Polyglots and other Multilinguals, Rejoice [en]

[fr] A lire de toute urgence pour ceux d'entre nous qui parlent plus d'une langue (même imparfaitement) -- et pour les autres aussi: Life as a Bilingual, blog du Prof. François Grosjean de Neuchâtel.

My friend Corinne shared a link on Facebook the other day. It was a link to an article (I’ve forgotten which one by now, as I’ve pretty much read them all) on a blog titled Life as a Bilingual. It’s written by François Grosjean, professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Neuchâtel (his site is also full of interesting information).

Go and read. Start anywhere. Myths about bilingualism, for example. (My only complaint is the use of the term “bilingualism” to refer to what is actually “multilingualism” — using more than one language.) Or what parents need to know.

More from the blog:

Pick one, and start reading. If you’re interested in languages, or if you speak more than one, you’ll probably spend a few hours reading through the blog.

I have to say I was really happy to see that research about using multiple languages seems to confirm many conclusions I arrived at instinctively (check out my Multilingual Page if you’re not familiar with my various talks and rantings about multiple languages online).

Thanks for your sharing your research with us through your blog, François!

The Ugly Indians Are Cleaning the Streets of Bangalore [en]

[fr] A Bangalore, un groupe de volontaires nettoie et reprend possession des rues remplies de détritus. Tout ça en s'organisant en ligne, bien entendu. Ça rappelle un peu les Riot Wombles des émeutes de Londres.

If you’ve been to India, you know that the streets there are not a model of cleanliness. As for myself, coming from very-clean Switzerland, I always had a hard time with the idea that the accepted thing to do with your plastic cups when you’re travelling by train is to throw them out the window in the countryside.

20040202_street_life_117

Not in Bangalore, but a very typical sight in India, sadly.

Well, it seems that there are non-Swiss people who also think like me: The Ugly Indians (don’t just click on the link; go through the first pages of the site and take the tour of their work — it’s very well done).

It’s a grassroots citizen mouvement, which reminds me a lot of the Riot Wombles in London and elsewhere in the UK, concerned citizens who showed up in the aftermath of the infamous riots with brooms and buckets to clean up the mess.

The Ugly Indians are anonymous and self-organizing. They decide on a spot to reclaim, clean and prettify it, identify the main sources of “dirtification”, and once reclaimed, keep it that way. Less broken windows.

Read the piece the BBC did on The Ugly Indians. Like them on Facebook. Share with your friends, in India and elsewhere. Most importantly, read through their success stories — it’s incredible what they’ve accomplished!

Living in India, and feeling inspired? You just have to e-mail them.

Outraged and Furious: First Encounter With a Full-Body Scanner (in the UK) [en]

[fr] Furax: je découvre qu'au Royaume-Uni aussi, il faut passer par un de ces scanners-qui-vous-déshabillent. Et je découvre ça coincée comme un rat dans une cage en verre dont la seule sortie passe par un de ces scanners. Et contrairement aux USA, pas d'autre option: c'est ça ou je ne vole pas.

I am furious and outraged like I have rarely been.

You’ve heard about the full-body scanners they’ve been using in the US, right? And the “enhanced pat-downs” you go through if you opt out of the scanners? Thought that was bad?

I did.

You probably already know — if you know me a bit — that all the security theatre around flying angers me no end. Somebody tries to smuggle explosives on plane in their shoes? Let’s make everyone take off their shoes. Liquid explosives? Great, let’s put restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage. Explosive underwear? Even better, let’s ask everyone to get naked. You know.

I won’t get into the details of why this is a complete pile of horseshit, others like Bruce Schneier have done it (and are still doing it) way better than me.

Now, if you’ve been flying to or from the US, chances are that you’ve wondered what you thought about them. Do they invade your privacy? your intimacy? are the “enhanced” pat-downs you can choose instead something you’re willing to subject yourself to? are they as safe as we’re told?

And, like us all when we travel and have to jump through hoops, you’ve probably reached some kind of agreement with yourself about the price you were willing to pay (in terms of hassle or loss of freedom or invasion of privacy or possible unproven health risks) to benefit from the comforts of air travel.

Or, maybe, if you don’t have any intention of flying to the US in the near future, you’ve put off that particular decision until you really have to make it.

