Book Recommendation

I planned to do an "Intensive English Study Week" - unfortunately I got ill and slept A LOT! I still feel tired, dizzy and shivery but overall my health is better now. Or maybe it just seems so because, unlike yesterday, I managed to get out of my pyjama and put in my contact lenses. :D

 

As a positive result of lying around bored I finished one of the four English books I bought, called "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared".

 

 

 

It's hard to give a short summary about this book, because it is NOTHING like you expect from the title. Allan Karlsson - Swede, centenarian and explosive expert - decides to leave everything (which is acutally not much) behind on his hundreth birthday. A story including murderes, thiefes and an elephant begins.

 

Next to that, Allan's past gets slowly revealed. Without taking much notice, Allan played an important role in almost any noticeable event of the 20th century. He, without any interest in politics and religions at all, saved the life of Franco and changed sides in the Spanish Civil War, met Harry Truman as well as Stalin, Churchill, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Mao Tse-tun, who sponsored him 15 years of holiday in Bali because Allan had saved the life of his wife.

 

I don't want to give away too much because I think this book is a must-read. The story is hilarious and every person has its own detailed and special characteristics.. Throughout the whole book, Allan Karlsson often reminded me of Forrest Gump - kind of naive in talking and behaving, without any clue what's really going on but shaping history with his careless actions.

 

I can only recommend you to read it, but for me it's time now to rest a little bit to get well again :)

BYE!

 

 

 

 

 

Study Plan

I didn't pass English at the KGP, so it's about time now to think about how to improve my English until September. A friend of mine told me to write a study plan I must force myself to stick to, otherwise I might get lost somewhere. I can only agree with him, because "just starting to learn English" doesn't work out that well, as I experienced. The problem is, I don't feel like having a real goal to reach because there are no vocabulary lists I will be tested on and no special grammar parts I just could learn by heart. But I have many ideas how to improve my knowledge in all areas of language learning.

So, let's get started- here is my plan.

 

• Vocabulary.
  When it comes to writing and expressing myself verbally, I often search for the right words but I just can't find them. As a result, I use the same boring words over and over again. Getting to know a various range of words and synonyms will be a great benefit.
  - vocabulary.com: Finally an entertaining way to learn new words. The program even creates lists of words I failed at, so all I have to do is doing the so called "challange" to extend my treasury of words. In addition to that, I will create some lists of random words I come across while reading, writing and so on. Thanks to the Internet it's so easy to get my vocabulary collection organzied.
  - reading: This will not only extend my treasury of words but also give me a better feeling for English grammar. I plan to read "The Chronicles Of Narnia", which is something I always delayed doing because of so many other important and time-consuming things in my life (like studying ;) ).

• Grammar.
  To figure out my main mistakes I will go through all the stuff I wrote last year. I think the tenses are something I should revise carefully as I still struggle with them alot.
  - englishpage.com: Doing these exercises hopefully gives me a better understanding of the grammer rules.
  - Major No-Nos: Probably a good idea to go through this list again (and again and again..)
  - Innovations Books: Studying the grammar parts and doing the related exercises should be helpful. ;)

• Writing.Frankly, dear readers, writing is my weakest point. Even though I wonder if anyone might read this during the summer break and I'm not sure who I'm talking to if not just to myself, the sentence is still correct - my writing skills happened to be "under all pig" the last semester. :P Excuse me for drifting away. What are my plans to improve my writing skills? Well, I think that's obvious.
  - writing. Using this blog is the best way to keep focused because there is a chance somebody will actually read my outpourings. I hope this will help me to stay motivated and focused. I don't have time the whole summer but I intend to record my progress in all areas.

• Culture Stuff.I think I won't change the topics I've chosen, but I'm not sure yet. Over all, I want to inform myself about American History in general.
  - watching documentaries and relevant movies: Hehe, something I enjoy doing.
  - reading books: I don't know yet which books and where to find them, but I'll figure that out.

 

• Speaking.
  - finding someone I can talk English to.
  - trying to think only in English.
  - talking to myself in English. 

Well, it's a wonderful feeling to have a plan. Right now I'm really motivated to improve my English since it's something I'm doing more or less voluntarely at the moment. ;)

 

LET'S DO THIS! YEY!

 

Where have all the Honey Bees gone?

The dying of the honey bees is highly discussed at the moment, I think everyone has heard of it. I did some research about this occurence and guess what - I'll give you a short summary. ;)

 

 

Like we all know (hopefully), bees are essential to the pollination of flowers and trees. Thanks to the honey bee, we can enjoy apples, pears, nuts, onion, carrots, plumbs and even cotton. But all around the world bee keepers voice concerns about the vansishing of the bees. In some cases, bee keepers open their hives just to realize that up to 80% of the bees are dead.  While there were 4,5 million bees in the United States in 1945, there are now about 2 million. But why? What is going on?

