Auf Wiedersehen, former native German language skills..

August 26, 2010 – 3:53 am

I’ve lived in English speaking countries for approximately nine years of my life and during that time my German has deterioated immensly.

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I still remember the first time I noticed myself thinking in English; I was 14 years old, walking down Friar St in Reading having just left WH Smith and my English pen pal, her friends and me were walking towards McDonalds as someone had passed us and I caught myself thinking about his dress sense. That happened after visiting England only a handful of times and receiving substandard English lessons at school.

When I was 15 I visited some of my distant family in America for just over a month which gave me a very strong American accent and, also due to jetlag, left me unable to speak German upon my return to Germany. As for fixing my pronounciation, well, that took a lot of effort and just over a year.

I lived in the UK for ten months when I was 16 and during that time went to an English school. Despite several other German students attending that school I found myself spending more time with the English students. This time is what I consider the first time I fully integrated not just with people, but also the all important popculture references.

Even though I had a moderately bad time I found myself getting more and more homesick during the following years and found myself visiting London and Reading a couple more times between 2000 and 2003 before finally moving back in June 2003. Initially I struggled enough with English and work and studying that keeping up my German became not only a minor thing, but mostly something I didn’t care about at all.

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I still remember the first time I struggled with my German. It was in late 2007 and caused me to purchase a print subscription to a large German weekly magazine which I pretty much just ignored and flicked through each week promising to myself I’d read it ‘later’. I do to this date read three online publications though.

In both 2008 and 2009 I spent some time in Germany completely surrounded by German people. The only way to carry on using English was on the internet and I carried on thinking in English the entire time, despite having a job in a customer facing job!

Since moving back to the UK last year my German has taken a turn for the worse. Having had to deal with banks and other official channels is a nightmare and more than once I was completely lost for words during phone conversations, especially at one point when I encountered one of the rudest call centre agents of my life and was unable to argue back leaving me with nothing but hanging up passively aggressively..

Writing any German text is a challenge, even if it’s just a tweet of 140 characters which, the other day, took me over a minute as I was convinced the grammar was atrociously wrong. I also found myself automatically replying to two German emails in English and only realised my faux pax over a day later..

None of that is the real problem though. The real problem is that I find myself increasingly unable to read German. I wasn’t aware of this until this week when I read a text in German that uses a large number of idioms and I realised I didn’t know the meaning of many of them and had to translate them first.

Yes, I’ve complained about my problems with English before, but this is nothing compared to the sheer frustration I have with my German. It’s something I should be able to do, but despite still reading German on a daily basis it is getting worse.

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What should I have done differently? Is there anything I could have done differently? Would I be able to reverse time I still don’t think I’d change anything as I do believe that the only reason my English is at the stage it is at now, because I fully concentrated on it versus trying to keep up with German at the same time. I have made an effort ever since I’ve first realised I was facing problems, but it doesn’t seem to be enough and failing to even remember the most basic things is the most frustrating thing I’ve ever experienced and I’m currently experiencing it on a daily basis.

I just feel so powerless.

By Cat | Posted in German, Life in general, Personal | Comments (3)

More personal stuff

August 2, 2010 – 9:55 pm

As I’ve already mentioned in my last post there’s a lot of stuff that’s going wrong in my life. Those that know me will know that not only this isn’t the first time but also that I normally try to keep as much of my problems off the internet. The latter I am struggling with at the moment. In the past years I’ve shifted to asking Twitter or on other places for specific help and, Twitter’s always been helpful with things be it fixing my iPod, deciding on bottles of wine and other things I wouldn’t want to repeat in this blog I’m at least pretending to keep free of too much personal stuff!

I feel the crowdsourcing aspect of Twitter would be very useful at the moment, but then there are so many people that follow me on there that I don’t feel comfortable in sharing too much or even share anything which, seeing how much I’ve relied on it in the past, leaves me without being able to use it properly. Add to that a bunch of people I don’t want to unfollow because I’ve been following them for a long time and don’t want to hurt their feelings or be abrupt and it all becomes a bit pointless. Sure, I still get great information out of it and the local Twittervine is brilliant, but having to constantly censor myself is difficult.

I’ve said before that I’ve started to notice certain patterns in my life. Sure, I’ve put a lot of it down to bad karma this year and I have been more proactive about sorting things out, but there comes a point when I’ve realised I’ve done all I can do and it then comes back to making me realise it’s got to be me. There have been epiphanies about my relationship, or rather lack thereof, with my family or certain friendships or just how I generally end up getting myself into certain situations I really should have known better. But then I evidently don’t and every time it seems to be that much more.

