Is Your Partner Stalking You on Facebook?

According to a UK poll commissioned by crime drama channel Alibi, a high percentage of Brits admitted to “snooping” on their partners on Facebook

The survey found 58% of respondents had looked up two or more past partners, and 15% had actively changed their Facebook status expressly to make a current or past partner jealous. Almost half admitted to reading their partner’s emails to look for evidence of cheating. Men were more likely to stalk women, with a tendency to spend 8 minutes or more “spying” on their partner’s profile per day.

This jives well with previous evidence about Facebook increasing jealousy in relationships. The kind of jealousy that can ruin them. But with the survey also revealing that 20% had scratched up an ex’s car with a key and 39% took revenge on an old flame by spreading false rumours, we can’t help but wonder if the survey participants were chosen from the pool of past Jerry Springer panelists.

What has your experience been with Facebook and jealousy issues? Have you been snooped on my a partner or ex? Have you spied or been tempted to spy on a significant other?

(Source : http://mashable.com/2009/08/28/facebook-stalking/)

Basic English Vocabulary

partners – คู่สมรส, คู่หู

stalk (v) – ย่อง

Brits – British people – คนประเทศอังกฤษ

snoop (v) – สอดแนม, อยากรู้อยากเห็น

Respondents – ผู้ตอบรับ

make a current or past partner jealous – ทำให้คู่ปัจจุบันหรือในอดีตรู้สึกหึงหวง

Cheat (v) – นอกใจ, โกง

look for – ค้นหา

look for evidence of cheating – ค้นหาหลักฐานที่แสดงถึงการนอกใจ

a tendency – แนวโน้ม

Spy on – สอดแนม (spy มักจะตามด้วย on)

jealousy (n) – หึง

jealousy issues – ปัญหาการหึงหวง

ruin (v) – ทำลาย

reveal (v) – เปิดเผย

take revenge – แก้แค้น

rumours – ข่าวลือ

ex – คนก่อนหน้า

tempt (v) – ทำให้อยาก

been tempted – ถูกทำให้อยาก (verb to be + V3 เวลาแปลให้แปลว่า ถูก…)

มีการสำรวจออกมาว่าช่วงนี้คนส่วนใหญ่มักจะกินข้าวในบ้านมากกว่านอกบ้าน เนื่องจากอยากจะประหยัด แต่ผลปรากฏว่าเวลาเราไปซื้อของมาทำอาหารกับใช้จ่ายมากเกินกว่าความจำเป็น ลองอ่านดูว่าทำไม และเราจะแก้ได้อย่างไรครับ….

making a decision – ตัดสินใจ
observe – สังเกต
contemplating – พิจารณาอย่างไตร่ตรอง
the pile of fruit – กองผลไม้
patrons – ลูกค้า
supermarket aisles – ทางเดินในซุปเปอร์มาร์เก็ต
unnecessary expenses - ค่าใช้จ่ายที่ไม่จำเป็น
checkout lane – แถวชำระเงิน
Grocery shopping – การซื้อของชำ
mundane – เรื่องปกติ ธรรมดา
Despite/ in spite of  - (prep) ทั้งๆ ที่ ตามด้วย N/Ving
impulsively and irrationally – หุนหันพลันแล่น และ ไม่มีเหตุผล
become disoriented – ไขว้เขว่
Be confronted with = face – เผชิญหน้า
end up – ลงเอยที่
a precise list – รายการที่แน่นอน
beforehand – (adj/adv) ล่วงหน้า
errand - กิจวัตรประจำวัน
grocery list - รายการของชำ
instincts -(UN/CN) สันชาตญาณ

supermarket shopping

SHOPPER 46 is making a decision. Stopwatch in hand, I observe her from behind a cereal display. Shopper 46 has been contemplating bananas for four minutes and 43 seconds. Finally, she moves to place one with minimal brown spots in her cart, changes her mind and quickly deposits the unfit specimen back onto the pile of fruit. Shopper 46 exits the produce department with a bargain tub of banana pudding instead.