I know I did.

Actually, I have taken the US off my list of “places I’m going to fly to” — unless I have a very good reason to change my mind.

Yes, because of the bloody scanners.

I’d actually pretty much made up my mind that before going through the “enhanced security theatre”, I would rather get to the US by road, flying first to Canada. Or something like that. But having no immediate plans to go to the US, I didn’t give it that much thought.

Now, back to why I’m writing this in Manchester airport departure lounge, having used up a pack of hankies because I feel so outraged that I don’t know what to do with myself and can’t stop crying. (Writing is helping, though, so now I just look like a mess but I’m not dripping a puddle on the floor anymore.)

I’m on my way back home, having visited my grandparents as I regularly do. I know the security theatre drill: liquids separate, take out the laptop, make sure I don’t pack too many cables, finish my water before going through security, remove extra and potentially beeping clothing before going through the metal detectors, and prepare to be quickly frisked because the darn things are so sensitive that anything can set them off. (Except in Geneva airport, where I can safely go through with clothing that will beep anywhere else.)

Well, not this time.

This time I went through the detector, which beeped, and I ended up trapped like a rat in a glass room — only way out through a full-body scanner.

I wasn’t prepared for this.

I didn’t even know they were used outside the US, or for travelers going to tame places like Switzerland from the UK.

I had no clue I should also have been thinking about whether I wanted to continue going to the UK by air (actually: coming back from the UK), or if I preferred to switch to the Eurostar.

I called out to the guy who was making the people before me go through, expressed my surprise at finding the scanner there, and asked what the other option was. He told me there was no other option, that once I had been selected for search, it was that — or don’t fly.

I exclaimed that I hadn’t had time to think about this, and he told me to “take my time” — but that was before I’d realized they were not giving me any other options.

He quickly called his superior who stepped into the box with me and started telling me it was safe, necessary, would be quickly over, etc. I tried explaining why I didn’t want to go through but we were clearly in a “dialogue de sourds”, and I started getting pretty upset (understand: crying from anger — I tend to do that, it’s really annoying).

I don’t know how long I stayed stuck there (at least 10 minutes I’d say), but it was pretty clear that I had no other option but to go through — unless I wanted to give up on my flight (yeah, sure).

I gave in, told the guy I was furious, refused his offer to give me documentation, picked up my stuff (my shiny new MacBook Air had been lying in an open tray in front of everybody during all that time) and sat down to continue having my meltdown on my own.

So, what went so wrong here?

Clearly, the fact that I discovered the existence of full-body scanners in Manchester Airport while I was trapped like a rat in a glass cage and pretty much forced to go through one.

That put me in the unenviable situation of having only a few minutes to make a difficult “ethical” decision that I’d been putting off because I wasn’t expecting to have to face this kind of situation: do I cave in to security theatre and fly, or do I refuse, and pay the price by not being able to board my flight?

I hadn’t even decided, with the US scenario, if I preferred to go through the scanner or submit to an invasive pat-down.

Also, although the two security staff I interacted with were very kind and polite, it would probably have helped if the guy in the box had actually been able to hear what I had to say and sympathize (maybe that’s too strong a word).

Instead, he insisted on telling me I was wrong, that this was necessary, that it was for my safety, that it wasn’t dangerous and would only take a few seconds, that he could give me all sorts of documentation to explain this to me.

For somebody who has read a lot on the topic of airport security (even if I haven’t written that much about it, except for rants like this one when things get too frustrating), it really didn’t help to have him talk to me as if I was just a scared uninformed passenger. I mean, he even told me that they hadn’t had any problems coming out of Manchester (regarding security), and so that they must be doing something right. I hope all of my readers can spot the flawed logic there. It doesn’t mean anything.

Wishful thinking probably, but I think that faced with somebody who would have said “I agree, all this security is probably overkill, I’m unfortunately as stuck with regulations here as you are, and I’m really sorry you didn’t know about this beforehand” — it would have helped more than pressuring me by saying that if I wanted to fly I had to go through and that I was making a fuss for nothing.

Time to buy some of that scanner-proof underwear, methinks.

A Balanced Life Has Change and Instability Built In [en]

[fr] Quelques réflexions sur l'équilibre de vie -- et le fait que celui-ci est en fait un perpétuel déséquilibre, qui doit pouvoir absorber le changement.