 

A reason for thís mysterious "Colony Colapse Disorder (CCD)" could be parasites. Furthermore, bees often get transported  across the country what has also been considered as a possible reason, but one should know that this was going on for about 40 years now without affecting the bees and leading to such a "bee holocaust". Also the climate change was mentioned in one documentary I watched, but in my opinion this is a little bit far-fetched, but of course I'm no scientist.

 

According to biologist Marla Spivak, all this is happening because of changes in farming practices after World War II. Pesticides came into usage and as a result every batch of pollen a bee collects has at least six traces of pesticides in it, including neonicotinoids. While parasites die because of this pesticides, they affect the brains of the bees so they can not find their way back home. Scientists did some research and found 25 different pesticides in one bee. Nobody really knows what the combination of these toxins might cause.

 

As I was writing about GMO foods at my Food Magazine Article, this came not as a big suprise. Whenever I read something about genetic engineering, I imagine humanity as little children playing in the sand without realizing what they do.  We do not know the long term results of interfering with nature, but we just try it - just as little children.

 

The dying of the bees is one result I guess we'll soon experience firsthand. What can we do to avoid this? Planting as much flowers (without pesticides!) as possible in the garden, on the balcony, etc.. and maybe getting bee hives.

 

 

 

I wish you guys a flowery summer!

 

 

Culture Presentations

The presentations are done now and I think we're all relieved the project is completed. All in all I was really impressed about how much effort everyone put into researching and preparing for the presentation - great job all of you!!

A list of the presentations I watched:

USA:
- Southern Hospitality - The Southern Way of Life (Julia Rauch)
- Monty Roberts: An Extraordinary Communicator
- America as a nation of narcissm (Maria Dorner)
- Does Race Still Matter in the US? (Lisa Ziermann)
- Ellen DeGeneres - a modern woman and her influence on America (Johanna Schreilechner)
- Two Heroines of American Aiation: Amelia Earhart and Bessie Coleman (Orsolya Csizmár)
- Hurricane Preparedness (Claudia Schwaiger)
- Harlem, New York City (Louis Nguyen)
- Scientology: A Religion Made in America
- Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies (Tiana Jerkovic)
- How the Columbian Exchange changed the world (Alexandra Haunold)
- The Amish country (Anita Mužek)
- TV shows depicting social issues (Christine Hartinger)

IRELAND:
- Witchcraft in Ireland (Sabrina Krassnig)
- Homophobic Bullying in Irish schools (Shirin Mahrouzadeh)

In all this stress and nervosity I acutally forgot to watch a third Irish presentation - I'm ashamed ;) But fortunately only the American ones will be tested at KGP, so I hope it's not that bad ;)


TOPICS I WANT TO BE TESTED ON AND WHY:

1. Southern Hospitality: The Southern Way of Life by Julia Rauch
I really enjoyed watching this presentation because I think Julia did a good job on giving a short overview about the pecularities of the South. It's something I want to figure out more about, that's why I chose this topic.

2. America as a Nation of Narcissm by Maria Dorner
Maria presented what everyone might feel in some way - American's self-image and national proud goes too far. I was really impressed by this presentation.

3. Religion made in America: Scientology by Harald Pasch
I heard a lot about Scientology but I hadn't known that much details, therefore I found this presentation greatly insightful, especially because I always wanted to find out more about it.

4. Racial Segregation as depicted in 2 Movies  by Tiana Jerkovic
I've already seen the movie "The Help" and even blogged about it, so this topic is kind of a must-have. I'm looking forward to watching the second movie "The Secret Life of Bees" since I was really moved by the short clip Tiana showed us on Thursday.

5. How the Columbian Exchange changed the world by Alexandra Haunold
It was fascinating to realize what foods wouldn't be popular in Europe without the Columbian Exchange. I felt like Alexandra could have talked about this topic for hours since it has a huge impact on world's history. She did a great job at giving a short summary and I really want to learn more about this topic, so this is the fifth presentation I chose for KPG.


To anyone of you who actually read this article - I wish you much motivation for studying and good luck for your final exam! :)

Why I love calligraphy.

