The 6,5

Here's my go at a literary translation Dutch to English. I received a 6,5/10 for it.
Is that reasonable? You be the judge.

Cheers,

Obama Speech Analysis

I took the liberty of analyzing the first four paragraphs of Obama's speech on Osama's death. Since the presentation of my findings has been held yesterday, I can now share the results of my analysis with the world. Enjoy.

Oh and here's another finished project I've been working on yesterday and the day before. Enjoy that too.



Cheers,

Welcome in Amsterdam

The sign, sigh.

I wonder how much effort the translators put into this. All I can say is the following: dear cab drivers, either have a linguist take a look at your concept translation, or lrn2english yourselves. It is obvious that these people were thinking in Dutch during the compiling of this English text. There are a lot of dutch-isms.

From top to bottom:
- Welcome TO Amsterdam,
- On the right you can find the official Amsterdam Central railway station taxi rank/the official taxi rank of Amsterdam Central railway station,
- Maximum or max flag down rate or (less common and natural) flagdown rate,
- Decimals are indicated with periods in English, not with commas. Prices/distances should be (€)X.XX and not (€)X,XX. At least they are consistent with this mistake.
- Make sure the taxi meter is running,
- Maximum tariffs or (yet again, more accurately) rates by July 1 (or July 1st),
- As a customer you may decide yourself which taxi you are going to take/you want to take,
- You are not obligated to take the first taxi in the array/line-up. (I personally would only use row for a queue of people or when it's not about waiting for turns.)
- When present, the taxi host can assist...
- Personally I wouldn't use 'Journey guaranteed' since journey, in my point of view, indicates it's going to take awhile and involves long distances. Aside from that, without the word 'is' in between the subject and past participle, it sounds more like a slogan than a promise or guarantee (haha). Instead I would have made the title say 'Your ride is guaranteed' or 'Rides are guaranteed'.
- Taxis, obviously. Also, I'd use 'allowed' instead of 'permitted', feels more natural.
- Personally, I'd use license plate instead of licence plate. Technically licence is not incorrect—it being Canadian—but it looks like crap.
- Call the National Taxi Complaints Office at/on 0900 202 18 81. Saying 'call me at telephone number' is rather redundant. Hey, look! They wrote "0.13 euro" correct!
- More information regarding traveling by taxi in Amsterdam...
- You can call the ATCB at...
- ... or visit either of the ATCB offices at Amsterdam Central on platform two or outside in the Noord-Zuidhollands koffiehuis.

Now, when can we expect the reprint?

Cheers,

Safety Mechanism

A speech I wrote, explaining why bearing arms should never be legalized in The Netherlands.

Click on the picture for the speech.

Bad shape

Passing the 4.2km mark.

Today was the first day in weeks I took part in a fitness run. The last time I ran was the same run, only during winter. That time was all but pleasant. For good reason I started calling this particular fitness run the "Trauma Run". Together with my brother, and this time with proper food in my stomach, I gained enough courage for a reattempt.

Looking back, it is noticeable that it's been too long since I went for a run. Even after putting aside that I had only slept for 3.5 hours thus not being in optimal condition, I'm still not amazingly pleased with the results. To put it like I did on my Twitter, "I'm in peace with it."
Fact: I'm in a worse shape than a year or two ago. During secondary school I ran around about 3km in 12 minutes. More recently I remember running 7.5km without walking. Today was only 5km and I walked once for about 50 meters. In the end it almost took me a staggering 27 minutes from start to finish. It's no surprise though if you think about it, considering that nowadays I can travel by train or bus for free, I eat too little and the only exercise I weekly participate in is bowling.

I want to regain a proper shape. That, and I want to get a better grasp at running. By a better grasp I mean not just technically, but psychologically too. For instance: I'm not sure whether my arm movement is proper and whether my steps are the right size. For a fact I know that I'm losing the running mind-game. Halfway through after suddenly being able to see far ahead, I broke down and had to walk for a bit. At the finish however, I still had plenty of strength for a final sprint. To me that simply strikes as odd, and for me to become better at running, I need to gain experience.

