BetterTimes

As the titles suggests, this is becoming more and more of a pressing issue for me. The problem is that I’m really social, or, say, have a hefty social appetite. But I have nowhere to vent this desire to make friend…

A while back, I decided to get rid of my old friends, after I discovered that they’re all socially crippled, morally weak potheads with no character. And I just don’t like them any longer.

The thing is: I finished school, I’m not working, and generally don’t do much during the day. Alone sucks. 20 years old, and I don’t do anything. Sounds horrible. And this has been going on for a while now, and I seriously would eat my own liver before going back to my old moronic friends. I prefer no company to bad company that kills my self-esteem and my self-worth. So where do I go from here?

How do you make contact? How do you turn sporadic strangers into friends? Living in a big city, I just don’t know where to begin.

I really want to surround myself with happy, well-meaning, beautiful (on the inside, I’m not very superficial) people. Where are they? Where are you, guys?

During the time to come, I’m going to check my local newspaper for all kinds of social events, anything will do. Maybe I’ll meet some new people that way… Anyone got any good constructive advice?

Listen, here’s a crash course in the language.
It uses the latin alphabet, except for a few letters, that have a circumflex above them (looks like a roof or hat or something). Since they’re inconvenient to type on a computer, people usually type “gx” for a “g” with a roof above it. Such letters are cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux. These are (of course) coupled with your standard c, g, h, j, s, u. These letters sound a little different, but don’t worry about it for now, because this is purely a written guide. How to pronounce the letters can be found in any esperanto school book. Oh yeah, the letters x, y, w, q, are omitted, they don’t exist.

All nouns end with an “-o”
All adjectives end with an “-a”
All adverbs end with an “-e”

Verbs are a funny thing, they end in different endings dependent on what tense is used.

The three common:

Present tense: “-as”
Past tense: “-is”
Future tense: “-os”

There are a few more, but it’s not really beginner stuff.

Definite article: La (works like the English “the”)
Indefinite article: there is none (no equivalent to English “a or an”)

Plural form ends with “-j”

Accusative ends with “-n”, and adjectives are dependent on the nouns for both plurals and accusatives.

Basic pronouns: Mi (I), Vi (you), Li, Sxi, Gxi (he, she, it)
No difference in pronouns between subject-form and object-from. Object-from logically (and simply) gets the accusative “-n” ending. e.g. Mi = I, Min = Me.

Example of all the grammar above: Mi mangxis la grandajn pomojn malrapide.

This means: I (pronoun) ate (past tense, notice the ending “-is”) the (definite article) big (endng in “-jn”, both forms adhere from the noun) apples (noun ending in “-jn” making it plural and accusative) slowly (adverb, ending in “-e”, does not retain the “-jn”). I ate the big apples slowly!

Hopefully this is helpful to some of you who are somewhat familiar with grammar. I’m somewhat of a amateur-linguist myself…
Also, hopefully this made some people keen on maybe learning more. Go to an Esperanto youth congress. It’s like a week-long-24-hour-a-day-party. No sober people anywhere! You’ll learn quickly there.

I had an interview today, for a telecommunications company, their customer support-department.
Went surprisingly well. Such a textbook case interview. All about what I can do for the company, what my positive characteristics are, and then negative. I didn’t prepare, so I had to pull stuff out of my ass, but still, I think I did it with great success. They told me I did really well, but they had many applicants so they’re going to call me later this week. I’m really hoping, I really want this job. It seems so stable and so organized. Not to mention well-paid.

On a more funny note, preparing for an interview, I came across a list of examples on how not to act at an interview. Apparently, there was some guy who came to an interview, got a call on his cellphone, answered the call, talked for about 30 minutes. Apparently it was his current boss that was calling to tell him he was fired based on sexual harrassment. The guy informed the interviewer on all the details and then demanded to get the new job… Laughed my ass off. Bet that guy didn’t get a call back…