Foreign Perspectives

Archive for June, 2009

Despite various TV talent shows having been on the go for years they can still throw up some major surprises of one sort or another although this years crop from Britains Got Talent seems to have broken all records in terms of surprises this time around.

For one thing there’s the heavy bias towards the cute and vulnerable acts this year. Sure there’s probably a feeling that the youngest hopefuls should be encouraged that little bit more but as many have shown this year, they simply don’t need any legup on the older hopefuls. Well, except for Hollie Steele, of course, and for reasons which escape me the judges seemed to be puppets under the control of her mother. That wouldn’t have been so bad but her act just wasn’t up to the professional standards of the other young contenders and they didn’t get anything like the assistance that she did.

On the other side of the coin we saw Susan Boyle who came out of left field and surprised everyone. Although it’s usually taken as wrong to judge on appearance, for a high level talent show like this one, appearances do count. Not that it mattered because she simply overturned that initial judgement completely and will probably become someone we’ll hear quite a lot of in the years to come. Her other surprise was the collapse after the show. This was someone who seems to have been aiming for an opportunity like this for her whole life and yet she doesn’t seem to have thought through what might happen if she were to do really well.

Two very different surprises for sure.

We’d a special interest in reading to our kids when we were in France and we wanted them to grow up knowing English as native speakers and readers.

Of course, it’s not just the business of reading that matters in our case, it was the topics of the books too. In their nursery school it was the French nursery rhymes and fables that they were coming across so at home we made a point of working our way through the various stories that we came across in our own childhood.

To begin with, we concentrated on the Ladybird range which is for babies up to around five or thereabouts although that’ll depend on your childrens’ interests and notionally their range runs up to around seven. However, just by chance we came across the Usborne range of books which seems to pretty much take over where Ladybird finish although with quite a bit of overlap.

As with all these publishers aiming at the child market, they’ve loads of different ranges of books but the one we chanced on was their Young Readers Series 3. It’s actually aimed at older children than our nearly 4 and nearly 6 year olds but they just love the books so we’re planning on plugging away with those over the next six months or so although with the remainder of the Ladybird ones and some from the Usborne Series 2 mixed in amongst them.

When we were in France, we got a library book from the school each week and read that to the boys in English which is much harder to do than you’d think. After all, if you’ve learned French as a teenager or adult you’ll have missed out on all the words for things like witches and goblins which make up a surprising amount of the reading material that ends up getting brought home. In the end though we were only defeated entirely by one book.

One of the plus points of the current economic difficulties is that just about everywhere you look companies are really pulling out the stops to attract your custom. Not so good for them but it means some great deals are on offer for you.

OK, so they’d call them great anyway as they always do, wouldn’t they? Well, yes, but this time around some of the promotions on offer seem almost too good to be true.

For instance, a family vacation hotel contest being run by a hotel chain wouldn’t be a big deal by itself. After all, the cynical amongst you would figure that there’s only going to be, at best, a handful of winners so it ain’t worth looking at. However, what if you add in a $50 cash card for staying three separate times with the same hotel? And how about throwing in another contest in the form of the Comfort Inn Demi Lovato contest?

You might think that all that promotional effort is going to need paying for through increased prices for you. In normal times, you’d probably be right but then these aren’t normal times and these really are great deals for you. Although you’ll obviously appreciate the contest prizes if you win, in practice it’s the $50 that’s there for the taking which is the most valuable of the “prizes” as we can all pick that one up whereas obviously there won’t be too many contest winners.

Definitely, this is gonna be a great year to go on vacation!

Hawaii is probably the only place in the world that says “holiday” in every sense of the word.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone who it wouldn’t be suitable for in terms of fulfilling their holiday interests. Want a surf beach? It’s surrounded by them. Just want to crash on the beach? There are loads of quiet ones that’ll let you do that too. Fancy seeing a little of the cultures from the Pacific islands? No problem: the students from the Mormon university run a fantastic cultural centre that’ll let you do just that.

That’s just on Oahu too…. the other islands offer even more choice for you and all surrounded by beautiful and spectacular coves as you can see.

With all those advantages Hawaiian vacations don’t come in one-size-fits-all. Sure, you could do the standard flight and hotel deal but you’ll get much more out of your Hawaiian vacation if you choose a vacation rental property as your base.

With the massive numbers of tourists arriving in the islands, Hawaiian Local Travel Information comes in considerable volume so it’s easy to be overwhelmed by it all but then that’s just a good excuse to go back again next year…

When you start out on the path of a particular qualification there’s usually one or two sequences of courses that you have to do if you want to pick up that qualification at some point but it’s not always clear just what overall sequence you should follow.

Certainly, if you are doing a tightly defined qualification you may well find that almost all of your courses are compulsory but in a lot of cases the sequence itself isn’t compulsory and that’s where it can be very worthwhile examining what each course entails before deciding on the appropriate sequence for you. If you have previous experience or qualifications (even in a seemingly unrelated area) then you may find that you can make life a whole lot easier for yourself if you work out an appropriate sequence because in this case the ideal sequence for you may be entirely different from that for those who are coming to the qualification with no prior experience.

For example, in my own case to get the modern languages degree I needed to do a sequence of courses in French, another sequence in Spanish and a single course in English language. Most people doing that degree tend to start with the English course since that’s perceived as the easiest one and they tend to do the French sequence next and finish with Spanish because the majority of people here will have done French at school therefore it should be easier for them than Spanish. However, that’s not necessarily the easiest sequence to do. For a start, Spanish is usually seen as easier to learn than French so logically it would be a better to start with than French. Then there’s the business of learning a language which is obviously covered in the French and Spanish sequences and which thereby makes the English course (which is supposedly one of the hardest in the university) seem fairly simple. So, in theory the ideal sequence for me would have been Spanish, French and finally English.

Since I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment, I’ve recently embarked on a psychology degree. There too there’s a sequence to follow that’s recommended which does not seem to be the ideal one for me. Although I should have started on the introductory psychology course first I actually started on the child development one. That seems to be working out to be a better sequence for me in that “learning English” was obviously covered in the English course and it’s also covered in the child development one. Right now I’m in the midst of that section which is proving to be relatively easy going for me thanks to the previous English course. In theory, the introductory course next year should also appear easier in that I’ll have already done a year of psychology. As to the subsequence years, well I’ve not gotten as far as considering a sequence for them yet.

Now, if anyone could work out the ideal (read: easiest) path to the Open University psychology degree it would be really helpful….