China has been taking great strides preparing for the Summer Olympics which open today. (In fact, why am I blogging when I should have the TV on, waiting for the Opening Ceremonies?) They’ve been cleaning the streets and the air, training the population on how to be polite to tourists and visitors, and teaching service professionals English. Even the private sector is showing great initiative in trying to make visitors welcome and also make a buck. So we should give this restaurateur an A for effort. In order to …Continue

In getting back to normal life after the aforementioned personal crises, I immediately downloaded back episodes of my favorite podcasts that I missed over the last few weeks. Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me is my absolute favorite radio show that here in Kazakhstan I can only get on podcast. It’s a pseudo-game show that really just makes fun of the week’s news. It’s great practice for language learners because it’s funny and entertaining so you want to try to understand.
One of the recent episodes mentioned some quotes from members of …Continue

Barak Obama, leading candidate for President of the US, announced today his plan to fund all universities directly from the government budget. In a speech in Pennsylvania, which holds its primaries in 3 weeks, he said:
Education should be available to everyone at every level regardless of ability to pay. The only way to lift the poor from disadvantage is through education. Education means better jobs and higher salaries and more self-respect.
He went on to cite the problem of how prestigious universities often set extremely high tuition costs which most …Continue

Another post in my series on American holidays, which started (late) with Valentine’s Day.This time I’m looking at the upcoming Saint Patrick’s Day, which is almost always held on March 17th. This year though, it has been moved to March 15th (because the 17th is part of Holy Week–the build up to Easter). That may or may not influence the secular authorities–probably it will since the 15th is a Saturday!
As you may have realized, originally St. Patrick’s Day was purely a religious holiday celebrating Saint Patrick who converted Ireland to …Continue

Valentine’s Day was the 14th of February as it is every year and I had meant to post something about it in terms of learning English and American culture. But it was a crazy time for me. Oh well, at least I’m early for next year.
First, some cultural information in case you end up in the US wondering what the heck is going on:
Cultural Notes
Valentine’s Day is a day we celebrate romantic love. It falls on the 14th every year and typically couples celebrate it by going out to dinner …Continue

In the course of my life here I occasionally come across some very funny English mistakes. Here are two that I managed to document on my (not high quality) cellphone camera:

This is from an ESL workbook. Clearly they meant to say that the answer key begins on page 1 as numbered in Roman numerals. But it ends up looking like Key pi (as in 3.14159…). I thought this was an English book!
The second one shows you how to destroy the world with your air conditioner.Oh yeah, that first setting on …Continue

After the last post, I got a burst of nostalgia for Arlo Gutherie, so I googled a place where you can download the song Alice’s Restaurant for free.*
It’s an American classic for Thanksgiving, especially among long-hair liberal hippe types and probably the only Thanksgiving Day song we have. Can you think of any others? Alice’s Restaurant is a story-song and I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s really funny and very clever. And some radio stations make a point of playing it on Thanksgiving, so you might check that …Continue

I read an article once that quoted an experienced Russian translator as saying that there were many words in Russian that did not translate into English (or other languages). Among them he listed:
душа (dusha): which means soul but is also used where English speakers would say ‘spirit’ or ‘heart’ or even sometimes ‘mind’ as in “He has no dusha; he is very tired and lifeless.” or “This painting has an artistic dusha.” We can even talk about the dusha of a project, the heart or core of a project. Dusha …Continue

Just a couple of funny news items that caught my eye from the Chronicle of Higher Education news feed.

First off, How Not to Sell Marijuana. Namely, do not shout out your window, “If you’re looking for weed, my roommate Ferrante has some for sale.” That might attract the attention of nearby policemen who might then search your room and arrest you. You might get kicked out of school as well for that.

Or your wardrobe may get you in trouble. As the busy holiday travel season begins, take a look at …Continue

Although I assumed this blog would be read mainly by students from Kazakhstan and the former Soviet republics, in fact my biggest readers are from the US, Malaysia and India (in that order). So it might be interesting for you guys to read about life around these here parts. It’s definitely an interesting part of the world: former USSR, nomadic history, culturally Muslim but not religious. If you want to see what this country looks like through the eyes of a genius Brit living here in Astana, check out Kazakhstan …Continue

There is a site called Rate My Professor which allows students to rate their professors by university, subject and name. In principle this is not a bad idea. Before taking a class with a new professor, I always tried to find a few people who knew the prof so I had an idea of whether he/she was a good lecturer, what kind of workload was expected, how accessible the prof was outside of class. A professor makes or breaks a class, without question so knowing something about the prof. is …Continue

Stanford
Harvard
MIT
Texas A and M
Indiana University

Stanford

Once upon a time, a man and wife, dressed in old and unfashionable clothes, asked to see the President of Harvard. The secretary, practically laughing, brought them in. They sat down and said that they wanted to donate some money to Harvard to start a new college or department.The President of Harvard looked over their clothes and figured they wanted to give a hundred dollars or so. He said, “Well it’s very expensive to start a new school. You have to pay for the building, …Continue