The importance of being show – KX 93.5

I managed to drag myself out of bed to get interviewed at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning by the inimitable Ernest Hackmon on his Importance of Being show.

There was lots of humourous banter. Apparently, I am ‘linguistic’. That explains a lot!

We covered a lot of ground: from my three-year-old self watching Buongiorno Italia and नै ज़िन्दगी/نئی زندگی, to the oft-recurring theme of espionage.

The main theme was language learning and what prevents people from doing in successfully. Ernest shared his own experiences, of how the formal written language of the foreign language classroom often doesn’t equip people to use the language in real situations. That is something I too have experienced.

The story of my first visit to DPRK (North Korea) then came up, rather tangentially.  I was managing a project there at a distance. When I arrived in Pyeongyang for my first visit, I discovered Kim Jong Il had died.

Next, we explored coaching, which comes from my passion for people, as uniquely diverse beings. We discussed parallels between why we fail at language learning and what stops us achieving other life goals. Ernest shared an example about baseball, which was totally and absolutely lost on me. My incomprehension was made worse because I thought he was talking about basketball.

A quick reference to the Cosby Show, and we were done.