September Update

Sorry for only updates at the moment. I do plan to do more.

Chinese has become my main activity outside work. It consists mainly of listening and some speaking.

Listening - This has improved since August. At the end of August my girlfriend and I went away with two other friends. I notice that when she was speaking to her other friends about something that we have done I was able to follow the conversation pretty well. I haven't really been able to do this before so I was very excited and happy about this breakthrough.

Listening at the moment is mainly - ChineseOnline -- a Chinese podcast, Youtude, Taiwanese TV including news (difficult), chat shows (difficult but fun), some Children TV (some of which is easy to understand), listening to when my girlfriend talks to her friends (previously I found this boring and hardwork but now I enjoy it) and about 4 hours per week with a friend. (She does most of the talking, though she is prone to translating, which is really annoying).

Speaking - not sure whether this has improved. I'm in a dilemma as I don't want to push myself to speak if I'm thinking too much about what I want to say. If it doesnt' 'pop' then I'm not ready to say this. This annoys my friend as she thinks I should speak more.

Photography - earnings are down this month, though I've started to upload more.

Getting Fit - after the summer heat I think it's time to get exercising again. I went for a jog and a swim last week.

Giving up work, I still haven't handed in my notice. The main thing holding me back is that I'm worried I'll end up doing nothing with my freetime. Though I've had ideas about earning extra income, I haven't really done much towards realising this.

Update

Update

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month researching ‘language learning’. There are definitely many camps out there but the one that’s got my attention is the ‘acquisition approach’. This approach requires a ‘silent’ period that can last for up to a 1,000 hours and massive input of the target language. It doesn’t require books, study or even thinking, as these practices will ultimately restrict your ability in your chosen language.

Advocates of this approach include;


Though I haven’t researched it thoroughly, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of products for this approach to language learning. The advocates would say that in this age of technology you can source many of the things yourself but this is time consuming and if you’re not familiar with your target language you might end up getting stuff in the wrong language i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese.

I want over the next few months to develop a proto product designed to meet the requirement of the ‘acquisition approach’. I will use it myself to learn Chinese and I’ll share with friends to see what they think.

Chinese – this is slowly improving. I can understand many more words now and sometimes I get the gist of what they’re talking about on TV. There hasn’t been any jumps in my comprehension though.

Photography – my income for July was down to $36 from $41 in June. Currently I’m likely to get around $30 for August. The summer months are suppose to be slower than most other months and I hope this turns out to be true. My aim is now to earn a $100 per month by the end of the year. To achieve this I really need to increase my uploads. I also need to upload people pictures as they’re more in demand than objects and scenery.

Writing – I haven’t done much on this for some time.

Videoing - despite getting a brand new video camera I haven’t done much with it. I have a plan to make a language video as well as to record different techniques that could be used to ‘acquire language’.

Overall, I don't think I'm making much progress towards being free from work. There are ideas bubbling but I really need to take the next step with them.

The past couple of weeks I've been reading about language learning and I've come across some interesting sites.

There are many ways to learn a language and over the past week I've read about people with radically different approaches. Some take a pro-active approach whilst others believe in acquisation that's accompanied by a period of silence. Saying this, most do not believe in learning grammar and memorizing vocab lists.

Interesting Links

Keith's Voice on Extreme Language Learning. Keith is using the TV method to learn Chinese, though he has temporarily stop this as he needs to find a new job in Japan. Besides writing about the TV method, he also has articles on

ALG Thai programme - video of the director of the programme talking about the Thai language programme. This programme is radically different from other learning teaching programmes in that they recommend you do not speak for the first 800 hours. Very interesting.

