Talking with Aussies Volunteer Program for International Students...and other tips

Hôm nay mình xin giới thiệu về một chương trình tình nguyện mà có thể một số bạn ở Adelaide quan tâm. Chương trình này được thành lập bởi một nhóm sinh viên người Úc. Các sinh viên đó biết được 1 vấn đề của các sinh viên quốc tế, đó là có nhiều sinh viên chỉ đến Úc học rồi rời Úc sau khi khóa học kết thúc mà không có giao tiếp với người dân bản đia Úc nhiều. Vì thế mục tiêu của chương trình là tăng cường trao đổi văn hóa giữa sinh viên và người dân Úc. Ngoài ra, chương trình cũng giúp sinh viên có thêm cơ hội giao tiếp bằng tiếng Anh.
Cách đăng kí: các bạn tham khảo link:
http://www.international.adelaide.edu.au/life/current/talkaussies/
Có thể thời gian chờ là khá lâu. Trong trường hợp của mình là 6 tháng. Trong khoảng thời gian đó nếu bạn muốn có thêm cơ hội giao tiếp bằng tiếng Anh thì bạn nên chủ động tìm kiếm. People won't knock on your door.

• Bạn có thể tham gia một Uni club, vừa có thể học thêm một cái gì đó như photography, hoặc là hobbies như hiking,... Link cho Clubs Association của Uni of Adelaide nhưng bạn có thể dễ dàng tìm kiếm một group tương tự ở trường bạn: http://lifeoncampus.org.au/clubs/
• Bạn có thể tham gia từ thiện. Đây cũng là một cách tốt để bạn có thể viết về Work experience trong resume. Nhiều bạn tới Úc trước đó chưa có kinh nghiệm làm việc gì, bạn sẽ dễ kiếm việc hơn nếu resume của bạn có một số hoạt động từ thiện. Link tham khảo:
  vconnect.org.au
  http://www.adelaide.edu.au/volunteers/opportunities/
• Một cách khác: To practise listening and speaking, some students find it helpful to check out programs on Radio National that could be of interest to them. Here you can often download both the audio and the printed version of a program - so listen and read along at the same time. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/

• Làm thế nào để nói chuyện với người bản xứ mà không phải đi tới nước đó:

  Đây là một chương của quyển ""Language Hacking Guide" của Benny Lewis, một blogger nổi tiếng về đi du lịch và nói được nhiều ngôn ngữ. Vì vấn đề bản quyền nên mình e ngại khi chia sẻ toàn bộ file pdf của quyển sách, mình chỉ chụp hình 1 chương đó ở đây:
  https://www.dropbox.com/s/dmp879geamt7wyy/Speaking%20without%20travelling.zip
  
  Xin lỗi các bạn đọc trước, mình chỉ copy nội dung bằng tiếng Anh và dán vào đây vì thời điểm này mình không đủ thời gian để dịch.
  
  

  • Couchsearch

    My favourite site to do this with is Couchsurfing. I’ve already talked about how useful Couchsurfing is for non-travellers for hosting speakers of that language and using the site’s frequent meet-ups to meet foreigners to practise with, but I’m talking about something different today. Do a “Couchsearch”.
    Log into the site (creating a profile is free of course, but take time to fill it out properly and add photos), and go to Advanced search. All you need to fill out is the language of interest and the city you live in. Couchsurfing has over two million members so it’s very likely you’ll find what you’re looking for.
    The vast majority of Couchsurfers can’t host, and many simply have their status set to Coffee or a drink. So I take them up on that. I ran a search for “Irish” in Medellin and saw another Éireannach and e-mailed him to meet up. Then I searched for “Hungarian” and a local who has intermediate level and specifically states on his profile that he wants to practise Hungarian, got an invitation to do precisely that. Finally when I searched for Esperanto in Medellin, the guy’s Couchsurfing profile was actually written in Esperanto!
    Now keep in mind that these are “uncommon” languages and I still found speakers! A search for German (I’m in South America remember!) for example, currently yields 72 results. What do you think the chances are that at least one would be up for having a coffee with me and speaking German?
    