I want a balanced life.

When I stop and think about what I want in life, that’s the best answer I can come up with: I want a balanced life.

I’m not an extremist. I want time for work and time for play, futility and depth, travel and stability, arts and science, me and others, and space for my wide variety of interests.

Many years ago, one of my philosophy courses made me suddenly understand that imbalance is what makes life alive. The very chemical reactions which form the basis of life are oscillating reactions, which go back and forth around equilibrium, permanently out of balance, but stable enough to allow us to live and breathe long years.

There is a risk of getting caught up in words, here. Stable, balance, unstable, imbalance.

During my physics classes in high school (what we call “Gymnase”), I learned that there was stable and unstable equilibrium. An object is in stable equilibrium if it is hanging from somewhere. If you make it move, it will come back to its equilibrium point. Unstable equilibrium, on the other hand, is when the centre of gravity is above the support base. Push it over, and it may fall and never come back to where it was. It’s unstable.

This struck me as counter-intuitive. When I first read about the two terms, I thought it would be the other way around. A lamp hanging from the ceiling seemed less stable than a table on the kitchen floor. There was a slight discomfort in the realization that what I considered most stable was in fact labeled by physics as “unstable”.

Me sitting on the couch: that’s unstable equilibrium. I feel pretty stable, though.

Walking: a body which is losing its balance every step of the way.

I’ve written more than a handful of articles that have to do with my quest for balance or related topics. Here are a few I dug up, but you can probably find more if you hunt around:

So for balance, you have to factor in instability. A balanced life is not a rigid regimen of balanced components. A balanced life is elastic, ever-moving, a harmonious danse of spare parts. A chaotic system, probably.

Balance, probably, is an ability to manage change. Interesting idea, for someone with a slight adjustment disorder.

A balanced life is a life that can absorb external elements without being turned upside down. This reminds me of something that’s sometimes said of Indian culture: it’s inclusive, it absorbs rather than rejecting.

So, my balanced life needs resilience. And it will never be really in balance — forever trying to reach it.

The Trap of Happiness: Big Things and Small Things, Outside and In [en]

[fr] La clé, pour être heureux, n'est pas dans les événements ou circonstances extérieurs, mais dans nos activités. En nous, et non au dehors de nous. Ce n'est pas très intuitif, d'où le piège. ("Quand ceci ou cela arrivera, alors je serai enfin heureuse.")

I realized today that many of the things I agonize over, the big things of life, are probably not worth spending so much energy on.

These big things of life — work, relationships, where to live — are just the measly circumstantial 10% component of our happiness (50% is due to our happiness “set point”, and the remaining 40% depends on certain intentional activities).

If I’m agonizing over whether to pursue a relationship or not, whether to keep my current line of work or change it, stay put or move to another continent, I’m doing so because at some level, I believe those decisions hold the fate of my happiness. But they don’t.

This is not to say that major life changes have no impact on how we feel. Of course they do. And of course bad decisions can lead to pain and anguish. But if things are going reasonably well and the drive is to be happier, the research presented in The How of Happiness (which I’ve already blogged about) tells us that these major changes will probably have way less long-term effect on how happy we are than certain more modest-looking intentional activities that have been show to reliably increase happiness.

Major events give us a “happiness high”, which is maybe one of the reasons we keep on looking to them as the solution to our lasting happiness. Hence the trap of happiness:

We think that big important things like being in a relationship, having a great job, having kids or living in our dream city are going to make us happy, when in fact it is small day-to-day activities that make use happy.

So when we’re unhappy, we yearn for big changes and stay stuck on “if onlys” rather than doing something that will actually make us feel happier.

For me, there is an important corollary to this:

The key to our happiness is inside of us, and not in exterior events.

This is nothing new under the sun, but I think that today I have really understood it.

You see, in addition to agonizing over “big decisions”, I spend a lot of energy hoping or waiting for things to happen which I expect will make me feel happier. Things that are outside my control or depend on other people. Without getting into details, this energy sometimes pushes me down alleys where I do things which I know are doomed to failure, which I know are a bad idea (and I can even explain why), but I have a very hard time stopping myself from doing them.

