dimarts, 23 de novembre del 2010

Oral presentation: The Powerpoint

dilluns, 22 de novembre del 2010

Podcast - Joke

I hope you liked it when I told it in class. :)


Comment on people's blogs


The different comments im willing to write to different people's blogs are here, put together. I hope you anjoy them.


First, I'd like to make a little comment on Sergi's post about Asterium and about it's name. I actually think the name is well thought, because it shows that they believe you can make good music without the most expensive equipment, without record companies, just being mid-class people and some good will. And musical taste, of course! As I've always liked cultures from many years ago, I also like the linking to the ancient Rome. Very well done.

To Adrian's post about the airplane-news I'd like to answer his question, first. Actually, I almost never watch TV-news and I think it's because, as you said, you only see bad things happen in the world. As I'm a sensitive person and I'm already stressed I don't want to get even more depressed at the moment.
Talking about the airplanes you said, I think you're right: thousands of passengers would be danger if there wasn't done anything. Of course it means a loss of money for the companies, but safety of all the people is more important than money. At least that's what I think.

Melissa's post about parties also caught my attention. I agree with her that there are many other ways of having fun then drinking alcohol and taking drugs, so I don't understand either why our generation is getting so addicted to it. But I must say that it's not so easy anymore to control your children because there are so many teenagers who do it that there could always be one or two between your son or daughter's friends who takes drugs or drinks alcohol. You can't force them to stay at home always. So I think the only way to prevent your children from getting addicted to alcohol and drugs is education. We need to tell them what are the riscs and how we can avoid them, what the consequences could be.. From that point on, teenagers should be able to decide not to drink too much and not to take drugs.

Discussion essay

Computers have made the world a better place. Discuss.

Computers have brought a big revolution to our world. But was it really good for us?

The first thing many people, specially parents, think about when talking about computers are game-addicted teenagers and children.

However, computers give us a whole lot of tools to make working and studying easier, such as writing programmes, video and photo editors... One of the key points of digital working is thatyou can edit your work over and over again, as long as you like. But the real revolution came with the internet. It opens the door to an enormous amount of information and knowledge, so it makes our life even easier. On the internet you can find everything from the latest news to cooking recipes.

In conclusion, I think that computers and internet have made our world a better and easier place to live. they make working and communication easier, but we must be careful not to let them control us and isolate us from our friends.

My oral presentation



The transcription:

Good morning everybody, today Adrià and me will explain you about the topic of humour, more concrete, American sitcoms. So, does anybody know what sitcoms are? No? Don't worry, I'll explain you. (Question: What does sitcom mean?) That's what I'm going to explain now.
So, sitcom means situation comedy. It features characters in common environments like their home, working place, sometimes cafés or something like that. It's normally in TV series and the different episodes have an ongoing storyline, so they are linked together. Also the end of each episodes tends to put the characters in the same situation they were at the beginning, so normally there are conflicts during an episode but they are solved and so it's like a circle. It always ends where it started. There are many jokes, of course as they are humour series, and there are usually called running gags, jokes that are started sometimes at the start of the series and are repeated afterwards more times. Now were are going to explain you some different kinds, but before I want to ask you a question: So, now that you know what they are, do you know any sitcoms? In fact, they have already explained one of the series we are going to explain now. So we're going to start with one of the four we are going to explain, Adrià will start with How I met your mother.

(Adrià)

So, going on, we have The King of Queens. I don't know if it's very well known here, but I knew it when I was small and I liked it very much, so I decided to explain it. It is about a, well, not so typical American pair, Dough and Carrie. They share their home with Carries father Arthur. Dough works as a delivery driver and Carrie as a secretary. Arthur is a bit difficult so they usually get in some difficult situations, until a point when the couple decides to hire a dog walker to go for a walk with the dogs and with her father. It's also funny sometimes because Dough is very clumsy sometimes, as you will see in the video.

(Adrià)

And, finally, we have Scrubs. This series focusses on the point of view of it's main character, Dr. John Michael Dorian, also called JD, the short form, and his friends working at Sacred Heart Hospital after their university studies. In every episode, JD introduces the story and then it's told through the point of view of the other characters. And there are also many running gags, for example the Janitor, you're going to see in the video. JD is also, like the guy from King of Queens, a bit clumsy. And there are also sometimes unexpected situations or dialogues you don't expect at all. Ok, you're going to see some funny moments in the video, like a little best of.

(Video)

Allright, that was our little presentation about American sitcoms. I hope you liked the presentation and the videos. And I don't know if there are any questions? No? Then that's it.

-----

Here's my self-evaluation:

In Adrià's and my oral presentation, we used a Powerpoint with videos and some images. The powerpoint was very visual and rellevant to the topic because It shows examples of sitcoms, the topic we explained. It supported the presentation because it distracted people a bit and so I was a little bit less nervous. The timing of our presentation was also ok, about 10 minutes.

