HRVATSKA=CROATIA – HOW DID IT COME TO THIS WORD?

Croatian history seems somehow to be shrouded in mystery, despite strenuous efforts of the historians to find out with pinpoint accuracy which part of the globe our ancestors resided. No one seems too sure as to whether it was here or there down to the migrations. While one is of the opinion that we are from Iran, the others claim something else. According to Ferdo Siscic, one of the greatest Croatian historians, Croatians may really have its roots somewhere in the Caucasus, as does the word Hrvatska (pronounced /hrvacka/). The word Horovathos is traced on two stone inscriptions in Greek language and script (year 200 a.d.) found by the Black sea. What is interesting is that the name Chrowat (= Croat) appears in the region of northern Steiermark. There is a place called Kraubat to which the word Chrowat relates. What is more, in Corinthian there is a place called Kraut, which name is also derived from the Middle Age name Chrowat. If you want to find more, have a look at http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/et01.html#buga.

Next time I could explain the symbols on our flag. Isn’t it a great idea?
Have fun!

The world's only known case of "semi-identical" twins

Read under: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/heaalth/6498215.stm
After reading the article, I was curious to find more information about the twins, since I wasn’t satisfied with the info provided. On the internet I found a kind of essay about twins. To be precise, about “What makes twins biologically and psychologically alike and what are the causes of any differences in a pair of twins?” I’ll sum it up briefly and if you want to read it yourself, follow the link:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f00/web3/hayesconroya3.html


There are several types of twins:

1. fraternal or dizygotic twins – if there are two eggs released and both fertilized. The twins can than be male-male, female-female or female-male


2. identical or monozygotic – when a fertilized egg splits. The twins can then be either female-female or male-male. What struck me as fascinating is the phenomenon of so called mirror imaging. If the morula (the fertilized egg) splits between day 10-13, the twins can be mirror images of each other. One can be left-handed while the other right-handed or they can even have birthmarks on the same part of the body, the one on the left and the other on the right.
   Siamese twins (named after famous twins from Siam – joined at the breastbone) are also monozygotic and are the result of the “too late” splitting up (after day 13), which is why the division is not successful.


3. other types.

Aren’t all these “phenomena” fascinating? I wanted to find more info about twins on a genetic level (from morula to fetus, from fetus to I don’t know what), but unfortunately I ran out of time. Maybe some other time. I’ll be back!!

I’ve found it! The theory of semi-identical twins:

A PEACEFUL BRITISH INVASION

An article in “Spotlight”

This article is about British people moving to Normandy, and so perfectly relates as well as to the topic covered this term as to the book I’m reading (“A year in Provence”). Families, who have spent their holidays in Normandy, fell under its spell and settled down actually in the middle of nowhere to make their wishes come true. Which wishes? To start a business from scratches since this couldn’t have been affordable (or maybe still isn’t) in Britain, inasmuch as the property market is up to five times as expensive. The trend towards heading down to France began 20 years ago.
What I found interesting is the remark that socialisation takes place not in pubs, as it is in Britain, but at people’s houses.

INTERESTING VOCAB:
- rat race – ständiger Konkurrenzkampf : to get out of the rat race

I have to say that I admire these people for summoning courage and above all for taking the plunge and go to leave somewhere else on our enticing blue globe. You might say that I did something similar, as I left Croatia, my home, to live/study abroad. Alike though it seems, it is by far not the same, since I left my country for the time being, except if I in the end marry a fetching Austrian guy and stay here.:) Be that as it may, what I want to say is that I cannot imagine living miles away from my place of birth. (Our house- the photo blow)
The story goes as it follows, since my brother and sister left the nest (they have their own family), the destiny of the house hinges somehow upon me. It is not that I crave to reside a village where neighbours green with envy don’t feel like talking to each other, but I cannot imagine putting the house up to sale. Moreover, I can’t live without my nephews. If it weren’t for these reasons, I would like to live in Africa. I’m talking rubbish!! I’m not at all like that. Well, maybe a bit.

JANUARY

This fabulous and hilarious book begins on New Year’s Day with a divine lunch in a restaurant in France. Peter Mayle and his wife have for long been considering to realize their long-cherished dream to move to Provence, where they spent their hot summer holidays. Finally, they bought a charming 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, took French lessons and shipped their two dogs from UK.

