The Language of the World

I speak seven languages. Really? Which languages? European languages? Asian languages?

In my mind I am conjuring up a visual image of the person who speaks all of these languages. How do they get daily practice speaking not just one other language than their "mother-tongue" but all of the ones they profess to speak...

It seems to radiate outwardly in a kind of a wave. Let's say the mother-tongue is English. In school we may have learned French, Spanish, German, even Italian. At a stretch, we may have learned Russian, but this is a far harder language to learn with past passive participles and other oddments.

Going out with the ripples, it is unlikely that we would learn Portuguese or Greek. Even less likely that we would learn Romanian, Serbian or Croat. It is even less likely still that we have a command of Catalan or Basque. But we might. Following this theme, Asian languages are going to be really hard to learn, because they have no relationship to anything in our experience, unless we have spent time there in an Asian country with Asians and speaking an Asian language. And Asians are remarkably good at English, so why would we need to learn their language?

I began to learn Korean. I was fascinated with the culture. I got good at conversational Korean, but never learned the alphabet. This was a mistake, because I couldn't relate to anything which had been written, only spoken. Now, if I try and remember anything, it's a distant memory. And this was only a few months ago...

I think what I am coming to is that to successfully learn any language, you need to have a strong knowledge of the culture and also have someone who speaks that language spend time with you, helping you understand all the nuances and tricks in learning to speak it. Oddly enough, I remember enough about Korean to know that you have to use different words to say goodbye to someone who is leaving you than if you are leaving them!

Something which is really helping is the emergence of the Web 2.0 culture and all the social networks. This is helping stimulate bonds of friendship between really indigenous boundaries. It will be interesting to see how far this really goes. Even the Chinese censorship and blocking of outside web links is not having an adverse effect on social media. The word is still getting through. And woe betide you if you are an Iranian dictator who wants to stop a fair election! The word also gets out here too.

Outrage, Twitter worm author gets a job at exqSoft Solutions...

Why does someone who intentionally wanted to do harm to millions of people deserve a job more than me?

"It's because he can code, Steve," I hear you shouting. Yes but that's all very well, but a 17 year-old? People do improprietary things every day and sometimes they are punished and other times they are rewarded. It is such a crazy world. I mean, why would this dude get a job and the inventor of that terrible virus "Melissa" be headed to jail?

I think that it probably feels better to do the right thing. Every day I and other people too, are presented with situations where, if we said nothing, we would be undercharged, or we would not have to suffer the consequences of what would happen if we had spoken up. But for some reason, it always feels better to "face the music!"

I don't know about you, but I feel better at night. I sleep better if I know I have done the correct thing. Michael Josephson has written a book about ethics. In fact Michael Josephson writes a weekly column about how ethics make the world a better place. You can hear this on the radio too. The amazing thing is, there is so much quality to living an ethical life. The knock-on effect of your actions are very far-reaching! You have no idea how far-reaching they really are until you come to view it all from a point outside of yourself. Then you will see.

Well, here's hoping that I made a difference to somebody's life today!

If Music Be The Food Of Love, Om On.....

We look endearingly at mantras. We gaze lovingly at yantras,

and yet we still cannot ground our chakras. Have you heard the crystal bowls being played? I had a friend who played the bowls. Their steady but haunting music had a positive effect on my thoughts. I was able to instill really great ideas in my head.

We need to breathe deeply and consider all of the great things that happen in our world. We need to be grateful for all the things we do have. We need to look forward to the things that will be coming to please us in the future.

There is so much in this world which is sad and dismal, we need to correct the balance. We can do that by being positive and upbeat. We need to look at happy things and face the brightness of the sun and shiny happy people. If we do that, all the shadowy, evil things will take their place behind us.

Every awesome day begins with the sun rising and warming our bodies. Even in winter, the sun comes for a few hours to warm up the earth. After the winter solstice, the days grow longer and the nights grow shorter all the time. That period is soon.

"When the white eagle of the north is flying overhead,
and the browns, reds, and golds of autumn lie in
the gutter, dead.
Remember then the summer birds with wings of fire
flaying come to witness springs new hope,
born of leaves decaying.
As new life will come through death, love will come
at leisure, love of love, love of life and giving,
without measure gives in return the wondrous yearn
for promise, almost seen.
Live hand in hand, and together we'll stand

on the threshold of a dream." - The Moody Blues

Great Indian Food You Are Going To Love!

