April events around the world - 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen'

What a busy month, humorous and serious. It started on April 1st which was April Fool's Day and Easter Monday.

Ramadan dates 2024 and 2025

Ramadan ended April 9th 2024.  However, Ramadan is not in April in 2025. In 2025 it will be from Feb until March for 30 days. Travellers may wish to travel before the date of the start to reach Muslim countries and areas to enjoy evening meals with the family or street markets, or to avoid Muslim countries on these dates if you wish to visit Muslim restaurants. In some Muslim countries and areas you will find other restaurants open to foreigners, eg Chinese restaurants open to Westerners in Malaysia - look for the red lanterns and lights on.

Varied Celebrations & Commemorations

April has brought us Shakespeare and St George's Day in England, Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, and Earth Day worldwide.

Earth Day

Monday April 22nd was Earth Day. 

Harrovians Toastmasters International speakers' training and leadership club in Harrow was celebrating its 21st anniversary. Inflatable globes decorated with maps depicting the world were on stage. 

Costco Cake Catering

We had a birthday cake which was ordered from Costco on Saturday and delivered on Monday. The icing was delicious. The cost was about seventeen pounds for a large cake.

Guest of Honour, Mayor Harrow

The club had invited the Mayor of Harrow to speak, and his wife the mayoress. The mayor was dressed in red. He entertainingly told us that a little girl aged about six had mistakenly though he was Santa Claus and asked him for a present. She assured him that she had been very good.

Left: The mayor of Harrow, Ramji Chauhan. 

Centre: Toastmasters International, UK South, Club Growth Director, Mo Dawodu.

Right: Angela Lansbury, member of Harrovians Toastmasters Club since 2004.

If you wish to read about the early days of Harrovians, I wrote an account of it which you can buy from lulu.com

Shakespeare & St George

Tuesday 23rd April, all day and every year on the 3rd, is St George's Day. It is also Shakespeare's birthday. A chance to celebrate with quotations from Shakespeare.  

The red cross on white is familiar to football supporters who know the England team's insignia.

ANZAC

Thursday 24th is Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. Marches start at dawn in Australia. 

Field of Remembrance, Australia. Photo from Wikipedia.

The Anzac Field of Remembrance is wooden crosses for those who lost their lives, planted by the War Widows' Guild, in St Andrews Church, Sydney, Australia. Other events include playing of the sound of the Last Post. Events take place worldwide, Malaysia, Tasmania, Canada, UK.

Decorations on memorials and gravestones in cemeteries in New Zealand. Wiki.

Gallipoli, Turkey. Wikipedia.

Anzac Cove, Turkey. Wikipedia.

Hobart Cenotaph, Tasmania, Australia.

Sabah, Malaysia.

PASSOVER MEALS

Monday 22nd and 23rd this year (following a Jewish calendar with changing days) are Passover or Seder night for the UK Jewish community. In Israel, religious events take place on one day, but in the diaspora they last two days to be sure to align with the time the event is celebrated in Jerusalem.

Jesus's Last Supper was a Passover meal, commemorating the angel of death passing over the houses of Hebrew slaves when a plague swept over Egypt. 

The Discovery Channel programme investigating suggested that wet weather turned mouldy the stored wheat or grain. The wheat was eaten by the richer Egyptians. They gave double portions to the older firstborn son, hence the deaths of their firstborn. 

This food poisoning was known in the USA in a previous century as the cause of St Vitus's dance.  The spring cleaning by finishing up last year's old flour before stocking up with the new season's harvest accounts for the unleavened matzah eaten by Jews and the lent fast including pancake day to use up old flour.

If you have a meeting of a club any time in April you could choose any these events as your theme.

April 20th was Chinese Language Day.

The last day of the month April 30th, this year 2024, is the last day of Passover, April 30th is also National Child Day which encourages reading to children, national Mahjong Day which encourages you to play or learn to play mahjong, and adopt a shelter pet day and therapy animal day, and International Jazz Day. If you want to end with a sweet treat, it is also national oatmeal cookie day and bubble tea day. As Shakespeare said, or rather, wrote, All's Well That Ends Well.

Useful websites

Easter

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/kids-rule-makes-and-bakes/why-do-we-eat-eggs-at-easter/

Anzac Day

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day

https://www.timeout.com/sydney/news/our-guide-to-the-anzac-day-dawn-services-and-marches-in-sydney-042224

Shakespeare

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shakespearean_phrases

St George's Day

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13339457/thousands-brits-call-st-georges-day-bank-holiday.html

https://nationaltoday.com/april-30-holidays/

Please share links to your favourite posts.

