I like my villains visibly bad, because it makes it easier to cast them aside. When they are intelligent and well-spoken and if we have discussed ideas earlier and have established some sort of friendly rapport, it makes it that much more enticing to want to dig deeper beneath the surface to try and determine what (could have) made you that way. And if you changed, what was the inciting incident that made you change.
Category: At the Table
Topics that merit more in-depth attention and are best discussed around food. Here you will be presented with dishes that were a part of the discussion via an artistic picture and the customary video.
Triptych: Three Thoughts On the Current Political Climate I – The Flip Flopper
That person looked me right in the eye at a chance meeting much later and acted as though nothing had happened and she had never told our boss not to extend my contact.
Divorcing Finland – intro
I once witnessed a Finnish friend literally not hear a word of what I was saying when I switched to Finnish even though I was standing right next to her. Her brain simply didn’t allow for the fact that I was addressing her in Finnish, when we had spoken English all this time and sometimes French when she wanted to practice. It was an interesting experience, and definitely opened my eyes to similar reactions around me.
“No rising hill, or mountain grand, (No sloping dale, no northern strand)” – some random initial thoughts on Santa’s homeland
Finland, the land of (at least) 10,000 lakes, an endless space of forest and an educational system that has drawn accolades and reporters from around the world. And let’s not forget sauna, salmiakki and Santa (unless of course you’re from Denmark, Greenland or Iceland). The last three obviously figure in several countries but, just like…
Moving from the Cross-cultural to the Intercultural – finding your identity through language(s)
The problem is that too often people tend to associate identity and belonging with language, and will label the speaker accordingly. For my part, I don’t want to be labeled as being part of a culture I either rejected early on or have absolutely no connection to by virtue of its changed geography. I also don’t want to come across as assigning more value to one culture than another
The (un)Glamorous Notion of the TCK / CCK Conundrum
The Personal Experience that Set the Initial Identity I first came across the term TCK in college, when someone much older than me made me aware of the term. I devoured all the material available, only to realize that it ticked all the boxes. Caught between this culture and the next, check. Code switching on…
talesfromyourlocalpubs 