I tried to look at thie audience most of the time, but I ended up looking at the Powerpoint or Sònia sometimes. I read occasionally from my notes, when I get lost. Afortunately, is wasn't too many times, I think. I do some gestures, but they could have been more creative. But in general, I think in these points I got better than last year. I organised our ideas from general to particular things, so I started by explaining sitcoms in general and then we explained 4 examples of them. I think I used some discourse markers, but it could have been more.

I think I introduced some new information to our audience, explaining them sitcoms in general, because I think there are series they watch and they didn't know they were actually sitcoms. Our information was clear, but I don't really know if it could have been more detailed when we explained every sitcom. The general information about sitcoms is from the internet, but the information about every series is our own, only helped sometimes by a source (also internet). We watch the series, so we know what they are about.

My grammar was generally correct, I just messed up one or two times when I got confused. I could have used some synonyms more, for example for 'clumsy'. But despite that, my vocabulary was also OK, I think. I used sentence linkers like so (I actually use it a lot), as well as pause fillers: well, yeah, ok..

I generally knew how to pronounce the words I said (I always try to avoid using words I can't pronounce), I just got confused with the name of the main character from The King of Queens, Dough. I didn't check the pronunciation because I didn't use words I didn't know before. I tried to change my tone of voice sometimes to keep the attention, but in the video it doesn't come out much, so I don't know if I succeeded in that point. I had some breaks in my presentation, but I think they weren't so bad so people had time to think about what I had said before.

For my next presentation, I think I should improve again my body language and eye contact with the audience. And again, I should try to get more synonyms and control my nerves. But in general, I think our presentation was quite good, so I think a 8 would be my mark.

About my visit to the "Salón del Manga"

Last month I went to a manga convention in Barcelona with some friends. I'd like to tell you about these awesome experience so I decided to write a post.

I got up early on Saturday, the 30th October, to be ready until 7:30 in the morning when Africa's father would pick me up. At first, I put on my simple, but in some way cute costume: a fuzzy pullover, black leggins and a skirt, a collar with a little bell and my self-made cat ears. Then I put on my makeup. Then it was almost time so I got to wait for the car.

After picking me up, Africa's father went to pick up her cousin, Wijan, and a friend, Idoya. When the group was complete, we set off to Barcelona. During the journey we were so excited we were only talking about what we wanted to do and what we wanted to look for to buy.


As we arrived there, we saw a HUGE line of people waiting to get inside, but we already hat our tickets to got inside directly. The first impression was amazing: everywhere where people dressed up as an anime, manga or video game character. So we started to look around and I found plushies of some characters I really love. We took tons of photos with people. There were also rooms with expositions and a gaming room to rest and play some famous video games with other people. It was a shame that at 3 o'clock we had to get back home already. But we're already planning to dress up as a group next year and I'm excited to see what's going to happen!

I wanted to show you a photo of Wijan and a guy who dressed up as the same character than he did. the other photo is with the plushies I brought home.

the welcome Mail

My dreams and goals

Everyone around me seems to have very special dreams and goals for life, but I’m not really the same. I’m not sure what I want to do with my life yet. But let’s explain first my short-time goals. I want to finish batxillerat with good marks and I want to get better in Maths again. To achieve that goals I’ll work hard, do my homework and focus on my studies.

After batxillerat and if I can, I want to take a year off. I’m saving money to travel around, specially to visit some friends in Germany and Holland. After that, I always wanted to go to university, though I don’t know yet what to study. Maybe I’ll become an architect. I’m working hard in my technical drawing lessons at high school, so maybe I can do it. My only problem with becoming an architect is that I haven’t studiet Physics in batxillerat, so maybe it can get a problem. But maybe I can do something about it in my gap year.

Another way I would like to go is languages and tourism. As a German living in Catalonia I already speak 4 languages (German, English, Spanish and Catalan, though my English is still improvable) and I’d love to learn one or two more. A special wish of mine is to learn a eastern language like Chinese or Japanese, but that’s very difficult! Maybe I can do it if I work hard, but not now. I’d like to learn dutch, too, which would most likely be a lot easier by now. I’ll see what I do.

Maybe I’ll got to Germany to study, because I think I need a change and I want to see what life on my own is. If I work hard to get good marks and talk to friends for a cheap place to say, maybe I can do it. I’m quite optimistic about it because I’ve already talked to some of them and their parents would let me stay there. I’m excited about my further life!

