Covid update in the UK and Singapore Oximeter

Photo by Angela Lansbury.
 

In July the UK is opening up. 

Singapore has issued an Oximeter to every household with Singaporeans and Permanent Residents (which includes my family in Singapore).

The leaflet about it arrived a week earlier, with a tear off slip for claiming the device, as part of the leaflet. A few families missed the tear off slip and threw away the leaflet. I admit i read it twice or three times before realising that one foldover end was the needed tear-off leaflet. 

Where To Get The Free Oximeter

The leaflets tell you which places have stocks. But you are advised to check stock level if taking a special trip. We combined collection with a shopping excursion for good.

Collection points included supermarkets, where you collected not at the till but at the collection point. That is in the service desk next to the tills. 

Free! Free?

The supermarket bills require a price. (Why? Maybe to prevent staff giving themselves free items.  Or because hasty cashiers accidentally undercharge by missing out the price.) So the free item is listed as one cent. 

But it is illegal to sell the Oximeter. So the one cent cannot be taken and returned. The one cent coin is no longer issued and the one cent is not collected. They must have some way of deducting that cent from the end total.

Useful Websites

moh.gov.sg/news-highlights

moh hotline at 1800-333-9999

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, is a semi-retired travel writer still researching bucket list countries and seeking out the special, unusual, people, places,  landmarks, hotels, museums and trails, fabulous foods, recipes, clothes and online souvenir shopping.

Angela Lansbury is a member of Toastmasters International.

About the Author Angela Lansbury

The Author - Quick Quotations

Angela Lansbury B A Hons  is the author of ten books by regular publishers plus another ten self-published books. 

About Angela The Speaker & Trainer

Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Vice President  Public Relations, Immediate Past President. VPPR

Former Area Director S3. Club Coach for Nee Soon South Toastmasters Club.

Also Member of: TCA Toastmasters Club; Singapore Online Dynamic; Harrovians UK

BHA

Past meetings have included Garen Tee on using story telling in business, on 

bha.learncool.sg/meet/bha . 

Recent meetings of BHA included an educational session on using Powerpoint for posters.

Next BHA meetings, always first Wednesday evening, 7 pm Singapore time. Next meeting is  the third Saturday afternoon, June 19th 2pm Singapore time.  Inauguration of the new committee was by the incoming Director of S, plus a lively speech on teamwork.

Next meetings will be on these dates (unless a national holiday in Singapore or worldwide)

Themes and word of the day are tentative

2021

JULY - JUBILANT JULY

Theme/WOD Jubilant

WORKSHOPS & EDUCATIONAL SESSIONS (based on level one of Pathways)

1 Your first speech or role EASY ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Articles A and The, Plurals, Tenses, Pronunciation, Singlish)

2 CHOOSE YOUR PATH

Wed July 7th What Your Committee Can Do For You

Saturday 17th

July 4th American Independence Day.

2021 AUGUST - AWESOME AUGUST

1 Pathway Level 1 Introductory Speeches

2 Evaluations

Wed 4th

Sat 21

2021 SEPT - SUPER SEPTEMBER

Wed 1st

Sat 18th SPEECH CONTESTS

Humorous Speech Contest

Table Topics Contest

2021 OCT - ODD OCTOBER

Wed 6th

Sat 16th

2021 NOV - NOVELTY NOVEMBER

Wed 3rd

Sat 20th Wed

Diwali Hindu Festival of lights Nov 4th.

Nov 25th American Thanksgiving.

Hanukah starts 28 Dec 8 days until Dec 6. Jewish Festival of lights, celebrated by Jesus.

2021 DEC - DARLING DECEMBER

Wed  1st (Hanukah if not previous month. Festival foods.)

Sat 18th

Speech on 

JAN 2022 - JOYFUL JANUARY

Wed Jan 5th New beginning - forget the past

Sat 15 Long-term plans = for the future/Chinese New Year (CNY for short)

2022 FEB FUN FEBRUARY

Theme Love and romance - Chinese New Year

Feb 1st and 2nd are holidays - do we move this Feb 2nd meeting date?)

