[meme] Ten Things I've Done That Others Probably Haven't

[pne]

I found it hard to come up with anything. Still, here's my attempt.

1. Had 8th grade maths lessons while in 6th grade, and 4th grade English lessons while in 3rd grade. Worked with an RFC-1086-style X.25-TCP bridge (well, a simulator, since requirements changed before the program went into testing), and gave a talk about this at YAPC::Europe.
2. Shaken the hand of a prophet, and held open the door for a pope.
3. Ordered the bouquet for our wedding two hours before the wedding… and bought the rings after the wedding.
4. Received a "Dear John" letter during a two-week mini-mission.
5. Passed level two of the Klingon Language Certification Program on the same day as, and with a better score than on, level one, and found an error in that test. (My Klingon has rusted quite a bit since then, though.)
6. Translated into someone else's conlang during a Conlang Translation Relay.
7. Got a 20-minute crash course in differentiating polynomials in preparation for taking part at an international mathematics competition where most of the participants were one year ahead of me.
8. Was woken up in the middle of the night to fill out border papers, since I had forgotten to bring my passport along with me (on a train where passports were collected when you boarded so that the attendant could do the formalities for you when the train crossed the border without the travellers' having to wake up for it).
9. Sung a hymn in Estonian (or gave it my best attempt, at any rate).
10. Been told that I had an English accent when speaking German but a German accent when speaking English. Been to Liechtenstein, and have a stamp in my (now expired) passport to prove it.

Comments

[kake]

I have a Welsh accent in England, and an English accent in Wales.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hm, close enought. (Are both of those when speaking English in the respective countries, or speaking Welsh in Wales?)

How about: "10. Been to Liechtenstein and got a stamp in my (old) passport to prove it."

[kake]

Both when speaking English. Welsh is barely spoken in South Wales, which is where I'm from.

[kake]

Oh - and I wasn't trying to make you cross things out, but if you want: not sure how your grades work, but I got a maths O-level (normally taken at 15/16) when I was 11, and I (along with the rest of my class) did one of my English GCSEs (either language or literature; I think the former) a year early. I know there are lots of people who took various exams early, but I mention this because the subjects were the same as yours.

I don't think there are many people with both O-levels and GCSEs. The latter replaced the former; the year I got my O-level was the last year they were offered. (I think. There might have been some overlap.)

O-levels and GCSEs

[pne.livejournal.com]

I don't think there are many people with both O-levels and GCSEs.

*raises hand*

I took my maths O-levels in 9th grade, and O-levels in several other subjects in 10th grade, but for history, I took the IGCSE (international GCSE, I think) in tenth grade. Classes before me took only O-levels in 10th and classes after me only IGCSEs; ours was the only one with overlap.

I'm not sure whether they overlapped at any given institution, though, since I think that year was also the one when my school was switching over from one to the other (I think it used to have O-levels administered from a London university, and they moved to IGCSEs from Cambrige, or the other way around).

At any rate, I found that a felicitous choice since my history grades were not that good, but since it was a different kind of exam, my grade for that subject isn't on the O-level diploma I received for the other four or five subjects I took that year :)

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

I was one year ahead in my English classes my whole elementary-school career because I taught myself to read in kindergarten, so therefore my first-grade book was useless to me and they taught me from the second-grade book and so on, until someone decided this was a Bad Idea.

After elementary school, all subjects except English are separated by ability level. So for example I did have Pre-Algebra in 7th grade when some people don't get to it until 10th, but that's hardly unusual.

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein Liechtenstein!! bwahaha

Liechenstein

[pne.livejournal.com]

When we visited my father-in-law in the east of Switzerland and he mentioned at one point before we came that Liechtenstein was not that far away and that we could go there on a day trip, I knew I had to do that!

Not to see any specific sights... just because I thought it would be nifty to have been in such a small country.

Re: Liechenstein

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I've only ever passed through on the train. :-)

Re: Liechenstein

[eridanusus.livejournal.com]

I want to go there when I'm rich!! And Andorra lol. That would be AWESOME. Then we're going to go visit all our friends and play scrabble with my brother Wick lol

Chris

[volantwish]

i was two years ahead in math but not english :(

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

A big bunch of overachievers are we... when I started grade 1 at the age of 5, I had a reading age of 12 years 9 months. When I finished year 1, I was already off the primary school testing scale, which went up to 15 years 5 months - the age of the average grade 10 student.

What was the occasion of the Estonian hymn?

[pne.livejournal.com]

What was the occasion of the Estonian hymn?

Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, before my mission to Greece and Cyprus.

Occasionally, when we got off a lesson a bit early or when we had time to practise on our own, I'd wander the hallway of our floor. On one such occasion, I came past the classroom teaching Estonian as they were about to close and I joined in with the closing hymn.

There were only a couple of students in that class, and I don't remember whether they asked me in or whether I invited myself, but it was fun: a very enthusiastic rendering of Let us All Press On (http://www.geocities.com/ddstone48/hymn_texts_k_l.htm#f).