Impromptu speaking

Attended a workshop about impromptu speaking last night and really enjoyed what I had been taught. It was not the first time I attended this kind of workshop but perhaps the speaker yesterday gave me something more impactful and inspired me to think not only on the ways of making myself a better impromptu speaker but also in a bigger picture, how to change from a quiet introvert to an outgoing and more sociable extrovert who is usually seemed to have better communication and interpersonal skills. The speaker showed us the comments given by his teachers on the report cards to show that he was not good at interacting and socializing with people when he was in schools but what happened after his graduation encouraged him to improve himself and his own efforts made him an excellent communicator and professional trainer of sales and interpersonal skills.    

 

Three useful formulas to prepare an impromptu speech that he shared – PREP, Pendulum and 5W1H. PREP is about how a speech can be structure and organized by using the formula of point (agree/disagree) + reason + example / elaboration / story + point (summary / restatement / conclusion). Pendulum is about giving the listener the freedom to make his own decision by analyzing certain things in detailed without bias. 5W1H is about using “What, Who, Why, Where, Which and How” to ask questions and generating the content of an impromptu speech. In addition, there are two more tips. Firstly, for a topic with a long and complicated title, speakers should only focus on a few key words and avoid explaining the title at length to avoid misunderstanding and make full use of the time. Secondly, if the topic is something very specific that a speaker without prior knowledge on, “reframing” technique could be used in preparing a speech in short time. By “chunking up” a certain topic, things tend to be more general and with that, we could link the existing topic to something that we are more familiar with. The speaker gave a good example by sharing with us how Mr.Tony Tan, the ex- president answered a question raised by someone during the presidential election, “What was the biggest mistake that you ever made in your career?”

“Practise makes progress” We can only progress in what we are learning if we constantly make an effort to practise it. The speaker shared with us how he made use of his toilet time to practise his impromptu speech by using the quote of the day on the newspaper as the title. And only by repeating the practise numerous times, he made a breakthrough in his skill. Lacking of motivation, I must admit that I put almost zero time to practise my impromptu speech even though I always want to improve myself. An impromptu speech needs only a few minutes and it does not cost much of my precious time, I believe I can afford to repeat it a few times per day under the same topic. There will be an impromptu speaking competition on 6 March 2018, 13days from now. I want to challenge myself how much can I learn and progress in delivering an impromptu speech if I put in real effort every day. Let me start from today to make a difference!

(549 words)

09 [The Power of Habit] by Charles Duhigg

This book explains in details how a habit can be changed and modified to make life better based on the research results done in United States. In comparison to change a habit completely, a better approach is to understand the habit loop and replace the routine that we do when we receive certain cue in order to get the same rewards. 4 steps to change a habit (1) identity the routine (2) Experiment with rewards (3) Isolate the cue and (4) Have a plan. Perhaps it is easier say than do so I decided to use apply the steps on one of my bad habits that I want to get rid of and see how it works.

To figure out the habit loop, the first step is to identity the routine which I want to change. The routine here is whenever I am free and have nothing to do in office, I feel empty and an urge to do something to keep myself busy as it is not good to be always free while other people around me are working so hard. Therefore, I start learning a few languages that I am interested in but not have sufficient time to study or browsing the internet looking for possible job opportunities.

To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment with different rewards. After experimenting a few times, I found that the reward that I got after sending out many resumes or indulging myself in language learning was the feeling that I had tried my best in learning something and therefore I were satisfied with the meaningful thing that I had done during my time in office.

To identify and isolate the cue amid the noise, the same system used by psychologist is applied: Categories of behaviors ahead of time are scrutinized in order to see patterns. By asking the following questions: Where are you? What time is it? What’s your emotional state?  Who else is around? What action preceded the urge? The answers would be as listed below. The cue is likely to be identified based on the answers to the questions. The possible cue is “Feeling everyone is busy with tier stuff except me”.

