Wine and Dine Finding New Friends Through Meetup and Peatix

Problem
How do you get to meet people when travelling or in a foreign country - without being picked up by con artists who hang around stations and even hotel lobbies?

Answer
Go to events organised by Meetup.com or peatix.com
These events, if you choose to pick selectively, may have a fixed or predictable price for a drink or food and drink. I like events which have free flow of drink or all included. No surprises. No extra VAT or service charges and taxes at the end either.

If you like to eat out, or drink, these events are particularly useful.
Sign up to newsletter for any kind of event in the country where you will be living or visiting. You will sooner or later be sent notification of an event using the local sign-up website. For example, theatre, wine and dine, learning languages. You then get invited to events you will enjoy, in the company of people with whom you have something in common and a topic of mutual interest for starting conversations.

Many restaurants will be glad to put you on their email list and let you know about events.

if an event is free there's no charge to put it on Peatix.

Information on Peatix
https://www.techinasia.com/talk/regional-expansion-peatix
https://about.peatix.com/pricing.html?hl=en

Useful Websites
meetup.com
Singapore
https://peatix.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Peatix/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker

Travel And Taxi Driver Tales From 'Yesterday'

Prooblem
With a multi-lingual group it's sometimes hard to tell recent events from long gone events, especially if the speaker or translator is not good at the past tense in English.

Travel Tales About Yesterday And Distant Past
In Chinese there's no past tense, just the words for time. So 'I/we went yesterday' in English becomes 'I go yesterday', when translated literally from the Mandarin.

Taxi Driver Conversation
When a Singapore taxi driver tells you, "I go London, yesterday," he could be referring to a trip twenty years ago.

I have had a few nonsense conversations in the twenty years before I learned this. I used to reply, "It was sunny/raining, yesterday."

Sometimes I said, "Were you on an early flight?" The taxi driver would reply, "Can't remember".

Author
Angela Lansbury. See my other posts on leanring Chinese and other languages.

Language Meetups In Singapore

Problem
I joined a language meetup group in Singapore after meeting one of their members at a Toastmasters club. I am an amateur polyglot. I am learning the Greek and Russian and Hebrew alphabets, and keep looking at Chinese.

I also had a go at Korean, but I found Korean hardest of all, although it is supposed to be the quickest language to learn, with fewest letters. It's all circles and squares and bears no relationship to anything I know. I don't speak a single word of Korean. Yet, if I look at a page of Malay, or Spanish, or Italian, or German, I can usually pick out a few words which I can identify or remember.

Looking at the Singapore meetups, some of them are for fluent speakers who want to keep up their languages. Frankly, I have spent several evenings with the French-speaking Toastmasters club, Francophone, and find that a challenge, even though I can speak and read French fluently.

Once they used the French slang word for tipsy. An entire five-minute speech made to sense because I was missing one vital word. My friend was equally lost. She was teaching multiple languages at a Singapore polytechnic.

The group's site is full of warnings. You should turn up so as not to disappoint the organisers, nor take up a place which could be used by somebody else. You are not to use the group to sell anything. It is not a dating organisation.

What is stopping me attending? I suspect it's a bit like Toastmasters. You get interested and there are so many meetings, so many opportunities, but it can take a while for the right group and the right date to materialise along with your enthusiasm to get up and go out to meet new people at a place you do not know.

Learn English
The learn English group, with a free demo lesson sounds interesting. The Russian group with a reading of a short story would be good, but I don't know sufficient Russian and will have to wait for a lesson where they are learning the alphabet - or put more effort into learning the Cyrillic alphabet.

I am corresponding with an American woman I met at a hotel in Singapore. I was thinking of sending her to a meet-up group. If she goes as a native English speaker, with no intention of having to learn another language, she would get to meet people from all over Asia.

You can start your own group, anywhere in the world.

The cost of some of the Meetup language groups is five Singapore dollars for a drink for ladies.

How does that compare with Toastmasters? Toastmasters meets the first three Mondays of the month at the Sheraton Towers near Newton MRT and charges about $20 which includes a snack buffet. The meeting is large, with an evening of speeches, with socialising before and at the interval.

Other Toastmasters groups cater to speakers of Mandarin, Tamil, French, Malay, and a bilingual English and Mandarin club is starting shortly.

