Tag: learning

The Daily Post is teaching me English

Mia4 Comments

its only wordsAs a non-English person, learning the language is never easy. There are a lot of English words I’ve never heard or seen before. The Daily Post one-word prompt today is; Cacophony. I looked it up on Google like I always do when I don’t know a word and I must say, oh boy what a word to pronounce. In a way, The Daily Post is teaching me English. There has been a lot of words I didn’t know about. I don’t use difficult words in daily life. I come from a working-class background so I don’t know any fancy words in any language. I don’t know why something has to have a difficult word. Simple is always the best. Does knowing fancy words make people feel smart or something? It only makes people feel they’re better than everybody else. You could say things in a simple way. Cacophony could just be called noise. How many English speakers use that word anyway? But learning new words you don’t know can be interesting even if you never use them.

When it comes to the cacophony, I’m quite sound sensitive. I can concentrate if the music is on but if there’s talking or any other noise, I get distracted. Sometimes it even disturbs me so much that I get irritated. Living in a flat even the neighbours moving about in the stairs disturb me. I must have a very good hearing if I can even hear the smallest sounds. Maybe the neighbours are just loud. Party people are the worst. They make so much cacophony when they play loud music and shouts at the same time. If that isn’t enough, some neighbours shut their doors with a bang like they were in a bad mood. Especially at night when you’re trying to sleep and they come home. Bang! Almost giving me a heart attack. You can close your door quieter. There is doorknob for a reason. People have no respect for other people anymore. When I come home at night, I close to door quietly by turning the doorknob. Some are just thick in the head it seems.

Living in a city there’s a lot of cacophonies that you can’t take away entirely. You just have to live with it. But you can get away from it for a while. What’s so good about Finland is that there are places where no one is around. One of them is the forest. In my city, you don’t need a car to get to nature. You can take the bus or cycle there. Even the cemeteries are close by. At weekdays there are workers who use different types of machinery but at the weekend there’s no cacophony. Some peace and quiet for a while are good for your mental health.

That’s the whole cacophony thing. Thank you The Daily Post for teaching me a new word once again. I’m sure I’ll never use the word cacophony but it did fill my English vocabulary.

Tallenna

Tallenna

Tallenna

Tallenna

Older but not ancient

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old_tripod

Looking for a job is much harder today than it was before. There’s so many young hopefuls who wants to become something. But without experience, its more difficult to get anything. But how to get experience if no one wants to give you a chance. Even if you do have experience, it’s still difficult. You’re either too young or too old. I think employers have too many high expectations on how an employee should be but in a way its quite understanding. No one really wants to take risks to hire people. If its money issues or something else. But if no one wants to give you a job no matter what education you have, how will this society succeed?!

When I look online where these 19 something are searching for internships and they have all these skills, I feel ancient. These are the hopefuls I mentioned at the start of this post. They all say they’re eager to learn and so on. But what about people with experience, aren’t they eager to learn? Just because they’re in certain age doesn’t meant they can’t learn something new. They’re older, not ancient.
I have never had a paid job. My career has never really started. But there are older people who got success at an older age. There are for example many actors who got they’re big break at 40 something. Not everybody has to have a career at 20. Besides it’s not old, it’s experienced. Some look at age too closely. That’s doesn’t make a person. It’s how they behave. There are older people who act like teenagers but there’s also teens who act like they’re older. It’s how you feel inside and not when you’re born. A person can have a lot of experience but when an employer sees the applicants age, they put their files in the bottom of the pile. It shouldn’t happen but it does.

Age discrimination is too common these days. I haven’t experienced it personally but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had happened. My mother used to say when you turn 40, it’s harder to get a job and she must be right. Revealing my age here, I am getting close to that age and it does worry me. I’m worried that I won’t get any luck even with this web designer education  I’m going through. What I know now about web design, I’m still a novice. There are a lot of people who can do more than I do and they’re younger. It’s a lot about practise. They more you do it, more it becomes natural. It has nothing to do with age. It might take longer to learn than for a younger person. But an older person have more life experience and that should count for something.

So say no to age discrimination. We’re older and not ancient, there’s a difference.

Tallenna

Tallenna

Tallenna

Talking gibberish

MiaLeave a comment

Nothing like this though

WordPress.com asked on Twitter “Who is your Reader?”

I usually write to myself so I could be the ‘Reader’ Well I do read before I post. What I don’t like, is spelling errors. My spelling errors. Not so fussy about others. And especially English errors. That’s why google translator is a good tool to use. Sometimes it might have errors but at least that is better then nothing. As long as people understand what I’m saying. But you could always ask if you don’t.

Another questions was “When you draft a post, do you write with someone specific in mind?” Why so serious? (Yes, I’ve watched The Dark Knight too many times :D) It depends what I’m writing about. If I talk about a movie I think about that. Or an actor. Or whatever. I don’t think about anyone specific.

Since English is not my first language, the use of words are limited. I don’t know any “fancy” words. When reading other blogs, some of the words are not familiar. But that’s really the point, to learn English. Even though I have been able to speak English since 5th grade, I still can’t speak it fluently. I think I’ve only used it in real life about 2-3 times. So writing is my strongest point.

The main question was “Who is your Reader?” Young, old, adults with childish minds, adult with no so childish minds, people with jobs, people with no jobs, interesting people, caring people or anyone who cares (or bothers) to read my blog.

Not so gibberish now, is it?!