Where are you? (Office)

What time is it? (Early morning 8am)

What’s your emotional state?  (Ennui and despair)

Who else is around? (Colleagues)

What action preceded the urge? (Feeling everyone is busy except me)

Once the habit loop is figured out, the reward that driving the behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself—actions can be taken to shift the behavior. A change to a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward that one is craving. Put another way, a habit is a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD. To re-engineer that formula, I need to begin making choices again. And the easiest way to do this, according to study after study, is to have a plan with a specific timing and well-mentioned objective. My plan perhaps can be any of the suggestion mentioned below.

Option A

Before working, list down a list of meaningful things that I want to do within a day and use it as a guide to focus on my tasks and prevent distraction from others.

Option B

Ask for more assignment from the superior and keep myself busy with works so that I don’t feel that I am the one who is free and lagged behind.

Option C

Spend partial of the 9 working hours in something that can give me fulfillment and spend the rest in doing assignment that I have in hand.

Not sure which option is the best to go ahead, perhaps I should try out each and every of them. If none of them are effective, I shall repeat the steps until a satisfactory formula is found to replace the existing habit loop. Changes don’t come easily, but it comes with determination and perseverance.

(675 words)

08 [The Spy] by Paulo Coelho

Mata hari in Malay/Indonesian language it means “Sun / Sol / Soleil”. It’s hard to imagine an European woman would use this as her name. After so many years in SE Asia, I never heard of any woman with such a name. After the first chapter, I knew better why she got this name; apparently she was married to a general stationed on Java Island which was then still a Dutch colony. In spite of the big gap in their ages, the exotic life in a Far East country seemed more attractive to her. However, the marriage didn’t last long, after the death of her second child, she returned to Netherlands then she moved on to Paris to start a new life.

The period of time in which the story happened is during La Belle Époque. I believe during that time France is the center of Europe. As an erotic star, Mata Hari became famous by presenting the oriental dance which was novelty among the Parisian. Even thought, some people see her as nothing more than a whore who strips naked in public under an artistic pretense. There were many other dancers who followed what she did after she gained her fame but for her, all the others was shake their bodies grotesquely and take off their clothes without artfulness or inspiration.  At the same time, she had many lovers who were in high ranking in the government or rich people who were able to offer her the luxury in terms of housing and money.

Beauty is not eternal and she was growing old, when she was thinking how she was going to live the rest of her life. There was an offer from Berlin. She accepted it and left Paris for Berlin in the hope that she could repeat the same success in Paris. However, it was a wrong decision. A war broke out soon after that between German and France, she fled to her hometown with the help of the agent that brought her to German in the first place. Even though, she remained loyal to France, she was then no choice but accepted the money given by a German Consul and became a spy. At the same time, she tried to get in contact with the French intelligence and attempted to tell them what happened on her. She contacted a wrong person who desperately needed a scapegoat to keep his power and regain his fame.

The German intelligence set a trap to eliminate her after noticed that she was possibly a double agent. The French also did the same. She became someone who squeezed between two big power and none of her lovers wanted to get involved due to her espionage. She was judged and convicted of what she didn’t do. Without sufficient evidence, appealing was useless and soon, she was executed. She ended her life in a way that was very different from what she expected. I believe if she had been given a choice, she would have chosen to stay in Netherland or other European countries instead of going back to Paris.  

This book is quite different from the other books of the author but nevertheless, it remained one of most interesting books I have read and it actually inspired me to find out more about the La Belle Époque which was virtually unknown to me before I read this book. Looking forward to the next book of the author.

(581 words)

Willpower strengthening...

It is not easy to muster sufficient self-control to repeat something tedious everyday especially something you are not interested at all. It can be a torture and a waste of time if a task is carried out simply for the sake of doing it without clear motivation and rewards. For people who are highly self-disciplined and with clearer objective in mind, they are more likely to stick to their daily routines and outperform their more impulsive peers in longer term on every performance variables. In simple words, Impulsive momentum can last only a short period of time and for longer run, willpower is definitely necessary to go through all the ups and downs without being distracted from the original track.

