Metal Reviews

Drinking with friends is indeed a good time, but speaking from experience, being a sloppy no-good drunken goddamn mess is no fun. Well, mostly. The problem is that once I'm already on that road, having another drink sounds like a wonderful idea. I'm a fairly big advocate of moderation, but I do enjoy a bit of the drunkeness, so maybe not being a hypocrite is something I can work on in the new year. Whether or not that means dropping drinking or moderation, I don't know yet.

Anyway:

-Get back into working out reguarly, eating better
-Probably drink less/lay off the rum.
-Try some more drugs (hippie dippie drugs like mushrooms, not PCP)
-Be less of a miserable bastard
-More outgoing/talk more with the ladies
-Write more
-Read more
-play guitar more regularly
-generally be more productive/don't waste so much time on internet
-Believe in myself more, or, to put that into action: continue to be awesome, and seek awesome new heights with which to be awesome.
-Seriously, work out more
-Work on self-control, self-worth/self-esteem, yadda yadda
-Find some kind of stable employment, profit.
-Save up money with which to travel, then do so.
-Simultaneously figure out long term goals for life, or at least medium term ones, be it grad school, internship, whatever.
-Conquer.

So these are repetitive, and maybe somewhat contradictory, but that about covers it.

Well, yeah. The thing is, I haven't decided if I will simply enter a bank and work for the rest of my fucking life, or go all kinds of corporate. The latter would obviously be easier if I had a second language.

I'd like to learn Spanish. It sounds more fun than German and French and is also useful enough, I guess.

One of my friends works with people from China. Learning Chinese would definitely kick ass, but it is damn near impossible.

Wouldn't it be smarter to learn Portuguese then since the emerging and growing stability in the Brazilian economy? Or has that ship sailed?

It's not impossible, especially if you want to learn "new" chinese where the words are pronounced how they appear. Trad. Chinese has works like "Tao" that are pronounced "dow" so that would be difficult.

As with any language, you learn the alphabet and whatever vowel formants they use first. Why do people think they learned english some other way when they were children?

Not at all. It's just that three beers is barely anything.

Three beers is pretty much my limit too, except I usually stop after 2.

I don't have to spend a lot of money on beer then!

i would definitely say look into brazil if you want to work in latin america (i am), it's just that portuguese is considerably more difficult, mainly due to pronunciation (most people in portugal speak or at least understand spanish, the opposite is not true). on paper they are similar enough to allow speakers of one language to understand texts in the other, though.

Maybe because they had nothing else of importance to do when they were kids?

Didn't do a very good job of this yesterday but friend picked up the slack and she's coming over to do a puzzle with me today. Trying to decide on a thing to do and a time to do it is hard sometimes.



lol this is my goal always.



That's how I look at it too.

Portuguese and Spanish are incredibly similar, the only difference being that the Brasillian/Portuguese accent is different from Spanish. I had a conversation with a Brasillian and while his tone was a bit more nasal, I could make out about 85% of what he was saying. When you look at the text in both languages, the differences are hardly obvious.

I'm not old enough to drink legally in the States yet, so when I drink, it's usually about once a month and the purpose is to get a little buzz going with my friends. Once I can buy legal, I imagine that just sipping a tasty beer will be more appealing, but as of now it's not something I'm into on a regular basis, although I definitely like a good beer. One of my goals this year is actually to party more and meet more people. College is probably the only time in my life where drinking a lot and partying every weekend will be acceptable, so I want to make use of it.

It is much easier to learn a second language as a child than an adult.

It's easy to learn anything when you are a child. I taught my nephew a little about electronics and he gets it. It was struggle to grasp when you're an adult and are incorrect on so many points how you imagine things.

Although this is true, there's a huge difference between teaching a child something about electronics and teaching a language. A child knows nothing about electronics nor language when it is born. Should you bring that child into contact with electronics for the first time at the age of 20 for example, it'll probably figure it out eventually. Should you do the same with language that same child would only produce sounds, maybe a few words at best after a very long time.

It makes me giggle seeing how many resolutions include "be more outgoing." I remember trying to do that a few times, but it never really worked. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm a complete and total introvert, and that I shouldn't try to change that. I'd much rather sit at home and read a book than go to a party full of drunken and obnoxious perople I barely know, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

Pubs are a good compromise. Relaxed environment, easy to socialize, and you don't have blondes in tank tops and Ug boots screaming how wasted they are, man.

I've made progress with respect to outgoingness but it's extremely slow progress, a marathon instead of a sprint. It's easy to feel like I haven't changed, but if I look at me now vs a year or two ago it's a lot easier for me to talk to someone I'm sitting next to in class or accept the invitation to hang out with someone who's just an acquaintance. Also realizing things like if a conversation doesn't go well it's not necessarily my fault, and learning + remembering the things that happen to me throughout the day that other people find interesting. I like reading a book more than going to a party but I also really like having great conversations with 1-6 awesome people so my resolution is making those happen more often (which is what I meant by be more outgoing). Another reason for it is that I do most of my socializing at school and when school is over I pretty much don't see my friends and that's something I'd like to fix before we're all done. It's kind of frustrating because while at school I get more than enough socializing without really trying, but then as soon as it ends I start feeling lonely.

Decided to push myself further and limit my use of internet to checking email and killing time at work. go me go!

How I did on last year's:

Learn to dance - Big check
Learn to drive - small check
keep playing music every day - Check
get back into non-school writing - Didn't happen.
keep working out most days - Small check.
figure out what to do after university - Didn't happen, but thought about it a lot.
spend more time with friends - Check.
be more outgoing, feel less lonely - Check.
get a new job - Didn't happen.
maybe move out - Stopped wanting this to happen.
buy less new stuff and get rid of the stuff I don't need or love. - Stopped thinking about this one but I didn't buy all that much. So... check?
Limit my use of internet to checking email and killing time at work. - Did this pretty well for about four months. Then a bunch of my favourite websites stopped working at work (not because they got blocked, the computer just sucks too much to run Web 2.0 type stuff), and, I dunno, I like the internet.
Relearn French - Check. Read 1,000 pages of Les Miz and practiced conversating with friends.
Stop drinking - This turned into "stop getting drunk" after a month or two, and I succeeded at that.

Not really making any this year since I feel like graduation and store I work for probably closing will create life changes without me trying particularly hard.

Lol at past me. What a cock.

This year - read more, write more, drink about the same, chat up more ladies, be happier.