Sumiko@LingQ

What do you learn English for? What is the purpose for studying English? Is it for your carrer? Do you simply need it for your job or to survive because you live in a English speaking country?

Me? I do need some English for my job, however I don` t need to study English harder as long as I continue my current job, which would not need such a high level.

I just love learning English. Because with English, I can communicate with many people from different places in the world. I feel as if I could explore or expand of my own world with English.I would love to enjoy the Hollywood movie without Japanese subtitle. Yet I don`t have concrete puropose for learning English and therefore, sometimes it is not easy to keep my motivation. How about you?

皆さんが英語を学ぶ目的って何ですか？キャリアアップに有利だから？仕事で必要だったり、英語をしゃべらないと生きていけない環境にあるからでしょうか？

私は単に英語が大好きだから、という理由のような気がします。英語に触れていると自分の世界の広がりを感じます。大好きなハリウッド映画も字幕なしで楽しみたいし。でも明確な目的がないので、正直モチベーション持続が難しい時があります。英語の検定試験合格、などを目標に掲げてみようかとも思うけど、なんか違うのです。いったい私はなぜ、何年も英語を学び続けているのかなあ。

Hi everyone!

Hope all of you had a very happy Christmas and New year.

It has been so long since I posted last time. Because it was too long, I do not even remember how to post it!

I have got my own Japanese blog and I have not posted for that for more than month. Why do I become so lazy?? One of the reasons for not posting anything for my Japanese blog is that unfortunately someone is putting lots of junk comments almost everyday. I cannot do anything to prevent it.

So I have decided to close my Japanese blog for a while and I will try to write English & Japanese blog here in the vox blog.　This is one of my New Year Resolutions!

皆さん、お久しぶりです。楽しいクリスマスとお正月を迎えられましたか？

VOX blogも自分の日本語ブログも全く更新しない今日この頃。なんでこんなにだらけてしまったのでしょう？？実は日本語ブログ、悲しいことにスパムメールのようなジャンクコメントが毎日寄せられているのです。もう私にはどうすることもできません。実際ブログに書くねたも思いつかないし、思い切って日本語ブログをお休みして、ここにできるだけ（簡単ではありますが）日本語と英語で記事を書いていこうと思います。

ということで、今年も宜しくお願いいたします。

Today I am going on business trip to Tokyo.

I will have a meeting at 9:00 in the morning, so I have to leave home before 6:00 am!

Usually people living in Kansai region would leave for Tokyo a day before in this case, however it is too hustle for me to stay over night as I am a working mom. Therefore, I would rather wake up early in the morning and leave home while my daughter and my husband are sleeping.

It takes about 3 hours to reach Tokyo by bullet train. I may be doing some paper work and I think I will have some time for reading a book.

Now I am reading an English book called "Hole", which Satomi has introduced in her blog before. I have just started to read it and it is quite fun.

Yet I might just fall asleep in the bullet train. I am getting sleepy.

These days I play badminton every weekend.

It is a great fun.

I used to play it quite seriously when I was a high school student. (It was so long time ago that I cannot remember when exactly it was...)

A friend of mine I met though my daughter`s nursely school, has invited me to the badminton club.

Initially when I restarted playing it in May, I was so shocked because I found myself hopeless player. I totally forgot how to hit the shuttlecock, I cannot smash, my footwork was going wrong and so on.

As I keep playing it, gradually my body seems to recall how to play and I think I am getting better.

In playing badminton, you have to shut up the gymnasium completely by closing doors, windows and even the curtain otherwise the very slight wind might blow the shuttlecock.

Then can you imagine how it would be like in the gymnasium in summer?

It is just like sauna.

It is SO SO HOT. Beside badminton is such a hard sport and you get up a sweat incredibly.

Still getting sweaty is somehow confortable.

I am now looking forwad to playing badminton every weekend.

Is anybody suffering from rhinitis? In Japan nowadays there are so many people who are suffering from rhinitis, especially those who are allergic to pollen.

In my case, it may be worse than pollen allergy, because I am (in fact, I should say "I was") allergic not only to pollen but also to house dust, mite, temperature change and etc. That means I have (had) symptoms all the time throughout the year.

I had been fighting against the allergic rhinitis for nearly 20 years!! The symptoms get worse especially in the early morning as soon as I wake up. That`s so so annoying.

Therefore, I decided to have a day surgery to cure the disease.