    Many other networks

    Couchsurfing just happens to be a network I am very active in myself since I host Couchsurfers and am a traveller. But there are many social networking sites and you can do something very similar on many of them. You can even get around the lack of a language search by simply putting the language name into the search as it could be written on someone’s profile.
    Make sure to do several combinations when trying this. If I was searching for French here for example, I’d actually try writing three possibilities: French, français and francés (Original language, in English, and in the local language of Spanish in my case).
    If you are a part of an online university network, online chess players network or whatever it may be then try to search for the language and your city and you may be surprised! This has worked in combination with other websites that I’ll be talking about in more detail in other posts for other ways to meet people. Think of any social networking site, or website that connects people and see how you can search it for languages.
    Then there are language specific sites. Polyglot learn language for example is primarily a penpal site for language learners, but you can search for city and languages and I just found someone who speaks Hungarian in Medellin, but log ins on this site are less frequent so you may not get a reply depending on who you write to. Some sites like Livemocha let you search for countries but not cities. I got several results for Esperanto in Colombia, but they could be at the other side of the country. However, it’s a start.
    Listing all the possible sites you can do this on would make this post ridiculously long, but most popular websites that allow you to search and send messages can work fine to find people who speak or want to practise particular languages.
    
    http://www.fluentin3months.com/social-search/
    

    • Language meet-ups

    It’s important to remember that the purpose of a language is communication, and thus requires you to be social. If you are introvert, you should still try hard and there are many ways to get out there and meet new people. So, how do you meet natives or other learners? There are so many resources, that it’s impossible to list all of them as this depends on the city you live in. A little digging and you will find something. In the mean time, I can suggest a few websites and other resources that have been useful to me.
    Meetup.com This site’s goal is to gather people with similar interests, to get unplugged from the Internet and to actually meet up in person to share and discuss that interest. It has many regular meetings based on a huge range of interests and is especially popular in English speaking countries. One of those interests is of course languages and you may find that there is already a regular meeting for the language you wish to practise (usually meeting up in a bar or restaurant). If you don’t see a language meeting in your city then suggest one!
    Couchsurfing.org I have already written an entire post about how Couchsurfing can be used to learn languages, in such a way that is especially related to non-travellers! You can host natives of the language in your home for a couple of days, or if that idea scares you, then you can still be a part of an amazing international community by attending the regular meetings, or suggesting one, in the groups and meetings page of the site. These meetings already have an international crowd, which may have lots of people willing to speak the language you wish with them. But you are also more than welcome to suggest meetings especially to practise a particular language.
    Basically any modern social networking website (including Facebook; by searching for your city’s name + the language and then clicking “Events”, but especially by clicking “Groups”, e.g. French in London) can be searched for meet-ups that may include particular language meetings. And if they don’t, then take the initiative and create one! Or contact the members individually (without spamming or being a creepy guy only contacting girls) that are a part of a language interest group and ask that person if they want to meet up for an orange juice or coffee (or a beer if you must) and speak in the target language.
    It doesn’t have to be through a social networking site; you can put an ad up on Craigslist or your country’s equivalent (there are several in the links at the bottom of this page, as I discussed in trying to find accommodation). I’m sure there are other sites I have overlooked so feel free to mention them in the comments!
    Then of course, there are the ways that don’t require any use of the Internet! By word of mouth, or asking your friends you may see that someone shares a common interest in learning the same language and you can arrange to meet up to try to chat and practise whatever you know. You can also put up advertisements, especially in universities. If you feel you are ready to talk with a native, you can of course get private lessons, but to avoid paying for them, you could arrange for a tandem exchange.
    
    Link: http://www.fluentin3months.com/practise-a-language-without-travelling/
    Nếu bạn có thời gian, chắc chắn bạn nên đọc thêm trong các link trên hay blog của Benny.

Có rất nhiều cách để bạn tham gia và hòa nhập vào cuộc sống ở Úc.Get out there and embrace the opportunity while you're here. Some people wish they could learn English in an English-speaking country so while you're here, don't waste it.

Can you get fit in just 6 MINUTES A WEEK?

