Amigurumi : Swedish dog

En français














When I'm not really inspired and still think I need to write a post I generally write an amigurumi one. Of course not all the time, but the advantage is that I have several amigurumi that I haven't presented yet. The pictures are ready and well I don't have to think to much for writing, especially if it's 1.36am.
So here is my Swedish dog. It doesn't have a proper name, I just call it Swedish dog because when I made it I was feeling in a Swedish mood.
That's why it is blue and yellow.
I think he is funny. Not because he really looks funny, more because of how I was feeling when I made it. It is realized without pattern as well, it just came out of my imagination at that moment.

Step 1 : Get addicted

En français
Here is finally the first step in the About learning series.
The basic idea to succesfully learn anything is to get addicted to it.
I can already hear people laugh: "Addicted, addicted, you're just kidding right".
Most of people I know tend to be scared by addictions.
Not that they don't have some just that they refuse to admit they have one because saying that you're addicted to something make you just looks weird.
I'm not going to say that all addictions are good, cause they are of course not.
If you're a drug addict, quit it already that's not what I'm talking about here.

So what's so good about addictions ? Or a better question, why do you need to get addicted ?

Lets take the example of language learning.
First you will need to spend a really huge amound of time on it. That already sound scary right ?
Lots of listening (watching movies, drama, listening music, radio...)
Lots of reading...

Being addicted is what is going to make you overcome the scary part.
If you decide to look a bit of a drama everyday during breakfast. It better be a good one. If you don't look forward to see what follows, if it's so deadly boring that you're ready to fall asleep as soon as the main character starts to speak.
Then you'll definitely stay in bed instead of getting up early enough to see more of it.
That's the main difference between someone addicted to what he is learning and someone who is not.

The addicted person is having fun, is motivated because his learning process has become as good as breathing.
The addiction allows you to look forward to do the 200 SRS repetitions programmed on your computer all day while you're at work.
The addiction makes you be sure that you won't lack batterie for your mp3 player because that would make you spend hours without the language you're learning.
The addiction is making you look for new things as soon as you're done with wat you are doing at the moment.

So to really learn something, create an addiction about it. Something that is going to make you go through all possible difficulties and keep the pleasure high. Learning something that you don't like is to difficult to really worth to try.

Why do you think geeks all speak Japanese ? Because they are addicted to manga of course :P

PS: One thing I almost forgot. You don't need to stay addicted to the same thing through the all process, changing your addiction want hurt as long as the new one still carries you toward your initial goal.

Forward to step 2
Back to introduction

Mr and Mrs Bomb

En français
This time I really wanted something cute but explosive. That why I knitted Mr Bomb. When I was talking about my plan of knitting a bomb people were looking at me strangely. I mean even more strangely than usual.
I really like the cuteness of anime little bombs so I wanted to try to capture the thing in an Amigurumi.
As I could not left Mr Bomb being lonely, I also knitted Mrs to hang out with him.
Aren't they too cute ? At least they won't hurt anybody by exploding.

About learning : Introduction

En français

Lots of people seems to be a bit confused about my way of learning things. Especially languages but the more I think about it the more I think it works the same for anything.
I was looking on the internet for advice and tricks at learning languages fast.
That's a good thing because that brings me to "All Japanese All The Time" which is a great source of comfort and inspiration for me.
But now I suddenly realized that I do speak 3 foreign languages more or less fine already.
So I decided to think more deeply about it and to write this "About learning" set of posts to share the way that makes me know those languages step by step.
Some of those step won't really be steps, maybe just thoughts about things around the learning process or about what you may have to face when learning and questions you may asked to yourself.
I'm not really clear about it yet, I have just few things programed so far and we'll see what'll happened.

The first thing I want to talk about, as a kind of introduction is the way I learned the 3 languages I already know so that you can get a feeling for what will follow.
I completely agree that language classes aren't good enough. But it's most likely because we are expected them to teach us everything which is a great misconception.
How could a finite amount of time and a finite list of vocabulary and grammar point could ever get us to know all the infinite nuances expressed in a language anyway ? you get what I mean.
Still I can say that I learned English, German and Italian in classes... kind of.
Classes have the good point of getting you started and giving you bases.