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/07/alg-thai-interview-with-david-long.html

An interview with a Korean ployglot

http://natural-language-acquisition.blogspot.com/2009/06/hyunwoo-sun.html

Benny the Irish ployglot is learning Czech in three months

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

This guy is actually an English Teacher, to many 1,000s of people. His 7 tips are worth signing up for but here he commenting about the ALG Thai programme.

http://effortlessacquisition.blogspot.com/2004/11/comprehension-is-king.html

I haven't read much of this site. It's a mix of language points and NLP. When I have more time I'll go into his site more.

http://stujay.blogspot.com/

This is one I've come across today. It's a free sample. How anyone read the whole book?

http://www.learnthatlanguagenow.com/Learn%20That%20Language%20Now%20SAMPLE.pdf

Other articles by the same guy

http://www.artipot.com/authors/31647/robertson-b-kunz/


I've read many other things as well and hope to put out an article reviewing the sites in more detail. If you are interested in learning languages, these links are definitely worth following.

Leave a comment if you know of other learning sites that you have found interesting or more importantly useful.

Learning Chinese, changes in approach

A New Approach to Chinese

I’ve been in Taiwan for three and a half years, so I’m running out of excuses why my Chinese is still poor. So over the past month, I’ve been looking at top language learners and teachers, reading about language learning and generally looking at ways to improve my Chinese.

I feel that this spurt of Chinese learning has been productive and that the techniques I’m using this time are proving to be more successful.

I’m mainly concentrating on speaking and listening, though I have an interest in reading Chinese too.

So the changes I’ve made have been.

Listening more

Sounds obvious, but by this I mean comprehensive learning (listen to stuff you can understand – using a text for example) and listening to this stuff many times over.

I’m currently listening to ChineseLearnOnline podcasts. They use a lot of dialogues (semi-authentic), so I listen whilst reading the dialogue 5x and then listen without the dialogue 10x. I also review the lesson the next day and test myself by writing out the dialogue.

One online English Teacher said that learning to speak English, your studies should be 80% comprehensive listening.

Results;

I definitely think my listening has improved. In one-on-one conversations I have better comprehension and can now provide better answers. I’ve gotten involved in many more conversations recently because my confidence has improved and I feel I’m getting more out of them.

Group conversations, I’m getting the gist much more now but it’s still hard for me to participate in these conversations.

TV listening is slightly better though this is still too fast for me. I can occasionally get the gist of what they are talking about, though this is also through the fact that I can read some characters.

Review more

With the listening exercises, I make a point to listen to them at least a few times the following day and if I like the lesson, then I’ll listen to them more.

Result

Reviewing has deepened my understanding of the language and I feel that my ‘language’ has grown much quicker as a result.

Learn phrases, don’t learn words

I’ve found that listening to dialogue repeatedly, has made it a lot easier to recall the dialogue. One of the exercises I do, is to recall the dialogue and then check how accurately I recall this. I then work on the more difficult bits. I’ve found this to be useful as it feeds back into listening as well. I also feel that I’m working out the grammar of Chinese without actually studying ‘grammar’.

Results

I feel that it’s much easier to recall phrases and sentences than to recall single words. Also when accompanied with a sentence, you get a much better understanding of how the word can be used.

Getting involved in more conservations

To really learn a language you need to use it. I’ve read about conversations connectors, these are phrases that help a conversation follow and can also buy you time to think about your replies. Conversations connectors are things such as, thanks for asking me, by the way, me too! So, I my plan is to get a list of common connectors translated into their Chinese equivalences.

Results

I’ve gotten involved in many more conversations recently and this has definitely helped my Chinese. Though I’ve probably gotten involved and have been able to continue them because my comprehension has improved.

Pronunciation

I was having trouble with certain sounds in Chinese. So I got some help with these sounds. One of my friends was able to tell me about tongue position in the mouth for certain sounds and since then I feel that my pronunciation of these sounds has improved.

Result

As well as my confidence, I’m also better able to hear the difference between sounds. A lot of sounds in Chinese are similar and being able to hear these differences has definitely been a help.

Summary

I really do think I’ve made progress, especially in speaking and listening. So I’ll continue to do listening exercises everyday. I feel I could do more listening, once I’ve got my mp3 player working, I’ll be able to use ‘deadtime’ (sitting on a bus) to listen to Chinese.