A bilingual Chinese - Italian group is being started by a couple from Braddell Heights Advanced. The wife, Jade, speaks Chinese. The husband is Italian.

Useful Websites
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
https://www.meetup.com/TheLanguageLovers/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Language Learning Groups

Conversation

A lagnuage or conversation group in Singapore has tables and they put flags for native speakers of that language. The rule is you must speak in that language. Only useful if you are already fluent. No use if you are trying to learn or want advice and help.

This is useful if you want to keep up a language you already know. But I would like:

A 'learn a language table. where I can get started on a new language which I am afraid to tackle, such as Tamil, Chinese (Mandarin) or Bahasa Malay. 

We could also have go-between translators. I can translate French and would like to practise translating.

B We could also have word of the night or subject of the night, for example drinks, or fruits, perhaps with photos. Add one sentence. I like oranges. I like apples. 

We could run a programme through the year, 52 themes.

Useful Websites

https://www.facebook.com/Speak-Easy-Singapore-353908498132718/

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

How Learning A Language Can Help You Even If You Stay At Home

Problem
I am learning Portuguese. On Duolingo and TinyCards. Only about five minutes a day. Sometimes I miss a day. When I come back I feel  like I am starting all over again. Then it gets easier and I do double the daily amount. Suddenly the stystem tells me I am 17% fluent. Hurray!

They have put a lot of effort into what seems silly but apparently is vital to making people stick with the course. Continuous rewards, smiling faces, consoling words when you make mistakes. They have done a lot of research, compared language learning systems and popular games and which features make people start, and stay.

I read that on one of their information pages. At first I just wanted to get started learning, not bother with what I thought would a lot of self-congratulatory stuff.

Later, I was puzzed, as well as full of praise for the ingenuity of the sytem. I wanted to know how they made each change and why.

As for the 17% success, at first I thought that mean I had completed 17% of 100 lessons they set you, and that I would make continuous progress. Then it seemed that the system was simply testing my speed at answering questions, and my persistence in keep up with the course every day.

I wasn't sure that I would be going on the trip needing Portuguese. Then I got confirmation of flights. Suddenly, learning the language seemed more urgent. More relevant.

Apart from the 17% message, have I made any progress? Yes, definitely. Surprisingly, the page where I did not learn any new words has proved the most useful. It was the grammar page on Duolingo. At first I missed out on the grammar page at the start of a course or a section. It depends on the size of your screen. I hope to progress from a laptop to a full size screen, like a small TV.

You might have an old screen lying around, abandoned by a family member or co worker. I decide I was getting round-shouldered, poor posture, short-necked, with back and shoulder ache from being hunched over a laptop on a kitchen table or dining table, or hotel desk or study desk. I am waiting for the dable to arrive. Meanwhile, vital things are disappearing off the bottom of the screen. I rf=frequently fail to spot the vital button. I think I have entered information. The submit or continue button is on the bottom right of my screen.

Regarding the Portuguese, I discovered the grammar information below one of the first couple of pages I had been doing that day on Portuguese. I learned about two vital things. Orange juice in Enlgish becomes juice of orange in Portuguese. The use of the de, which is superflous in English, has to be inserted.

I may be likely to forget that. However, today on Facebook I was reading comments on a post showing a video of teeny turtles, red eared sliders. I turned on translate and read the English. Then I went back to what was Portuguese. I could see all the constructions in Portuguese using the word de. I could work out whether the translation was a mistake and awkward, or simply the way that the Portuguese language is constructed.

I was immensely pleased with myself and happy. The message I have for you is that learning a language has enormous benefits, to your morale, and your understanding and feel of control, not just when you visit a foreign country, but also before, during and after, simply when looking at translations on the itnernet.

Useful Websites
https://www.duolingo.com
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/courses/C2yji/duolingo-portuguese-course

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts on Portuguese and other languages as well as placed to visit. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Freebie Websites, Airmiles, Discounts, Points and Savings

Everybody likes to get something free. If you don't need a free gift, you can give it to somebody else, friends, family, somebody who would love it, somebody who needs it, a charity, a raffle.

Freebie sites are also useful for services, such as courses, to tempt you to try something new, even if you don't have the time or the money right now.

Some discounts are available only to local residents, others, such as duty free shops in Singapore, only for foreign visitors who can show passports and/or return air ticket.

