Do you love a good curry now and again? If you’re from England, you probably have a curry at least once a week. But if you’re from Germany, you might not yet be addicted.
Take the BBC’s curry quiz and see how many of the eight questions you can get right. (Click on ‘play’ to get started.)
We have a word for the time at the end of a work day here in Germany. It’s “Feierabend”. So how can we translate that into English? We don’t have a word for it.
If you want to wish someone “schönen Feierabend”, you’d just say “Enjoy your evening” or “Have a nice evening”. Or if you want to explain what you do “nach Feierabend”, you’d have to say “After work I do ….”.
So what are the worst mistakes you can make when preparing your PowerPoint presentation? The Visual Communication Guy has listed twelve. My list would include the following:
I’m sure you could add more!
Do you have times in your life when you feel that email messages are getting out of control? If so, you might like Tim Ferriss’ email autoresponses. In the first automatic message, Tim informs his readers that he won’t be checking email messages more than twice a day.
Let’s take a look:
“Greetings, Friends [or Esteemed Colleagues],
Due to high workload, I am currently checking and responding to e-mail twice daily at 12: 00 P.M. ET [or your time zone] and 4: 00 P.M. ET.
If you require urgent assistance (please ensure it is urgent) that cannot wait until either 12: 00 P.M. or 4: 00 P.M., please contact me via phone at 555-555-5555.
Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency and effectiveness. It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.
Sincerely,
[Your name]”
You’ll find two more email autoresponses on Tim’s website here.
What do you think? Could this work for you? What do you think about checking your email just once a week?
“When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.” Chinese Proverb
Are you going to write thank you letters now that Christmas is over? Even if you haven’t written them before, you might like to give them a try this year, rather than send a text message or an email.
British etiquette expert William Hanson has some good tips for us:
- Keep a list of who gave you what.
- Use good quality writing paper with matching envelopes.
- Writing paper can be around A5 size for social correspondence.
- Use blue or black ink from a fountain pen (I’ve gone back to writing with a fountain pen and it’s great!)
- Write your address at the top if the writing paper has no letterhead.
- Don’t start the letter with ‘thank you’, but rather something like, ‘It was very nice of you to buy me the beautiful vase…’ And say thank you within the letter.
- Send out letters as soon after Christmas.
