British Council has started

It has been a long time since I posted my last diary. It has passed almost two months.

Since writing diary is good training for think and write in past form, I restart my English diary from today on.

British Council Again!

I have taken a new class in British Council since today. The class is a part time class held in the evening and two hours class.

I am taking upper intermediate class. Today was the first class of new term(Oct to Dec). I found that it was a bit high level for me because everybody in the class spoke very fluently. Perhaps they don't have any problems to communicate with people in the workplace like me.

I remember that I felt the same feeling when I took full time class in July. As I managed to deal with full time class, I was not disappointed at myself tonight. I became tougher than before.

After the class, I met some teachers who taught me in full time class in front of the school. I asked one of the teacher what time is their working hours and he told me that he worked from 9am to 9pm/10pm today and he works 6 days a week!

I was surprised to hear that the teachers work very hard. ( are there alternative expression 'very hard'? It's very normal expression but I have no another idea)

They must be highly paid! 間違いない！

That's all for today.

Using Fillers

Well...

Um... er...

Actually...

You know / see...

As a matter of fact...

The thing is ...

What I'm trying to say is...

That's a very good question...

Hang on...

To be honest...

It's like ...

Right then...

Now, where should I start...

Let's say...

I wonder...

Now, let me think ...

Linking sentences めも

Anyway...
In the end...
After that...
As a result...
Surprisingly...
Strangely enough...
And you know what?
And then...
As if that wasn't enough...
Even though...
In order to...
As soon as...
While...
At the same time...
Because...
However...
Although...

Sentosa island

I felt asleep on the sofa last night so my wife woke me up , saying 'what are you doing here?'

ah i did it again. I got up with a little regret. hansei

then in order not to sleep again I took a shower and did some work

getting up early on weekend is great!
today we went to Sentosa for the first time.

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easy way or difficult way?

I am involved / engaged a new hassle task again!
it looks very very troublesome and needs a lot of preparation.

now I am undecided whether i take a new english class or not. the class I have tried is three times a week. it's so heavy that I could sacrifice my work ちょっと a bit , but I don't want to sacrifice my work.

if I focus on my work only , I should not take. on the other hand , since my boss allows me to take a class , I should take it! saying myself.

my mind is almost taking a new class.
easy or difficult way.
when something is hard to decide , try to choose unusual, difficult way. / try not to be conservative. my voice inside is saying.

せっかくだから、大変なほうをえらんで、自分に負荷かけてみようかなと考えている。高めの目標にしないと、楽しちゃうからなあ。、。



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Taking notes: abbreviations

e.g. for examples
etc.
i.e. this means/ which means
N.B. please note
re. about
inc. including
P.S. postscript (a msg written at the end of a letter, after the signature)

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arrows, symbols and abbreviations

+ in addition to
imp. important
↑ go up/ rise
X a negative point
↓ go down/ fall
v a positive/ good point
poss possible
temp. temperature
vs. versus/ against (vert ere (past form) latin)
= the same as
info information
yr. year
w/ with

&
>
<
*
' '
(1976)
C20th

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You can also make up your own symbols and abbr. to help you take notes more quickly.
e.g. , @(about/ around), tk (take), lrn (learn), educ (education), b (born).

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e.g.

Taking notes

-Do's

use abbr
symb. & numb
org. your nts
predict what youll hear
listen fr. the main ideas
rewrite yr. note asap

focus on main topic
highlight point

-Don'ts

write earth. in full
panic if you miss sth

That's unreasonable! ムチャブリ

Sometimes my boss asks me unreasonable things. The boss asked me to ask colleagues, whom I've never met, helping me with collecting some data in very short notice. I understand my boss is also asked by higher management as well, but that was unreasonable.

It is ok if I ask someone to ask a favor in short notice only one time.
But my boss asked very similar favor in a row. The other side person could be irritated if we ask similar favor repeatedly in such a short time. Actually I asked a colleague to get the information about something more than 5 times in a half day...

However, unreasonable asking makes me tougher.
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無茶ぶり、というのを英語にしてみようとしたが分からなかったので
unreasonable で表現してみたが正しいのかは自信がない。

Extracts from Longman dictionary.

unreasonable (adjectives)

not fair or not sensible

e.g.
-It is possible for telephone companies to make profit without charging unreasonable rates.
-Some news media have described the government's action as excessive and unreasonable.
-She divorced her husband on the grounds of unreasonable behavior.
-It didn't seem like an unreasonable request.

一番したのやつが無理な依頼、みたいな感じにみえる。

Gave a presentation to ...

Today I had an opportunity to give an presentation to the company president.

The time came suddenly. My boss in department told me to help a senior management to give a presentation to the president. At first, I thought I have to just help him. But when I talked with him over the phone , I realized my job was not helping him, giving a presentation by myself.

That is life !
The good thing for me was that I was able to give a presentation in Japanese because all attendants were Japanese.

The presentation material was not made by me in the first place. So I updated some slides in two hours.

And the result of the presentation was good. I have to appreciate the opportunity like this. And I thought preparing something to present someone is necessary to do good job. efficient people always prepare a lot.

Anyway I found it much easier to give a presentation in Japanese than in English. I've been struggling with speaking English these days so I feel very easy to give a presentation.

Nihon-Go is amazing!






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International friends in British Council

I took a full time class in British Council this month. In British Council's lesson, I got a lot of things, which is not only English knowledge but also friends from all over the world.

Malaysian, Indonesian, Mongolian, France, China, Japanese...

I found that talking to students was more difficult that teachers because they don't read between lines like teachers. And every students spoke with own accents, it was very hard to communicate with each other at first. But gradually we got used to communicate each other.

In the end, we became very close friends and we had a party on Sunday.

We gathered a student's house and had sushi party and enjoyed swimming in the swimming pool. That swimming pool was very big! My elder son enjoyed very much! He said he wanted to go there again. Because the apartment has swimming pool for kids which has small slider but yesterday kids pool was under maintenance! It was very unfortunate.

After that we walked to a Chinese restaurant and had plenty of dinner. The most memorable dish was sea cucumber. I think I ate it for the first time. It was very soft, and mild taste, texture was like jelly. It looked weird but taste was amazing.

We all enjoyed the sushi party, swimming and dinner.

We took the same class for only one month but I feel it was longer than one month. AS I am writing this diary, I realized that that was the feature of school.

Children become close friends immediately because they share the time all day long. I feel nostalsy to my school days.

正直に 腹を立てずに たゆまず励め

鈴木貫太郎氏の言葉。

なんとなく、Wikiで、我が母校（高校）の卒業生をみていたら、終戦時の首相だったという鈴木貫太郎氏の情報にたどり着いた。

氏は、終戦直前に７０歳くらいの高齢で、総理大臣に就任し、戦争を終わらせるように活動した人らしい。

で、Wikiで氏の情報をみていたら、「正直に　腹を立てずに　たゆまず励め」という言葉にたどりついた。

最近、自分のことにイライラしているのと、あせる気持ちもあったり、子供に腹を立てて怒ってしまったりすることもあり、なんか嫌だなぁ俺、と思っていたこともあり、腹を立てずに　と　たゆまず励め、という部分に同感。

簡単だけど、深いことばだなーと思いました。

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Be honest, Don't get angry, Always keep make an effort.

This is the word from Kantaro Suzuki who was the Prime Minister of Japan when WW2 ended.

He was graduate of our high school.

Somehow when I was looking at the wikipedia, I found that word.

These days I feel irritated myself and sometimes I get angry with my son unnecessarily. Somehow I thought I don't like me. So I agree to his word especially 'Be honest' and 'Don't get angry (with something)'.

Very simple, but it's deep word for me.