An Indian dish called dhansak. 

It is made with four types of lentils (aka "dhal" or "dal") and chicken. (Apologies to all the vegetarians out there.) The complete Indian (Parsee) name is murgh dhansak (meaning chicken curry made with lentils in a savory sauce.) Most restaurants who serve this dish make it medium spicy, so if you don't like any spicyness in your food, you may like to request it mild.  

It is eaten with Pulao Rice. Meantime here is the recipe for those who want to create it at home:

Rice Method: (start this around 15 minutes to the end)

2 cups	Indian Basmati Rice
6 tbsp	oil
1 tbsp	whole cumin
6	whole cloves
1 stick	cinnamon
8	whole black peppers
1/2	onion, sliced thinly
	salt
1/2 cup	frozen peas
2	large black cardamon seeds

Heat oil in a pan. When hot, add the pepper, cloves, cinnamon and cardamom. Fry until brown. To this add the cumin and onions and fry until onions are soft and pink. Meanwhile wash and soak rice for 1/2 hour. Then add the rice to the pan and fry for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add 4 cups water and cook until rice is done.

Dhansak Method:

1/4 tsp  1/4 tsp  1/2 tsp  1 tbsp  1/2 tsp  1 tsp  1/2 tsp  1 cup  2 1/2 cups  1/4 cup  2  1/2 cup  1 1/3 cups  2/3 cup  1/4 cup  1 tsp  11/2 lb  2-inch piece  6  1/4 cup  4  4 2 tsp  1 tbsp  2/3 cup 1 1/3 cups  1 tsp

seeds from 3 cardamom pods ground nutmeg cloves  ground fenugreek chili powder  ground star anise  coriander  ground black pepper  mixed dal (lentil), washed and soaked for 1 hour  you will need: toor, masoor, urad and moong 1/4 cup each.  water  chopped cilantro  large onions, chopped  diced pumpkin  diced eggplant  diced potatoes  vegetable oil  garam masala  boneless chicken breasts, cubed  fresh ginger, peeled and grated  garlic cloves, crushed  chopped fenugreek leaves  large green chilies, finely chopped up  (you could make this only one chili, if you want a mild dish!)  large tomatoes, chopped up  tomato paste  dark brown sugar  Tamarind water  chicken stock  white wine vinegar  juice of 1 lemon salt and pepper

Heat a dry skillet pan until it's hot, then add cardamom, cloves, and all the ground spices (nutmeg, star anise, pepper and fenugreek), and dry-fry for 4-5 minutes or until the spices are toasted and releasing their aroma. Put the dal (lentils mix) into a saucepan with the water, 1 tablespoon of the chopped cilantro, 2 tsp of the spice mixture, the onions, pumpkin, eggplant, and potatoes.

Simmer, covered, for 40 minutes or until the vegetables and lentils are very soft. Remove from the heat and puree in a blender (that's right! in a blender) to a smooth sauce.

Heat the oil and fry the remaining spice mixture with the garam masala. Add the chicken cubes, and fry on all sides to seal. (It is sometimes helpful to get the chicken going first by pre-cooking in a microwave.) Add the ginger, garlic, the remaining chopped cilantro, fenugreek leaves, tomatoes and green chilies to the skillet and cook for 10 minutes. Reminder: about twenty minutes into this final section of cooking, you will need to start the rice. Don't forget, because it is great when both gets served at the same time! Add the pureed dal mixture to the chicken with the tomato paste, sugar, tamarind water, and stock. Simmer gently, covered, for 35 minutes or until the chicken has cooked through and is tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper and add the vinegar and lemon juice.


Simmer for 5 minutes and serve on silver platters 

with Basmati (jasmine, pulao or whatever rice! It really is best with Basmati. Look at my separate recipe for the rice, which needs to be started 11 minutes before the rest of the dhansak is ready.)

Also, you might want to break out the mango chutney and lime pickle!

Serves 4 - Enjoy!

The Global Village

In my last blog, we touched on the Global Village. I wonder how many of you really understand this whole concept? I mean, it is one thing to know of the Global Village and entirely another to realize the implications of it too.

