A: So how’s the new place so far?

B: It’s great. We just need to buy some curtains for the living room. The sun is so bright in the morning that I can’t seem to sleep in.

A: You should consider buying them on one of those auction websites. I found my curtains on Rakuten and they were half the price of the ones in the stores. You should really try it. It’s not hard at all, and I’m pretty happy with the ones I have now. 

B: Thanks. I might try it, even though I don’t know anything about auction sites. How do you know if the site is legitimate or not? I’ve read some pretty bad stories about sites that try to scam you. 

A: That’s true. There are some questionable sellers out there. But you can’t go wrong with big names like Amazon or Rakuten. They’re pretty reliable.

New Apartment

2 summers ago, I went to Akita. I spent one of my days biking along the coastline of Oga Peninsula. Have you ever been there? If you bike 30 minutes along the coast from Oga Station, you can see The Godzilla Rock. It’s pretty cool. 


Godzilla

Have you ever seen these manner posters in the subway stations. These posters show different kinds of bad behaviour. I’m pretty sure everyone has seen someone on the train do something like this. I personally don’t like the people who sit down and put their bags on the seat beside them. I always try to sit there anyways to get them to move their bags. How about you? Which one annoys you the most?

Manners

4 years ago, I went "hiking" while at an international camp close to Mt. fuji. I don't think you could really call it hiking, though. It was more like climbing. The stairs were so steep. I didn't think I was going to make it to the top. At one point, my friend and I decided it would be better to reach the top of the stairs as fast as we could. So we raced each other to the top. When we reached the top of the stairs, we collapsed. Sadly, that was only a fourth of the way to the top of the mountain. 

Hiking

There's a great magazine that lists events in New York called Time Out New York. It's really great for finding out what's going on in the city right now. In March they started printing Time Out Tokyo. There is already a website for it and it's great. I think it's good to check the latest listings in Japanese and in English. And they have all sorts of listings, art, music, food, and things like that. 

www.timeout.jp/en/tokyo

Time Out Tokyo

Learn how to describe yourself in English.

How to Describe Your Personality in English

A podcast where you can hear real English conversations between two native English speakers from the United States.  Get the practice exercises and transcripts at www.bonafideenglishpodcast.com

Episode 5 - Career Changes

Have you too noticed that the best things can't be planned or added to a vision board? My thoughts.

TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone, and welcome to Elsewhere with G. My name is Guyomar, and today I’m going to talk to you about relinquishing goals. I grew up in a very goal-oriented household. My parents had enormous faith in the power of setting goals. They thought that if you defined your goal, outlined the steps needed to get there, wrote it all down, made a timeline and stuck to the plan, you’d get there. You’d achieve what you wanted.

They thought that nothing was impossible, with persistence, with perseverance, and with time. I believe this for a long time, and indeed, setting goals seems to work for relatively simple tasks. Simple tasks that can become habits. I can train myself to wake up at a certain time. However, when it comes to things that are more abstract, like writing a book, writing a dissertation, or making discovering, scientific discoveries, I think goal setting has its limits. 

I think it’s far more important to be driven by your curiosity and your values, to live, to act in a way that’s consistent with your values, the thing that interests you the most and about which you have questions, or something you want to change, something you want to contribute – and when it comes to this, I think it’s very hard to set goals. I’ve been reading many anecdotes recently about how people acquire languages, about some of the greatest discoveries that changed all of our lives for the better, and the common thread is that these people didn’t set out with the intention of inventing something.

They didn’t set out with the intention of speaking X language in a certain amount of time at a fully proficient level. They were interested. They loved something and spent a lot of their time with that thing, and it just happened to be in another language. There are some very compelling stories about people who learned Mandarin Chinese just watching TV, just watching series that they found interesting without formal instruction, and they managed to reach an excellent level. There are stories about people who made discoveries that you really can’t predict. You can’t predict where your curiosity will lead you, but truly exceptional results require behavior that’s based in values, not goals.

And goals, I find, are usually self-serving. They’re about trying to bolster our own image, about trying to create a perfect version of ourselves, and achieve things for ourselves, to be admired, to be given privileges, to be considered the best or to be considered special, whereas when it comes to the things that we value, when it comes to the things that interest us and the importance of these, it’s not about trying to get things for ourselves. It’s about following a passion, to use a cliché, but I can’t think of a better way to put it right. In a way, it’s about not caring about the result. It’s about relinquishing the goal and trusting that your intuition, that your sincere interest, that your loyalty to the subject will lead somewhere good. But you’re not fixated on the result.