 

Mid Autumn Festival Celebrations at Gardens By The Bay, Condos & Toastmasters Clubs

  Outings and Events - Gardens By The Bay

Mid autumn festival, a harvest festival, a festival of the moon is celebrated in Singapore and Asian countries and places with Chinese populations and Chinatowns. 

In Singapore you can see seasonal displays at Gardens by the Bay.  How long should you allow? Twice as long as you thought. 

Condos Holding Parties

Private events take place in condos. At a condo in Cashew Heights, Singapore, adults and children were given lanterns.

Cashew Heights Condo party for the Autumn Festival, with flowers and coloured paper langerns. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Toastmasters

Toastmasters clubs in Singapore decorate rooms with lanterns and serve calorific moon cakes.

Tampines Changkat Advanced Toastmasters Club in Singapore.  Lanterns for the Mid Autumn Festival.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_by_the_Bay

https://www.youtube.com/user/gardensbythebay/videos

https://www.toastmasters.org/Find-a-Club/

How to say good morning in Chinese, already

Flag of China.

I went to a bilingual Mandarin-English toastmasters club in Singapore. I heard the convener saying what sounded like, 'knee how?' and everybody replying, 'How!'

I asked what that meant and a new friend told me, "It is a greeting. 'Knee how' is 'you good' and 'how' is 'good'."

What was easy to understand and remember. It stuck. the equivalent of the English, 'how are you?', and the reply, 'fine, thank you,' or, 'good, thank you'.

This week I met a Singaporean lady who knew Mandarin. I said to her: "Good Morning. Knee how!"

She replied, "Woe how!'

Ah! I remembered that wo means I in Mandarin. Chinese sentence construction is very simple and succinct. Chinese is hard to pronounce with unfamiliar words, but a little vocabulary goes a long way.

I noticed that when she spoke to me in English, she kept ending sentences with the English word already. I thought, that must be a direct translation from Mandarin. Shopkeepers often say, "No more already" when an English shop assistant would use the phrase, "Sorry, we've sold out,' or, "We're out of stock''. So I reckoned that already is a handy word to either use of recognize, because it crops up so often.

Wo how means I good.

English - Chinese (Mandarin)
I - wo
you - ni
good - hao
how are you - ni hao
I am fine (thank you) - wo hao
I put the thank you in brackets because it is not in the Chinese, so a direct translation would not include the thanks. but if any Chinese readers wants to know the correct English, they should be aware that it sounds polite to add thanks, and rude to fail to do so.

Mandarin - English
wo - I
ni - you
hao - good
ni hao - how are you (literally 'you good?')
wo hao - I'm fine/well/good

Good morning
morning
already

早上好
早上
已经

Zǎoshang hǎo
zǎoshang
yǐjīng

The z in when said by my new friend 'Maggie' sounded like sz, like Suzie without the u.
The first time I repeated the word as sow-shang, she told me, "If you say it like that, people won't understand you."

So I repeated the word, more like Z at the start.
better. but she repeated the vowel.

I adding the dipped vowel sound, a bit like asking "really?", with your voice going low and then up at the end of the word.

That seemed to do the trick. Once you know the sound to listen for, you can listen to other people talking. or practise with every person you meet, until the pronunciation becomes automatically correct.

If I were to learn just one word a day, that would be about 300 a year. After three years I would know 900 word. In ten years I would know 3.000 words.

Chinese is spoken in China, Taiwan and Singapore. (Hong Kong, more Cantonese.)


Flag of Singapore.

Just 150 words learned if we are stuck at home for 6 months. Or stuck at home for 14 days and get in the habit of learning a word or two every day. The same applies to any other language you care to learn.

With many people stuck at home because of the coronavirus, a great opportunity to learn a language. So that when we are able to travel, we enhance our enjoyment with our command and understanding of another language.

Useful Websites
google translate
duolingo

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Teacher of English and other languages

How To Identify Soup Spoons On Restaurant Tables In Europe

Cutlery Conundrums
A friend in Singapore complimented me on my use of chopsticks in Singapore. To my surprise he told me, "Some of us here have even more trouble with Western cutlery."
I asked, "What's the problem?"
He elaborated: "You have not just two pieces of stick you pick up, like for us, but cutlery in all different sizes and shapes. They are all for different purposes."
I gasped, "You found it a problem?"
"Yes. I have turned down opportunities to go into a restaurant, because I did not want to have to cope with all the cutlery. I am sure many people like me would be glad to hear an explanation of what all the different pieces of cutlery are used for, and in which order."

