Archive for the year 2007
Losing Your Accent
Posted on December 2, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
I recently had the opportunity to interview for a new position in the company that currently employs me. I was relieved to finally get through the screening process. I was very grateful for the opportunity. I was both excited and apprehensive at the same time. I hadn’t interviewed for anything in more than three years and my interview skills are not exactly magnificent.
Then I wondered if my accent is still very pronounced. Sometimes accents pose a communication barrier. I know I have had to rely on Angie sometimes to translate me to other people because the words I’ve said form totally different words and phrases to my listener. Angie is used to me so she can understand me no matter how fast I speak. She also says it is a talent that she has developed. Even when she worked at K-Mart, cashiers would ask her to assist when they received questions from foreign individuals who could and were speaking English but were difficult to understand.
I prefer to convey my message without the aid of a translator or third party so I really wanted to work on losing my accent. There wasn’t enough time before the interview, though. Besides that there were a lot of other things I needed to work on. Trust me. My accent was the least of my worries.
Regardless, accent training is something that I would like to pursue down the road. After all, I’m now an American. I should sound like one. 🙂
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Congratulations, Mom!
Posted on December 2, 2007 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Life.
Mom took her oath and became a naturalized US citizen on November 30, Friday. Congrats, mom!
She is the last one. Mine took place about three years ago. I went ahead and did it because my green card (aka permanent resident or “alien” registration card — I’m not sure why they call it that, it sounds so negative) was about to expire. I didn’t want to expire on me so I couldn’t wait on mom and dad any longer. Dad and Jen were both naturalized last year. Their green cards actually expired on them.
Mom’s green card had a later expiration date because she lost her purse several years ago and had to renew everything. Therefore, her green card ended up with a later expiration date than mine and Jen’s. Our entire family is now naturalized. Woot! Woot!
I haven’t found a huge advantage to being naturalized other than we now have the right to vote and we won’t have to pay for a green card renewal every few years. In the long run, being a US citizen is more cost effective.
Some people wouldn’t dare consider pledging to another country. They would maintain their original citizenship or at the very least maintain dual citizenship. Even though we are all naturalized Americans now, we haven’t forsaken the Philippines. I love my home country and will forever call it my home (although in most of my online profiles — e.g. Facebook, MySpace, etc. — I refer to Wichita as my hometown). We are not unpatriotic to our country of origin. We are merely pragmatic.
I suppose we have assimilated more than we realize. Pragmatism is very American. I’m proud to be one, and I’m happy that my mom is now one too. Congrats!
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Anecdotes
Posted on December 1, 2007 by Ching under Web.
File this under web discovery.
I may be one of the few I know who love hearing and reading anecdotes. Whenever I say the word, people always seem to respond with a puzzled look. A whatta? It may just be that I’m not around the right people. Whatever the case maybe, I have found kindred spirits online. Anecdotage.com is a web site devoted to preserving and sharing anecdotes. Their mission is to be the world’s widest collection of celebrity anecdotes.
I discovered the web site while researching information on French cultural anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille
Then again, the web site could just be an extension of the public’s fascination with celebrities. This could simply be another way to obsess with celebrities. However, I choose to think that my initial assessment is true.
Here’s a good one.
“Hugh Massingberd, a former editor of the obituaries page of the Daily Telegraph, recalled the unwieldy challenges posed by a refusal to capitulate to the seductions of the posthumous parallax [a bending of life histories toward all that is light and wholesome, away from anything that might reflect unfavorably on the dead].
“‘One day, an injunction arrived from on high that we were to make a point of including the cause of death,’ he reminisced in The Spectator [in 2001]. ‘As it happened, a candidate for the morgue of the morrow, a priapic jazzer, had handed in his dinner pail after a penile implant had unfortunately exploded. We duly complied with the editorial diktat.'”
It has been reprinted here without permission but I am linking back to their web site (Anecdotage.com) so hopefully they won’t mind it. It is free word-of-mouth, buzz advertising after all. I hope you enjoy their web site as much as I do.
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Johnny Depp is Back
Posted on November 30, 2007 by Ching under Movies, Sponsored Post.
Johnny Depp strikes again with another dark film by Tim Burton. He’s come a long, long way from his days on 21 Jump Street. That’s for sure!
Of all the films that he has done I would have to say that Captain Jack Sparrow is my favorite character. I love the witty banter that he does throughout the movie and the perpetual drunken swagger is a riot! I saw in a behind the scenes show one time and he said that he modeled his swagger after Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. I found that funny since he played Jack’s dad in the last film! He also beats Yoda at talking in circles. For example, take this line “Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid.” He said that in one of the scenes in the first “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Captain Jack Sparrow always had the best lines!
Another great film is “Edward Scissorhands.” This dark film by Tim Burton was a masterpiece of story telling and visual stunning. It paired darkness with the holidays and opened the doors to a new genera of holiday films. In this film Johnny played a man made being that was incomplete. His creator had died before he was able to finish his hands, so instead of normal fingers he had these scissors. It was brilliant how they showed how complicated it would be to have a disfigurement or some sort of impairment and how society hates anything that is different or they don’t understand. The only down fall to the movie was that Johnny didn’t really have any lines to speak and when he did speak it was very short and usually consisted of about 3 words but he made it all up in body movement and facial expression. Tim Burton’s new film “Sweeney Todd” looks to be another Dark Holiday hit like “Edward Scissorhands” but this time we have Johnny singing and dancing in this film. The new film has that dark edge and gripping story and interwoven humor that is a trademark of Tim Burton. Looking at the previews you can tell that this story was written with Johnny Depp in mind as the lead character. There are several places you can go to see the new previews, you can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site where you will find the trailers, film stills backgrounds and wallpapers. For you MySpace junkies you can visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace and list him as your friend. I am really looking forward to seeing this film on December 21st I think it will be one of the Holiday Hits to see.
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New Goodies
Posted on November 29, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Wishlist.
I finally had the opportunity to spend my $40 Best Buy gift card (slap bracelet) that my in-laws got for me for my birthday. I got a Canon camera case for my new digital camera and a Gorillapod (so you all can scratch that off my wish list).
It used to be that the only Gorillapods available were for big, SLR-type cameras. I’m so glad that they now have a version for ultracompacts because it is awesome. I tried it out last night and you can literally hook it to any surface. I love it!
Incidentally, my gift card came in the form of a cool slap bracelet. When I tried to give it to the cashier, he looked at me kind of strangely. I had to explain that the slap bracelet IS my gift card. I guess he’d never seen them before.
Thank you so much Mom and Dad B!
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