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Random Funfacts!

xoid said:
I'll play the where I've been game:

  • USA
  • Mexico
  • England
  • Bahamas
  • Ireland
  • Belgium
  • The Netherlands
  • Denmark
  • Sweden
  • Germany
  • Czech Republic
  • Austria
  • Hungary
  • Italy
  • France
  • Scotland
  • Vatican City
  • Spain
  • Portugal
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;)

I am afraid of heights, but am also addicted to roller-coasters... the bigger, taller and faster the better...

Go figure...
 
My tally:
Russia/SU
Sweden
Estonia
Norway
Denmark
Iceland
Poland
Germany/BRD
Austria
Belgium
The Netherlands
UK: England, Wales
Eire
France
Italy
Vatican
Slovenia
Kroatia
Bosnia
Yugoslavia
Israel
Singapore
Malaysia
New Zealand
Cook Islands
Canada
USA; NY, NJ, PA, FL, WY, ID, MT, CA, HI
Cuba
Belize
 
When i was 7 years old, this blew my mind:

Space1999_Year1_Title.jpg
 
I like lists too!

Countries I have been to/visited:
  • United States (46 of 50 states, excluding Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii)
  • Canada
  • Mexico
  • Belize
  • Honduras
  • Barbados
  • Kuwait
  • Saudi Arabia
I have also been to (for less than a day) to the following:
  • Ireland
  • England
  • Netherlands
  • Germany
  • Romania
  • UAE by way of Dubai
  • Bahrain
  • Qatar

Another fun fact, earlier today I could have sworn the forum was broken, as I could not log in. Turns out if I spell my username as 'Waaaaarden' instead of 'Warden' the password doesn't work :D
 
Been as far East as Naples, Italy and as far West as Mumbai, India.

Countries visited:
  • Austria (Tyrol)
  • Bahamas (Nassau)
  • Canada (homeland - AB, BC, MB, NB, NS, ON, QC)
  • Dominican Republic
  • France (Îsle-de-France, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur)
  • Germany (Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria)
  • Italy (Campania, Lazio)
  • India (Maharashtra)
  • Japan (Hiroshima, Kanto)
  • Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Selangor)
  • Phillipines (Luzon)
  • Singapore
  • South Korea (Jeju, Yeongnam)
  • Sri Lanka (Colombo)
  • Switzerland (Vaud)
  • US (CA, DC, FL, GU, HI, ME, MI, NY, PN, PR, VA, VI, WA)
  • Vatican City
EDIT: Now in map format!
Where I've Been.png
 

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Yesterday I revisited my senior school days by watching the 1963 film of Lord of the Flies. Much of what I had been taught about interpreting the novel was still there in my mind, even after 7 years :D

Lord of the Flies was definitely my favourite of the books I studied at school, because of all the clever interpretations of the story. I rank the others in the following order:
  • Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo - this one tied in nicely with studying WWI in history at the same time, and reflects the tragedy of trench warfare and the brutality of officers at the time, though it doesn’t have the intelligent symbolism of Lord of the Flies.
  • Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - I am probably the biggest Dahl sceptic in the world, but this one one of the only novels of his that was decent.
  • Holes by Luis Sachar - Pretty forgettable and meh this one, neither good or bad.
  • Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - This one’s pretty boring, but it’s one saving grace is that it prompted us to study Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for a little while beforehand, which was great.
  • Skellig by David Almond. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as bad as this before or since. A dreary story coupled up with the pointless presence of a fallen angel without any explanation to why he was there produced a book that I never want to read again as long as I live.
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
Yesterday I revisited my senior school days by watching the 1963 film of Lord of the Flies. Much of what I had been taught about interpreting the novel was still there in my mind, even after 7 years :D

Lord of the Flies was definitely my favourite of the books I studied at school, because of all the clever interpretations of the story. I rank the others in the following order:
  • Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo - this one tied in nicely with studying WWI in history at the same time, and reflects the tragedy of trench warfare and the brutality of officers at the time, though it doesn’t have the intelligent symbolism of Lord of the Flies.
  • Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl - I am probably the biggest Dahl sceptic in the world, but this one one of the only novels of his that was decent.
  • Holes by Luis Sachar - Pretty forgettable and meh this one, neither good or bad.
  • Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - This one’s pretty boring, but it’s one saving grace is that it prompted us to study Great Expectations by Charles Dickens for a little while beforehand, which was great.
  • Skellig by David Almond. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as bad as this before or since. A dreary story coupled up with the pointless presence of a fallen angel without any explanation to why he was there produced a book that I never want to read again as long as I live.
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Ooh this funfact has inspired me to do the same. However I am homeschooled and am taught through a Co-op program so my list is gonna be quite different lol.