What’s left now is to pick up the pieces and this is the part I’m worried about most. I’ve described myself as a bit of a nomad in the past and, if my trackrecord is anything to go by, that sums it up pretty well. Every time things got really difficult I’d move. Moving back to Reading was my attempt at normalising my life, being in the same place, settling somewhere for a length of time and breaking the cycle. The last months it’s been getting more and more difficult to stay in Reading and, with some recent developments, I’m struggling even more. Even a post from a month ago marking my return a year before that already has that coming through.

Looking into staying and making this work is a priority even though I’m not sure it’s actually the solution my nomadic self wants, but it’s better than being in this situation again years down the line.

In the meantime there might be less of me on Twitter or here. Or maybe more, who knows.

Note: Whilst comments are welcome I reserve the right to moderate more strictly, just like with anything else posted in the personal category, then perhaps on the rest of the blog. Thanks!
By Cat | Posted in Personal, Twitter | Comments (6)

Why do tweets about alcohol always get the most replies?

July 31, 2010 – 11:01 am

Surely it would indicate that most of my followers may have too much! Here’s the previous time a tweet about alcohol got quite a few and this is what I got yesterday.

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How long does a screwtop bottle of red wine remain drinkable once opened? #

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  • jhomerston: I’d say about 2 days, 3 if the wine was a very dry red. #
  • emmaguy: if it smells like vinegar its probably gone. Otherwise it’s still good ;) #
  • GeminiAce: Depends on how many bottles you’ve consumed before it. #
  • Anie67: if it’s screw top i’m guessing it’s a cheapish young wine? should last several days with cap on. older wines only ‘last’ about 6hrs #
  • FallingBullets: dont know, never seen one last more than an hour… :p #
  • PCurd: depends on the quality of the wine but weeks most likely for a cheap bottle. Red tastes like vinegar when it’s off #
  • musecrossing: As long as a corked one, if not longer. #
  • jszuryn: A week? (unless you drink it a bit sooner than that :) #
  • loop_pool: depends how high your standards are! #
  • Anie67: have you poisoned yourself on wine? #
  • Ankit_Tr: I dont think alcohol goes bad. /Arrested Development #
  • LivingDefiance: From what i’ve learn, up to a weak it’ll keep a decent taste #
  • Angrythehat: did you leave it open or cork it? #
  • sahfenn: about 5 days I think. Any longer than that it’s all gone here anyway ;) #

I actually discovered white wine only a couple of years ago and still don’t like red wine much. This particular bottle was opened some time ago, so long in fact that I can’t remember exactly when! Based on the responses I got I decided to not smell it or anything else and just pour it down the sink!

Thanks everyone!

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I’ve been a bit quiet this week both on here and Twitter. I’ve generally not had a good week from a mild stomach bug at the beginning of the week, generally stress and things to deal with plus no internet at home and dabr, my mobile Twitter client of choice, has been a bit temperamental lately.

I’m hoping things will improve next week though, I could do with a less stressful time!

This weekend I’m planning to do some more knitting as I’m very behind on projects and some more laundry. Realistically though I’ve been getting the urge to go back and complete my 7th KotOR playthrough as I want to play KotOR II again, especially after reading about Nar Shaddaa yesterday.

By Cat | Posted in Community and Games, Crowdsourcing, Funny Stuff, Knitting, KotOR, Life in general, Personal, Star Wars, Twitter, Twitter Favourites | Comments (3)

It’s almost like something unusual happened in Reading!

July 22, 2010 – 7:13 pm

10 hours. 81 tweets. The Reading hashtag. Most of them about the same thing:

  • asilon: Please don’t rain in #rdg; I have a lot of washing to get dry today. #
  • parent2: @asilon Sorry! RT @getreading: Flash warning of heavy rain for Reading: http://bit.ly/97vS2h #rdgnews #rdg #
  • lortolan: Here comes the rain in #shinfield… RT @getreading: Flash warning of heavy rain for Reading: http://bit.ly/97vS2h #rdg #
  • Dani_Sweens: Oh no, here comes the rain and still no marquee! HELP! #raftrace #rdg #
  • gavinaldrich: here comes the rain again… #rdg hasn’t it gone dark! #
  • getwokingham: Flash warning of heavy rain for Wokingham http://bit.ly/9x0WeE <rain has hit #rdg has it reached #woky yet? #
  • devilhat: Raining. Heavily. I think I’ve inherited the #rdg storm. #
  • sahfenn: Wow that was a big rumble of thunder in #rdg #
  • tomcanning83: I heard about the thunder in #rdg on twitter before real life! #win #
  • stevegabb: @tomcanning83 Count the seconds between receiving the tweet and the thunder and it’ll tell you how far away it is. #rdg #win #
  • tomcanning83: @stevegabb Is that in imperial or metric? #rdg #
  • DanielMcLaren: heavens have opened in #Rdg….. ye gods! #
  • getreading: RT @DanielMclaren: heavens have opened in #Rdg….. ye gods! –> Raining like the clappers here in Caversham. #
  • Dani_Sweens: The #raftrace event team making the best of the bad weather! #rdg http://twitpic.com/27lcja #
  • ab_sw: Just a light drizzle in #rdg .. #
  • PaddyCunningham: Wow, thunder, lightening and now stupidly heavy hailstone shower in #rdg, yes people hailstones !!! #
  • LouiseJJohnson: Ha! Someone on the #rdg hashtag read about the thunder on twitter before he heard it. There’s a physics exam question in that somewhere. #
  • karenblakeman: Flash flood in Star Road RG4 5BE #caversham #rdg http://twitpic.com/27ltcz #
  • LuckyHarvey: Blimey – I think those #Rdg hailstones have now hit #woky!! Pelting down. #
  • timmorgan: All this rain and thunder in #rdg. Haven’t seen any of it in Basingstoke for a couple of hours! #
  • markrfletcher: Rain’s so bad in #rdg that it’s made a puddle in the lawn http://twitvid.com/VMWPT #
  • carocat: Enjoying the torrential downpour under the outside cover in Starbucks with @boardyuk. #rdg http://twitpic.com/27lhl3 #
  • itsjustyou: That heavy rain in #rdg ? Yeah, I was cycling home during it… #
  • DroneRiff: Typical, I brave it and walk home in the rain. It stops half way home! But streets flooded from road to front gardens was impressive #rdg #
  • kissmyart: Glad I left work when I did – its tipping it down in paddington! Hope its not raining in #rdg for my walk home #
  • krider2010: @LuckyHarvey depends where you are heading; #rdg monsoon like, #bck hardly a drop! #
  • kissmyart: #rdg station platforms a little flooded this evening #
  • brainwipe: RT @itsjustyou: That heavy rain in #rdg ? Yeah, I was cycling home during it… (me too. The hail stung like buggery!) #
  • LAYYYZ: I can’t believe it! (in my best victor meldrew voice) all the rain water has dried up on the roads in #rdg it’s like it didn’t even happen! #

I love the Reading Twitter community!

By Cat | Posted in #rdg, Crowdsourcing, Twitter, Twitter Favourites | Leave a Comment

Gamer Banter: Cover art? No, thanks!

July 22, 2010 – 4:11 am

Gamer Banter is a monthly gaming discussion of multiple bloggers. More info is here and please contact Terry from Game Couch if you wish to take part.

July’s topic is set by Terry from Game Couch: How important is cover art to you?

Not at all.

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in Blog Banter, Community and Games, Crowdsourcing, GTA, Twitter, Twitter Favourites | Comments (14)

Cancer Research UK – Race for Life – Reading recap

July 20, 2010 – 6:53 pm

As I’ve mentioned before I was part of the volunteer team at Reading’s Race for Life this past weekend.

Read More »

By Cat | Posted in #rdg, Cancer Research UK, Charity, Life in general | Leave a Comment

Raoul Moat and the state of the media and government

July 16, 2010 – 6:03 am

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The 2010 Northumbria Police manhunt was a major police operation in North East England in which armed police officers under the command of the Northumbria Police force attempted to apprehend Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old man from Newcastle upon Tyne who had recently been released from Durham Prison. Moat, armed with a sawn-off shotgun, was believed to have shot three people: his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart, her new partner Chris Brown, and police officer David Rathband. Brown was killed, while Stobbart and Rathband remain hospitalised, seriously injured. After six days on the run, on 9 July Moat was recognised by police and contained in the open, leading to a standoff in Rothbury. After nearly six hours of negotiation, Moat shot himself in the early hours of 10 July.

Required background here.