I will also continue to review stuff through listening, rewriting the text and rehearsing the dialogue in my mind and then checking it.

I don’t plan to learn grammar, characters and writing characters for the foreseeable future. The stuff I’m learning at the moment, I can understand why the words are being used and I don’t want to get bogged down in learning grammar, as my main goal at the moment is to speak.

Also learning characters is time consuming, especially writing. When my speaking is better I’ll have a blitz on reading as I feel this would be useful, especially for extensive reading. Also, I don’t think it’s that difficult to learn characters in Taiwan, as you’re surrounded by them all the time and also I’m fascinated by them.

There are opportunities all around

Be Different












I can see that there are opportunities all around us. Unfortunately, I've missed quite a few this month.

June's opportunities

Working on English Camps, new experience, good rate of pay and different to my day to day job - missed

Entering a travel competition with a realistic chance of getting to next round. This one was also missed, mainly because I left it to the last minute. I'll see about other competitions as I think they are great motivators for improvement. I found myself looking at other entries, being inspired by their ideas and wondering how I could do things better.

On the positive side.

I didn't miss every chance. Last night I started a conversation on the bus home, purely to practice my Chinese. If I can make this a habit then I'll get a lot more practice of speaking Chinese. I've also started 'classes' with a friend that has been very useful too.

And I got my first article off to Matador Travel, which got refused because there was another article similar to it. Lesson to learn - use more keywords to found what they have on their database.

Getting started in microstocks

If you have a DSLR camera, a passion for photography and an appetite for learning then microstocks could be for you. Treat it as an experiment and the very least it will do for you is to broaden your photographic horizons.

You have a choice of agencies to start with but some require that you qualify for photography status first before you can submit i.e. Shutterstock, Istockphotos and Stockxpert.

I’d suggest that you first try Dreamstime, Fotolia and 123RF because;
• You can summit photographs straight away.
• If your photographs get rejected, you can still submit more.
• You will learn from rejections and be in a better position to submit more photos.

You can build up a portfolio and also understand which photos are the most suitable to use to gain qualified status at Shutterstock, Istockphotos and Stockxpert.

Shutterstock is now considered to be the number one in microstocks. It certainly is in my experience but it’s also notoriously hard to get accepted. It took me three goes and knocked my confidence. After my first rejection, I didn’t try microstocks for another year and Shutterstock for another 15 months.

Here are some tips for submitting to Shutterstock.

Only submit photos that were taken at ISO 100 or less.
Submitted photos should be different from one another.
Use the Shutterstock forums to help. They have (http://submit.shutterstock.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4) one specifically for critiquing new submitters.

And good luck. I’ve found that once you have been accepted by Shutterstock that they are fairly constant with what they accept and reject. It’s now my favourite site.

A similar approach with Stockxpert will get you accepted though I haven’t really summitted many more as I found their keyword requirements complicated.

Don’t ask me about Istockphotos; I’m still to be accepted there. They have an artistic qualification system where you submit three photos and they accept you depending on ‘artistic’ quality. I think if you have good stock photos of people then you’ll get accepted.


Submit Photos to Shutterstock and make $$$!





http://www.fotolia.com/partner/200870006

Why Travel?

Why eat? Because it’s essential to your body! So why travel, because it’s essential to living, to growing, to your mind. It can give you insights to the world, to other people as well as yourself that sitting in a cubicle or reading a book won’t give you.

If life is all about experiences then travel is the ultimate experience rich medium. Exotic locations, different people, continuously changing situations and challenges face you.

You learn, or is it, relearn to appreciate things. Simple things start giving you pleasure again; like eating a new fruit, seeing a waterfall, walking through a forest, hearing a foreign language and getting up for sunrise.

In truth you can have many of these pleasures at home but the business of life and time has the effect of closing ourselves and our senses to these things. When you travel many of these senses reawake. You feel alive, you start to be creative, you deal with problems and you get along with people, most of them anyway.

