New Year's resolutions (II)

It is a tradition in this time that people make their New Year's resolutions. Unfortunately, it is almost a tradition not to make a real effort to fulfill them. I always liked to keep my word and then I try to make realistic resolutions.
Last year I made my list of resolutions for the first time as an excuse to put a post in this blog. I have been reading it and I have realized that I made them come true.
This year I would like to manage to make my wishes real again, and that wishes are below.

1. Being conservative, I would like to keep all that things that I have got during last year.


2. I would like to continue going to gym, keep going to run, use my bike more often, swimming, etc. I would try to share some of these moments with friends, as far as possible.


3. During next holidays, I would like to travel abroad, most likely to Ireland.


4. I want to continue improving my English level. One of the ways to be able to do it is writing posts in this blog in a regular way. Other way is traveling to countries with English as official language.


5. It would be nice to start learning other foreign language, maybe French.


6. Finally, and most important, it would be amazing if next December 31st I can say: I made it!, I fulfill all my New Year's resolutions.

I hope that your wishes and resolutions will come true and A happy New Year 2010!

Note: During last New Year's Eve I realized that maybe I should add to my list: learn to dance. That is not a priority but I will take into account.

Last day, not apocalypse

Today is an important day for me. I have quit my current job and will start working in other company and other job in the next days. I think that I am a bit sentimental because I look at everything with different eyes. Maybe I will miss it at least a bit.
However, I have an opportunity that I can not refuse and I am sure it will be more challenging and interesting than my current job. I will have to work hard but I will learn a lot and it is a job that I have been preparing for.
I am going to work in a young and small company but with good growth expectations. My future boss has a great interest in research and development, so I believe that we will work with new technologies most part of the time. Perhaps, this is the secret of the success of the company in these times of economic crisis.
Although I will miss people who worked with me along these last years I am excited to start at my new job. It is a new challenge for me and I will try to enjoy facing it.

Cooking

I am good at the kitchen, very good really. I am always ready to eat things that other people cook, I am always helping to empty the freezer and, sometimes, I also wash the dishes. I only have to learn to cook.
I have to admit that my knowledge about cooking is very little. However, I know how to cook delicious Spanish omelette (Tortilla). In this post I am going to explain how I cook that typical Spanish dish.
The ingredients needed are 6 eggs, 5 or 6 medium-sized potatoes, 1 small onion, 1/4 litre of oil and about 20 minutes of your time.
I started peeling potatoes and slicing them thinly. Then I fry the potatoes and chopped onion. While frying potatoes and onions, I beat the eggs in a bowl and season them with some salt. Add some salt to the potatoes and onion and when they are fried enough, I add them to the bowl and mix well. After that I put all the content of the bowl in the frying pan and shake it from time to time in a way that the omelette does not stich to the bottom. When the bottom of the omelette has set you can turn the omelette upside down and after the other side has set too you can
turn the heat off and put the omelette onto a plate. And that is all. Enjoy your meal.
I promise that when I learn how to cook something else, I will explain the recipe here but, I am afraid that it can take a while.

Sport in moderation

Alone in the dark at night 4 or 5 kilometres far from home and thinking that you will never arrive there. I had that feeling yesterday and it was very unpleasant. I was quite tired but the real problem was that my legs was aching a lot and I almost could not walk. My t-shirt was completely full of sweat because of the effort made previously and cold wind was beginning to make me feel a bit frozen. I walked for several hundreds of metres and then I had to stop for a while to try to stretch my legs and avoid the horrible pain but it was completely useless. In the last 300 metres I had to stop three times and put myself against a wall to keep standing up.
The reason that caused all that agony was a "bit" of exercise. I had planned to spend yesterday afternoon watching Spain team playing in European Basketball Championship on TV. Nevertheless, a friend of me propose to go running for a while and we finally spend about 1 hour and 50 minutes running without stopping, and after that we were 5 or 6 kilometres from home. That was the worst part. I was quite well in general but I had a terrible sore leg and I almost could not walk. I was talking with myself trying to encourage me to make an effort and continue because I knew that if I stopped it would be harder to continue again later, and I was getting cold.
Finally, I could get home and inmediately I had a bath in hot water, trying to alleviate my pain and I got it. However, when I try to eat something to recover some energy I threw up all I had eaten but I felt quite well, only tired and I decided to go to bed and rest.
My partner in this crazy adventure suffered a lot to get home too, but he took a different way than me the last kilometres and then we were alone in that hard moments. Anyway, he is thinking about repeating this experience in two or three monts. I am not so sure but, who knows? It is said what does not kill you makes you stronger.
Today I cannot belive that I have suffered so many only walking but it was true, unbelievable but true. Because of that I think that sport can be harmful, unfortunately it is addictive too. So, practice sport in moderation. I will try to do the same.