In fact, I had this operation before about 6 years ago. At that time, it worked and I got much better once.

However, these past a few months, I developed severe symptoms and I cannot stand it any longer! So another operation.

This is a laser surgery. What happens is that an otorhinolaryngologist actually burns your mucosa with laser. It may sound awful for you, however it is quite simply operation and IT WORKED, thank you goodness!!

According to the data, the efficacy of the operation may last certain duration depending on people. For some people it may be just for a year, or it may last for a few years for other people.

In my case, the efficacy for the last operation carried on quite long period, so I sincerely hope that this time too would hold on as long as possible.

So far the conditon has been quite good. In the morning,I don`t sneez and I don`t have to blow my nose, which is great! 

It`s been a while since I wrote on the blog last time.

I am still alive!

Have I been very busy? Well, the life has been hectic just as usual, however I think I have more free time now than before.

Why?

Because now I have a househusband in my house.

My husband quit his job at the end of March. He tried to look for the job one time, yet it did not go well. Besides he always wanted to learn some particular skill so he finally decided to go to a vocational course for about 6 months.

Since I am a working mother, nowadays my husband takes a turn of cooking, doing a laundry, sending our daughter to the nursery school etc. He is now a sort of househusband, temporarily.

I had been doing all those household chores by myself so far, and now I don`t have to do that.

IT IS GREAT! 

I always felt as if time is pressing me, but now I can more relax.

Of course we have to worry about money. Now we have to depend on only my imcome which is not very sufficient.

Therefore, I sincerely hope that my husband will master the skill and get a job soon.

As a matter of fact, he does not like to be a househusband!  

On Tuesday, there was a kid rugby match, and my daughter participated in the game. I took a day off from the work and went to see it.

All her classmates have been trained playing rugby for a couple of months and my daughter`s nursery is supposed be a probable winner every year. In fact, they had captured the first place for the past few years, and all the parents and nursing school teachers were expecting their victory this year as well.

The thing is that the kids were divided into 2 groups. The one is the group with very skilled kids, mainly consist of boys and apparently the teachers have intentions to win the first place with this group. And the other is, well you may call it "let`s enjoy playing rugby team". My daughter belonged to the latter one.

As a consequent, the strong team came in first, responded to our expectations, and my daugher`s team was lowest in rank. She seemed to enjoy it. I had fun! I enojoy watching all the kids were putting all their energy in order to try the score and doing their best.

Actually my daughter said she did not like playing rugby because she was afraid of  banging into other people. It is understandable.

It has been long time not updating this blog. As for studying English, I have been very lazy learner these days. I am very ashamed of myself.

I have not submitted writing for past couple of months, I did not do as much reading as I should do. I cannot wake up early in the morning which is the only time for me to read English and access to my favorite blog. The only good thing is that I AM LISTENING to English every single day, mainly my favorite podcast and the contents from the TheLinguist library thanks to my iPod Shuffle. If the MP3 player was not available, I would definably fallen behind in listening as well. I am so grateful for handy and portable iPod Shuffle!

Well, since the spring seems to be around the corner, I would like to refresh the way I spend my daily life.

Finally, eventually , at last, I bought iPod Shuffle!

As I wrote before, I have been using a Sony MP3 player. It is a good one, however the problem is that it is quite inconvenient for downloading the podcast audio file. Since I have got several favorite podcasts now and I am downloading them every single day, using Sony MP 3 player was such a time consuming.

But now the problem has been solved! With iPod shuffle, it is so easy and convenient to download the podcast audio file. The one I bought is the blue one. Here it is!

IPod shuffle blue

It is incredibly light and stylish. I just love it.

It`s been for a while since I posted last. Because it was so long ago, I didn`t remember how to post on this blog. It`s too bad, isn`t it? I should write English more and more. In fact, I didn`t submit the writing last month at The Linguist, which I should have done.

The reason why I am lazy about writing is because I have been having this nasty cough for months. It has lasted for long time and I can`t get rid of it. The day before yesterday, I went to see a doctor, which was my 2nd clinic visit this year. He said there was nothing serious and gave me medicine, actually pile of medicine!!

Now I am taking antibiotic, three tablets of cough suppressant, anti-allergic agent, another medicine for common cold and gastointestinal drug which is in fact manufactured by my company.

These medicine make me so sleepy and I cannot wake up early in the morning when I sould study English. I hope I would get better soon.