[2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES]

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Spoonary
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby Spoonary » Fri Jan 04, 2019 9:55 pm

@Brun Ugle Yeah, I know what you mean. It reminds me of the early Youtube trend which had people saying bits of sentences in different parts of their rooms so that when they edited their video it looked like they were popping up all over the place while they spoke :?

Day 4 - 4th January
I don't have a lot to say about today. It was a bit of a melancholy one where I couldn't really be bothered to do anything after work, but I dragged myself through anyway.

Output Challenge
Yeah, I'm tired and I've had a teeny bit of alcohol, so this isn't great. I repeated myself a lot and had a lot of mind-blanks. Still, I suppose I did it (I said supongo a lot). OC 4th Jan Spanish Recording

I haven't done my Spanish editing yet, but I'm planning to do it after finishing this, if the battery on my tablet lasts.

German 365 Day Challenge
Day 4: 37 minutes - Total 152 minutes (4 day streak)
Today I spent 20 minutes finishing off Café in Berlin which I enjoyed, despite not understanding several sentences (even with the help of the included dictionaries at the end of each chapter). I also watched a 6 minute video by Anja of Learn German with Anja on Youtube and spent 11 minutes listening to Language Transfer episodes 21 and 22.
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby Spoonary » Sun Jan 06, 2019 10:22 pm

So I'll just come out and say that I didn't do anything language-related yesterday, no German, no output, nothing. I just played video games all day because that was what I wanted to do with my Saturday. This means I have broken my streak for the 365 Challenge, but more about that shortly. First, here's what I did today.

Sunday 6th January

Output Challenge
I missed out an Italian recording yesterday, which I had planned to do today and haven't had time for. I have, however, done today's Spanish recording in which I explain what happened yesterday and talk about my first experience with my watercolour pencils OC 6th Jan Spanish Recording

I have also finally edited my first Spanish text in which I explained what I do for a living:

Cómo me gano la vida
Para empezar bien el reto del output he decidido no escribir una especie de diario como hice la primera vez que intenté este reto, sino que voy a elegir un tema semanal para cada idioma. El primer tema es cómo me gano la vida. Aquí os voy a contar lo que hago a diario en la oficina en la cual trabajo.

En pocas palabras, se puede definir mi trabajo como el de una teleoperadora que trabaja en el departamento de atención al cliente, pero actualmente el papel que tengo es un poco más específico.

La empresa que me emplea provee a empresas pequeñas y medianas terminales, máquinas que les permite a estos empresarios (nuestros clientes) ofrecer a sus respectivos clientes la opción de pagar mediante tarjeta de crédito y débito. También ofrecemos servicios que se pueden utilizar para que sus clientes paguen mediante una página web.

Desde hace un par de meses, mi papel era precisamente el de una teleoperadora de atención al cliente. Mi día a día consistia en contestar llamadas y correos de todo tipo, ofreciendo apoyo, ayuda y explicaciones para resolver los problemas y contestar las preguntas de los antes mencionados empresarios. Fue un trabajo muy variado, ya que les ayudaba con todo: a entender sus facturas, accesar a los varios portales virtuales que ofrecemos, hacer funcionar a su terminal cuando se le surja un error técnico etc.

Obviamente, el trabajo en sí tiene sus positivos y negativos. Debido a la cantidad de información sobre la empresa y los procesos administrativos que hay que seguir, además del constante llegada de trabajo que hacer, me siento a veces que no estoy llegando a ninguna parte, que cada vez que consiga algo, hay miles de otras tareas que completar. El lado positivo es que me encanta hablar con la gente – tanto con mis colegas como con el público. Nunca se sabe que historia o chiste la próxima persona (sobre todo los que no están enfadados por alguna razón) te va a contar. También me considero una persona paciente y amigable, así que el trabajo de teleoperadora se me da bastante bien.