Wed 2nd (Valentine's Day Mon Feb 14)

Sat 19th

2022 MAR - MARVELLOUS MARCH

Theme

Wed 2nd

Sat 19

March 1st is Christian Pancake day. 

2022 APR - APRIL'S AIMS

Wed 6th

Sat 16th

Muslim Ramadan 1-30 April.

Jewish Passover (Seder meal=Last supper) April

 16

2022 MAY - MODERNISING MAY

Wed 4th

Sat 21

2022 JUN - JUBILANT JUNE

Wed 1st

Sat 18th

Jul 6, Jul 16, Aug 3, Aug 20, Sept 7, Sept 17, Oct 5, Oct 15, Nov 2, Nov 19, Dec 7, Dec 17.

Angela The Blogger 

Angela has several blogs speeches, comedy and song writing and organizing, writing intermittently, but writes almost daily on these three:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

See many varied posts such as the post on sculptor Tom Harvey.

Please share links to your favourite posts. 

How To Learn A New Language On Every Holiday Or Business Trip

Are you keen on learning new languages?
✋
Polyglots' Tricks
I was looking at the Polyglot page on Facebook and read that one language enthusiast saves books in other languages just in case he ever needs to immerse in that language. What dedication!

Several polyglots replied that they do the same. I think this would work well in languages similar to English. You can download well-known books, either where you know the language and characters and plot, or where you can easily get the translation.

Wouldn't Alice in Wonderland in other languages be more fun for some people than lists of words? You can read the Esperanto on the left, the English on the right, with the original now out of copyright Tenniel illustrations.

For example, if you see the story of Cinderella or any children's book in French or Spanish or Italian, that might be a good start. You can find translations of the bible and fairy tales and classic children's stories which are out of copyright. Those which have been in print for years are available in Latin and the made up simple language, Esperanto.

Dictionaries
Until today I had never downloaded a whole book in a foreign language, but I did buy a mini dictionary in every language. I saved the translation pages in airplane magazines. Where to find them? The files of travel maps and brochues went out of date and eventually got thrown out by my family. So I began to fold the handy lists of common words and phrases and slide the page or part page under the front cover of one of my dictionaries.

Japanese is challenging. But the written language is more or less the same symbols as Chinese. Think of the symbols on your washing insructions and no smoking signs which are cigarettes with lines through them.

Leaflets
In Singapore if I see a leaflet in English and another leaflet in Malay or Chinese I pick them up and look for capital letters or repeated words or short sentences to learn or look up. I used to take the whole leaflet.

I would circle repeated words in the English. Or simple words I might need often. Looking at the foreign language, I would circle the equivalent word.

I would check in Google translate. Then I would create a page in a notebook if I had one handy. If not in my diary - no empty pages - sometimes back in January I had an empty page. Failing al else I found an empty half page in the leaflet or wrote the translation on both leaflets.

Then I decided that taking information leaflets was antisocial, costing the government money. I was also creating clutter in my home.

So I started taking photos insted. I would leaf through the leaflets. When I saw a useful page, with either very little text, (when I started learning thelanguge) or lots of text (later on), I took a photo of the English language cover and first page and back page, then the Malay or Chinese translations.

Travel Sites - Places for Polyglots to Visit



Flag of Austria from open Emoji, free to use Emojis.

AUSTRIA
Vienna has a museum on languages, specifically made up or cimplified languages. You can learn about the origin of Esperanto which is like a mix of Spanish, Italian, Latin, English, German, but following set rules, no exceptions. You don't have to worry about accents. Accents don't matter because no country pssesses this language.

Who speaks it and where? You can find Facebook pages and an annual conference. Several smaller countries whose language you might find hard, or too many to master, favour Esperanto. Handy in Hungary where the older generation could take their exams in Esperanto as a foreign language because Russian and German were too complicated and different from Hungarian.


