08 July 2007

Working your gray matter

I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love. It's an OK book. I waver between loving it and finding the main character (the author) highly annoying. I did, however, gather a very good tip from the book which I am putting to use.

For the last few days I have been reading a small news story in German. The first was a story from Der Spiegel about the new Simpsons movie. I love the show but I don't know about the movie so it wasn't quite cheating. It was a fun interview with the creators, Al Jean and Matt Groening. I even laughed out loud a few times!

Today I'm reading a story from Deutsche Welle about people who are learning German at the Goethe Institute in India.

Practicing your language skills is amazingly entertaining and the pay off is three fold: you work your brain, improve your language skills and learn something interesting. (I will not be reading any finance or economic stories. That stuff freaks me out in English.)

On a side note, you may, as in all news reading, learn things you do not want to know. I just read in Der Spiegel that Tom Cruise will play Claus von Stauffenberg in an upcoming movie, Valkyrie. Shudder. (Stauffenberg was a crucial player in the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.)

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