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Tag: blog
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Ohayo Gozaimasu!
Good morning!
ItsJustTomBobson’s blog with a little international lingo! Not particularly in-depth and fluent but I can provide it in very small spades!
Just don’t ask me to transcribe anything in Kanji. I cannot, for the life of me, get my head around that!
This post, I guess, is just to talk briefly about what’s become my New Year’s Resolution. As I’ve talked about before, I have such an appreciation for the country of Japan. I watch a lot of anime, Japanese wrestling and I’ve read a lot about the culture of Japan, which just fascinates me in general. Therefore, why not at least attempt to learn the Japanese language?
I’m not planning to be able to transcribe it in Kanji or be able to write in Japanese. I simply want to be able to speak the language a little and be able to have some conversations in the language. I think that’d be a really cool skill to master so I made it my New Years Resolution (earlier on in the year) to start learning the language properly.
“Hokusai’s Japanese Kanji faith, Album” by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ CC0 1.0 I already knew certain words due to the power of anime! When you hear the words “NANI” yelled out so many times, you’re going to be able to make the connection that “nani” means “what”! These things just happens when you hear something in a different language over and over again.
However, I started to expand my dictionary a little bit more this year. I’ve tried a few things in order to understand the language and here’s my list of some of the ways I’ve tried to understand the Japanese lingo!:
- YouTube videos – About four years ago, I saved an hour long video on YouTube under the “Watch Later” category. About four years later, I actually watched that video as a starting point. The video was actually extremely informative and helpful with tips of how to learn the language. It was with the “Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com” channel, which actually holds a lot of similar videos like it with tops of learning the language. I’d very much recommend it.
- Duolingo – Duolingo is a free-to-use app which can give you very basic lessons and practice sessions of whatever language you’re interested in. I tried this for a couple of weeks (daily) but, after a while, you can only get so much out of hearing the same words over and over again. It’s good for consolidating and practicing a handful of words but not for understanding and conversing in the language. I stopped using it after a while and put learning the language on the backburner for a bit.
- Audiobooks – With my Spotify premium, I discovered an audiobook also from the JapanesePod101.com people which has someone reinvigorated my interesting in learning the language. They are 10-15 minute lessons which gives you some very thorough explanations and consolidation of certain phrases and words. This was certainly a lot more effective than Duolingo and I’m still listening to the audiobook now.
- Social Media – My YouTube and Instagrams feeds have been flooded with reels and shorts as these videos give brief explanations as to what certain words mean. This, on its own, doesn’t really feel like a lot. However, if you’re in the habit of mindlessly scrolling through your phone, you do come across the same words over and over and it helps stick certain words into your brain.
- Small whiteboard of words – I have a small whiteboard which I’ve updated with certain words I’ve come across or whatever I want to remember. If I’ve got a certain phrase that I want to consolidate, this has certainly been effective when I get to see the word constantly as I walk around my house. The phrase “Kore wa nan desu ka” is now stuck in my head due to this method! (NOTE: “Kore wa nan desu ka” is “what is this?” or “what is it?”)
I’m still in the early days of my “Learning Japanese” adventure but I’m hoping to stay committed to this quest and I’d like to be able to converse in the language some day.
Heck, maybe I could do a vlog while speaking in Japanese 😉
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Hello everybody!
Hope everyone is having a lovely day, where ever you are! Even if you’re not necessarily having a lovely day, there will be days ahead where that can definitely give you lovely days. I’m rooting for you all!
This will not be a regular blog post answering WordPress’ daily prompts as I usually do. In fact, there will not be any of the daily prompt blog posts as usual for the next week or so. There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get into but there’s a few things I want to get out of the way first…
To my new subscribers to this very new blog of mine, thank you very much for following and subscribing to the blog on WordPress! Your support is very much appreciated and you’ve picked a great time to be subscribed to the blog. I’m trying to post a blog post of some kind at least once a day and so far, I’ve only had one day when I wasn’t able to post anything*. Seeing people actually click onto the blog posts and read what I’ve got to say is very much an awesome morale booster!
NOTE: The reason I wasn’t able to post anything that day was because I was exhausted by a lot of travel for work! In case anyone was wondering!
As of me writing this, I’ve had 250+ views on my blog since I created it in May and about 200 likes alongside of it! It really is an awesome amount of a views in such a short time frame so for that, I thank you all again!
However, I wanted to quickly address what’s on the horizon for the blog in the next few weeks. More specifically, I wanted to discuss what would be happening for the next week or so as the content will be completely different.
From the 23rd of June to the 29th of June, I will NOT be answering any of WordPress’ daily prompts. Instead, I plan to have 7 different blog posts instead covering a whole bunch of completely different topics. From Fleetwood Mac to Chocolate Eclairs, I’ve written a whole bunch of blog posts I’m planning to post during that week instead of the daily prompts.
The reason for this is that I simply won’t be around and available to answer those daily prompts. However, I still wanted to get blog posts out for the week that I’m away so the subscribers and any new viewers have new content to enjoy!
From the 30th of June (or possibly the 1st of July), the daily prompt blog posts will resume along with other planned blog posts of mine!
Until we meet again, take care everybody! Tom Bobson out!
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Martin Luther King Jr. was a man I truly admire. Regardless of what the colour of your skin is or where you’re from, the lessons that man taught can be applied to just about anyone.
