Yo' wazzup in dis' hizzy, uh.... yo'.... yo' ;)

[Astrocat]

hello, It's nice to meet you all.

I live on a little rock in the middle of the sea, and I'm here because i have a whole variety of interests related to consumerism (in a nice way) , and in order for people to be nice consumerists it seems to be that educational awareness is necessary for some folks , and that as such consciousness raising is a good approach to educating many people...... for example, by making people consciously aware of what they are choosing to buy, by declaring more information on labels.

I like to watch anime, play computer games, make papercraft, belly-dance, read, write, eat, live, laugh, go for nice strolls, play Magic the Gathering (this is a recent thing, I started playing 3 weeks ago and already have the hang of it ) , listen to music and watch the calmness of a quiet world outside.

[Anthony Butcher]

I have seen people playing Magic the Gathering (the card game, not the online version) and while it looked good fun, I was scared off by the seemingly endless 'collectibility' - i.e. whoever has the most money can create the best deck of cards. I knew one chap who didn't seem to play at all, and just stored all of his cards in individual plastic cases in a big folder. Odd.

[Astrocat]

pweehee, yeah that's mega-obsessive.

My dad and brother do the same with their vast collections of comics, hoarding them all in pristine condition inside individual slimline plastic sleeves inside boxes in big stacks.

I have seen people playing Magic the Gathering (the card game, not the online version) and while it looked good fun, I was scared off by the seemingly endless 'collectibility' - i.e. whoever has the most money can create the best deck of cards.

I have aired this out with my MTG-playing friends extensively, and there's a good way around it which is optimally good for people who are relaxed about their cards and buy them communally in order to have a good set to play with.

This is the case with my awesome boyfriend and his snazzy brother - they have amassed a vast collection of cards together, along with a friend of theirs, and as such they have some really nice, fun cards to play with - and we don't have to worry about anyone nicking them because of winning them as ante !

Another excellent way to get around it, is to play with a whole load of proxy cards..... this is also a good way to get your hands on some playable copies of really fancy, pricey, rare cards. Just hijack a load of daggy cheap land, glue a load of paper on the front, and remake the card to be something else.

my boyfriend and his brother even have some cool (and well-considerd) cards which they've made themselves, although we haven;t been playign with those ones.

It's all good !

:P yah, you can;t do that with the online version of course hehe.
But it only works on broadband connections due to the tedious frequency and weight of updates, and it's love of crippling itself until such updating is complete, so I can't use it at home anyway, because it's too rural for broadband where i live.

[Alex McKee]

Hello, welcome to the forum.

I see you've already been busy, so without further ado I'll go and read some more of your posts!

[Astrocat]

hi there.

I also do languages - I know esperanto really well, Japanese to use simply, and I'm in the process of learning German now. I got a '1' for French at school (1 is good) but it never really took off.

s'me.

[Alex McKee]

Originally Posted by Astrocat

I also do languages - I know esperanto really well,

Saluton.

I speak a little esperanto, but I never have had any use for it, whereas my German has been more useful to me.

[Conserned Consumer]

Greetings!

I used to play Magic: The gathering. I haven't played since Odyssey went outh though, (and planeshift - I loved the terminate card!). Irridescent angel was a killer for a while too.

Anyway, welcome to the site

[Astrocat]

Did you ever do any of the EAB exams, Alex ?

I did the 'mezgrada' one, but the 'altgrada' one was just taking the **** so i failed it.

I'm not even kidding, those guys are intense...... they expected me to be translating and analysing stuff, which was so ridiculous that i wouldn't even have been able to do that with if it were in english to start with !

I'm not even kidding - we're talking about excerpts from esperantised versions of Shakespeare and the Illyad and stuff like that.

:P Then they expected me to do the same, but the other way around - putting antiquated incoherent english into esperanto.

They also had the cheek to chastise me for inventing my own words, even though that's SUPPOSED to be part of the whole idea of esperanto : that even if there is some obscure word for something, if you don't know it then it is just as valid to make a 'stuck together' word which means the same thing.

For example, one excerpt which i translated from esperanto into english then had to answer questions about, was an anthropomorphised piece about a horse, and it declared that "he chased the filly, then one half of the world swung alongside the other" , and i was meant to say what was going on. I actually had to ask my mum about it, in order to get to the bottom of it in the end, but maybe i am just too innocent !
For those who, like me, are baffled - my mum reckons that this was a flowery way of saying "they did the horizontal samba" .... which was news to me ! (O.o)

I think that is definitely not the right way to go about being an examinatory body for esperanto....

The EAB seem to be really weird, though.
They sent me both of my certificates (for the beginner and intermediate exams) in esperanto, making them nearly worthless for showing that i have achieved anything (for example, for inclusion in my Record of Achievement for employment purposes) ....

This being the case, i wrote to them expressing my civil dismay and requesting the certificates in english. They wrote back, i thought a little indignantly, declaring that esperanto is a perfectly good language, that english is not superior, and that employers ought to learn esperanto rather than the EAB keeltowing to their lack of esperanto skills.

I wrote back saying that this is all very well and all, and yes esperanto is very nice :if i were opposed to it then i wouldn't be learning it to such a level in the first place, but that the fact remains that for the forseeable future nobody other than a small minority of people can comprehend my certificates, making them pretty much worthless as an indicator of skill level, which is the whole point of having a certificate at all.

They wrote back saying that it was ok because most of the people they give certificates to are pensioners who just have the certificate for display purposes, so it's irrelevant what language it's in.

I wrote back saying that was all well and good, but I am 22 years old (which i was at the time) and thus not a pensioner, and would not be for a very long time, and could i please just have the certificates in english, i have paid you guys £10 for the two exams and successfully passed them, and all i want is to receive a certificate which conveys information about my achievement, so that i can put it in my Record of Achievement.

Without further comment, they wrote back asking me to send in my certificates, to see what they could do. A while later i received them back, with an english translation scrawled on the back of them both, which was signed by the examiner for authenticity purposes :P something about the whole process seemed fundamentally unsatisfying.

[Alex McKee]

Yes the EAB are a wierd lot, that's for sure.
I never did bother taking any of the exams, no.

[Astrocat]

I asked my boyfriend and his brother about the horse and the 'one half of the world swinging alongside the other' and was relieved to find that they didn;t know that the hell was supposed to be going on, either we had even been talking about abstract flowery stylistic ways to describe shagging before then ('o that she were, that she were, an open-@rse apple, and thou a poperine pear' etc ) and still they were flummoxed by it.

hehe, 'nuff said !