¿Pero cuál es este papel específico que dije que tenía ahora? Pues sigo contestando llamadas y correos de nuestros clientes, pero el tema de esta comunicación es mucho más específica - el PCI DSS

PCI DSS es el Estándar de Seguridad de Datos para la Industria de Tarjeta de Pago, un estándar desarollada por Visa, Mastercard etc. que mantiene que todo aquel que procesa transacciones o tiene contacto con los datos de los titulares de tarjetas de pago debe seguir una serie de normativas y regulaciones para asegurarse de que el ambiente en el cual procese o transmite ddatos de pago esté segura y que esté procesando la información de sus clientes de manera segura. Los empresarios deben declarar esto mediante una autoevaluación que llevan a cabo contestando preguntas en un sitio web específicamente diseñado para esto. A veces también hay que llevar a cabo una examinación de su red personal para identificar la presencia o falta de vulnerabilidades.

Resumiendo, mi trabajo consiste en ayudar a nuestros clientes a completar esta autoevaluación, así que les explico lo que es un cortafuegos etc. pero también paso mucho tiempo explicando porqué es importante mantener una red segura y hablando de la cíberseguridad en si, lo cual me interesa bastante.

No sé durante cuanto tiempo tendré este trabajo. Sé que el trabajo de callcenter no suele ser de los más amados, pero por lo de ahora este me gusta. El ambiente en sí es más bien el de una oficina de que un callcenter normal y corriente, y la empresa sabe tratar bien a sus empleados, así que me voy a quedar durante un buen rato creo.


I also wrote just under 500 words in Italian today about my experience with art. I will edit that at some point this coming week and pop it up on here for anyone who is interested.

German 365 Day Challenge
Day 6: 39 minutes - Total 191 minutes (Score - -2)
So yeah, I broke my streak by not studying German for 30 minutes on Saturday. The rules of the challenge state that if you miss a day, you have to subtract 7 days/points from your total, so on Friday I had a streak of 4, for missing Saturday we subtract 7 which gives -3, then add 1 for today which gives -2, right? :roll:

Today I listened to 39 minutes of Language Transfer while I was cleaning my flat (episodes 23-27). While I was paying attention and getting all of the answers right at the beginning, by episode 27 I was not keeping up as easily so I will review that one tomorrow. I'm really enjoying LT and am a bit sad that I'm over halfway through!
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Spoonary
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby Spoonary » Mon Jan 07, 2019 9:57 pm

7th January
I have had a very busy day at work today, so the language stuff I did was very sombre...

Output Challenge
I did a 16 minute Italian recording today, but it was so bad, so rambly and so full of mistakes that I didn't want to share it. I honestly did do it though :)

German 365 Day Challenge
Day 7: 31 minutes - Total 222 minutes (Score - -1)
I listened to 12 minutes of Language Transfer today (episodes 27 and 28). In episode 28, the student changed, and I'm sorry to say this, but she's not as good as the first one :roll: She makes more mistakes than the original student did, so we have to go over simple things (such as using the simple 3rd person conjugation that had literally just been introduced) more times than i would like. I also found that these last 2 episodes were more vocab-heavy than previous episodes, so the amount of example sentence exercises for each new word has reduced, leaving a lot of vocab barely learned.

The other 19 minutes of study today were spent reading 'Ferien in Frankfurt' the next book in the German short stories collection, which seems about as entertaining as the last. I am definitely enjoying seeing words and phrases I have learned in LT show up in these books. It convinces me that I am actually making some progress here :D
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Spoonary
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby Spoonary » Sun Jan 13, 2019 7:49 pm

8th-13th January
Ok, here I am again, with my (non-existent) tail between my legs a bit. In short, my first full week back at work since before the holidays was manic and absolutely exhausted me. I therefore did absolutely nothing for the Output Challenge and fell behind considerably. I still have faith that I can make up the words and minutes I've missed, but we'll see how that goes.

