prieš 5 m. 9 mėn. - prieš 5 m. 9 mėn.#8490nuo Janina
Janina replied the topic: Friday 2018/19
1. The London Undergroud is a great way to travel to and from central London.
2. Most people think they need seat belts on school buses.
3. When people are travelling to or from work is the time which we called a rush hour. vadiname - we call
4. If you need to pay your parking fine, you can do it online.
5. If you are renting a lorry, you will need a special drives license. =driving
6. If it's a van, your ordinary drives license will be fine.
7. We often see traffic lights for pedestrians.
8. Road works are underway because the roads need regular renewal.
Paskutinis taisymas: prieš 5 m. 9 mėn. nuo Jurate.
prieš 5 m. 9 mėn. - prieš 5 m. 9 mėn.#8500nuo Jurate
Jurate replied the topic: Friday 2018/19
This Friday (29 March) is the last of the month, the library will be closed for visitors,
but I will be waiting for you. Come in through the back door!
1. I'm really annoyed that there aren't many cycling lanes around Pasvalys and outside the town.
2. A van selling fresh and smoked fish frequently comes to Pasvalys market from Latvia.
3. There aren't many traffic jams in Pasvalys, are there?
4. The traffic lights at the roundabout to Pasvalys hospital aren't good, I think. The pedestrians and the drivers have to stop and wait too long when the road is empty.
5. I have never had a parking fine because I don't drive.
6. When I was a teenager I saw a huge truck crashed on the roundabout to Panevėžys. The motorway was wet with champagne.
7. There are many roadworks going on around Pasvalys.
8. Sometimes I don't wear my seatbelt when I travel by car.
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LIGHTNING BOLT MADE ME A MUSIC MAESTRO
Hello, I’ m Joe Pigeon. Thanks for downloading the Outlook podcast.
Tony Cicoria is an orthopedic surgeon from New York. He is 65 now but the amazing story that we are about to hear, happened 20 odd years ago when Tony and his young family were living in a small town called Oneonta and his life was all about that job.
My worklife was absolutely crazy. I worked 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week. At the time I was the only orthopaedist in the county. So, it all stopped at my doorstep but there’s a prize for that, personal prize. I rarely got the chance to have dinner with my family. Every night I would put the kids to bed and would sing them an old Elvis song ‘Wiseman’ and rubbed their backs till they were about five or six years old. So that was something that I had always done for them and that was just a special time for me.
One weekend in August 1994, Tony, his wife and kids went off to the countryside Sleepy Hollow Lake for a big family party. He told the reporter Daniel Gross what happened that day to change his life.
It was a beautiful day. The leaves and the folliage were still vibrant at the time. Beautiful surroundings. Kids running everywhere. I was out running the barbecue right next to the lake and when I stopped working at the grill I noticed a couple of raindrops. I looked up and saw that it clouded over. And it wasn’t surprise because the weather in upstate New York can turn at a drop of a hat so, like, just disregarded it. And I walked to a pay phone which was attached to the building that I was staying-in next to. To go call my mother. And as I took the phone and had it at about half of a foot or a foot away from my face, I heard a loud crack as huge flash of light came out of the phone, just a big bolt of light, and hit me in the face. And threw me back like a rag doll. I felt like I’ve been kicked by a horse. Because I’ve been kicked by a horse before and I remember what that was like. And I went flying backwards, and then it became very confusing because I turned and that’s when I saw myself over on the ground. And just a prevading thought running through my head, was ‘I’m dead!’ And that was really the first realisation that something bad had happened.
What did you see on the ground? Like, did you see kind of a mirror image of yourself?
I saw myself. My body was on the ground. There was a lady waiting to use the phone and I had landed right at her feet. The lady started doing CPR. I'm just standing there and I'm thinking okay what the hell is going on. And I thought, okay there is no point of standing there, cause I could hear and see them, but nobody could see and hear me despite my attempts.
Did you start to think that you might be dead at this point?
Yeah, it would seem like I was dead at this point and so, I turned and walked away and as I was walking away I thought I was going to walk upstairs where my family was.
Leaving the scene where everything was happening, where people were rushing to attend to your body…
Yeah so I started going up the stairs and I noticed that my legs were dissolving. They were losing the form that I knew them to be and, by the time I got to the top of the stairs I had just become a ball of energy, but I was still very conscious off everything that was happening and then I got to the top of the stairs I just went through the wall. I passed directly over my wife who was sitting on the couch painting children's faces. And I remembered exactly where everyone was and verified that stuff later on. And I was feeling the most, the absolute bliss and it suddenly changed and it was almost like somebody snapped their fingers and I was back in this body and I went from absolute bliss to absolute pain. Overwhelming burning pain. If you took a hot poker and stuck it on your mouth and on your foot that's the sort of pain that it was, it was just a searing ten out of ten, this really hurts.