The secluded and warm place planted with vines, as well as the hospitality of their neighbours (Henriette & Faustin) was enticing them more and more. Neither the unearthly dialect nor the stories about the bone-chilling winter wind Mistral, “which was blamed for every problem in Provence that couldn’t be blamed on the politicians”, couldn’t make them change their minds. They didn’t know that the stories about the wind were true till the day they experienced it firsthand. The wind cracked their pipes, ripped tiles from the roof and tore a window from its hinges.

I would love to experience the winters there in France. It might change my attitude towards winter, in particular the snow because up till now, regardless the aftermaths, I’ve been craving for it. A winter without snow is like a mouth without teeth :). It’s like the song says: “Love and marriage go together like horse and carriage …” And all people just grumble and whinge and I don’t know what else. I like it and I want snow, right now!
“Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!”

By the same token, do you know what I find peculiar here in Austria concerning winters? As soon the temperature drops not even below freezing, the heating immediately “gets into top gear” and it gets unbearably hot. Are the Austrians cold people? What is more, instead of “shifting into the first gear”, they /we open the windows, if at all. From my point of view a bit strange.

Besides the wind, bureaucratic mazes weren’t making their life easier. Buying the house was a disaster, let alone a car because “documents are holy things here and deserve respect”. We meet Antoine Massot, who is to become their “personal advisor”.

VOCAB
· Amiable – His parents seem very amiable
· Extenuating circumstances - There were extenuating circumstances and the defendant did not receive a prison sentence.
· Disposition – She has a cheerful disposition.
· Tiles – The wind ripped the tiles from the roof.

In comparison to JI this book is much easier to read and funnier as well. No that JI is not funny, but it is harder to understand Monagan`s humour. Otherwise the topics are almost the same: problems with settling in, bureaucracy. A huge difference is in the peoples “nature”. While the Irish people seem more reserved, the France people are rather outgoing.

Weekly speaking session of Dina & Ivana

A rainy day, time after lunch – a perfect time to take a nap. If only dreams could get true! If only! I have to admit that I wasn’t much into talking at the beginning, which is why I gave my words rather to Dina. But it didn’t last to long that my tongue got into gear. The question then was: Would you appreciate if your husband/boyfriend helps out with the household/children?

Who wouldn’t! I would say, gone are the days when men didn’t look for their babies. And man shouldn’t be ashamed of it. Why? Just imagine that you are taking a walk with your baby. All the women would turn back as you relaxed stroll down the street. Admirable!
And if you would after that do the washing-up it wouldn’t be that bad. Actually, it would be the icing on the cake. After all, men are not made of sugar.

WHAT DO CHICKEN, GOOSE & DUCK HAVE IN COMMON

I today’s session, chicken, goose & duck will play a major role. Which one you can find below!

• duck soup - a task that does not require much effort: The exam was duck soup. I am sure that I did very well.




• kill the goose that lays the golden egg - to spoil/destroy something that is beneficial or makes a lot of money: My friends sold part of their business but it is the most profitable part. I think that they have killed the goose that lays the golden egg.




• chicken feed - a small sum of money: The money that I spent last night was chicken feed and I am not worried about it at all.

Speed friending

Saturday night, 9.00 pm
I have to say that the girl who had this tremendous idea must be a genie. Never ever in my life have I talked in English like a machine. The aim of this speed friending was to meet new friends, as well as donate money, if I’m not mistaken, for the Kinder-Krebs-Hilfe. And the “game” goes like this: there were people who were staying at their “posts” and people who were moving around. For each person we had 4 min to talk to, and when the caw bell rang, we had to change partners. And that’s it!
The atmosphere was fantastic and the people were from all over the Europe: England, Italy, Check Republic and so one and so forth.
I met two Italian guys who have been working here in Austria for a year and who, to my surprise, don’t speak German. Nor did they know anything about Graz, except where the Kunsthaus is. Not even about the Murinsel. Shocking! Irresponsible people (I mean, towards the culture).
And now a funny thing. During a conversation with some English guys, Pia brought up the word unfathomable. They first didn’t quite understand and we thought that it was wrongly pronounced. But no. The word is in English rarely used(according to them) and that’s why they didn’t comprehend it.