So, I gave one hour workshop on cutlery and crockery at his Toastmasters Club, Braddell Heights Advanced. I started with soup spoons, holding up a soup spoon. I asked:
"Do you know what this spoon is called, and what it is for ..."
Somebody shouted, "A soup spoon."
Since they had all been given the right answer, or at least a clue, I held up the soup spoon and asked. "Put up your hand if you think it is a soup spoon. Now put up your hand if you think it is a dessert spoon? Judging by your answers, half of you think it's a soup spoon. But half of you think it is a dessert spoon - or you aren't sure, or think it is for both purposes."

Soup Spoons
Let us start with the spoons, soup spoons. the round bowl on the spoon is deep and for sipping soup.

Firstly, the soup is served first at a Western meal. It is served last in traditional Chinese restaurants. Not everybody knows this. If you are ordering in a restaurant serving from an a la carte menu, makes sure which order the dishes will arrive, especially your soup. Once in a Chinese restaurant in China we ordered soup and it didn't arrive. We kept asking and being told through the meal that it would arrive. When the soup arrived at the end of the meal we had a discussion about the poor service and whether we could not add to or even deduct from the supposedly optional service charge.

The moral is, if you are a Western customer in a Chinese restaurant, or a Chinese customer in a Western restaurant, check when your waiting staff expect to serve the soup. If you want it served in a different order, you must explain to them and explain why.

If you are serving in a restaurant or dinner, or running a dinner or banquet, make sure the menu shows when the soup will be served.

Now, back to the cutlery. In Western restaurants the soup is servd first. You use the cutlery from the outside inwards towards the plate. So the soup spoon is on the outside right (facing with the spoon cavity at the top or north.

Importantly, the spoon bowl is circular, not oval.

In an Italian restaurant in Edgware, NW London, I asked a European member of staff for a soup spoon. I was about to write that I had no spoon, but thinking about it, perhaps I had a knife and for and dessert spoon.

She brought me a dessert spoon.
I and my family sat debating why.
"That's an insult."
"No, she's just careless."
"She's busy, not thinking."
"Maybe she's half-witted. Maybe she's dumb - which is why she is doing this job."
"Maybe she is smart and thinks this job is beneath her."
"We should be discussing the finances which we came out to dinner together to discuss, not getting distracted by actions of the servers."

None of our ideas about the cause of the problem were right. We should have called the manager and asked for a soup spoon.

On a return visit, months later, we discovered the problem. Out waitress could not recognize a soup spoon. No such item was used in her country in Eastern Europe. She was surprised and interested to hear that a round spoon was exclusively for soup. She had thought it was just a different design by another cutlery manufacturer.

The moral is
1 If you are given the wrong cutlery, speak up, nicely. You and the staff may both learn something.
2 If you are running a restaurant or a dinner event, train your staff to ensure they know the different items of cutlery.

My audience ranged in age from 9 years old to indeterminate age but probably well over the age of fifty.

If you would like a one hour speech or interactive workshop, or one which is longer or shorter, for a Toastmasters club in Singapore, or London, or anywhere in the world, please contact me.

A next post will be on wine bottles and drinks at dinner.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speaker.

My last Malay Language Post Goodbye and thank you

Problem
I like learning Malay because it's an easy language. All phonestic - what you see is what you say. Many words look like English, simplified English. I hear Malay on the MRT underground trains and stations in Singapore. However, I am now a spnsor of a bilingual club in Singapore, Italian and Chinese. It is being started by a Chinese woman who has married an Italian. Their common language is English and they attend an English language Toastmasters International Club to which I belong. (My club is Braddell Heights Advanced.)

I have been learnign Malay-Indonesian daily. However, I now realise that either Italian or chinese or both would be more used to me in the new club. So you can expect to see much less Malay-Indoneisan on my blog, and more tips on learning Chinese and Italian.


So here are some last words in Malay

Malay - English

Selamat jalan - goodbye / bye
termimah kasih - thank you
jumpa lagi - see you later

English - Malay



Goodbye - bye / selamat jalan (the e is not prounounced).
Thank you - terimah kasih
I am sorry - (saya -I) maaf.
See you later - jumpa lagi (not jumper but lagi is again, joompa is see you).

