2016-04-22 01:30 English blogs
Y (Kuma's owner)
I started my blog in January this year. I had been thinking of writing a blog in English, but couldn't start last year because I didn't think I could do it. I thought I would lose interest soon.
Contrary to my expectation, I have been writing my blog for about four months. I think I have been doing well. No, no wait! Keeping a blog in English is not my target. The goal I am aiming for is to be able to write in English without making mistakes and to write good English.
There is no doubt that writing English is good for improving English skills. However, I think I need to read someone else's blog, someone who is a native English speaker. Native English speakers know lots of expressions so I am able to learn from them. That it would be a great help. All right, let's find some English blogs!
There are an enormous amount of blogs on the Internet. I wanted to read someone's blog who lives near to the area where I live, but I couldn't find any at all. So, I tried to find blogs about the same topics that I'm interested in. I found some blogs about cats, gardening, puzzles and Australia. I saved some of them in my favorites folder on the browser I use. Alright, I'm ready!
I promised myself I will read one or two English blogs everyday, starting from today.
2016-04-20 22:53 Jasper Jones
Y (Kuma's owner)
I think that anyone has favorite books. One of my favorite books is "Jasper Jones" written by Craig Silvey. The reason I read this book was because I wanted to read an Australian author's books. I didn't have any idea about Australian books, so I searched for books through the internet, and found a book which has a good reputation.
It is a story of a remote area in Australia during the Vietnam War. The leading characters are Charlie Bucktin, a boy who loves reading and Jasper Jones who is believed to be a trouble maker. Before I started to read, I expected that the story was a kind of mystery, but it was not so simple. From the beginning, I was absorbed in reading. I'm not going to write the details of the story in case you read it.
I heard that this story was going to be a movie.
Usually, I don't expect much from movies when I had read the original books because some movies dramatized the stories a little bit, and that made me feel something was wrong.
However, there are some movies that didn't disappoint my expectations. For instance, an old movie "Gone with the Wind" was really good. I had read the original book before I saw the movie, but the movie was also good.
I don't know why but I think the movie "Jasper Jones" would be a good one.
I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
2016-04-20 09:30 Humanity and robots
Y (Kuma's owner)
I think most people love movies. I love movies too. My favorites are heart-warming, funny movies like comedy, and science fiction.
I have been trying to see movies a lot because it's good for improving hearing in English, and also most DVDs have subtitles, which is very convenient for me. Even if I can't catch the words, I can understand what is being said by reading the subtitles.
However, I have an issue that it is quite difficult to understand the jokes in comedies. I need to know the background of the society or country where the movie has been made, otherwise there's nothing funny. Another reason for difficulties with comedies is the slang words. I didn't learn slang words at school. One of the few comedies that I could understand was "Back to the future". Therefore, to me SF movies are much easier than comedies.
My recent favorite SF movie is definitely "Interstellar". There are so many SF movies with beautiful 3D graphics. I love them too, but sometimes I feel a bit disgusted by the design that is conscious of the near future.
One of the reasons I like "Interstellar" is the shape of robots. The robots in the movie, TARS and CASE are not humanoid type of robots, they are just boxes. Yes, they really are! Maybe I have seen so many humanoid robots in movies and got tired of them.
I can understand that it's fun to see humanoids. Their bodies are similar to ours and we can feel familiar with them, but still I prefer TARS and CASE. If robots can move in any way, by wheels or caterpillars, I think that's enough. There's no need for them to be humanoids. To me, having a head, eyes, and even a mouth are extra parts.
Another reason I like "Interstellar" is that TARS and CASE have a sense of humor. Despite their mechanical looks, they can make jokes. That makes me feel that they are more human than humanoid robots.
If I could have a robot, I would choose the one that has a sense of humor set to 70%*, rather than a humanoid. Let me see, 50% is good enough at the moment, maybe.
*In the movie, the robots can be set to have a sense of humor of any percentage.