2010 TEDprize Winner Jamie Oliver

Chef, TEDprize Winner and Delicious Daddy, Jamie Oliver is starting a food revolution. He has one wish:

“I wish for everyone to help create a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

Jamie Oliver points out that the no.1 killer in the USA is heart disease. In fact 2/3 of America is either overweight or obese. He advocates focusing on education to catalyse change. During his TED speech he showed a video clip of children at an elementary school who struggled to identify basic food items such as tomatoes, cauliflower, beets and aubergine (UK)/eggplant (USA). Jamie’s point is that “if kids don’t know what stuff is then they will never eat it!” and “We’ve got to start teaching kids about food at school!”

JAM Fruit & Vegetable English Flashcards are a great and fun way to educate children about fruit & vegetables initiating a healthy relationship with food. We are also proud to announce that recently JAM Fruit & Vegetables English Flashcards was catalogued in the USA National Agricultural Library.

Since I’m writing from Monterrey, Mexico and in the spirit of healthy meal solutions, check out Gwyneth Paltrows’s Mexican dinner family style J Adorable Gwyneth not only dishes out her delicious “delish” recipes in this short video but also indulges in her own lingo/slang.

Guac – Short for Guacamole

Donesville – Means it’s done

Barbie – Short for barbecue but can also refer to a grill

Not down with the spicy – Does not like spicy (in this context spicy food)

Delish – Short for delicious

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

Futebol? Soccer? Chuggu? Sakkā? Fußball? Voetbal? Fútbol?

Good guess - I am talking about the World Cup!

I think it was while I was watching Uruguay v South Korea I was wondering how players that don't speak English, manage to communicate with the officials. If there is a Spanish-speaking ref with a Spanish-speaking team, are they allowed to speak Spanish or does everything have to be conducted in English?  Surely the Koreans all speak to each other in Korean, and swear at the other team (and the ref and linesmen) in Korean as would the Spanish-speaking teams. The English speaking teams can't get away with it as everyone understands them swearing (even if you can't hear them it's pretty easy to lip-read certain swear words) or sometimes you want the other team to understand what you are saying; to rile them and put them off their game.

In my past life I use to help organise football tournaments for the Asian Football Confederation. I always remember one Team Manager's Meeting when I was in Binh Dinh, Vietnam for one of the legs of the AFC Champions League. The Match Commissioner was from Hong Kong and the referees from Indonesia. I had assumed that English would've been the one common language. The Japanese team had a foreign coach, I can't remember where from so let's say Russia, and a translator for him but the translator only spoke Japanese and Russian. So when the coach had something to say the translator translated it into Japanese, one of the Japanese translated into Vietnamese (neither of these Japanese spoke English) so one of the Vietnamese had to translate into English and then back again... I was beside myself, and as you can imagine, the meeting took about 5 hours!

As a native English speaker I use to have this assumed arrogance that everyone should speak English to accommodate me, or at least be trying to learn it, to accomodate me. As and when I travelled I would always make the effort to learn Hello, Goodbye and Thank You at minimum but I would not really make any further effort. Now I'm embarrassed that English is my one and only language and am desperately trying to learn Portuguese as fast as I can as we settle into Sao Paulo. I don't think it's a bad assumption to make (that English is the common language in a group of people) but I can't impose the same expectation I have of others to learn a second language when I don't force the same upon myself.

Source for different names for Association Football in each country

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

GLOBISH

It’s everywhere and it’s invading the planet! I first stumbled across the term Globish in the Jordan Times when I was in Amman, Jordan and yet again while in Monterrey Mexico, colleague and friend Felipe Dell’Oro pointed out an article in Newsweek about no other than… GLOBISH!!

According to Wikipedia as the term is neither in Cambridge nor the Oxford dictionary, Globish is a subset of the English language formalized by Jean-Paul Nerriere. It uses a subset of Standard English grammar, and a list of 1500 English words. According to Nerriere it is "not a language" in and of itself, but rather it is the common ground that non-native English speakers adopt in the context of international business.

Interestingly enough the term Globish was coined by Jean-Paul Nerriere in 1995, but why the hype all of a sudden you may ask? Its all thanks to McCrum, an editor at the London Observer who claims in his recently published book “Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language”, that English has achieved a self-sustaining "supra-national momentum" that is carrying it beyond the reach of the cultures from which it sprang. As the property of all who use it, the language will soon, he predicts, "make its own declaration of independence."