The Global Village is the phenomenon where we see that goods from around the world are easily available in our stores and in places where we would have struggled to obtain these items before. Of course the original term, "Global Village" was coined by Marshall McLuhan where he showed that the electronic hook-up of the world via the World Wide Web and what went before, made the distance between global areas so much shorter in terms of time.

Instantaneous movement of information has caused this phenomenon and it is clear that along with the information movement, so have goods and items from all over the globe, become easy to move into any area. In a way, this has been a little hurtful to some people, and extremely beneficial to others. Let me explain: the people who had come to rely on a certain methodology for trade, had to rethink their way of doing it, because  of all the new people from all over arriving on the scene...

So, now we see a completely different landscape emerging and goods and products are much more easily available in every area (at least every Western area!) Also we are seeing implications for forming new sociological structures within the context of culture. So the global village is actually helping us learn something new about our world.


There are many other things which the Global Village has changed about our lives. This blog is far too small for me to comprehensively go into all of them... I might do a Global Village Part #2 later on. 


Watch this space! OK see you all for Powerblog #3! 

Coffee Facts You Might Just Not Find At Starbucks!

Wow - what a plain title I hear you say!

Sorry, I am trying to create 30 100 word powerblogs by May 01, 2009! So here goes... My friends all say I can talk about anything under the sun (or the hind legs off a sick donkey!) I'll leave you to be the judge of that!

So here we are fishing for my first topic...

Let's talk about coffee, shall we? How much does anyone really know about coffee? First of all, it is grown all over the world, usually in hot places. (I.e. British coffee beans don't exist, or at least you won't find any called British, nudging shoulders with bags of beans from exotic places like Kenya, the Goald Coast or Java!)

Now that's out of the way, isn't it strange that although you don't see much coffee being grown in Britain, they sure drink a lot of it... Much more than say twenty years ago. Reason being is that they have improved their catered coffee over 700% since then. Gone are the days of the transport cafe, where a cup of "brewed" coffee was a mug of steamed milk with pretend coffee essence stirred in out of a bottle with the brand name "Camp" on it!

I can feel a blog about the Global Village coming on, but don't hold your breath. That's next!

OK, so to carry on, the coffee used to (after they ditched the stuff out of the bottle and started getting particular about how the powdered stuff would taste) be split into "arabica" and "robusta" beans. The difference was in the taste. The "robusta" beans had a coarse earthy taste to them and really lacked the delicate pungency of the "arabica" beans. Then the coffee importers would use so many parts "robusta" to so many parts "arabica."

To cut a long story short, we are all spoiled for choice now. British coffee drinkers can get their coffee from Costa or Starbucks. And the choice is no longer restricted to which brew is ordered, since the coffee can be created as a traditional Italian-style blended drink, along with the shots of expresso-made coffee added to it to create a perfect "Caffe Macchiato" (spotted coffee, rather like the spotted cow, really!)

I won't bore you with the rest. You can go to a Starbucks and just read the wall...

Happy coffee drinking! See you all on the flip-side for Powerblog #2!

The Headache of Trying to Get Just Any Job!

You see people working, everywhere. You wonder why everyone is working and you are not.



The President passes some fabulous law which will remove the burden of $1,200 a month on "just-in-case" health insurance to 65% being paid by the employers and 35% paid by you, effective from September last year. Only you don't qualify, because you were laid off just six days too early (August 25th.) So you wonder why this doesn't work for you because in reality, you have a far greater need than all of those "chosen few" who just happened to get in at the right "event time!"

Oh and the other thing going on is that you cannot get any more unemployment benefit because the benefit just ran out after six months... So you apply for the benefit again, hoping they won't turn you down. The nice thing is, you are dealing with an ethical government office. They'll play it straight provided you do too. Sure enough, they approve your additional emergency relief. However, this only gives you ten weeks! At least it buys you some time!

After all, you played the whole thing straight, while there's some woman driving a Mercedes Benz and living in a mansion claiming food stamps! Huh! That doesn't sound right, does it... Makes the stuff AIG are allegedly doing, sound like small potatoes. But wait a minute, I thought all the skullduggery was over, no?

So what have you been doing to find work? Well, forget about "job" jobs. You may as well go and stand in line down on San Fernando Road along with those friendly folk from South of the Border, and wait to be chosen for semi-agricultural work at $7 per hour, except that you really don't want to jeopardize what you may have coming in from the Department of Employment Development.

