The Importance of a Second Language

Having spent my school years in international schools I seem to take it for granted that everyone speaks more than one language. In fact I was always slightly ashamed that I only know two languages well and can just about get by in Spanish and French. (What i call cut and paste knowledge) Today as I am doing just that, cutting and pasting French and Spanish translations onto web pages, I realize that meager though my knowledge may be, I can always look at the text and guess what each word means. When I took French and Spanish I had no dreams of ever living in countries where I would need to converse in either, but throughout my working life, these skills have come in handy more times than I can count. More than just the obvious ways that knowing a second or third language comes in handy, I believe that it changes the way you think and adapt to cultures and the people in your life.

Cartoon taken from Borg Blog

Prioritization – the secret key

The latest book I have been reading is ‘The 4 Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferris. As with all books, I find that if you can dig out that one piece of advise that applies to you and enables you to improve your life, then the book wasn’t a complete waste of time and money. I have read a lot of management, self-help, financial advise and work improvement type books. There seems to be one central theme that every book eventually pulls out. PRIORITIZATION.

Usually it involves figuring out your goals… and then you prioritize accordingly. As a career project manager, this is my main task. I prioritize and then I re prioritize (for myself, for the project and sometimes for other people who obviously do not understand the concept and have not read the many books that I have)

You know you’ve neglected your blog when….

1) You read about news that you told other people on THEIR blog! (WITNESS has received the first humanitarian award…I guess you could say I won it too right? Wait a second, it isn’t even on the WITNESS site, so I guess I am not too behind) And its a funny thing but this project keeps winning awards even when it hasn’t even launched. I hope we don’t end up like Friendster that never actually got out of beta.

2)  You look at the blog traffic and wonder why in hell the traffic spiked (best day ever) when you haven’t posted anything new in almost two weeks. And what’s worse, my bikram yoga posts do extremely well, and I haven’t done bikram ever since i got to LA. (I feel like a an imposter)

3) You thought you blogged about it, but then you remembered that you only got as far as thinking of blogging it….

4) Now that the blog is getting some traffic and its not just yourself, your mom and the co-worker you forced (or bribed) to read your posts, you are undergoing a paralyzing identity crises. Do you really want the world to know ALL your rambling thoughts and extremely trivial ideas? So you just ignore the entire thing all together.
So in the interest of pulling off the bandaid and putting an end to the languishing blog, here is a quick update of my life.

International Bloggers’ Day for Burma on the 4th of October

FREE BURMA

QA begins today (oh what fun)

Here’s the promo video for the Hub. The site I have spent the last year of my life working on. If you want to read about it, volunteer or become a tester please go to WITNESS’ site or just contact me.

‘This November WITNESS will be launching its newest project: The Hub for human rights media and action.

The Hub will be a grassroots-driven, participatory media website that will enable anyone anywhere in the world with access to the internet to upload, share, discuss and take action around human rights-related media and resources. Through the Hub, organizations, networks and groups around the world will be able to bring their human rights stories and campaigns to global attention.’