And I have understood today that the way to fight these “dysfunctional” urges is to remember where they come from: they come from feelings of unhappiness that I’m trying to address in the wrong way. I’m trying to make big things happen outside of me, rather than certain small things that involve only me — the “happiness activities” or “intentional activities” Sonja Lyubomirsky describes in her book.

Not surprisingly, some of them are already part of my “toolkit” for making myself feel better. Before reading The How of Happiness, however, I think I just hadn’t measured how important they were. And now I have extra stuff to add to my happiness toolkit. Yay!

So I’m making a note: to fight my gosh-I-wish-I-wasn’t-heading-for-that-wall-again urges, pick an activity out of my happiness toolkit. And I’m putting “working on being happier through daily activities” above my big “existential issues” on the priority list.

I find it ironic, in a way, that something as important as how happy we are (I mean, a huge amount of what we do, we do because in some way we’re trying to be happy) can be influenced by so small and seemingly trivial things.

It does explain, though, how we can tumble from “happy” to “not happy” in just a few clicks, and climb back to “happy” by answering two e-mails and cleaning the bathroom sink.

It’s not rocket science.

Formation à l'écriture blog le 03.12.2011 [fr]

[en] Giving a day-long course on blogging (the writing part of it) -- how to write a blog that reads like a blog and not like press release rehash or marketing copy 🙂

Depuis des années qu’on en parle, ça se concrétise enfin: je donne une journée entière de formation à l’écriture blog, le 3 décembre 2011.

Ça se passe à l’eclau, bien sûr, il y aura entre 5 et 10 personnes, et vous repartirez en ayant:

  • appris ce qui différencie le style “blog” des autres formes de rédaction (ou genres littéraires ;-)) — y compris le choix du titre, le formatage, le choix du sujet
  • mis en pratique, appliqué, corrigé, ré-écrit, écrit encore, recorrigé, jusqu’à ce que ça devienne naturel!

Le but: que vous puissiez écrire un blog qui ressemble à un blog “sérieux” (et non à un resucé de communiqués de presse ou de contenu marketing, pour les cas les plus graves ;-)) et que vous compreniez les mécanismes de ce type d’écriture, possiblement pour l’expliquer à de tierces personnes…

Informations utiles:

  • c’est donc à l’eclau, à Lausanne (facile d’accès en transports publics et en voiture — prévoyez un petit moment pour trouver une place de parc en zone bleue)
  • on commence à 9h, on finit à 17h
  • le repas de midi est compris dans le prix (on commandera au Baz’Art, c’est très bon)
  • le prix? 340.- à verser pour confirmer l’inscription à Stephanie Booth, Guiguer-de-Prangins 11, 1004 Lausanne, CCP 17-683449-5
  • annulation d’inscription: 30% jusqu’à 15 jours civils avant la formation, 50% jusqu’à 8 jours, et 80% jusqu’au jour avant (conditions piquées chez quirao parce qu’elles me paraissent très raisonnables)
  • chacun(e) amène bien entendu son ordi (et son blog! ce n’est pas un cours d’ouverture de blog, mais bien d’écriture!)
  • un grand grand merci à Valérie Demont qui me donne un coup de main pour la mise sur pied de cette journée, elle n’aurait pas lieu sans elle 🙂

Des questions?

Si ce sont les médias sociaux en général qui vous intéressent (plutôt que spécifiquement l’écriture blog), jetez un petit oeil du côté des workshops médias sociaux que j’anime au SAWI dans le cadre de la formation de Spécialiste en médias sociaux et communautés en ligne.

Merci de parler de ce cours autour de vous si vous connaissez des personnes susceptibles d’être intéressées! (Il y a un événement facebook que vous pouvez faire circuler.)

Drifting People [en]

[fr] On ne peut pas être ami avec tout le monde, ne serait-ce que pour des questions d'agenda. Je crois que j'ai accepté cette limite, et aussi que l'amitié va et vient la plupart du temps, et que les gens invités dans ma vie ne resteront pas forcément pour toujours.

I like people. I meet a lot of them. I connect easily and make friends. I have lots of people in my life, and not just “business contacts” kept at arm’s length.

At some point these last months, I started reflecting on the fact that I want to count as friends more people than I can cope with, from a purely “calendar” point of view. It’s very frustrating.

