MeetingS kills

A friend was preparing slides for a training session entitled "Meeting Skills". In the process of typing the title slide, she realised that with a small typo, you will get an entirely different meaning:

"MeetingS kills"

Anyone who has ever sat through a meeting can testify that on the whole, meetings are a dreaded necessity. This is especially true if the Chairperson does not know how to keep the agenda moving in a quick and efficient manner. Discussions can go completely out of hand if not directed well. An agenda with only a few items ends up lasting hours because people were allowed to talk freely on anything superficially related to the topic. Hence, skills are required to conduct meetings so that the business gets done in as short a time as possible. Chop, chop ... and the meeting is over. Work can commence.

If the meeting goes on and on, you may find enthusiasm "killed". People will find excuses not to attend the meeting, or be physically present but mentally somewhere else.

Get the right meeting skills or risk killing others (or getting killed) by meetings.

Have fun at your next meeting!

Learn to write Chinese beautifully

Chinese writing is not easy. Chinese words or characters are based on pictures of the actual item, rather than made up of parts of a phoenetically-based alphabet. (For example, the character for "moon" 月 looks like a crescent moon.) However, there is a system to writing each character. After that, comes the art of Chinese writing.

"To Write Chinese Words" is a DVD that teaches you how to write beautiful Chinese characters using a pen. You could call it calligraphy with a pen, instead of using a brush. In traditional Chinese calligraphy, you have to learn how to hold a Chinese writing brush correctly, then dip it in ink before you can begin to write, "To Write Chinese Words" uses an ordinary pen, which you are already familiar with. No added stress.

You will often hear a Chinese person say, "My handwriting is so messy," (我的字很潦草。）or "My Chinese handwriting does not look good." （我的书法不好看。）One of my friend's received this unkind remark from her primary school Chinese teacher, "Your characters look like devils dancing." (你的字好像鬼在跳舞。） Needless to say, she never mastered the Chinese language, nor the writing!

The beauty of the DVD is that there is a dual track for language of instruction: English or Mandarin, with subtitles in that language. You may not be conversant in Mandarin, but that will not stop you from learning to write beautifully. If you are a student of the Japanese or Korean languages, you can also use this DVD, with instructions in English. Chinese characters are also part of Japanese and Korean writing systems.

Learn Mandarin, Japanese or Korean (or all 3 languages!) and pick up a new skill today! Impress your friends and family!

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