Did you have the ability to move your body?
It seemed like minutes, before I was finally able to open my eyes and to say anything. The lady had stopped CPR and she was kneeling next to me. And I have no idea why I said it but one of the first things off my mouth was, ‘It's okay, I'm a doctor.’ And she just laughed and said, ‘Where were you a moment ago?’ And I thought okay that was pretty stupid, I won’t say anything else for today.
Did you feel like yourself, if that question makes any sense, did you feel like a person that arrived in the party?
I can tell you that the circuits had been fried, things were really fuzzy, and I wasn't thinking clearly. The police came and they wanted to transport me to the hospital and I refused, stupidly thinking oh, you know, if you get hit by lightning, you either alive or dead, there’s not much in-between. I look back and I think, ‘What a dumbass!’ I would have never let somebody just not to go to the hospital, I think it was really a stupid thing to do. But at the time I just wanted to go home.
Tony stayed at home while his body and brain recovered and after only two weeks he felt ready to get back to work.
It seemed like I was normal. At least I thought at that point. I thought, ‘Okay, whatever happened happened and for the most part is gone. Typically that’s the way I've always dealt with things, you know, I had trauma at different times in my life and, it happened, you pick up and you go. It wasn’t until somewhere at that second week I start to have this incredible desire to hear piano music. Which was a big departure from me cause it wasn’t something I would normally listen to. So, that struck me as, okay, that’s kind of strange. But it was such a strong feeling that I needed to get a CD of classical piano music to listen to. And at the time, you know, this is 1994, there were very few places in the location like where I live that would even have that. So, I went to Albany, and went to one of a big music places. And there was a CD that seemed to jump up off the shelf right in my hands and it was Vladimir Ashkenazy playing his favourite Chopin. It was absolutely not a question that it was the CD I was supposed to have. And I bought that one, I didn’t buy any others.
You bought without having heard it, you just knew somehow that that was the one.
Yeah, I even hadn’t look at any others.
What did you feel when you first heard these notes?
I was there. I could feel the emotion, I could feel the passion of the music. And it seemed like there was absolutely nothing I would rather hear. And I listened to it all day. I listened to it on the way to work, on the way home from work, I listened to it at work, I was making everybody else to listen to it while I was working. Though, I made my family listen to it, I made my work people listen to it, I’m sure that they were wondering, ‘Okay, what the hell is wrong with him?’ It was almost like a drug, I just had to keep listening to it, listening to it and that went on for a number of weeks and all of a sudden I realised that it’s not going be enough. To just listen to that music, I have to be able to play it. Which was difficult because I didn't have a piano. But the next day one of our babysitters said, ‘I’m moving and I have this old upright piano and I was wondering if I could leave it here with you guys.’ And so, all of sudden I’ve got a piano, but I didn’t have a plan for those things. But nothing is impossible, so I was like okay, so, I’ll learn how to play.
How old were you at the time?
I was 42. A little late to start things like that. I bought all the sheet music from the CD. And I remember looking at that and just laughing and saying, okay, I don't have the faintest idea what this is saying, but that’s right. …These are a couple of the first ones that I bought. This was the Military Polonaise, Chopain’s . When I first looked at that I laughed and thought, okay. That’s ridiculous.
The number of notes, the number of changes and speed.
Technically it's a difficult piece for somebody that knows how to play. And I didn't have the faintest idea. I had to start at the bottom.
But Tony’s obsession didn't stop there. He even dreamt about music. He had one recurring dream about a song he’d never heard before.
I was walking out of a stage, the concert hall. And I'm looking around at the venue, I actually sat down and drew a picture of the inside of the Concert Hall, so if I ever saw it, I would know exactly what it was. But I don't need the picture, I still remember the details of the balconies and everything else. But, as I'm walking out, I'm realising - oh my God - this is not somebody else's music, this is mine. I listened to the piece of music, it had a loud crashing ending, and it woke me up. I looked at the o'clock and it was about 3:50 in the morning. And I walked out to the piano and I started to plunk out some of the ideas that I heard. But I didn't have any idea how to write anything down and I didn’t have any idea how to play it. It was in my head. So I sat there for a half hour and realised this is futile, I’m going back to bed but from that day on whenever I sat at the piano the music would play in my head exactly the way I had heard it. And it continued non-stop whenever I was driving a car, I was quiet, I was doing something else , the music from the dream would play. And so I went from the obsession of learning how to play and now I had a double obsession of ‘Oh my God, this music is driving me crazy!’ Because it's just constantly here.
