Putting aside all the other things I could say...

...I'll just say:

Happy New Year to ya'all,

let's survive it like we did this one,
perhaps even more gracefully and with greater happiness
in out cold, withering hearts :)

Take care.

Adam

Christmas rant

OK, here comes.

This year's Christmas will suck. A lot. Not only I have two fuckloads of things to do for all sorts of school and college assignments, but also my computer got broken somehow and refuses to boot, so it seems I'll spent my beautiful holiday giving electronic version of CPR to my dearest fraction. In the unlikely scenario involving me acutally getting it up and running the problem with WoW unplayable will most probably persist, as several people has come to conclusion that with old graphic card drivers your icons get fucked up and with new graphic card drivers your gameplay will be choppy. That's just great. I wish I had a supercomputer or something (not that it always helps, some guys have problems on high-end PCs too).

There is a brighter side to Christmas, though, because due to some supranatural cause I've managed to get all the presents together and quite a handful of them, I might add. I got a nice book for my father (one he wants), nice book for my brother (one he wants too - not that he knows it, but he's a LotR freak so another Tolkien will make him happy), that iranian Persepolis comic book for my mother, the film for her too - coming in a beautiful cover-art'd box, shoe-wax for me and my father, Magic: The Gathering cards for my brother (the ones I gave him earlier this year but he doesn't seem to play much - a reminder to him he has them), a wooden cat necklace for my mother and finally a custom made song-book of negro gospels arranged for little choir for my parents, because they sing in one and want to try singing them themselves - this book comes with a picture, uni-bound, I just like it :)

Also, I've seen the finale of Stardance II. I liked it and I'm happy Aleš won, because he's such a fine man. And that dancer of his, she's pretty hot when not wearing all the make-up.

Good,
over and out,
Adam.

In Flagranti

Prepare yourselves, "culture" is coming.

I have just returned from a concert of a string trio called In Flagranti consisting of first and second violin and a cello.
The three girls, named Markéta, Katka and Sylva respectively, held their electronic instruments with great confidence. All of them were trying to look glamorous, but only the blonde one smiling at all times seemed beautiful to me (well, I know that if she took off all the make-up she wouldn't, but hey, it's always like that). Dressed in a tube top dresses and on high heels, with the skirt part cut up to their hips, the put up a real show. Or at least attempted to. Moving around on the stage in a crude attempt to create visual pleasure to the viewer, throwing away the skirts (only to reveal the shorter ones below) during only the third song, getting back-to-back to the others then splitting with a thump of their bottoms... I can't possibly depict the kind of view we spectators were getting and even the less in english, but it was embarassing and funny in a sad way.
They played with electronic support. Beats and such, you now that kind. Unfortunately for the whole case, "and such" included strings, namely the melodies these girls were playing. I seriously doubt - no, I'm sure - that the cellist ever really played anything. She mainly twisted around her instrument, once or twice even tried to spin it around the way they do it - much to my dissatisfaction it didn't fall, but I swear to God it almost did.
I shall not continue with disgraceing their "art". I'll just point out that the funniest moment was when the sound-manager played a wrong track and the leader signalled him to stop it, but the two other girls didn't really take notice and kept pretending they are playing, but then all of them stopped, but the music kept playing, not changed in any way.
They say they bring us classical music and that till now they've only had performances abroad. Well, I think I can imagine the kind of those performances. Private parties of very rich men, where these girls come, pretend to play classical music, pound the beats from the CDs into those men so that they don't fall asleep, twist around on the stage looking beautiful (some of them, at least), perhaps have a little lie-down, get paid and depart.

Oh well, this was a new experience to me. I'm happy to have it. But for the love of God, don't go to their concerts, not if they are paid. And for the love of God, girls, don't kill the amazing classical music like that.

Adam

CPE - Listening and Speaking

EDIT: I've been noticed by a friend of mine that I have messed up tenses in this post. It's very likely the case, because even checking only few lines showed me that I really made some mistakes. I _might_ correct them at an unspecified time in the future, but at the moment I can't be bothered. I'm always mixing up past simple and present perfect.
Also, this is not a boasting post. If you find it such, you are plain wrong.

I'll try to keep this short, not that usual wall of text.

As you all know, I've attended a first part of CPE examinations today. It consisted of two tests, Listening and Speaking, the rest is scheduled for the 13th.

First was the Listening. We were asked to arrive 30 minutes in advance, which proved to be completely unnecessary, as I've arrived only about 20 minutes in advance and still had to wait. After being let in we found our seats according to our answer sheet with names printed upon them. After a short introduction from the supervisor, some man not having a sheet with his name in the room at all and after a short sound-check the answer sheets were handed out and the test started. It was pretty standard, I've done all the tests from previous years so nothing really surprised me. Understaning was very easy, I could have literally transcribed the script, but as usually the question-answer pairs were often two-way and very unclear - that is even if you knew perfectly well what the people on the tape said, you didn't know what answer to choose. As I've said: standard. Just one more remark: the headphones didn't fit me at all and kept falling off my head and by having the sound come at you from three different sources (the headphones, one soundspeaker and second soundspeaker at the other end of the room) it was kinda echo'ed. Nothing critical, but still annyoing.

Next was the Speaking. I had to wait at the vicinity of Budějovická underground station for about one hour, which I found extremely boring. The place has nothing to offer; if you ever find yourself in need of spending prolonged period of time at that place, bring a book. Or two. When I entered the waiting room in the local gymnasium, I met our ex-professor Folda (who is known to be a pojeb). He was taking the FCE level exams. After a while the organizators read out my and one girl's name out loud, so we stepped forward and subsequently were given instructions as to the place where we should go. Off we went and I started a little chit-chat, just to learn something about that girl and so that we feel better when taking the test together afterwards. Do this, it helps. Get to know your co-examinee. When we entered the classroom, there were two examiners. One who talked to us and one who was making notes. Off went the examination, also strictly according to the guidelines I read earlier in the previous year tests. So strictly in fact, that I didn't like it at all. The examiner stared at us with rather blank face, not showing any understaning nor emotion, didn't react to what we said at all, only with standard "Hm. Now I will ask you some other question." sort of stuff. Really annyoing if you ask me. Also the topics we had to speak about for two minutes were quite academic - increasing the effectivity of people working (my co-examinee Karolina's) and of public transport systems (mine). I found two minutes extremely short and insufficient, especially because after the time run out (which I couldn't know, as the clocks were hidden from us) the examiner very ruthlessly cut in and ended me almost in the middle of my sentence with very standartized "Thank you, Adam.". I didn't learn to like that man. A few more points: I found myself resorting to calling things "things" instead ofby their real names and I also didn't really get to any conclusion during the speech I made (the two minutes one). It's not as easy as it seems. There are I think 5 areas that are marked in this test. It would be: Lexical Resource, Grammatical Resource, Discourse Development, Pronounciation and the last one I can't remember atm.

I'm not exactly excited and confident about the results, I think the girl spoke better than me and that I may have made some mistakes in the Listening test, but I think I'll pass.

Adam

P.S.: I've also met Barbara Holcatova at the Speaking part, applying for CAE. Rather nervous but still herself. Yeah, with a boyfriend. More like a manfriend actually, that guy must have been like 30.