David who?
How much do you know about David Beckham? Do the BBC quiz to find out.
And just in case you don’t know who I’m talking about …
David Beckham was captain of the English national football team from 2000 to 2009.
Paper, paper everywhere …
How would you translate the German word “Zettelwirtschaft”? Piles of paperwork? Paper chaos? Bits of paper everywhere?
You don’t know the word? Deutsche Welle explains it nicely.
Getting away from a bad conversation
You’re having a conversation with someone, but would like to get away gracefully. What can you say?
On the phone I might say something like:
- “I should let you go.”
- “I hate to interrupt, but I simply must take a bio-break.”
- “Let’s discuss this another time. I’m too busy at the moment to give it my full attention.”
At a conference I might say:
- “Excuse me. I have to rescue Olivia from a conversation. She just gave me the signal.”
- “I hate to interrupt you, but I simply must take a bio-break.”
- “I have to take an important call!… (explaining) My phone is on vibrate.”
- “Sorry, what time is it?”
You’ll find other ideas and explanations in Geoffrey James’s article here.
Financially speaking
Have you ever seen the abbreviation p.a.?
As in the sentence:
Sales increased by 5 per cent p.a.
The abbreviation p.a. is short for per annum and is a Latin phrase meaning per year.
You might know that I’m not a big lover of abbreviations, as I find they can often confuse people. I’d rather use the full term.
So I suggest writing:
Sales increased by 5 per cent per year.
On genius and madness
“No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.” Aristotle
Germans’ love affair with potatoes
Germans eat tons of potatoes every year, according to this Deutsche Welle article (and slideshow). Whether fried, baked, sliced, grated, rolled, as dumplings or shredded, mixed with onions and deep fried.
Did you know that over 5,000 varieties are grown today?