All time favorite book I've read for school is Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. It's a fascinating story for both Christians and non Christians about a man who gets transported to another planet where, unlike the earth, never sinned in their garden of Eden. Essentially a sinning human goes to a world of no sin. It's a deeply Philosophical book and I just loved it.

The Iliad- can't say I particularly loved it as it was a nightmare to read, because ya know Homer had to have like 200+ named characters. But I definitely respect the book as it shows the greek mentality and their view of a Hero.

This might not count as a regular book, but one of my favorite subjects was Philosophy. We read a book titles The Consequences of Ideas and it went through many of the major philosophers and gave their views. From that I strongly respect the views of Rene Descartes, and even read his book Meditations for fun.

The Hobbit- nuff said right here, it's a great book and we got to discuss it in class so.... Epic

Red Badge of Courage- absolute worst book I ever had to read. It was incredibly bland and hard to follow, this coming from someone who reads lord of the Rings like it's a children's book (not saying that in a negative connotation, but merely as a description of the struggle involved)

Old Man and the Sea- loved this book, half our class did as well, the other half hated it. I loved the story and seeing the struggle, it oddly raised alot of introspective thinking and overall was a cool book.

Edit: might I add The Iliad is literally the hardest book I have ever read, people who say LotR is hard and such need to try this book lol. LotR has nothing on the Iliad in difficulty to read.
 
DeathBringer125 said:
Ooh this funfact has inspired me to do the same. However I am homeschooled and am taught through a Co-op program so my list is gonna be quite different lol.
Click to expand...

If you were home schooled, how come there were other kids in your class? Were they home schooled too and you interacted with them via video link or something?

DeathBringer125 said:
The Iliad- can't say I particularly loved it as it was a nightmare to read, because ya know Homer had to have like 200+ named characters. But I definitely respect the book as it shows the greek mentality and their view of a Hero.
Click to expand...

DeathBringer125 said:
The Hobbit- nuff said right here, it's a great book and we got to discuss it in class so.... Epic
Click to expand...

Lucky beggar. My parents got to read some great books at school too. Am I the only person in the world other than my classmates to have had to study so many poor books at school (at least half of them are ones that I would never read again)?
 
Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl said:
If you were home schooled, how come there were other kids in your class? Were they home schooled too and you interacted with them via video link or something?





Lucky beggar. My parents got to read some great books at school too. Am I the only person in the world other than my classmates to have had to study so many poor books at school (at least half of them are ones that I would never read again)?
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As I mentioned, I am homeschooled, however we are part of a program called Classical Conversations. Every Friday we meet up from like 9 am-3 pm and have a class day. So we basically have weekly assignments and then meet up every Friday.
 
DeathBringer125 said:
I started playing video games at age 6 with World of Warcraft.
Click to expand...

bOdziO Wolf said:
Quite similarly but the game was Star Wars: Rebel Assault II on PSX and I had no idea what I was doing :p
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Ha! I beat you both! I started playing PC games when I was really young, about 3 or 4-ish, though those games were themed around my favourite TV shows at the time like Pingu, Thomas the Tank Engine and Postman Pat :D

I was probably about 5 when I played my first 'proper' game, in the form of Worms 2, and later on I diversified my palette with games like Zoo Tycoon and Age of Empires.
 
Countries visited:
  • Australia (homeland)
  • Indonesia (twice)
  • Malaysia
  • Singapore
  • Thailand (about 6 times)
  • Myanmar (illegally snuck across the border with some hill tribesmen and we accompanied a donkey opium caravan returning into the mountains)
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • India (India, Sri Lanka and Nepal was an 18 month bicycle trip I undertook with my brother)
  • Sri Lanka
  • Nepal (3 times)
  • England (lived here for 10 years)
  • Scotland
  • Ireland
  • Wales
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Netherlands
  • Egypt
  • Croatia
  • Turkey
  • Spain
  • UAE
  • Greece
 
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Seems like I had to board this countries visited list way sooner... now it seems so dull compared to most of yours :confused::p

Grrr, Imrahil
 
I do not like haikus. I had a childhood trauma related to haikus. I am amazingly lucky that one of the top ten worst things that happened to me as a child involves haikus. It shows I lived a privileged life of comfort.

In hindsight I found out I was part of a social experiment in the fifth grade.

I didn't realize this until I took some psychology classes in college, but in fifth grade, once or twice a week we we're paired up with first graders to sort of mentor them. There was a lot of student teachers in the room. At the time I thought, "You're adults you teach the first graders" but now I realize they were observers, and I was the pigeon in the Skinner Box.