So, what about Craig's List? Hmmm, they seem to have regular jobs every day. But wait, these are so competitive, that for every one you apply for, there are 10,000 others applying in the same second you apply. And wait, Craig's List themselves tell you that 89 - 99% of these jobs may not really exist, because this is the amount that get "flagged" for non-compliance with their code. Yes, you got scammed at least a couple of times. One scumbag has all of your details. God knows what he will do with all of this information. You do some damage limitation. First of all, what does he want the information for? Hang on! We need to know why he is a scammer first, right? OK - here's how we know... because we leave our browser open at the exact same page on Craig's List where his posting was yesterday, and it says right in the middle of the screen, "This posting has been flagged for removal" - so we go to the link under the word "flagged" and that is where we find the conciliatory note which explains why they prefer flagging over moderation,and, frankly, I wouldn't want that job either... Enough said.

Wait a minute, didn't we send off a resume, containing all of our information in good faith? Yep, we did! Bummer! That means that we will either be spammed to death by this guy or it will pose a security threat to our personal information. The key question to ask is "What did he want to do?" Well, the answer to this may end up being in your email a couple days later (if he's smart) or the next morning or the same day, if he is not smart. Mine came the next morning. "If you want this job you have to go to this site - link to click. Don't click it. But there may be clues in what he sent you, which will give his game away. This one was fairly straightforward. You actually click on the link and there's a page telling you that all employers need a person who really wants to further his education. There are three options, all of which take you to that famous alma-mater in Arizona somewhere, otherwise known as the fast-food university. You click on "No Thanks!" and it gives you one further option to sign up for something you really don't want!

This is mild. Other scams are after identity theft. Yet others will explode your screen with porn and other nasties, provided the browser you use doesn't intercept it first. (Mine does.) Nowadays, people are pretty well protected from this. That is why the scammers have to be so clever, and make sure that it all comes from the clicks made by the person they are scamming!

Enough of scamming! Back to the legitimate job search... And so, you very judiciously signed up for the Federal Jobs email, religiously emailed out every day, listing hundreds of jobs, albeit for careers like Marine Biologist in Taiwan etc... (These are all the 39,000 federal jobs that Jessica Holmes made such a big journalistic thing about the other morning on the KTLA Breakfast Show.) But let's not lose hope, eh? One day we'll see something there which will match your skillset. Along with these, we are seeing a whole new slew of jobs from the FBI. However, most of these are for Washington, DC and somewhere in Virginia. Now, the County, they still have openings, but wait, isn't there a hiring freeze?

Which brings me to the jobs that actually exist, but which have not been filled yet, but which you have to know somebody to get even the interview. These are around, but, as I say, if you don't know someone, forget it... I just really don't know how employers have the face to advertise a job and bring someone to an interview, and then change their mind. Others advertise jobs which don't exist. And employees at some recruiting companies, not all, mind you, are like hungry dogs....

So there are a bunch of people who are nice enough to phone you and see how you are doing... One has left a message. You phone them back. "Hi June! How is it going?" is your friendly opener.
"It's been so quiet. There is nothing for you right now... tell me how you have been getting on?"
So you tell her. You had a really successful interview and you are just waiting to hear... Wrong! She now wants to know which company. You stupidly tell her. And then you are surprised that the job is no longer open when you call the company back to find out what the next step is going to be!


A couple of kids came to my door the other afternoon. "Hi my name is XXXXX, and mine is YYYYYY!" they chirped, with a professional polish you would only hear in SoCal, as their father stood down at the street, watching every move. "We want to share with you our fund-raising drive for our school", as they opened an envelope with a glossy magazine and a list of hand-written names. I didn't wait for them... I told them that I had been unemployed for quite a while, and I didn't really have any spare cash to hand out.... Then I went to talk to the Dad. It turned out that he was unemployed too! Maybe not for so long as me... but he pointed me to a couple of web sites, albeit useless to me for job-hunting in my line of work, but then again, isn't that just how the Internet has turned out?

So what is the word on the street? In this inquitous society we live in, there is nothing obvious about how we get this business of finding a job done. The Internet, despite Monster, Dice, BrassRing, Indeed.com, Craig's List, CareerBuilder, Yahoo Hot Jobs, and a hundred other job boards, won't help you get a job.

I am told the only way is to go round banging on doors the old fashioned way. Trouble is, who is going to offer you a job if you don't know anyone?