Four years ago I wrote a post titled “Too Many People“. I’m not at this level of crisis, at all, though the seeds of this year’s realization were undoubtedly sown sometime then.

I think I’ve accepted that people will drift in and out of my life. I’ve accepted that I cannot pursue every friendship worth pursuing, and that when friends drift out of my life, it is not just my responsibility.

You see, for some reason, I tend to look at things as if I was in charge of maintaining the relationship. But there are always two of us, and when there has been no contact in a year, it is also because the other person has not made a move either.

I’m not thinking of any of my friendships in particular, here. It’s more that I think I’ve accepted something about the somewhat transient nature of friendships and relationships, and the practical limits which mean one can’t be friends with everyone one wants to, and feel more at peace with it.

Sync Multiple Google Calendars on iPhone: Finally Figured it Out! [en]

[fr] Instructions pour synchroniser plus d'un calendrier Google avec son iPhone.

This is something that has been annoying the hell out of me for some time, now. I use at least half a dozen different Google calendars to keep track of my stuff, but when adding a Google account to iCal, all it does is add the main calendar.

I had come upon a hack which consisted in adding each Google calendar in iCal on the computer separately, rather than using delegation. A few weeks ago I was doing some digital housekeeping, and forgot why I had initially done that, and switched back to normal delegation. There went all my lovely syncing.

Let me explain things a bit more clearly:

  1. I have a bunch of Google calendars.
  2. I prefer using the iCal application on the computer and on my iPhone rather than the web interface.
  3. I want everything to sync.

Now, getting Google calendar to sync with iCal on the computer is quite straightforward: add a Google calendar account to iCal following these instructions, and under the “delegation” tab, include any secondary calendars you may have.

It gets tricky with the iPhone. You might think that now that you have your Google calendars in iCal, you will find them on your iPhone if you configure your iPhone to sync calendars with your computer. But no. iCloud or no iCloud, that’s not how it works.

So, you can add a Google account to your iPhone under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account… > Google Mail. That’s fine if you have only one calendar, but not if you have more than one, because there isn’t anything like the “delegation” function you had in iCal.

So, if you have more than one like I do, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Add your Google account as a Microsoft Exchange account as described here.
  2. Head over to https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/, select your iPhone (or other device), and choose which calendars you want to sync.

It’s pretty straightforward, but (a) you have to know about it and (b) do not forget the trailing slash in the URL above. I kept getting “device not supported” and 404 errors which were driving me batty until I figured out what was the cause. Almost gave up!

Thanks a lot to @zecege who patiently tweeted to and fro with me while I figured out all this!

Variety is the Spice of Life [en]

[fr] De l'importance de varier les choses que l'on fait pour être heureux, les façons dont on s'organise, et le type d'article qu'on publie sur son blog. La routine ne tue pas seulement le couple. Vous avez d'autres exemples?

I’m in India. I’m reading “The How of Happiness“. The two are completely unrelated aside from the fact they come together to give me the title of this article.

Spice
Photo credit: Sunil Keezhangattu/Flickr

Don’t let the slightly corny title put you off as it did me, The How of Happiness is an excellent, solid, well-researched and practical book.

I don’t want to delve into the details of the book, but just share with you something that has fallen into place for me during the last week. It has to do with variety.

You see, in her book, Sonja Lyubomirsky doesn’t only go through the various things you can do to make yourself happier, or help you pick those that seem the best fit for you: she also insists on the necessity of varying the way you put them into practice.

The example that really made this point hit home for me was the one on “counting your blessings” (yes, corniness warning, directly from the author herself, but don’t let that stop you).

First, the test groups who were asked to write down the things they were thankful for 3 times a week ended up seeing less improvement in their happiness than those that were asked to do it only once a week. Doing it only once a week makes it more of an event and keeps boredom/immunisation at bay.

Second, even then, Sonja Lyubomirsky invites the reader to not do it in the same way every week. By writing, by conversation with a friend, upon certain occasions, about certain areas of your life, or in yet a different manner, so that it remains a meaningful practice. (Page 97, if you want to look it up directly.)

This immediately reminded me of a flash of insight I had one day walking in the mountains around my chalet. I can’t remember exactly when it was, but I can see the road I was on and I remember the insight quite clearly.