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I have to admit that I didn’t pay much attention to the pursuit during the first few days. I read the random headline here and there, but it wasn’t anything that directly concerned me and the updates came fast and plenty that pretty much planned to just wait until the situation was resolved to read a recap. This changed last Friday when a vast majority of my Twitter stream suddenly contained references to Moat and bad media coverage.

Here are a couple of tweets, tumblr posts and links I posted that evening and the following days:

  • Now watching BBC news as I didn’t believe Twitter how bad the coverage of #Moat is. Bad, awful, atrocious don’t quite sum it up.. – @carocat
  • “Extraordinary evening with extraordinary, fast unfolding events” #BBCNews #moatwatch What events? Talking to someone on the phone?! – @carocat
  • “She could actually see what she believed to be Moat with what she thought to be police negotiators.” – cat on tumbler
  • “Gascoigne’s agent, Kenny Shepherd, said: “He’s doing what? I am sitting having an evening meal in Majorca. I’m speechless.” – cat on tumblr
  • Raoul Moat’s family: why did police reject our offers of help? – Guardian.co.uk

The coverage was atrocious. For hours the BBC news team stood in very close proximity to Moat filming the police, trying to zoom into Moat lying on the ground and, most bizarrely, phoned up completely random people that may or may not at some point have lived in Rothbury. In fact, @disgraceUK summed it up very well:

I have a friend of a friend whose uncle’s sister’s friend once drove through Rothbury. Shall I go get interviewed? #

I have written about sensationalist media reporting before; last March after a shooting in Germany. Media that is so hellbent on getting the best angle that they aren’t afraid to climb into trees or interviewing the daughter of a woman who is locked into a house near to Moat. Media that happily creates a liveblog for every day. Bad media is bad.

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Moving on the big topic today seems to be just who is at fault and how the general British public should act. A Facebook page was set up for people showing sympathy for Moat and it quickly reached 30k members though I assume a large number of that was due to the media coverage which included this:

David Cameron condemned public sympathy for Moat today and described the gunman as a “callous murderer”. The prime minister said he could not understand “any wave of public sympathy for this man”. Any sympathy should be directed towards Moat’s victims, he said.

Chris Heaton-Harris, Conservative MP for Daventry, suggested Cameron should contact Facebook to ask it to remove the RIP Raoul Moat page. Heaton-Harris said the page contained anti-police statements, which should be taken down. Cameron said he was making a “very good point”

Guardian.co.uk

This was also brought up in last night’s Question Time:

Second question – Is it acceptable for Facebook to have allowed a page worshipping Raoul Moat as a hero? #

From what I saw of it was most of the panelists agreeing that free speech is important yet also disagreeing harshly with the page’s existence with some saying it should be removed as it criticises the police and that it’s disgusting.

I completely disagree.

Raoul Moat asked for therapy whilst still in prison. He mentioned the media in several of his letters to the police. Yes, shooting and killing someone is a horrible crime, but the police and media were not helpful in the last hours of his life. He died because the police fired two tazer shots at him and he pulled the trigger of his gun probably due to reflex. Having sympathy for what he went through is not only ok, but should be given and there is no way the government should step in to remove something that doesn’t break any laws purely because they don’t like it.

I didn’t become a member of the group. Whilst I agree with its existence, I don’t think the members themselves went about it the right way. @Bluraven summed this up:

Wow. The comments feel like something you’d find on a Youtube video. LOL. #

The group was later removed by its creator.

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Freedom of speech should be paramount. The press needs to be investigated about their actions, as does the police. And, just like @mariepercival said in an unrelated post, “we have entered into some sort of political limbo land” and need to actively get engaged with our government.

By Cat | Posted in Bad media is bad, Life in general | Comments (2)

Race for Life

July 15, 2010 – 7:06 am

I’ve long since supported Cancer Research UK with monthly donations and I have in the past volunteered with them, though it never actually came together as the events were either fully staffed already or at times when I couldn’t make it.

A few months ago @chelthan told me that she was taking part in the Race for Life in Oxford which got me interested again. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find enough people to sponsor me for the race itself so decided to take another look at volunteering.

There are three Reading events this weekend:

More info on this flyer.

I will be part of the admin team responsible for the sign-up and allocation of numbers for all three events which, judging by the weather forecast, most likely means sitting underneath a flimsy tent in the rain hoping that the wind won’t blow it away. Yet strangely I’m also looking forward to it.

Are you going to be there?

