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Benny’s birthday request: 1982 clicks!

| 26 comments | Category: off topic

At midnight tonight I will have successfully completed 28 laps of the entire solar system. That’s about 26,264 MILLION kilometres! Phew, it’s exhausting! But I’m ready for much more! :D

So, I will take this short off-topic break from saving the world from being doomed to a a boring monolingual fate, to asking for a birthday present from you!

If you’ve enjoyed any of my blog posts in the past, then this will be hugely appreciated as a thank you! Best part is: it’s completely free and will take you 20 seconds max. Although those of you willing to treat me to a non-alcoholic cocktail (or mocktail as I prefer to call them) for my weekend celebrations, can certainly do that too!

My birthday request: 1982 clicks

Don’t worry, you don’t have to personally click anything 1982 times – once will do :) But I’m hoping that the RSS subscribers, Language Hacking League e-mail subscribers, and everyone I am spending the day writing to personally, can combine their click-powers to give me a total of 1982 clicks (any guesses why I’m aiming for that number? ;) )

The best part is that you can follow the progress for yourself! Check out the page I want to share with a video of me speaking in 8 languages. The page also talks about the Language Hacking Guide, but people have told me that it’s fun to share simply because the video is cool, even if they aren’t interested in the book. That page has the Facebook share link on the top-right and that is what I would like people to click this weekend!

I have augmented the page with the latest advanced web 7.0 technology: a cheesy guilt-filled message and a ridiculous giant arrow just so there is no confusion about where I want you to click! When you click “share”, a page opens up for you to put the link on your Facebook profile (you may have to log-in first). Write a wee message saying how crazy this Irish guy is, how bad my accent in French is, how cheesy my pathetic plea for attention is, or whatever you want to say, but share it! You can also click the arrow to select a nicer white image to display to represent the page.

All the link sharing will bring more interested and cool readers to my site, give me lots more interesting comments and e-mails, and perhaps make an extra sale or two to make sure that I have enough Orange Juice to power my language learning missions! The next one is going to be quite the challenge and I’ll officially introduce it next week!

That’s it! So if you have 20 seconds to spare for your favourite Irish polyglot, please click ‘share’ on the top-right of this page. For every click I receive, I guarantee that I will smile in appreciation, or you get your click back no-questions-asked. Multiple clicks mean multiple smiles so spread the message, and for bonus points (or if you don’t use Facebook) you can e-mail 3 of your friends learning languages and tell them to read this blog, and let me know about it so you get your well earned smile-credit!

My birthday request is to take over the (Facebook) world… for the weekend :P You know what to do to help make it possible!

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Comments: If you liked this post or have anything to say, please leave a comment! I love reading them :) You don’t even have to write in English! I will reply to all comments in any language listed on the right with the flags.
Just keep in mind that I’ll delete any comments that:
1. Are unnecessarily nasty and mean to me or any other commenter or otherwise totally inappropriate.
2. Are irrelevant to the particular post they follow, or leave a link to a site that is totally irrelevant or are clearly spam. If you have a general language learning question, please ask it in the forums.
3. Use a commenter name of a business or brand instead of a human being or a spammy temporary disposable e-mail service, or a clearly fake address.
But that’s not you, so don’t worry! Can’t wait to see what you have to write… don’t be shy!! :)

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  • http://www.getinthehotspot.com/ Annabel, Get In The Hot Spot

    Cumpleanos feliz, happy birthday, bon anniversaire! Hope you make it to 1982 clicks and congrats on all that lapping of the solar system. Superb!

  • http://www.marsdorian.com/ Mars Dorian

    awesome, I will give you a happy birthday message via Twitter.

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    Thanks so much for the well wishes and the retweet! You earn dozens of smile-points :D :) :) :) :) :)
    I'll be online for most of today (it's not my birthday until midnight) and then I'll be out enjoying myself all weekend long :) Can't wait!

    I've got a lot planned for my next laps around the solar system!

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    Cool, thanks a million! :D We'll have to finally meet up next week since I've got little time left in Berlin!

  • http://www.marsdorian.com/ Mars Dorian

    Man Benny, totally forget about that. Let's pick a day now. Which day next week ?

  • http://flapic.amplify.com Flavio

    Do they have to be exactly 1982? If so I can wait for your goal to be reached and click as 1983rd to screw it :D

    Happy birthday and come back to visit soon!

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    haha- funny :P If I (somehow) make it to 1982, then I will be quite happy to invent a new objective :D
    Thanks for the share!

  • http://molista.blogspot.com/ Glavkos

    Happy birthday Benny from Slovakia…

  • http://www.tidbitsfromtheworld.com/ Alexandre

    祝你生日快乐 zhu ni shengri kuaile! (Happy birthday)

    I just discovered your blog, and I was wondering if you think you could learn a non european language (such as Chinese), in three months and achieve fluency as you defined it? I’ve been learning Chinese for two years now and I’m not sure I would consider myself fluent yet, by my own standards that is. I am looking forward to the day that I can express any idea in Chinese, using common vocabulary and the four-character chengyus (成语) or expressions in classical Chinese.