CHAPTER 6

Monagan talks in this chapter about Irish superstition – believe in fairies, which control their life, and banshee, who, if seen, brings dead to a member of your family. We also find out about some typical stereotypes about Irish people. While on the one hand, they are only open sometimes, on the other hand they are clannish, inscrutable and baffle people with their vacillation. There is actually a reasonable explanation: “If you tell people too much, they’ll start talking about you.” The typical Irish man would in Monagan`s eyes be Vincent, a fireman and volunteer harbour serch-and-rescu man, who interrupted during a dinner didn’t mind looking for Monagan`s glasses.
After an incident in Monagan`s garden, the gates of which are always open, we find out that openness is considered naïve. Namely, one day a girl spat on Laura and was dressed down in a too straightforward way, the result of which was that their garden play furniture was smashed and some guys started bullying their kids.

VOCAB
Ambiguity – There were several inconsistencies and ambiguities in her speech.
Omnipresence – These days mobile phone is omnipresent.
Vacillate – She is still vacillating whether to go or not.
Clannish – It will be difficult to become part of their group since they are so clannish.

What I found most fascinating is that Monagan knows a lost about the Irish culture, especially about Irish myths and legends. This made me think about my culture but unfortunately I couldn’t come up with any of these myths and legends. Do we really don’t have them? No, there surely must be something. And now, either I am not educated properly or there is a “paucity” of them. I would say the former. Shame on me.

CANNABIS MAY REDUCE DEPRESSION

Listen to it under http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0510/051015-cannabis-e.html

It sometimes seems that the science is on the verge of having a grand theory of everything and that science has the answer to all our problems. Moreover, we are likely to believe it since we fully trust the scientists to such an extent that we don’t think things through for our selves. Cannabis can certainly lessen the hopelessness. Just have a look of the cool guys on drugs whose motto is: “TAKE IT EASY!”

The doubt whether the results of the experiment could be applied on human beings is, I would say, futile. Of course can cannabis have a practical application on people, as did mostly all other experiments. But what we don’t find out are the consequences.

At Prince Charles Pub

Thursday night

Where should I start? What should I say? What can I remember? Hmmmmmm!
We (Dina, Pia, Tina, me, myself and I) had a pleasant night as well as the opportunity to converse with some guys from England, all ex pats. What we astoundingly found out is that, in comparison to Austria, the quality of life in Britain leaves a lot to be desired.

GM mosquitoes

The other day on the FM4 radio news it was reported that scientists have created malaria-resistant mosquitoes. These creatures carry modified genes resistant to malaria parasite. However, scientists have yet to confirm if these GM mosquitoes could “in real life” have a practical application.

A whole series of questions cropped up. Why would anyone want to produce a whole river of mosquitoes? I am eminently happy if I can get rid of them in hot summer nights! How could these creatures exceed normal mosquitoes? And suddenly it dawned on me. Of course! Survival of the fittest, what else.

I found an article about this topic on the BBC. Have a look under: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/800785.stm

FEAR OF THE PAST - PTSP

FEAR OF THE PAST, an article about PTSD in SPOTLIGHT

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is, as we all know, an uncontrollable emotional reaction caused by traumatic events. But what is interesting is that scientists found a way not to delete the horrible memories, but to make these painful memories much less intense. And here we go!

It all has its roots in the way our memories are stored and actually formed. Before an event is sorted deep deep in the brain, it becomes sort of temporary unsteady memory that has to stabilize. What is more, whenever we experience those memories again, the memory returns from the stable state back to an unstable state. And it is now that the scientists have come to the idea that these memories could be blocked and somehow modified by using certain drugs before being stored again.

Isn’t it amazing how our brain functions? We “drag” this mysterious “machine” along with us every day, and are not even aware of it. Don’t think that I’m under certain drugs for bringing up this topic; the thing is that I’m actually much into biology: anatomy and genetics.

How to mince my word

Can you mince your word? Do you often burn the midnight oil? Find out!

1. DOT THE I´S AND CROSS THE T´S – used when somebody pays great attention to every detail of a task (used as a criticism): If we give this project to John, it will take forever for hr tends to dot the i´s and cross the t´s.


2. 
   BURN THE MIDNIGHT OIL – used when somebody works until late in the night: Before an exam I used to burn the midnight oil.


3. 
   NOT MINCE ONE’S WORD – when somebody does not mince his/her word, the person speaks frankly and openly: I’m not going to mince my word. Your presentation was the worst I’ve yet to see.
   

CHAPTER 1

The first chapter is mainly about David Monagan explaining why he and his family took the plunge and moved from a small town in Connecticut to Cork. Ever since he visited Ireland (the place his ancestors fled from) as a student, he has fallen under its spell. The news came as a shock/joke to some of their friends, who didn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing.