New ideas

My recent trip to London helped me with my English a lot. I have not learnt a lot of English while I was there. In fact, I learnt only a few vocabulary and some expressions there. However, I gained a lot of confidence in what I have learnt until then on my own. I consider that this is the most important thing I brought back from London in my luggage. Besides, I have increased my desire to learn more and improve my level as much as possible.
In the same way I discovered that I understand quite well written and spoken native English, so I realized that I need to speak more fluently. In order to deal with this fact, I am going to begin to read in loud voice. Anyway, I know that the best way to speak more fluently is talking and having conversation with native speakers. So I am trying to find native english speakers that live near me and that could be interested in making a language exchange. This way, I can help them to improve their skills in Spanish or Galician languange and in exchange they would help me to improve my English.
It is likely that this idea was easier to put in practice in a bigger city than Vigo but I am confident to find somebody interested in the deal.

Summer holidays

It is hard to return to work. This is my second day after summer vacations and I am craving for more holidays. However, I thought that the transition back to work would be worse than it is. Maybe I can't spend too much time without working but I would not bet my money on it.
I spent a great holiday and I believed that I would suffer post-holiday syndrome or something like that but, the truth is that it isn't being so hard back to work again. I think that this is because I got up early in the morning almost every day during holidays and I try to keep doing exercise and eating healthy food (I almost did it).
I tried to write some posts during my spare time but I was a bit lazy to write. My intention was to write about how to plan my trip to London and then about the time I spent there. Unfortunately, the good weather sent me to the beach (so I could tan my skin a bit), to the river and to night parties (to dance or something alike). Moreover, I was chatting with friends a lot of hours during coffee time and at pubs during the night.
The most exciting experience for me this holidays was my trip to London. I was eager to visit this city and I had a good time there. During the time I was in UK I could test my English and I am quite satisfied about the results. I could solve all the situations without problems, even when we lost the return flight and we have to search on the Internet, buy other tickets and take a coach to go to Heathrow from Stansted airport. This experience encourages me to continue learning and improving my English.
This confidence in my English knowledge let me think about planning my next trip. I would like to go to somewhere in Ireland but I don't discard the posibility to go to UK again or even to London. Time will tell.

Looking for alternatives

These last days I have been really busy, and I will be in the same situation for, at least, two or three months. The past two weeks I have no enough time to learn English. I cannot avoid this situation but I do not want to leave English learning aside. Then, I was thinking how to solve the problem and I discovered two new ways to enjoy learning English.
First of all, I decided to download some audio books from the Internet and then I recorded them in CD. So, I can listen to the book while I am driving. And considering that I have to drive for almost two hours every day, I can listen to a lot of English, and enjoy with the story. Now I am listening "Dead man's folly" by Agatha Christie.
Moreover, during the recent Australian Open Final, there was some problems with TV signal in Spain and I decided to watch the game on the Internet, in English, of course. I loved the match and I learnt some tennis vocabulary. Then I think that in the future I will try to watch sport broadcasts in English whenever possible.
Finally, I will try to continue writing in this blog, but I think that it will not be as often as now. In any case, the most important is continue learning, no matter how. And if you know different ways to make English learning enjoyable, please, post a comment and share them. Thanks in advance.

