Photography quiz

I have a friend who works as web manager of an organization. He knows almost everything about internet. I’m in the opposite side as far as internet is concerned. A few days ago talking with him I mentioned that in our class we have opened blogs as tools to facilitate our English course. He then told me that blogs may be used for a much broader scope.

If you like photography you can use one of the many free available sites online to store your photos and you may even manage them. Having done that it is possible and easy to produce your own photo galleries in your blog. By doing this way you’re able to insert in your blog photos of large size which can be shared or exchange with other people.

I will make a ‘mini’ photo gallery right in this blog just as an excuse to keep on writing English.

Now here is ‘my’ quiz. I’m going to insert a few photos from different countries or places. I won’t write down the names of those places. So if you like, guess from which contries/places/towns are the photographs of the mini gallery.

Just a clarifying note before I carry on my post. What I'm doing in this very post (same as what I attempted to do in all others) is just an excuse for doing my aim and only aim which is writing in English. I'm not trying to keep any real sense or any degree of consistency. In few words I'm just playing a game. The game is all about practising English!

The photographs are coming right away. Some show an easy clue to be identified. And two may be identified only by one of our class mates. If this person happens to see them I think he or she might be glad but nostalgic.

If this post were a game two good things would have been part of it. One is that no answers are expected. That's good, isn't it? The other is the last picture. That is a great unforgettable course! As you can see it's a tray much bigger than an ordinary dish, with 'arroç amb llamàntol' = 'arroz con bogavante' = 'rice with lobster' (actually a crustacean of the lobster family). As an exception of this game answers might be given for that picture. An special prize will be awarded to those that might be able to identify town and restaurant's name.

I will be more than happy to let anyone interested know some information on that place.

To be or not to be... Lost

Hello dear mates and readers,

At the beginning of our English course Felicity made us some suggestions on books and films we might read/see to practice the language. Regarding films she focused on humour TV series being consistent with one of the course subjects. Do you know what I did? I was dramatically inconsistent with the point since I started watching the TV series ‘Lost’ (Perdidos) which doesn’t meet any of the Felicity’s reasonable suggestions. What a mistake! The ‘Lost’ series is meant to be one of the most addictive series on TV. It’s a real thriller. And watching it is quite likeable since it leaded by a bunch of incredibly beautiful actors (women and men too!) all filmed in a luxurious nature which is supposed to be a remote tropical paradise-like non-inhabited island (the island is actually Hawaii which is not that bad anyway). But those episodes don’t meet any of the three basic criteria I guess Felicity was suggesting.

One. There’s no humour at all. Neither English humour nor anywhere else humour.

Two. There’s very little English culture in that series. With the exception of the accents of two characters the rest are typically American. The characters supposedly from Great Britain are an English guy who played the bass in a Rock band and a Scottish man which is not yet clear to me what he was doing before he got ‘lost’ except that he used to run Marathon races. Everything in that series is ‘American’. People’s talking, reactions, believes, violence, everything is American.

Three. ‘Last but not least’ is the language spoken in the films. Ah, my friends. This is a great series to learn the English (American) that is likely we won’t hardly need to use in most circumstances. What do I mean? Imagine a group people under limit situations. Imagine them surrounded by mysteries, dead threads and not able to trust anybody around them. No matter whether they spoke Russian, English or Swahili the question is ‘how’ would they be speaking most of the time? Educated language? Family language? Work language? No, obviously not. They speak fast as a lightning, using all kind of down-the-road (am I using right this expression?) language and all sort of odd words, at least within my English knowledge.

A few examples of what I’m saying are: buddy, gizmo, ‘you’re a dump hick!’, nutter, hatch, latch, ‘he is a jinx’, ‘a deranged woman’, ‘you’re mad at me’, piss off!, dude, sodding, ‘to drive someone nuts’, ‘how long was your last fix?’, clout, etc.

Do you want me to sum up my ‘Lost’ experience? Terrific! No more coffee. No more non sleep pills needed! One gets trapped to the episodes rightaway. You just can’t quit them so you stop sleeping, eating, working and…STUDYING ENGLISH. Our course falls into pieces!

I made a big mistake. I waste a lot of time on watching ‘Lost’. No English learned except indispensable words like ‘dude’, ‘gizmo’, ‘jinx’… Now I feel sad. I apologize to whom it may concern. Please don’t do the same mistake. Don’t follow my wrong path. BUT my friends, ‘Lost’ made me HAVE A GREAT TIME and as a not intended bonus I GOT A DEGREE on how to survive in tropical islands. Is all summed up that bad? May be it is but just in case it is not, does anyone know how I can get a tomorrow’s flight to the… Seychelles Islands?