We didn’t make things easy for ourselves, having set our hearts on a replica of Midnightstar Lily, a beautiful black-silver-shaded girl. The stork doesn’t bring cats like this every day. I sent a hopeful letter to Denise at Midnightstar explaining the situation and asking to be added to her waiting list. My first impression was very good; Denise sent me a polite, professional response within a few minutes, informing me that Lily had a batch of two-month-old kittens and so would not be producing any more for quite some time. She unselfishly pointed me in the direction of other breeders whom I might approach. I thanked her and thought that this would be the end of our correspondence. Little did I know …

A couple of days later Denise got in touch to say that a change in circumstances had caused one of Lily’s kittens to become available. I was worried that I might annoy her by trying to set up a date to come and visit over the imminent Bank Holiday weekend, since my partner, Clare, has a very bad cat allergy and we would have to be sure that the kitten wouldn’t set it off. Even if my emails backwards and forwards that Friday night did irritate her, Denise in no way showed it and we arranged to meet that Sunday.

Pebbles at 15 weeks

After a couple of weeks the kittens were old enough to leave and so we began the 170-mile trip to Denise’s to pick her up. It became clear within twenty minutes that we had a character. Rather than cowering at the back of her carrier as Heidi did, this one asked to come out and, after a short time, set about trying to force the door open. She wasn’t scared at all, keeping this chatter up for the whole journey to her new home.

Her force of character showed itself once we finally arrived. We introduced her to Heidi, who responded with the expected hiss, and took her to her room. We were all set to keep them separated for a few days, but little cat wasn’t having it. Whereas Heidi stayed hidden as a kitten and never showed herself (which is why she got her name), this new kitten wanted to explore all over the house. She really is the most well-socialised little cat that I think I’ve ever been around.

Pebbles and Heidi quickly became friends, taking advantage of my turned back whilst moving ironing to nip into the bedroom together and steal a place on the bed. They play together, have plenty of rough and tumble, and follow each other around. We love having Pebbles in the family and owe a debt of gratitude to Denise for her flexibility, friendliness and, most importantly, masterful manner of producing beautifully socialised kittens.

As a teenager growing up in the divided city of Białystok in the Russian-ruled Poland of the 1870s, student Ludwik Zamenhof mournfully observed that the accident of birth that decided in which area of the city you were born (and, thus, your religious, ethnic, and linguistic background) determined the people that you would consider your friends, and those from whom you shied away.

All around him others thought in terms of labels: Jew, Russian, Pole. It filled him with dismay to see that an errant foot in the wrong neighbourhood would see a man assaulted on account of being an outsider. Observing the prejudice and discrimination that characterised his city, he thought to himself that a principal barrier that separated these groups was that of language. If people could greet one another, express regret or gratitude, or verbalise pain, maybe then they could see each other as fellow human beings. He theorised that Białystok would cease to be so volatile, if its people had access to an additional language, commonly spoken by all of them.

Himself a speaker of a number of tongues, he put his mind to deciding what that common language could be. In the first instance, he had to rule out one of the languages native to the ethnic groups of Białystok, since the perception there would be that one of the groups’ languages (and, by extension, culture and native speakers) was superior to the others’. Imposing A’s language on B and C not only resembles imperialism; it also poses a greater burden on the two groups who have to learn the the other’s native tongue. Hardly the ideal solution to a spawned of perceived inequality.

This being the case, he had to extract a suitable language from outside of those spoken in his home city. It’s likely that others would have done just that. Young Ludwik didn’t. Just as it was not his wont to distinguish himself from non-Polish-speaking Jews in Białystok, nor was it his inclination to do so with people from outside of Białystok. Ludwik was thinking of all people, everywhere. For this reason, there was no national language that could be a fair and just common second language, since it would always be someone’s native tongue.

The solution, then, was to plan a second language. To create one.

Ludwik was not the first person to have tried to create a language. The first on record appears to have been penned in the twelfth century, and no lesser a respected figure than René Descartes (he of “I think, therefore I am” fame) had recognised the need for a neutral tongue and tried his hand at inventing one.

The youngster spent the next several years crafting his language. His first draft of his lingwe universala was prepared in 1878. By 1887, now in his mid-20s, he had finished his third draft, and printed books of his Internacia Lingvo. Interestingly, that was the language’s name, rather than that by which we know it. Ludwik used the pen-name “Doktoro Esperanto” when writing about his creation; in the language itself, Esperanto means “one who hopes” (so “Doctor Hopeful”), and adherents soon applied this name to Ludwik’s project itself.

Esperanto hasn’t risen to its earlier promise to be the common second language for all people. But it has achieved in other areas and, for those of us that speak and use it, proves to be a worthwhile pursuit that I’d recommend to anybody who showed an interest. Other people can give their own stories, as they do in this 24-page booklet, which I think provides an extremely good way of reading how Esperanto plays an important, enjoyable role in people’s lives in the twenty-first century.

