WIP, Weekend, and Mini Achievement

Whoa… it’s a weekend again? How’s your weekend?

People in the US, the Caribbean, Asia, Mexico, Sierra Leone… Everybody. I hope you are all safe out there. It has been a tough week, but hopefully it will pass soon.

My weekend? Well.. not quite as productive as I expect it to be, but I managed to work on my WIP, and a mini achievement.

I think this is my first time I knit outdoor. I was super conscious about it, and wonder if people would start staring. However, I think because knitting is quite a British thing anyway, people didn’t bat an eyelid seeing someone knitting in public. How wonderful. Maybe when the weather is getting better, I would do that again.

For an achievement… I finally completed my German course in Duolingo. Now, I know how to make a simple sentence in German. But does it mean I can start conversing with a native speaker? I doubt it. This course is great if you want to start learning the basic. In the end of the course you would know how to make a sentence, ask for a cuppa, and thank people when they show your way back to your hotel if you get lost in Berlin. BUT, you wouldn’t have enough vocabulary even to translate “Thumbelina” — not kidding, I tried.

Nevertheless, it was still an achievement. So, here we go… *clears throat*

“wenn ihr Deutscher seid, oder Deutschsprechen leute, und ihr würdet gern mir helfen zu lernen — bitte”

How’s that?

x ❤ x

Dieses kleine Piggy lernt Deutsche

I have been trying to learn German since the beginning of this year, but for some reason it was really difficult. Until last month, all I can say in German were just random words like “ja”, “nein”, “bitte”, and a bit of greetings. Until someone told me about this amazing website to learn language called Duolingo.

I am not trying to promote or anything, I am not even get paid for doing this. But I think this website is quite wonderful. I have been there for two weeks, and now I can do this:

“Ja. Danke, Piggy. Die Suppe schmeck so gut. Ist es Bacon? Und… Ich trinke Wein, bitte”

How was that for two weeks? Basically I am thanking Piggy for a tasty soup and wonder if it was bacon. I also asked for a glass of wine, and I even said please. And no, I did not open any dictionary when I did that, so apologies if I made a spelling or grammatical errors (please correct me if I did).

Of course learning language needs perseverance and discipline. I tried to do at least an hour a day, consist of learning one new subject and reviewing the subjects I have learned in the past. It is now getting harder to memorise everything as the vocabulary grows. Aber… Alle ist gut. Ich lerne gern Deustch, und Ich bin froh dass ich lerne Deustch. (now I am not sure if that’s even a legit composition…)

Anyway… Tschüss 🙂

This Little Piggy (And Hubby) Caught A SCAMMER!!

It was a beautiful morning. I was sitting at my sofa, happily stitching while watching BBC’s documentary about British musicals industry after World War II (yes, I could be highbrow once in a while), when our land line phone rang.

I don’t usually pick up the phone, as I don’t really like speaking on phone. But, my husband was still in bed, so I answered it. A few seconds delay, and then someone from the other side started talking — a male speaker. He had a slight South Asian accent, although he spoke really good English. He spoke really fast, and I couldn’t get his name or his company where he claimed he was working at, but then he quickly moved on and told me why he rang me.

He said that he was from a security company affiliated with Microsoft, and he said he noticed there’s a problem with my computer. He told me it was something that I picked up from an unsecure network in the internet.

I wasn’t suspicious by then and asked him which computer as we have one PC and two laptops which are regularly in use in our house. He could not answer, and he said any of them will do. I became slightly doubtful, but went along anyway because I thought he was quite convincing.

He asked me to run the eventviewer program on my computer by pressing ctrl or windows button + R, and type eventvwr. He kept pushing, and then I became pretty upset, and told him that I am not going to press the OK button unless he explained himself. By this time, my husband has woken up (probably heard me arguing on the phone).

He kept talking in round and round, and never told me what problem I actually had. He kept repeating “I am from a security company affiliated with Microsoft”, and “just click it and you’ll see”. That’s bollocks… I told him that “I am sorry but I don’t trust you”, he became very agitated and defensive, so I apologised, although I also told him “it is perfectly normal for me to be careful not to instantly trust someone who called me out of nowhere like that”

Finally, I told him to speak with my husband, as by then my husband has already got his coffee.

With the phone in my husband’s hand, I googled about the program eventvwr, and add the word SCAM with it. Results came up and hundreds of articles came up. This is one of them, written by a techies who knows what he’s talking about, and it explains about how the scam would work.

We were lucky because we were not panic, and just do what he asked us to do. This scam has been around since 2009 (I found one article from the US and another from Australia), but this is the first time I actually heard about it. I wish more people (not only people with tech background) had spoken up about this more, as I believe techies know better how to handle things like this, while someone who barely knows anything about computer operation would easily fall for this kind of scam.

Anyway… it was still a good day. Hope you have a good day too.

x ❤ x

This Little Piggy Is A New Fan…

Of…. Haruki Murakami.

Yes. I might be twenty years too late, but I just finished reading Norwegian Wood, and I love it!

I think this is the new cover for this book…

I have heard about this book and this author for ages, but of course with a pile of books I wanted to read, I did not think of moving this book to the top of the to-read list. But then, on our usual weekend walk to Anglia Square, I found this book at Barnardo’s charity shop.

This is an honest admission. My husband and I are big fans of Barnardo’s charity shop at Anglia Square. They have the largest range of books on their shelves and it is heaven to be surrounded by books. Some of the books even looked new when we got it from them. We are getting closer and closer to building our little home library.

Okay… this is just two of our four bookshelves. I have catalogued the books alphabetically for the fictions… these are A – N

Anyway… back to Norwegian Wood.

This is such a great book. I can’t believe that this book was written only a couple of years after I was born. The story is still so relevant to the nowadays society, showing how modern this guy was when he wrote this novel.

My book is in English, of course, because I could not read in Japanese language (not yet!!). It makes me wonder, if I read this book in its original language, would it be better? I mean, knowing how language works, I believe that there are some things which would be lost in translation. Although I am satisfied with what I read, I wish I would be able to read it how the author really wrote it. Am I weird?

Anyway, the story was narrated by a man named Toru Watanabe. The story was about his life when he was in her early 20’s. This main character was really lovely. It is hard not to like him. In fact, it is hard not to like all the characters in this book, even ones who were portrayed as womanising bastard.

This is the version that I found in the shop… looking a bit tatty in the outside, but it just shows how this book has been read so many times…

I have to say that by the way it was written, I wouldn’t realise how deep the story has affected me. It got me thinking, and it got me thinking hard about the story. I have been talking about the book to my husband many times, but I don’t think he’s that interested. I would make him read the first three chapters, and see how he’s not hooked… muhahaha.

*cough*

Anyway, I am now obviously in the hunt for more Murakami books. Wish me luck!!

This Little Piggy Just Finished This Book

I am ashamed to say that it took awhile to finish this one. I have to admit though that I might have had a little bit too high expectation when I started reading The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden.

It’s packed with political humour, and fateful adventure

 

Written by the author of The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. I expected the same level of adventure in this book as the one in its predecessor. I am afraid I would have to say it did not happen to me.

I suspect though — as I assume Jonas Jonasson is a white Swedish male, it would be easier to write a story from a white Swedish male point of view than a black South African female protagonist character. I am sure it must be a challenge for him to do it.

Anyway, this is still an interesting book to read. It is, like its predecessor full of the detailed political humour and the fateful adventure. I would easily recommend this book to anyone. And hey, since we have few more weeks pf summer, this could be a great summer reading too.

x ❤ x