China232.com Blog

I was watching a “light news” video today on Youtube. “Light news” or “Soft news” is the type of news story that is talked about when nothing really serious or major happens in the world.

This video was an American news video. It was talking about a story that apparently happened in China. I say “apparently” because, as you guys know, I live here and I didn’t hear about it. Anyway, I do believe it happened.

Apparently some woman in China was working in some kind of “divorce office”. I suppose she was one person in charge of allowing people to get divorced (I’m not sure which city) but it doesn’t really matter for this story. Anyway, when a husband and wife walk into the office to get a divorce, this woman is supposed to do the paperwork to make it official.

Well, I guess this Chinese woman didn’t like to see so many divorces, so she would pretend that the printer wasn’t working or she would make up some story that would make the couple “think twice” about getting the divorce. Her purpose of making the excuse was to try to save marriages and only give them to couples who are super serious about getting a divorce, and not just in a silly argument. Because of what this lady was doing, the couple would have to go home while still married because the divorce couldn’t happen that day, and if they still wanted a divorce later, they would have to go back to the office and get one.

According to this woman, many couples never returned. I guess they didn’t REALLY want one. I think many young couples don’t treat marriage seriously like they did in the past, and they get divorced for a silly reason like a dumb argument.

Divorces are getting more common all over the world. Some people think this is a horrible and sad thing for obvious reasons. Some people actually think its a good thing because they believe that people shouldn’t be married if they don’t want to be. They believe that if a couple says they want a divorce, just let them, what’s the big deal? It’s their choice right? They also believe that the reason there are more divorces now than in the past is because people in the past who were in terrible marriages (maybe where the husband was hitting his wife or in a marriage where one of them were cheating) would just stay married, even though the marriage was TERRIBLE. It’s definitely much easier to get a divorce now, and more people are getting them.

For me, I’m personally a little bit more traditional. I do believe that more divorces are a bad thing for society in general. I don’t think marriage should be treated lightly or like a total joke. It’s more than just a piece of paper in my mind. I do believe that couples who are truly in a horrible marriage should be able to get divorced, but I don’t think it should be so easy that all you have to do is get in a little argument and say “I want a divorce”.

If it’s so easy to get divorces, why even have marriage? If it’s JUST a piece of paper, then what is the point of that paper? I think we need to be somewhere in middle.

Anyway, the Americans in the video were saying it was WRONG of the Chinese woman to be doing this. They thought that the government should totally stay out of this business of divorce. I think the Americans who made this video were wrong. They were too simple minded and they treated marriage like it had too little meaning in my opinion.

The American woman in the video has especially ridiculous views on this (in my opinion again). I don’t like her thinking at all. I would love to hear what you guys think on this topic! I know some people can watch Youtube and some can’t because of the country you are in, but anyway, for those who can watch it, here it is.

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section!   I am fine if you disagree with me on this.  It’s just opinions.  I’d love to hear where you are from, why you think what you do, and how old you are and what you do.  (Or anything you’d like to share with us)

By the way, the new SUPER VIP monthly membership is coming VERY SOON!!  It’s going to be amazing so get ready…

Also, remember to watch my daily free English learning videos here.

This may sound like a weird topic, but I think it’s a very interesting idea.

(In case anyone didn’t know, “VS” is short for “verses” and means “compared with” or “competing with”)

My message of this blog post is this:

LEARNING ENGLISH IS NOT REALLY THE SAME THING AS LEARNING A LANGUAGE

Ok, I hope to have your attention now.  You might be thinking, “What the hell is this crazy guy talking about”?

Well, think about this.  Imagine I told you that I will start to learn Swedish.  That might be fun.  It might be interesting.  It might be a great thing for me to do.  But, I’m probably not going to do it.  (If you are Swedish, please don’t be angry with me  I chose this example because many people from Sweden are very smart and will understand this example without being offended)

Why don’t I try to learn Swedish?  Well, the thing is that there are a lot of things that I want to do in this world and I don’t have time to do them all.  There are only about 9 million Swedish people in the world, and they have a great English program already in their country.  I can communicate with many them already with using English.  For me, learning Swedish would be similar to learning a new hobby.  I could learn to play the guitar, I could learn how to cook fancy food, I could learn how to dance, I could learn a lot of things.  I might do some of these things one day, but I’m not going to right now.  We all have only 24 hours in a day and we can’t do everything we want.