A good place to start for an overall summary would be the Wikipedia page on the language, although the booklet Discover Esperanto, 24 colour pages in length, gives a more readable and accessible introduction to the language, with comments taken from its users.

Answers to questions:
If you’re interested in finding out bits and pieces about Esperanto you might like to follow these links, which contain small, bite-size articles on the relevant topics:

• Esperanto Is Much Easier To Learn Than Other Languages
• Esperanto Makes Learning Other Languages Easier
• What Is Esperanto? Who Created It?

Learning Esperanto:
The one-stop shop for courses, forums, exercises, tutors and, especially, the excellent documentary Esperanto Estas is Lernu, an internationally run site of volunteers. The site is accessible in several languages, including English.

We are also on Twitter (@Esperanto_UK) and Facebook (Esperanto UK).

There are figures that back this statement up, such as a study by the Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy in Paderborn, Germany. They tested how long it took people with French as their first language to learn a series of languages to a comparable “standard” level.

German was the hardest, necessitating some 2,000 hours of study.

English, in spite of its penetration in the world at large outside the classroom, still required an average of 1,500 hours’ study for the students to reach the target level.

Italian, a member of the same language family as French and so genetically “closer” to the students’ own language, still demanded that they invest 1,000 hours of their time in study.

But what about Esperanto? The answer is 150 hours, one tenth of the time needed for English.

(Note: This is from the point of view of French-speakers. The numbers would obviously be different for speakers of other languages. Nonetheless, it’s worth underlining that Italian and French are linguistic siblings, yet Esperanto was far easier (by a factor of seven) to learn.)

So, that’s confirmation that Esperanto is relatively easy. But there’s another thing worth bringing into the discussion: The fact that learning Esperanto first makes it easier to learn other languages later. In other words, if you’re interested in getting proficient in a language, you might be best served to consider learning Esperanto first.

Source for the ICP study: Flochon, Bruno, 2000, « L’espéranto », in Gauthier, Guy (ed.) Langues: une guerre à mort, Panoramiques. 4e trim. 48: 89-95. Cited in François Grin, L’enseignement des langues étrangères comme politique publique (French)

There’s another excellent reason which may be of interest to people, even if you’ve no intention of mixing with other Esperantists or attending any events: Learning Esperanto makes it easier to become proficient in other languages.

There have been several studies over the decades which have looked at the positive influence of Esperanto on language-learning.

Consider this experiment, reported in 1965: A group of secondary school children were being taught French, and would be tested after four years.

Half of the group did four years of French. The other half studied Esperanto for the first year, and followed this with three years of French. The group which traded a year of French for one of Esperanto ended up with a “significantly better command of French”.

(Source: Williams, N. (1965) ‘A language teaching experiment’, Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26-28)

An Irish chap called Benny runs the website Fluent In Three Months, and explains why he feels Esperanto is so effective, two months’ learning of which enabling the learner to jump months ahead.

The central point is that learning one’s first foreign language is harder than learning subsequent ones. Once one has “learned to learn”, things become easier. This being the case, it makes sense to learn the easiest language as the first one, and then move onto learning the first foreign natural language.

I remember the first time that I was caught out, asked whether I wanted not to install Ask Jeeves. “Why not?”, I thought. “It could be useful.” So I didn’t uncheck the box.

When I started up Firefox, I realised that there had been a problem. Where there once was a Google search box, there was now Ask Jeeves. Indeed, I’m not the only one to get caught out. I used to work in an office where we would sometimes swap workstations, and somebody had inadvenently seen to it that a few of the machines were bedecked with pointless Yahoo paraphernalia. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the rights to remove programs at work.

Double unfortunately, we weren’t supposed to be able to download executable files either, so we couldn’t ask for the IT department to help us, since we’d then have had to explain how we circumvented their procedures to install Firefox in the first place. (The answer was to download the set-up files, bring them to work on a memory stick, then transfer them to publicly viewable files so that we could set up Firefox on every machine. Yes, it’s naughty, but when you bear in mind that it’s 2010 and the staff there are still using Internet Explorer 5.5 you get an idea of why we decided to change things ourselves.)

Anyway, I’ve just upgraded Firefox on my laptop. I’m sure I didn’t click to authorise anything, other than the usual. When the updated version opened, it told me that a new add-on had been added. I didn’t think anything of it, and clicked to load the browser. In front of my eyes was the horrible sight of a Yahoo toolbar dominating the screen:

Not only has this monstrosity been surreptitously placed on my browser, but Yahoo have gone out of their way to make it difficult to remove. Normally you would expect to right-click and be presented with, at the least, the option to hide it. Not here. Instead you have to do something else.