VOCAB:
1. with a vengeance – After the dreadful accident the famous footballer is back with a vengeance.
2. disparage – Although my presentation was perfect, she didn’t mind to disparage it.
3. transfix – On hearing that he is going to marry her, I stood transfixed with shock.
4. marshy – The rain was in surplus this summer, which is why the ground is so marshy.

After several hours spent in the town, Monagan says that doubts were already creeping in. I am wondering why. How can he expect that the country will stay the same after several decades? It’s patently obvious that some changes must have taken place and this is what he didn’t take into account.

I did some research on the internet and found something about the education system in the RIL, as well as the Celtic Tiger, cul-de-sac and Cork. I will give you some brief info about it, and more you can find under: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_City
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cul-de-sac

A cul-de sac (bottom of sack) – dead-end street with only one inlet/outlet.

Celtic Tiger (“ the booom”) – name for the period of rapid economic growth in RIL (1990s – 2002).

Cork (Corcaigh) – 2nd largest city of RIL, nickname: The Rebel Country

IDIOMS

To learn for example three idioms a week is by far not an unreasonable imposition, is it? So let me start with the first three:
1) PUT SOMEBODY IN A PICTURE – if you put people in a picture, you inform them about something they should know: John was very puzzled about the recent events, until someone finally put him in the picture.
2) CLOSE BUT NOT CIGAR – used in a situation where something is almost correct but not exactly correct: A: You were so close to win the match. B: Yeah! Close but not cigar!
3) MAKE A KILLING – means to make a lot of money: She made a killing on the stock market.

Bush on his tour in Latin America

This week president Bush was on his tour in Latin America. In most of the countries his visit was met by severe protests against the Iraq war rather than President Bush's policies on Latin America. He has namely promised to work hard to achieve a more sensitive immigration policy but has yet to live up to it. The visit is regarded as symbolic rather than a step forward in the relation between Latin America and USA.
I listened to this news on the radio FM4 and what I generally loathe about politics and politicians is that they always pledge better days or whatsoever but never keep to their promises. Politics is a bitch, that’s obviously true. However, do they (the politicians) really think that we are dim-witted? It all reminds me of a politician in Croatia who during her campaign expressed regret for people in Shri Lanka (when it was hit by a tsunami, Dec 2004). Deeply touched though she was, she didn’t think of donating some money to those areas suffering the depredation of tsunami.

LISTENING

Well, I’m listening to radio FM4 every day especially to the news, and to be honest I DO understand the news (even if not everything, obviously), but whom I don’t understand is the main radio commentator. Don’t ask me why. Maybe his voice is too deep or he speaks to fast, I don’t know. Be that as it may, I’ll persist in listening to this radio station with hope to understand him one day. (I don’t know how he is called.) And yes, the radio station is around 101 MHz. I’ll tell you the exact MHz next time.

Besides the radio station, I save on my precious MP3 player the news from the www.breakingnewsenglish.com every Monday and listen to one every day (well, I hope that this will continue). That’s not all. I do as well the exercise to the news I’m listening to. Easy though it is, I constantly come across new vocabulary I remember more easily as I’m an audio person (well, of course, a visual person too).

This week I listened to the news entitled Half of Europe’s citizens are bilingual.
Contrary to my expectation are Hungarians those with the poorest language skills and not the Italians. Find more about it under: www.breakingnewsenglish.com/0509/050925-bilingual-e.html

READING

Is integration working?
An article in Spotlight, a magazine in English

As the headline says, the question is if integration is working in GB. Most Britons (especially racists, of course) are of the opinion that Muslim immigrants could not be trusted. To make things worse, the terror attacks are on one hand a justifiable testimony to their judgments.

How can a person who has been given chance to start a new life in a foreign country like GB (or any other country) rise their hands against their fallow citizens? What went wring? The thing is, although a clear majority of British Muslims feel loyal to Britain, they face discrimination and find it hard to blend into their culture. Why? In comparison to America, where newcomers keep their differences, while at the same time having a strong sense of being American, in Britain the emphasis is put on diversity, denying the fact that they (Muslims) are also British.

If you ask me, these days it is hard to even trust your own children, let alone a complete stranger, especially one from a different culture with distinct values. For these reasons I to a certain extent justify Briton’s reaction towards Muslims. However, if these practices persist, the gap between people of different cultural backgrounds will get wider, leading to misunderstandings as well as ignorance.