Thinking in the Language You're Writing

Perhaps the most useful information I've extracted from U of T's career manual titled "keys to your future: a powerful resume and cover letter" (2006):

Each language has its own internal logic and structure. What is correct in one may not be necessarily correct in another. Avoid unnecessary errors by thinking in the same language in which you are writing.

I have had errors that are direct results of failing to follow the above advise (in addition to my struggle with my ongoing struggle with prepositions). I am fairly accustomed to thinking in English by now. In fact, I've been doing that since my early days of my Canadian life. But I still find myself falling into the trap of making English statements that can only be understood if one also understood Tigrigna. This may even be apparent in some of my writings on this blog.

I noticed during my stay in Quebec that, even though many of the tourist information materials there were printed in French and English, the English part was not readily understandable. Here is a classic example from a French-langauge offering university in Quebec:

Our summer intensive 3 and 5 - week programs begin in July. Those programs are offered to 18-year old, and older, and are opened to university students, teachers, business people, retired people or anyone wishing to improve his-her proficiency in French. Since all levels are offered from real beginners to very advanced, you will find a class corresponding to your proficiency in French.

For a more complete learning of French, in addition to the 20 hours spent in classroom every week, you will participate in a wide variety of socio-cultural activities. There are also tourist activities on weekends which will be offered on an optional basis.

Besides classes and extracurricular activities, you will live in French with a francophone host family (or on campus at the university residence) where you will experiment some aspects about the culture of Quebec. This will make your immersion a total immersion.

I think how you communicate in one language is a lot more than in what language you "think." A friend, who was at that time new to Canada, once told me that his native English speaking classmates remarked that he "speaks as if he is reading a book." We agreed then that it was because he speaks as if reading a book because he learned English through reading books. He comes from a school system that emphasizes a lot on the grammar and structure of English, but does little to encourage spoking in English. Missing from his (and my) vocabulary were the words and phrases that are the most often used in everyday Canadian English (I remember realizing how important it was to practice common words and phrases in my Early Canadian days, when I had emails to my cousins with as many of the new words as possible -- one email had most of its sentences ending with "and stuff", another was littered with "you guys".)

Paper Dollars

It was a rip-off.

That's how it felt when I paid what I always have paid for my grande (yes, I upgraded from tall) Starbucks coffee. I paid in U.S. dollars. The adjusted price was the two dollar bills plus 24 Canadian cents. It is not that I paid more for it that makes a rip-off (the regular Canadian dollar price is $2.10), but the fact that I paid in PAPER bills. The money felt to have had more value than, say, when I would have to pay using a two dollar Canadian coin plus a dime. Two (or even ten, depending how much change I happen to carry) COINS versus two dollar BILLS makes a huge difference on how I perceived my expense.

Well, that's what I heard is partly why there doesn't exist Canadian dollar bills; just coins.

Animals, Water and Nature

Citizenship

I don't remember attending a major political event, except at very local levels like campus student bodies, or speakers on campus. In the just finalized federal elections, I was involved with Elections Canada as an employee.

More than being a very shot term employment opportunity, what I've found is that the experience of getting involved has given me a sense of citizenship that no other events have.

It is common for politicians in campaigns or speeches to claim how being in campaign tours had brought them close to the voters - that they have seen and heard voters and have come to understand their concerns first hand.

There may be some truth to it, aside from it being a campaign cliche...

What impressed me during the training day was the diversity of the trainees. Our age ranged from a girl who I would say is just out of high school or even still in high school, to a man who must have voted in the last seven elections. I don't know if that were the shared sense of responsibility in understanding well and following the electoral rules or the interactive nature of the training that gives one a sense of citizenship for being part of the process.

On election day, I had a glimpse of what politicians may call the "fabric of the society." The voter turnout (which I thought was descent, given the number of polls in our location), the order of the process and great discipline that everyone involved showed. There were the elderly voter, the first time voter who needed to register just because she turned 18 last week, the pregnant woman, the dad with twins in a stroller, the businesspeople who just got out of work and came in rushing to vote before it was over, and there was the lady in a wheelchair who knew exactly which station she was going to vote in. From my observation, it was by no means a fully representative voting crowd (college-aged young people were not as visible, for example), but it were representative enough for one to see what the society is made of.

And then there was the voter who drove back to her house and dutifully brought her proper identity, and the other voter who was very insistent in voting and having her voice heard and made two trips to another voting location that the records showed she was eligible to vote in, only to come back to our location because she "lives next door."

It is easy enough to see that outside this particular event, these people are businesspeople, dads, moms, doctors, retirees, nurses, caretakers, customer servers, TV show hosts, and so on. But on this particular day, they were all citizens who wanted to make their voice heard, who wanted to make sure that the voting process was fair and error free, and that the rules were followed and respected -- the latter often enforced passionately and forcefully.

What I've been up to

Inside the Mind of a Third-Grader

I asked a grade 3 student to draw anything that comes to his mind so we can describe it in Tigrigna, as part of a Tigrigna lesson; and this is what he got:

Tech Ease

Why are online newspaper articles on current events easier to read than, say, an academic article that deals with even a slight deviance from the area of the reader's interest? Well, some of the answers are as obvious as pointing out the fact that news articles and analysis are going to be readable simply because they are intended for an average consumer with the most standard and comprehensible language possible. But other less obvious answers may be that these online articles are presented in the most readable format. My attention was brought into this thought by a function on Safari browser that I just discovered. It is a "reader" function located at the rightmost side of the URL box. I was about to give up reading an article until I discovered this function and changed my mind and went back to reading it from the first paragraph.

Seeing is believing:

Here is a shot of the article in its original form:




And here is the same page after reader is activated:

Hooked

My eShelf

I never thought I'd find myself in another phase of awe after I transitioned from a "basic" phone to a Blackberry last year. Back then, playing around with the smartphone was such a novel and exciting experience. The excitement wasn't a fleeting one, like what I usually find is the case with new technology. It was just another level from which I didn't see myself turning back.

And then there's the iPhone. I'm as excited about this phone as I was for the Blackberry, which is to say that I'm very very curious to know how thin thing operates and what I can do with it. It turns out that I can do A LOT. I've had the machine for only a day and half, and I've to admit that I spent half of that time with it. Actively exploring.

It appears as if there is nothing this machine won't do that a regular computer can't (especially given that I've been using the computer mostly for internet browsing lately, and so this is not a mere exaggeration).

So far, I would say I've explored half of the functionality I need to know to effectively use the iPhone. Given the amount of stuff that I can do with it, I won't be surprised to find out later that I've overestimated what I know of its workings.

I'll have more to say about the phone -- if we should call it one -- soon, but this is what I've spent the last couple of hours doing: Filling my eShelf with books. Before I could realize my dream of having to have a great shelf-full of great books, I've virtually built one on this tiny machine and stacked it with books (picture above). iBooks is an app that allows you to purchase, download, and organize eBooks on the iPhone. If the size of the screen is going to make it convenient enough to read these volumes of books that I've already shelved is to be seen, but for now, I've a stack of books that I'll be carrying in my pocket everywhere I go.