Being multi-lingual

   Ever since my dad brought home a Berlitz Teach Yourself French book when I was seven years old, I have been fascinated by the idea that people can communicate in more than one way. I hadn't really had foreign language exposure much (that I could remember or identify) at that time in life, so finding out that people referred to objects with a different word was awesome. Then I found out that different cultures lexicalize different ideas- that is, create a single word to encompass an entire concept- and I was hooked. I wanted to get into the heads of different cultures and languages, and see what made them tick- why certain words or ideas were more important that others, and how it affected one's outlook on life.

     Fortunately, the school system that we were in at the time required all students to take Intro to Spanish in 6th grade, and Intro to French in 7th grade. Given that I already had a background of rudimentary French from working with dad, I stuck with the French, and took it all the way up to my junior year in high school. I started to take the senior year, but after the first few weeks, when people were still saying "jer sweez.... uh...." I decided my time would be better served elsewhere. A couple years after I graduated, when I finally got a chance to go to Paris, I was delighted to find that I'd retained enough of the language (mostly by reading French comic books!) to get around, and had a lovely time there.

Time for some reconsideration.

     As a general rule, I tend to avoid talking politics. To be perfectly honest, I haven't really felt, in the past, that I was sufficiently aware of the situation to make an educated statement, so I simply listened and changed the subject. However, as I was listening to a parody of "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood today, it got me to thinking. Back a couple years ago, when that version of the song came out, I liked it. It was singable, it had a good message, and quite frankly, I was relatively proud of being American. Not enough to get me kicked out of other countries for being obnoxious, but I felt that the US was in decent shape.

     Can you see where this is going? Yeah, I don't really feel that way anymore. Perhaps it was my being educated on the circumstances that exist in other countries (did you know in France, you are required to take 30 days- a month- of vacation per year? When's the last time you heard of anyone taking even close to that in

Update on interviewing

As mentioned in the previous post, I went out yesterday to a job interview for an IT position. "How hard could it be?", I figured, "After all, I've done IT before, it's just getting used to a new system." While I was right about that particular train of thought, I hadn't realized that my recent attempts at bettering myself had taken a toll on my ability to suck up and fit in.

Going by my usual habits, I got in to Boulder and parked about half an hour early for my interview. Unfortunately, it was incredibly hot, and the email sent to me had specified professional dress (something I intentionally own very little of), and I didn't want to hang around and get all sweaty. So I did the super-un-cool thing of arriving for an appointment more than 15 minutes in advance. The books that I'm reading at the moment are "Committed", a book that looks very chick-ish, and is about marriage, and "An Intro to Islam",