I've been doing some reading and studying about exercise physiology in the past few days.
I will just plagiarise outright here from what I read in Tim Ferriss's book "The 4-hour Body", because I think I would not be able to write it better than he did:
"On June 6, 2005, Martin Gibala of McMaster University appeared on CNN with news that seemed too good to be true:
“Six minutes of pure, hard exercise three times a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity.”
Changes that were thought to require hours per week were achieved with just four to seven 30-second bursts of all-out (100% VO2 Max) stationary biking, with four minutes of recovery time between bursts. These bursts were performed 3x a week for just two weeks. Total on-bike time for the two weeks was a mere 15 minutes. Endurance capacity for this “sprint” group almost doubled, from 26 to 51 minutes, and their leg muscles showed a significant 38% increase of our friend citrate synthase (CS), one of the desirable endurance enzymes. The control group, which was active (jogging, cycling, or aerobics) showed no changes.
It seemed like a fluke.
It had to be repeated, and it was. This time with an even higher bar for evaluation: an 18.6-mile (30 km) cycling test.
The sprint group followed the 30-second burst protocol. The control group performed more traditional moderate-intensity cycling for 60– 90 minutes at 60% VO2 Max. Both groups worked out 3x a week and were evaluated before and after with an 18.6-mile cycling test. The improvements were almost identical, as were the increases in muscle oxidative capacity.
Recognize that working long in the gym is often a form of laziness, an avoidance of hard thinking. Three to four hours per week or less than 15 minutes per week? The choice is yours— work long or work hard— but the results appear to be the same. Trust data instead of the masses."

Why? [If you don't care about the science, skip this part]. 

"The "secret" to why HIT is so effective is unclear. However, the study by Gibala and co-workers also provides insight into the molecular signals that regulate muscle adaptation to interval training. It appears that HIT stimulates many of the same cellular pathways that are responsible for the beneficial effects we associate with endurance training."

And from NY Times article: “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles”, "Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.”

How do you have give it all you've got? 

If you do cycling, you're crawling out of the stationary bike when you're done. If you swim, I don't know you're floating on the water. I don't really have an accurate definition for all-out state. Your heart beats like you're having a heart attack. Also, it takes quite a while for you to come back to normal state. You're very very very exhaustive at the end of the exercises. Yes, that's all you should feel and then you know you've gave it 100% of you or close to that.

My comments:

1. The belief of achieving endurance can only be attained through endurance training is obsolete. 
2. If the bouts of high-intensity interval training are to be effective, they have to be "all-out" exercise. These form of exercises, swimming, stationary cycling, elliptical machine, etc... , satisfy 1. Low impact. 2. You can go all out. You should not do running for this 100% effort exercise due to the impact of pounding. If the only kind of exercise that you are doing is walking 50 meters from the bus stop to your house, and then you start running like a horse, you will risk injure yourself! Your muscles, tendons and ligaments are not tuned for this.
3. The other alternative way to do this is doing 10 one-minute sprints with about one minute of rest in between, still three times a week.
4. Make sure you time your breaks! If you take 1 minute after the first exercise but take 5 minutes after the firth one, the effect of this whole idea of high-intensity training would probably compromised.
5. Although the title is catchy, 6 minutes per week are only the time you do exercise. If you also count 4 min rest between bursts, the total time will be 4*3 + 4*0.5 = 14 min and up to 4*6 + 7*0.5 = 27.5 min if you do 4 and 7 repetitions respectively. Or 19 minutes for the 10 one-minute sprints alternative. Even though, that's significantly less than 2-3 hours a week for traditional endurance training.
6. For the more studious readers, you can read this article in NY Times here, when Martin Gibala did experiments on mice and college students. Or you can google him.
7. To my Vietnamese readers, if you find at some points the article is not crystal clear, let me know. I may consider translating it.

There is no more excuse for not having enough time out of your busy life to exercise (used to be my biggest excuse :D). Please adopt this innovating form of exercise guys. You can spend 20 minutes a day reading news, facebooking, chatting with friends, doing other unimportant things,...so there is really no way to say that you can't spend just a few minutes of your time for exercising. And don't think that it's wasted time. Indeed, the time you exercise is the most well-spent time you ever spend.

Leave some comments. Let me know if you trust this or not. Let me know what you think. Ask me questions. What should I do so you can easily apply this? Thanks for reading.
Reference:

• Ferriss, Timothy (2010-12-14). The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Kindle Locations 6914-6919). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 
•  Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?:
  http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123639.htm