Dan Ednie

Rediscovering Footbag

2010-11-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

It's been the cornerstone of my development. First physically as I got in shape as a 12 year old. Then it was personally, as I was able to be proud of my ability to play well, and thus become proud of myself. Finally its been my vehicle of friendship, where I've made so many friends all over the world and had so many great times with so many excellent people.

But where did it go wrong -

The pressures of needing to get a 'real job' - I guess as I put it myself when explaining my life to a Primary School teacher this week 'Footbag probably won't pay a mortgage'. I'm not even interested in getting a mortgage - I'd rather invest in the banks then be prey to them. Its part of the story - but Footbag has also been my main source of income throughout uni and meant that I never had to get a typical part time job.

Loss of the close friends who I had when I was learning. I probably wouldn't have kept playing after one year if it weren't for Lynton Stephens and Brendan Erskine. I probably wouldn't have kept playing if it weren't for Alex Urano and Scott Kirchner. The only thing that kept me in Footbag after those guys left was my love of teaching - my love of the game was never the same.

When I think about Footbag now I think about Jesenik and playing with Milan Benda, Daniel Spacil, Karel Hak - if he ever plays again lol. But while I was there I realised that I just wanted to play with the people I started playing with, I wasn't really interested in improving my game - I felt my Footbag spirituality meter had dropped.

Spending time with Vasek and writing the Vasek Klouda Manual was exciting, and I am so inspired by his words and life in general. The thing that excited me most was the potential for people all over the world to be reading that e-book, then improving incredibly, and all the joy that would bring them. I wasn't excited about my own game improving, after ten years of playing I had lost the desire to keep pushing my own boundaries - but I feel good that other people still love to see me play, and that they love Footbag.

I'm going to write more about Footbag over the coming weeks

Speaking on Chinese Radio SBS Mandarin 1224 AM

2010-10-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

Over a month ago in the final week of preparations for Language Connection SBS Mandarin radio rang me up and said '你好Dan, 今天你和Angela会做interview吗？So we were waiting in SBS Radio's reception for about thirty minutes, mainly me saying random words to Angela in Chinese and talking about how well dressed our Japanese friends are.

The interviewer came out and greeted us in Mandarin, she usually speaks to us mainly in English but because the interview was going to be in Chinese she wanted to speak to us in Mandarin. I felt really nervous, especially after waiting for so long.

I usually guess what people are saying/asking and then respond, but about half way through our interview she asked a question that I thought I knew the answer to - but the longer I answered it the more I realised I was answering the wrong thing. She asked Angela and we kept going. I guess that was the worst thing that could and did happen, because other than that it went really well and I could understand everything :)

Radio Station: 1224 AM

Date: Monday 18 October 2010

Time: Between 11am and 12 Midday

Online: You may also listen online at www.sbs.com.au/mandarin (click on "listen to the latest program") before 10am Tuesday 19 Oct.

Follow Your Rainbow Yarrawonga September 28 - 29 2010

2010-09-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Follow your Rainbow was such an energising event for me. I was keynoting on Day One and then teaching Footbag for the rest of the day. I was so nervous that I couldn't eat breakfast that morning, but when I got out there in front of the group of 70 enthusiastic young students I couldn't have felt better.

The program exposes young students to a range of new skills which gives them the space to be themselves and try something new. Students had a huge number of facilitaors, many of which I found really inspiring personally - Andy Wright the story teller, Scot Gardner (Author) and Bernard Mangakahia.

The second day was, for me, a great chance to be a participant and do something new. A life of learning and making time to give oneself creative space and nourisment is a must and something that I've neglected of late

Thank you so much Jim and all of the organising team.

Dan

成功

2010-09-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

我毕业以后我考录我的生活。因为我生在澳大利亚，我收到了沟的机会。我上很好的中学，在十家摩尔本大学是澳大利亚的第一个大学。我每年式成功各种各样achievement. 但我已经二十三岁,我朋友们期待我会开始平时的工作。他们看我的文科,他们都不想起来我会做什么.他们都想做最安全的工作.我想患这个世界.

文科专业的人他们在not for profit organisation工作。他们做sales and marketing和customer service他们写report，他们做生意。教育是非常有用我们要更多的文科的人。为什么亚洲的文化其实文科？

还好吧
我在哪

By the way ght 过得非常好!

Update

2010-08-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

This blog has been very silent for a while. Since I last wrote:

Completed my BA
I majored in Linguistics. My main interests have been second language acquisition and pragmatics :) I had a distinction average and might look at doing honours - but not decided yet. My graduation is tomorrow! It's given me the knowledge of how languages work, how to analyse people's communication and also how to map out cultural value systems.

Footbag
I haven't been playing a great deal. I'm still teaching at school and speaking, which I love. I have been injured of late but want to play more. I was house sitting for 3 weeks and played a lot while I was there because I had music to play with. I struggle at the moment because all of the friends in Melbourne that I learnt to play with either don't live here anymore or have quit.

Languages
I've been speaking Chinese everyday for the last six months or so, and in the last couple of weeks I've been speaking two or three hours a day. I'm feeling much more comfortable with all aspects of the language and its really growing on me

I'm still speaking Japanese two or three times a week and often hang out go out partying with a new group of Japanese friends I've made. A lot of the tours are Japanese so I'm speaking quite a lot overall. Czech hasn't been used much, I am still in love with all Czech things and Czech people, but Asian languages are so much more useful and common in Melbourne.

Global Heart Tours
This is where I've been putting most of my effort over the last few months. We have gone from a partnership of two, to a company limited by shares with seven managers. I feel so great to have such an awesome team of people around me. I'm in awe of them for their talents and the principles by which they live their lives - thank you Su, Carl, Chester, Hannah and Ben. What I like most about them is that we can go to parties and hang out as friends as well as be business partners. I want to thank Angela Wright in particular for everything she's done in the two years we have worked together, all the hard work she put into the transition and her maturity in all areas. You've given me so much and thank you to everyone who believes in the broader goals of Global Heart Tours: to improve the confidence and proficiency of both local and international students, and to connect learners.

I'll be writing more :)

Dan

Creative Innovation 2010

2010-07-29T05:38:00.000-07:00

This is a really great conference I am hoping to go to this year :) Tania De Jong is a phenomenon and if you don't know about her please google her acheivements.

CREATIVITY UNLEASHED AT THE MELBOURNE RECITAL HALL IN SEPTEMBER
Some of the world’s trickiest problems will be put to some of the world’s greatest thinkers and strategists to find creative solutions in Melbourne in September 2010.

Questions such as how do we re-think the future? How to lead creativity and innovation in organizations? Constructing communities – a contradiction in terms? Mental health and mental wealth? How war can bring peace? will be posed to Edward de Bono; Edward Luttwak, US Strategies; Patrick McGorry, Australian of the Year; Mark Scott, MD of the ABC;
Austin Williams, architect of the Future Cities Project; US Entrepreneur of the Year Dr Peter Farrell, and many more.

They are among 35 world class speakers, thought leaders and artists who have been invited to give their answer to the $1 billion question – Imagine If…

Creative Innovation 2010 is the brainchild of soprano, social entrepreneur and Founder Creative Universe and Creativity Australia, Tania de Jong AM, who says the conference will “definitely be different to others and change people’s thinking”. She believes that creativity is the strategic tool of the 21st Century.

“The emphasis is on short and sharp keynotes focusing on interactivity, and dialogue over monologue; master classes in which you can learn new skills with the best of the best, and deep conversations when you can discuss issues with game-changing thinkers,” she says.
Creative Innovation 2010 incorporates three concerts – tickets to all events are open to the public – at the Melbourne Recital Hall. These include: With One Voice – where the public can experience some of Victoria’s most diverse choirs made up of CEOs, migrants and people challenged by mental or physical disability – on Wednesday 8 September; Magical Musical Melbourne – featuring the world premiere of an orchestral work created by young Australian composer Stefan Cassomenos – on Thursday 9 September.

An Enchanted Spring Evening – featuring Pot Pourri – on Friday 10 September. All profits from the conference and the concerts will be put towards Creativity Australia’s With One Voice program supporting disadvantaged people.

Public enquiries and to register: www.ci2010.com.au
Media enquiries: Penny Underwood, mediawise@mediawise.net.au; 03 9818 8540.

Going to Parties

2010-05-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

I went to the Melbourne University Japanese Club's party last night and there were so many Japanese students and young people there from outside the actual university. This was such a well organised event and the people that came really loved it. Having international and local students connect in this kind of atmosphere is what we need more of.

Japanese was taught really heavily in schools in the 90's and early 2000's as they were our largest trading partner, are quite local to us, don't speak English and are a world power in economic terms. I spoke to one Australian student (in Japanese) about why he learnt and he said that he did it in Primary school and just kept going. That he is able to socialise with Japaense speakers and that the culture has been attractive enough for it to maintain his interest while still living in Australia is a truly great thing. He will be able to work in Japan or in Australia with Japanese client or anywhere in the world where we need people to be multilingual or at least by culturally aware and open.

We have some success with Japanese because its gotten a really really big push in the past. Funding and supporting Japanese teachers in Australia and bringing more Japanese native speakers into high schools as teachers assistants is worth the effort. I hope we can keep building.

The other point that came out of the night for me as I was sitting on the train thinking about it all, was that for many of the Japanese exchange students who came, it was their first party in Australia with other young people their own age. They were using their English, and they were also able to speak a lot of Japanese in the group. What made it most exciting for me, was that their use of Japanese made them cool. It didn't make them 'better' than anyone else, but they were totally accepted and welcomed in the group and found it really easy to make new friends.

I want to organise and help promote more events like this. This is what really makes people's experience of Australia a positive one.

Should I work on the tones? Why I haven't done much work yet.

2010-05-24T04:04:00.000-07:00

The tones are something I intend to work on - but thus far haven't. I'm not sure if they've improved since I started learning, but where people couldn't understand me at all, things have got better. Here are the aspects of Chinese that I work on from easiest to hardest.

1. new grammatical structures
2. new vocabulary without tones
3. phonemes like the /r/ sound and the difference between x and sh for example q and ch
4. the tones

If I put in half an hour into new grammatical structures I get, I think, about 70% of what I read about or practiced.
With new vocab its more like 50%
With 3 and 4 I get either no noticable improvement or very little.

All aspects of the language are important, but I have focussed mainly on the areas where success comes most easily first, and now I am working on the areas that I struggle with. Native English speakers are crazy to spend a long time on the tones to begin with because the pay off is low and the depression rate high.

什么都没有 - Trying to understand Chinese Values

2010-05-07T02:37:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago now at the Saturday language exchange a girl was asked how she was. She replied

什么都没有
shenme dou mei you
what all don't have
I don't have anything

I tried to repeat the sentence and got it wrong, and my girlfriend asked me if I knew what it meant. I didn't. It means you don't have five things

1. Money
2. A place of your own (she was living with family)
3. A car
4. A job
5. A boy/girl friend.

I keep remembering this phrase, and I want to know if these five things are the be all and end all. Are these are the things that are valuable to Chinese students. Is Shenme dou mei you always referring to these five things.

Direction

2010-05-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

When I look at everything going on in my life on a piece of paper, it just looks totally retarded.

Running a student services company that is yet to really take hold.
Almost given up being motivated for Footbag
Finishing an Arts degree
Working an hourly rate to work on a book
Volunteering (very occasionally) with Oaktree
Having a girlfriend (this makes everything so much easier actually)
Working sporadically on a book about how I survived in Japan
Learning and speaking Chinese every day

These connect - and at the same time they don't. And the way they stand there isn't even listed in terms of their importance to me, I mixed them up on purpose. Chinese is actually my highest priority even though it's the least urgent.

100 most frequently used words in Mandarin

2010-05-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

It came up in conversation, incredibly, and I had the chance and reason to naturally use zheng rong 整容 Which my girlfriend laughed at and said in English 'Plastic surgery!!' But just how useful is that word? I think I just lucked out.

The most used Chinese words based on frequency

The first few are 的一是不了在 I'm printing out the whole list now.

Very visual video about Japan (Japanese)

2010-04-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

关于日本用日语的时评但单词不太重要的，还好看的

今イギリスで遊んでる友達から、このビデオをもらいました。外人の立場から、日本の不思議なことを説明してみます
よろしく

http://vimeo.com/9873910

Health Education Session for Female International Students

2010-04-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

In conjunction with the Multicultural Centre for Women's Health, the ISCS is holding afree health education session for female international students on Tuesday 11th May. The session will be informal, relaxed, and fully confidential. Participants will receive invaluable information on keeping healthy now and in the future, and will also receive a free Health Resource Kit.

Dinner will be provided to all participants.

We would love for you to promote this session to your female international students and are happy for you to post the attached flyer on any notice boards around your organisation.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like further information.

Kind Regards

The ISCS team

__________________________________________
International Student Care Service
Level 1, 19-21 Argyle Place South
Carlton VIC 3053
t: 1800 056 449 free call except from mobiles
f: (03) 8383 6412
e: info@iscs.vic.gov.au

Chinese Conversation at the Confucious Institute Carlton

2010-04-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

It's come to my attention that the Confucius Institute is running Chinese Conversation groups - which I am going to try to attend to even though I already have linguistics class then.

We would like to remind you that our weekly Chinese conversation salon has started. It’s still on Thursdays. This year we have two sessions. First one is for beginners and lower-intermediate levels, it goes from 2:30pm-3:30pm. The second session is for upper-intermediate and advanced levels, it goes from 3:40pm-5pm.

Huanying dajia canjia.

Please RSVP by emailing lyhao@unimelb.edu.au or call 9035-8203.

The Confucius Institute is here:

Confucius Institute

The University of Melbourne

Tel: 03 9035 8203

Fax: 03 9348 1067

Address: 172 Bouverie Street, Carlton, Victoria, 3053

Web: www.confuciusinstitute.unimelb.edu.au

<http://www.confuciusinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/>

在火车我们有放屁的对话

2010-04-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

我跟一个搞笑的澳大利亚的朋友用中文说一说。在Meetup Carl教我们很有用的单词-放屁。

很多的中国人做了我们的火车，我们没算了。我们大声的有了这样的对话：

Jack: 今天的新单词是什么？
Dan: 我们听了那个，那个放屁
Jack: 哈哈，是呀，你放屁么？
Dan: 我要放屁。其实我想放屁。
Jack: 好啊同志
Dan: 你在放屁吗？
Jack: 我在放屁ing,你呢？
Dan: 我也在放屁，我们在一起放屁
Jack: 你放屁一个屁吗？

Jack gets off the train, we could have this conversation for an hour but he had to go. there were 2 chinese guys that kept looking at us and trying to not show that they are laughing but they failed so hard. every time we said 放屁again, they would always burst out laughing and make a sound. it was so funny.

they think that made this so funny was that the grammar was kinda like textbook grammar where i would say a sentence structure and then he would repeat almost the same structure but refer to himself. we sounded like children learning the most basic components of expression so in that sense the conversation held a strange kinda of innocence whilst talking about something so debauched.

Do people really say these crazy things 快餐店难民

2010-04-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

I"ve been following a blog from Shanghai, it's called Shanghai Daily - and in it the blogger brings up heaps of crazy concepts and words that he hears in Chinese. I don't know how he can find so much random stuff- and I want to know if people recognise these words.

There is the link:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/buzzword/article.asp?id=243

快餐店难民 (kuai4 can1 dian4 nan4 min2)
McRefugee
It refers to those people who spend their nights in 24-hour fast-food chain stores like McDonald’s to save living costs in large cities like Shanghai.

校园招聘 (xiao3 yuan2 zhao1 pin4)
milk round
The term “milk round” is commonly used in the United Kingdom to describe the phenomenon of companies touring universities each year in order to advertise job opportunities and recruit students. Milk being delivered directly to homes is a long-standing tradition in Great Britain. So, in the mid-1960s, when companies began touring universities to advertise their job opportunities directly to candidates, the visits became known colloquially as the “milk round.”
地沟油 (di4 gou1 you2)
swill oil
It has been reported that millions of tons of cooking oil are annually recycled from kitchen swill in gutters and drains back onto dinner tables in China. Hotels and large restaurants are said to be collaborators behind the underground scheme.
不景气时装迷 (bu4 jing3 qi4 shi2 zhuang1 mi2)
recessionista
Recessionista is a blend of the words fashionista and recession that describes a person who strives to remain fashionable on a minimal budget. The term originated in the United States during the economic difficulties of 2008.
情绪食物（qing2 xu4 shi2 wu4）
mood food
People are likely to react with different moods to eating various kinds of food for breakfast. Foods that can influence a person’s demeanor are called mood food, like yogurt can give some people an uplifting sense and chocolate a sense of happiness.
笑点 (xiao4 dian3)
laughing point
Similar to the point at which water will boil, people are said to have different levels of laughing points where they find it difficult to refrain from laughing at something amusing.