If you go to work temporarily overseas, then get offered a permanent job, and become resident overseas, you may then be able to buy new goods in the UK and take them duty free back to your foreign home eg furniture or a musical instrument. You need to keep your receipt of purchase if you are traveling back and forth with something large and expensive such as a camera or video recorder.

My favourite free sites include:
http://www.britishmuseum.org/membership.aspx

City Cards and passes - some just museums, others just transport, others both:
New York pass card
https://www.newyorkpass.com/

Reykjavik Museums, shops, swimming pools and buses:
http://www.icelandair.co.uk/holidays/package/reykjavik-city-card/

Discount DIY
B & Q discount card; money off voucher on sign up when you spend your first £30; also Diamond club giving 10% discount on Wednesdays to those aged over 60.
http://www.diy.com/bandqclub

Free Languages
www.duolingo.com
www.duolingotinycards

Free Healthcare
UK NHS.
www.nhs

For details on obtaining the form to get you free health care in Europe go to:
http://www.nhs.uk/nhsengland/healthcareabroad/ehic/pages/about-the-ehic.aspx

USA - look for the local free hospital or clinic online, for example this one in New York:
http://nycfreeclinic.med.nyu.edu

Free Coupons and vouchers
www.vouchercodes.com

Late Booking Hotel and Holiday Discounts
www.lastminute.com

Free magazines and newspapers
Waitrose weekend magazine free to regular shoppers with the loyalty card (which is free)

Supermarket and Store Loyalty Points
Boots Advantage card
http://www.boots.com/?cm_mmc=bmm-_-Google+Boots+Main+Account-_-Boots+-+Brand-_-Boots+Advantages

Morrisons More Card
https://my.morrisons.com/more/

Tesco Club Card
https://secure.tesco.com/clubcard

My Waitrose Card
http://www.waitrose.com/home/mywaitrose/mywaitrose_ts_cs.html

Wholesale Bulk Buy Food Groceries Household Supplies
If you have a shop or business or organise club events or hold parties and meetings, have a huge family or like to bulk buy
Costco
http://www.warehouses.costco.co.uk/membership/

Airlines' Loyalty Schemes
Star Alliance

Hotel Loyalty Schemes

Memberships
Art Card
Friend of the museum

Restaurant Offers
Sign up for the newsletters of restaurants and pubs to be sent seasonal offers and birthday offers.
For example, Cafe Rouge sends me mailing of offers and birthday offers.
https://www.caferouge.com/offers

I shall be updating this page as I find new offers.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Flashcard Language Games

Problems
How do you entertain yourself, your children or others whilst waiting at airports and travelling?
How do you learn new languages?
Which languages?

Apparently the most useful languages for careers in the future will be French, German and Chinese (Mandarin).

For me, the most useful language is the one of the country I am about to visit.

French speaking countries include;
France, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland. Some French spoken in countries and islands such as Vietnam. Full lists in Wikipedia and other places.

German speaking countries:
Germany, Switzerland, Austria.

Mandarin speaking countries:
China. Also many Mandarin speakers in Hong Kong - where the language is Cantonese, Taiwan, Singapore.

Answers
According to a newspaper article Heathrow airport is providing language flashcards online and to families passing through the airport, on request.

I went on line looking for flashcards. You can create your own in several languages.

However, it seemed quicker to select an exciting set. For example:

http://www.cram.com/flashcards/italian-979044

For young children you can create a guessing game, or play snap (matching pictures). When travelling you could create a foreign language version of the old I-spy game, using cards such as objects: planes, water, suitcase; colours:.

Another way to do it is to buy books or card games in a foreign language at the destination and add your own translation in stickers on the back.

You could design cards with the words alongside printed on one side of the paper and cut down the mildly of the page with scissors or a guillotine. Or print in thin card, on both sides, if your printer and your ability to operate your nearest printer allows.

The advantage of the cards is that they can be used as a game for either one or two or more players. For example, a family of children, siblings, a class of school children on a trip, a language class as a game at the end of a lesson or reward for homework finished early.

I prefer Duolingo which takes you through a course of vocabulary and grammar. This is mainly useful for when you are alone. You could have two children or more competing to see who finishes first. Or use Duolingo as inspiration for a set of cards.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.

Fitness Holidays: triathlon, swimming, cycling, running or watching

Running, swimming cycling, you can plan to watch an event or participate, so start planning now, or reading about it.