Why is learning English SO different?  It might sound like I’m being unfair or something.   Well, here is the thing…

English is the world’s language.  By not having REALLY GOOD English, you are missing out on SO MUCH of what is going on in the world.  Yes!  I’m talking about making a lot more money.  But that is only part of it.  I’m talking about improving your entire life.

The purpose of learning English is NOT to learn a new language and communicate with more people.

The purpose of learning English is to JOIN THE REAL WORLD!!!!!!!!!

You might have an awesome life already, and I hope you do, but I guarantee that it will be a hell of a lot better, richer, and more interesting if you put focussing on learning English as one of the most important things you do in your life for the next few years!

You should absolutely keep your own language and never forget your culture, but it’s almost weird and ridiculous to not take English learning super seriously.  It’s absolutely possible to do it now, it’s fun, and it’s not going to cost you a fortune.  I could write a whole book about the major benefits of learning English, but I think you are smart enough to imagine what some of those are.

I’m not talking about getting to just an “ok” level.  I’m talking about totally kicking ass!  This is what we are doing here.  We are having fun, but we aren’t joking around.  We are serious about making sure your improve your English improves to the point where it makes your life (WAY better, much more interesting, much happier, and it makes MUCH more money for you)

This is not going to happen in one or two days, but it will happen if you take it seriously, and we’re here to help.  The process will be more fun than you think, the results will come faster than you could guess, and the benefits to your life will be MUCH better than you can imagine even now.

English isn’t really just a choice anymore.  It’s a total MUST in my opinion.  Some people understand this but most people don’t.  They don’t understand how important it is because they can’t see it.

Some people never leave their country for a trip, some people never leave their city for a trip, some people never even leave their town or their village in their entire lives!

They might seem happy, but they are in a little bubble.  Can you imagine if you lived in a small town and NEVER left it even one time to see what was outside?  I guess you might know people like this; people who have never been anywhere and live just a simple life of doing the same thing every day; no new thoughts, no new experiences…

I know people like this in Canada.  They don’t know how important it is for them to get out and see some of the world.  They aren’t dying so it doesn’t seem necessary.  I’m trying to say that not learning English WELL is almost like the person who has never left their little farm village.

I don’t wish to insult or judge these people.  I just want to make a point for the people reading this blog who get what I’m trying to say.  If you can read this blog, good for you! Your English is already not bad at all!  But it’s not enough.  You NEED to keep going.  If you don’t believe me, that’s fine.  I just want to make this point to give you something serious to think about.  This is my honest opinion and I truly believe that you won’t regret it if you follow this advice!

Please leave your comments below  I love reading them as always.  Do you agree with what I’m saying?  Am I making any sense?  Will this help give you more motivation to learn?  Let me know below…

And also, please remember to visit our English Video lessons every day!  We’ve got over 40 now and we’re making a new one every day, 7 days a week.  I hope you go there and watch the video.  Warning!  Your English WILL get a lot better  And also, our monthly membership part of the site will be ready soon.  We know you are gonna LOVE it!

When I was a kid, I always wondered why rich people would pay SO MUCH money to play golf at a private golf course.  It didn’t seem to make any sense to me.  Ok, sure, they are rich, I know that.  But even most rich people don’t like throwing money into the garbage for no reason at all.  A lot of them are surprisingly careful with their money.

In Canada, you can play golf at a VERY nice golf course for under $200 per time.  Sometimes it’s much less than $100.  And I’m talking about really beautiful golf courses, not just average ones.

So why then, would any reasonable person pay $100 000 per year for a membership?  It made no sense to me before.  Now it makes perfect sense.