There are some experiences that you can’t have at home or are just simple better when you go traveling. These include exploring other cultures, learning a foreign language, studying meditation with an Indian guru (maybe in New York or London) and this is just the tip of one gigantic iceberg.

Some experiences I had so far whilst traveling.

• 17 day trek in Nepal – changed my view of trekking and reconnected me with my inner child that fantasized about climbing icy peaks and walking across the Antarctic.
• Disastrous climb of Adam’s peak – taught me many valuable lessons about getting prepared for trekking and big challenges.
• 2 day white water rafting in Nepal
• Teaching English in a Jungle Refugee camp in Thailand – an amazing experience that taught me how resilient people can be.
• Climbing Santa Maria, Guatemala, to witness a mini explosion of her side cone, which sent a plume of smoke about a kilometer into the air – simply awesome!
• Gate crashing a Halloween Party at an Intercontinental in Columbia, when we weren’t even suppose to be in the country
• Being freaked out in Burma (Myanmar) by the terrible political situation there.
• Two weeks of hedonistic indulgence in Goa

This is why I want to break free from work and go traveling again. This time with a view of making money to sustain it and to experiment with different styles of traveling.

A New Reality

I find myself in a brand new siutation. Last week I had the hours to build up my savings for travel. This week I don't. I've lost 8 teaching hours and have gone from being able to save a lot to just covering my costs.

When I heard the news, I felt depressed and panicky. I feared that I wouldn't make my saving targets and that either I would have to work longer to get there or I'll end up teaching English again after my travels.

Since then, I've reviewed the situation and am now happy that I have the extra time. I can still break even from teaching English and now I have more time to build up other sources of income. Despite having just 8 hours less, I figured that this reduction gives me an extra 12 hours per week (preparation time and gaps between classes). This is excellent.

I plan to use the extra time for;

Travel Writing - aim to do writing related work for two hours per day.
Photography - to increase my microstock portfolio and improve my images.
Photoshop - to see how I can use this to improve the performance of my photo stock.
Chinese - to do at least one listening exercise a day and be more outgoing with my Chinese.

I'm glad that I dealt with my fear and that my 'child' of an entrepreneur is growing up. Yes, there are problems in life but there are plenty more solutions to them. It's all part of growing.

Passive earnings from Microstocks (Photography)




I’ve been doing this for about 7 months and have got my earnings up to $35 a month. Whilst the income is a bit disappointing, I would still recommend that keen amateurs still try microstocks.









Benefits for the amateur photographer;




· Feel accomplishment by getting your work accepted by stock agencies.
· Feel accomplishment by selling pictures. I know that money shouldn’t validate your photography but it’s still very gratifying to know that someone is willing to pay money for your photographs.
· It’s less complicated then applying to traditional agencies and some of the feedback you get on rejections is very useful.
· You will learn soft skills that you might not learn otherwise. All the microstocks agencies I’m with review the photographs you upload. Therefore you will get rejections and it’s from these rejections that you learn. For example; I now use ISO 100 most of the time because there less noise and more detail. This has forced me to use my tripod more and I also use my fast lens more.
· Try new types of photography.
· Increase motivation
· Ask more questions about how to commercialize your photography
· Join in with some active forums
· It’s a very low cost why to start a second income
· To learn from other photographers




These are some of the benefits. There are many more I’m sure.




Signing up is easy and free. Just click on the links below and start turning your photography into cash. You never know perhaps you’ll be the next microstock star!





http://www.fotolia.com/partner/200870006


Submit Photos to Shutterstock and make $$$!

Creating a Compelling Vision

I find this difficult and I believe a lack of it has meant that I've achieved my goals very slowly. I can close my eyes and see things but what I find difficult is to direct them into an ideal vision.

I can write down the ideas, make it attractive to me but the seeing, the feeling, they’re very difficult to repeat. Do other people have the same problem?