I consider this fitness run to be a benchmark. From now on I have told myself that I will exercise more. Hopefully I can once in awhile do this with some friends of mine too. In a couple of months I shall look back at this run and compare the results and the feeling during running.

Yes, that's a trash bag.

Cheers,

Comeback?

I'm the guy left.

It's been a really long while now, hasn't it? One year and several months ago, I wrote my last blogpost about a day of internship at my primary school back then. Time has passed and a LOT of things have changed. If I were to sum it up in one sentence, it would have to be that I have matured. Let's talk about this maturing a bit more into detail.

First of all and most shockingly, I quit PABO (after successfully finishing first year). I do no longer wish to be an elementary school teacher. In fact, the year at PABO made me realize how much I actually dislike children. They yell, they are unintelligent, they're reckless and most of all; childish. All issues I cannot stand. Don't get me wrong, I can be childish too sometimes, but in my case, it's in a frequency that is still cute or fun, and not in an annoying one. Now that is said, PABO has done a very important job; it forced me to grow up and act like an adult... and I have, ever since. I (for) now study Language and Communcations at the University of Amsterdam. This new course has been very depressing to me, and I fear it's only a matter of time I quit this course too.
Second of all, I am more into anime than ever before. Not necessarily watching anime -I still tend to fire up a game instead of an episode-, but I work for a non-profit organization (stichting Tsunacon/Tsunacon Foundation) promoting the modern Japanese culture, a.k.a. anime and manga. I am one of the managers there. The last big event that was held by stichting Tsunacon was the 2011 anime convention at Sliedrecht, where we managed to entertain over a thousand visitors for about ten hours straight.
Thirdly, and it's not a joke: I have a girlfriend. I have had a girlfriend since January 18th this year (officially that is). It might sound obvious, but I love her and she fits me like one side of a zipper does with the other. Other than getting a girlfriend, I made a couple of new friends and have become closer with my true friends circle.
Fourthly, did I ever mention Woopyland? Well, I now run that joint. The old "King Woopy" left after losing his interest, and gave me full admin rights. At first it was a tough going running Woopyland. A lot had to be done, but I couldn't do any of it. After hiring Chris (yes, the one I visited in Texas years ago), Woopyland V3 development had started. Hopefully, before the summer vacation, the two of us have developed and polished V3 and will have released it.

The list goes on. Like I said, a lot has changed since my last blog article. In the next couple of blog articles, I will probably discuss more changes in my life. Otherwise, you'll notice what I'm into nowadays simply by reading what I talk about. For now. let me help you out just a little bit...



What made me write this blog article? One of the main reasons would be that I've had plenty of spare time recently, and am in a phase I want to share my vision on stuff happening in my life, and perhaps educate my readers a bit while doing so. Since one of my good pals Leofox started his blog, I became interested in continuing mine too.

For continuous updates on my life in Dutch, visit my Twitter.

Cheers,

A day in the life of an intern-teacher

Intern's log, Earth date October 13th, 2009:
I arrived on time today, but didn't do a lot before class started at about 8:35. I noticed that H and I were the only two interns around, A - the usual third intern - wasn't there. When the class was finally quiet, they were given the scheduled language test. During the explanation and Q&A I was sitting at the instruction table the entire time, watching how, but more important, what questions M - the teacher - replied to. One of the kids asked what 'dingy' (groezelig) meant in a question where they had to sort words from weak to strong. I was surprised to hear that word in a test for third grade, because honestly, I didn't know what it meant either. M however, who is a bit older and wiser, explained what it meant to the kids and with that, spoiled a bit of the answer already.