So, that’s where I wanted to go today.  I wanted to talk about relinquishing the idea of a destination, of a place at which to arrive, of relinquishing the image of ourselves that we want to perfect, because I think that the really brilliant successes happen when we remove ourselves and our petty goals from the picture, when the subject is most important, and not our ambitions.

Anyway, that’s all that I have to say today, and I’ll see you in the next one. Have a wonderful week. Bye!

Relinquishing the dream (click here for the transcript)

Being cynical about holidays and celebrations has become popular, but here's why everyone needs symbolic days of celebration and reflection.

TRANSCRIPT
 Hello everyone, and welcome to Elsewhere with G. My name is Guyomar, and today I’d like to take you back to 2010, to the 31st of December 2010 (in fact, it was 2006, I made a mistake). This was the first time that I missed New Year celebrations with my family. Every year, we did something special. We had a special dinner that my mum had made, that she’d spent all day preparing. It was different every year, but it was delicious. We also set off fireworks in the backyard, played music, drank champagne – it was a special time, and it was one of the few times that the whole family – my parents, my brother and I – sat down to together for dinner, and spent time just chatting around the table, spent time in each other’s company.

I missed this because I was upstairs, in my dad’s office, where the computer was. At the time, I didn’t have my own personal computer. It was a shared family computer. So I was upstairs, working at the computer, writing my essays to submit the applications, the college applications that were due on January 1st. As usual, I’d left them until the last minute. Well, I’d left the essays until the last minute. I’d prepared everything else. I’d sent off the necessary documents – my transcript, letters of recommendation – but the essays, I’d struggled with, and I worked on them that night. And I remember my mum kept calling me to come down to eat something. My dad also asked me what was going on.

They understood that I had to work on my application, but it’s one of the things that I really regret. I remember coming down after they’d rung in the New Year. I ate alone. My mum had saved me a plate, of course. But yeah, I’d missed the togetherness. I’d missed setting off the first fireworks, kissing each other as the New Year came in. I wish I’d given more importance to celebrating that holiday. And since New Year is just around the corner, since it’s the festive season, I thought I’d talk about that today. I know that these days it’s popular to be cynical about the holidays, about Christmas, about New Year, about festivities. There’s a lot of talk about consumerism and the folly of celebrating some randomly chosen day. I understand all that. I understand that perspective, but I also think that we need symbolic days.

We need days that are symbolic to us, that force us to reflect on what we’ve done in recent months and think about what we’d like to do. I don’t think that we can manage thinking about long, indefinite stretches of time. I think we need markers, like these symbolic markers of the passage of time to reflect on our lives and our direction. Today, I had a Russian lesson, and my teacher had chosen the theme of holidays, of New Year.  She shared a very interesting quote with me in the lesson she’d prepared: «Как встретишь новый год, так его и проведешь.» As you start the new year, as you meet the new year, so you will spend it. So, what you do, the way you are, your attitude on the first day of the year will set tone for the rest of it. I think it's…maybe it's a little  supersitious, but I find it, I don't think… 

I think it maybe a bit superstitious, but I also think it's true that where we are mentally at the start – the symbolic start – really matters. It sets the tone for everything else that we'll do. So if there are things you'd like to change, if there are things you'd like to do, if there's a way in which you envision the time ahead, maybe start now. You know, maybe start doing those things now, and organize yourself to the best of your ability, so that on New Year's Eve, as you ring in the New Year, everything's in place to create the conditions for you to continue along that path. That's what I'm planning to do, anyway. I'm going to try to put some things in order, and yeah, get ready for the rest of it.

For the rest, comment below!

Symbolic dates and the shape of days to come (click here for the transcript)

More musings and stories from today's news, in Bratislava and the UK...

The English Native Podcast: Episode 6

A podcast where you can hear real English conversations between two native English speakers from the United States.  Get the transcripts and practice exercises at www.bonafideenglishpodcast.com

Do you already speak English but want to improve your comprehension of the spoken language and fluency? Have you always loved good books, compelling narratives, and deep conversations? Then, you're in the right place. Here, I'll tell you stories, real stories from my own life, from those of friends, and even from the world of fiction, in clear, slightly simplified English. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad or strange, the stories will always be memorable. My goal is to help you acquire English and enjoy the process, by providing you with compelling "comprehensible input." Ideally, you'll want to spend more time with the language because listening to these stories will bring you pleasure.

Real English

Jabble英会話スクール

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