Also, I missed another day of German :oops: I managed to do my 30 minutes after work each day last week, despite not doing anything else, but then I took Saturday off again and played a lot more Mass Effect :lol: I think I am going to drop out of the 365 day challenge, because I simply can't maintain a streak. I have 2 evenings with my friends planned this week as well so I doubt I would do any German those days. I am, however, going to continue to do 30 minutes of German most days, because I'm really enjoying it. More about that shortly.

For those who are interested, I finished Un figlio e ho detto tutto and I thought it was brilliant. The book was an emotional rollercoaster ride and was not as much about kids as I thought it would be, so I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads. :P

Output Challenge
I haven't calculated how far behind I am yet, but I plan to pick things up tomorrow from where I left off and hope that the extra minutes and words I planned at the beginning of the year make up for what I have missed this week.

German 365 Day Challenge
Day 8-13: 185 minutes - Total 407 minutes (Score - N/A - 2 days missed)
All of my German time over the last week has been spent watching/listening to Youtube videos. I did some Language Transfer on the 8th and had episodes 29 and 30 blow my mind with the amount of example sentences I had to create, which resolved the qualms I had with the previous episodes.

Over the rest of the week I watched a bit of Deutsch für Euch, Learn German with Anja and Get Germanised which made me realise just how much quality material there is on Youtube for German learners. I realise that I will need to knuckle down with some books at some point, in order to really understand all the grammar rules (something I regret not doing with Italian - yet), but for now this is fun.

By mid-week I had discovered Easy German which I absolutely love. They have a video about pretty much every topic I might want to know how to talk about in German, all with bilingual subtitles and some in nice, slow German which I can just about keep up with. I particularly enjoy Cari's videos, because she makes me laugh out loud and I like the way her voice sounds. I watched several videos today about how to decline adjectives and articles in the accusative and I think I just about get it now :P

So yeah, I am still getting serious with my language learning, but I have had a bit of a setback and had to rethink my plan a little.
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby Spoonary » Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:23 pm

¡Hola a todos!

Yep, it’s me, after 2 months of absence. I have been meaning to pop my head in here for a while, but I didn’t really have a lot to say. Just to clarify, I still don’t have much to say, but I just feel like giving you all an update about my life and language learning, so here I am. :D

So I started this year and this log with big plans, as I am want to do. I wanted to tackle all of my target languages head-on, with lofty challenges and big changes in mind. However, several weeks in, I realised (finally) that I am not someone who deals with big changes and lofty challenges very well. I have noticed that gradually making small changes seems to suit me much better, because it requires much less effort. :P

I’m giving up on the challenges I set myself at the beginning of the year and, for now, I’m putting all of my target languages on the back burner, apart from Spanish. Over the past few years, I have been trying to focus on improving in other languages, such as Italian/Esperanto, or adding new languages, like German and Greek, while also trying to maintain (and possibly improve) my Spanish.

The thing is, no matter how much fun I was having with other languages, I always felt as though I was cheating on Spanish. After all the time I had dedicated to it at university, and the level I had achieved, letting my Spanish get steadily more rusty made me start to feel embarrassed by it and therefore almost unwilling to use the language in the few opportunities I had to do just that. :roll:

So, enough about what I haven’t done - what have I done? Well, I’ve started taking private Spanish lessons. It all happened in a short period of time and completely by chance. A particularly long phone call at work meant that I left the building at the same time that the teacher my employers had hired to teach beginners Spanish to my colleagues (I knew these lessons were taking place, but I didn’t take part, for obvious reasons) was leaving. One of my colleagues told her I speak Spanish so we started chatting, and the rest was history.