These guys aren’t paying for how nice the golf course is.  That is only part of it.  It’s a small part actually.  What they are really paying for is the community.  Think about the other people who go to those courses.  Most of them are also successful business people.  They pay for status and ability to meet these people.  They talk and do business together.  They make friends and get their children in this rich group of successful people.  In some ways, the whole thing makes me sick.  I wish the world were a more fair place.  But the reality is that it’s not.  It does make sense for these people to stay together, meet each other, and network together.

It’s MUCH more likely that you will meet someone worth doing business with on one of these super expensive golf courses than if you were to try to meet these types of people at other places where “regular” people can go.

I was thinking about this because I was thinking about a social networking website for English learning.  These aren’t the exact same thing, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute…

People who speak English as a second language and are actually serious about improving their English, their business, their lives, etc, don’t have anywhere to go to meet each other online.  There are a lot of garbage websites that allow anyone on there.  If you want to speak with someone to “practice your English”, you can absolutely find a partner on a million free sites.

But the problem with this is HUGE.  These sites that allow anyone to join, attract people who aren’t really serious about learning English or really serious about anything at all.  Why?  Because most people in the world are not serious about anything they are doing.

If you want to meet a partner to speak English with, share ideas, share stories, share culture, you will want to meet someone who is at or above your level.  You want someone who can challenge you and you can learn from.  It’s not easy to find these people, but they exist.

Imagine for a second that you wrote on your Facebook page, “I am looking for someone to learn from, talk about business and life, and really challenge each other to improve our English skills”.  I can’t imagine you will find anyone.  Maybe, if you are lucky, someone will say “Yes” to your offer, but they probably won’t be the type of person you are hoping for.

As you probably know, Add and I have been making a new free video EVERY DAY at www.LearnEnglish232.com  

We are hoping to get people to get in the habit of going there every day for the new lessons.  We want to grow that site to 50 000 visitors per day.

But many of the people who find this site or that site aren’t super serious about learning English.  We also want to find the SUPER SERIOUS people and provide an opportunity for amazing English, business, and life learning that does not exist anywhere else on the internet.  That’s our goal.

The people who are not serious will not pay a small monthly fee to join the membership part.  And that’s great.  Our plan is to build a membership site for serious learners.  Everyone will have a great profile with an awesome photo, bio, linkedIn page, Skype number, where they are from…  A lot of stuff.  Then these people will be able to search through the other serious members and we can all have a really high level and private conversation.  Also, the members will be able to contact each other and set up high level language exchanges and other things.  It will be a real community.  I’ll be on there providing reading material, movie talk, technology stuff, and a bunch of interesting and high level topics for group discussion.  We’ll all push ourselves to get better and better in not only English, but in life too.

I want to have a lot of great free English learning content for everyone to enjoy, and a high level SUPER VIP program that is connected to this one and also adds a lot more.  We’re still talking about how we want the site to be.  And since some of you guys who are reading this right now will be interested in joining it, it would be great to hear your ideas now.  We are building it for you and other high level people like you.

What do you think of this idea?  What would you like to see in that program?

Help us design it with your ideas and then it will be much better that way!

And by the way, don’t worry, it won’t be expensive like an elite golf course!  It doesn’t need to be.  The only reason I used that example was to try to make a point.

Love to hear your thoughts guys.  By the way, does anyone here already have the great habit of going to www.LearnEnglish232.com everyday yet?  What do you think?  Have you shared it with your friends, students, or teachers?  What do they think?  We’re still in the beginning stages of developing this, and we’re sure this will be the best yet!

It will be connected in some way with China232.com VIP membership, so don’t worry about that.  We’ll take care of you guys and make it kick ass!  There will be tons of amazing free stuff for everyone and an insanely awesome high level private English learning VIP club.

Sounds like a win/win to me!  What are your thoughts on this whole topic?  Even the part about rich people paying so much for golf.  Does it make sense to you too?

Your comments are always appreciated.  You guys have been great lately with that.  Keep it up.  I read EVERY one!!