My current vision for the end of the year.

I’m diving into tropical water, splash, the cool water washes over my body. I feel the speed of entry into the water, it’s a deep, beautiful blue and full of colorful fish that dart playfully about. I look side to side and a big smile raises on my face.
(What I get when I try to visualize this, is a dark blurry blue, I feel the temperature around me rather than the coolness of the ocean, also, it’s as if I’m looking at another person, it’s not me. And the fish, are few and hazy)

Next, I’m walking uphill. A cool wind takes the heat out of the day. The scent of flowers floats by as do butterflies. The walk uphill is a challenge and it feels great. I can see the top, it far off and I’m really enjoying the walk up to it.

It’s sunrise, I can feel a slight warmth on my back, it’s a new day, the day and I’m excited about what’s ahead of me today. The light behind me, creates a huge shadow in front of me.

A clock ticks and money falls into a box with my name on it. It’s passive earnings, where I do nothing but my money goes up. It’s brings me freedom and happiness, as I know that my traveling isn’t costing me so much.

I've added an extra bit to passive earnings

As I sleep the money goes up, the money goes up, the money goes up, as I sleep the money goes up, up, up, up.

To the tune of Here we go round the mulberry brush. Part of visualization for passive income.

This is coupled with an image of me sleeping, with a smile on my face, we go up with the z,z,z,z, and a clock ticks. As the clock ticks, money falls into my bank account. It’s a beautiful sight and a happy one.

Do other people get clear visions? You know like a video or a movie?

Has your 'vision' sharpen over time?

I would love to hear about your experiences.

How I gave up smoking for FREE

How I gave up smoking - a little at first, delaying the first cigarette of each day but this eventually lead to a great end result. I now haven't smoked a cigarette for over 10 years.

What brought this memory back was reading 'The Power of Less: Changing Behavior with Leo Babauta' on the 'Four Hour Working Week' blog.

This suggests concentrating on changing one habit at a time, over a period of a month. The article says changing more than one habit at a time is counter productive. It also said that starting small and gradually make the challenge bigger leads to more success as you get many more successes behind you this way.

This rang true with how I quit smoking

I was in Thailand, with about a month's money left before I needed to returned to the UK. I was smoking between 10 and 15 cigarettes a day, more if I went out drinking. It was my first time to spend many months travelling and I loved it very much. Which got me thinking, how to save the money to go traveling again? Quitting was a good option as cigarettes were about 5 pounds a packet back at home, ten times the price they were in Thailand. This made me feel that smoking was daylight robbery in the UK.

I guess that how I started, with a strong vision.... I'll go travelling again, something which I really wanted to do. I also felt passionate about it as I didn't want to give my money away to the UK government.

But despite this strong vision I didn't stop straight away

Here's how I did it;

• I created a powerful reason for giving up. Also that reason was an award.
• I smoked my first cigarette of the day at a later time each day. If I did this then the day was a success. The amount of time didn't matter, so as long as it was later.
• I also couldn't smoke any more cigarettes then the day before. Even if I smoked the same number of cigarettes as the day before but smoked the first cigarette later; the day was still a success.
• I did this over a period of about two to three weeks until I run out of time and 'number' of cigarettes to smoke.

I haven't smoked since.

I think the good thing about this approach is that I won in my battle against smoking everyday for 2-3 weeks before I actually stopped smoking. With this success behind me, I was able to continue despite being in a country where cigarettes were cheap and there were plenty of opportunities to go out and party. And I did.

By the time I got back to the UK, I had already stopped for more than 7 days and was able to resist starting again.

Here's the link to Leo's article on how to change habits.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-power-of-less-leo-babauta-zen-habits/

I'll have to use this method to change some other bad habits that I have and to start some good habits.

I would love to hear from you.

How did you give up? Or are you giving up or want to give up smoking?

The images are ones I took, if you're interested in using them, please leave a comment and a contact email.

