I’ve been running some Yammer 101 training sessions for our company at different times of the day and night to cater for our overseas colleagues. These are ‘open’ sessions for anyone to join so it’s always a surprise to see who joins me to have a bit of a chat and also get to know […]
When There’s No Community, Mutiny
This was what a colleague had accidentally said when he got tongue tied talking about community during one team meeting and we all rolled around in laughter. Little did he know that sometimes, you need to prod to get a reaction in a community. A Like, A Follow, A Share, Something, Anything…. Is there anyone […]
Learning to Crochet
This week I’ve been learning a new skill (thanks to YouTube) and I fell in love with it. My friend Renee who lives in Spain and is a fluent French speaker (we chat in French every week), recommended Yolanda Figueroa’s YouTube channel where she runs crochet tutorials of tops that she’s created. The garments are […]
Curated Tidbits for The Week
Lines and Symmetry: The Death of Jean-Louis Trintingnant This week, well known French actor Jean-Louis Trintingnant passed away at 91 years of age. He was the topic of our French conversation group so I had to quickly look into his work only to realise that he was in classics such as 1950 And God Created […]
Reading Jaron Lanier
I’m reading a couple of books by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier at the moment. The first one is You Are Not a Gadget and the second is Ten Reasons To Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. They’re not the reason why I’m getting off social media as I’ve noticed that once we make […]
Block Block Block Delete
Well it’s started. About 18 months ago, I quit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. When I say quit, I meant that I simply just left it. Deleted the apps in my phone and didn’t revisit them. In the last few months, through duress, I was part of a French speaking group on Facebook so went back […]
Reminiscing
Back in 1978, a year of my childhood was spent living above The Albion Hotel on Lygon Street Carlton. My father was a publican and at the time, he was managing this pub that was a notorious place for students, “musos” and petty crims. “You could get stabbed for breathing in there” I was shielded […]
New Knitting Skills
Sometimes it’s so easy to fall into habits that we don’t change over time resulting in becoming comfortable or even stagnant in our skills. For example, I like to cast on new stitches in knitting as if I’m knitting them. That is, I don’t use any fancy cast on methods or use anything other than […]
Yarn Stash
There’s something about yarn that gives me comfort. As a knitter. The more I knit, the more yarn I start to accrue over the years. Sometimes I buy it and never knit with it as I change my mind, other times people give me their stash. Most of all though, it’s yarn I have bought […]
Open Horizons Exhibition
Today I headed into the city with mum to see the Open Horizon Greek Artefact Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. It was the first time in about 2.5 years my mum had come into Melbourne and indeed travelled on a train so it was nice to see her enjoying herself. It was my little birthday […]
Glimmers of Hope
It’s hard to believe that we have reached June already. Where does the time fly? It’s been a really weird year for me so far. Where 2020 was all about fear and anxiety of the unknown thanks to the pandemic, 2021 was tedium most of which was in lockdown unable to see anyone or my […]
Notifications Pinging
Early morning my phone started to ping like a thing possessed. Usually I have all my notification sounds turned off. Everything for work – off. Everything for social media – off. Most of the time, I get to my messages when I pick up the phone and see them sitting in there. My daily life […]
The Tower of Babel
It’s hard to believe that I’ve spent a majority of my working life trying to help organisations and people see the value of peer learning and community building and at times, I feel I’m constantly banging on the same old drum without having achieved anything. To be fair, that’s only the way I think. If […]
What Did You Miss in June?
A busy month of learning in June. Here’s what I wrote about: Separation & Flow – the importance of setting boundaries between work and play Levelling Up Your Skills through Mini Challenges Lockdown Lament A BS Mantra: Fake It Until You Make It When Subscriber Numbers Get Scary Books vs. Cigarettes Ways to Follow This […]
Building a Digital Profile
Some time ago, I was asked to present at an upcoming conference on the topic of Building a Digital Profile. I accepted as it was not only an interesting topic, also I valued the person who asked it of me, and it was also a paid opportunity. Since accepting the work, I have been doing […]
The Immersive Language Experience At Home
I’ve been writing about my language learning journey with French (click on the Search box above and type in ‘French’ to see the list of blog posts) over the last 18 or so months and one of the things that I’ve been deliberating is whether “language immersion” works and whether we need to be IN […]
Knitting Owls
Recently, I found a great design by KDD to knit on a jumper and they were….Owls! In fact, the jumper design is of the same name. I bought the pattern and with highlighter in hand, scrutinised the pattern to see if it was something that I could knit. I would say that I’m an intermediate […]
Snippets of Conversations
This morning I went for a long walk from Brighton to Elwood, headed into the Elwood Village and had a lovely breakfast of porridge at The Turtle Cafe. I didn’t listen to anything during my walk, just with my thoughts and decided that on the way back, I’ll listen to what people were saying as […]
Books v. Cigarettes
I’m a huge fan of George Orwell. Guess you could say he’s my literary crush. I love all his books and I can’t help but feel that he was an empath writing about the human condition and the inequalities in society as well as making some predictions of the future which have somehow all become […]
Fake It Until You Make It: A BS Mantra
If there was ever a bullshit mantra going around, this would be it. I know that many people would say that this is what gives them the confidence to do things in their life they may not have the confidence to do. So, they pretend to be someone else or to set aside those feelings […]