我该不该涨Facebook

2010-04-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

这是英语但是非常强的。
http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/01/29/an-argument-for-quitting-facebook/
星期前我该了我的Facebook。还没有多的空但我学了更多呀：）

faceBook有好的部件(parts)，有不好的。如果不好的部件多了比好的部件，该摆脱把

还没摆脱了，现在我生活还不太不好，我收到Facebook的Emails。

Australian Chinese Youth Association

2010-04-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

最近我来找了又中有又高兴的俱乐部（Club)，澳大利亚中国小人Association （ACYA)他们介绍澳大利亚人道中国的工作和Internship和Scholarship.上个周末多的中国人和澳大利人一起去橄榄比赛(Aussie Rules Football Match). 实在那个中国人不知道了AFL。他们叫我很厚意思的冷晓华

你们都能参加：）http://www.acya.org.au/

xiexie ACYA

今天的笑笑

2010-04-17T05:53:00.000-07:00

我说的时候总是用英语的Um或者err。我式记得内阁弹词，我要完成我的句子。平时我不记得的时候我还没开始了新的弹词，今天我要说Waiter 在拼音 shouyinyuan 但我只说 shou yin. 5秒以后我完成 yuan. So I first said shouyin, then five seconds later said yuan.

shouyin ......... yuan

Lauchy笑我。

我：什么，什么
Lauchy: Hahah,I'm sorry dan, omg i think you just said something really weird hahah
我：What happened?

It turns out, 用中文shou yin 意思手淫。

另外我们有30个人！真的人来了太多了。吸血（thank you) 大家你们来我很高兴了。

Are you a Foreigner or a Local

2010-04-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

This is crazy. I'm in Australia, and I refer to another Australian as 外国人 - a Foreigner。

1. I am Aussie myself
2. This is Australia and they are the local ones

What was different was that we were speaking in Mandarin. What did it matter that we were in Melbourne and that I've never been to China. When you speak Chinese the way you divide the world around you into categories takes place as though you were a Chinese person in China.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=460SmH9Dc9Q

Update: Having just read another blogger's thoughts about this I can see how people would get really angry about this. I speak Chinese really badly and haven't been to China yet, but I'm going to try not to refer to Westerners in a western country as 外国人 and in general call chinese people 中国人 and Australians 澳大利亚的人 in the middle i'm going to call ABC人

Hillarious Malaysian Video

2010-04-15T03:36:00.001-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUg04hCqGDg&feature=player_embedded#

auntie fail parking

Brother Power

2010-04-14T04:19:00.001-07:00

This is an amazing story of a big naked chinese guy who took over China and a taxi for about an hour probably, then hid under a car! He says that modern society is ugly and we must retreat. Lots of funny pics here:

http://www.chinasmack.com/2010/pictures/brother-power-naked-chinese-man-vs-modern-society.html

The Ha approach 哈？

2010-04-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

Syndicated from http://www.maxiewawa.com/2008/08/23/the-ha-technique/comment-page-1/#comment-4444 This is a superb articulation and I haven't tried it yet, so here it is in full.

A conversation in a Chinese shop usually goes like this:

“Hello welcome can I help you.”
“意大利经典.” (A classic Italian sandwich please.)
“你要什么面包?” (What bread would you like?)
“好的，大的…”

But occasionally, and much to my annoyance, the person behind the desk insists on using English, often very difficult to understand English. The conversation goes like this:

“Hello werrrcum, kenn-eye herrp pyu.”
“意大利经典.” (A classic Italian sandwich please.)
“You wanna which-a?” (Pointing to bread)

A confused foreigner might just shrug and try to continue in English, deciphering what the hapless sandwich maker is saying along the way. He or she misses out on a small opportunity to practice his or her Chinese. Although it’s not a large opportunity, as any language learner will tell you, every little opportunity counts, and eventually these snatched conversations go together to form a fluent mandarin speaker.

So if you ever find yourself with someone who stubbornly refuses to speak mandarin to you, I suggest my own special technique for making someone speak mandarin. Try this:

“Hello welcome, can I help you?
“意大利经典.” (A classic Italian sandwich please.)
“You wanna which-a?” (Pointing to bread)
哈？(HA?)”Which-a?” (Pointing again.)
哈？(HA?)”你要什么面包啊！” (Which bread do you want?)
(Smile of recognition) “哦！白面包。” (Oh! White bread.)
“Big/smoh?”
哈？(HA?)”Big/smoh?” (Tries communicating with sign language)
哈？(HA?)”大的还是小的？” (Big or small size?)
“哦！大的.” (Oh! A large one.)

Etc.

You’ll notice that after each English phrase, you should reply with 哈？(HA?) This makes it clear that you don’t speak English. You might have to reply to a question with 哈 several times before the other person gets the point, but eventually they’ll start speaking Chinese to you.

And finally, I only recommend this for situations when you’re the customer in a shop. The 哈? technique is designed only for those situations when one is being served, and the person doing the serving doesn’t seem to understand that the servee wishes to practice his/her Chinese.

If a friend or one of your peers keeps answering your Chinese questions in English, you’ll need a more subtle approach.

Complimenting people early in the conversation

2010-04-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

Me: Ni hao
Chinese person: oh, you can speak Chiense, you are good.
Me: mei you, danshi ni kan le zuotian de zuqiu bisai ma? zhen de hao kan de.

I'm used to getting this. It's a classic, and great, thing that Australian's will say 'Xie xie, wo hen gaoxing' or something like that. We know what to do with praise, it motivates us, makes us feel great about who we are. But its a fun game to flip it over, because Chinese people see straight through it immediately.

Chinese person: I have been learning English for five years now.
Me: oh, you speak English really well
Chinese person: (looking at me dubiously) Really?

It works well if you give a playful smile as well to show that you have figured out the praise giving process and how, pragmatically, it is different for people from Chinese speaking backgrounds.

Cold Chinese Joke

2010-04-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

How many steps does it take to get an Elephant (大象, da4 xiang4) into a Fridge (bing xiang).

Impossible right...

Step 1: Open the door
Step 2: Put the elephant in
Step 3: Close the door

Okay then, how about how do you put a giraffe in the fridge?

Most people say three steps again... bu dui

Step 1: Open the door
Step 2: Take the Elephant out
Step 3: Put the Giraffe in
Step 4: Close the door.

One might say: So what.

I mean it's a bit funny, but not really, and I think one of the main reasons it was as funny as it was was because everyone else realised that I had never heard this specific joke before. I think it reveals a lot about how Chinese humour differs from Western humour which I don't think finds these kinds of jokes funny anymore. There is a very innocent feeling to this joke and others that I want to look at.

谢谢Rebecca! 你告诉了我这个冷笑话，我了解一点中文的Humour
Follow my Journey through Mandarin at www.danednie.com

Sorry. My English is so bad.....

2010-04-11T23:19:00.000-07:00

Today is a Video Blog about how we shouldn't start conversations in English with native speakers.

今天是录像介绍怎麽我们不应该开始对话根澳大利亚的人。

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_iTc-xuE2A

Taken from www.globalhearttours.com/blog/

What's your 名词

2010-04-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

People usually drift into the language exchanges slowly from about five past four (four pm is the starting time) and we don't usually bother introducing everyone at the start because new people will come and have to be introduced. And because so many people have come multiple times, a lot of people already know each other. At one of our thursday language exchanges a girl who has come a lot came in sat down. She looked at the guy she didn't know and just said

名词！

Name!

Forget all this Ni hao or ni jiao shenma. lol

Unusual semantic rift between Mandarin and English

2010-04-10T19:34:00.000-07:00

On thursday's language exchange Somebody asked me if I had something - so I responded 有了有了 (you le you le, or, I had it I had it). A few people were laughing so I wanted to know what I'd said that was so funny. It turns out that if I say I have it, that it refers to a child. So I what I was saying was the equivalent of - I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant to their ears.

好笑的火车

2010-04-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

LanguageExchange以后跟女朋友回家。我们先坐椅子在两个椅子但是痛的时候三个中国人也坐椅子。先我们聊天用英语但是我们开始说中文一点。对面的人要笑的，但是他不要给我们看他的笑。(He didn't want us to see him laughing 呀。）然后我们故意说脏话。比如她教我怎麽说“婊子”。我故意说的很大声。对面的像小学生说秘密跟旁边的朋友。他们真的LittlePussies呀。他要和他的饮料但是不会了。然后我们超笑他。嘻嘻

The funniest thign was that he didn't even realise that we knew he was laughing at us. He was trying so hard to not laugh out loud, it was like a balloon about to burst. LOL and we were sitting right there so we could say bad words and watch his reaction.

Australians know how to Eat Rice

2010-04-08T19:50:00.000-07:00

One thing I come up against as an Anglo learning Mandarin is that people don't think I know how to eat rice - like 我不会吃。As in I might try chewing on it, but something goes wrong there and the whole concept just fails...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puTSCNsIChU

Free Information Session for International Students 12 April 2010

2010-04-06T05:40:00.000-07:00

If you haven't heard already, The Couch is at 69 Bourke St and is a part of the city created by the Salvation Army and the Australian Federation of International Students. It's for international students to hang out, play table tennis, meet new people and get help with anything they need.

I've been there before myself and although its a little hard to find the first time, its a great great initiative.

They are having a free information session about tax, superannuation, work life and wages, how to shop safely. Basically its all the scary stuff that no-one ever wants to think about, but you can find out all the information you need at this event.

Monday, 12 April
6 - 830 pm

Sea Salt Fish and Sushi Bar

2010-04-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

Its an unusual topic for me but today I was at uni and I had lunch at Sea Salt Fish and Sushi Bar on Lygon Street. I was undecided about what I wanted but I saw they had Fish Burgers and either chips or salad for 8.90 and I happened to have exactly 9.20 in my pocket, so it was a good match.

The thing I realised is that Sushi in Melbourne is pretty price sensitive. People who eat sushi regularly know exactly how much is the going rate, and for a long time it hovered at exactly $2. I have since started measuing inflation based on sushi, and most have gone up to 2.20. What I liked about this place was that their sushi are about one and a half times bigger, and cost about $3. This totally sets them apart, and while I don't necessarily think you get more sushi at Sea Salt as opposed to other places, there is the bulk buy perception which makes it at least seem like a better deal.

When I ordered the burger though, the waitress was slightly annoyed. And when I thought about it, I can imagine why. Everyone else is getting sushi. You just pick the sushi, into the plastic specialised sushi plastic box it goes, and you're done. But with this one, she needs to tell the cook, and then have it brought out to me. What I was getting was the equivalent of three sushis, but the extra effort for serving me this should have made it signicantly dearer for them to bother. When the chef brought it out to me himself, indicating that not many actually order this, he was also pretty cold.

Why do they advertise this deal to bring people in off the street, and then not want to serve it. I think that the advertisment is working well, but I think most people see the amazing massive sushi and decide to get that instead. Its a round about way of getting people in the door - but I think that's how its working for them.

I was going to put a photo - but bloggers new set up won't let me add one unless its already online or in picasa. And Picasa just crashes all the time.

Great Chinese One-liner

2010-04-03T21:48:00.000-07:00

At the language exchange yesterday there was this really funny kid who I think was five or six years old. He was lying on top of the couch and Rebecca asked him what he was doing, and he kept hiding his face and speaking really softly.

Eventually she could tell what he said:

Kid: 你不能看我
Rebecca: 谁想看你啊！

Kid: you not can look me
Rebecca: who likes to look at you!

Its much funnier in Chinese than English but I love this kind of Chinese joke.

Thank you so much to everyone who came. The next language exchange is one Wednesday evening

Language exchange tomorrow!

2010-03-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Name: Gongzuo Ren Team
What: Chinese and English Language Exchange
What Day: Wednesdays
Time: 5:30 - 7:30pm
Where: Horse Bazarr
Address: 397 Little Lonsdale Street
Area for students of Chinese and English to meet and speak in both English and talk

A lot of people have been wanting this to be in the evening so we will have one in the evening.
The 1000 Pound Bend lanugage Exchange starts at 4 and goes until 6 and then there is this event for people who are probably a bit older.

We had this on Thursdays originally but it confused the younger group that met at 4pm on Thursdays. Bang Bang Tang is definitely Thursdays from 4 - 6 and full- time workers team is meeting on Wednesdays. Save my number 0433 366 323 - Dan is the organiser. Ni da dianhua wo de shihou Zhongwen haishi Yingyu dou hao.

Dan Ednie
0433 366 323
www.danednie.com

Interview with Chester - An awesome Chinese Student in Melbourne

2010-03-29T22:40:00.000-07:00

Today's Blog is an interview with Honours student at Unimelb Chester Li Chen. He's a great friend of mine and the one that I can go to with my cultural problems with Chinese and know that he won't judge me for what I ask him. He is in my mind one of the most successful international students I know because his studies, Agricultrual Science, are going to lead him straight into a great career, he speaks superb English despite only being here for a year and a half, and he is comfortable hanging out with Westerners and understanding of a lot of the unspoken aspects of speaking English that go beyond the words.

1. Please tell us a bit about your stay in Australia, an outline of what you've done and where you are going.

I bought a degree in Melbourne University for the last 1.5 yrs and now I am paying for the advanced version of it. Since I've wasted such a lot of money for my study, there is no way for me to waste my time for it. Therefore I linger around cafe and bars around Melbourne and when it comes to holiday I just go overseas because it is so expensive to live in Australia.

When I feel guilty, I study. My course is Agricultural Science and I am a 100% percent city boy except I was born in the largest village in China. So I spent almost a month in a farm in the middle of nowhere to see what exactly sheep look like, after which I improved my skills in stargazing and bbq.

Now I am working on a project you don't want to hear but I am going to tell you anyway. I am working with cattle manure and hopefully they will cure the sun burn.

2.What do you think is the biggest obstacle that Australian's learning Chinese have to overcome?

Generally speaking there are three types of Australians when coming to the learning Chinese, those who were born in a Chinese speaking country, those who were born in a Chinese speaking family in Australia and those who were born in a non-Chinese speaking family.

For the first two I am not sure about the obstacles. But for the third, I might have something to say. Speak Chinese as much as possible. It's good to have a group of friends who are learning Chinese as well therefore you may help each other. And hang out with Chinese groups, you will pick up very quickly, which could be painful at first time but it really helps, I suppose.

I guess there are several language exchange groups available now in town. They are very helpful in either improving language skills and understanding how Chinese people socialise. Online socializing in very common among Chinese. renren.com (previously known as xiaonei.com) is a SNS website aiming at Chinese at home and abroad. It is very popular among college-aged Chinese and the average age of its users is increasing gradually now. MSN is also essential to a lot of Chinese. There are some other SNS website such as douban.com, which is a website sharing movies, songs, books you like with friends. It is not only a SNS website. People also find recommendations and comments, reviews of books, movies and music. Think about you find someone who loves more than 100 same movies as you do or someone has a very similar opinion about a book. You can be good friends maybe.

3. How proficient were you in English before you came? Give us an example of what kinds of things were difficult for you before you came.

Hmm.... just so-so. Subtitles were ( and still are sometimes) compulsory for me in movies. I felt isolated when I hang out with friends to bars coz I don't understand the conversation. That was frustrated.

4. What techniques did you use to get good at spoken English?

Speak with native speakers. Make friends of them. Again join language exchange groups. I am lucky because in my faculty there are a lot of local Australian students who are very friendly and love to make friends with you. Invite people to your house and cook for them is the secret of mine. Hang out with people and learn to tell some jokes. You should first invite people then people would invite you. It's not only a problem of how to find Australians. It's a problem of how to make new friends in a new city, in a new country. The rules are basically the same no matter what people you are going to deal with. You may like GrandPrix or AFL or other stuff and there are a lot of people who share same interests with you. But keep in mind don't make friends with native english speakers just because they speak english. People will think you are using them and I don't think you will feel comfortable. Make friends with people you like and people who like you. Then you can pick up your English easily.

5. How has your time, so far, in Australia shaped how you see the world?

In the city where I came from, there were not a lot of foreign faces hanging around the streets. The city speaks pure Mandarin and anyone with an accent would be picked up easily. I remember in my primary we used to laugh at one of my teachers' accent which was acturally not that hard to understand. Mainstream culture and media (no plural forms) are propagandized to unite the whole nation.
While in Australia people are different. Multiculturalism is embraced by the majority.

After I came to Australia, there was a culture shock for me of course. It is probably indescribable but I knew there was one. I don't know which stage I am now on, whether I have over passed it. But I think i realized more and more that there is such a big world out there and I was narrow-minded before I came. In only 1.5 yrs it's hard to tell which is really happening and which is just illusion. We'll see how it goes.

--------about the sun burn in Q1. I was not joking. The project is looking for pathways of reducing greenhouse gas emission from livestock. I was imagining a world in the future where air-tickets would be auctioned because they are highly regulated and limited. A world where personal cars were prohibited. A world where air-conditioners were banned even in summer. I was scared.

Topics of English Conversation

2010-03-29T05:48:00.001-07:00

So here we are, talking to the native speaker. I studied for six years in high school, I did a major in English literature at university, now I'm doing a masters in Management in Melbourne and I'm at an lunch organised by the university and I'm introduced to an Aussie.

What do I say!!!!!!!!

我们在跟澳大利亚人说呢。我在中学六年学了英语的语法。润喉我在大学学了英语的文学。现在我在墨尔本大学的活动我被介绍了一位澳大利亚的学生。我们正在对话开始呢

哦！我应该说的神码！！！！

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nYnKymCzVk

Da Tou Da Tou

2010-03-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

大头大头下雨不愁
Da Tou Da Tou Xia Yu Bu Chou
Big Head Big Head Fall Rain No Worry

人家有伞我有大头
RenJia You San Wo You Da Tou
People Have Umbrella, I have Big Head

We were talking about 冷笑话（leng xiao hua, cold joke), which are like ironic jokes, and most people don't laugh, but just want to kill whoever told them. Chester started to tell me this one. Apparently this is what primary school children say. While I don't really like the image of having a big head, this is one that I told to some of the girls that have been apart of the language exchanges for a long time. I ambled slowly through it trying to remember exactly how the words went, and they laughed and send me such warm feelings when i finished it. I don't know how, but it was only in the final 'wo you da tou' that they got what I was telling them.

