Interim Result

I moved to the U.S. 4 month ago, and therefore now I want use the possibility to think about this time and the eventful year 2007. It is very surprising how fast this year has gone by. If you had told me at the beginning of this year that I would be in the U.S. together with my boyfriend, I had not believed you. It was a big surprise.....

I gave up my flat, sold my car, but I could negotiate with my employer a sabbatical, so I still have my job if would go back in 2 years. After 11 years of work as a bank clerk (finally in private banking) I had a high position, a good salary, and a personal assistant; it was very difficult for me to go to the U.S. without any idea what to do and to expect. I'm not allowed to work here, so I will study. However, there are still hurdels which seems impregnable. And that is the first time I get no money for my effort, and even worse I'm dependent from my boyfriend.

Despite we live together for the first time, it's very harmonious and I'm very happy. It's really funny, we met in South Africa (holiday trip), lived in different cities in Germany (about 200 km), and live together in the U.S. Not very common, but very interesting.

In this 4 month I learned a lot, about me, my boyfriend, and of course English. However, there is still room for improvement. I think I have no problems to understand my teachers or other people at school, but it is still surprising and disappointing to communicate with the "normal" people. Sometimes I'm not even sure if they speak English with me or not. It was a great time in the ELI, and now I'm corious about new things and other fields of study, e.g. math and business (of course in English).

Thanks to all, Merry Christmas and have a great time whatever you will do in 2008!

The End Of The Golden Compass

Everybody who hasn't finished the book should not read this blook entry. However, I guess this entry will only be read by my classmates, and all of them know how the story ended up. Lyra will try to find out more about Dust and maybe fight against her parents. I'm so glad not to have such malicious parents; what a horror must that be? On the other hand the charisma, the intelligence, and her cleverness must be come from anywhere. I think these things she had inherited from her parents.

Although the end is not that what we had expect, the author had to let the end open so that he is able to make the readers buy his next book. Unfurtunately, I'm not one of these readers, but I will watch the film. That's also one thing the author might make a lot of money with. By the way, the film was produced a with a budget of $205 millions.

I also further informations about Dust at Wikipedia:

Dust in Philip Pullman's trilogy of novels His Dark Materials is a fictional form of dark matter, an elementary particle that is of fundamental importance to the novels. Dust is invisible to the human eye and cannot be seen without the use of special instruments such as the The Amber Spyglass or a special film. However, while humans cannot see dust without the use of outside devices, creatures such as the mulefa are able to see dust with their own eyes.
Unlike ordinary particles, Dust is conscious. It falls from the sky and is attracted to people (especially adults) and objects made by people. This makes it of great interest to the Church, which believes that it may be the physical manifestation of Original Sin. We later learn that Dust actually confers consciousness, knowledge and wisdom. This allows creatures who have the ability to see dust to identify other sentient and intelligent creatures. An example of this is when the mulefa are able to distinguish Mary Malone as an intelligent being, because of the dust surrounding her, when compared to the other animals in the mulefa's world.
It is Dust that provides the answers given by the alethiometer, and by the I Ching system of divination.

That's the autor Philip Pulman. In my opinion, at this picuture he looks very similar to my expectations.
Let's watch the film on Tuesday!

Art

To be honest, art is not a favorite topic of mine. However, it was interesting to read about China's art in the book because I never heard something about that before. When I saw the painting with the characters I was still wondering how anybody could read that. For me the characters of Asian languages looks very funny and I can not imagine to be able to read those. The script itself is a kind of art for me. And I'm sorry, the charcters look all very similar to me.

It must be very difficult for people with other scripts (Chinese, Japanese, Saudi Arabians etc.) to learn not only the other language but also the different characters first. Sometimes it's very difficult to read handwriting especially if the writer has not a very legable handwriting. Therfore, maybe Masa or Ashley might answer me the question: can you read illegable handwriting in your native languages? Can you also identify who the author of the writing is, do you something like a remarkable handwriting?

At this time I'm sitting on my PC and that brought up the idea how to type in different characters? Can you send an email in your native language from a computer here at the university?

I looked on the internet how a keyboard from Japan looks like, and now I'm more confused than before because I can't imagine at all how to produce this aesthetic characters.