We meet up for one hour a week and have a chat in Spanish over a cup of coffee. We get on very well and have a lot of common interests, so it’s an absolute pleasure to talk to her, but we are still working out how to best spend our time to make sure that I am actually progressing and she feels like my paying her is justified. She is very flexible and willing to work the way I would like her to, but I find it hard to be specific about what I want. I have explained that I want her to correct the mistakes I make, challenge me to speak about all kinds of topics, and help me express myself in a natural way, avoiding direct translation from English. I also acknowledge that I tend to listen a lot and make comments, rather than making a point of telling a story or explaining something myself, but this is probably down to us meeting after work when I have been speaking non-stop for 8 hours and tend to enjoy staying quiet for a bit. :|

So far things are going pretty well, I think. She’s Argentinian, so when I am not swooning over her accent, I am fascinated by the vocabulary she uses and the different ways she expresses herself compared to what I’m used to from peninsular Spanish. I don’t think I have started imitating her accent yet, but that’s bound to happen at some point. :lol:

In other news, I have continued listening to Entiende tu mente, that podcast about psychology, and I have been watching both the second season of Ingobernable and an Argentinian series called Conflictos Modernos which I found on Youtube. I also started reading Metro 2033, but I think I may need to start that again, because I can’t remember what was going on when I last read any of it.

Although I’m not spending masses of time engaging with Spanish each day, I have noticed that I am almost always thinking about it, about how I would say this or that, or what I want to discuss in my next coffee shop chat, and that’s a great feeling. I am still not sure what my end goal is with Spanish, but this quality time I’m spending with the language is genial! :mrgreen:
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES/IT/DE]

Postby zjones » Wed Mar 13, 2019 10:59 pm

Hi Spoon! I'm glad to see you're back. (For some reason my keyboard wanted to auto-correct that to "your back"... that's weird.)

It makes me happy to hear that you're adjusting your language-learning to work best for you instead of worrying about sticking to old goals that no longer fit. I'm sure you'll figure out how to make the private Spanish lessons useful. I hope you don't mind if I offer my opinion.

I think it's incredibly important that you get lots of time to practice your Spanish during your lesson instead of just making comments on what the teacher says. It's useful to know how to pay attention to the other speaker in a conversation, but listening practice can be found in a lot of different places. If you don't feel like you're being challenged to speak then you should make that crystal clear. A good teacher knows how to focus the lesson on you and your needs. I'm not sure what exactly your lessons are like, but I strongly encourage you to avoid letting your lesson time devolve into a casual chat where the teacher does most of the talking - I've had this happen with an iTalki teacher and it was a huge waste of money on my part.

Anyway, that's just my opinion, and you can take it or leave it. :D I'm happy you're still learning and making progress! ¡Buena suerte! (I don't know Spanish, I just copied and pasted that so I hope it's right.) :?
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES]

Postby Spoonary » Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:43 pm

Hey Zelda, thanks for dropping in!

Don't worry, I am definitely aware of the money I'm spending, and that I need to push myself (and be pushed) to speak more in my Spanish lessons, to make sure they are worthwhile. In fact, this is something I've recently spoken about with my tutor and I think we started to make progress in that area this week.

I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

Oh and ¡Buena suerte! is perfect. ¡Gracias! :D
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES]

Postby zjones » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:09 am

Spoonary wrote:Hey Zelda, thanks for dropping in!

Don't worry, I am definitely aware of the money I'm spending, and that I need to push myself (and be pushed) to speak more in my Spanish lessons, to make sure they are worthwhile. In fact, this is something I've recently spoken about with my tutor and I think we started to make progress in that area this week.

I'll keep you posted on how things progress.

Oh and ¡Buena suerte! is perfect. ¡Gracias! :D


Oh good! I couldn't tell by your post if you had discussed that with your teacher or not, and I'm super happy to hear that you did! :D
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Spoonary
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES]

Postby Spoonary » Mon Mar 25, 2019 10:56 pm

So you may have noticed that I’ve been a little bit more present on the forum recently, but I haven’t written much in my log until now.