Lesson: Finding the cultural icons that native speakers know from their childhood are a great idea. 1) They are usually easy to grasp in terms of vocab and grammar. 2) You get to experience a part of their youth and share that with them.

A Chinese, A Japanese

2010-03-23T03:16:00.001-07:00

Speaking to Chinese people everyday - a couple of the more common errors in their English is becoming a bit more obvious to me.

Me: Where is he from?
Chinese student: He is a Chinese.
Me: He's from China?
Chinese student: Yeah.

We can say:
1) He is Chinese
2) He is from China
3) He is a Chinese guy
4) She is a Chinese girl
But
if we are going to say 'a Chinese....' they need to be a Chinese something. Because in this situation 'Chinese' becomes an adjective. To English native speakers its like somebody saying, 'It's a wooden', or That is a fast'. It just doesn't make sense.

The other probelem is: 'I'm proud of you.'

I hear:
I proud you
Me proud you

When I hear sentences like this I feel like I'm learning something about how Chinese grammar works even though the whole conversation is in English.

in Chinese, I found out today, it goes like this:

wei ziji gandao hen zihao
for self feel proud

中国人的英语错很可爱。嘻嘻

Chinese and English people speaking together (VIDEO)

2010-03-18T02:19:00.000-07:00

大家好！

今天的语言交流非常好。来的人谢谢

这个录下用中文，不太好地说。可能是有时候你们听不懂的时。但是我想信息很重要的

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV7fODxJGZY

Strange Note

2010-03-14T01:26:00.000-08:00

It reads: Although many of us are daunted by the thought of trying to master a new toungue, the average Canadian could acquire one every year in the time he now spends watching Canadian BUS DAILY.

I don't completely understand the note. BUS DAILY, maybe the time on the bus is sufficient. And why would this be a Canadian, wouldn't it be everyone.

The point is clear enough though, its not about time. We have lots of that to learn foreign languages. People say they don't but they do. TV, msn, youtube, surfing the net, hey did anyone mention stalking people on facebook. Daunting in the key word here.

Its psychological - I would never claim a lack of time as a good reason for not doing something I really want to and is so good for the soul and the career.

Australian Time

2010-03-14T01:01:00.000-08:00

So our tour for the day starts at 2pm from Federation Square. So what does that really mean. Does that mean why aim to all get there around 2pm? I take out my phone, there's a message saying:

'I'm going to be 15 minutes late for the start of the tour, is that okay?'

When are we thinking we'll go? We stand there talking, and that's okay, we all talk for twenty minutes, and she arrives. Okay so we are going now, its two twenty five. The slowest start we ever had was two thirty five, that was the most over time tour. We factor in some time to get to know each other. Everyone, in groups with fewer than ten people, should know each others name and what they are studying or doing. Surely we'd all leave at 2pm, ie: the tour begins, we start walking.

Is this everyone? Is this just how things happen in Australia, Australian Time? Is this how people that don't care act?

There have been times when Angela and I were downstairs in the Visitor Center talking and preparing, at 1:50, then minutes before the tour is supposed to start, that we'd get a desperate call or message asking where we were. I'm pretty sure it's just Japanese people that see two o'clock start written, and then deliberately get there more than ten minutes early. That's Japanese time. We agree on something and then we both arrive early.

How Chinese Students Perceive local Australians

2010-03-14T00:44:00.000-08:00

At the end of the tour today one of the post grad Chinese students said that she felt like she was in Hollywood, Australians are slim, good looking and dress well. Angela figured said that she was wearing rose tinted glasses. I don't know if she picked up what that meant, but it is a topic worth more thought.

Local Australians, I believe, tend to assume that international students are desperate to meet local Australians, and that our Whiteness elevates us to God status. Anglo-Australian culture and the look that is associates with that, unkempt longish hair, t-shirt and jeans, beer drinking, partying men who occasionally succeed in womanising the blond, full-chested, fairly refined, but unpretentious Australian women.

This is certainly what I thought.

But hearing a forum at Melbourne University late last year, exit surveys indicate that over a third of students don't meet Australian students, but that they aren't particularly disappointed, the prefer hanging out with their own countrymen. There is an almost equal group that want to meet Australians, do, and live happily ever after. It's the third group that wants to meet locals, but don't that feel isolated and unhappy.

Spending a lot of time around international students, I'd half forgotten until today that just the 'Anglo-ness' of my appearance could be something of interest to Chinese students. I remember how excited I got every time I realised the people I were speaking to were Japanese. I wanted to stand in their aura and soak up their Japanese -ness. Its still like that to a certain extent, Japanese people dress so well, but it doesn't make me forget who where I am and what time it is like it did in the past.

Dan Ednie, Local Australian trying to figure out what's going on with international students.

How Chinese students perceive Value

2010-03-14T00:22:00.000-08:00

We finished our second tour with predominantly Chinese students from Melbourne University, it was a fun tour and it was great to get to know them. They were between 21 and 24 and studying finance and business related sorts of topics.

At the end of our three hour tour, intimate group of eight people, covering Aboriginal History and Art, a picnic (included), the Shrine of Remembrance, two local Australian guides, we taught them how to play cricket and a visit to a cafe (we didn't include the coffee for this one).

The students were paying $10 for the tour, and the rest was subsidised, but we asked them at the end what they thought the tour was worth, I let them know that this was a special price that we don't usually go with. The two that answered said $10 - 20, and the other said maybe $15. She added as well though that being in the Cafe that we were in was like being in Hollywood because Aussies are so good looking - which was a really kind thing for her to say.

The same student was surprised that she had to pay for her own coffee on a $10 tour. Does she think that we are a charity?

The tours usually happen for $40 per person and these are considerably cheaper than all other personal guided tours. One of our competitors drives people around the city for two hours for just under $100. So relatively, we are offering something which is generally much more highly valued. But that information obviously doesn't affect how they feel about the tour.

They reasoned that we didn't go very far from the city, and that Evergreen will go on the Great Ocean Road for $55. And this is a good point, but those tours would be, I don't know exactly, but they would be buses with 60 people plus, one driver and one tour guide. There would be almost no interaction, with announcements only.

They explained that Chinese people see tours as a bus, where there is no interaction, but very very cheap. If there is any information given then its in the form of statistics, and its given by a Chinese ex-pat. And this is what is expected and wanted.

So ultimately there is a degree to which we are providing the service that we think Chinese people would be interested in, but its becoming clear that its something they don't particularly value. We fill our tours with concepts like greater cultural awareness, English conversation, understanding where young local people go and what they like to do, being able to walk around and spend time in significant places at your own pace, being able to ask questions. But I even though these are things Chinese people enjoy and value, they don't want to pay for them.

Beijing Blur's take on Starbucks

2010-03-12T19:45:00.001-08:00

Beijing Blur by Sydney writer James West, first of all is an unbeleivably well written memoir which elevates the experience of working overseas without self-adulation. I'm trying to write a similar book to his but about Japan, and its so difficult to toe the line between writing in lots of detail, and it being so boring that I find it hard to get around to editing it, and the other way of writing where you just skip through way too many abstract problems, imagine Dan and his impressions of Japan in a vaccume and that's my first draft.

In Beijing Blur, West meets with Hao Wu, an Chinese blogging in English who was locked up by the government. They meet, and when James speaks to Hao, Hao suggests that they meeting in Starbuts 'because, Hao said on the phone, 'Where else can you find civilisation in Beijing'.

When they meet this is how West finds Hao Wu:

'Hao's demeanour didn't dissapoint. He is reading The Economist and sipping a latte as I enter. He is wearing black-framed glasses and shiny lip balm. He has a round face with a high forehead and sparse eyebrows. 'So what do you want to talk about?' he asks when I throw my jacket over the sofa.' (p.112)

Later, p.118, we return to Starbucks with what I feel like is an ambiguous statement.

Hao stayed locked away in solitary confinement for five months.
'Back at Starbucks, a place designed as a black hole for cultural memory, we talk a lot about memory - Hao's and the nations, and about the losses that change brings.'

Is it that Starbucks is the only place appropriate to talk about topics that straddle Chinese and Western mindsets? Or is it that the notion of Western chain-stores seem to efface (remove) the nation's memory of and its long cultural tradition. Any other interpretations of why 'Starbucks is a black hole for cultural memory'?

Starbucks significance in Melbourne

2010-03-11T04:03:00.001-08:00

For me growing up in Melbourne chain cafes like Gloria Jeans and Starbucks are pretty much my last resort. I haven't had anything in them this year. We have so many unique cafes, one of a kind, a design specific to the space, run by people that are creating an atmosphere not filling out a set of specifications for a franchise.

Imagine my surprise though when a Chinese friend wanting to have a business meeting suggested that we have it at Starbucks, at 8pm. I'd suggested he come to Little Lonsdale Street, to Horse Bazaar where we were going to be talking in Chinese, and that was where I'd met Lang. He listens to this and says 'okay, I'll see you at Starbucks when language exchange finishes, is that 8pm'.

I asked Angela, 'Hey what's up with Starbucks, who would go there?'

It turns out that drinking starbucks is a status symbol for Chinese people. I hadn't thought why, but Swanston street Starbucks is usually patronised most heavily by Chinese customers. Not only that but the seats on the footpath are most popular. Starbucks used to cost half of a regular workers pay and to be able to carry the take away cup, or be seen drinking it is still synonmous with wealth.

We asked Feng at the language exchange why Starbucks is seen as the rich man's coffee, and he denied this. 'No, no, its not like that at all.' Angela gave me a look and then asked 'So what is it like then?' And with no notion of anything contradictory this is what Feng told us.

'Its not a rich man's drink, its popular because usually you see workers, not just normal workers drink it. Its much more expensive. (pause) White collar, (he holds his collar). You know, maybe they are working for a foreign company. So they can buy it.

My bizarre friend and his Chinese business proposal

2010-03-11T03:38:00.000-08:00

I got a strange call last night from a Chinese guy, I'm calling him Lang but that isn't his real name. I that I couldn't even remember meeting. I was working at the time so I said I'd call him back. When I called back he didn't answer, but said that he had a really good opportunity for me. I assumed that it was just his English which made this sound so suss. I'm running a business and often Chinese friends of mine help me make links with the Chinese community so I'm pretty open to this sort of thing.

I wanted him to come to the language exchange because we ran two language exchanges today from 4 - 6 and 6 - 8. This wasn't really desirable but I digress. He said he only had time from 8pm though. So I suggested he come at 4pm, and he said that wouldn't work either when he realised it was a language exchange. Again, quite strange, especially as I have no idea at all what this is about, except that it was a business proposal. He said to me

"its really good that you are doing this tour thing, I really likes it. At the moment I'm expanding my business, I can't promise anything, but I might have something for your tour company."

I was hoping that he had an uncle working in tourism in Dongbei or something. I had a sneeking feeling that this was network marketing of some kind. And then When I saw Lang he was with a friend. We had some chat, some Chinese, mainly English. I told them both about Global Heart Tours, and then I ask them, what is your business

USANA

The guy next to me started laughing. Lang's friend started telling me about how USANA is the biggest nutritional supplement in Australia, even though you can't buy it off the shelf. They equated this to quality, and said that their job was to distribute the best quality product. My friend asked them if it was more expensive and they said it was a little bit, but they gave the analogy of a Toyota and a BMW. You can get the Toyota, but the BMW is much higher class and better quality, even though the Toyota is 20,000 and the BMW is 50,000. The sad bit was they didn't realise how unpersuasive that is, the BMW is bought by people who are deliberately wasting money to look rich, because the Toyota will get you from A to B and its only the presige associated with the brand name that fetches it the extra dollars. But maybe they thought that would appeal to me.

This was my response:

"Well tourism and nutritional products, its not exactly a great fit, I'm not sure how we can incorporate them into our business.'

Lang's friend continued that a lot of Chinese people are using it, but they want to break into the Caucasian market, and then waved his hand at my business parter and I and said 'Caucasians like you'.

Great. I get to be your caucasians and buy into your pyramid. You really won me over there.

Why you don't need a language class or teacher.

2010-03-08T00:49:00.001-08:00

Please hold my hand, I don't want to push myself.

Classes are for people that don't want to learn the language enough to do it with their own enthusiasm. They need a deadline, an upcoming quiz, they need someone to turn up at 10am at class to take them very very slowly over extremely basic aspects of a language.

People that continue to take classes and don't search for and speak to native speakers at all possible opportunities throw all their learning down a black hole. "I'll start speaking to native speakers after I graduate from this class', then its the years work, then its "when I go to Japan, I'll speak then", all these excuses. People put it off. Start using what you do know almost from the word go. I usually give myself a week when I start learning a new language.

Your teacher may have a degree in teaching, but all native speakers can correct poorly constructed sentences, and all of them can speak to you in normal everyday conversation.

Bare Essentials of Learning a Language

2010-03-08T00:40:00.000-08:00

Text books, a native speaker and ability not live down embarrassement.

Step 1. Read textbooks. Write down new words, do the exercises. Textbooks contain descriptions and explanations of the grammar, and heaps of new words.

Step 2. When you can't understand the book you take the book and the question to your native speaker friend. They will explain it to you, or give you more example sentences. You can try making your own sentences with them, keep going until you understand.

Step 3. Check your pronunciation with the native speaker.

Step 4. Make your own sentences and when your sentences are incomprehensible, or you get things wrong, figure out just what did go wrong, it will tell you more about the language than the things that you get right. When you really mess it up, you never forget those bits.

Teachers and classes can help, but they aren't essential, friends are.

Dealing with Bilinguals

2010-03-06T03:37:00.000-08:00

So you meet an Australian who is learning your language. You are Chinese and you meet Dan, a local student at the Melbourne University who is learning Mandarin.

Local Student: Hey, ni Zhong guo ren ma? (Are you Chinese?)
International Student: Oh, you can speak Chinese?
Local Student: shi a, ni xuesheng ma? (Are you a student)
International Student: ah, yes, I am a student here, why do you want to learn Chinese?
Local Student: wo you hen duo pengyou, wo yao qu Zhong Guo, hen you yi si de guo. (I have heaps of friends, I want to go to China, its a really intersting country)
International Student: okay. please just talk English.

Maybe the conversation goes on for a little bit longer, but I think this one will end soon.

The local student is obviously really interested in talking to the international student, he has a lot to learn, and they could easily become good friends. But if you refuse to speak back to them in Chinese, Japanese or any other language, then this is very hurtful. This is what the local student is thinking:

This guy ignores my questions, doesn't think I am good enough to understand any Chinese at all. He is really disrespectful and I can speak to other Chinese speaking people, why should I waste my time with this guy?

Sure international students want to speak English, but if you ignore it when people take an interest in your culture, then they will just talk to other people that at least show the respect to be encouraging at the start. The chances are that the Australian student won't be able to speak for very long and will start using English after a short while.

I promise you if you show that you want to help them with their Mandarin, you will have a friend for life, and you will soon be meeting their other Aussie friends that probably won't speak any Chinese and you can speak to them in English.

"I'm so sorry, my English is poor" (Part 3)

2010-03-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

Here is another badly done conversation which happens a lot:

Local: Hi My name is Dan, How's it going?
International Student: Good.
Local: What's your name?
International Student: My name is Jiang, I want to practice ENGLISH!
Local: Cool, so what have you been doing recently!
International Student: Studying English EVERYDAY~!
Local: Wow, that's a lot, how is class?
International: Good! I really like the class but English is so HARD you know
Local: Sure. I guess it would be.

This International student is showing a lot more confidence, but local students don't want to be 'used' for English practice. Find areas of shared interest where you can help eachother. This is hard, but most people only become friends because they can either help each other with something or they have a lot of shared experiences. If you are playing a lot of basketball together then there is a lot to talk about in reference to the recent NBA game. Its good to talk about ourselves and ask questions of other people, but there needs to be a lot of common interests as well. Australian's never had to learn to speak English so the probably don't care, they can't relate to you.

"Sorry, My English is Poor" (Part 2)

2010-03-06T03:22:00.000-08:00

In the last entry we looked at a typical conversation. There were a lot of problems, but what should you talk to Aussies about?

TIPS
1) Don't talk about your English, if you are asked about it then sure talk about it, but if you talk about this topic first it will appear as though you can't speak very well. If they decide that then there is nothing you can do, but don't suggest the idea.
2) Ask questions about things that they are experts on, if they can recommend some good movies and ask them to describe the movies that they like. Australians never had to learn English, so they can't connect with you on this point. They like watching sports, seeing movies and going out to cafes and bars. Talk about topics they can relate to.
3) Its good to speak about your home country if you have something interesting to say. If you can tell an amazing story about something which happened at your home university or city which is relevant to the conversation, then you will be adding a lot of value. Its very typical for people to tell stories to each other about remarkable things, think of unusual events that you can tell people.

Eg: In Chengdu, my home town and the birth place of Panda, something really crazy happened late last year. A panda and a tiger got really drunk accidently and had a half panda half tiger child. Now it is the mascot of my university - (then start laughing to show that its the end of the story)

"I'm so sorry, my English is poor" (Part 1)

2010-03-06T03:11:00.000-08:00

Okay so I'm a local Australian, and we are introduced through a mutual friend.

