Updated: What does English sound like to non-English speakers?

Why the post? I always wondered and I wondered again as a result of the last three months. I have been the only native English speaker in a group of eight students each working on significant sized research reports. For example, I cannot imagine going to other country and writing an academic research report in that language in only three months. That's what these people have done and they never complained or pulled out the old argument that 'it wasn't fair'. They just got stuck in and kept at it, took the feedback from the supervisor and kept going.  That sort of perseverance in the face of these sorts of challenges is amazing to see. We had to give presentations and there was a lot of thought and effort put into those presentations.

As for what English may sound like, here are some examples. 

Here's one version from 1974



Here's another (slightly less entertaining attempt) from 2011

Where I have been spending my time

Freedom

I have handed in my research report today. Over the past three months I have been getting up at 4:00 or 5:00 am to add an average of 170 words a morning into the report. It's now over and I have my life back - mostly. It's proving awfully difficult not to get up at 5:00am.

I will restart this blog but at a slower pace, perhaps one or two posts per week. It will be nice to have a break from writing to deadlines. I also have some presentations around Service Management and Product Development Management I want to write up so I can reinforce and better remember what I learned from those papers.

No today though.

What defines a service failure?

Not getting the client to the summit or the client dying. The example near the bottom shows how blurred the line can get.

Father's Day - from Larissa

Larissa's Father's Day card

And her message

Father's Day - from Phoebe

Phoebe's Father's Day Card

And her message

Hiatus - till late October

I am needing to put more and more time into the research assignment. For a period I had a small stable of posts but these have now run out. Better to be honest and say that I will be taking a break until late October (after the 25th at least).

I'll leave you with some nice posts by my kids. One from Larissa about (her) my family, and one from Phoebe about why Japan was more fun than Malaysia.