Month: September 2013

I am teaching Japanese who want to practice Japanese. I am also a Chinese learner, I need to practice Chinese if I could find the time. My second foreign language is Chinese, but I totally forgot everything about Chinese. And I always am shy when I speak Chinese. Learning foreign language is fun if I have more time to learn.    

Since Japanese is my mother tongue, I have not cared about grammar. The student asks me “Why do you say so? other than ….” my answer sometimes “I did not notice that” or “I do not know”. When I say so, this is actually my fault. I should have prepared better.  

I need to know more about Japanese grammar, so I often open textbook and learn Japanese sometime. That is funny. When I teach Japanese, I realize that I do not understand Japanese. At least, I did not think about my mother tongue logically. My student often says “That is weird” , “You should say …” But I actually I do not say so. Sometime I do not have answers from “Grammatical point of view”.

Anyway, today is Friday. My study was going well for this week. I have still so many things to do before I turn the paper in. But I am pretty much enjoying the process. I am becoming the better and the better for Science. I would say I am enjoying study physics. 

I will run 20 miles tomorrow, I need to sleep earlier. I will finish today’s blog here. I am having good time lately, but to tell the truth, I need more reading time. I think I could keep some for Saturday and Sunday. I will pretty much enjoy this weekend as usual. I am still reading “Why nations fail” which is long book and serious theme. I am looking for something fun book for the next.

You have a good weekend.

I started my blog 02/03/2013, finally I am going to write 100 th post. As my rule, I write 300-500 words at least. So, I think I had written around 40000 words. Normally, the written books are around 40000 to 300000 words, It seems I need to write more, if I want to be a serious writer.

The one of most famous contemporary writers in U.S. Steve King said on “On writing”, if you want to be writer, you may start 1000 words a day. I am not going to be writer, so 500 words a day is enough to practice English, other than physics. Anyway, I just finish 100 post. When I reach 1000 posts, maybe, I would be able to write more.

On training marathon, there is running “junk running” which just adds our running experiences, normally, just jogging for hours. But, it is important to have just running experience. While running, I can teach my body enduring work, tell my body ”I am going to run. I will run, O.K.?” For me (thank you for reading this blog though.), to write this blog, sometimes “junk writing.” I am serious writing about scientific writing though, the writing experience is especially important for me.

I used to take a diary. Someone’s saying in Japanese “The person who has taken a diary everyday for 3 years is going to achieve something, and the person who has taken a diary everyday for 10 years had already accomplished something.” I believe this is true.

By writing every day, I can log my thought, consolidate my thought everyday. Unconsciously, I am talking to myself and confirm ”what is the achievement today, what is my goal for my life, did I walk some to my goal?”  When I do not have to write something, I have to come up with something meaningful. To write this blog, firstly for only me, but I would like to write something meaningful for readers. So I have to observe ”Is there anything I have experienced something meaningful for readers today?”

Living in the U.S. is so much fun. I have been in the U.S. for 1 year and 5 months. I have truly experienced meaningful for my life. We have 2 eyes, both eyes are important, because seeing by 2 eyes, we can see the things 3 dimensional. For me, the first eye is made in Japan, the second eye is going to be made in the U.S.

It seems today’s writing is junk writing. By keeping writing, I will come up with something, Thank you very much for reading this blog. You have encouraged me everyday. Thank you very much. Have a good day.

I love to read the books, but life is short. As describe similar discussion here before, if I can read 30 books a month, I would be able to read around 360 books a year, therefore I may be able to read only about 3000 books before I turn 40, including rereading books. I have to work and will have family, children. My life is going to be busy, it will be much harder to save the enough time to read books.

However, the one of recent technological innovations helps a lot, as you know it is called “The audio books”. The benefit of reading audio books are following.

1. We can listen the book with doing something else (e.g. driving, cleaning, walking and so on)

2. We can build listening skill.

3. I believe, from my experience, the audio books work on our emotion, while the physical books work on our logical thinking.

4. Since you listen the book, you know how these words are pronounced, so you can easily talk about the book with your friends.