Local: Hey I'm Dan, how's it going)
(brief pause)
International Student: Oh I'm so sorry, my English is really poor.
Local: That's okay, that's okay, it must be hard to speak another language
International Student: Yes, I studied English in Elementary School, then High School, but I still speak English poorly.
Local: Okay
International Student: Have you heard of China? I am from XXXXXXXXXXXX
Local: Cool, its really great talking to you but I need to go over there to tie my shoelace, I hope you really enjoy your stay here.

There is not a lot else to say after this and the conversation will probably end quickly. A lot is going wrong here.

PROBLEMS
1) Sometimes I feel like many international students speak about their own English mainly because this is the topic they have spoken about the most often. Even if your English is bad, it tells the local that you aren't going to be an interesting person to speak to because you can't express yourself.
2) Locals like speaking to people who are confident, and criticising yourself shows that you don't have any confidence. Confidence is generally equated to happy people, and most people don't want to speak a lot with unhappy people that they don't know.
3) Even though locals might say 'its okay, its okay' they are already thinking about how they can end the conversation - its definitely not okay.
4) Often Australian's are only interested in the United States and Europe, and unless you come from Tokyo in Japan or Beijing/Shanghai in China, they may not have heard of where you come from.

In the next part I'll give some tips of how to manage this conversation better.

Footbag 4 Fun and Global Heart Tours Update

2010-03-04T04:39:00.001-08:00

Hey Everyone,

I've been really flat out recently, I've been working everyday for the last three weeks and the one day i had off (Sunday) was all admin. That said, teaching Footbag and hanging out with Japanese international students is pretty fun so I can't really complain.

Footbag 4 Fun
I had a totally awesome last seven days. I taught at Warrandyte High School, Guthrie St Primary School and Firbank and they were all awesome! The teachers at all three schools really made me feel welcome and I was really impressed by how eager they were to pick up a new skill to teach their students. I just passed 9,500 students that I've taught since 2007. I will get to 10,000!!!! Comon!

Global Heart Tours
For the last three weeks we've been giving tours, catering for BBQs, hanging out and getting to know two groups of Japanese students from Kobe and Ritsumeikan. They had heaps of English Classes in the morning, and then they would come and do an activity with us in the afternoon, and then go home for English in the evening with their homestay families. We had ten different tour guide/ Aussies who came to the events and I'm really happy that we have created a lot of friendships where otherwise it would have been nearly impossible to them to meet many young Australians their age.

Thank you to everyone involved in this and we still have a week to go :)

Dan Ednie

Chinese Language Exchanges

2010-03-01T02:29:00.000-08:00

Coffee, conversation, a new culture and a whole new world of words, values and meanings.

That's why I am driving so many new words and sentence patterns into my head everyday.

Come and join us at 1000 Pound Bend
http://chinese.meetup.com/370/calendar/12661731/

jintian de danci
xinxi jushi - IT
da ban tian - big half day (most part of the day)
tan de lai - chat can come (chat along easily)
chui feng ji - blow wind machine (hair dryer)

Why did it stick? (Final)

2010-02-25T04:04:00.000-08:00

lingren xin fen de wuhui - exciting party

We had a language exchange today with the Melbourne Chinese Language and Culture Meetup Group - only seven or eight people came, but they are the people I'm getting to know best from the group.

One invited me to his party, and I said 'wo yijing you hen EXCITING de juhui' (I already have very EXCITING party). I asked him how to say exciting and he said xin fen. I wrote it down. I do this all the time, and its only when I go back to those words numerous times a month later that I can use them. I repeat the sentence using xin fen de juhui.

My Zhongguo friend shakes his head, its still not right, he askes someone else, and they suggest ling ren xin fen de juhui. I repeat it. Another westerner learning wants to know why it needs so much to say exciting party. I say it again. And we talk about Chinese Grammar, I say it again.

ling ren xin fen de juhui - exciting party

Its not the only way to do it - but it worked for this word on this day.

Why did it stick? (Part 2)

2010-02-25T04:01:00.000-08:00

What else did I remember today?

chong lang - surfing

Chong lang - Surfing. I was on the train and I looked at this word and thought, 'Wow, I know I've tried to rote learn that one at least three times, and yet I'm looking at it now as though I've never seen it before'. It's a bit

That! was the mingbai le moment - the exact moment for giving up on a word, that its too weird, or that its too long, or its too anything. Sometimes that is what will push it into our brains.

Why did it stick? (Part 1)

2010-02-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

Today I remembered a heap of Chinese words

xiyao - Western Medicine
zhongyao - Chinese Medicine

When we realise that we have remembered a word and it is 100% there, its time to do a bit of analysis - why did it stick?

xiyao and zhongyao are really similar and I remembered them at the same time. They belong to a pattern and are compound nouns. Compound nouns are the easiest to learn because you already know the parts, now you just need to put them together. xi means west, and you can say xican (western food) and xifu (western clothes). Same goes for 'zhong', its in Zhongwen, zhongguo, it represents all things Chinese.

I had to remember that 'yao' is medicine, but I think that it's connection to xi and zhong made it much easier. To remember.

Learning on Trains

2010-02-23T18:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the only language learning I do with pen and paper is on trains. I'm just about to head out now and I have 45 minutes between my house and Melbourne University. Yesterday I was reading a manga called "Hands" in Japanese about Handball. Today I'm going to review my new Chinese words.

Doing it on public transport can be a bit distracting, in terms of other passengers, but if you deliberately only take your notes, then you won't read anything else, you'll have no other choice but to keep hard at it the whole journey.

And no getting up to make yourself a coffee either!

Loves it!

My Mother, My Writing and Me

2010-02-20T04:51:00.000-08:00

Iola Mathews (OAM) came and spoke to a rapt group of listeners at the Phoenix Park Library (Stonnington) a few weeks ago and I managed to get a copy of her memoir My Mother, My Writing and Me. I've just finished reading it and I think it is a perfect book for people in their fifties and sixties who are beginning their third age, and find it difficult to find time for themselves between their ailing parents and the onset of grandchildren.

She struggles through the writing of the book to decide just where she is in the universe, and now that she's retired from her influential post at the ACTU, will life just be downhill from here on in?

What I got out of the book, as a young writer myself, is that reflection is an end in itself, and our lives are less-fully lived and treasured if we neglect our pasts. In the book she explains how difficult it was to write about a painful affair with a married Frenchman, and was scared of how she'd feel if this part of her life were ever exposed.

She speaks about writing 'fearwards' and entering into a freefall where the words that need to come out are allowed to expunge themselves from our world of half-repressed moments in time, and onto the laptop or page. Writers do tend to write about writing itself, but I genuinely found this to be a great read and there's a lot to be said for the publishers, Michelle Anderson Publishing, that have printed a book that needed to be published rather than hunting purely after popularist sellers.

http://www.michelleandersonpublishing.com/general_health.html
(second book down)

"You need to be in the country to learn the language" (Part 3)

2010-02-20T04:35:00.000-08:00

Right now, I want you to look at these two hands in front of you?

On the left you have a native speaker that you can call, meet up with, meet the friends of. On the right you have textbooks, podcasts, dictionaries, learning materials.

You might have access to More native speakers in German, but if you have some German speaking friend/s in Melbourne, spend more time with them and study hard in between meetups. Save yourself an airfare, insurance and the trouble of finding a place to stay until you are really killing it.

"You need to be in the country to learn the language" (Part 2)

2010-02-18T03:59:00.000-08:00

"You need to be in the country to learn the language"

2) Okay, so people imagine that they will be forced to speak, forced to learn. They like this because it means that they will never have to choose to learn. If you aren't motivated to jump in at every opportunity, so much in love that you can happily read every word of a novel in Czech despite barely being able to follow anything; the maybe your location isn't the problem. This is going to be really hard work, and guess what, the text book has exactly the same number of pages now, sitting on your desk in Melbourne, as it will when you and it arrive together at the letiste in Prague.

If you are like most of us, and you realised just how cool it is to speak foreign languages, after rejecting them and building entire friendships over a common hatred of French or Japanese, then its not as easy as just sitting in front of German TV for six hours a day and guessing which word relates to 'green', 'chair' and 'that'. You won't be able to see the forrest from the trees. Even kids who can learn without hard work take most of a decade, and some people never learn to speak any language properly because they're brains have been melted by free to air TV.

Improvement in language ability is impossible without hard work. So we better get going, don't put it off any longer

You have to really be IN the country to learn it...

2010-02-18T03:13:00.000-08:00

Wrong. This is a myth of language learning that will destroy you.

Every week, multiple times a week, someone will be speaking to me about Chinese, English, Japanese, anything, and the conversation will turn to 'how to learn' - which is a great great topic.

I talk about all the different things I am using, ways of learning, events, people, books, apps on my computer and ifone, and then, as though they haven't listened to a word I've just said, they sigh and say:

'Yeah, I guess you really do need to be in the country to learn the language'

I writhe when this myth rears its head. Not because I don't think it would help, but this, this! is the single biggest lie that native English speakers tell themselves. People that come to me saying they want to learn Spanish. I'm going to make this a multi-parted topic, so that I don't go thin on ALL of the NUMEROUS reasons why this thinking leads to immediate death.

1) Believing that this is true creates an excuse not to work hard now. Learning a language is like killing medusa. For every word you learn, you will realise that you want to know how to say two other concepts or idioms that you say in your native tongue. You can't win this game by waiting. People put off learning Spanish until that magical day when they become 'immersed'. That's right, I'm going to walk right off the plane, into the nearest and most pretentious cafe I can, light up a cigarette and I will just magically be able to 'pick it up' with no book learning, no hard work and no connection whatsoever to reality.

Speaking Mandarin on SBS Radio

2010-02-09T01:35:00.000-08:00

Ni Hao Everyone!

Angela and I were very happy to speak on SBS's Mandarin program. I've been learning for five months or so now and having an interactive interview was touch and go to say the least for me. We didn't get a recording but they asked us about things like what we will do at chinese new year, why we are intersted in Chinese culture and what Global Heart Tours does.

We are heading into a big group of tours over the next two weeks and I am really pumped for these :)

Here are some photos, and thank you May and Jennifer Beck for organising this. It was a really big confidence booster for us :) You can't see from the photos but there was there were about twenty onlookers, mainly extremely surprised and confused Chinese people !

Burtta Cheney Biography

2010-01-29T16:37:00.000-08:00

Over the last three months, the enormous challenge of chronicling the incredible life of Burtta Cheney has been embarked upon. Gillian Ednie, myself and our wonderful editor have been delving more and more deeply into what has and truly still is a life of great devotion. Burtta Cheney, now 93, has almost insistently been the single most enthusiastic and hand-working member of the Australian women's golfing community. Interviewing her, finding out the stories that represented turning points, both happy and sad has been a privilege. Our lives are so special, and to be privy to some of the most cherished experiences of anyone's life is at once insightful and inspiring. Burtta's life is remarkable though, in that her love was almost solely poised on Golf, and the development of the game. When we are granted the chance to write about a life of significance, there are so many important questions to ask, that relate to both the broader characteristics of their humanity and the nuances of their individuality. What we want to know is:

What makes a champions tick? From where does truly unconditional love come from? How does a person ignite the interests of generation after generation of young golfers?

We found it difficult at first to get beneath the where's and when's of life, and its not unusual to be guarded about these things. But as we move deeper into the interviews, collect more and more stories, descriptions of friends and family, the inner world is ever so slowly delineated for us. Writer, transcriber (me), and editor are all working together to make this biography the best it can be.

The main goal of the biography team is to document and honour Burtta’s contribution to golf as a champion player, outstanding administrator and pioneer junior promoter. Her life in golf provides a great personal story and insight into the development and history of women’s golf in Australia. We also hope to reach as many golfers as possible so that Burtta’s stories and wisdom will not be lost to the golfing community. By reading her story, we hope others will be inspired by her amazing example and help carry on the development of women’s golf for future generations.

Global Heart Tours Building Up!

2010-01-28T23:28:00.000-08:00

Angela and I have been working hard on Global Heart Tours and the year is off to a flying start. January is a terrific time to do goal setting and if any of those goals are achieved in January, then it gives you so much more energy to keep knocking down the obstacles, creating new things, interacting more with people and doing what you love.

Global Heart Tours Goals
1. Reach our 1000th participants, both international students and short term visitors to Melbourne - This will be a big ask, but we are taking all the right steps at the moment
2. Have thirty tour guides who can or have worked with us casually. Its an exciting thing to show people your home city in a foreign language and to find out more about the people you are taking on the tour.

Those are our two key goals that we measure our success on.

Getting the Word Out
There was a point in December of 2009 when I thought, 'just how would anyone find out about us if they hadn't met us in person?' We knew we had something really great to offer, it is a matter of getting the word out there though.

We want to make connections with:
10 university departments
10 backpackers/ hotels
5 touring agencies
Turn up on the first page of Google, Baidu and Yahoo Japan for Melbourne Tours

Where are we now? We have connections to three university departments, 8 backpackers or hotels, four touring agencies and we are on page 3 of Google and still doing badly on Yahoo Japan and Baidu.

Coming to the end of 2010, we have much better exposure, and if people are are looking for tours, then they will find us. At least we have a chance of being seen now, a totally different tale to a month ago. 2010 is off to a flyer :)

Dan Ednie

Footbag in 2009

2009-12-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

Merry Xmas Everyone!!

This was such such such an unbeleivable year in Footbag for me.

January - Featured on a nation-wide Subway commerical and voted the Education Director at the International Footbag Players Association

February to June - Lived in the Czech Republic learning Czech with the Footbaggers there, learning how to play doubles with Ales Zelinka Tomas Tucek and Martin! I also trained singles with Milan Benda and Vasek who were just so inspiring. Not only is Footbag a sport of great beauty, but the coordination and precision these two had took my understanding of the intrinsic beauty of the human form to a new level.

Ales Zelinka and Dan Ednie doing Doubles at the World Championships

July - I came 13th in Singles Freestyle, ran a Certified Instructors course for about 50 future Footbag teachers, judged the singles freestyle finals and had The Vasek Klouda Manual: How to Play Footbag published with Vasek

August to December: Taught close to 2000 students at twelve different schools and spoke at four events about my personal journey in Footbag. I've also been invited to speak more and teach more at lots of new schools and events in 2010 and I just totally love it.

I am inching closer to my goal of teaching 10,000 students personally. I'm just a tick underneath 9,000. I'll be graduating from my BA at Melbourne University half way through next year, and I don't know if I will be in Australia in the second half, but any school that would like to have me come along to teach them Footbag, please email me early next year, I would love to come.

I am so so blessed to have met all of the teachers, students and Footbaggers I have this year in Australia and Europe. Footbag is a great game, yes, but now that I've played for over ten years, the value for me isn't really in playing. The opportunties , the people, the travel, the teaching and the conversations that make the Footbag community what it is have a couple of times this year moved me to tears. Footbag has been the biggest thing to ever happen to me.

Dan Ednie

Public Speaking in 2009

2009-12-25T19:31:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this year I decided that I wanted to do more public speaking, and make this one of my strengths. I'd done a bit of it previously, mainly with ACHPER (Australian Council for Health Physical Education and Recreation), but it was something that I realised I needed to build on.

I spoke at seven formal events this year, where the people there were introduced to me, and then proceeded to sit or stand and listen to me, for better or worse. It's certainly a thrill, and I've been lucky with my introduction to it, in that I am usually playing Footbag for the audience as well, and this physical aspect to what I do takes some of the pressure off speaking outstandingly well. I also tend to use the demonstration of Footbag as a way of breaking up the speaking parts, so that things don't become monotonous.

I've also been lucky in that I've had my Uncle, David Ednie, available to give me advice any time I've needed it. He speaks for audiences and runs workshops all over Europe and is a massive inspiration. I've also had some great books to read. I've read:
Presenting to Win
Say it like Obama
and my favourite
The Awesome Power of Public Speaking by Peter Daniels

I've been spending a lot more time in my backyard, walking up and down, using my que cards to construct what I want to say. You have to love families for how they can put you back into place. I was at the dinner table and I told them I'd been asked to speak at the ACHPER state conference and showed them the brochure for the event.

Dan: Hey so I've been asked to speak at the state conference for ACHPER!
Mum: That's great Dan! Well done
Brother: grunts
Sister: why anyone would want to listen to you
Brother: laughs
Silence
Dad: yeah what would you talk about
Everyone but me laughs

But that's what they are there for, to pick you up when you are down, and knock you back down to earth when you need it.

Here are some of the videos of my earlier appearence at ACHPER

Part 1

Part 2

How to make a Footbag Routine Part 4

2009-11-30T02:23:00.000-08:00

When you want to do hard tricks, you can put them all together in a grouping, or have them just after you've taken a break. For example, Takumi's world's routine.

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/12545

Note: see the pixie swirl and the final ripstein--he really has a break, gets ready, then he has every chance of completing the trick. He makes it as easy as possible to succeed. All the other hard tricks are in one section towards the start. But most of them are forgotten by the end, especially because there was no climax in the music when he did them.

For a good example of hitting hard tricks during the climax, and making them more memorable, see Vasek semi-final 2006.

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10059

To see how to set up and have preparation for tricks, see my semi-final world's routine:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10059

I am playing to the music with each set up trick, but it is actually a rest if you can find music that really helps you get ready for those big tricks, then it will be much easier. Also, see in the semi-final routine that I only play to the music right at the start and right at the end.

