Free vs. Gratuit – in Graph form

Every Canadian kid who grew up reading bilingual cereal boxes knows that it takes more characters to say something in French that in English.

Finally, the economist delivers a graphic that tells me exactly how many more (about 25%).

 

h/t Chris Blattman

attitudes to immigration

via the Guardian

It’s the answer to the jobs question that really blows my mind.

I am trying not to take it personally.

links I like

A few links from this week..

• Favourite story of the week: Man brings shirts into dying wife in hospice, takes her for a ride on the Harley. (You will cry.) (via @kottke)
• Favourite blog comments thread of the week. (speaks for itself)
• Well-written blog post on whether charities should operate as businesses (spoiler: they already do) (via @fp2p)
• Another effective advocacy strategy I hadn’t really considered (until the Robin Hood Tax campaign did it, at Westminster Tube station): buying up advertising at a close-to-government-transit station (case study from Washington) (via marginalrevolution)

recommended reading

I make no apologies for my pretty extended absences from WordPress and Twitter .. life (work, school, soup-making – that sort of crazyness) has been getting in the way. That said, I’ve been keeping my my reading over the holidays. Here are a few of the posts and articles I’ve starred over the last few weeks:

• This woman is my doodle-idol. And the blog post worked. I have wish-listed Community (the show she wrote for) on LOVEfilm.
• A detailed and intimate portrait of an unusual relationship, via the New York Times. (not a Modern Love entry, though I read that too).  (via kottke)
• Who knew the shopping cart was originally a hard sell?
• A well-written perspective on why we need good IT education in schools.
• Future reading: best longreads of 2011
• On my birthday wishlist. (i need to quit reading design blogs. $100 for a poster..!?)
• Also gorgeous, this time affordable. A type-based map of the UK and Ireland. (The Canadian version just doesn’t do it for me.)

And in M&E-related reading…

• I’m saving this image for a future presentation on meta-evaluation. (via joho the blog)
• New find: AWID’s Monitoring & Evaluation Wiki. (via Michaela Raab)

Happy New Year

This year has flown by.

Best wishes to family and friends on both sides of the Atlantic, celebrating tonight. I’ll be ringing in 2012 a few kilometres above Quebec City. See you in the new year!

Learning a country through sport

One of the hardest bits of living in a new place can be learning how to make small talk. There is nothing like the feeling you get after you’ve had your first “daily-routine” style exchange with a local in a new place – particularly in a foreign language. It’s one of the first signs you get that you might be able to fit in there.

In Cuba, I watched Mexican telenovelas so I could gossip with neighbourhood ladies. In England, I’m learning sport.

It started with football – which is incredibly easy to learn about as there are about a millions teams and most people (OK, most men, it seems) are happy to talk to you about it.  Football fans have one (maybe two) favourite teams, so once you know a couple of people and which teams they support, football (the concept, not the game itself) develops a kind of social quality to it, as well. You start to pay attention to how Blackpool did, so you can congraulate the canteen guy on Monday. You can commiserate with your roommate when his team loses to their arch-rivals.

Pretty soon after moving here, I met my sports-mad boyfriend and my football education sped up. Then I was introduced to cricket. I’m not so keen on the latter and I have a tough time with terminology (keep slipping in to baseball banter), but I do like the international aspect. And there’s something to be said for a sport where nobody ever throws a hissy fit or a punch.

This time of year, it’s rugby. The Rugby World Cup is on and because the UK furnishes a bunch of teams, everybody has an opinion and probably a couple of loyalties.

I haven’t become a sports fanatic and I still don’t really know most of the rules, but I do know that learning how to follow standings (sort of) has helped me understand a lot of workplace / pub banter, and give me something to talk about besides the weather. (And for the record, I’m now cheering for New Zealand, just because they’re small.)

Bouquets of freshly-sharpened pencils

Credit: Datu Aurellano / Flikr: datu

Fall is my favourite season. I love Thanksgiving, the colours orange and brown, the sight of young Moms & Dads taking kids to their first day of school. I’m a total sucker for all that. I know Spring is supposed to be the time of “new beginnings” – but we all know September is the time that feels like things are starting up again.

Unfortunately, England doesn’t have Fall, it has Autumn. To my still-Canadian ears, “autumn” sounds less like a season and more like a character from The OC  — lovely, but maybe a bit silly coming from me.

Anyway, the autumn is full of new beginnings for me. I’m taking on a new role at work (just for a year – maternity cover!) and starting courses towards a new degree.

Yesterday was registration day at the tiny downtown campus – they day when you pick up your student card and figure out the safest (indoor) place to park your bike. Next week is full-on orientation and the start of classes – and I start learning things like whether or not they still use hard-copy course packs.

This year is going to be packed-to-the-brim and filled with learning, as I balance work, studies and a twice-a-week commute into London. But as I’ve said, I love September – and during a month like this one, you can psych yourself up to do almost anything.