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker

My First Words In Tamil

Singapore Flag

Problem
I meet Tamil-speaking people all the time, in Singapore and in England at Toastmasters clubs. In Singapore on the trains and stations you hear announcement in English and Chinese and Malay and Tamil. The Tamil announcements end with what sounds like mandri or nandri.

Tamil is spoken in India and Sri Lanka. It is used in schools in Malaysia and Singapore.  It is also recognized as a minority language in South Africa and Mauritius.

Various origins of the meaning exist. My favourite is Tam is sweet and il is sound.

This month I met a Tamil woman and asked her to tell me the words for hello and goodbye and please and thank you and one to three four.

English words borrowed from Tamil
bank
catamaran
hospital
lantern
mulligatawni
rail

Here are my first ten words in Tamil:

English- Tamil
bread - rotti
food stall - Kadai (kedai in Malay)
fort - (kota in Malay) kottai
goodbye - Piriyavitai
hat - topi
hello - vanakkam
lion - singa
same - sama
sweet - tam
sweetness - tamil
thank you - mandri/nanri

one - oru
two - irantu
three - munru
four nanku
five - aintu

Ten - pattu

Tamil- English
il -sound
kadai - food stall (Kedai in Malay. Think of a food caddy. K for kiosk.)
mandri - thank you
rotti - bread (roti in Malay)
sama / saman (in Malay also sama) - same
singa - lion
tam - sweet
toppi (spelled topi in Malay) - hat (This is so like top hat that I just had to include it.)

Useful websites
You can learn Hindi and Indonesian from Duolingo but not Tamil.

Loan Words From Tamil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_loanwords_in_other_languages 

Learn Tamil
http://www.linguanaut.com/english_tamil.htm
memrise.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How To Create A Chinese New Year Plate With A Dog Face

Photo from Facebook.

Problem
How do I create a Chinese New Year lo hei ('prosperity') goodwill wish, without spending a fortune, and in the shape of a dog, as lunar year 2018-9 is the year of the dog.

Answer
If you live in Singapore as a Resident, or expat, or are visiting, you can attend a New Year dinner at a restaurant or town or country club, or Toastmasters Club or hotel. If you suggest making a shape of a dog, they will probably be very interested and want to help you.

Why is it make at the last minute? Because the ingredients are shredded vegetables and raw or smoked fish or shredded chicken which will go off quickly in Singapore heat, or any time anywhere. If you buy the packet from a supermarket, it comes in lots of small packets of vegetables so it's quicker if everybody helps and its more fun and makes for more teamwork and gets everybody involved.

Many Chinese New year lo hei meals are created on the table in front of you. Therefore you need some advance practice in making the dog face.

The idea behind the meal is to have lots of colours of food.

For example, shredded carrot, mandarin orange slices in small semicircles upright to create a border around the edge of the plate.

Photo from Facebook.

You could draw the outline of the dog's face on edible rice paper with food colouring pencils or icing squeezed out of a tube. Then build up the face with the different colours.

If you think it might not look right, or the underlying picture will disappear, have another picture propped up vertically behind the plate against the wall.

You will also need to provide:

Paper plates
Wooden Chopsticks
Paper napkins
Paper cups and tap water

Useful Websites
visit singapore
http://www.visitsingapore.com/en/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Travel time is useful time for learning landmarks

Problems
How do you learn your way around a city? How do you learn your new commute? How do you entertain yourself while waiting for a bus or train?

Answers
Read advertisements and learn the bus and train stops, names of stops, numbers of stops and street names and landmarks on your regular route. Mark the nearest Mrt Railway station

Stories
Americans, at least the ones I met when I first arrived in Singapore, are good at recalling road names and directions.

Although many of them lived in the central district 1 around the American club near Orchard MRT, they knew the road out of the city towards the hill of Bukit in Malay, was the Bukit Timah road. They also knew that the road the other side of the barrier, coming back, was named the Dunearn Road.

Now when I sit on a bus I pretend I am a travel guide helping a newcomer to the city. I say to myself: 'Notice that the road from the Eunos MRT is called the Changi Road. We are near Changi airport. See the Esso station on the right as we are getting near to the stop outside the Great Eastern Insurance company building.'

The next week, next month, next year, or next time I am giving directions, I can remember. I can also use these memory aids to check directions and ask, 'Is your building before or after the Esso garage?'

I keep the agendas or programme sheets of Toastmasters international speakers clubs I visit and write on the agenda or attach Post its of the nearest railway station.

I keep the agendas in alphabetical order. Then when I revisit club I can quickly find the travel directions, names of Vip members and handy phone numbers when I reach my destination.

