads. We don’t stay in one place for too long. The longest period we’ve lived in a house was 3 years. Again this year or the most next year, we may be somewhere else. That too won’t be the last time we’d move I suppose. We are not so unique I know, some people I know love to stay in different countries. For us we just have enough but we can’t help but move until we’ve come to the place where we’d tell ourselves this is the place for us to settle for life. Currently we are looking forward to buy a car big enough to put more things in just in case. That has taken some of our time. Not to mention later we’d need to look for cheap auto insurance.

Anyways, we have started to scrounge for information from the internet, books and people about our move again.  I’m having mixed feelings about it. It’s exciting, and scary at the same time. At least when you gather enough information, I suppose it provides you a little calmness to know what may be useful to know.

It’s time to start another savings fund for another thing that I need to have. A Japanese-English electronic dictionary. I realized that I need one while I was doing my homework last evening. I have a beginner’s oxford Japanese/English dictionary and I may need to buy an advance or better one later, so instead of getting another paper dictionary, perhaps it is better to just get an electronic one that would save me time from having to flip through the pages to find a definition – which proves to take a lot of time.

I’d like to have a Sharp Papyrus pw-am700 in red.

Just like getting my camera or any other new gadget, if it is something that cost more than 100 dollars, instead of just going out there and buy it, I’d rather save for it and not use up my savings for other things. At least it would give me time to rethink or reconsider.

It is a long way to go at the rate I’m saving. Well, it is in a way on purpose since I still can use the dictionary that I have currently. And I’m sure by the time I need to upgrade to a better dictionary, I would already have enough saved.

Maybe I should save up more on the household budget to help the ticker reach its goal quicker- use up all the promotional hand sanitizers, soaps (from hotels ), cut down on weekly chocolates and chips, etc.

I go tutoring twice a week. Today is tutoring day.  Since I am bilingual, I am teaching the kid 2 languages. Hence, the twice a week tutorial. Teaching isn’t all fun. There are good days when he actually wants to listen and do what you ask him to do. But there are also bad days when you simply have to lecture and raise your voice just to make him write down 2 words. On days when the weather is warm and nice, we’d even have our lessons outdoor in the garden. They have this nice koi fish pond complete with a pond skimmer to keep the pond nice and clean. However, since it is still cold, we have lessons indoor.

Although I feel like staying home and just read or study Japanese, I do look forward to tutor. Seeing how well your students do in their studies, keeps you motivated.

Young children sure do love to imitate what adults do. They love to play pretend games. I can still remember how I love to play house with my friends. Now, my young daughter loves to pretend making coffee or cook something for me. And sometimes we would even play shop together. For now we would play using real money and some items we find around the house as merchandise.

So now I’ve decided to get her a toy cash register. I have to say even I myself enjoy play shop with a cash register. Even though it is just a toy one.The cash register is simple – no Epson tm-t88iv – but it provided us hours of fun.

As a child I never really like dolls or play with dolls. Even now as a mother, I even prefer my daughter to play pretend games like this rather than dressing up dolls. I think she learns more this way. She practice counting the money, learn about what having money means, etc.

I just wonder when can I be the shopkeeper sometimes.

I went to the first Japanese class last Friday. One of the few things that we did was ‘Japanese numbers’. I can count in Japanese but somehow , just like learning any other new language, it takes time to be able to connect visually with what you know. For example when I look at the number 9, in my mind instead of the Japanese ‘kyu’ I’d think of  ‘nine’ and I have to translate it to Japanese ‘kyu’. So it takes a few seconds to realize what it is in Japanese,the number that I’m looking at. It would take a little bit longer to connect visually when I hear the numbers said by native Japanese.

So we had an audio lesson where we have to listen to a couple of Japanese speakers say some numbers (big digits) and we have to write down what we heard. It was tough. So the entire week I have been doing a little Japanese number drill. Everytime I go out and see numbers on car plates, billboards, posters etc, I’d recite the numbers in Japanese as fast as I could. I realize it takes me 0.05 seconds to recognize 6 as ‘roku’, 7 as ‘nana’, 4 as ‘yon’ and 9 as ‘kyu’. The rest of the digits are easier. With this little practice I think I am a little better at saying the numbers quiker when I see them. But I’m still slow at recognizing numbers when I hear them.For the listening problem, I am using Pimsleur Japanese audio lessons to help me a little with that. Not easy, but with practice I’m sure I can go over this ‘bump’ somehow.