I started learning about MLK when I was a kid. We were shown clips of him in school, alongside snippets of the famous “I have a dream” speech he delivered as part of a march on Washington, DC. Out of everything I saw and heard about this man, the quote that will forever stay with me is this extremely important line:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.“
“The content of their character” was the part that struck me. Character. Why should we judge someone based on anything other than their character? Why judge them on race? Why judge them on sex? Why not just boil it down to the character of the person?
Giving people “benefit of the doubt” seems like a foolish thing to do according to pessimists. However, making a pre-determined notion about anyone before even interacting with them feels like slamming a door on a part of your mind. Why not open your mind to a new perspective, even if it’s not one you totally agree with? Even if it ends up hurting you, you’ll at least have the “evidence” of what somebody’s character is like before judging them.
You don’t need to judge people based on their skin or their country. You just need to judge them based on who they are as people. Dr. King really captures that sentiment in one line and it’s a line that still sticks with me to this day.
I ended up tracking down the rest of the speech online (somewhere, I can’t remember where I found it) and the whole speech is worth tracking down if you’ve never listened to it. The man flowed with such charisma and conviction in everything he said and he was somebody who practiced what he preached.
The man’s home was bombed. He was attacked, stabbed and berated by detractors because he dared ask for equality. Yet, throughout it all, Martin Luther King Jr. was the guy that remained peaceful in the face of adversity.
That’s a guy to truly admire… no matter who you are.
“Martin Luther King, Civil Rights” by U.S. National Archives/ CC0 1.0 -
I guess it’s finally time for me to talk about my love life on this blog! There isn’t much to speak of when it comes to romance in my life but I do remember my first crush very well. She’s not somebody I think about lot nowadays but you’ll always remember the first time you get a crush. I’m no exception!
Her name was Victoria and she was my first crush while I was in school. I just had such the hots for her and unfortunately for me, I never exactly hid it well! As soon as I let it slip to one person that I liked her, most of the school pretty much knew from that point on! Gossip spread like wildfire at our school!
TOP TIP: Do not tell a friend in school that you have a crush on someone, boys and girls! If you want it to be a secret, keep it until yourself until you’re ready to act! Otherwise, that secret won’t stay a secret for long!
In hindsight, I really wish I didn’t say a word about it because it made things completely murky between the two of us. We got on OK up until that point but as soon as she was privy to this school gossip, she pretty much distanced herself from me. It was somewhat of a bummer that I had feelings for a girl, who never reciprocated them. However, it was more of a bummer that we rarely spoke after that… all over a stupid crush.
Don’t get me wrong… she wasn’t like a terrible person or anything like that (at least, I don’t thinks she was). I also understand why she distanced herself from me. However, our interactions just became super awkward so we just rarely spoke afterwards and I had quickly gotten over my crush. Think of it as two ships passing in the night.
The funny thing is though is that I still get updates about her on Facebook! I don’t have her as a Facebook friend (and I’m about 90% certain she’d just reject it if I sent the request now!) but I’m still friends on Facebook with someone who is extremely close to her. They’d post photos of her and she still looks very similar to how I remembered her in school.
She still had straight, long blonde hair and had a perky smile that I’d fallen for when I was a kid. She appears to be living a good life and I think she may actually be engaged right now. I’m kinda speculating from the top of my head but I don’t see anything negative posted about her or anything like that. She seems to be doing OK!
It’s just strange thinking about what could have been with our first crushes. Think about your own first crush. Would you be living with a different Mr. or Mrs. Right today or would you be living with someone whose lives took an unfortunate turn for the worst? Do you still hear anything about your first crush and what happened to them? Heck… did you MARRY your first crush?
All I’ll say is that Victoria was definitely somebody that I remember and it was honestly really nice to get those butterflies in my stomach for the first time. Feeling any kind of love is a great feeling of anxiety and excitement in your life that we really should strive for. So here’s to you Victoria… thank you for being my first crush!
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Daily writing promptWhat are the most important things needed to live a good life?
I think the most important thing needed to live a good life is just to love yourself. I think things like working hard are important parts of living a good life but all of that work will be for nothing if you’re not kind to yourself. Don’t just work for the sake of working. Acknowledge when you’ve put in the grind by treating yourself to a nice time.
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This is probably the hardest “daily prompt” I’ve answered this week. I don’t have a great political, philosophical or heart-warming answer in response to this prompt. The people that come to mind, like my family and friends, are people I’ll always talk to on a regular basis. You really should with people like that, if you’ve got people who genuinely love you in life.
In terms of new people I want to talk to and engage with on a regular basis, the people I’d like to talk to soon… is you.
“Iphone Phone” by Alejandro Escamilla/ CC0 1.0 With this new personal blog I’ve wanted to write, I’ve been having a really hard time finding a direction for where I want to take this platform. I’ve played with a whole bunch of ideas but ultimately, I just want to write and create interesting conversations with those on WordPress and others who stumble across this blog.
To answer the question, I want to talk to you guys soon and I’ve loved being able to answer these daily prompts to start such conversations. I want to keep it up and regular post on this blog, even if it’s just to answer the daily prompt. I want to keep doing it and hopefully create a community where followers and others, who follow this blog, will be able to engage in healthy conversations on the internet.
In an age where social media is flooded with a cesspool of negativity and disgusting behaviour, we should at least try to create a healthy place to communicate online. Why not use our blogs to show the internet a better way?