Update: I found the article I wrote at the time, it was in 2009!

I was thinking of the different ways in which I had got organized, and how I seemed to become “immune” to a given method after some time had passed. The flash of insight was this: “maybe I just need to keep on finding new ways of getting organized.” I brushed off the idea, because it wasn’t comfortable, and wrote it down to the need to have different techniques for different contexts. For example, there are times when I’m more stressed than others. Times when I have more work than others. Times when I feel productive, and times when I need to kick myself down the two floors from the flat to the coworking space to get to work. Even my recent musings on freeform versus structured work go in that direction.

But in fact, I was right. Just like it’s important to vary “happiness activities/techniques” to prevent habituation (or worse, boredom), I think it’s important to vary one’s organization methods. Or at least, for me, it is. And it could well be because there is a “happiness” component for me in the act of getting organized. I like the feeling of being on top of things, of finding solutions to be productive despite my built-in procrastination engine, of learning how I function, of coming up with strategies to prioritize and get things done. And maybe — maybe — for me, trying to find one method that I can just stick to is a big mistake.

Another area I’ve recently connected “variety is the spice of life” to is blogging. I’ve been hanging out with the communication team at Wildlife SOS these last days, volunteering a bit of my time and expertise to help them make better use of social media.

As I was inviting them to vary the type of article they publish on their blog (at the moment, almost all the stories are animal rescue stories), I realized that this was another example of this theme at work: “variety is the spice… of reader engagement?”

Even if as a reader, animal rescue stories are my favourites, I will actually enjoy them more if they stand out against other types of articles. And for another reader, the favourites might very well be “behind the scenes” articles or “get to know the team” ones.

By publishing only one type of “top post”, one turns it into the “average post”. Add a sprinkle of intermittent reward to the mix, and you’ll probably positively influence the way readers perceive your content. Isn’t it more exciting to head over to a blog which might or might not reward you with a new article, which might or might not be the type that moves you most?

Now think about relationships: don’t we say that routine is the biggest love-killer? Oh, some habits are nice — but you also want new stuff, changes from the habitual, different way of being together and relating to one another. Surprises. The unexpected. This is nothing new.

So, let me summarize. Variety is the spice of life. Not only should you flee excessive routine in your marriage or relationship, but also in the following areas:

  • activities that make you happy
  • how you get organized (work, and probably life too)
  • the kind of content you publish on your blog

Can you think of other areas where it’s a little counter-intuitive, but it actually turns out to be really important to add variety to the way you do things?

Ada Lovelace Day: My Middle-School Maths Teacher [en]

[fr] Cette année, la femme que je voudrais mettre en avant pour Ada Lovelace Day, c'est simplement ma prof de maths de 8-9e, Mme Niklès (en espérant que j'écris son nom juste -- je ne me souviens plus de son prénom). A l'époque, j'aimais les maths, et j'avais décidé d'aller faire le gymnase en section X ("maths spé" comme on disait). Peut-être que le fait d'avoir une femme comme prof de maths a contribué à m'encourager à investir cet intérêt. Qui sait?

I’ve been wondering who to write about for today’s Ada Lovelace Day. Trying to think back to women who’ve influenced me as far as my interest in science and tech goes, there aren’t that many. I’ve had role-models, of course, and female role-models, but not so much in that department.

One person who does stand out a bit, though, is my maths teacher in 8th or 9th grade. I wouldn’t exactly call her a role-model, but she was my maths teacher, and she was a woman. I’d always liked maths, but it was around that time that I decided that I was good at it (it’s when we started algebra) and was going to go for the special maths class in high school (well, it’s called “Gymnase” here and the name of the class was “section X”, but that’s only of interest to locals who understand what it means).

Anyway, though she was maybe not the teacher I liked the most, or looked up to particularly, she was a perfectly good teacher. And looking back, I wonder what role having a female maths teacher at that stage of my life played for me — maybe without me realizing it. It’s an implicit way of sending the message “hey, girls do maths too”. We were an all-girl class, by the way, so there wasn’t much “boys vs. girls” competition around more traditionally “boyish” topics.

So, here’s to Mme Niklès (I hope I’m spelling her name right), who quite probably played a role in encouraging me to be a geeky maths-y sciency girl, simply by being a maths teacher who also happened to be a woman.