 

Am I a person with strong willpower? My answer would be “ it depends on the situation”. Even though, it is quite often that I am lagged behind in my learning schedule and cannot keep pace with the targets that I set, but perhaps I overcommit myself always or the targets are too ambitious and not realistic enough. Appropriate expectation on my own capability and the limitation of time must be taken into consideration while making a plan to avoid disappointment that come afterwards when the original schedule has to be modified repeatedly to suit the changing dates.

 

I read an article this morning and it said that if one wants to do something that requires willpower—like going for a long jog after work—one has to conserve his willpower muscle during the day,” “If one uses it up too early on tedious tasks like participating in a long brainstorming meeting or doing something that requires high concentration for a long period of time, all the strength will be gone by the time one gets home. Very often, there is less willingness to do what has been planned and choosing an easy way out is more likely to happen. I really agree with this point as it happened so many times in my life. I cancelled my visit to gym every time after working very hard in office especially when I was required to prepare something urgently needed or visit to a site. I didn’t feel like working out in gym even though I was aware of the importance of exercising a few times per week but I simply didn’t feel the motivation to do it.

 

The article also has an interesting discussion on whether it is possible to exercise willpower muscles in order to make them stronger like the same way using dumbbells strengthen biceps. It is an inspiring question that helps us to look at the problem from other perspective. In addition to understanding the obstacles in carry out our daily routines because of the lacking of willpower, we are actually focusing on how we can strengthen the willpower muscle in one part of our lives and make use of the momentum slowly creating a possible spilling effect that can touch every aspect of our lives. Suddenly, I feel un urge to find out how could I strength my willpower so that I can be better in the areas I want myself to be. Haha.

**With ideas and lots of quotes from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

(528 words)

07 [Grit: The power of passion and perseverance] by Angela Lee Duckworth

I first heard about the word “Grit” when during a dinner on a weekday’s night, a friend of mine said that she had not yet seen any grit in her second daughter who was in secondary school and she wondered how she could do to make her grittier. Then, she expanded the topic by saying more about the existing educational system and how the government was looking to teach the young generation who were the future pillars of society to be grittier in facing challenges. And all of these because of a book called “grit” that changed people’ thinking about the necessary conditions to succeed in life. I found that book in the library and then spent another two weeks listening to the 9hours plus audio book and I must admit that I learned many things from this book that I wanted to share some of them here.

We all face limits in our lives, not just in talent, but also in opportunity. But more often than we think, most of these limits are self-imposed. We try something but fail then we conclude that we have bumped our heads against the ceiling of possibility. Or we change direction because of the enormous obstacle right in front of us even though we are only after taking a few steps forward. In either case, we never venture as far as we might have and put in as much effort as we could. To be gritty is to invest, day after day and week after year, in challenging practice relentlessly and to be gritty is to fall down many times but each time to be able to stand up with great fortitude and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

I don’t think I am a very gritty person based on the tests given in the book but I want to make myself a grittier person and thus better prepare myself for the possible changes that may happen in future, be it in my career or other aspects of my life. I always want to step out of my comfort zone but I don’t have a clear idea about how I am going to achieve that. Now, I have a better idea. I need to find out the real extent of my comfort zone then deliberately manufacture situations slightly outside of it. After that, try my best to overcome them through trial and error and through doing them repeatedly. By keep on pushing myself, the zone is more likely to get bigger and once an uncomfortable thing may become something that belongs to my comfort zone and I don’t feel reluctant to do it anymore. In order to do that, I must surround myself with people whom I want myself to be because by doing this, I tend to fall in line and following along what the people are doing.

A quote from Nietzsche: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” There are always setbacks in pursuit of something and we should not let setback to hold us back and discourage us from moving forward, even though we are in fear and trepidation. We must be positive enough to think nothing is impossible and no goal is beyond reach. The most important is we must give it a try!


I am going to use the ideas I learnt from this book and apply it in my daily life to see how big the difference that I can make.