The reality is that we use it and recognize it probably without even knowing “Globish” had a name and that it has actually taken on a life of its own!

As I said to my friend Frank Salazar, Internal Relations Coordinator for the State of Nuevo Leon, Mexico during one of our many discussions “Yes We Can!” A phrase, which he instantly recognized from Obama’s presidential campaign and a stellar example of Globish.

Fun, Sweet & Sticky JAM Facts:

-In 2003 both Chile and Mongolia declared their intention to become bilingual in English

-2006 English was added to the Mexican primary-school curriculum as a compulsory second language

- By 2030 nearly 1/3 of the world’s population will be trying to learn English at the same time

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

METROsexual OR RETROsexual ?

I am the biggest advocate of a metrosexual man. There is nothing more sexy than a waxed, shaven, pedicured, moussed-up, with a skin care regimen, wearing a pair of skinny-jeans, and a smile backed by pearly whites … under 30 (that last bit is just my personal preference so it seems and a different blog altogether ☺). That was until, after a night out in Monterrey, Mexico, a metrosexual friend we will effectually call “anonymous” applied eye cream at 5AM. Yes, after an evening of extreme partying he is so pre-programmed that he felt compelled to proceed with his skin care regimen at 5AM! That left me wondering and days later while looking up a word in the dictionary I stumbled across Retrosexual. What is considered to a certain extent the opposite of Metrosexual.

Retrosexual Definition: a man who adopts a traditional masculine style in dress and manners

The definition was followed by a comment from West4th NY: "old-fashioned manners and clothes typical of the early 1960s (think Mad Men)"

So I did the natural thing and went digging some more for these MAD MEN. I stumbled across the official site for the show and you can even Mad Men Yourself! (That's me pictured above with the coffee cup).

About the show:

"Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell. The latest season of the show takes place in 1963..."

So whether your man is Metrosexual or Retrosexual… I still think eye cream at 5AM is where one should draw the line for a man who likes women. As for men who like men and us girls, different rules apply, we can apply eye cream whenever we want ☺

Metrosexual Definition: a man who is attracted to women sexually but who is also interested in fashion and his appearance

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

The Mother's Voice

Every mother at one point will spend time away from her child – whether it’s going back to work or them going to school, going away for a weekend or them staying over at a friend’s house.

The panic of being separated from your child for the first time slowly subsides (well it took about a dozen times before I was comfortable with leaving her with a babysitter). But sometimes you can’t help but think ‘I should be there to comfort my baby if anything goes wrong!’.

A recent study suggests that a mother’s voice is as soothing to a child in a stressful situation, as much as a hug. A mother’s voice can help create as much oxytocin (the love hormone) in a child as physical comfort. Oxytocin is believed to be strongly associated with social bonding as well as alleviating the affects of cortisol (the stress hormone).

Source.

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!

Mexican-Dutch a Spicy Combination

Friend and colleague Ana Maria G. Landeta is “Mexican by birth but Dutch by choice”. Ana embarked initially on the challenge of going through the stringent Dutch Naturalization process, which lasted four years in total motivated by love. She had met a charming Dutch man in Washington DC during an Entrepreneur leadership conference. The connection was inevitable and before long they were inseparable. For the relationship to grow, however someone had to compromise. Mexico or Netherlands? In the end it was Ana Maria who took the plunge and relocated her entire life to the Netherlands. Aside from the cultural differences the biggest challenge was the language barrier. While Ana initiated self study of Dutch 6 months prior to departing for the Netherlands she confessed that it was a steep and frustrating learning curve to move beyond basic Dutch into a more sophisticated language essential to discuss relevant topics at VIP dinners with her partner’s social network or simply to be able to work in communication & marketing, her passion. The appropriate accent was critical but also the understanding of slang and innuendo’s, which can only be mastered after being exposed to the culture for a significant amount of time.

The love story that catalyzed her move to the Netherlands ended but her Dutch identity remains. While Ana Maria is Mexican to the core, she always travels with a bottle of chilies (it is true!). She is, as she likes to say, Dutch by choice, an accomplishment she is most proud of and one that changed her life forever.

*Ana Maria G. Landeta pictured above the day she was naturalized as Dutch

JAM English Flashcards: Fruit and Vegetables available online at jam.shop now!