Getting Rid Of The Yahoo Toolbar:
Go to Tools > Add-ons > Extentions. Select Yahoo “toolbar” from the list, and choose whether you wish to disable it or, preferably, uninstall it.

And now everything should be perfect, right? Think again; you’ve reckoned without Yahoo and its underhanded techniques.

Yahoo Replaces My Address Bar

One feature I use everytime I’m online is the one which takes whatever terms I enter in the address bar and returns Google’s “I Feel Lucky” hit if I happen to click “enter”, rather than clicking on one of the relevant past pages that appears in a list form whilst I’m typing.

I tried it this time, with a view to being taken to a Wikipedia page which contains a link to the Australian Esperanto Association’s online forums. This time it didn’t work and I was left looking at this:

Horror of horrors! I’m now taken to a Yahoo search page! Again, this has taken place without my foreknowledge or consent. Once more, there’s no easy way of getting rid of it and reverting to the system that I was running before. You have to try something else.

Getting Rid Of The Yahoo Address Bar:
To deal with this we have to delve into the far reaches of Firefox, where laymen like me would normally fear to tread.

1: Enter about:config in the address bar, noting that there is no space either side of the colon.

2: You’re heading into uncharted waters, so Firefox sends you an alert:

3: You’re feeling brave, so click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!”

4: Filter down the list of options that appear by entering keyword.URL in the text box. This will narrow the field to one option.

5: Right-click and select “Modify”. You should see that a Yahoo address is the current value, and this is the thing that’s causing your search terms to generate a Yahoo page. We need to get rid of it.

6: Decide on what you want to happen. If you would like to have your search terms take you to Google’s “I Feel Lucky” site, then enter http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q= (changing .com to whichever domain is appropriate to your needs).

If you instead want to bring up a Google search, then enter http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= (again entering the relevant domain).

And that should be it.

Recap

So I installed an update of Firefox. Upon opening the application I was informed that an add-on had been added, and I saw a big Yahoo toolbar. It wasn’t obvious how to get rid of it, since there were no options to as much as hide it. Instead, I had to know that this was an add-on and disable it from my add-on manager.

I then discovered that Yahoo had taken over my address bar, robbing me of some of the functionality that I regularly use. Again, this wasn’t straightforward to rectify, and would oblige most people who aren’t tech savvy to seek specialist help or, which I feel is the aim here, simply put up with it.

So, it comes packaged hidden with something else, installs itself without knowledge or consent, and is designed to be hard to remove without some form of specialise knowledge. Isn’t that the definition of a trojan?

Shame on Yahoo for adopting such deceitful practices, and shame on Mozilla for incorporating them. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve had it for over ten years and doing without it would cause me a lot of inconvenience, I’d get rid of my email account with Yahoo in a heartbeat.

I haven’t got around to counting quite how many we have; it’s simply too many. It’s only by creative stacking that we’ve been able to put them all in place, so I’ve identified about twenty that will be given to a charity shop, so that we’ll have a little bit of space to hold the ones that will be undoubtedly purchased in the near future.

This is what our newly equipped office now looks like.

View From The Door

Above The Desk

Along The Length Of The Wall Between The Window & The Desk

Above The Alcove Where The Futon Is

What You See When Casting An Admiring Glance Over Your Shoulder When Leaving

We seem to be doing quite well for ourselves as far as the collection on language-related books goes

Lots Of Different Languages Represented Here!

Needless to say, we’re both very happy, and grateful to our family members who invested time, skill, and money into putting this together, whilst all we had to do in return is take our nephew to the zoo for a day, and fill him full of chocolate and biscuits. I’d say we (and he!) easily got the best end of the deal

Young Zamenhof

So he started work on his project for an international language, a mutually understood yet neutral language that each group would have in addition to its own. The Russians would still have Russian, but switch to the international language when speaking to Germans, who would keep their Germanic tongue, but opt for the international language when in conversation with the Poles, and so on.

At the party for his 18th birthday Zamenhof presented to his friends his lingwe uniwersala, the first draft of what would become nine years later Esperanto.

Since the 1920s Esperanto-speakers have celebrated December 15th as “Zamenhof Day”. Having started with only one member Esperanto has wound its way around the globe; the World Esperanto Association has members in 121 countries. Not a bad rate of success for a project started by a teenager, especially when compared to the results of efforts of intellectual heavyweights such as René Descartes

Anyway, aided and abetted by Google China’s logo today, I’d like to wish well on Zamenhof Day to any and all curious souls who may have stumbled upon this blog entry.

If you’d like to find out more about Esperanto I’ve written a brief description of the language’s history, provided some useful information such as details about its alphabet, how it sounds, and how many speakers it has, and run some online forums where you can get a flavour of some of the young people who speak Esperanto in Britain, find information about our meet-ups, and get answers to any questions that you may have. Have a snoop around; it won’t take more than a few minutes and, you never know; you may find something interesting. I know I did

Thanks!

