Learning spanish?

Okay, so here's the problem: I am lazy. But I want to learn Spanish. I had started to attend a course back in July last year until end of last year. But due to my work I had missed several lessons so I quit and did not continue 'cause I was unable to make up for the missed lessons.
I know that I need to learn, that I need to be less lazy in that. I am willing to. Though at the moment I think it makes no sense for me to attend a school again as I can foresee that I won't be able to regularly attend it due to several holidays I will take. I also work shifts which makes it very difficult to visit a course regularly. But still, I desperately want to learn this beautiful language. I haven't figured out a plan yet how to do it, any suggestions from your side? Self study needs a lot of discipline which I also don't have, so the school thing was a good slight pressure for me... ;-) Luckily I have a few friends with Spanish as their mother tongue and I can pick up the pronunciation from them from time to time. But maybe some of you have had similar experiences in picking up a language and can share their opinion. I know I need guidance in learning due to my lacking self discipline. Maybe I should look into some online communities...

Un abrazo, everybody. ;-)

Shine!

May I introduce to you Holland's Eurovision songfestival entry for this year in Moscow: "Shine" performed by the Toppers! I saw sunday night's finals live on tv and this year the Netherlands opted for a different decision making progress than the previous years. The artists are long known (I think since end of  last year already) and tonight the winning song was chosen which they will perform in Moscow. A jury of 5 professionals gave their votes for six different songs that the toppers presented in a live show on tv and besides the professional jury the audience at home had the possibility to vote too! One third of the votes was given by the professionals, the rest by the audience. For the professionals, the song "Shine" was number 2 while the audience put it on number one so with all votes combined "Shine" became the winning song.

The three men who will perform at Moscow are very popular artists in the Netherlands. The "Toppers" as they call themselves are together since a few years and easily fill the Amsterdam Arena or similar big arenas for several days for extremely popular sing-a-long concerts. Shortly after they had been announced to be the artists for the dutch entry for Eurovision last year, one of their original members (Gerard Joling) decided to quit and for him a new member joined the Toppers (Jeroen van der Boom). Originally consisting of two gay members, now only one is left: Gordon! He is also the one who was very eager to get to the contest for his home country. He and Gerard Joling became immensely popular on tv as two very queer, very gay, very funny singers/entertainers with their own reallife soap, the Toppers concerts and many other tv shows they present with more or less huge success. Rene Froger is the third member, a very popular singer. After Joling left the group they brought in newcomer Jeroen van der Boom.

I like the chosen song, it was Jelle's and mine favorite too. It's a nice, happy, singable song. It's for sure not the winning entry, it's not eastern european enough I think... ;-) But still, I typical, yet nice eurovision song with a twist... though a little something is missing but in general it's a nice and worthy song for the contest. 'Nough talking, now listen to it:



Grand Prix hugs (in Germany the Eurovision Songfestival is known as the "Grand Prix")!

A respected boss.

On the 29th of January, there was an interesting interview (unfortunately in german only) in the german newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) with Lufthansa's former boss Jürgen Weber. He is now the chairman of the board of the airline and as such gave an interview. The most interesting he commented on for me was his statement about salaries of top management: he thinks even top managers should not earn more than 100 times the average of the companies' employees salaries. I think that's reasonable. He says we can't take America as an example anymore and I agree on that, they simply went crazy there with the giant salaries for even failing managers. He is a simple modest man who worked his way up in the company and that's what I admire about him. He is realistic, he knows the problems of the small employee in the company as well as he sees the whole picture of the airline in the competitive business. He has a lot of respect between the employees I think. He was very popular when he was still the boss of the airline. He is the kind of boss I have respect for. Too bad today's modern, younger managers don't have his style anymore.

Youth memories

Sometimes it pays when you go from one blog to the next and further to another one: that's what I did tonight when I followed a link to the blog La pastilla roja. I was attracted by a too familiar logo that appeared as a still in a youtube video, as seen below: Falcon Crest! It was my most favorite of those typical american soaps of that time and I really loved it. And I guess that was partly because of the beard of one of the main actors... god, I'm so predictable... :-P In any case, I loved the series and also the main tune and you can listen back to it down here. If you want to know more about the series, follow the link to the blog as the author has an interesting post with more details about the series. 

I wonder if many of you liked this series too or which of the famous ones was your favorite? Was it Dallas, Denver (as Dynasty was titled in Germany) or Falcon Crest? I don't know Santa Barbara, I can't remember that we had it back then in Germany. 

A warm cuddly hug for you. 

Thank you.

First of all let me apologize to you that it has been quite a while now since my last post. But for me the christmas period was  kind of busy and I also did not always feel like posting something. You all probably know the feeling that there is something to say but you don't know really how and in that case I rather prefer not to say anything than something stupid. I asked my lilbro for some tips on how he always manages to write something, with the precision of a swiss clock. So I will try to use those tips in the future. 

However, I would like to thank my beloved lilbro for something beautiful he did to me. I feel very honoured and at the same time even a bit ashamed as I feel I did not deserve it: he awarded me the "I love your blog" prize! Thank you so much Dani, it means a lot to me. But let me assure you that I don't think I deserve it but I appreciate what you express with it to me. That truly made me happy, so thank you once again. I felt very insecure and - as I said - a bit ashamed and actually did not really know how to react, whether to ignore it post wise or comment on it. In the end, as you now can read here, I decided to express my appreciation publically. I usually don't like these chain-things and I still don't really know how to react and what to do with it, what the appropriate way to react would be. So, all I can say is thank you very much I guess. I know and understand why you gave this prize to me, Dani, and that truly makes me happy and very proud and thankful.

A very tender kiss, my lilbro, for being the way you are and doing what you do to me.

Congratulations to all other awarded winners who truly deserved their prizes, I am happy for you. Hugs to you all.

P.S.: I hope to soon post more often again. In the meantime, why don't you check my flickr pages where I post regularly about me and my life in pictures?