My great friend Joke, aka Elfy Jo, a multicultural polyglot magical musician, recently interviewed me on her radio show. The conversation careers around topical hairpin bends, as it always does on Joke's red sofa in Guangzhou – usually with the assistance of a G&T. We talk about our shared love of languages, discuss the power of coaching and delight in human diversity. Along the way, we… Read More
I managed to drag myself out of bed to get interviewed at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the inimitable Ernest Hackmon on his Importance of Being show. There was lots of humourous banter. Apparently, I am 'linguistic'. That explains a lot! We covered a lot of ground: from my three-year-old self watching Buongiorno Italia and नै ज़िन्दगी/نئی زندگی, to the oft-recurring theme of espionage.… Read More
Puns and plays on words are a huge feature of Chinese. There are lots of words that sound similar, and Chinese characters enable people to make visual puns too – playing with characters that look alike or share visual elements. In the year of the dog, which just started, many greetings involve the play on words between wàng 旺, meaning abundance, and wāng 汪, the sound that dogs make. Yes,… Read More
I had the great pleasure of being the guest of Doug Gfeller MCC on his OC Talk Radio show The Coaching Perspective. The show goes out live on Thursday afternoons and the live element added just the right drop of adrenaline. Doug was the perfect host and was very welcoming. The topic of the show was Delighting in Difference and Celebrating Similarity. We talked briefly about how I lear… Read More
It’s the stuff of nightmares. You get to the Q&A section of your meeting or presentation. You ask, “Who’d like to start us off with the first question?” Silence… Ear shattering, blaring silence. You smile nervously. “Come on! Don’t be shy. I’m sure everyone’s got lots of things they’d like to ask.” People start to shuffle awkwardly in their seats. Grinning inanely, you try to m… Read More