In the middle, the music plays at about the same speed at the whole time, but you don't realize because your first and last impressions are that I'm really organized. It's so easy to tell that I'm playing to the music. Don't be too subtle, because if people can't tell, it doesn't help you. You really want people to be able to tell that you've practiced. Have a look at Lon Smith in the semi-finals of
Worlds 2007:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/10291

He's really entertaining, hits hard tricks, but it was so disorganized and obvious that he never practiced it that it scored badly and he was unlucky not to make finals, despite his amazing skill level.

Use breaks to help you. See my qualifying routine:

http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/12543

From x to x after the p.s whirl, I am resting. I do juggling then very slowly have one bag on each foot and atw’s, then I do kicks and knee bumps. That was all a break for me because I was dying by that point, and I knew to put that rest there because in practice I was always tired at that point. So I wrote a break into the routine.

How to make a Footbag Routine Part 3

2009-11-30T02:19:00.000-08:00

Now that you have some music which has different sections, see if you can write down when the section start and stop. See if there are two or three-second breaks between those sections. You'll also see if the sections of the music are 15, 20, or even 25 seconds. Less than that is fine but longer than 20 sec. is going to make it hard for you to remember which tricks you are supposed to be doing. I'll explain more later.

Song example: Queen "Don't Stop me Now"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58CJih1iYC0

Section 1: 29-38 sec.
Section 2: 39-55
Section 3: 55-1:08
Section 4: 1:09-1:29
Section 5: 1:30-1:48
Section 6: 1:49-2:00
Section 7: 2:00-2:16
Section 8: 2:17-2:32

In each section of this song, you can write one of your move groupings next to it. I recommend at the start, because you will be nervous, you pick the very easiest possible section and if that's just kicks, that's fine.

If you don't have enough different moves to do different tricks for two min. you can just kick it at the start. Do not repeat the same tricks when you have easier tricks that are different ―it looks terrible if you the same mirage, butterfly, and legover the entire time.

Your chart could look like this:

Section 1: easy toe tricks
Section 2: clipper-style tricks or inside clipper
Section 3: body tricks
Section 4: unusual
Section 5: guiltless
Section 6: two of your hard tricks, e.g. ripwalk and pixie butterfly

It's ok for your routine to finish five seconds early. It's also ok to finish less than five seconds late. e.g. 2 min. 3 sec. is ok. Avoid having to edit your music ―it will never be as good as playing to an unedited song.

When you get ready for your routine, all you have to do is remember what type of tricks to do in each section of the music. Never try to remember something like this: clipper, butterfly, p mirage, mirage, lo, atw, butterfly ―it's too hard to remember, and if you drop you will never recover. Each time you do the routine in practice, you do the same tricks just in a different order. Make up the order each time. Being able to change the order will help you.

Also, when you practice your routine, if you drop the same trick more than three times in a row, you need to remove that trick. You will drop it if you do it in competition with all the pressure.

If you do the routine and you drop in different places each time, there is nothing you can do except keep practicing ―you're doing fine if that's happening.

If you lose your way, let the music guide you. You may forget to do the spins and ducks in section 3, but when the music changes for section 4 (unusual), you want the music to be able to REMIND you what you are supposed to be doing. Routine is really hard, you need to do everything you can to help yourself. When you want to do hard tricks, you can put them in the one section, like many players do. It can be good to have one hard trick at the end to finish, but if you drop that trick, don't pick it up ―just make an action with your body which says "this is the end of the routine."

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htyr-xOS2X0
(See the very last action he does at the end of the video)

Alan Rea and Footbag at Candlebark School

2009-11-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Today I had the great pleasure of speaking about Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story at Candlebark School in Romsey. It was founded and run by one of our most popular and widely read Australian authors, John Marsden. As a twelve or thirteen year old I attended the creative writing work shops and it made a profound mark on me and my interest in books and writing. I wrote to John with the book to thank him for putting on the program and also hoping that he would have a chance to have a look and tell me what he thought. I was correct in guessing he gets a lot of books sent to him, but fortunately he read the book and loved it!

It was organised that I would come to the school today to speak about my experiences and the importance of knowing our grandparents and relatives stories, as for me, finding out the stories of my great uncle Alan Rea has been one of the most formative experiences I've had.

I also did some Footbagging with the students which was fun :) It was a great day and it I loved having such attentive students.

Powerpoint presentation

Myself and John speaking to the students about Footbag

Action shot!

Love it

Global Heart Tours in the Melbourne University Voice Magazine

2009-11-14T00:25:00.001-08:00

Hi Everyone,

Just recently Global Heart Tours was featured in an article in Melbourne University Voice. Its a bit hard to read so I've got the article underneath :) It talks about how the tours are used to help young australian language learners improve their skills and how the group started off. We've gotten some good interest from the story so thank you so much for having us in there Unimelb Voice.

Streetscape classrooms

In June 2008 after finishing exams, University of Melbourne Arts student Dan Ednie and his friends had some time on their hands. The Japanese language learners were also feeling the pressure to ‘keep up’ with fellow students raised in Asia as multiple language speakers. So the students invented a way to use their leisure to practice communicating beyond their mother tongues.

Dan realised that despite being an enthusiastic student, Japanese class only showed him the grammar and vocabulary, but he, and numerous other aspiring language learners, had no real chance to use them. At the same time he saw a dire need for young Australians to connect more with the international students who tended to keep to themselves and form friendships.

“It was when a friend of mine who’d been studying a Commerce degree for two and a half years told me that she’d only recently found out that she could just take a tram all the way down to Federation Square that I realised we really need to help international students connect with Melbourne,” says Mr. Ednie.

From this point Global Heart Tours, as it was later named, began giving half-Japanese half-English tours of Melbourne and it was through this medium that both the learners and the international students who came on the tours could improve their cross-cultural knowledge and try out those language skills.

The themed tours take in the Central City, including State Library and coffee culture destinations, a Tastes of Melbourne tour looks at the city’s Greek, Italian and Chinese precincts, a City South Tour includes 20/20 cricket and art galleries, a Bar tour, and a Garden Picnic tour that culminates in tim tams at Captain Cook’s Cottage in the Treasury Gardens.

“Through Global Heart Tours we’ve found that international students are really surprised – and actually feel really proud – when they find local students who speak their language, and are keen to engage in language exchange,” says Mr Ednie.

“It helps everyone to relax and experiment with language if we can move in and out of our native tongues, and our comfort zones, while having a fun social experience that builds confidence. When they hear us make our mistakes in their first language, they don’t feel they have to be perfect in English.”

www.globalheartours.com

Presentation at ACHPER Music and Sport Conference

2009-11-08T15:37:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

About a month back I gave a 30 minute powerpoint presentation about Footbag to a group of about 50 Physical Education Teachers in Melbourne. I was the keynote speaker and it lead to five or six schools contacting me and organising to have Footbag at their schools. ACHPER (Australian Council for Health Physical Education and Recreation) had it videoed and it's on their home page now :) http://www.achper.vic.edu.au/index.php

You can watch the video here:
http://www.achper.vic.edu.au/professional-learning/video/dan-ednie.html

I've also been teaching at some schools recently and I've loved it totally!

Ivanhoe Girls Grammar
Goulburn Valley Grammar School
Methodist Ladies College
Cobden Primary School
Girl Sport Victoria Year 7 Sport Expo
Mandeville

And performing at
Ashwood Community Day
Maroondah Festival
Lowther Hall AGS

Doing the Footbag demonstration at the end of a class at MLC

I'm off to Catholic College Sale today !!! I've never been there before and I'm really keen to show the students how to play Footbag :D

Vasek at Circle Contest Worlds Berlin 2009

2009-09-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

This was truly epic, but what did it mean?

You will notice watching it that the first minute at least is almost without any risk. The majority of the tricks are butterflies and the overwhelming emotion is that the run hasn't started. That the tricks in the beginning are so simple actually tells us that this will be an extremely long run. It runs for almost three minutes. This is not a long time for Vasek. He is not really playing for the tricks, only the swifter and two vortexes even suggest that he is hitting tricks because he likes them. He is not playing for tricks, he is playing for contacts.

For those not at worlds, you might not know that Vasek almost never plays in the seven days, in fact he only came on tuesday afternoon or wednesday morning from memory.

It is suggested that the best outcome from the invention of circle is that it forced Vasek to play for the cameras. If you look back at footage from Worlds 07, with a couple of exceptions, the only footage available is from the circle contest. He took about five- ten runs in the same area, but the people that have video from that haven't really posted it in many places. The Monday following worlds 07 he actually shredded at Terra Verde for over two hours hitting unbeleivable combos like attempted gauntlet> nemesis to some thing else which he dropped.

Because Vasek's routines generally circle around the same tricks and combinations, the first run of his circle is always something which is highly anticipated. But the first run in the circle finals is the run that he chooses to make his point to everyone watching. Vasek tried with this run to prove that he is in a league of his own and that he is really the only player in the circle. Milan Benda showed us though that there is, in the absence of Jorden Moir, an intermediate between Vasek and the rest. Milan annihilated the circle final with almost all runs over 40 contacts even more convincingly than Vasek won Worlds circle. If anyone has footage of this, let me know.

During this time the other three had to start concentrating on staying warm, to stand waiting for four minutes or longer for your try is too long. Say you drop three moves in, its as though you haven't played, the bag goes to Vasek, then Milan and then you need to construct a run. The intimidation factor for me was too cruel in this competition. While it has established a record length run in circle which might not be broken for a year or so, I didn't really rejoice in this statement. It seemed as though it was a way of making it harder for the other players to stay warm, like a plan. What are your thoughts?

Thanks

Dan

How to make a Footbag Routine Part 2

2009-09-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

2. Choosing tricks

*Write down all the tricks you can do confidently
*If a trick is something you can do about 8 out 10, definitely don't put it on the list. 9 out of 10 is borderline. But put all your 10 out of 10 tricks on the list
*Organize those tricks into about 6 six groups of similar tricks. Here's an example of some groupings based on style of trick:

Easy toes section
*toe delay
*legover
*atw
*mirage

Easy inside and clipper section
*inside
*clipper
*clipper-set pickup
*clipper-set legover

Unusual section
*jester
*lap catch
*back of the neck stall
*chest stall
*knee kicks

Body tricks section
*spinning toe delay
*ducking clipper
*diving clipper
*osis
*spinning clipper

Guiltless section
*butterfly
*p mirage
*sym mirage
*smear
*dlo

Hard section
*ripwalk
*ducking butterfly
*whirl
*pixie butterfly

You don't need to have a lot of really hard tricks to do a great-looking routine.

Video link: Scott from Australia

How to make a Footbag Routine

2009-09-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

This is the first part of a series on how to make a Footbag routine. This is something I wrote in full about a year ago and I hope you love it. Remember to RSS this blog in its new address to keep getting the updates to your feeder.

1. Music choice

Your music should really be all of the following things:

*Everyone can enjoy your music, even if you weren't playing footbag to it

*It's good if it's well-known, but that's not absolutely necessary

*Have some sections faster and slower than others

*Use music that you already know really well

*Do not choose heavy metal or angry music―EVER! And don’t kid yourself with the line “I’ll get my best technical performance if I play to music that inspires me and even if people don’t like my music they will appreciated how inspired I am and how in-sync I am” . This just isn’t true. All you do when you choose such music is alienate people – and judges will always have a bad music choice in the back of their head when they write your artistic mark.

*Do not choose music that is really, really fast or really, really slow – its just too hard to play well to.

*Do not choose music that repeats the same tune or words all the time – it will be harder for you to use the music to cue you into new sections if you get lost – and it may become frustrating for a crowd.

*Choose music that will have short breaks (1-4 seconds) interspersed throughout the whole routine

*There should be obvious sections where the music is very noticeably different from the previous section

Vasek at Euros 2007

Upcoming Footbag Stars from the Czech Republic

2009-08-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

At the Czech, European and World Championships I had the fun of hanging out and playing Footbag with Patrick Cerny (14) and Honza Drugda (14)! They are two of the three upcoming starts of the Czech Republic, along with Jindra Smula (15). I am really glad that I learned enough Czech to be able to communicate with them. They are learning English at school but it’s still early days.

Name: Partick Cerny
Age: 14
Home Town: Kralove Hradec
Years Playing: almost 4
Best Tricks: Symposium whirling swirl, scorpions tail

Analysis: Patrick came third in routines at the Czech Championships in Jesenik and made the semi-finals of the European Championships in Open. He is very very good at routines already, he has a good feel for the music and has a very graceful style to match. With Patrick it’s not about the tricks he is doing necessarily which impresses you, even though this is also impressive, its more about the control he has on his sets and the balance of his body. I am really amazed by it and when I first saw him playing I realised immediately that he could be one of the best.

Big weakness at the moment are his flipside whirls and double dexes. He is really good at whirls, Steve Goldberg was telling me that this was because he had such good timing of the hip rotation. But he “cannot” yet do a flipside whirl. It’s really incredible that he didn’t learn it.

Partick will be at worlds, speak slowly in English to him, he is a really great player and a good kid.

Name: Honza Drugda
Age: 14
Home Town: Kralove Hradec
Years Playing: 10 months
Best Tricks: Motion, pixie paradon

Analysis: Honza is a really fast learner having only played for 10 months and already being semi guiltless with quite a few five add tricks up his sleve. He has really solid ducking and pixie sets and is working on a lot more. He competed in Intermediate at European Championships and came second with a really well choreographed routine. I can’t understand why the Czechs are so good at routines. While even the best shredders radically underperform, they tend to play much better than what you would expect from seeing them on the sidelines. Honza actually won the intermediate routines as well at worlds!

Honza is really tall for his age and will improve a lot more as he controls his body better. It’s so amazing watching him play because he has such such big feet and if he had a more natural Footbag body then he would already be twice as good as he is now.

Name: Jindra Smula
Age: 15
Home Town: Prague (kind of, It’s a seriously long way out though)
Years Playing:
Best Tricks: p.s whirl, blurriest

Analysis: Jindra has the Eye of the Tiger. He really wants to be the best at Footbag and trains more than the other two I think. Its hard to say though because all of them must play as much as their bodies can take everyday. At the Slovakian Champs Jindra went from not being able to hit a quantum set to hitting quantum switch, quantum butterfly and quantum mirage all on both sides in about 10 minutes. He has pretty good steps (one side) and pixies (both I think).

His big problem is that he doesn’t concentrate enough on his style to really take it to the next level at the moment. He takes a double step for left clipper to far switch and infinity which really slows him down. He also turns his ankle in too far when he hits switch and dlo tricks. Milan and I are trying to sort this out, and Vasek tried too, but he still has it – sigh. He will be really really good though, I know it.

Footbag Promotional Video

2009-08-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Ian Pritchard from Sydney made a terrific video recently about Footbag and I wanted to share it with you. Ian is doing the talking and I am doing the playing in the video – I really need some new shorts though, I got them when I was 15 or 16 I think.

Check it out on www.ausfootbag.org It will come up automatically on the homepage :D

The Vasek Klouda Manual: How to Play Footbag

2009-08-01T21:46:00.000-07:00

The Vasek Klouda Manual: How to Play Footbag is a 90+ page eBook written for everyone from beginners to advanced players. In the five months I spent in the Czech Republic I had access to the inner world of now seven-time world champion Vasek Klouda. In many ways this text is the product of those discussion, my questions and Vasek's feelings toward footbag as a sport and a lifestyle.

The book is available for download for US$5 with half of all proceeds going to the IFPA to help fund the future of Footbag worldwide. The text covers three core topics: How to train footbag, The psychology of footbag, and the exact trick tips that will help you to master ever set and every downtime component.

You can read the three page biography of Vasek if you schroll down on this blog and I will be releasing exerpts there once a week.

The place to download it is at
http://www.footbag.cz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=70
Or if that link doesn't work then go to
www.footbag.cz and click on the second news item.

Thank you

Thank you to the Czech Footbag Association

2009-08-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

I’ve lived and shredded in the Czech Republic, for the last five months and now as I head back to Australia I am thinking of all the great times I’ve had here. One of my biggest reasons for playing Footbag, there are a lot of them though, is that I get to meet people all over the world and that I have an instant network of friends. I was picked up at the airport by Honza, I was translated for when registering with my university by Jana, I have been driven all over the Czech Republic as well as Slovakia and Poland by Dexter. I learnt the psychology of Footbag from Vasek, doubles with Ales and I learnt how to relax and not be such a workoholic with Milan. I learnt great Czech with Jana and Milan in particular, but everyone helped. And I learnt how to drink from everyone as well – thanks guys I’m an alcoholic now lol.

Thank you so much, I will never forget my time here in CZ.

Jana and I being so roztomily!

The final hoop. Dike moc pro vsechno Ales!

Patriku lost his ball at Todexon near lavka bar

Everyone was watching hoping that Vasek didn't fall in the water

Got it!

This was so epic

2009-07-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

Here is some more information from the World Champs.

I spent the week playing with people I'd never played with before, having great comversations about footbag technique, talking about trick tips and footbag education with so many players from all around the world. I was so happy to have about 60 players attend my IFPA Certified Instructors Workshop on Friday morning. We covered a lot of topics including a full hour simulation of what it is like to be a new player and how classes can be structured. The rest was a mishmash of topics like how to promote the sport, how to approach schools, how to present yourself professionally and how to get into newspapers and on TV. The players party the previous night was off the chart so I was stuggling after two hours of working with the group, but many have since emailed me about organising their own Footbag 4 Fun in their own countries.

