is not the answer? Is getting more things done in less time going to make a difference — or will it just increase the pace at which I react to the people and circumstances that seem to control my life?

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I got a message through the contact form on my site from amishera on why I mention that I like to eat olives. The truth is, there’s no special reason why I mention it, other than the fact that I really like eating olives. They are one of my favorite foods. (Sometimes I say “fruits” to throw people off. Olives are the fruit of the olive tree.)

Fun story: One time my parents found a specialty store that sold hundreds of different types of olives somewhere in northern or central California. They brought back a bunch of bottles including almond-stuffed olives, spiced olives, smoked olives, and other stuff. They were all amazing.

I’d rather get olives than chocolates. True story!
I hope I find olive-flavored ice cream one day. MMMM.

This is a short post and by no means does it encompass all my thoughts on the subject.

I’ve been reading parts of Being and Time by Martin Heidegger and as I was visualizing (in a way) Da-sein, I realized that I already have a very good concept of da-sein, it’s called Fiinţă. I understand now how Martin didn’t want it translated to “Being” because it’s misleading because of the common use of the word being like “She was being annoying” as opposed to “a being” even though, It’s not really A being, its more like, Fiinţă, which, I can’t explain or translate, but I’m sure Martin Heidegger eventually finds a way to explain it. “‘Being’ is not something like a being.” Being, Heidegger claims, is “what determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings are already understood.”

Anyway, I realized that maybe the fact that I sort of understand Fiinţă and Da-sein I have always looked at my identity differently. I wonder if there is anything concrete that could be drawn from understanding this concept from a young age (age of language acquisition) as well as the obvious differences already known of how language creates identity. It’s obviously not the phonetics that create the identity, but the symbolic interpretation of the world through language that affects your development.

On top of that, according to Psycholinguistics, the fact that I speak two languages fluently and interchange and mix them at will creates actually a third grammar (and language) which expands the symbolic concepts you are aware of to a larger range. On TOP of that, my SLA was actually a natural acquisition NOT a conscious one so that adds more questions to the pile as well. God, I would love to study this. I am convinced it has a huge effect on personality. Consider the huge amount of people who are growing up bilingually (English and Spanish) and how unprecedented this amount is, and how little research is done about the subject. These are called “Coordinate Bilinguals”, or bilinguals who learn two languages naturally (finish learning the second language before age 6 or around there, there’s no age set in stone).

For coordinate bilinguals, words and phrases in the speaker’s mind are all related to their own unique concepts. Thus a bilingual speaker of this type has different associations for ‘chien’ and for ‘dog’. In these individuals, one language, usually the first language, is more dominant than the other, and the first language may be used to think through the second language. These speakers are known to use very different intonation and pronunciation features, and sometimes to assert the feeling of having different personalities attached to each of their languages.

Since I mentioned language mixing earlier, and how it’s considered to be a third grammar and a third language by some psycholinguists, I thought I’d show part of a powerpoint on Code Mixing and Code Switching

There is an exception to the last model, for example, adding endings or beginnings to a word to transform it into a verb. (when it is a noun in origin.)

The Sociopsychological Functions are also talked about in this slide which I find interesting and sort of hilarious at the same time. Language mixing is used to give Authority, Anger, Seriousness, Pain to discussion, and to express these things you usually use your mother tongue or “older” language.

Language Acquisition Device theories are hard to test because of lack of children without language, and producing such children would be considered abuse, although it’s been tried a couple times, with results always being inconclusive, since nobody (hired nurses, doctors, nannys) could keep their mouth shut around the children, and they always pick up whatever they can get. Cases of “wild children” are getting rarer and rarer and even when they existed they didn’t seem to prove much except that there is a time period where language acquisition is not as easy. (still doesn’t prove the “Critical period”) but even that doesn’t need to be proven to make the distinction between naturally learned languages and conscious learning.

Doamne, trebuie să mă culc.

That is the question.

I think horoscopes are a big pile of baloney, but when I’m bored, I’ll dig around the chinese horoscopes, symbols, things like that. I don’t really know why I do it, I’ve never believed in them. Maybe it’s a wish that symbols carried more meaning, or maybe it’s just my human curiosity.
Regardless, there is a part of horoscopes that I like. They are called “keywords”. There are words for each of the horoscopes – but they apply to all of us, I think, at different parts of our lives.

The keywords are supposed to be words you use when you talk to yourself. Or words that first come to your mind when expressing and describing yourself.

These are the words:

I HAVE
I THINK
I AM ME
I KNOW
I USE
I FEEL
I WILL
I ANALYZE
I BALANCE
I WANT
I AIM
I BELIEVE

Which words do you use often? How would you express or describe yourself?

Personally, I would use I FEEL and I AM ME. I saw that I wrote “I am me and that’s enough” on my facebook profile a couple days ago (before I ran into these keywords). It’s a perfect way to describe me. I’m also centered on feelings and put my worth on emotional strength. The words vary though, depending on what’s going on and such.

Obviously they should probably be re-written for the next generation, who probably only use “Omg” “Wtf” and “lol” in their self-talk. (Okay, who am I kidding, I’ve said lol in my head before.)

Here’s a list of which words go with which horoscopes if you’re interested.
ARIES: “l AM ME”
TAURUS: “I HAVE”
GEMINI: “I THINK”
CANCER: “I FEEL”
LEO: “I WILL”
VIRGO: “I ANALYZE”
LIBRA: “I BALANCE”
SCORPIO: “I WANT”
SAGITTARIUS: “I AIM”
CAPRICORN: “I USE”
AQUARIUS: “I KNOW”
PISCES: “I BELIEVE”

I randomly stumbled upon this photo on Nasa.gov. It’s a photo of some land mass on mars that makes my skin crawl. Maybe it’s the weird worm shape or it’s resemblance to rollie pollies (I am deathly afraid of rollie pollies.) I tried googling how to spell “rollie pollie” but I freaked out 5 seconds in. Damn Google’s image search mixed in with web search! It will be the end of me. :(

What happens if you get amnesia and you need money out of the bank for healthcare, but you don’t know your PIN #?