After they had completed the test, I collected them and started 'grading' them along with H. The kids started doing arithmetical calculations together with M. Once again, during the explanation I sometimes dropped my green pen used for grading and paid attention to how she helped the class with the exercises she had given them. After paying a bit of attention, I continued grading the tests and was surprised at some of the mistakes kids made! I mean, there have been made plenty of non-surprising mistakes, like wrongly-written words (missing a consonant 'aleen' or having one vowel too much 'leege'), but there were also surprising mistakes, purely made because of lacking concentration and/or attention span. Even with the explanation of the word 'dingy' (groezelig), spoiling its place in the list, some of the kids misplaced it, and put it after 'gross' (smerig), which was in fact the strongest word in the list!
Another example of stupid mistakes were the wrongly contradicted words in the 'write the contradicting word' exercise, simply because the kids didn't read the sentence properly. Instead of writing 'light jacket' (lichte jas), some kids wrote 'white jacket' (witte jas), simply because they read the word zware (heavy) wrong, and mistook it for 'zwarte' (black). It wouldn't have been a surprising mistake if they had to rush finishing the test, but they had all the time of the world!
Still though, I can't fully blame the kids for not acing the test (some kids however, did!). The formulation of some of the questions was horrid. During the grading, I was angry at the answer booklet for saying that the first part of zonneschijn (sunshine), zonne was. Now I got angry at that because if I were the one making that test, I would consider the first part of a word, the first syllable, making the answer zon. Same goes for voetbalschoen (football shoe). Apparantly the first part of that was supposed to be voetbal. Isn't voet (foot) by itself a word too, and the first syllable for that matter? Rather strange formulation if you ask me.

After the class finished the mental calculations, the kids had to complete their day tasks on their own. The teacher went to the hallway together with a couple of pupils to practice the tables (or whatever), leaving H and me with an, at first, quiet class. When I noticed the class started to lose its concentration, I started walking around to answer questions and keep the kids quiet. It mostly went fine at the beginning, but there were a couple of kids that have a hard time concentrating: F, P, S and SS. At first, I just asked them to keep quiet and to work for themselves, but when they still had bursts of non-coneentration (leading to shouting and stuff) I decided to sit next to P and S, to keep them quiet and working. On a certain point it started to work, and I made a deal with P and S that they would try their best to stay focused. I have to say it worked rather well for quite some time! Same goes for F, when I talked to him a bit and told him to work by himself, he soon was little annoyance to me and the rest of the class.
SS was a whole challenge by itself. After telling her she had to work quietly and not talk to the rest of her group, I started a conversation with her, saying things I shouldn't have as well. For instance, I told her I tried my best to keep the others quiet as well, and that I am a teacher for sake of the kids, not for my own. In her eyes I saw that she didn't liked the conversation (I honestly thought that she wanted to cry) and decided to talk even more 'recognisable'. I made her replace her table and for a moment, thought the talking worked. After four minutes or so I noticed that she had replaced her tables again and started feeling irritated myself... this waswhen the teacher walked in and started talking to the entire class.
During the conversation (which was about me and how I'm a first year student), I slowely realised I must've done something wrong for her to have that kind of a conversation:

You kids must know that Ifar is studying to become a teacher just like me, and is here to be taught by teaching. This goes well for most of the time, but sometimes it doesn't go well as well. We've had this conversation before, but I want you to always remember he's there for you.

When the conversation was over and the kids were eating, I got one of the toughest feedbacks I've had during my entire period as an intern.

The reason why some of the kids weren't listening to you that well was because your relation wasn't good enough with them. You have to work hard on creating a good relationship with the pupils. You can only demand things like silence from kids if they feel like you're their teacher and accept you as one.
I saw you had trouble keeping SS quiet. What you did wrong is to tell him you tried your best to keep the kids quiet, but that he had to be quiet for it to work as well. This is talking about how you experience things as a teacher. If you tell the kids this when you don't have a good-enough-relationship with them, they take no message of it. Especially SS is one of those kids that doesn't simply take you for granted, take no message of what you say, and as a result, does exactly the opposite of what you want him to do, simply because you and him aren't close enough. He just doesn't consider you someone to listen to. After trying once or twice to keep him quiet, you'll just have to ignore the problem, and hope for the best. You can't want what you can't accomplish.