In terms of my personal performance I came 13th. I went dropless in the the preliminary finals and was poised to do a terrific routine in semi-finals. I felt I had a really good shot, but just as they were about to call me up the event organiser came over and said that my music wasn't playing on the computer. It had played when I gave them the music, but apparently they'd changed computer and hadn't checked until now. I had to do a routine to a song I wasn't ready for, the choreography was terrible and I didn't make the final :( That's life... the rest of the tournament was totally awesome, and I had more time to work on Footbag Education with the competing out of the way.

href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kxI63t2rmME/SnEENwtyipI/AAAAAAAAARg/c4ryhUIc0nc/s1600-h/instructors5.jpg">
Me talking (I love these kinds of photos :P)

Learning how to perform the kicks from the perspective of beginners was a valuable exercise for the instrutors who are already so advanced in their own ability that it's hard to imagine not being able to do the basic kicks sometimes.

Here we are working on our technique for Footbag Golf

Hold 'em! Hold those Footbags!

Thank you so much to all instructors who came!

30th World Footbag Championships 2009

2009-07-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

What an incredible week!

I am writing from Korea where I am now recovering from one of the greatest weeks of my Footbag life - the 30th World Footbag Championships in Berlin. I had the pleasure of learning and training doubles Footbag with Ales Zelinka and in the lead up to the tournament we really started to be able to improvise better and better. Being able to know where your partners' dex is going to be, when to call a spin, and when not, and the thrill of playing a choreographed routine to a large crowd of footbag afficados was just the best. Thank you so so much Ales for this very special part of my week.

Mens Doubles Net Finals

The organisation was absolutely unbeliable with about 1000 spectators from the public in addition to all the players and fans who had been there all week coming to the finale. This was the first time I saw Footbag as the main event in a massive arena. There were dozens of cameras, a big screen behind the action which showed scores and the players names much like professional broadcasts. It was a huge step forward for our sport and I want to thank Paul Cronjager, Mattias Lino-Smidt, Jakub Wagner, Andrew McCagar, Yves Kriel and Max Kerkoff for making Berlin 2009 the biggest Worlds I've ever been to and most likely the best ever (biased, lol)

My personal results in the competition were not as I had hoped sadly. My first round was a dropless performance, but after preparing for my routine to Elvis Presley - Viva Las Vegas for two days I was told that the file on the computer didn't work and they wanted to know if I had a backup on another disk. I obviously didn't and I was forced to use the same routine as the first round all of a sudden. I couldn't really beleive it at first, sadly the choreography was totally different and I kept getting confused about which tricks to do next in the music. I was also totally over DJ Otzi hey baby and I think everyone else probably was too.

I finished somewhere in the top twenty but the results have been slow in coming. The reason why this sounds really high is because it was very very difficult to make the cut into semi finals and there were only 24 there from an original 72. So making it to the semi finals was a great thing. I did a lot of hard tricks that I don't usually attempt in routines because I realised that I wasn't going to score well for artistic because it was clear that I had forgotten the choreography. I hit a mobius in the routine which was for the first time in any routine at any tournament or performance at a festival or school :D

I was a bit sad about this music mix up for about two hours and then I was over it and loving the tournament again. Competing is just one part of the pie and getting knocked out meant I could judge the finals which was awesome, except as the scores were going up we realised that all of us had ranked the 2-6th players in a different order, so it might be a controversial result. It was mainly because the standard was very very high, I'll be interested to see what other people think about the results and why. Thank you so much to everyone who came! It was the best.

Vasek Biography Part Two

2009-07-23T06:09:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

I'm writing this from worlds, and it is a fantastic atmosphere with so so many fantastic players. Olaf Piowar from Poland and Anssi Sunberg are the standout players. There has also been a much higher standard of routines in the qualifications than in previous years. I went dropless and still couldnt win my pool in qualifications but I still am aiming for finals :D I will be running the IFPA Certified Instructors Workshop tomorow at the event site from 11am. I want to help instructors all over the world to be able to share their ideas, have the knowledge and resources they need to teach and to have a network of other teachers to refer to. Tomorrow will be a big day in my role as Education Director of the IFPA

Here is the second part of Vasek's:

So the promotion finished, most people stopped playing at my school Fakud had to go back to Russia. I didn‘t have any friend to play with. This was a really bad time for me and footbag. And it was sad. I was sad. I had the feeling that this sport was so good but I didn‘t know why I lost my motivation at the time. I know now of course, but I thought that maybe I was weak.

Two months later, I was at Kampa park when saw Vojta playing. I was so happy. I knew that I had found someone that I could come and play with. I only knew the kicks then, but I saw him doing the delays. So I took his number and we set up a meet time for the next day. This is one of the craziest things that ever happend, When Vojta and I played the next day at Kampa park, Ales came. And then Ales started to play. So the place where we all met will always be a very special place to me.

Vojta was my teacher because his level was quite high and he was really friendly. I wanted to be like him. Not just with him, but I wanted to play Footbag like him, think like him, talk like him, do everything like him.

Ales and Vojta had the internet, so they showed me Footbag on that and I was really happy that there was a big world of Footbag and I knew where I was going.

Then Dexter came and he was the best. He didn‘t come to the sessions as often though. It was kind of like the king that you never could know that well. So I was always looking forward to meeting him. When I met him, he was my teacher. I wanted to learn tricks what he do. And think how he thinks. I wanted to be the same.

When I started I was mainly practicing with Ales. He was so talented, he helped me so much at the start. This wasnt just sport, it was also nice friendships. When I was playing during these first few months after meeting Vojta, Ales and Dexter, my goal was to be better than Dexter - which happened after eight months.

I also found out, after a couple of months, that the president of the Czech Footbag Association (CFA), Tms Tperkl lived only three streets from me. I thought that I could have played with him when Fakud left, but the timing wasn’t that bad, he was actually venuzeuela at that time, so I couldn’t play with him anyway.

So after the next year I was 15, maybe still 14. It was time for the European Championships and that’s where I met Steve Golberg and Ryan Mulroney. Ryan was the world champion, so I wanted to be like him. I decided that I could copy him. I knew this method of copying from from when I played chess. You can see how players do moves in different situations, and in chess the best way to get better is to copy the same kinds of moves that the best do.

They have already found the best ways of doing things, just like Ryan had. So you don’t have to think about it to much, you just repeat it. This is much faster than making a new system. Ales and Honza said that I was a copy machine, and they were makin fun of me. But i didn‘t care, I knew the way.

In telling you this, what I would like to tell you is that you must find the best teachers, and find as many as you can. If the teacher was still just Vojta, I would stay on the same level for 10 years. I go higher and higher, from teacher to teacher. When you are practising you can always look to see in front of your eyes the final position, for a long time I was looking at Ryan as the final position. Don‘t look were you are, look where you want to be. Imagination shows you what will happen.

Vasek Klouda Biography Part 1

2009-07-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone

Vasek and I have been working on a new Manual which we hope will help Footbaggers all over the world improve their Footbag ten-fold. I'm going to be putting up some exerpts from the book, first part is a short biography on Vasek - here is the first of three parts:

When I was ten years old, my father was one of the best tennis players and usually he wanted me to play tennis. But I felt the pressure, and because of that pressure, I didnt want to play tennis. I was interested in Eastern philosophy. I was intersted in fighting systems. When I was 11, I started going for boxing and the teacher of the boxing told me I had good legs. He told me that I should do something with it. So I went to taekwondo, but after one year I realised that this is not life, and this fighting is not sport that I want to be the best at. I realised that fighting is not good as a sport.

My father taught me chess from the age of 12, and we played together a lot. Then we went to competitions together trying to win some money. And that was once I started winning that he took me to the place where they played professional chess. After some years in a chess club, I was the league champion. And I also had a chance to play against the then world champion Kasparov. I was playing chess for two years, so I was fourteen when I first saw Footbag.

A footbagger called Ivan Lamarch came to my primary school to promote footbag. I had seen hackysack already but I wasn’t very interested in it. I thought it was a street thing just for fun. But when I saw footbag and this promotion, I was so interesed in this sport.

That moment was a big one for me. Everyone was playing it, so I played it too. At that time I had a friend who’s family was renting an apartment with family from Russia. This family was from Uzbekistan and my friend‘s name was Fakud. He was so fast at footbag. He won all the competions with the promotion. So obviously he was much better than me. I couldn‘t even do five kicks in the first week and he did 1,000. so we were practicing together and I got better and better and after a while I was able to do 1,000 kicks.

I was so happy about this sport. It was so fun, but what I loved on this was that i didnt need money for it. I didnt have the money, and neither did my family. During the promotions there were prizes like a discman. For a kid of fourteen, this was a big thing. And Ivan wrote to me on my t-shirt to keep practicing.

Part Two coming tomorrow

Interview with Milan Benda

2009-07-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

Milan and I just finished a great footbag session with Dan Spacil. Dan is a great player hitting lots of fives and whirring swirl! Today Milan hit symposium torque> p.s whirl> repeat, almost blurriest> flurry> paradon swirl repeat (so so close).

I wanted to have a deeper intereview with Milan because he is a top footbag player and has a lot of trick tips and advice about Footbag.

Dan: Cau Milan
Milan: Cau ptakopysk (Hi playpus in Czech)

Dan: How was the session today?
Milan: quite short we will have longer today.

Dan: Many footbaggers are trying to improve their footbag, what do you think is the main advice you would give to them?
Milan: First they must have a hardcore trainings, with both sides. With Ales (laughs). In general people must play more. Al ot of good players play less than I think , thats so bad, they must play more.

Dan:How long do you think people should play for each day?
Milan: When they start and the level is not so high , they can play three hours by day. Because it doesnt take as much energy to play. When their level is good they must play two hours like six times in a week.

Dan: When do you think people are good?
Its relative, but When somebody can hit more than 30 contacts guiltless and he can hit some good moves and he has got good flipside and style. Style is important

Dan: Why is style important?
Milan: because when yo uhave a good style, the trickls are coming faster and in better execution and people love it when somebody has a good style.

Dan: You were telling me earlier about posture, body position, what should people know about this?
Milan: Its one of the parts of style becaues a lot of players which start {I had the same problem) they play and they are body is like crooked and so weak as well, its too weak to have the good posture, standing up straight. whne you stand straight youre style will be so much better. and execution of all the tricks. souvisi Because everythign links to everything else in footbag.

Dan: Which tricks is this posture most crucial for?
Milan: A lot of new players do just ducking tricks and not a lot of spins and when they do spins they are "fraggy" Which is when they footbag stays on your clipper too long and ten when you finally set it is too delayed. (Milan stood up to show me what he means and his back made a popping sound!). So this is bad form.

You can see it with the stepping set when the shoulders and the top of your body are going down and the legs are going higher. This is so bad. Just legs must go higher, the body must be straight. Its when the shoulders and the knees are getting so close together. Even for stepping ducking you just just set higher rather than bending down. The way to fix this problem is to go to the gym and work on your upper body and you will have the strength to stay straight.

Dan: What would you say to someone who is just doing footbag for the first month?
Milan: First kicking, a lot of kicks. and toe stalls. Just do inside kicks and toe kicks. Outside is shit. After that do inside stalls, clippers, toe stalls, around the world, and ... (forever)

Dan: What is the hardest challenge in Footbag for you?
Preparing Routines. Because its hard. But I do it for every competition.

Dan: How do you prepare your routines?
First I must love the song. Second I must hear it many times. After that I try to play to this music and prepare it like for a many parts and try to remember what is on each part. But never prepare it trick by trick for every second just prepare it for parts. Often there can be like ten parts.

Dan: Thank you Milan for your interview!
Milan: Thank you Dan, Klokan (Kangaroo in Czech)

European Footbag Championships 2009 Strzelin, Interview with Milan Benda

2009-07-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

European Footbag Championships in Strezelin, Poland was a fantastic event and I loved being there. It was my very first Euros, which after almost 10 years of playing is a really big surprise. I was so lucky to play with guys like Marcin Bujko, Norek Dudziński and Yves Kriel. The standard at the tournament was really high, and I was really happy to make the Final in Routines. This was the only event I competed in, because I wanted to spend more time making new friends and really enjoying stress-free Footbag with new players.

Results here
http://www.footbag.org/events/show/1235653935

Milan Bender was pretty much the king of the tournament, coming second in Routine and Request contest and winning the shred thirty and circle - here is his routine:

Milan and I were working on our routines for about an hour for before the event. I was really nervous for him because he was dropping it so much in practice, and sometimes forgot what he was doing. We both decided that we couldn't do any more practice without tiring ourselves out, and bravely faced the music. As you can see Milan's was a faultless performance with so many hard tricks and terrific choreography. I had two drops in the last fifteen seconds, which really killed any chance I had of placeing higher, but I was really happy with my routine, and I couldn't have done any better because the level was so high.

Here is what Milan Benda had to say about the competition:

Dan: Cau Milan! How was Euros?
Milan: NIce I loved it!

Dan: What was your favourite part?
Milan: Finals circle was great, becaues it was such a high level of players, and we did like whatever we wanted, it was just massacre, yeah.

Dan: How did you feel during circle, you destroyed everyone!
Milan: (laughs) is it good question? hahah Yeah I felt good, but Damian was so good too. I love when he wasnt afraid of double spinning clipper to stepping far osis or something. Or when he did matador to spinning pdx dlo and after that a long run.

Dan: Do you think you have what it takes to beat Vasek?
Milan: I think vasek is still bestadn its not possible now, maybe in some years, but... But he is still the best.
Dan: What is the difference between him and you now?

A big difference, its hard to say, he can bust, he can do massacres all times, he can do everythi both sides and nice style. Longer runs and better style and harder tricks, but he is like my teacher, I love it.

Dan: What are the areas of your game you want to improve for Worlds?
Milan: Everything (laughs). I think more spins flipside, and more variety maybe. I want to do some more big ones, like really massive trick. Maybe nemesis back to back or something. But I am happy with the level on which I am now, but anyway it can be better.

Dan: Who will be the big surprise at this years World Championships in Berlin?
Milan: I think Juho (Marjo). But he is a long time on the Footbag scene, we will see. He wasnt at the Worlds for a long time, so people might forget how good he is. Its a pity when top US players can't come. Because it can be a good challenge with them.

Thanks so much for organising a great tournament (From Dan and Milan)

Footbag Teaching in the Czech Republic

2009-06-24T06:23:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!!!

(English Version)
I've already been in the Czech Republic for four months. Its a really long time, but I really like it here, I especially love Czech language and European people. Last week I finished my final exam and now everyday has become a holiday for me.

I went on the weekend to play Footbag with Vasek Klouda (6 time world champion), we are writing a manual on Footbag together at the moment for more advanced players. He taught me a lot of new technique for better footbag = so I'm pretty happy.

I've also been teaching some Czechs at these festivals how to play footbag - in Czech! Even though I teach a lot of Footbag all the time, doing it in Czech is so so much more exciting at the moment - because I am so bad at it, but I really still get a big thrill out of new Footbaggers getting the satisfaction of hitting their first kicks and tricks.

(Czech Version)
Už jsem v Ceské Republic pro 4 měsic! Dost dlouhy čas neviš. Ale tady se me libi, vlaštně opravdu zbožnuju česky jazyků a Evropa lidy. Minuly tyden udělal jsem můj poslední zkouška a takže každy den stalo prazdniny!!

Na vikend šel jsem do venkově a tamhle hral jsem footbag s Vasikem Kloudem (šestinasobny mistr světa) a Dexter massere. S Vaskem jsme psame nove manual pro šikovny footbagger. Vašek ucil mě hodne teknik pro lepši Footbagu = Bavi se mě.

Unas učim taky nove lidy jak se hrat Footbag. Během tenhle festival učim Footbag v Cestinu. Vzdycky učim Footbag ale v Cestinu to je moc moc napinavy. Jěstě ne mám dovednost v Cestinu a tak když můzu komunikovat spravny to je vybourny. Když nove Footbagger uděla novy trikky skutečně mám hrdost.

Tady je hezky fotka od Mlada Bolešlava

Here are some great photo from Mlada Boleshlav

I promise the Footbag on the ground isnt the one I dropped, I wish you could see the bag :P

Teaching Footbag

Footbag on the Stage

Cesky Zapad Volunteering with Roma People

2009-06-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,

So its been almost four months for me now in the Czech Republic and my skills have taken some really big boosts here. I am about one week away from the end of my exams, but have been travelling a lot in the last two weeks as well. I’ve had three really clear goals typed up and posted in my college dorm wall and I’m making good ground on all of them, even though they are very general and I might never “complete” them per se.

• Get my Czech language proficiency as high as possible
• Learn as much as I can about the Czech culture, values and people
• Learn as much as I can about the structure of language and second language acquisition.

I realised three weeks ago that i had to leave Prague to really get my conversational up , and I had too many ways out of speaking Czech in Prague. So many of the young people here speak English, and even if they don’t speak well, they see me as their rare golden opportunity to practice. I can understand their reasoning, and some of them really think they are doing me a favour, but I think its unfair given that I have had to pay my way here, and if they want to speak English so badly they can go to England, North America, New Zealand or (God help them with understanding our accent) Australia.

Czech Footbag Championships - Jesenik
I spent one week in a mountain town about five hours drive from Prague called Jesenik, We had the Czech Footbag Championships there and I was speaking Czech with a lot of the players and the host, Milan Bender’s, family. Here are some cool photos from the event.