But also, the audio book has disadvantages, such as,

1. Sometime listening is interrupted by our random thinking. So that, listening audio books is not suit for reading the book first time. You may lost the some part of book when you are thinking different things, which happen almost unconsciously, like “What is today’s dinner?”

2. It is said that comfortable listening is around 160 wpm, so about 10000 word an hour. Normally, the number of words written in the book is around 40000 to 300000. So that we need 4 hours to finish shortest book, sometime 30 hours is needed to finish a long ones.

I am listening faster than normal speed like 2X normal speed, if I can focus on listening I use 3X mode. The audible apps in my smartphone has such function fortunately. Firstly, I thought listening faster speed is hard, but finally I got used to.

You know life is short, I estimated how many hours I spend listening books for a month. I am listening the book around 50 hours a month, which means I do sacrifice my time for listening music for 50 hours. I do listen music, I love music, I play music. But, I chose to listen the books, most of my niche time. Yes, I know time is invaluable.

I am currently reading “why nations fail”. Honestly, I have not followed the author’s claim so far. There are many cases are shown by author, such as French, Britain, Japan, China, the U.S., and so on. I could not see the consistency of what the author claiming. I think the centralization of power in the nation is key, but I am not sure that only this parameter can explain everything. I will have questions about this matter next several days, maybe weeks. I am thinking of reading related books about this matter.

I had heard from one of Physics journal. They sent me the referee comments on the paper I submitted in July. The comments are positive, I believe the publisher is willing to publish the paper. So, I am reading the critique for my paper as deeper as possible, I am planing to revise paper. The referee thought highly of the data, but he has some qualms about my paper, especially for interpretation of the data. I need to address my clarification to publish paper. This is good news. I hope this paper will be published.

To do writing homework for “Paraphrasing”, I was reading the article from the Economist called “No loopy idea”. This article described the possibility of next new train system, which run in large vacuumed tunnel in California area. Unlike the other Economist article, my impression about this article is “not well written”. I am not native reader but I felt so, so that the next question I have to answer is “why do you think so?” I need to have this sense, why this English is “good” or “bad”.

Why is the key. Someone said “The person who know how to do always has the job. The person who also know why is always his boss.” I could find this saying in the book “How life imitates chess” written by Garry Kasparov who is the strongest chess player in history. He explains that this “why” can make turn bad tactics into good tactics. Therefore, only the strategist who always ask himself “why” can have good tactics to his goal.

And now, I am reading books in University library. I like reading here, because they open until late and they serve coffee. I can just focus on my reading. I like it. The Univ. of Virginia has several library, they compete each other, most of them open until midnight, some of them open 24 hours. That is surprising. The university gives the student at least the opportunity to study hard. The students can ask themselves why they need to study hard, can’t they?

Since I had been out my home town for experiment for a week, I did not realize the fall semester at the Univ. of Virginia started. Full of Students!! I can feel my life is going to be crazy busy in this semester (My work does not depend on the semester though. ) But this busyness helps me to work harder.

I am currently working on writing skill. I hired my writing tutor, because I know, among the several language skills, the writing is hardest and difficult to teach myself. My ultimate goal in writing is publishing my book in English. I do not know whether or not that would happen. Anyway, I will have written the scientific papers in English throughout my career. Why not practicing my writing?

Let me share my experience with you on writing, especially for English learners. My teacher asked me to write “summary” and “paraphrase”. I thought I did not need to practice, because my objective is writing the book. I wanted to work on the longer writing, like 10 K words more. But, once I have done several assigned works, I just realized these skills are very important.

Both practicing “Summary” and “Paraphrase” helps you a lot on reading. Both skill need you to understand the text fully. You have to understand what author is saying. For summary, you need to catch main author’s point and describe clearly and shortly. For paraphrase, you had better use the different vocabulary and structure to describe what the author explain. These are hard jobs.

And I just finish reading “Blink” by  Malcolm Gladwell, and started reading “The art of thiking clearly” by Rolf Dobeli, and also am reading “Why nations fail” and “The romance of three kingdoms (Chinese classic literature)” These are very fun. Let me write here soon. I am sorry, but time to go for today. Let me write later. Have a good evening.