Driving license

I am very happy today. I have just passed the exam to obtain the driving license after 12 years driving. That is awful, you will think. But do not think the worst. I am not telling the whole truth. The fact is that these last days I have read and watched on TV opinions about the results of a survey that suggests that a great percentage of people who have obtained the driving license would not pass the exam today. I think this fact can explain a lot of the accidents that happen on the road every year and recklessness that some drivers show when they are behind the wheel.
I consider myself a cautious and quite good driver. In fact, I have had only one minor accident (not people wounded, only a little hit in the other car) during the last 12 years. But I hope that this statistic continues for a long time.
Despite the facts, I wanted to try to pass the exam again and I did it. I found a link to a recent test in an online newspaper and I get 25 out of 30 questions correctly answered, that is an 83%. That is fine because I was thinking to try the motorcycle exam in the near future and now I am more confident to get it at first try.
However, I think that the most important on the road is to be calm, use your head and do not drive too fast. Anyway, I would recommend you to try to pass the exam again, just for fun. I show you a summary of traffic signals explained on the photograph and I hope it can help you.
Take care on the road.

Hard work

I was reading a newspaper on the Internet a few days ago. It is something that I usually do, but the story that I read then was not so usual. The article told about a job offer. It would be nothing extraordinary if the job offer were normal.
The fact is that in Australia, in the state of Queensland, there have been a reduction in tourists visiting the region in the last year. Then, they have created a campaign to promote tourism in the area. This campaign consists in paying a person to live as a tourist during 6 months in Hamilton Island and visiting the surroundings. The applicant who gets the job will have to swim, snorkel in the reefs, meet new people, enjoy as much as possible in this paradise and then put down in words in a blog his experiences every week.
It is hard to believe but it is true, paradise exists on earth. Everybody can apply for the job. Apparently, the requirements are good knowledge in written and spoken English, good communication skills and to be willing to live new experiences. It does not sound bad. If you are interested in the offer or do not believe me, visit http://www.islandreefjob.com, please. I am sure that you will agree with me that this kind of job offers are not common.

Thinking English

In this post I am going to write about some resources available on the Internet that can be very useful in English learning. In fact, I use some of them when I write in this blog. Sometimes, they are helpful to solve my doubts and sometimes help me to find a bit of inspiration.
First of all, I use some online dictionaries. I will give you the addresses of three of them that I consider more interesting but there are a lot on the Internet.
The Free Online Dictionary is an online application where you can search for words, idioms, acronims, etc. It lists a lot of definitions of each word you are looking for, and you can hear word's pronunciation too.
The Urban Dictionary is useful when you are searching for the meaning of words that are used in the streets and probably are not referenced in standard dictionaries.
Finally, Cambridge Online Dictionary
is a very complete dictionary online and also you can download it and use it in your mobile phone. Moreover, it is supported by Cambridge University.
A translator can be useful sometimes as well. I usually use two that you can find using Google search engine. These are El Mundo's translator and Google translator. Both of them do the same but sometimes you can get slightly different results from one to the other.
I also read English in newspapers, magazines and web pages all over the web. You can try the online version of The Times and Sunday Times. If you are interested in politics, finances and business, then you should visit The Financial Times or The Economist. However, if you prefer magazines you can follow this link and you will get a list of magazines that you can read on the Internet.
If you want to listen to English speaking people you can try with podcast. If you search in Google "English podcast" like I did, you will get millions of results. I will recommend you one and if you do not like it or if you want more, then visit Google. You can visit China232 and listen to some of the podcasts. I hope you find them interesting.
I have more interesting links to share but it is enough for this post, I will write about my "Favourites list" again in the future. Furthermore, I am adding new resources frequently.
Enjoy this links and make your own searches. Surf the web!

Why grapes?

This is the first post of the new year and I have been doing some investigation about the tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight in 31st December every year.
I have discovered that this tradition was started in Murcia, a region in the southern part of Spain. Apparently, the year 1909 was a year of an excellent harvest of grape. In this situation, the vine growers invented the tradition "The twelve grapes of luck". It consists in eating twelve grapes in the first twuelve seconds of the new year, one with every strike of the Puerta del Sol tower clock, and you should ask for a desire while eating each grape. It is said that if you eat all the grapes in time you will have a year full of prosperity.
This tradition has been adopted by other countries all over the world, mainly Latin American countries and other people related with Spanish culture, like Philippines (that country was part of the Spanish Empire). What is more, if the tradition started in 1909, then this year turned 100. So it is a centenary tradition.
I ate my twelve grapes in time, so I hope that this will be a good year.

Welcome 2009!