I wrote a long piece to put up today, and pulled it. I fear that I become repetitive in my middle age, returning to a handful of themes that interest me enormously (my own enduring trauma from losing my job; the centrality of manners) and which bore and frustrate friends and supporters.
My manager is a Korean-American man who immigrated here in this 30s. His English is "OK" (says my monolingual self), but he hasn't worked as hard on it as some. It is marked by Korean grammatical sentence structure. So I am always careful with cultural references, and if I must use one, I make sure I ask him if he has heard it before, and happily explain them to him if he hasn't. Most recent was "moving the goal posts." He is smart, he said, "Is that like trying to hit a moving target?"
Hugo—
You can take the man out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the man.
It’s who you are likely for a lifetime so keep on trucking’ it and sharing it the way you know best.
Your posts are fun and entertaining.
My manager is a Korean-American man who immigrated here in this 30s. His English is "OK" (says my monolingual self), but he hasn't worked as hard on it as some. It is marked by Korean grammatical sentence structure. So I am always careful with cultural references, and if I must use one, I make sure I ask him if he has heard it before, and happily explain them to him if he hasn't. Most recent was "moving the goal posts." He is smart, he said, "Is that like trying to hit a moving target?"