Actually, I've always loved the act of writing. It doesn't really matter what I am writing, I just enjoy using different pens, feathery, papers and so on. But being a lefty led to some problems in the past - I always smeared up what I have written, therefore I nowadays hold my pens in a strange way to avoid this, but I've seen many left-handers doing this ;)

However, my passion about calligraphy and writing in general developed at the first year in HTL. Our teacher gave us pictures of different people with the task to design the letter "g" in a way that represents the facial features of the persons. I really loved doing that, but never had I imagined what this simple task might bring forth. I couldn't stop writing the letter "g" everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE. All the sheets we got at the different lessons and even the desk pad we had to use was full of letters. I must have been considered psychopathic by my classmates and teachers, but fortunately in a school for graphic design the pupils are expected to have their weird characteristics and peculiarities. :D 

As a result, whenever I'm sitting around bored and pen and paper are within reach, I start to scribble - not just letters, of course. But whenever I'm chatting with somebody on the phone, i unconsciously start to write some words used in the conversation in a calligraphic way. One big advantage of that - after the phone call I know exactly what we were talking about. ;)

Writing words in different ways helps me to calm down. I just need to let my creativity out now and then, especially since I'm studying something completely different, namely languages. I can not really explain why it makes me happy, it just does. At some point I even dreamt of opening a calligraphy studio, but soon I realized it's impossible to earn your daily bread that way. That's art - wonderful to create, wonderful to look at but at some point useless ;)

I planned to write a few lines about the history of the alphabet and calligraphy, but I even got bored myself so I think I'll release you from that. Instead I'll show you some wonderful artworks and handwriting:

Have a nice weekend, see you :)

Schindler's List

I can't believe I haven't seen the movie "Schindler's List" earlier - I watched it a few days ago (to be precise, immediately after PC2 ;) ) and was really moved. The film tells the story of Oscar Schindler, a German business man who saved the lives of more than a thousand Polish Jews by employing them in his factory. Jews who were important for arms production were not taken to concentration camps. At the beginning, Schindler's aim was not to safe lives but to earn much money by empolying cheap workers. Gradually, he became aware of the cruelty of the Nazis and decided to "buy" many Jews from SS-officer Amon Goeth. All Jews he wrote down on a list were saved from being gassed at Auschwitz.

Since this story is based on real historian events, I want to write a few lines about the background and one person in particular: Amon Goeth.

 



 

Amon Leopold Goeth was a captain of the SS and commandant of the concentration camp in Plaszòw, Polen. He was born in Vienna and joined Nazi youth group and the Austrian Nazi party at the age of 17 and 22, respectively . At that time, the Austrian SS was an illegal underground organisation, as a result there is not much information about his activities available. In 1943, he was assigned to construct and command a forced labour camp at Plaszòw.

 

A description of Amon Goeth by Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, one of the Jews saved by Schindler:

 

"As a survivor I can tell you that we are all traumatized people.

Never would I, never, believe that any human being would be capable of such horror, of such atrocities. When we saw him from a distance, everybody was hiding, in latrines, wherever they could hide. I can't tell you how people feared him."

 

In the movie, Amon Goeth seems insane. I especially remember the scene where he randomly kills Jews from his balcony, appreciatively smoking his cigarette. It's unbelievable. We all know what cruelties human beings are able to do, but it's still disgusting and depressing to become aware of stories that really happened.

 

As some of you might know, I believe in God. I'm often confrontated with the question - if there is a God, how can he allow such cruelties? Why didn't he do anything about it? Well, I really understand this question, I often asked it myself. But at some point I realized that God gave us free will. God never wanted us to be robots. No parent would prefer robots, built to say "I love you" all the time, to real children that can think themselves and therefore express their love without being forced to do so. All pain and cruelty is a result of mankind's failure and it's wrong to blame God for all of that -  that's what I think about it.

 

 

 



A Different Kind of Love Story

About one year ago, the  Isreali graphic designer Ronny Edry created a digital poster about his attitude towards the Iranians:

I know it's kind of yesterday's news, but I watched Ronny Edry talking at TED a few days ago and I want to give you a short summary of the story behind. Ronny wasn't acutally expecting such a big media attention when he put this poster online, because he made many different posters before wich were more or less ignored. But with this one it was different - he got up in the middle of the night and passed his computer, just to see many red numbers on facebook. Many people, and beyond them many Iranians, were enthusiastic about his message.

As a result, new posters with different people were produced. It was a stressful time for Ronny Edry and his crew, but this campaign was mentioned in worldwide media. There is even a facebook page with many different posters and pictures which you can find here:

https://www.facebook.com/israellovesiran

As the Iranians were really touched by this campaign, many responsing posters were made. The special thing about them all is that there aren't just statements from anonymous people, instead these posters show faces of real citizen who agree with the message.

I have to admit that my first thought was: Ok, that's nice, but how should "normal" citizen be able to decide wheather a country gets bombed or not? I do not think they acutally can, but I find it so wonderful to see how this campaign destroys many stereotypes about other countries. Friendships were made because of these posters and many people might have realized that people from another countries just feel the same way.

So if you're interested in this topic, I can highly recommend you to watch the video on TED:

http://www.ted.com/talks/israel_and_iran_a_love_story.html