**With ideas and lots of quotes from Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance.




(577 Words)

06 [Veronika Decides to Die] by Paulo Coelho

When I looked at the book title “Veronika decides to die” at the very beginning, I really wondered what the book was about. A teenager girl that wanted to commit suicide because of the disapproval given by her parents in maintaining a relationship with a boy who is from different class of society that the parents frowned upon? My curiosity got the better of me and I started reading the book soon I got free time. Later on, only I found out that I was wrong and the story was not so shallow and easily predictable. In fact, the background and the ways the writer presented the story were quite unique to me. The story starts with a scene in which a lady from Ljubljana, whose name is Veronika, is trying to kill herself. She has a very special way of seeing life and feels that everything in her life is the same; mundane things are repeated days after days where one day is exactly like the other. And, once her youth has gone, her life would go all the way downhill and increase likelihood of suffering. She does not see the objective of living in this world even she knows that suicide is an affront to all religion code and man should struggle to survive, not to succumb.

After her failure of committing suicide, she is sent to a mental hospital called Vilette and in this place he meet with the others who have very own reasons of being admitted to the hospital. Some of them are schizophrenics, maniacs or lunatics who could not really distinguish the real things or a hallucination. Some of them are simply tired of living in outside world and want to get rid of everything seems unnecessary in their lives. Going through a period of time in which she always want to kill herself, Veronika grows to understand better what she is looking for after her interaction with the doctor and the patients. Each of the patient just like Veronika, has a long story about why they are here and whether or not they want to leave the hospital to return to the normal lives outside.

It is a bit difficult to write about what I really learnt from this book but I like reading the stories of each of the characters because what happened in their lives are different from the people that I can meet day in and day out. Perhaps I should spend some time to think about whether or not I live in my very own world --- with minimum desire to let others neither step into my zone nor become a part of my world. Also, I am curious to find out whether people in modern society nowadays experience more despair, pessimism and a sense of futility if they cannot do something in the ways they want the things to be. Whether or not they would take immense pleasure in the suffering of others simply because that make them believe they are happy and that life has been generous with the certain group of  people like them.

Society always imposes on us a collective way of behaving, and most of us never stop to wonder how our behaviors are influenced by people around us. Most of the people just think all these are norms and follow blindly without asking simple questions like why the keyboard is QWERTY but not ABCDE or why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other…perhaps we simply accept the fact that when a lot of people think something is right, and that thing must be right.

(608 words)

Passion

Am I following my passion and doing something that I really want to do in the rest of my life? The moment I graduated from University, I didn’t know what I exactly wanted and how I was going to do with all the time that I had but deep inside my mind, I had a simple thought to earn sufficient money to buy my parents a better house in which they could enjoy their retired lives. I achieved it after a few years working in an industry that I never thought I would be working in. And until today, I am still in the same industry and with all interests and passion to bring my career further. In fact, I always believe that interests are triggered by interactions with the outside world. The more we interact with others,  the more we absorb new ideas that help us to know ourselves better what we are interested in, even though the process of interest discovery can be messy, serendipitous, and inefficient, in large part because we simply cannot predict with certainty what will capture our  attention without giving it a try. However, my past experience told me that lots of things seem uninteresting and superficial until I take my initiatives to learn and discover. After a while, only I realize about the different facets which I didn’t know at the start and the eagerness to know more push me forward to dig deeper. And after a period of years, it eventually helps me to foster my passion. The process is not a passive discovery, like unearthing a hidden gem in my psyche, but rather of an active construction over time.

“Passion for your work is a little bit of discovery, followed by a lot of development, and then a lifetime of deepening.” I really agree with this sentence, something that one has passion in should be something that one never get tired of doing it and something that one allows to occupy all the waking moment. However, some time people are just overwhelmed with all kinds of goals that they want to achieve and cannot exactly tell what their real passion is. For them, perhaps the metaphor of passion as firework is correct – erupt in a blaze of glory but quickly fizzle, leaving wisps of smoke and memory of what was once spectacular. It is understandable that a human being always has the desire to learn new things, to seek novelty, to be on lookout for change and variety – it is a basic drive that we, as a human being, have. However, the more important thing is how we commit to something we have passion in and stay there for a very long period of time to achieve mastery, instead of moving from a place to another doing different kinds of new things that look more appealing.