    Is Chinese in your list of languages to learn?

  • http://www.tidbitsfromtheworld.com/ Alexandre

    By the way, from your photo, it seems like you are celebrating your birthday in my hometown, Montreal! Enjoy your time here! :-)

  • josipaz

    feliz aniversário! : )

  • http://hooshotjr-russian.blogspot.com Jen

    с Днём Рождения Benny! ))) (I read somewhere that it's bad luck to wish someone a happy birthday before their actualy birthday in Russia, but my Russian friends swear that this isn't true. So…)

  • http://www.MyBeautifulAdventures.com/ GlobalButterfly

    1) Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    2) How do you measure a lap? Does it have to be a RTW trip?

  • Angela

    I don’t have a facebook (le gasp!) so please consider this comment one click instead. :)

    Aww, and happy birthday, you!

    …from a new reader of your blog. :)

  • http://howlearnspanish.com/ Andrew

    Happy birthday man, I gave you a click. You're doing what I essentially want to do with my life (travel, live in different countries, learn new languages), I go into more details on my blog if you're interested (don't be too harsh, I JUST started)–I'm planning on using a combination of what you do with Iversen's insanely structured “global” learning method to learn languages (I've been half-assing my way through Spanish, and more recently Japanese, for a while now but I've decided to get a proper system together, get serious, and get fluent).

    I do have a question though, if you don't mind a bit of a digression: how do you deal with visas?

    What I mean is that, something I've noticed is going to be a big problem for me since I don't want to do the traditional tourist thing, most countries won't let you stay any longer than 3 months or so (I think Canada MIGHT be 6) in their country, and I really don't believe that's long enough to truly learn about the people and the culture, I'd like to be able to stay for 6 months or a year or two at a time, but visas are often not the easiest things to get, depending on the country. You're very lucky in that you're Irish and therefore have an E.U. passport and can stay in any Schengen country for as long as you please (I'm American and I'm actually considering eventually getting citizenship in an E.U. country for the primary purpose of being able to travel to and live in any Schengen country for as long as I want, Belgium looks good :/ ). Anyway, I was just wondering if you had any particular way of dealing with visas if you go to a country and decide that you want to stay there longer than they would normally allow a tourist without a visa (or with just a tourist visa that's usually only good for 30 or 60 days or something like that)?

    Much appreciate any help or advice you can offer, like I said you're essentially doing what I hope to be able to in a year or two.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    1) Thanks!! :)
    2) That's not a RTW trip, that's the trajectory of the Earth's orbit around the sun. To measure it, take the distance to the sun and multiply it by 2pi, and then multiply that by the number of years (“laps”) ;) That's the distance I have “covered” so far, even if I was sitting still!

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    Thanks for the birthday wishes Andrew!
    As an EU citizen, I never have to worry about visas in this continent. Otherwise I will stay up to 3 months as a tourist (any work I do officially exists in a different country, since it's Internet based and I'm not taking jobs away from locals etc.)
    One thing you can do is get a second passport of ANY country if you can (obviously priority is European). What this would mean is that you can leave after 3 months, cross a border and come immediately back on the other passport. I have a second passport just in case I ever decide to stay longer.
    Hope you get to follow your dream!
    All the best

  • http://www.ikindalikelanguages.com lyzazel

    Well, actually Earth's orbit is elliptic thus I don't think 2π works here.

    Also you are not only traveling on Earth but in a superposition the whole solar system is moving as is the whole galaxy and so on. All motion is relative.

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    Good point! I guess my number will just have to remain a vague approximation, and based on the assumption that the solar system itself is static in space. :P

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    My next language is Hungarian. Although Hungary is physically located in Europe, the language is NOT an Indo-European language, so it hasn't the many commonalities Slavic, Germanic and Latin languages have. After that challenge I can evaluate my 3-month assumption to a wider range of languages better ;)

    Chinese is definitely on my list, but I don't know when I'll get to it. Taking 3 months at a time means I am going quite slowly through the list ;)

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    About half of my blog post photos are from my travel archives (the other half being taken for the post) – I'm not in Montreal right now but I lived there 3 years ago and had a great time :)

  • http://www.fluentin3months.com/ Benny the Irish polyglot

    Valeu!! :)

  • bencameron

    Consider it clicked!

  • Khadija

    Happy Birthday, Benny! I don't have a Facebook account, but I'll be sure to link to your blog and Language Hacking Guide whenever the subject of language learning comes up in future posts.

  • Joshua

    Nachträglich, alles Gute zum Geburtstag.
    I would have clicked but I don't have a Facebook account and I wont create one.

  • Matthias

    Happy Birthday Benny.

    Ich habe keinen Account bei Facebook, aber betrachte diesen Kommentar doch als Click. Nach drei Monaten ein C2 Examen, also ich finde schon die Anmeldung mutig. Aber nach intensiver Lektüre deines Blogs glaube ich du kannst es schaffen. Und eine bessere Werbung für den Language Hacking Guide kann ich mir nicht vorstellen.