Foreign Perspectives

Life insurance is a peculiar business really. Effectively the company is betting on how long you are going to live or, rather, on when you’re going to die.

That being the case it usually gets more expensive as you get older and if you’re involved in something “risky” eg if you’re a professional pilot. As always with insurance schemes, it’s better to get life insurance quotes early in your life as it’ll save you a small fortune in the long run.

Popularity: 5% [?]

One of the things that I’d not really allowed for when I started the listings sites was that people would want to drop their listing.

For a normal site that charges a lot of cash each year you’d expect that people wouldn’t always renew, but when I started the site was completely free so why would anyone drop their listing? Whilst only one has dropped off in the sense of not wanting their listing at all, quite a number have dropped out through having either sold their property or simply stopped offering holiday accommodation.

This year the turnover is so high that I’m finally getting around to implementing a facility for people to suspend their listing themselves and I’ve also started to send out verification e-mails to check that those on the site are still in the business.

Popularity: 6% [?]

For a variety of reasons I ended up learning Spanish rather than German years ago with the effect that it’s only now that I’m getting around to starting on the German.

As expected, it’s easier to pick up than either French or Spanish were in that since English is also a Germanic language then various aspects of it are a good deal similar to English than the corresponding constructs in French and Spanish. The overall effect of that plus me already having two foreign languages behind me is that I’m progressing through the course at quite a pace and can even say some relatively sensible things in German whereas it was quite a while before I got to the same point in the other languages.

One “problem” that I’m having is that the Rosetta Stone course that I’m following seems “too easy” in that you pick up the language without really trying that hard. Whether that’ll remain the case as I get further into it remains to be seen though!

Popularity: 4% [?]