Interning as a consumer behavior researcher last summer for Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, I observed thousands of supermarket patrons in situ from Whole Foods to Safeway. In this economy, people are increasingly trying to save money by eating in. As Americans make the transition from restaurant tables to supermarket aisles, they are making mistakes that translate into unnecessary expenses at the checkout lane.

Grocery shopping might seem like a mundane, mechanical activity, but look around next time you’re in the store: Despite our best intentions, we buy food impulsively and irrationally.

We go to the supermarket resolved to watch our pennies and choose healthful foods. But we become disoriented when we’re confronted with thousands of products and brands. So we end up spending $3.49 on an accidental bag of Doritos, $1.99 on M&M’s. And besides the calories, these wasted dollars add up fast.

You might think that browsing slowly through the store would help you pick out the best products. But our research shows that’s not the case.

The shoppers I studied who took the longest, examining packages, stopping at whatever caught their eye, invariably spent more money. They tumbled stray, often unhealthy, items into their baskets, and later, when questioned, couldn’t cite a reason for the purchases.

It turns out that making up a precise list beforehand and getting the errand done as quickly as possible is the best way to save money. Cutting time cuts costs, as well.

Bananas? Check. Special on Kozy Shack banana pudding? If it wasn’t indelibly marked on your grocery list, control your instincts and move on quickly.

(Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16stein.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print)

Why You Should Celebrate Your Mistakes

Vocab to start with
make a mistake, make mistakes - ทำสิ่งที่ผิดพลาดไป
cherish - ชื่นชม
the most precious thing – สิ่งที่มีค่าที่สุด
scold - ดุด่า
We’ve been scolded - เราถูกดุด่า (อยู่ในรูป present perfect tense)
an unconscious reaction - ปฏิกิริยาที่ไม่รู้ตัว
trial and error - ลองผิดลองถูก
have figured out - คิดออก
toddler - เด็กเล็ก
construct a model in your mind - สร้างแบบจำลองในความคิด
Most of the journey was made up of mistakes - สิ่งที่พาเรามาจนทุกวันนี้ส่วนใหญ่เกิดจากความผิดพลาดทั้งสิ้น
if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes - ถ้าคุณเห็นคุณค่าของการเรียนรู้ การเติบโต และการพัฒนาแล้ว คุณก็จะเห็นคุณค่าของความผิดพลาด

When you make a mistake, big or small, cherish it like it’s the most precious thing in the world. Because in some ways, it is.

Most of us feel bad when we make mistakes, beat ourselves up about it, feel like failures, get mad at ourselves.

And that’s only natural: most of us have been taught from a young age that mistakes are bad, that we should try to avoid mistakes. We’ve been scolded when we make mistakes – at home, school and work. Maybe not always, but probably enough times to make feeling bad about mistakes an unconscious reaction.

Yet without mistakes, we could not learn or grow.

If you think about it that way, mistakes should be cherished and celebrated for being one of the most amazing things in the world: they make learning possible, they make growth and improvement possible.

By trial and error – trying things, making mistakes, and learning from those mistakes – we have figured out how to make electric light, to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, to fly.

Mistakes make walking possible for the smallest toddler, make speech possible, make works of genius possible.

Think about how we learn: we don’t just consume information about something and instantly know it or know how to do it. You don’t just read about painting, or writing, or computer programming, or baking, or playing the piano, and know how to do them right away.

Instead, you get information about something, from reading or from another person or from observing usually … then you construct a model in your mind … then you test it out by trying it in the real world … then you make mistakes … then you revise the model based on the results of your real-world experimentation … and repeat, making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, until you’ve pretty much learned how to do something.

That’s how we learn as babies and toddlers, and how we learn as adults. Trial and error, learning something new from each error.

Mistakes are how we learn to do something new – because if you succeed at something, it’s probably something you already knew how to do. You haven’t really grown much from that success – at most it’s the last step on your journey, not the whole journey. Most of the journey was made up of mistakes, if it’s a good journey.

So if you value learning, if you value growing and improving, then you should value mistakes. They are amazing things that make a world of brilliance possible.

Celebrate your mistakes. Cherish them. Smile.

(Source: http://zenhabits.net/2009/01/why-you-should-celebrate-your-mistakes/)