I’m still continuing on with my weekly Spanish session, and things are going very well. After a couple of conversations about how we can best spend the time my tutor and I spend together, this week I feel as though I really put some effort into the preparation that I did before the session, which meant that when I started to speak and present my ideas, I had enough to say that my tutor, who will henceforth be known as M, didn’t have to fill the gaps with her (admitedly fascinating) stories and opinions.

Just to be clear, the last 2 weeks have also been positive in terms of the amount I spoke, but this week was particularly great. Last week we started by discussing some clips I had watched of parodied songs from the classic Argentinian show Todo por dos pesos and ended up talking about music in general. M then gave me the task of choosing a song by my favourite Spanish band Gatillazo and presenting it to her.

Well, what I did was break down the song into its main themes, both linguistically and socioculturally. I colour-coded the parts of the song lyrics that represented each of these themes. I even read interviews with the band members to find out whether the impression I got from the song was what they wanted to transmit through its lyrics. I went to town on that 2 minute long song! As a result, we ended up having a great conversation about punk music and even a bit of politics, which I usually avoid like the plague.

It just goes to show that you get out of these kind of things what you put into them, kind of like what I said in that thread about studying Spanish at uni. I really started reaping the benefits of having language teachers around when I started exploring the language myself.
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Re: [2019] Spoon’s Getting Serious [ES]

Postby Spoonary » Mon Apr 22, 2019 12:28 pm

Now then! I hope you are all well. I was just sitting here on the couch, enjoying this sunny bank holiday Monday and having a bit of a read when I thought I would pop on here and give you guys a life/language update. Truth be told, not much has changed and I haven't really done anything interesting lately, so I don't have much to tell you, but here goes.*

I won't go into details but a family member falling ill rocked my world a bit this month. It meant that I spent more time at the hospital and/or crying than I would like and that I put my life on the backburner for a bit. Fortunately, the situation seems to be improving now, but I am definitely seeing life in a slightly different light right now. :|

My birthday on 13th April also helped change my perspective a bit. I didn't have a huge party or go anywhere special for my birthday, but I spent time with people, with friends who showed me just how much they appreciate me for who/how I am and demonstrated that they do listen and are interested in what I have to say.

This may seem odd, but I have realised recently that in social situations, I have fallen into the role of the listener who makes funny comments but does not tell stories/share experiences really. I guess this is because I don't believe I have anything interesting to say. I have decided recently to make more of an effort to bring more to a conversation than comic relief, both in English and in other languages, so we'll see how that goes.

Speaking of just that, my Spanish sessions with M are still going strong. Progress is slow which, at my level, is to be expected I guess, but I am definitely noticing improvement in my vocabulary choice and the increasing variety of my phrasing as time goes on. I am finding that I am able to talk about almost anything and my ability to joke around is improving, allowing my sense of humour and personality to shine through my Spanish, which is particularly important to me.

Today, if I can stay awake, I'm planning on reading a chunk of the Spanish translation of Metro 2033. I've just hit chapter 4 so I have a fair bit still to read, but the sci-fi horror aspects are right up my alley, now that I have gotten past the explanation of the metro and its politics which was a bit of a drag for me.

I am also currently watching more of Vis a vis, which I found out had a 3rd and 4th series a couple of weeks ago. I finished the 3rd series last night and can't wait to crack on with the 4th. It's a drama with comedic elements set in a women's prison in Spain. What's not to love? :P

Aside from that, I have started listening to a newish podcast called Hasta las manos, in which my favourite Spanish youtuber who I have been watching for years, Melo Moreno, and her quirky Argentinian friend Martín talk about all kinds of topics in a sometimes serious, sometimes silly way that amuses me greatly.

Finally, thanks to M I have discovered the brilliant 2 Minutos, an Argentinian punk band who have won me over with their catchy tunes and awesome lyrics.

In short, after a bit of a wobble at the beginning of the month, things are looking up. :)

Edit: *Reading back through this, this is exactly how I am IRL. :lol: Also, I read a few pages and fell asleep for 2 hours, so thats something...
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