happylife

An exchange lesson

I'm now taking so called an exchange lesson with my friend in my pilot school. He teaches me English and I teach him Japanese instead. He is a Canadian student pilot with the flight test near at hand. So, he can tell me not only about English but also all about aviation. Plus, he is also trying to take an ATC [Air Traffic Controller] exam. This is a golden opportunity for me because I can simulate the aviation radio communications with a future ATC guy for free! On the other hand, I'm teaching him basic Japanese like how to write Hiragana, how to do daily conversations, and so on. I think this exchange lesson with him is very successful for both of us.

Confusing words

Pilots in command are supposed to read number separately in radio communications. We read for example 2,300 "two three zero zero" instead of "two thousand and three hundred." But some pilots or even tower officers say "two thousand and three hundred" or "twenty three hundred." So there are three ways to read one number. It's very confusing. And moreover, the preposition of "to" makes it much more complex. I heard in today's ground school that once actually occurred an air accident caused by the misunderstanding of pilot who took the tower's instruction "Descend 22,000." for "Descend to 2,000." English is really a explicit language but still has ambiguity.

The wrong number

When I was living in Vancouver I often received a wrong call like, "Hi, room number 101, Mr. Johnson, please." According to my research, my number was ever used by a hotel named Washington, and I found some hotel lists on which my number is printed as the number of Washington Hotel. Of course I claimed to the issuer of the list, and some of them were revised but there still remains old lists and there's no way to revise the personal address books. So I still receive a few calls to Washington every week. For the first months it was annoying matter for me and I sometimes thought about changing my number but didn't do it, and I decided to use this situation for my practicing English conversation. It was most difficult for me to talk on-line because I can't use the body language and I have to rely 100 percents on voices. Owing to this free and at-random practice, I can now reply to this kind of phone call well. "Hello." "Would you make me a reservation for two tonight?" "I'm afraid you have the wrong number. What number are you calling?" "Isn't this 604-xxx-xxx?" "Yes, it is MY number. Please check it again."

The Motorcycle Diaries

It was Tuesday today, and I was a little bit tired of facing toward the laptop. So, I went to Tinseltown to see a movie. The movie I chose was "The Motorcycle Diaries", which is a story based on a real adventure by two Argentine medical students. They traveled around South America on a ragged motorcycle named "Mighty One." They slipped so many times that the motorcycle got broken on their half way. Then they continued the travel by hitch and on foot. It is interesting to see how they grew through their various experience in the travel. And the people they met are all tasty. As I like traveling on a motorcycle, this movie seemed more fascinating. And what I have to say is that this movie is a Spanish film with English subtitles. So, I could understand much more than usual English movies.

Escaping from Chapters

This afternoon, I parked on the road near Chapters booksotre, and payed $2 to the parking machine for one-hour parking. I went into the store, chose some books to read, and sat down on a sofa with them. But, suddenly after sitting down, I felt a strong desire to relieve myself and looked for a washroom. Unfortunately I couldn't find it and my desire was getting stronger and stronger. So I went out of Chapters just like escaping from it, and ran into my room. I was narrowly in time. Anyway, don't you have such experience? I think I often want to go to a washroom in bookstores. In Japanese, this phenomenon is called "Mariko Aoki syndrome". Mariko Aoki was an average house wife in Japan. She sent one day a letter about this phenomenon to a radio program, and her letter was broadcated all around Japan. Temporarily he happened to be famous about this kind of topic. But she didn't want that and hide herself. So now, this name is not known even to Japanese people. I wonder what this phenomenon is called in English. My dictionary does not answer my question.

Voice recorder

This is an IC voice recorder I'm using for practicing listening English. I sometimes record the teacher's voice or conversations with it and listen to them again and again. It is a convenient gadget and some additional functions. If the teacher speaks too fast it is no problem because I can listen to the recorded voice at a lower speed. It can be connected to my PC and save all the voice data permanently in the harddisk. As it can hold more than five-hour voice data, I almost record news headlines on TV or the radio and listen to them repeatedly. I wonder why my listening skill won't improve.

Electronic dictionary

When I was in an ESL school last year, there were eight students from seven countries; one German, one Swiss, one Brazilian, one Mexican, one Chinese, two Korean, and one Japanese. And it was amazing that every student had an electronic dictionary instead of a paper dictionary and I had often heard electronic sounds of them. In the class it was just like an exhibition of electronic dictionaries. One day I asked other students to try their electronic dictionaries. Dictionaries for European languages were simple and cheap, and those for Asian languages were complex and seemed to be difficult to use. As you know Japan is a kingdom of gadgets and the people are strongly interested in learning English. I thought that my dictionary was most advanced because it contains various kinds of dictionaries such as English-Japanese, Japanese-English, English-English, thesaurus, and numerous sample sentences.

There are opinions that an electronic dictionary is not good to remember words because it is too easy to look up words in it. But I can't get back using a paper dictionary because it is more comfortable by far than a paper dictionary. Especially electronic dictionaries of these years in Japan cover whole the contents of paper dictionaries and more than that they have some added value; we can search all the sample sentences in the dictionary which include particular keywords, compare the definitions in different dictionaries, and jump from any word in any dictionary to the definition in other dictionaries.

The Terminal

Yesterday I watched Tom Hanks' new movie 'The Terminal'. This is a story about a poor man who lost his nationality because his country has just been in a coup just before he arrived at the JFK airport. He was obliged to stay in the transit area of the airport. Though he had no valid money and he could not speak English, he managed to live in the ariport. Inspite of some obstructions of the unkind airport director, he gradually got his friends, supporters and even a girl friend of a flight attendant. I think this is a heart-warming comedy which encourages people in adversity.

Two films

Tuesday is a movie day in Vancouver, and we can watch most films at low prices. So yesterday I watched two films: 'Fahrenheit 9/11' by Michael Moore and 'The Notebook'.

Unfortunately I couldn't enjoy '911'. I know Moore is a director who stands against the power and this time he is trying to prevent Bush to be elected again. But I couldn't understand most episodes with my poor English skills. I felt lonliness while watching this movie because everyone in the theater was laughing at the episodes and I couldn't understand them. As the film itself is full of ugly faces of politicians and some cruel scenes, it is boring if you can't understand the episodes.

On the other hand, I enjoyed 'The Notebook'. This is a love story and I'm not interested in this field of movies very much. But I watched it because it was highly rated on a web site and the scene of the big wheel was taken near my apartment. The pictures were very beautiful and the stroy was easy to understand even to me. There were a lot of young girls in the theater and at the end of the movie, quite a few of them were sobbing. I was impressed more with them than the movie itself.

Nonnative English

Canada is a country of immigrants and we can often hear nonnative English here in Vancouver. Last Friday night, I was invited to a dinner at my friend's house. He is Japanese Canadian and his wife is French Canadian. One other Japanese couple who came to Vancouver more than twenty years ago was also invited. So there were five people including me at the table. As the French Canadian lady cannot speak Japanese, the common language among us was English. I was unexpectedly immersed in nonnative English conversation and I felt that nonnative English, especially Japanese English is not bad to improve my English skills because it is easy to listen and understand for me. I could learn how to speak only with very elementary words. If you're learning English and want to improve your conversation skill, it's a good way to talk in English with your friend who speaks the same language as you.