Well, it’s not so new anymore, since we’ve been here since August 28th, but this is the first time I’ve gotten around to taking some photos.

So, welcome to our house.  This is it from the outside.

Looks pretty big, doesn’t it?

Now we walk through the front door, which will put you in the hallway.  This is the view:

We have a shoe rack and a place to hang our coats and bags right by the door, so there’s no excuse for trailing mud through the house.

As you walk down the hallway you soon come to an archway on the right:

This is the entrance to our utility room, where we have more storage space than we can use, and our washing machine and tumble-dryer.

Here’s the utility room from slightly different angles:

On the other side of the utility is the gym, which is actually a garage that has had the exercise equipment put in and a TV/DVD player mounted on the wall.

Anyway, leaving the utility and going back to the hallway will take you to the living room.  This is the view if you look back over your shoulder as you enter the living room:

And this is the view as you walk into it!

Here it is from different angles:

At the bottom-right corner of the living room is an archway:

This takes you into the kitchen:

The kitchen gives us a nice view of the garden.  I’m going to build a shed where you see the white stones.

Time now to go upstairs.

We’re very lucky to have two bathrooms.

Here’s the first:

And the other one:

We have a small room which we painted blue.  It looks narrower in the photos than it really is.  The futon at the end is the same width as a double bed.

At the far end are some fitted wardrobes, which are currently filled with books, since we haven’t built a bookcase.

The old master bedroom is now an office.  Unfortunately, it’s all rather messy, as I haven’t yet put any shelving up.

There’s plenty of room at the desk:

We have a futon in this room too, which guests can use.  We have to remove the skirting board, which will allow the futon to fit into the alcove behind it, which is about three feet deep.

The final room is our bedroom, which is the longest room in the house.

We have a pretty nice view out of the window:

And that’s our house!  You may have noticed one or two ducks lying about:

, so it’s somewhat redundant to do the Loyd Grossman impression, but I’ll do one anyway:

Who lives in a house like this?  Radio and me, that’s who

I’m trying to be mature, but I could quite happily bang my head into a wall in frustration.

Clare and I are looking to get a house. The issue is complicated by Clare needing to be close to the train station and our differences of taste and preferences in houses. We’re pretty much diametrically opposed.

Clare prefers two-up, two-down terraces, to which I’ve long had prejudice and would refuse to buy.

On the other hand, I have tastes which I think follow most people’s: You ideally want to have a detached place which is quite roomy. If you can’t get to that level, you want a semi. If that’s out of your reach, you limit yourself to a terrace.

Well, I found a house that would be perfect for me a few months ago. It had been on the market since May of last year, originally for £160k. Here it is:

Wow. A newly built detached!

I smelt a rat, since the price had been knocked down to £130k and I couldn’t imagine why something so good would go untouched for so long.

Well, more time passed and the price fell to £120k. Clare and I were coming back from Rolf’s, so I made the suggestion that we could pop by Nuneaton to get a quick look, since three houses that we’d added to our shortlist were in the same neighbourhood.

One of the houses we visited was this one, and I loved it. Three big bedrooms, enclosed garden, garage, parking spaces. There’s a lake a few minutes away and a wood at the end of the road. Clare seemed impressed too. We did a practice run to the train station: 1.2 miles and no way that Clare could get lost.

Things got a bit complicated in the week when Clare discovered that there were plans afoot to place a soil-decontamination plant nearby, the first of its kind in the UK. Planning permission was withdrawn in January, but Clare was still worried that there might be an old landfill site under the house. It took a lot of research, but I eventually found maps of the old landfills and could confirm we were safe. Research also showed me that the home was built in 2005 and originally sold for £190k, so we looked on to a bargain.

So today I phoned the agent … who informed me that a contract had been signed the day before.

I’m so angry at myself for not pushing this issue earlier. Undoubtedly the fear of the soil-decontamination plant was responsible for the lack of interest. I also found out that the house had been repossessed, hence the periodic price cuts.

I can’t hold this one against Clare, even though I’d love to be able to transfer the blame away from myself. Within a week of seeing it she had conducted her research and was OK with it, so she’d not wasted any time.

I should have pushed this one earlier because of how special it is, but was reluctant to, after inadvertently hurting Clare’s feelings by seeking preliminary mortgage advice on my own because I had grown tired of waiting, so I decided to let things take their course in due time.

By doing so I’ve cost myself what would have been a perfect house, and I’ve been kicking myself all day about it. I’ve since spoken with Clare and we’re both agreed that the next time we see something that appears to be too good to be true, we won’t dawdle.

I wish we’d made that decision a month ago