Circle Contest Semi Finals

Jesenik - beautiful town

I came fifth in the routines, which is better than I did in the previous big tournament I attended (Todexon 10) where I didn’t make the final. I have a lot of hard work to do here, but I am really focussed on improving my footbag and its been necessary for me to take some backward steps. I was happy to come third in circle contest behind Vasek and Milan who were totally in a class of their own at the tournament.

I have been working on a manual with Vasek Klouda (6-time World Champ). He is teaching me the psychology behind his unbelievable skill. A lot is technical, but the psycolgical training is the part that I am most interested in. We did a lot of writing of the manual where he spoke and I typed during the week in Jesenik

Cesky Zapad – Dobra Voda
I was a volunteer for a full week with a Gypsy community about 3 hours from Prague. Buses leave once and come once a day from there so it is a very isolated, poor community. The NGO I worked with (Cesky Zapad or Czech West) has taken the community from near 0% employment to 70% employment in the last five years and has totally inspired me. Their philosophy was to work on projects that the Roma (gypsy) families wanted, and to ensure that the emotional ownership of those projects was felt by the community first and foremost. Its lead to numerous grants and financial support from the European Union. While I was there the minister for Social Work (I am not sure if this is the title exactly because they were telling me in Czech) was speaking to them via email about how the Czech Government could replicate their success.

Compost clearance

Group photo - it was a huge boost! but a long days work.

Me with Romany! It was so glad i could speak to him, because it was all in Czech

Gypsies are generally prejudiced against and find it very difficult to find employers in mainstream Czech society. They are often evicted from their homes in more surburban areas because rent prices go down if there are Gypsies known to be living in a block of flats. They are known as thieves and have a bad reputation for laziness and lack of responsibility. I took a class called Interculturalism in the Czech Context with my exchange program here and we read and talked a lot about this segregation. I interviewed a number of my Czech friends for a research project and almost all said that the problems were with the Gypsies themselves, not with any Czech racism to them. They often said surprisingly racist things about the Gypsies like: ‘Gypsies will never work and don’t want to be a part of Czech (republic)’. One friend even said ‘Wow, it sounds really racist when I say it like that’.

I felt privideldge to be apart of their community development day on saturday where they cleaned up a lot of the surrounding area with heavy machinery that was lent to them by local farmers.

http://www.cesky-zapad.cz/fotogalerie/svatek-sousedu-2009

čech čas = vybourný

2009-05-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

Ahoj Everyone!

So its been about 3 months now for me in the Czech Republic! I have been working hard on my subjects, I have been doing mainly linguistics subjects, which I am taking here instead of Australia. For every hour I've worked on those 6 six uni subjects, I've spent at least an hour on learning czech. Its a totally different language set up, in that a lot of information is built into the nouns and adjectives. I've spent most of my time trying to master the new vocab in the nominative case (dictionary form) and the verb conjugations. I can have some conversations - but generally I'm terrible. I have made a pretty cool youtube however of me singing a Cech song!

Singing Gipsz.Cz on Youtube

I've generally been playing footbag, socialising, doing some tourist style things and taking it easy :D Footbag 4 Fun has been more or less on hold in Australia, but still going and Global Heart Tours was still going strong for first two months that I was gone, but the momentum has dropped siginicantly. I am really pumped to work so hard on Global Heart Tours when I come back in August.

Footbag 4 Fun
Ollie Adams has been doing some Footbag workshops and I think he is learning a lot about Footbag teaching in the process :D Thanks heaps ollie. I have had the pleasure of speaking to Footbag teachers from all over the world, and my job now for the International Footbag Players Association is to provide resources for Footbag instuctors like manuals, game instructions, promotional advice and help. This has been quite successful so far, and I'll be running a Certification course at the World Footbag Champs in July in Berlin.

Global Heart Tours
We now have broshures printed out and are going will be distributing them - I learnt a lot about how to work with translators with this mini-project - I am hoping I will be a great person to work with tranlation and marketing/ promotion in the future and I realised that a lot of things can go wrong. You can't underestimate the care needed. And I will be reluctant to work by distance if I can avoid it. It is so so much better to get people to read out what we have outloud. The chances of mistakes getting in when people are reading things on screens is really high.

But that said, We have been very successful with getting a Chinese version of the website up and running

www.globalhearttours.com/cn

I've been reading Czech Literature - Kafka The Trial, Kundera - The Joke and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Bohumil Hrabal Too Loud A Solitude. I've been rereading books, which I never thought I would do, and it feels good to get deeper into a text. Usually at uni in Australia I just have to do things as quickly as I can to make time for the rest of what I do - but here I've had the luxury of really getting much deeper in my studies and thinking more about the structure of language. Its been great.

The semester is just about to finish so I will be doing some volunteer work in a more Czech speaking context and trying to get my level up to casual conversational :D So watch out for it in the next post.

Thanks,

Dan

Prague!

2009-03-20T06:42:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

I'm writing to you from my dorm room in Prague, Czech Republic! Its snowing lightly outside and I am still getting chills every now and again just realising how old this city is and how many people hvae walked the same streets I now walk. I have been fitting it much better than what I was expecting and the Czech I have been learning has helped me out on numerous occasions. Its a tough language but I am moving pretty fast and I've been fortunate enough to have some local friends already on arrival, and from there I've been meeting their friends, and making completely new ones.

My dorm room

Because I'm not a part of any particular exchange program, there is an American and a European one, I've been able to choose subjects that the local Czech students take (mainly in English) which has made me the only foreigner in a lot of my classes.

Milan Bender and myself on the way to a Footbag tournament in Presov, Slovakia

I've been trying out my Czech on my classmates, they laugh at me for various reasons, haha, they are surprised that a native English speaker would try to learn seeing that they can all speak English, but I would like to be able to speak to older generation Czechs, give tours in Czech in Australia and they have this killer phrase here

Kolik jayzku znáš tolikrat jsi člověkem
As many languages as you know is as many different people that you are

The length of my translation tells you both how bad my czech is and also how different the structure of the language is. you dont need to say "I" , "you" "them", it is indicated by the endings of verbs. English used to be like this before 1000's but changed slowly into having more words rather than being complicated within the word.

Nothing's Impossible
I have also had some exposure for Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story in Melbourne. We had spoken to Melbourne Weekly earlier, but they were taking a while to get around to us. I was leaving on tuesday, and we missed them on the Friday. We knew that without the photo it would never make the magazine, so we called them on Monday morning and they managed to come and take the photo on Monday afternoon in Degraves street. I answered the interview questions via email in Korea and now I am pretty much over the moon to see a scanned copy of it here.

Melbourne Weekly 16 March 2009. Click to Enlarge

Book reviews will (all things going to plan) be published in a number of aviation magazines, but with these they often take a while to eventuate due to the time required for people to read the text and then write up a story. There are a lot of other authors wanting their books publicised so it may take some a number of months.

Global Heart Tours
Over the last three weeks Global Heart Tours took 21 Japanese exchange students on three different tours and were involved in lunches, casual get togethers, sporting events and a conference that the students presented in their final days in Melbourne. We had seven tour guides that were a part of the whole thing and from what I've heard it was enjoyed by the students, the guides and the organisers thoroughly. Congratualtions everyone.

We have also completed the broshure's design, here is a sneak peek!

See you!

Dan Ednie

Nothing's Impossible in Stonnington Leader

2009-02-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

Nothing's Impossible Book Launch
In the lead up to the book launch, it was a race against time to get Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story printed and ready to go. We have 500 copies in total of the book! The book launch took place on Friday 6 of February and was attended by over 100 on the night! The book was officially launched by the Herald Sun, who were one of Flinders Island Airlines biggest clients, flying 10,792,011 miles, the equivalent of 431 flights around the world, and 22 return trips to the moon. They flew to the regional centres Corowa, Mildura, Hamilton, Canberra, Sunbury and Gippsland and delivered 42,932,960 Heralds.

Three generations of Ednie worked on this text to tell one of our families, and Australia's, great stories. From left to right Gillian Ednie, Dan Ednie-Lockett and Beverley Ednie.

Speeches at the Caulfield RSL function room.

The mic actually died in the middle of my speech! I think that actually helped ease the nerves though.

From right to left: David Gardiner (representative speaker from the RAAF), Rick Swinard (Representative speaker from the Herald Sun), Rob Pollock (long time neighbour and friend of Alans).

Signing a book for Vin Elder who was one of the volunteers at the RSL who helped us put on the night.

The night was a culmination of my work on the text. We will still be working on promoting it, but after five years - the project is completed and I feel very very satisfied. Thank you very much everyone who has helped me in this project.

Stonnington Leader 3/2/2009
Both Stonnington and Caulfield Leader newspapers have run stories on the book and you can read them here:

http://stonnington-leader.whereilive.com.au/lifestyle/story/words-on-wings/

I will be leaving for the Czech Republic on Tuesday the 17 Feb - tomorrow! I'll be studying linguistics and politics at Charles University in Prague. Any book orders can be sent to Gillian Ednie at gednie@optusnet.com.au

Thank you,

Dan Ednie

Nothing's Impossible and Subway Commercial

2009-01-26T23:36:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone!

Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story Completed

The Front Cover

At last! Five years after its conception the story of my great uncle's life has gone to print. Last friday we made the final corrections, the negotiations with the publishers were completed, the front cover design was confirmed and the five hundred copy first edition of Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story went to print. I've written about it earlier on this blog - and I am able to email a preview to anyone interested! I'd love people to order a book for $20 plus postage and to look out for the story of it coming out in the Stonnington and Caulfield Leaders on the 3rd of February. If you are on Face book please join the group :)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39013315671&ref=ts

I have given some talks about Alan's life that convey his message "Nothing's Impossible" and if people know of schools, libraries, clubs or events that are looking for speakers I would love to come, please invite me. Also, for close friends please contact me if you would like to RSVP for the Book Launch which will be happening on 6 February in Caulfield. For all Alan related enquiries email me through my blog profile.

Subway Commercial
In November of 2008 we were approached by Subway to feature Footbag in their new ad for the "Kickin Chicken" sub. I was lucky enough to be chosen along with Dyalan Govender (NSW) and Jeremy O'Wheel (Tas) to go up to Brisbane to film.

The thiry second version of the commercial

We arrived very early in the morning but the crew didn't get to filming our bit until about 2pm. The first half of the day was all about filming the sub, and there was constant drama like you would not believe. There were three "food stylists" and there must have been upwards of thirty people all concentrating their attention around the sandwich.

There it is in all its glory! The must have made between eighty and one hundred of these over the day. They were really very very big, but used no extra ingredients that you dont get in the shops

Filming a 30 second commercial involves about 15 seconds of food and 15 seconds of focus on the story line

As you can see from the commercial, we are three normal guys who start kicking the subway wrapper around. What you can't see is that there is a Footbag stuck with sticky tape inside. We had to regularly change the wrapper because it would fall off after a few kicks.

It was very very windy as we were just close to the sea. And the wardrobe wanted us to wear our everyday shoes, because our Footbag shoes were much too dirty to be seen on TV with. It was actually very embarrassing, because they had seen all these videos of us doing these fancy tricks, and then when it comes time to do it, we were generally very poor at kicking the ball up. The point at which the announcer says "kick" and Jeremy kicks it with the sole of his foot took an impossibly long time for example.

I also had a really hard time. At the start of the commercial I take a nice big bite of the sub. This sub was referred to as the "hero sub" because its really important in the overall course of the commercial. I originally took a bite which was much too big, then took one where all the lettuce was still sticking out of my mouth, and then I took one bite, but then without chewing started taking the next bite - which made the crew laugh! I never felt so much pressure eating before. I ate so much of it though. I felt bad that they were throwing out so many of them during the day - I spent about 15 mins eating that sub for that one second on the commercial. I was getting about two maybe three bites from each sub before they threw it and got a new one. They ripped the top of the sub off so that it looked like I was about three quarters of the way through. The attention to detail was amazing. I had to just spit out the sub after a while because it was starting to make me feel sick - not because it tasted bad, but just because I had been eating it all day - and everyone has their limit.

It's playing on the major networks and will be going for probably another week or so. It's quite a short run, and they will have a new commerical really soon.

Thank you!

Dan Ednie

Global Heart Tours Update

2009-01-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

Global Heart Tours has been building steadily since we started in June 2008. I first posted about it on 14 Sept and since then we’ve had a heap of new developments

Website
We have launched our website www.globalheartours.com ! Click http://gh.webzelite.com.au/index.php to go straight to the English version. Thank you Webzelite for making our website for us, you guys were great.
You can also join us on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105566340426

New Tours
We now have a second tour up and running, The South Tour. We go from Federation Square, to the Alexandra Gardens, to the National Gallery of Victoria, and finishing up along Southbank – we’ve done our tests and practices, and will be going on one next week.

This is the map for the Central Tour - Thanks so much to Welan for making it

New Tour Guides
There have been a lot of Japanese learners who have approached us about becoming tour guides, and we’ve now got three fully trained guides, with one learner, and a large number ready to start over the next couple of months. A big part of what we’d like to achieve with Global Heart Tours is giving the opportunities and resources that Australian learners need to improve their language proficiency and confidence. Things on this front are looking really positive at the moment :D

Asher and Miki

South Tour - 19 Dec 08
This was a really cool tour! We were testing the South Tour, checking that the information was interesting, and taking notes on what we could include. We had three tours guides and three Test Tourists, which meant that I spent most of the time thinking about the tour itself, and letting the lead tour guide and the support tour guide Asher do most of the talking.

Lance, who is was the lead tour guide is really, extremely very good at Japanese. He was the winner of the Open Japanese Speech Contest in Victoria and Australia - マジ巧い！So it’s pretty inspiring to see how good he is, so that I can try to emulate that kind of freedom of expression in my own Japanese. Asher was on his second tour, and did a great job as well, both of us have been working very hard on the back end of the company, so it’s great to get out there and do it as well in the mix.

We learnt to play cricket in the Alexandra Gardens, which we weren’t sure would work, but was very very funny to say the least. Imagine trying to explain stumpings and third umpires in a foreign language! We didn’t actually get into that much detail, but keeping the arm straight when bowling, and the fact that there were now two batsman, and the whole team plays for up to a day and a half in test matches was pretty big paradigm shift for the tourists. Masa was really good at bowling and Miki was really good at Batting. I can’t remember what Yusuke was good at, but one of the comments of the day was him telling us that he still didn’t understand cricket after we’d played for 30 mins and spent heaps of time playing and talking about it, during and then after the game.

Go Team! They actually do play cricket in Japan, but its mainly a girls game!

The NGV was awesome, I would never go unless I was showing someone around Melbourne, but I was very impressed by the 17th and 18th century paintings exhibition they had. They had this massive rooms just bursting with semi-Australian history. So much of Australian culture is informed by European (British) custom, a sobering experience and I’d say my favorite part of the tour.

Masa and I "kicking it" at Degraves Street ちょうベリーナイス

We went onto Southbank, but couldn’t decide on a café, so we went to degraves Street, which I think we will do consistently, because we have to walk through it on the central tour, but I really like going there for some thing to eat and a nice latte.

Thank you everyone for coming!

Here are some other photos from that tour and others that we’ve done recently

Myself, Miki, Takuma and Lance!

Also, please let anyone you know who knows international students, anyone Japanese, homestay hosts and English language schools. We are looking to go on more and more tours.

Thanks,

Dan

Microfinance: The new way to give

2009-01-05T02:40:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

I hope your holidays have been restful and that 2009 is going to be a great one! I recently read Bill Clinton's book "Giving" (2007). It outlines all the great work that NGOs, private philanthropy and governments have been doing in the last thirty years to solve the great social problems that we face. The book was geared in large part to what individuals can do, and I have started to participate in some of the recommendations in the book.

KIVA
Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. Basically you scroll through profiles of people who need $100 to buy some livestock, or to expand their vegetable growing business, and you donate to them. Kiva has microfinance partners all over the world who identify potential recipients, and write the profile that you read on the website. The amounts vary, sometimes a family is wanting to open a textiles or a clothes shop, sometimes farms are looking to buy a big piece of machinery.

Over the loan's period, the recipient invests your money in their own livelihood, you get reports back when the microfinance company on the ground checks in on them, and they pay back the loan to you over 6 - 12 months. When you receive the money back, you can reinvest it in other people, or you can leave the site, no poorer than you started. There is a 2% default rate, but many lenders have lent millions with no-defaults - so look closely at the lender as well.

www.kiva.org - I highly recommend you get on there and lend to someone who will use your money to transform their lives.

Better World Books
This is the best place you can order your books online.
www.betterworld.com

Thanks!

Dan

What a Year, What a Feeling: 2008

2008-12-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

2008! What a year its been! In this post I want to thank all the people that have contributed so much to my life, and my projects. I've found a very valuable thing, and I've found it in numerous places, in my study, in my conversations, in hearing people speak about things that matter to them. This year I had four main goals (eight in total). I've managed to acheive seven of them, with the last to be completed in January of 2009.

1. Footbag 4 Fun
My goal was for the program to have to taught 10,000 students by years end. Since starting in March of 2007 Footbag 4 Fun has now taught just over 7,000 students in Australia, Japan and the United States. To all the teachers, principles and parents who have organised for me to visit schools over 2008, thank you so so much. Footbag is a fantastic game for young people to play, and the time they spend playing it is healthy, safe and fun. Thank you to all the students who got so much out of the classes. Footbag is far from a popular game in Australia, but its one that anyone can play, anywhere. When you see the game in the future I hope that you will join in, and have a go :)

I'll be heading to the Czech Republic for the first half of 2009, but in my stead will be the new up and comer of Australian Footbag, Oliver Adams. Ollie is 18 and has been teaching with me for the last half of 2008. His enthusiasm for the game is unreal and he will be a fantastic ambassador for the game!