2009 Goals



The overall goal is to break free from work forever. By the end of the year, I want to be in a position where if I go travelling and I'm breaking even. I plan to do this by raising my passive income, though making videos and through travel writing. I will also investigate some income generating ideas from 'The Four Hour Working Week'. Also, I want more power over how I spend my time, I want to exercise at least three times a week and have the time to develop new skills.

Goals 2009

• Increase my passive income to cover at least 30% of travel costs
• Increase income from mircostocks to $150 per month
• To get + $100 from videos per month
• To earn as I travel through spotting opportunites and exploiting them
• To earn from 'Teaching English' in different ways, i.e. ways that generate passive income
• To exercise at least 3 times a week
• To speak Chinese to a conversational level, by this I mean talking with a stranger for 10 minutes without the need to resort to drawing pictures or finding someone who speaks English.
• To be a travel writer, and this will cover the remaining costs of travel
• To develop 'own' business.

Passive Income


Microstock photography - although this is not real passive income (as it involves a lot of input at the start) I've included it in this category. Last Month I earned $35 from this source and this month will be similar. I want this to increase to $150 by the end of the year.



Other photography - Investigate other sources of income from photography



Video - to be earning income from this by September and for this to generate income of $100 plus per month by the end of the year.

Also to use video as a source of income on the road - shoting for hotels and activities centres in return for income or goods.

Travel Writing - When I'm travelling, to dedicate two hours a day to this activity.

To use my main occupation, teaching English, as a passive source of income.

Intro - Why I'm writing this blog

Perhaps it's a middle age crisis, the big FOUR OH is coming very soon, in fact too soon. This time next year I'll be there.

Perhaps, I haven't grown up and there's still some rebel left in me. I don't want my life and work to be a job that's 'OK'. I want more travel; I want to meet people doing radical things, who have new ideas and are working them; I want my own radical ideas to work and I want some of that entrepreneurial spirit -- like in 'the Dead Poet's Society' I want that 'cease the day mentality.

Am I too old for all this stuff, definitely not! Am I scared, definitely!

So I want to start living my life as I want it to be. I want freedom from work, which doesn't mean I don't want to work but I want to be doing my own work, something I can put my heart into.

I want to increase my passive income, which at present is vertically zero ($35 per month) to a point where I can travel or learn something new and not worry about money.

I want each day to be the most important day for me. At the moment, my mind drifts from fantasies to worries and is largely unproductive.

I've had always wanted this freedom but I haven't done much about it. Now I feel is the time to make changes. To do, instead of think and dream about it.

As this crisis sweeps my mind, I've turned to books and the internet for help.

So far I have read;

The Four Hour Working Week Tim Ferriss -- initial view, very attractive and some parts are very practical. I have stopped reading the news and this small change has saved me a lot of time. I haven't got my head about the 'muses' (businesses that generate cash but become fully automated) yet but it is something I would like to try. Outsourcing life, seems very radical to me, I didn't realise the extent this has gone, until I read FHWW.

I have partly read

E Myth Mastery - Michael E. Gerber

This book combines the Story of Sarah with the principles of Entrepreneurial ship. You have to read a bit to find out the practical tips. The story of Sarah adds an emotional dimension to the advice I guess.

Useful bits so far

Get use to being a leader - say it to yourself and notice how you feel. He gives this advice, as many people feel pompous or silly calling themselves 'leaders'.

Stopping - as the name suggests, this is literally stopping yourself when you're busy doing something and observing your thoughts. I found exercise this very interesting and insight. I'm not sure at the moment what to do with the observations.

Get your 'vision' sorted out first before starting a business plan.

Interesting website

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/01/07/the-power-of-less-leo-babauta-zen-habits/

This is not Tim Ferriss but it's on his website. An interesting approach to changing habits

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/30-days-to-success/

A bit about me.

I'm 39, male and working as an English Teacher in the Far East. I have dreams of being a photographer, travel writer and entrepreneur. I live with my girlfriend and we currently don't plan to have children.