**With ideas and lots of quotes from Angela Lee Duckworth: Grit: The power of passion and perseverance

(475 word)

An experimental way in learning new language

In the last 20 years, the approaches that I have been using for language learning are always the same, the traditional ways in which one learns the language through spending hours after hours, days after days memorizing what is shown in the textbooks. My past experience showed me that it is not the efficient way of learning a language. Only 5-6 years after I obtained my JLPT level 1 that I found how to improve my Japanese conversation and started talking to others in Japanese the ways I wanted to be since I first started learning the language. The same thing happened on me in Cantonese. Having been exposed to the Cantonese language for years, I never made a real effort to use it in my daily life until I met a Cantonese speaker from Shenzhen that was willing to talk to me in the language. After more than 5 hours of conversation, I found that I was able to express myself well in Cantonese using the words that I learnt from drama, movie and the conversations of others. I should have been aware of the possibility long time ago.

Also, another language - Malay. I  learnt it for more than 15years when I was in school but I didn’t use the language in daily life except in the language classes or when I must submit an assignment in the language. However, after spending some time to read a Malay language phrasebook, I recalled and regained many things which I was once familiar with. An attempt to talk to native malay/Indonesian speaker in mobile apps, opened a new door for me to practice the languages. Without the use of textbook and memorizing, the direct conversation that I have had with the native help me to polish up my language and familiarize myself with the languages again. Also, I am more motivated now and ready to improve my language proficiency to better communicate with people. The biggest change that I can observe is that the process of learning language is more enjoyable because of the use of the new approach.

 

In fact I still don’t have a clear picture of how can I learn a language in short time and I am in the process of trial-and-error to find out the method that best suits me. Right now, in my mind, I would like to try out a method which places great emphasis on conversation, practices and  interest-orientation. A brief explanation of how it is done ---

• Prepare a list of a few topics that I want to share with the native speakers
• Use the existing grammar and vocabulary that I know, write down the things I want to talk to the native.
• Talk to as many people as possible through meetup or mobile apps using what I have written and get feedbacks, inputs, questions etc from them.
• Use the feedbacks etc from them to expand the content and add in the new grammar and vocabulary that I learnt from news, books etc.
• Talk to as many people as possible using what I have and the same process is repeated.
• The list of topic is growing and slowly, I will be able to talk more in new topics in which I can apply the grammar and vocabulary that I learnt.
   
  I have decided to allocate a period of time (Now to CNY in 16Feb18) to try out this method by using Korean and Spanish that I am working on. I shall share my findings next month here to prove whether this method is practicable and helpful in language learning especially in conversation.

Doing business

The ways of doing business in developed and under-developed countries may be different depending on the transparency and the bureaucracy. Extra care must be taken when deal with the local government and also the business counterpart especially in the countries where corruption is rife and bribe paying is the norms. It is not something new that some huge multinational companies paid bribes to officials and local agents to win multimillion contracts through non-transparent tenders and under-table transactions. The more shocking things are that many of the companies are well-known ethical companies with proper internal controls, anti-bribery compliance programs and zero tolerance policies towards corruption. The existence of the policies and rules seems insufficient to deter companies from engaging in corrupt practices. Normally, such companies abhor corruption to certain extant, but in pursing of more profit and stresses from both management board and shareholders, there is a tendency that the companies eventually succumb to the “request” on the rationalization that "everybody is doing it", including their competitors. To stay competitive, they have no choice but capitulate to the inappropriate and unlawful requests. People that involved would devise ways to circumvent their own controls, by disguising corrupt transactions, for example, using a shell company in tax heaven to route the payment quietly.

