European Commission

Due to technological problems Fiona did not get our initial paragraph. 

We worked over our first drafts and in the progress deleted the original.

European Commission

As one of the main bodies of the European Union, the Commission represents the EU as a whole, manages the budget, sets objectives and priorities for action and enforces European Law in cooperation with the Court of Justice. Furthermore it ensures that laws are correctly applied by all member states and proposes new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. These proposals are made to meet obligations under the EU treaties, at the request of another EU institution, country, and stakeholder or, since April 2012, EU citizens. Before making a proposal the president of the European Commission - currently Portuguese Commissioner José Manuel Barroso - and the other 27 Commissioners, one representing each member state, meet to consult. Each Commissioner is responsible for a certain department, but due to the principle of collective responsibility, no one is able to take any individual decisions. The Commission’s staff consists of administrators, lawyers, economists, translators, interpreters, secretarial staff, etc. who are organised in divisions, so called Directorates-General (DGs). These are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Commission. Each member state holds branch offices but its headquarters are located in Brussels and Luxembourg.

All in all, the European Commission plays a vital role in the administrative behemoth that is the European Union.

Fabio Nitsche, Martin Tieber, Chloé Cloison 

Procrastinating or actually doing something? o.O

Funny how productive procrastinating can be...

I really wanted to do something productive so why not do something for my blog?
And simply because I have no idea what to put up here I'll start of with my struggle to decide which phone I am going to get next week.

Will it be
a) The Samsung Galaxy S4
or
b) The new Google Nexus 5.

I might put a post up here of my feelings towards Apple and it's products, but this day has yet to come.

I really do not know which one to pick. On one side the S4 is an awesome phone with a good battery, good camera (13mp) and a ton of features. Plus it is for now one of the fastest and most reliable phones on the market.
On the other side there's the Nexus 5. It is out for about a week, and is also plain awesome. The battery and camera are not as good as the ones in the S4, but it also just costs 400€. Well just is a little hypocritical. It's price in stores is around 400€ and the S4 is about 450 quid. Personally i was extremely excited for the Nexus 5, but after some reviews, and the camera being not as good as the competitor's, i was a little disappointed.
Now i am really just looking which one i personally prefer.
I might pick the S4 just because it's awesome, it has a better camera, and with the new update it may become even better, because the software will be adapted to the hardware.
But maybe I will choose the Nexus 5 just because of it's potential. I am not even going to post about the NSA or something that the google phone will keep track of my activities, because f*** it. Which phone doesn't do that?...
Yes, the Nokia 3310. Good old times.

But i guess it will come down to personal preferences in the end.

Suggestions?

That's all folks.
Ciao.

Progress - Does Austria have an influence on the EU?

Does Austria have an influence on the EU?

Well i haven't really done much research for this topic in particular, and just looked over the regulations which have been adapted by Austria on behalf of the EU. It is also kind of difficult to find something where Austria does influence the EU, simply because either the news do not report about this type of occurrence, or we really don't do anything. The only thing that i found was that Austria has "taken over" the lead of the Council of Europe - glad I didn't write any of the other councils-. The main focus areas are people trafficking, freedom of media, and data protection.

So that's just a quick overlook of what has happened in my field.
If you have any propositions where i could find more interesting stuff, feel free to comment.

That's all folks,
Ciao!

Vocabulary.com → Epic?

What I do to improve my English skills:

Due to the fact that for me, it is impossible, financially and time-wise to spend a few days in the UK or the US several times a month, i have come to a solution, which helps me enormously.

I started off by creating a vocabulary.com account, as Frank suggested, and started learning the porter words online. For me, this method is by far the most comfortable to do, simply because i can sit in my cushioned chair, can lay my feet on my PC-tower, in the left hand some pretzels or a Red Bull, and in the right hand my mouse.

As time goes on the words to learn get harder and harder, and in the beginning there was the possibility to have a joker, like the "Word in the wild", where you can see the word in context, or the definition, which made it easy to get it right if your brain refrains from working. But just as i expected, this was only available, either for a certain amount of time, or for a certain tries, because when it got to the harder words, there were no more jokers to choose from.

I did some exercises over the weeks, but lately i got into doing it, and tried to achieve something to brag about. So i sat down, started spelling-beeing the words, when it came to my mind. I wanted to get at least on the front page of the leader board.That meant doing a whole lot of exercises, but eventually i managed to get my score and i made it to number 43 on the daily leader board.

→ Proof at the bottom of the page. 

Another task that i had in mind was to start a vocabulary book. In the beginning I thought i would pull this through, but i just cannot make it. For me, it is just to boring to do...
So i had to search an alternative. And i found it on Vocabulary.com. I created a new list, and added to this point every word that I did not fully understand. It is still kind of odd to add words to it, because i have to admit that I am to stupid to know, and this scratches on my ego.


Summarizing, i still have to do a LOT of vocabulary training to extend my language skills, but i think that i can already see slight improvements here and there.


That's it folks.
Have a nice day and ciao!


P.S.: The proof as promised.