We the fifth graders were supposed to teach first graders things. Gradually they had us try to teach harder and harder things. I remember we were supposed to help the first graders write a haiku. My simple fifth grade brain did not want to cheat in anyway. I refused to write the haiku for the first grader like most of my classmates were doing. A first grader can barely write a simple sentence much less aim for a sentence that is a certain number of syllables long. I could not even communicate what a "syllable" was to a first grader in terms she could understand, so we both kind of had a melt down and garnered a lot of observers because I'm sure I was far more fun to watch than the fifth graders who took over writing the haiku entirely.

Also I don't think they translate well from Japanese to English. English haikus feel like a mathematical exercise of counting syllables rather than a poetic expression.
 
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Scalenex said:
I do not like haikus. I had a childhood trauma related to haikus. I am amazingly lucky that one of the top ten worst things that happened to me as a child involves haikus. It shows I lived a privileged life of comfort.

In hindsight I found out I was part of a social experiment in the fifth grade.
Click to expand...

Oh, interesting story!

Scalenex said:
English haikus feel like a mathematical exercise of counting syllables rather than a poetic expression.
Click to expand...

i feel almost the same
 
Scalenex said:
I do not like haikus. I had a childhood trauma related to haikus. I am amazingly lucky that one of the top ten worst things that happened to me as a child involves haikus. It shows I lived a privileged life of comfort.

In hindsight I found out I was part of a social experiment in the fifth grade.

I didn't realize this until I took some psychology classes in college, but in fifth grade, once or twice a week we we're paired up with first graders to sort of mentor them. There was a lot of student teachers in the room. At the time I thought, "You're adults you teach the first graders" but now I realize they were observers, and I was the pigeon in the Skinner Box.

We the fifth graders were supposed to teach first graders things. Gradually they had us try to teach harder and harder things. I remember we were supposed to help the first graders write a haiku. My simple fifth grade brain did not want to cheat in anyway. I refused to write the haiku for the first grader like most of my classmates were doing. A first grader can barely write a simple sentence much less aim for a sentence that is a certain number of syllables long. I could not even communicate what a "syllable" was to a first grader in terms she could understand, so we both kind of had a melt down and garnered a lot of observer because I'm sure I was far more fun to watch than the fifth graders who took over writing the haiku entirely.

Also I don't think they translate well from Japanese to English. English haikus feel like a mathematical exercise of counting syllables rather than a poetic expression.
Click to expand...
Very interesting story. However I would like to say that the concept of student leads us actually incredibly valuable, however I think they did it wrong lol. For the past 2 years in the Co-op I go to (we are basically homeschooled through a program and meet for in class days every Friday, however instead of having a different teacher for each subject we have one teacher, who learns with us) we have had student leads. For every subject we have to be prepared to teach our class because we won't know what lead we get until Friday. And I have noticed that nothing makes you understand a concept more than teaching it to others. That why pretty soon a discussion of Vectors in physics became me accidentally delving into experimental geometry and trying to explain why it all worked....
 
DeathBringer125 said:
Very interesting story. However I would like to say that the concept of student leads us actually incredibly valuable, however I think they did it wrong lol.
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Agreed, student leads can be a valuable teaching tool. I'm an Eagle Scout, and I didn't leave the troop immediately after becoming an Eagle Scout like some of my peers so I taught a lot of younger scouts knots and whatnot. But I was a teenager instructing twelve year olds hands on skills which is different from an 11 year old teaching a 7 year old abstract literary concepts.
 
Scalenex said:
I do not like haikus. I had a childhood trauma related to haikus. I am amazingly lucky that one of the top ten worst things that happened to me as a child involves haikus. It shows I lived a privileged life of comfort.

In hindsight I found out I was part of a social experiment in the fifth grade.

I didn't realize this until I took some psychology classes in college, but in fifth grade, once or twice a week we we're paired up with first graders to sort of mentor them. There was a lot of student teachers in the room. At the time I thought, "You're adults you teach the first graders" but now I realize they were observers, and I was the pigeon in the Skinner Box.

We the fifth graders were supposed to teach first graders things. Gradually they had us try to teach harder and harder things. I remember we were supposed to help the first graders write a haiku. My simple fifth grade brain did not want to cheat in anyway. I refused to write the haiku for the first grader like most of my classmates were doing. A first grader can barely write a simple sentence much less aim for a sentence that is a certain number of syllables long. I could not even communicate what a "syllable" was to a first grader in terms she could understand, so we both kind of had a melt down and garnered a lot of observers because I'm sure I was far more fun to watch than the fifth graders who took over writing the haiku entirely.

Also I don't think they translate well from Japanese to English. English haikus feel like a mathematical exercise of counting syllables rather than a poetic expression.
Click to expand...

I don't like haikus because they don't rhyme. To me a poem isn't a poem if it doesn't rhyme.

In fact Haikus rarely even make sense (in English at least) which makes me dislike them even more.
 
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