The problem itself is a pitfall for all companies that are doing business local or overseas. If everything is under control, the under-table transactions would be like a stone that sank into the sea without creating any ripple; all the parties enjoy the benefits obtained and in future, the same collaboration could be continued since they now know the ways to get the works done. However, if there is a leakage of confidential information, the impacts would be enormous. All parties involved in the transactions would be charged and the reputation of those involved would be severely tainted. It doesn’t worth as time is needed to rebuild the company that suffered severe reputational damage in any industry.

Hopefully, what happened recently would serve as a cautionary lesson and for the companies affected, in addition to all the preventive measures and programs, they must go the extra mile in countering this problem and make ethics part of their DNA.

(368 Words)

05 [Thirty Years a Slave] by Louis Hughes

The story background is American Civil war between the Union and the Confederacy. A black guy called Louis was a slave in a white family called McGee. The family was one of the richest plantation owner in Memphis with hundreds of slaves working in its cotton plantation. The story gives a thorough description on the working and living conditions slaves in plantation during that period of time on American history. Even though slavery was officially abolished after Abraham Lincoln from Illinois was elected as the president but some states at the south didn’t follow the rules the slavery was still prevalent and none of the slaves were given the freedom to live as a freed man and the rights they deserved. Whipping, beating, torturing and even killing are common then as the white family didn’t seem to consider the slaves as human beings but more like tools and perhaps animals that they could control, manipulate to gain whatever they want which justify the price they paid when they first bought the slaves. Any slave who tried to run away from the owners would be punished severely once they were caught and even killed when the war with Union army was going on.

I started thinking what made the white families so ignorant to the right of other people with different skin color and what made them treat the black people differently from the ways they treat their own family members, friends, neighbors and strangers with same skin color. Even though it was well written in the bible that all men are equal in front of God and most people then were somehow more devoted than people today,  but religion seemed so helpless in helping to release the slaves from the bondage to freedom. A good guess would be religion was abused as a tool by the slave owners and traders to manipulate the slaves by instilling whatever ideas that made the slaves easier to be exploited for the benefits of others.

Half way reading the book, I suddenly realized that freedom which is a basic need and something which is taken for granted by most people nowadays is actually something which was so desperately desired by the slaves. They could risk their life to run away from the owners just for the freedom and get rid from all the cruel treatment from the slave owners. Sadly, even though the American Civil war ended with the victory of the Union and slavery was officially abolished in United states but racial discrimination still happened for another 80 years.

As a conclusion, this book is definitely worth a read for those who are interested to know more about the slavery in US especially during the American Civil War period.

(456 words)

[ESP12] La nochevieja de 2017 - Parte 02

Essay 39 (Antes)

Cuando el año nuevo se está acercando lentamente, normalmente en algún día entre la nochebuena y la nochevieja, me entrego a la retrospección de todo lo que he hecho y pruebo a reevaluar algunas elecciones que he tomado este año. Luego, preparo una lista de los cambios que deseo hacer en mi estilo de vida para continuamente mejorar la vida en las doce meses que viene. El breve resumen sobre un poca cosas desde mi lista que quiero alcanzar.

{Tener más calidad de sueño} Durante los días de semana, sólo duermo 5 – 6 horas cada día y creo que es bueno que dormir suficientemente por la noche para evitar un efecto negativo en mi salud, ya sean la salud física y mental, y al mismo tiempo aumentar mi concentración.

{Convertirse más activo} En lugar de quedar sentados la mayor parte del tiempo y de permanecer encorvado sobre el ordenador todo el día, pienso que debo, al menos, hacer ejercicio algunas veces a la semana y encontrar formas efectivas de moverme más durante el día en casa o en oficina.

{Pasar más tiempo con las personas que importan} No debo desperdiciar mi tiempo en cosas tontas sino empleo más tiempo en las personas a las que cuido profundamente y que me preocupo. Vacaciones familiares, una cena familiar, un día familiar……Todas actividades que se terminan con el adjetivo “familiar” son de prioridad altísimo.

¿Los que quieres alcanzar en el año nuevo están parecidos  a los que mencionados arriba? :)

Essay 39 (Después)

No corrección se recibío.