Tony eventually got a piano teacher.
We met two days a week. At 5 o'clock in the morning I was there. And I feel bad for the family that, you know... They were having half of sleep (?) interrupted by… it was the only time that we had, I was free and she was free as well.
Tell me about your own family at that time, I mean… as you, kind of, cultivated this obsession. And as you spend all these hours listening to music and playing this music. How did your family react?
There was a mixed reaction, I think. Your term of obsession is probably a very accurate one. I was truly obsessed with the music. I got up at 4 o'clock every day and I practised from 4:30 to 6:30 until I had to leave work. I did it religiously, and when I got home, you know, I would eat, I would put the kids to bed and I was back at the piano. And so the children who at the time were young, four five and seven they went to sleep with me playing the piano and they woke up that way. To them it was just part of the fabric of growing up. But from my wife I think it was different because I would work at the piano till I literally couldn’t seem to be able to play. And I was there till 12 or one o'clock every night. It really became a wedge between us.
Did your wife or did anyone else ever suggest that you kind of stop playing the piano or just play less?
Her comment was I was married to the piano, I wasn't married to her. And that was part of my problem with balance. I had swung wildly out of control. I was working and I was playing the piano, and I really wasn't doing much of anything else. And at the time my justification at least to myself was, the only reason I'm here is because of this music. And that was part of the obsession.
In 2004, 10 years after the lightning strike, Tony and his wife got divorced. He immersed himself entirely in the world of the piano. He continued having lessons and in his spare time even went to a piano camp. Then in 2006 Tony was noticed by Oliver Sacks.
I’m a sort of devourer of stories, especially real life stories.
He was probably the most famous neurologist in the World.
As a physician, that’s one’s great privilege and responsibility to receive other people’s stories…
He wanted to interview Tony.
It was absolutely incredible. You know, it's like spending a day with a genius which he really was. We talked about all the stuff and probably the most amazing part of it was, at the end of our meeting I'm saying goodbye and he looks at me, just looking right through me and he said, ‘The music from the dream went through awful lot of trouble to get here. The least you can do is write it.’ And I thought, wow. And I was so taken with that, that when I got home I spent every free minute writing that music.
It took Tony seven months and he called this composition The Lightning Sonata. Not long after he was asked to perform his very first concert.
My teacher Sandy worked with me. She started right at the very beginning. How to walk in, you know, how to do this, how to do that, she would sit up in the stands, you know, ‘I can’t hear you!’ You know, just learning how to play to the audience and how to make the music sing.
During all this time, I mean, did you think back and say to yourself, all of this started with, literally with the bolt of lightning?
Oh, yeah. You know, I think it was a big step for a lot of people to say I’ve had an out-of-body experience, I’ve had a near-to-death experience. I mean, I've never said anything to people because I thought somebody’s going to call the State and tell them they needed to take my license away because I'm some crackpot. So I didn't say much about it. Oliver kind of took it out of the closet and said, ‘We need to look at this.’
First though, Oliver Sacks. His new book Musicofilia looks at what he calls the music instinct and what can be revealed by brains hit by disease in the extraordinary case I think we'll start with ‘Brains Hit By Lightning’. Oliver just tell us about Tony Cicoria.
Just last week he was in New York, giving the public performance of his latest work whitch is called The Lightning Sonata.
And is this music any good?
It's not bad.
And what do you take from this extraordinary story, the fact that we all have inside our minds the kind of programming for music that in some of us is switched on or off?
Well, certainly I think there were in him some abilities which were latent and which were activated by the lightning. I think various forms of reorganisation must have occurred in his brain. He himself is inclined to speak of Divine intervention. But I say, well, okay, but, might that not operate via the nervous system. I mean, I think the out-of-body experience, while it could be interpreted theologically, is really a complex hallucination.
Oliver Sacks spent a lot of time trying to understand your experience also from neurological perspective, what is happening in the brain after a bolt of lightning and as someone develops an obsession with music. Did his perspective, his scientific approach change the way you think about it?
You know, Oliver and I had many conversations. He always wanted to be able to explain it in terms of real-time circuits and anatomy. And I don't think that you can, because we have no real understanding of how the brain works. We know that we are able to investigate certain circuits, but the real understanding of how it works, we don't know. I do know that the brain treats music like it treats nothing else.