Flag of Belgium.

BELGIUM


Bilingual road signs in French and Dutch.



Flag of Bulgaria
The top is white which does not show up well against the white background of this blog post..


So here's the OpenEmoji which shows the Bulgarian flag framed.

BULGARIA
Easy to learn Cyrillic if you take the free tour then the cheap Cultural walking tour (after one free tour, you will be hooked, maybe glad to leave a tip, if not you may decide that two tours for the price of one is a bargain. On the cultural I was given the card with the Cyrillic letters and was helped to write my own name in Cyrillic.


Flag of Canada.

CANADA
Start at Niagara Falls - who wouldn't!
Ottawa - everything in two languages, French and English. Inspiring, encouraging.
Montreal - to immerse yourself in French. The Montreal accent is more like Marseilles in France.
Toronto - to immerse yourself in English.
A beautiful bilingual holiday, two cultures and two languages in one country.

FRANCE
Paris - to get the standard accent, not the Canadian accent which is more like Marseilles.

Flag of Germany

GERMANY
A surprisng number of words sound similar to English. Kindergarden in English is child garden. Garten is garden. Kinder as in Kinder Surprise is child surprise. Kinder looks a bit like child or children. Be kind to children, especially your kith and kin.

German is similar to English, Dutch and Scandinavian languages, as well as being understood in those countries.


Flag of Singapore.

SINGAPORE
Pick up Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil and Singlish.

UK
London is becoming a polyglot capital. You have restaurants of all nationalities. Some areas are inhabited by speakers of specific languages.
For example, such as Southall for sari shops and Indian restaurants and halal or vegetarian food.
Chinatown has restaurants which is Cantonese speaking from immigrants from Hong Kong, Most High streets (main streets) have at least one Chinese (Cantonese speaking) restaurant, and one Indian restaurant (mostly run by Pakistanis).

You will also find israeli restaurants for Hebrew, often middle eastern foods such as Jewish restaurants (Yiddish speaking - a European menu with variant on German and Russian which and kosher).

Plus Greek restaurants (Greek language and songs! Don't ask for Turkish coffee, it's Greek coffee here.

Turkish restaurants (Turkish menu). Lebanese (Arabic - could be halal and Muslim, or Christian - check website and menu before trying out your languages.

Malay - often combined with menus and staff of Chinese or Indonesian or Thai. (Malay national might be Chinese or Indian or Malay by race. by religion they could be Muslim but Asian not Middle Eastern, not Arabic and not Arabic speaking. Malay language is an easier language in the Roman alphabet)

USA
Pick up Spanish from bilingual signs, especially in public places such as hospitals and cities near borders. You will pick up some words effortlessly. Los Angeles means the angels. Now you know the plural and plurals for nouns.

ARMCHAIR AND AIRLINE SEAT LEARNING

Useful Websites
List and links to stories in other languages including Alice in Wonderland in Esperanto and several other languages.
http://bilinguis.com/

duolingo.com
memrise.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/





Bilingual English and Spanish Toastmasters Club in the USA
https://bilingualaustin.toastmastersclubs.org/

https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/these-singaporeans-can-really-talk-0
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club

Toastmasters International
You can practise your languages at toastmasters clubs in person and some clubs are online. For example, In Singapore, clubs in Chinese Mandarin, Chinese dialect Teochew, French, Malay (similar to Indonesian), Tamil (south Indian and Sri Lankan laguage).

In the USA you can find Spanish speaking clubs. Canada has French speaking clubs.

Europe has clubs in various languages. You can buy the Toastmasters literature in several languages including English, French, Arabic. Once you have joined a toastmasters club you will be welcome at Toastmasters clubs worldwide where you can network and socialise and find friends.
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English and other languages. president of Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Club in Singapore (see Facebook page.) I have many more posts on language learning, specific languages such as easy Esperanto, symbols and stories in Chinese, Cyrillic, Japanese, Indonesian, Malay, Mandarin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Welsh. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite pages.