Prince William and Kate Middleton aren’t the only people getting married this year. No, alas, it’s not me! I’d need a man for that or a woman and I can’t seem to bag either at the moment.
I refer to my brother Shaun and Sarah (see The Long Lost Brother Story). I’m excited for the wedding and feel honoured and privileged that they have invited me to celebrate their love. For the event we have to consider the dress code. I am looking for a smart charcoal gray suit and hot pink tie. Now if anyone knows where I can find a charcoal gray suit, please contact me. I’ve ordered a tie off ebay, hopefully it will be suitable.
Going back to weddings, there’s a rumour that my Uncle is also getting married this year. Not heard anything official yet, so I’ll keep you posted!
Both couples have been together several years and are happy. It’s nice to see and gives me hope, that one day, when the time is right, I’ll meet Mr. Right. Ha ha rather than the Mr. Right Nows I keep meeting.
I’ve noticed that my blogging recently hasn’t really been about me. It’s been about books, my beautiful iphone and generally anything that I like. So grab a brew and we’ll have a catch up.
First, Uni. I’m doing two elearning modules, one on Leadership and the other my Dissertation module. It’s going well, although I need to do some more research for the assignments. I am enjoying the learning, but will be thankful in March when I’ve completed my final module.
In my love life, I was dating a guy for a while, but it didn’t work out. Too needy and not good communication. Now I’m dating another guy and so far, it’s going well. He makes me happy. Cheesy grin smile :D.
Well that’s about all that’s new in my life, take care,
Sometimes in life things don’t work out how you want, dream or hope they will. The last month or so has been one of these times.
Boyfriend-W and I split up, things just didn’t work out and I returned to the UK. We have remained good friends. I learn’t so much being in Benidorm and being with him, more than I could write here (see A new design and a new beginning). So since I’ve been back what’s new?
New Car
I have got a Citroen C1 Splash in electra blue, which I’ve named Sam. I need a car for work and will be paying for Sam for the next five years. See:
New Work Image
In these difficult times in the public sector I decided to smarten up. Image is very important, not to me but to other people. Gone are the days of baggy jeans and t-shirts, come the shirts, waist coats, skinny jeans and shoes. A smarter look.
Cooking
I bought a cook book and have cooked a few meals from it. They haven’t tasted half bad, if I do say so myself. I have got great satisfaction from actually cooking something myself rather than popping frozen boxed food in the freezer. It’s called The Classic 1000 Beginners’ Recipes by Carolyn Humphries and I highly recommend it if like me you can’t cook a thing. It’s simple step recipes are so easy to follow.
Work
I’ve gone back to work with a renewed enthusiasm and some life experience.
So…What’s next?
I am moving back in to my apartment (see The Move) at the end of the month and will be glad to be home. I would like to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to my family and friends, who have been a huge support to me. Especially to my mum and Simon who continue to house me until I move back to my apartment.
Once I’ve moved back in to my apartment I intend to get a housemate to pay off some of my debts as well as continuing to try and live frugally (see Living Frugally).
The last month or so I have been having a quiet reflective time which has mean’t a lack of blog posts. Rest assured normal blogging will now resume, whatever normal is.
It´s nearly been a week since I arrived to start a new chapter in my life with Boyfriend-W in Benidorm. It´s been a time of learning, a new language, a new job, a new life style (sleeping some of the day to stay up later in the evening and most importantly living with someone).
With the language I´ve started watching YouTube videos such as:
As for my new job table waiting I´ve been shaddowing my colleagues watching and more importantly getting my hands dirty and pitching in. My first night I was quite fustrated with myself – feeling like I wasn´t picking things up quick enough. I´ve never done this sort of work before and learned that I´m actually quite hard on myself. I had to remind myself of the stages of competence:
The Four Stages
Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.
Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Natural language is an example of unconscious competence. Not every native speaker who can understand and be understood in a language is competent to teach it. Distinguishing between unconscious competence for performance-only, versus unconscious competence with the ability to teach, the term “kinesthetic competence” is sometimes used for the ability to perform but not to teach, while “theoretic competence” refers to the ability to do both.
Certain brain personality types favor certain skills (see the Benziger theory), and each individual possesses different natural strengths and preferences. Therefore, advancing from, say, stage 3 to 4 in one skill might be easier for one person than for another. Certain individuals will even resist progression to stage 2, because they refuse to acknowledge or accept the relevance and benefit of a particular skill or ability. Individuals develop competence only after they recognize the relevance of their own incompetence in the skill concerned.
Possible Fifth Stage
Many attempts have been made to add to this competence model. This addition would be a fifth stage, and there have been many different suggestions for what this fifth stage would be called. One suggestion is that it be called “Conscious competence of unconscious competence”. This would describe a person’s ability to recognize and develop unconscious competence in others.
Another suggestion by consultant David Baume:
As a fifth level, I like what I call ‘reflective competence’. As a teacher, I thought “If unconscious competence is the top level, then how on earth can I teach things I’m unconsciously competent at?” I didn’t want to regress to conscious competence – and I’m not sure if I could even I wanted to! So, reflective competence – a step beyond unconscious competence. Conscious of my own unconscious competence, yes, as you suggest. But additionally looking at my unconscious competence from the outside, digging to find and understand the theories and models and beliefs that clearly, based on looking at what I do, now inform what I do and how I do it. These won’t be the exact same theories and models and beliefs that I learned consciously and then became unconscious of. They’ll include new ones, the ones that comprise my particular expertise. And when I’ve surfaced them, I can talk about them and test them. Nonaka is good on this
—Nonaka, I. (1994). “A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation.” Organization Science 5: 14-37. (David Baume, May 2004)
(From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence, Last Accessed: 29 May 2010)
I´m currently conscious incompetent but getting better all the time.
As for my new life style, I´m loving it. Loving being with Boyfriend-W, going to bed with him and waking up with him. I´m adjusting my body clock to the evenings and most importantly looking forward to learning more.