Book: Sherilyn Kenyon's Unleash the nightr


Unleash the Night is about a girl, Marguerite Godeau, who meets Wren, the silent waiter of a bar called Sanctuary. The attraction between both starts right away, but what Marguerite doesn't know is that in her world are creatures, half animal, half human, and that Wren is one of them. She gets into dangerous situations, but her love for Wren helps her to get through.
What I like the most about this book is the depth of the characters and the moving story. As you are reading the book, you can really feel with the characters from the first page until the end of the book. There is action, love, nearly everything I'm personally looking for in books. Some characters give actually some quite funny moments and some spice to the story. Sherrilyn Kanyon's writing is full of sarcasm and her heros are some kind of the men women dream of.
Unleash the Night is a book of the Dark-hunter series from the author. Having read this book, I would definitely recommend it excepting for people who don't like sex-scenes, because there are a couple of them. And I think I'll give another book of the series a try.

divendres, 19 de novembre del 2010

Why is saying sorry so hard?


Talking about themes that get in my way quite often is something I used to do a lot in last year's blog. And I thought why not do it again when it worked out well?
So it happened that these last days some of my friends got into a fight and asked me for advice, saying after the fight that they felt really bad and asking what they should do now. I said that if they really feel bad for things they said they should just go and apologize, but I believe they haven't yet.

I'm asking myself why it's so hard for people to say sorry. I mean, it's just a word. I'd say that, on one hand, it's pride. Sometimes we know we're wrong and get into a fight for our oppinion anyway. Saying sorry afterwards means admitting in front of other people that we were wrong and that's hard for many people. On the other hand, I believe that people are not able to apologize when they believe strongly that they are right, even if they feel bad for fighting with people they like because of that. They don't want people to think they are weak in their believings and so they wait for the other one to apologize (who usually thinks and does the same).

Don't get me wrong, it's also hard for me to apologize sometimes. But don't you think we should be able to admit that we were wrong if we really were? Or just show that we feel bad for making a friend angry, even if we believe that we are right with our oppinion? I think relationships with people we like are more important than our oppinion about sometimes stupid things. So, go on and say sorry for good!

The Sims 2

I'd like to present my current favourite computer game, The Sims 2. It's a game where you are a bit like God and take control of Sims, human-like characters. You tell them what to do to lead them to a wonderful or terrible life, you choose. You build their houses, put all the decorations in it, move your family in the house and play with them.

What I personally like the most is building houses and decorating them. There are so many different objects and styles to try out! You choose everything from floors through wallpapers, chairs, the tv.. The result is never the same. What I also like to do is to take photos of important things that happen in my Sim's lifes: birthdays, their first kiss, having their baby.. There are many things to explore so you won't be able to see everything just in a couple of hours, like in some other games.

You can get really creative in this game, because you can personalize it: in the internet you can find tons of downloads: clothes, furniture, wallpapers, floors.. So if your game does't have what you need, youwill most likely find it for download.

To sum up I'd like to say that it's my favourite game because you can do so many things and it never gets boring. Does anyone else have that game? Tell me about your experiences!

I leave you with two photos: one of the wedding of two of my Sims and the other of a house I built, just the ground level.

dimecres, 17 de novembre del 2010

About the title of my blog


Some people may already have asked themselves what the title of my blog means. Love is like a rainbow? Why? Well, I've decided to explain.
First of all, I need to say that that phrase isn't mine: it's from a good friend of mine. In september she found her "better half", so she says, her boyfriend. They really match eachother: they think the same about many things, have similar hobbies, they're just such a nice couple! One day, I found in her Messenger the phrase "Love is like a rainbow.." and I went to ask her what she meant. Then she told me the second part: "Love is like a rainbow.. you don't know where it starts nor where it ends." I just loved the meaning behind it, and it's so true!
The reason why I chose to put it as a title for my blog is that I found out how true it really is: I've seen many people do things they would have never imagined for people they love. I'm deeply moved for things that people are able to do for love, and I wanted to show it through my blog.

I'd like to hear some oppinions from other people. What do you think about the title and the reason why I put it on the blog?

dimarts, 16 de novembre del 2010

B.o.B. feat. Hayley Williams & Eminem - Airplanes



I decided that my first post should be about a song because music is very important in my life. Moreover, this song means a lot to me.
Airplanes reflects approximately a year of my life very well, when I was dreaming and wishing for something to happen very badly. That's why I can identify with the verse "I could really use a wish right now". I went trough many ups and downs since last Feburary to get this wish to be reality. Since a week ago, I know it will: I got my flights to Germany for 11 days. I'm so excited about it!
Anyway, this song gave me strength to get through the hard times and wait for my little dream to come true. It means a lot to me because The message it gives makes me think about how I got what I wanted by fighting and making an effort for it. I just love the chorus sung by Hayley Williams, the singer of the group Paramore.

All in all, I just wanted to show you this amazing song which makes me feel really great!