By Cat | Posted in #rdg, Cancer Research UK, Charity | Comments (1)

On the decision to not send that friend request

July 11, 2010 – 4:09 pm

With social networking sites it’s fairly easy to find people I’ve previously lost touch with. This week I came across two people that used to be a very big part of my life.

One of them was my childhood friend I had known since I can first remember as we lived in the same house and our parents were close which led to us going on holidays together. We went to the same school walking together every day, sitting next to each other and played together at breaktimes. Later I stayed with the family for a few weeks as a we moved and I wouldn’t have been able to attend school from the new location though once we moved we lost touch. We were ten years old at the time. I clearly remember what he used to look like though, judging by his current profile picture, I wouldn’t be able to recognise him even if I’d meet him!

The other one was a friend I had all the way through secondary school. We lived in the same street though didn’t go to the same school and she was the year above me. We had many things in common, like reading, both did voluntary children’s work and spent a lot of time together. She and some friends even came to visit me when I went to school in England for a year when I was 16. We didn’t so much drift apart as ending our friendship on a negative note. We had both changed a lot and with it our priorities and views on life. I disagreed with her shift in faith and her boyfriend she later married and even though we tried to remain friends after I came back to Germany a year later I didn’t fit in with her new activities and, following some arguments, we ended the friendship. The last time I saw her was in 2004 when I was back in Germany for a couple of days and ran into her on the bus where we casually talked, although several mutual friends mentioned her regularly and still do.

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I considered sending a friend request to both of them, but decided not to in the end. Going to England for a year back then changed me a lot which is one of the reasons I found it difficult settling in again when I returned. Their lives in comparison hadn’t changed that much, they remained living at home going to the same school with the same people. retrospectively I realise that neither one of us could see the other point of view well, but that’s too late now. Looking at someone’s profile I last spoke to on the day of my 11th birthday which is afterall 16 years ago didn’t seem like a good idea at all!

The search was sparked in the first place by searching for a picture of one of the children’s events we both did. Combining both our names the result showed, amongst other things, an interview she did for a very local newspaper following her new job. The interview was very selective, she changed details of her past and took sole credit for some of the things we both coordinated.

Strangely that didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I remember the things we accomplished or the things I did with other people. I remember the children I used to work with and also the friendships to the other volunteers and having my name attached to something or being mentioned, even if not by name, in an interview doesn’t mean anything. It is exactly the reason I wouldn’t want to get in contact with her any more though. It has been eight years since we fell out, she has since married a her boyfriend I never liked anyway and she is happy in her jobs and various volunteer things she does elsewhere. She felt the need to change details about her past which makes me realise that there isn’t any point rekindling any form of friendship.

And that’s good, it gives me closure and doesn’t make me wonder about the possibilities in those moments when I get nostalgic.

By Cat | Posted in Personal | Comments (1)

Back to Facebook

July 9, 2010 – 11:58 pm

I deactivated my Facebook account at some point in late 2008 when, after having spent an evening setting specific privacy settings and lists, I realised that too much information was visible to people I didn’t want to see it. Sure, I could have limited the information I put on there in the first place, but I realised I didn’t like Facebook anyway and most people on there were either old colleagues, people that I didn’t have much contact to and hardly any people I actually cared about.

To say I missed Facebook is overstating it. I missed out on some events as they were advertised on Facebook and people initially assumed I had seen the invitations. I missed out on some birthdays as I forgot to write the important ones down before I deactivated my account and I also missed out on some pictures as people would post them on Facebook and nowhere else. At the same time I was already using Twitter and a German social networking site, so I still had the same social interactions.

I reactivated my account again in April this year as I remembered some pictures on my account which weren’t backed up anywhere else and, after copying them, had a look around. I removed most of my personal information on there, deleted several photo albums and apps and a large number of the ‘friends’. Colleagues I haven’t worked with in seven years? Gone. Friends of friends I’ve met at several parties six years ago? Gone. Housemates from the same amount of time? Gone. People I’m not in contact with in some shape or form? Gone..

I also closed a separate Facebook account I had in order to view a friend’s linked photo album using a secondary email address which, for some strange reason, had 18 friend requests!

Will I use Facebook much? I doubt it. I don’t like what they’re doing with the lack of privacy and Facebook’s integration on other sites which I also don’t like for sites offering a Twitter login, but overall it’s good to stay in contact with the people I do want to stay in contact with.

By Cat | Posted in Facebook, Life in general, Twitter | Leave a Comment