Extraordinary lives

We have been discussing the stages of life recently and we wondered when we were happiest. Our life is made up of our memories and our expectations for the future. We live the present but it is shaped up by our life experiences. Imagine what life without memories will be like. A British man Clive Wearing suffers from a serious type of amnesia that has erased the memories from his last 20 years. See this video clip of his remarkable story

If you like to see more of his story here are two further clips with more information on his condition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmkiMlvLKto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCyvzI2aVUo&feature=related

We sometimes complain when our partners and friends seem to forget bad episodes of shared history and we jokingly say they have “selective” memory. The idea of selectively deleting your bad memories has produced an interesting film  The eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. The consequences of amnesia have also been taken to the big screen in the film 50 First Dates

EXTRAORDINARY STORIES

The BBC has run a competition open to ordinary people with EXTRAORDINARY lives to write and send their stories. As we have just finished our topic of life stages, you may find it interesting to read some of these very humane stories. Unfortunately we can´t access the videos from Spain but we can see the stories in writing and they surely are inspirational.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mystory/

Let us know which one is your favorite

Volunteering

Have a look at the following ad:

Job position: Anything you want; you choose where you want to work.
Job description: Doing something you enjoy
Hours: flexible. You come in when you have the time.
Pay: none

At first glance, the first three sound good. But wait, all that work and no pay? What’s so great about that?

Well, volunteering is a great way to go. Of course, you can’t live off it, and you need to have some free time available to donate. But the great thing about volunteering is its often unnoticed benefits.

The greatest benefit is the chance to learn new skills, meet new people, and contribute something to your community. It needn’t be a lot of time, once a week, twice a month, every other Saturday. You get to choose how much time you can afford, and how often you can attend activities and meetings.

The ability to choose where you want to volunteer is another benefit. Community groups of various types often look for people to offer their expertise. Volunteering takes many forms and is performed by a wide range of people. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work in, such as medicine, education or emergency rescue. Other volunteers serve on an as-needed basis, such as in response to a natural disaster or for a beach-cleanup.

Volunteering is generally considered an altruistic activity, intended to promote good or improve human quality of life, but people also volunteer for their own skill development, to meet others, to make contacts for possible employment, to have fun, and a variety of other reasons that could be considered self-serving.

As I said, an often unforeseen benefit of volunteering is the possibility of employment. Those you meet through volunteering can often put you in touch with people or companies that are short-staffed. They know how hard you work because they see you every day. Who better to recommend you to others? And some day the place where you volunteer may get additional funding and ask you to stay on full-time. If you are enjoying your volunteer work, and it shows, they may prefer to offer you the job, rather than have to find and train another person.

If you don’t get a job out of it, that’s okay too. You are expanding your horizons, meeting new people and learning new skills, all while helping out your community. It looks great on a resume, and makes you feel great too.

The easiest thing to do is pick out a group you would like to help and call them up. You may end up helping yourself as much as you help them. Find below one of the most popular volunteering webs in the UK  , why don’t you give it a try and apply for one of the positions they offer?

http://www.vso.org.uk/volunteer/index.asp

Dependent Prepositions

In the English language, there are many verbs, nouns and adjectives which are followed by specific prepositions.  The prepositions are called dependent because their choice depends on the particular word and its meaning.

Despite the know-it-all linguists who say that all languages are equally difficult or easy to learn, it’s clear that some languages are harder to learn than others, at least, some bits of them. One of the maddening things about English is prepositions – in most cases, foreigners never completely get the knack of them and continue to have problems with them.

Find attached a file with them all.

Now, it’s time to practise it, print this exercise and try to complete it, if in doubt, check the key.

Take these online quizzes to have further practice on:

Prepositions after adjectives

Prepositions after Nouns

Prepositions with Verbs

Prepositions Mixed Types

Looking for a JOB

Looking for a job in the Anglo-Saxon world is a very different experience from the one we are accustomed to in Spain. For a start, there isn´t the same concept of becoming a civil servant and having a job for life.

In general, people go up the career ladder by starting with basic jobs and learning the ropes before applying for the next promotion. This means geographic mobility: people don´t hesitate to get up and go where the best job is.

Finding the right job is an art in itself; first, you have to know where to look, you will find millions of specialist websites and magazines. You can try to see if there are any opportunities for you in the British job market by uploading your  CV, in English of course, on the Guardian page and it will tell you whether there are any positions available for you.

Your CV and letter of application, also known as covering letter, are essential to your getting shortlisted for a job interview, here are three good examples

Then ,the most important part is to make sure you give your best performance at the interview, a bit like the oral exam, check here to listen to  a BBC page with some helpful points on how to conduct an interview. In this video, you can hear a professional telling you how to ace a job interview.

If you are still at the stage in your life of deciding what to do with your life you may find this American website interesting. Here, you can download 1737 short films  (with or without captions) about careers in 17 fields. You may just have finished watching them in time for retirement!

The Bucket List

The Bucket List is a 2007 film directed by Rob Reiner, written by Justin Zackham, and starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. The main plot follows two terminally ill men (Nicholson and Freeman) on their road trip with a wish list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.”

This is the list the main characters of the film completed

1. Witness something truly majestic
2. Help a complete stranger for the good
3. Laugh till I cry
4. Drive a Shelby Mustang
5. Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
6. Get a tattoo
7. Skydiving
8. Visit Stonehenge
9. Spend a week at the Louvre
10. See Rome
11. Dinner at Le Chevre d’Or
12. See the Pyramids
13. Visit the Taj Mahal
14. Hong Kong
15. Victoria Falls
16. Go on a safari
17. Drive a motorcycle on the Great Wall of China
18. Sit on the Great Egyptian Pyramids
19. Find the Joy in your life

What can’t you miss in your life? A book to read? a film to watch? A hobby to take up?…

Stages of Life

The 4 Liquid Stages of Life

Read this funny joke about life stages:

There are basically 3 stages of life: Teen age, Working age, and Old age.

Teen age: Have Time + Energy …but No Money

Working Age: Have Money + Energy …but No Time

Old age: Have Time + Money …but no Energy

Now, seriously, Life is a puzzle, sometimes it makes us laugh, sometimes it makes us cry; but the greatest irony of life is that it would take more than a lifetime to know everything about life.

We know about these quotes very well…..

From infancy to the senior years, humans physically mature at different paces but in distinct phases of development.

The different stages of Life are : Birth, Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Young adulthood, Middle adulthood and Senior adulthood.

Everyone has something BEST in any of these stages…or expect something to be the BEST …What has been the BEST STAGE OF LIFE for you….. ?? OR in general…..Which is BEST..?

The most famous English writer ever, William Shakespeare, wrote a famous poem about it:

The Seven Ages of Man