Elephant safari in Melbourne - Mali in the City

To celebrate the Melbourne Zoo's 150th anniversary, many artists painted fibre-glass statues of elephants (50 in total) to exhibit around the city. I decided to spend this afternoon taking photos in the city.

Ming Vase Elephant,
Queen Victoria Market entrance

Patch,
Queen Victoria Market

Mali is Listening to the Earth,
Cnr Peel & William Sts near Flagstaff Gardens

Frank Realities,
The University of Melbourne - Medical School Building

Lotus,
Gordon Reserve

Ranee,
Old Treasury Building - Treasury Reserve

Spot,
Centre of Treasury Gardens

Mali's Crimson Song,
Fitzroy Gardens

Harmony,
Melbourne Marriot Hotel Entrance

Rusty Mali,
Chinatown, Cohen Plaza

Interesting fact: an upright elephant trunk is good Feng Shui

Baroque Baby,
Bourke Street Mall

I think this is Jimbo,
but I didn't come out of the car to check
(It was getting dark, freezing cold and raining)

Yes, I did spend 3 and a half hours taking photos of elephants in Melbourne's busy traffic. I did get some strange looks for stopping to take a photo. 

Overall, going on an urban safari was worth the traffic and strange looks by others to find and capture 11/50 elephants.

Well Done Melbourne Zoo.

Mali in the City

Vote for your favourite elephant and win a trip to Thailand (Melbournians only, sorry)

Maps and info about Mali in the City (I printed out the info to find them)

Adopt an Asian elephant (Zoos Victoria)

London 2012

Creative Common - Flickr by Ell Brown

Since the Olympics started, I have been glued to the TV (like most of world) which is funny, because I didn’t really like watching sport four years ago. I love the feeling of watching my country (Australia) win a Gold or Silver medal. I became very excited when I saw the Australian women’s swimming relay and they played Advance Australia Fair. Swimming is now one of my favourite sports to watch because you can see what the athletes are doing from bird’s eye view and underwater. 

Creative Common - Flickr by Brendan Shanahan

Creative Commo

Creative Common

Creative Common

I found it interesting how Taekwondo (sparring) became an Olympic sport during the Sydney Games but not during the Seoul Games (although it was performed). Also, I reckon the Olympic Committee should make Artistic Taekwondo (Poomsae) an Olympic sport along with sparring because it will give other Taekwondo athletes a chance without such an anaerobic strain on the heart to compete (sparring is very tiring, well at least for me) and by having Artistic Taekwondo more people would be able to compete. Sparring is only one aspect of Taekwondo and is basically knowing what your opponent is about to do next. Poomsae is more of the art form of Taekwondo where you focus on technique and rhythm of rehearsed individual combat developed hundreds of years ago. Poomsae is also very nice to watch because the movements flow in the pattern (known as kata in Karate or forms in Kung Fu).  I really like the concept of the Olympic Games, the whole world are playing sport against each other and forgetting about war and fighting. I also like how the Olympics has its origins from Ancient Greece. 

Creative Common - Flickr by SPARC Beijing Olympics 2008

Creative Common - Flickr by International Olympic Committee

Carmen Marton is one of Taekwondists competing in the Olympics. She happens to go to the same Taekwondo branch I train in: Melbourne Taekwondo Centre. Make sure to watch her.

Interesting fact: French is the co-official language of the Olympics (along with English) because the person who started the Modern Olympics was French.

What languages are harder to learn - Photo Blog

Source: http://zidbits.com/2011/04/what-is-the-hardest-language-to-learn/

I believe the table is missing German and Indonesian / Malay. If I was going to add them, I would have German in the bottom of the easy list or at the top of the medium list. I would have also put Indonesian in Medium only because of the diverse vocabulary (Indonesian has a lot of loanwords from Malay, English, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese languages, Portuguese, Sanskrit and Arabic). Indonesian grammar is simpler than Spanish and other Romance languages, the sentence structure is logical and there is no tense. Also questions can be made out of sentences very easily. E.g. Saya tinggal di... (I live in...), Anda tinggal di mana? / Di mana anda tinggal? (Where do you live?).

I agree with 80% of the table but the only fact I disagree with is that it takes 88 weeks to learn Chinese, Korean, Japanese or Arabic because Benny Lewis learnt to speak relatively fluent Mandarin in 3 months.  

What do you think of this picture? Please write your thoughts in the comment section below.

How to impress many, increase iq and meet and speak to more people?

Do you want to impress many, increase your iq or speak to more people?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I believe learning another language or a word in a couple can help you. When you start a conversation the first word you would say is hello (to an unfamiliar person) or hi (to someone familiar). So the word for hello or hi or 'how are you?' would be good word to know in another language. 

Key:

(r) = rolled r

(rh) = guttural r

˜ = nasal sound

How to say hello in common languages:

#1 Mandarin Chinese: 你好 (ni2 hao3) (pronounced 'knee' with a high rising tone and 'how' with a high falling then rising tone) 

#2 Spanish: Hola (pronounced o-la)
#3 English: (I hope you would know that already)

#4 Hindi: Namaste (pronounced na-mahs-tay) or Namaskar (pronounced na-mahs-ka(r) )

#5 Arabic: مرحبا (pronounced ma(rh)-ha-ba) or السلام عليكم (pronounced al-sa-laahm a-lay-koom) meaning 'peace be with you' or 'peace upon you'

#6 Bengali: Nomaashkaar (pronounced no-maahsh-shkaah(r) (Hindu) or Asalaam Alaykum (Muslim) 

#7 Portuguese: Olá (European) or Oi (Brazilian)

#8 Russian: привет (pronounced p(r)ee-vet) or Здравствуйте (pronounced zd(r)ahv-stvoo-ee-teh)

#9 Japanese: こんにちは (kon'nichiwa) (pronounced kon-nee-chee-wa)

German: Hallo
Vietnamese: Xin Cháo (pronounced shin chow or sin chow depending on the dialect) 

French: Bonjour (pronounced bãn-zho(rh) )

Korean: 안녕하세요 (pronounced ahn-nyeong-ha-se-yo 
or ahn-yông-ha-se-yo)

Cantonese: 你好 (pronounced lei with a high rising tone and hou with a high rising tone or nei with a high rising tone and hou with a high rising tone)

Turkish: Merhaba (pronounced ma(r)haba

Italian: Ciao (pronounced chow)

Polish: cześć (pronounced cheshch) 

Indonesian: Selamat (pronounced se-lah-maht):  Pagi (pronounced pah-ghee) (in the morning), Siang (pronounced see-ung) (in the early afternoon), Sore (pronounced so-(r)ay) (in the late afternoon) or Malam (pronounced mah-lahm) (at night) or Halo

Thai: สวัสดี (pronounced sa-wa-dee)

Tagalog: Kamusta (pronounced ka-moos-tah) or Halo

Romanian: Bună Ziua (pronounced boo-nuh zee-wah)

Dutch: Hallo

Khmer: Sok subai tei? (how are you?) (pronounced sock soo-bye tay)

Greek: γειά σου (pronounced geia sou)

Catalan: Hola (pronounced like Spanish)

Czech: Ahoj (pronounced a-hoy)

Swedish: Hallå (pronounced ha-looh)

Hebrew: שלום (pronounced shah-lom)

Finnish: Hei (pronounced hay)

Afrikaans: Hallo

Norwegian: Hallo

... and one more -

Esperanto: Saluton (pronounced sah-loo-ton)

Pop quiz:

1. What is significant about the first nine languages on the list? 

2. Why is Dutch before Norwegian and Vietnamese before Italian?

Please write your answers in the comment section below. Answers revealed next post.