I have friends who plan holidays around events such as the Olympics, winter Olympics, watching ice skating shows, joining in marathons, watching marathons, supporting family in marathons, trekking holidays, triathlons, cycling, swimming and running, and swimming holidays. Yes, swimming holidays.

You can do a triathlon which starts with a swim, continues with a bike ride and ends with a run. You  have set times for each section and the transitions - removing your swimming get only about four minutes. Your cycling clothes underneath are wet but soon dry out, my friend Olga told me.

You can take a swimming holiday swimming from one island to another. On a swimming holiday the swimmers are followed by an escort boat which throws you a bottle of water when you wave your hand. Plus, of course, helping out if you are in difficulty, or bringing you aboard if you've suddenly had enough.

The swimmers are divided into three groups, the fastest, middle group and slowest. As in running, the age groups are usually the divide. Youngsters have more speed and stamina.

In a running marathon the fastest runners start first. You might think they would start last, to give them a penalty or so everybody finishes at the same time. Not so. The fastest start first, so that their way is not an obstacle course with the slower people in front, of whom there will be a larger number, the majority.

In most marathons anybody who completes the course, within a set number of hours, is given a medal recording their achievement. So you get something even if you don't come in the first three, even if you are in the last three. But you cannot turn up days later, after they have packed up and gone home.

People who are planning these events are enthusiasts. They start practising every day weeks in advance. You have to register in advance and will be given advice on what you should be doing.

Maybe this isn't your thing - you are just taking a family beach holiday. Make sure everybody in the family can shout for help in the local language. I read in the newspapers of tragic cases where friends or family or bystanders say we saw them waving but thought they were just having fun, never realised they were in difficulty, caught by a rip tide.

You can practise languages on DuoLingo (I have several previous posts on Duolingo for English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hebrew, Welsh, German and other languages.) You can also use google translate for simple phrases such as: I am tired; I need water; I have lost my friends, I have lost my group, where is the boat?

Have a safe and fun holiday.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Best way to learn languages through memory aids

I wrote to my friends on Facebook that I was studying languages, four languages, through Duolingo. You can get  a free look at an example.

Tony Winyard Duolingo is very good. Take a peek at Linkword which for me is even better http://www.linkwordlanguages.com/

Linkword Languages - The Easiest Way To Learn A Language

LINKWORDLANGUAGES.COM

Like · Reply · Remove Preview · 6 June at 10:11

Angela Lansbury Thanks. It is brilliant. But at £20 for the first course, then another, for French, Spanish, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese - actually not so bad. Especially if you pick one language, for a birthday present. Or get your employer to pay. Or can take it off tax. They do Polish and Hebrew but not Arabic, Hindi/Urdu/Persian which I understand (from the ladies in the sauna in Harrow) are similar.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I looked at the cost. You would pay another £5 or so to have the disc. I would invest in the disc. Every two years or so you find you laptop is corrupted, or out of date and replaced, or the memory is full and your downloads are replaced or put onto a backup and lost. If you are using a language course to get started and then become fluent and never need it again, then you don't need the disc. But if you want to refresh a year or two later, the disc is useful. Especially when you buy a new device and not everything is copied.

Easy German, Italian, Spanish

I searched on the internet for my daily dose of duo lingo German and up popped a site discussing how effective it was to learn by this method. The writer of the blog post had done the duo lingo course in German. He found it very effective for learning vocabulary quickly, less effective for understanding spoken German or speaking it.

I thought the way you could click on the sound was quite useful. I can see that putting together a sentence might be harder. But I wasn't expecting everything form the course. As far as I was concerned, anything was better than nothing.

I have Earworms discs in several languages. They give you whole sentences spoken. You can follow the text or just listen to the repeats of the disc. The text is in very small font.

For me the great advantage of the duo lingo system is that you have to concentrate. (I suppose some people would prefer to hear a disc in the background.)

My problem was I'd given up all my other courses. the duo lingo is in such tiny chunks that you can do a couple of minutes each day, however busy you are.

However, to address the rproblme of learning to understand the spoken language, I followed the recommendation of one of the comments. They suggested using Easy Languages on You Tube which is in several languages including German, Italian and Spanish. It's quite entertaining. I watched one on Mexican phrases or proverbs.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, English teacher and tutor.