My learning of English started at school. The difference that makes me speak it now when the other kids don't is that as soon as I get to now the basic I started to borrow books in English at the library and to read them.
Of course I didn't get everything at first but I liked to pretend I did and continue on reading.
Plus my parents had a very old fashion set of English taps that I use to have on all the time in my room, thinking about it those tapes are so childish and unnatural English.
I also sang "Spice girls" song and Britney Spears until I new the lyrics by heart I can probably still sing some of them now.














German was a bit more difficult due to the lack of listening material. I forgot to mansion that I didn't have internet at that time.
My learning of German was for the first part in school with additional reading from library books (that was more difficult than for English) and tapes from the class text book.
The second part was two month of being au-pair in Berlin, that was so cool.
I took classes in the morning and watch so many cartoons in the afternoon. Kids are also really great teachers.
I think I read there the first German book I understood fully. It was Harry Potter 1. The kids gave it to me with the tapes, I spend few days in my room listening and reading the first chapter again and again, the other were then easier to understand.













Italian is the language I know the least, I had 7 years English at school and 5 years German but only 3 years Italian. That probably have a huge impact on it as I had less exposure to it.
My learning when through classes, listening a lots of Eros Ramazzotti (those song I still know them by heart for sure), reading library books and getting up at 5.30 am to watch the Victor Hebner classes on TV. Me who has so many problems to get up right now, I did it, for the sake of learning.

I think the main reason why I didn't think about the way I learned those languages, only saying that I learned them at school, without taking into account all the "extra work" I did, was because all that "extra work" wasn't feeling like work at all. It was actually just pure fun !!!

Now that you know everything here is the list of steps :
(That will be updated and transformed to link when the posts will be published)

Step 1 : Get addicted
Step 2 : Get the attitude !!!
Step 3 : Build up the environement

Cooking : The King Table

En français















Oh, that's a great name for a meal. I got the idea while watching 6 episodes of 大長今 in a row. Maybe I should watch them more often and maybe I should also stop being lazy and finally get rid of the subtitles.
Anyway, tonight I came up with this meal and as 長今 is cooking great tables for the Korean king (much better than this one though) I called it "The King Table"
The first bowls on the top is rice,
in the second bowls you have the vegetables
and in the last ones an egg.
The black sauce is a mixed of soy sauce and red vinegar.
In the big plate it's spring onions pancakes. Yummy.

Now the recipes :

The vegetables :

Cut some carrots, mushrooms, cucumbers and tomatoes in dices
Cook them in a pan with sesame oil
Add rice and red vinegar and cumin.

The egg :

Separate the white and yellow parts of an egg.
Put the white part in a bowl.
Put the bowl in bain-marie until the egg is cooked.
Add some carrots and cucumbers pieces on the top to decorate.

The spring onion pancakes :

Slice the spring onions thinly.
Put them in a bowl with the yellow part of the eggs not used previously.
Add flour and milk.
Mix.
Cook the pancake in a pan using sesame oil.

Amigurumi : San Goku

En français
I already have several anime characters amigurumi, Ryoga, Hamtaro, Mashiraro, the Totoros, Winny the pooh and friends and Kerochan. My last one is much more famous. If you don't know who he is probably you need a complete review of your anime education... because something went just wrong somewhere.
Of course that's San Goku. I really like 鳥山 明 (,Akira Toriyama)'s stories. Vive Dragon ball !!!

Iceland : Vatnajökull, Svartifoss and Skaftafell

En français
The way to Vatnajökull is long, the road are long, strait and the landscape is flat and desert. We stop to eat but not too long due to abundance of fly. We stop again for a nap and when we take the road again we start to see the Vatnajökull's glaciers. We first stop at Skaftafell and walk in the mountains we can see Svartifoss with colums looking like at Giants Causeway. We walk 4km in the mountain road trying to see the glacier. But we end up at the bottom and the glacier is still far away. We then decide to go back and to stay at the camping in Skaftafell.
The next stage will be Jökulsárlón.

Travel table of content