Essay 40 (Antes)

Siempre gustaría viajar al extranjero pero por todas razones personales no lo logré. No es fácil que viaje sin hacer un gasto fuerte y un compromiso entre lo que tengo y lo que quiero debido a la distancia de los destinos desde aquí y los días disponibles cada año para ir de vacaciones.

Como un amante de los viajes y una persona supersticiosa, estoy listo a recorrer por las calles con mi maleta esta nochevieja para atraer nuevos viajes a mi casa y por así, podré viajar más frecuentemente y más lejos en el año nuevo, ya sean vacaciones con la familia, planes de negocios u otros. Me pregunto por qué se me vengo a la cabeza la intención para hacerlo. Creo que no hay muchos vecinos que lo conocen y tal vez les asusten cuando vean a una persona suspicaz con su maleta, al asomarse por la ventana justo a medianoche. Siento que este ritual surgiré efecto tarde o temprano si lo practico con sinceridad y esperanza. No me arrepentiré  si no se lo realiza, al menos el ritual me hace más optimista y positivo para perseguir  lo que quiero alcanza en esta etapa de la vida.

¿Pondrás en marcha un sinfín de rituales incluido salir a correr por las calles con su maleta en la nochevieja para dar la bienvenida al año nuevo?

Essay 40 (Después)

Siempre estoy gustoso de gustaría viajar al extranjero pero por todas razones personales no lo logré. No es fácil viajar que viaje sin hacer un gasto fuerte y un compromiso entre lo que tengo y lo que quiero debido a la distancia de los destinos desde aquí y los días disponibles cada año para ir de vacaciones.

Como un amante de los viajes y una persona supersticiosa, estoy listo a recorrer por las calles con mi maleta esta en nochevieja para atraer la suerte necesaria para hacer nuevos viajes a mi casa y por así, podré viajar más frecuentemente y más lejos en el año nuevo, ya sean vacaciones con la familia, planes de negocios u otros. Me pregunto por qué se me vino vengo a la cabeza la intención de para hacerlo. Creo que no hay muchos vecinos que lo conocen la tradición y tal vez les se asusten cuando vean a una persona suspicaz caminando con su maleta, al asomarse por la ventana justo a medianoche. Siento que este ritual surgirá surgiré efecto tarde o temprano si lo practico con sinceridad y esperanza. No me entristeceré arrepentiré  si no se lo tiene effecto realiza, al menos el ritual me hace más optimista y positivo para perseguir  lo que quiero alcanza alcanzar en esta etapa de la vida.

¿Pondrás en marcha un sinfín de rituales incluido incluyendo salir a correr por las calles con su tu maleta en la nochevieja para dar la bienvenida al año nuevo?

Essay 41 (Antes)

Hoy 31 diciembre 2017, el ultimo día de este año. De hecho, pienso que no lo voy a pasar muy diferente de otros días en este año. Tal vez este es mi estilo de saludar un año nuevo que me diré que yo será un año viejo que un año anterior.

Cuando descargué la aplicación aproximadamente hace un años más antes, no pensé que lo utilizaba tan frecuentemente en mi aprendizaje del lenguaje. Muchas gracias a todos de usuarios de Hellotalk, que me ayudaron mucho corrigiendo las frases escritas en español y me compartieron las cocas que se ocurrían  alrededores de suyos. Sus comentarios dulces siempre me animaran a seguir perseguir mi objetivo de hablar y escribir mejor en el idioma, que era una ambición inalcanzable antes.

Puedo imaginar que en algunos países, el nochevieja es celebrado en temperatura muy bajas y todos llevan más capas que una cebolla.Aquí, pantalones cortos con pantuflas porque esta lloviendo mucho estos días. Ojalá que haga un buen tiempo esta noche, aunque no tengo ganas de ir fuera a los lugares abarrotados para mirar los fuegos artificiales y participar las fiestas callejeras.

Les deseo feliz año nuevo, y por supuesto, toda la suerte del mundo con sus propósitos de nuevo año. :)

Essay 41 (Después)

No corrección se recibío.