Do you think that in some ways you are a different person then you were, you know, before the lightning struck?
Absolutely, I think I'm different. If you asked the people that knew me, then I was driven beyond what they had seen any body else driven. You know, it's almost like being a drug addict. I don't think you ever really fully recover from heroin addiction. It's just always right there. And if I have any regrets that is one of them, that I didn't achieve balance in my life and it's still a struggle. I mean that's something that I worked on all my life and have failed that, but I’ve tried. Even if I hadn't tried hard enough, as my wife would say.
When you went through your divorce, you said that the music felt so urgent to you, that it overtook everything else. And as open as you could bring me up-to-date on how your relationships progressed from there?
The relationship deteriorated because I put nothing into it. So we got divorced but our children were the most important things, greater than either one of us, and so we always did holidays together, we were still very much the part of each other's lives and very much of our kids’ lives. And long story short, we went up getting remarried.
Here you are, in front of your piano, in the house that you share with your wife. Somehow these things coexist now.
They coexist, but there is a balance where there wasn't balance before. In all due, I still play all the time. I do, but I try not to let it be intrusive and so, you know, will spend some quality time each evening when I come home, even when I want to work on piano. But if I don't play that day, the World doesn't come to an end anymore. And it used to.
That's feel good definitely, to have it written down before the end of the World.
Yeah. Once it was done and written down, it is not been constantly pushing me.
Now Tony feels free.
Yeah, you know, free in a certain way.
Tony Cicoria speaking to Outlook’s Daniel Gross.
Next week, on the 12th of April, we will talk about stay-at home dads a stay-at home dad/ mum - vaiką namuose auginantis ir nedirbantis tėtis/ mama
Would you like to be a stay-at-home dad or mum? Have you ever been a stay-at-home dad or mum?
Look at the picture, learn the words for baby things and write 5 to 7 sentences with them!
some nappies - sauskelnės
wet wipes [uaips] - drėgnos servetėlės
a first-aid kit [fiorst eid kit] - pirmosios pagalbos rinkinys
a dummy [dami] - "sioskė",
a baby bottle - buteliukas su čiulptuku
bibs [bibz] - seilinukai
a changing mat - pervystymo kilimėlis
a thermometer [ther mo mete] - termometras
prieš 5 m. 8 mėn. - prieš 5 m. 8 mėn.#8512nuo Jurate
Jurate replied the topic: Friday 2018/19
Please, remember that the Friday before Easter we won't have an English class Happy Easter everyone! Many colourful eggs! Celebrate the resurrection of Christ and nature and let it bring a lot of happiness in your lives!
But don't get lazy at Easter, practise English:
1.
Do the exercises from the workbook file 3, pages 20,21,22,23: Especially the listening exercise!
2.
Please write on the Forum a greeting for Easter for other students!
Write a few sentences with these words
: clean up the mess - išvalyti , sutvarkyti betvarkę a new trand [trend] - mada to exchange recipes [resipiz] - keistis receptais move in/move out - įsikelti/ išsikelti to be fed up - būti atsibodėjusiam iki soties to be able [eibl] - sugebėti a definite advantage [de finit advantidž] - garantuotas pranašumas more likely [mo laikli] - labiau linkęs
a disgrace [disgreis] - gėda
prieš 5 m. 8 mėn. - prieš 5 m. 8 mėn.#8522nuo Jurate
Jurate replied the topic: Friday 2018/19
I am waiting for you in the classroom today, on the 26th of April with tangerines
Please, come, we will watch a funny video about a family who is going from the UK to France in their car. They have to take a ferry, and they have some problems to reach the ferry on time!
a ferry [feri] - keltas
Please, download the first part of the audio (read by Michelle herself) here: !
Do it in two weeks period because later the link won't work!
www67.zippyshare.com/v/MsR8UPbp/file.html
We are so sorry we didn't do our homework these last weeks
On this Friday I'll have a long day with teachers from Kupiškis and from our school.And
I got cold. I feel sick and tired.
If we can't come next week we would like to thank and to wish sunny and warm summer:
Hi, Simona and Arvydas
No worries! Come whenever you can! I wish you get over your cold soon and feel refreshed and rested!
We are going to meet on May 24 and 31. Then we are going to have a summer break.
We are trying to read Michelle Obama's autobiography even if it is difficult sometimes.
Come to the Forum at the start of September , I will write when we meet after summer