Honestly, this struck me hard. It was a moment of pure realization, allowing me to add 1+1. It didn't only explain that incident, but the entire madness considering some of the more difficult kids to handle. What struck me even worse was the fact it wasn't completely my fault for not getting them quiet. Before that conversation, I always thought it was my way of talking to kids that was the problem and that is was simply solved by watching the teacher handle problems and copying her way. However, in the actual reason I have problems with those kids, there are factors I can't control myself like the amount of time I spend with the kids, or the way the kids are themselves. I realised it wasn't a simple change of plans that would make the kids whisper instead of talk... that it wasn't a simple change of plans that would make the kids walk in pairs and not behind me when walking towards the swimming pool... that it wasn't a simple change of plans that would shush the kids and make them pay attention while I explain them 1 on 1. There's more behind it, way more.
It really saddened me that I got to know that after commanding, just talking about what I want and why I want it doesn't work as a second option. For that to work I would have to create a relationship that wasn't possible... Yes, the feedback was fierce, and yes, it lit my mood for the rest of the day: I was broke and became powerless. After the break was over, I noticed some kids weren't really reading their books how they were supposed to do it. I walked to them and told them they had to be quiet, but when it didn't work I decided to ignore it. While walking back to my table, I quickly turned around to peek what they were doing. Apparently they thought it was funny, so I quickly decided to play along with it by taking a few steps and turn around to check up on them again, and again... I got their attention and got them quiet for awhile when I was back at my table. I helped Y with the tables and was called to accompany the kids the kids to the swimming pool. I obviously wasn't in the mood for it anymore, but I went along anyways (I mean it's my duty after all...)

During our way there, I felt it went okay. At the end one of the kids started crying because of a weird situation regarding plays... I didn't understand a lot of it, but noticed another kid did understand what she was on about. I told her to come to me whenever something bad happened again, but furthermore I just let the other kid consolate her, because quite frankly, it worked. I also got told from two kids they had pains in their leg and weren't sure whether they could swim or not. I asked if they wanted to give it a shot, and they replied with yes. I did tell them to come to me when they felt like they weren't able to swim anymore, because I didn't want them to drown. I told the teacher about them and she nodded. I assumed that was an okay and continued to walk to the dressing rooms. The kids preparing for swimming went perfectly fine! Dressing up was done quickly and in a way that didn't annoy me or anyone around the dressing rooms. Even loo visits were done according to the rules!
During the swimming, one of the kids who told me his leg hurt, came out of the water and told me he couldn't bare it anymore. I went to the teacher to discuss it, and after she looked at the place it hurt and gave an okay, went to the dressing room for him to change into his usual clothes (which I simply wouldn't have come up with if it weren't for the teacher saying to dress up - lol). After he was done dressing up we went to watch the other kids at the side of the pool and chatted quite some time... I was desperate to work on my relationships with the kid! Although it was mostly gibberish I replied with (I was all like 'oh really? Interesting...' and 'I didn't know that'), I noticed the kid had fun talking to me and went on and on about animals I didn't know about. I let him talk all he wanted until I was summoned to help the kids dressing up again for our way back to school. That too went fine.

Walking back with the kids felt weird though. They were all jumpy because they had been active during swimming, and with the fierce feedback I got back at school in the back of my head, I just didn't feel like it was worth commanding kids to walk faster, stop messing about and stop walking behind me... For instance: T and F were seriously messing around on our way back by niggerknocking, running everywhere like mad men and igniting scratch fireworks. After trying to make them stop two or three times I just gave up hope and ignored their misbehaviour, exactly like the teacher told me. In all honesty, having to ignore their misbehaviour out of powerlessness was a real difficult thing for me. I can see why teachers sometimes can't bare their job and have to quit or take a break with it.
It was after school time when I told the teacher what kind of bad things I saw the kids doing while walking back (like T picking up food that wasn't his from a stand and throwing it back, or the fact they were igniting those fireworks). She told me immediately inform her during the walk so she could talk to T about it, and that now it was too late. After some discussing about the future exercises I had to do for my college school, I went home at four o' clock, being totally exhausted a fierce day of work.

Cheers,