2. Oaktree and Leadership Opportunities
Since February of this year I've been exposed to the Changemakers of my generation. These are the people that have paid for their own tickets to go overseas and do aid work, then come back to Australia, run concerts, fundraisers and give speeches to high schools, community groups and altogether inspire and encourage everyone who takes an interest in making the world a better place.

I've met people like Hugh Evans, Simon Moss, Tom O'Connor, Viv Benjamin, Nick Bearlin-Allardice, Andy Asten, Laura John, Trina Malone, Emily Dudgeon and Isadore Biffin who whose combination of determination to effect sustainable change and the depth of their skill sets has made them fantastic role models for me. I know a lot of people who call themselves 'realists' who want to earn as much as they can for themselves and then one day start giving back. I've been more aware of who are the people who are making their choices based on what they can give, not what they can get. In addition,I am proud to say I am lucky enough to know personally the following people, Andrew McIntosh, Alan Wu, Bob Simpson, Val Yule, Nick Savaidis and Jeff Tho. Thank you for 2008!

3. Global Heart Tours
With this idea, I wanted to see if I could get this idea in place for 2009, and I am happy that I have. I would like to see more Australians who want to learn foreign languages to succeed in that area. Currently there is very little in the way of jobs that you can do as a non-native speaker of foreign languages, but so far we've been on six tours and the idea has worked thus far with really appreciative feedback from Japanese people who have come on the tour. I think that this is an idea that could make a big difference to people, and be a new medium for inter-cultural communication in Australia.

4. Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story
This was the only goal I didn't reach in 2007, and 2008 has been another year of toil on the book. The last two months though has seen it go into final edits, and the news of the book has now reached the vast majority of the people who knew Alan and his airline Flinders Island Airlines. To be printed in January, I can't wait to hold a copy in my hands and know that I gave it 100%

What else changed me in 2008
In the last 12 months I've had the fortune of learning about the life of Lance Armstrong who if I could have some percentage of his strength and determination then I would be truly set for anything. When I read "It's not about the bike" in June of this year I knew it was going to be a book that I would remember for a long time, but six months on I still sometimes find myself telling my friends, and anyone who will listen, just who Lance is, and why he is one of the greatest human beings ever to live. If you don't already know his story please find out. In particular see the work of the Lance Armstrong Foundation - LiveStrong.

Usain Bolt pulling up in the last thirty meters of the 100meters in Beijing and still breaking the world record was enormous, but to then see him in the 200M final, miles ahead of his rivals, but pushing as hard as his body would take him to challenge and beat the world record, that really moved me. Usain Bolt is a champion. Even though it was only on TV, I am so happy to have seen the beauty of his strength.

Finally the election of Barack Obama is, in my opinion, the event of 2008. While we wait to see how the world changes with his presidency, the ripple effects of such an inspiring individual rising to the top is in itself monumental. He will change the way the world see's America and bring worldliness and cultural awareness to the White House. Politicians everywhere are lobbied by the oil companies, whaling fleets, polluters, the big multinationals, all the people that will lose money if they they have to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. My hope is that Obama and the worlds politicians can stand up to the rich companies that look at the bottom line before looking at preserving and improving the world we live in. He has given me so much more optimism about what the next decade of the world will hold - its an exciting time to be alive.

Thank you to all my family and friends, 2008 has been one of my happiest on record. Christmas is here and I realise that I already have everything I've ever needed or wanted. The ease with which I can live my life is the result of the hard work or my family in a direct way, and in an indirect way those who have made Australia the lucky country.

Merry Xmas,

Dan Ednie

Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story

2008-11-10T18:56:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone,

As the year is drawing to a close so too is my work on my largest project to date. The time I spent in 2004, interviewing my Great Uncle Alan Rea, was probably one of the biggest turning points in my life.

Nothing's Impossible is an Australian tour de force. It starts with a young Depression boy from South Caulfield, who followed his love of aviation all over the world. Alan was a pilot instructor then a bomber pilot in WW2; in the 1950s he flew numerous times over the dangerous Pacific Ocean with only the stars to guide the crew; then ran his own airline - Flinders Island Airlines for thirty years! He was a born entrepreneur and an inspiration to all those who knew him. Nothing's Impossible is Alan's Story as he told them.

Alan was my Great Uncle, and as the writer of the family I had the task of capturing his famous, and well-told, stories. Before passing away in 2004, we interviewed him for just over ten hours. He led us through the turning points, the near-death experiences, and the successes that had defined his life. It's taken five years of transcribing, interviewing, researching and writing for the book to reach publishable standard, but its been worth it, I've grown immeasurably as a person through the writing process and those that knew him personally will treasure the book - I hope.

At the very nucleus of Alan's being was a drive that never stopped short. People were always telling him that 'this and that will never work', but it only made him more determined to overcome. He was asked to feature on the ABCs Australian Story in early in the 00s. Of particular interest was the audacity he showed in leading a team of plane rescuers. The rescue of the 'Wreck of the Desert' from Birdsville South Australia has persisted as folklore in Australian Aviation circles to this day.

Having been with the text, on and off, for so long has meant that his stories are well and truly a part of my life. In the process of writing it I came to much deeper understanding of Australian history, my family heritage and myself.

Getting your Copy
Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story is going to print in the next month and will be available in January of 2009, but hopefully will launch prior to Christmas. The book will be available in paperback for $20. We are publishing the book privately, so we are only charging to cover our costs, and we will probably only be doing one print-run. Please contact me via email (dan dot ednie at gmail dot com) to see the sample chapter. We are now taking orders and will need them by the end of November. Please contact me via phone (0433 366 323) or email if you'd like to reserve your copy or recommend friends to the book as well :) We have a Facebook Group also - it's called "Nothing's Impossible: The Alan Rea Story". I'd love to see heaps of people join the group.

In closing I want to thank everyone who has supported me throughout the writing process, especially my family. Special thanks also goes to all of the contributors who have helped me really understand Alan as a person, and further fleshing out the significance that his friendship had for those around him.

Alan start-up Air Surveys photographed all of the train lines in Victoria in the 1960's to standardise the entire rail network

Alan as a youngster born 3 August 1929

Alan rescued a number of plane wrecks, most notably the Lockheed Electra. To get it back to the Hangar though he needed the Victorian Police to help him drive the hulk back the Melbourne narrowly avoiding disaster.

End Child Slavery and Footbag 4 Fun (Nemesis)

2008-10-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Things have been going really well! I've generally been able to stay on top of things and I've been enjoying the learning I've been doing in various areas of my life. I've been learning a lot about group dynamics, training, and public relations.

End Child Slavery
Wednesday the 13th of September, quite a while back, was the Fair Trade Chocolate, Coffee and Tea Festival at Monash University. This was a terrific event that lobbied the vendors on campus to introduce fair trade products to their menus and to take steps toward securing produce that is Fair Trade. Of the 11 vendors in Campus Center, there are on 2 (Whole Foods and Meeting Point) that stock any Fair Trade products at all. With the rest, there is a more than likely chance that their suppliers use exploitation to drive down their expenses and reap greater profits.

Sadly Australian consumers, unknowily, are supporting the middle men in developing countries. We got significant media attention leading up to the event, featuring in MX, Waverley Leader and Monash Memo, and as a free event with numerous Fair Trade companies represented, it was a great chance to inform students about their power as consumers.

Click to Enlarge - Girls from left to right: Emily Dudgeon (organiser), Kathryn van Langenberg (support organiser) Tiffane Levick (Monash Oaktree Pres.) Boys: Dan Ednie (Public Relations)

Click to Enlarge: Waverley Leader

Footbag 4 Fun
The week starting Monday Oct 13 was the Girls Sport Victoria (GSV) P.E week. I've had the pleasure of teaching Footbag at the GSV Year 7 Expo, Firbank Girls Grammar, Melbourne Girls Grammar and Ivanhoe Girls Grammar. Its been a packed week, I only got to uni once, and that was to hand in an assignment. I've received a lot of great feedback about the program from students and teachers alike, and I really would like to thank all twenty of the schools, the two universities, the festivals and the school holiday programs, that have so far taken part in Footbag 4 Fun since the start of 2007.

I've been finding it hard to keep up with the demand, and as such I've been training a new Footbag Instructor! His name is Oliver Adams, and he's definitely one of the up and comers on the Australian Footbag Scene. Teaching him how to run a Footbag class has really helped me to see another perspective on the process, and having to verbalise what I usually just do habitually has been an enlightening. I think Oliver is going to be a superb Footbag teacher and performer, and he's already showing me a lot of new ways of seeing Footbag teaching as a process. It's great to have him on board!

The Melbourne University Footbag Club has been thriving with members in the hundreds now! While most of those only come during their breaks at uni, we had a very healthy turnout at the Melbourne Uni Footbag Jam Oct 3 - 5! While I have no photos, I do have a video of what is the hardest trick I've ever performed.

It's called the "Nemesis" and the trick has been almost unique in that it was thought of about fifteen years before any individual had ever done it. The Footbag starts on the side of your foot behind your other leg, goes around your left leg twice, gets to about waist high, then on the way down your right leg goes around it twice more. They thought the move was impossible, but as players get better and better quicker and younger than ever these days. Its now becoming a much more normal move. For me though, this was just sheer elation:

http://footbag.org/gallery/show/15255
For the best quality image

For Youtube:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg7C7x6zSQo

Thank you to Leon and Janis in particular for organising the event, and thankyou to Ollie for really pushing me - it was a huge psychological gap you got me over the line for!

Dan Ednie

Footbag 4 Fun and Kenzo Ogawa

2008-10-06T00:16:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

The school holidays has meant that I've had time to practice for myself, and I feel my game is improving a lot. In particular I've been working on some harder tricks and improving my overall fitness. I've also been working to improve on the current Footbag manual and Footbag games document to make sure that schools that have Footbag are able to keep going with it and develop the skills long after my initial visit.

In non-Footbag news, I'll be spending most of 2009 in Europe to study linguistics and politics at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. I'll be there primarily to find out more about European Languages and what techniques people use to learn them, and speak proficiently in non-native tongues.

At the same time, as Central and Eastern Europe is the powerhouse of modern Footbag, it will also be a terrific chance for me to mix with the some of the best Footbaggers in the world, improve a lot and really get the most out of my Footbag!

Footbag 4 Fun
I am really looking forward to two major events in the next two weeks. The first will be Footbag 4 Fun going to Portarlington Primary School in South Geelong this Friday. You'll be able to read the article that was in the Colac Herald below, but I feel that while Footbag is great for students in the city, the impact that Footbag can have on regional students is tremendous. I received a number of hand-written letters from a previous school I've taught at (Lavers Hill P-12 College), and I feel humbled that my influence on them was such a positive one. I know that Footbag has a huge potential to enrich the education of regional schools and I am determined to take Footbag all over the state.

Published in the Colac Herald, Wednesday, August 13, page11

Girls Sport Victoria have been Footbag 4 Fun's biggest supporter this year, and its just going to get bigger! P.E week for the 24 Girls schools is set for the Week starting Monday October the 13th and going all the way through to Friday the 17th. It's been reason enough for me to start training a new instructor, and it will be the most hectic week of Footbag in the history of Australia.

Kenzo Ogawa
From September 26th through to the 29th, Melbourne Footbag Club was graced with the presence of one of the most dynamic Footbaggers in the world. Kenzo Ogawa, from Osaka, Japan, came and played with us, showing off some of his skills. It was Kenzo's first trip to Australia and he was here for Grand Final week just by chance. He loved Australia and says he wants to come back. The highlight was having him come to the Melbourne Footbag Club Sunday kick (www.melbournefootbag.com) and passing on a lot of his knowledge and talent to those who could make it.

Kenzo in flight

Having a chat, always good in the middle of Footbag

Thank you Kenzo

Global Heart Tours

2008-09-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

For the last couple of months I've been working with two good friends of mine, Aidan Hamwood and Asher Preston, on a new tour guide company. Our goal has been to start a Tour Guide service that caters for Japanese tourists who would like to find out about Australia, from the locals, but in Japanese. Lots of time spent in market research, doing test tours with friends of ours, branding and marketing has finally lead to our first tour!

Global Heart Tours (グローバル心ツアー）, on Saturday the 13th of September took its first two customers on a three-hour walking tour of the city. We took them from the State Library, to QV, to Melbourne Central, up to Hardware lane for a taste of Melbourne's famous coffee culture, and finished up at Federation Square: and we did it all in Japanese. Giving the tours is really fun because we get to speak Japanese and because we are mainly looking at cultural tourism the emphasis is on good conversation and a friendly atmosphere.

There are so many great photos spots, here's one in the Bourke Street Mall

The original motivation behind the tours was that many young Australians learning foreign languages complain that they don't have any opportunities to use their classroom knowledge. Australia being a monolingual country, its not hard to see why they think this. Throughout the 1960s, over 40% of all final year high school students were studying a foreign language, in 2007 this was 13%. There is a language proficiency shortage amoung Australians working in a more and more globalised world economy. so we wanted to create a job. The one I thought would work is as a tour guide, and so began Global Heart Tours.

The State Library is our meeting spot and first attraction

We are starting with Japanese, and with our website yet to be launched (coming soon) things are still very much in the developmental stage. So much has gone right so far, and indications are that the business model will work, so really exciting times ahead!

Global Heart Tours

Footbag 4 Girls and Kids WB

2008-09-08T03:43:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

There's been a big shake up in the Footbag world! The six time defending champion Vasek Klouda from the Czech Republic came second in the recent World Championships to a Polish competitor by the name of Damian Gielniki!

Sadly I couldn't make it to the Czech Republic for Worlds, but here are the links to the first three places:

Damian Gielnicki - 1st place
http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/14874

Vasek Klouda - 2nd place
http://www.footbag.org/gallery/show/14876

Sergey Kozlov - 3rd place
http://footbag.org/gallery/show/14869

Footbag 4 Girls
Things have been humming along with the Footbag 4 Fun program, we've been extending, looking at getting more instructors on board, and have been having huge success getting girls involved through Girl Sport Victoria!

Footbag 4 Fun has been to Ivanhoe Girls Grammar, Star of the Sea, Melbourne Girls Grammar School over the last month and a half! Getting girls involved in sports during their high school years is often a difficult task, with many girls just wanting to hang back and not try too hard. Its a difficult age, but Footbag does the trick!

Footbag is a non-competitive, non-contact game, and while it took a few lessons for me to get the talking bit of the lessons appropriated to a high school girl's kind of attitude, I am really really happy now with the response I am getting, and I truly believe that Footbag is going to continue to be popular with girls high schools in Victoria, and hopefully beyond!

I'll be heading back to Melbourne Girls Grammar School and Star of the Sea, but we'll also be heading to Methodist Ladies College, Firbank Grammar and the Girls Sport Victoria (GSV) Year Seven Sports Expo!

Footbag on Kids WB
Its taken some time, but here we go with the youtube link for Footbag on Kids WB (9) from the 9th of August!

Thanks!

Dan Ednie

Footbag on Kids WB!

2008-08-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Things have been really humming along with Footbag 4 Fun! We've been getting a lot of new enquiries, mainly from girls schools, and there is another TV performance happening later this week!

Kids WB on Channel 9 this Saturday
On Saturday mornings Channel 9's Kids WB (Kids Warner Brothers) plays cartoons all morning. They have a number of guests come on the show. A couple of months ago, through a chance encounter, I met one of the staff there, and last week called to invite us to come and present Footbag. We will be filming it live - so pressure's on - for a 3-4 minute segment airing sometime between 9am and 10am this Saturday 9th of August.

Show: Kids WB
Channel: Nine
Date: 9/8/08
Day: Saturday
Time: 9 - 10am

I'm going to be unveiling a new routine which I've only used once before for a performance, it was a big hit! I'll be interested to hear peoples reactions - it could be a bit of a surprise!

Footbag 4 Fun
I was invited to come to Lavers Hill, one of those beautiful, cosy towns on the Great Ocean Road to teach from Prep to Year 12 on Thursday and Friday of last week! I almost didn't get there, saved only by Karyn's terrific resourcefulness. Getting there was hard bit, when I did get there, I was treated to some of the most attentive and enthusiastic Footbag students I've ever taken - and I really mean that - often they would literally stop talking when I started. You had to be there.

I had two sessions with all of the year levels except for the Preps, 1s and 2s so I was able to teach skills in the first lesson, then really tear into some of the higher co-ordination games. I was genuinely surprised by, in particular, the 9s and 10s of whom many had already learned to kick the Footbag consistently - one even told me that he had practiced all night in between the two sessions, and it showed!

I was able to bring with me a number of prizes for students who I felt really gave it their all, not necessarily skill level, but effort. Possibly the most satisfying moment of the trip was giving a Luigi doll to a girl called Amy, and just knowing that she totally loved it. Giving the right thing to the right person can be such a joy.

Lavers Hill is the rainiest area of Victoria, they have to spend a lot of time indoors during lunchtime. The beauty of Footbag is that you actually can play in indoors, and in tight spaces, which will fit with their program perfectly. I am going to really look forward to seeing the new talent of Australia's Footbag come up over the next couple of years, and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a number of the students from Lavers Hill training hard and attending jams and Nationals one day :D

Thank you Lavers Hill!

See you all on Saturday!

Dan Ednie