2005-03-08
the Trev Report 2005-03-08
Hello all, and welcome once again to your monthly Trev Report, wherein lies all things about Trevor Lalish-Menagh and his surroundings. What is Trevor like? http://www.trevreport.org/blog/2005/03/waste-of-my-good-time_08.html should tell you a lot (of useless information). Thank you to Paula for getting me "America: The Book" for my birthday! I really love it. Thank you to Signe and Dad as well for your really wonderful gifts! I appreciated them a lot! And now, on to the report!
Trev's Lovelife
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Signe has come back from America and her interview for the JET Programme. While she was there she also went skydiving! You can see some of the skydiving pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumex/ . While she was gone, I did a lot of hanging out with friends here like Emily ( http://modernemily.blogspot.com/ ), Matt Bruno, Rebecca ( http://rebeccainjapan.blogspot.com/ ), et. al. We even went to Hiroshima with Emily's Dad, who was visiting her. I am glad that Signe is back though. I missed her.
Trev's Work
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Work is going well. This is the last month of classes in the Japanese school year, so we are all ramping up for graduations and spring break. I'm not planning on doing anything for spring break except stay here and work on catching up on my Japanese study.
I have to say, I will really miss this year's 9th graders at the Jr. High School. They have become really good kids, and I enjoy teaching them and being around them.
My Cable TV show is also going really well. Starting next month the show will expand into the Unnan area (that is the city adjacent to ours), because one of the higher-ups of the city watched it on a visit to our town, and liked what he saw. The shows have be getting livelier and livelier, but I don't know what will happen after April, when my co-host leaves for another job. Hopefully we can find a good replacement.
Trev's Art Committee
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The JAGS ( http://www.shimaneart.com/ ) committee is coming along slowly but surely. I have finished updating most of the web pages (you can see them at http://www.trevreport.org/JAGS/ ), but I'm waiting for access to the server to upload the pages.
My job as treasurer is also going along just fine. We are still short quite a fair amount of money, but the first of our fundraising events will start soon, so with any luck we will get the funding we need to pull off the shows this year.
Trev's Anime and Sci-Fi
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Signe and I are just finishing up the end of "The Mysterious Cities of Gold." I highly recommend re-watching this if you were a fan of the show as a kid. It is still great.
I have been reading the "Oh My Goddess!" manga in Afternoon ( http://www.afternoon.co.jp/ ) for the last few months as well. They have introduced a new character, Gate. She is the personification of the gate between Heaven and Earth, and she wants to experience...new things. It is a pretty fun arc.
As for Sci-Fi, I just watched the 20th episode of Stargate SG-1 Season 8, and it turned out to be pretty good, although it was VERY fanservicey. I think Season 9 will be interesting, but in truth I am more interested in watching the second season of Atlantis. That show is getting much better. And, of course I am VERY MUCH looking forward to when the second season of the new Battlestar Galactica ( http://www.galactica.tv/ ) starts airing in summer. That is the best sci-fi show I have watched in a long time, although it doesn't beat Legend of the Galactic Heroes ( http://www.logh.net/ ).
Trev's Computers
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My computers have been running a bit slow lately, but I don't think it is anything much to worry about. Skype ( http://www.skype.com/ ) still rocks my socks, and I have been keeping up my blog on a regular basis as well ( http://www.trevreport.org/blog/ ).
The two big things I have discovered and fallen in love with recently are both due to Emily. The first one is called BlogLines ( http://www.bloglines.com/ ) and it is a web-based RSS and Atom feed reader. Now, instead of going to a bunch of websites to read about news, webcomics, and blogs, I only have to go to one page to read them all ( http://www.bloglines.com/public/jumex/ ). It is really a great invention!
The other thing I have fallen in love with is Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/ ). It is a place online where you can go to upload and display pictures you have taken. I have spent the last few weeks uploading every picture Signe or I have taken since 1999 onto Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumex/ ). There are over 2000 pictures we have taken on there so go check them out and comment away!
Trev's Games
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I taught the 9th graders in my Master Class (the top of the class in English) how to play "The Settlers of Catan" and they really liked it a lot! It is a great game to teach your advanced kids. Besides that we haven't been playing much, I introduced Emily to both "Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation" and "Kill Dr. Lucky," but she was unimpressed with both of them (I really like those games, personally). I'd like to find some new board/PS1 games that we can play as a group. Anyone have more suggestions?
Trev's Japanese
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My Japanese study is still slipping behind. I work enough to not miss the deadline for the monthly mail-in test for the JET Programme self-study course, but that's about it. I do write in my journal everyday and post it to my blog, that is helpful, but still I feel as if I should be studying more these days.
Trev's One-Point Japanese Lesson
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So you want to learn Japanese, huh? Great! How about negative tense for verbs.
Here are a few verbs for us to work with:
tabemasu - to eat
nomimasu - to drink
ikimasu - to go
shimasu - to do
OK. Remember last month? Do you notice something similar in all of them? They all end in -masu. To conjugate a verb in Japanese, all you have to do is change the ending of it! So we will be changing they verbs into the past tense, this is how you do it: Change the -masu at the end of the verb to -masen. That's it!
So, let's look at our example verbs:
tabemasu becomes tabemasen
nomimasu becomes nomimasen
ikimasu becomes ikimasen
Can you guess about kaerimasu?
Until next time, keep up your studies! Japanese can be a real fun language to learn and speak!
Well, that's about it for this month's Trev Report. Drop me a line every now and again. I love hearing from you all. Until next time, take care everyone!
Yours,
trv
Posted by jumex at 15:22