Tip
If you have time, in advance of a trip, you can print off a city map. Mark your hotel. Circle or underline in highlighter museums or offices of business contacts. I check bus routes, journey times and nearby restaurants. Add museums. Look for closing days of museums and restaurants. 

I took a photo of this poster about reading - in order to read it later! I wasn't even using this bus stop, just walking past.

Author
Angela Lansbury,  travel writer and photographer.

Pleas follow, like and share my blog posts.

Learning Chinese Online - how to say good in Chinese

I've been hoping to find a free course on line for learning Chinese and at last I've found it.

This one gives the tones as well as the five classic pronunciations of the word ma which means different things according to how you say it. (Any Chinese person or teacher of Chinese will tell you there's a sentence consisting entirely of the word ma said in different tones.)

I always thought either the British, BBC, or the Chinese, or the Americans must eventually make a learn Chinese course for English speakers. I used to look online and on TV and not find one.

Maybe they didn't when I first looked. Today is a happy day.
 I learned at a bilingual (English and mandarin) toastmasters club in Bukit Panjang, Singapore, that a group of people asked Ni how ma (equivalent of how are you; literally you/ good/ (question word). the answer is the middle word, how, meaning good.

What is my dream? To start a multi-lingual toastmasters club in both London and Singapore. Or a multilingual speakers club. A multilingual toastmasters club would be easier.

I thought I would go straight to the children's lessons as I am a beginner and wanted the explanations kept simple.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primarylanguages/mandarin/sounds/

Another guide to pronunciation, even shorter, is here.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/chinese/real_chinese/start/

Angela Lansbury, B A Hons, ACG, CL,.

French word of the day: clairvoyant - French speaking Toastmasters clubs - French translations

This word came up as word of the day at Toastmasters speakers' training club. I associate clairvoyants with con artists claiming to see the dead. However, I was most interested to hear the analysis of the word, clair as in clear, and voyant, as in voyeur, seeing.
   Interestingly, one of the examples of the use of the word given was: 'I am not clairvoyant.' (Followed by, 'However I predict you will soon get a job.'
   Tres bien. (Very good.)

If you are running a meeting, people are not clairvoyant. You have to tell everybody where to find the fire exit, toilets, the food, even the station to get home, and offer a lift. You have to tell them to turn off their phone, and turn it back on.

Toastmasters
   If you want to practise your French, you can attend a French speaking Toastmasters Club at home or at your destination. Members of Toastmasters International can buy a Toastmasters manual in French and several other languages.
   In Singapore you can attend a Mandarin speaking club. (Only recommended if you speak some Mandarin. I went to one assuming it would include some English but only one person spoke any English and I had to sit smiling politely most of the evening whilst not understanding a word.
  When I gave a speech in English to thank my hosts, I have no idea whether my translator understood anything, or simply made up what she imagined I might have said. I should have taken a sheet of translations in advance, plus a thank you speech translated with Google translate.
  In this sort of situation, you need a working phone, a spare battery, a downloaded dictionary, plus a few vital phrases including

Failing all else, follow the men to the toilet door and make hand over eyebrows sign for I'm looking.
Or make prayer sign, looking sign and hand washing sign.

English - French
Where is - the toilet: Ou est ... ( Failing all else - find the image of a toilet/ drinking glass, bottle, station, bus stop, car park, fire exit, fire extinguisher, doctor)
Thank you very much - merci beaucoup
Delighted to meet you - enchante (you might copy what the other person says)
My name is - Je m'apelle
What is your name? Qu'est ce que c'est - et votre nom madame/monsieur ?
Where is the station? Ou e s t la gare? V o u s  p o u v e z  m' a c c o m p a n e z? (You can accompany me)
I am going back to  / I am walking to - Je dois r e n t re  a ... Je marche v e r s
Can you give me a lift in your car? Est-ce-que  v  o u s  a v e z  u n e  v o i t u r e   Je  v a i s
Can somebody show me the way?
What time does this meeting end? A qeu elle h e u re   n o u s  i r o n s  f i n i  r? (At what time do we finish?)

Because of spellchecker, if you are doing a lot of translation, you might find it useful to print one page in English, then switch the computer language to French. Only do this if you speak fluent French and have somebody (family friend or nearby computer/phone shop) who can turn the computer back to English - write what you did to get the French, so you can reverse the process and get back to English.

I have given speeches and evaluated speeches in England, France, Singapore, China, Thailand, the USA, Australia and translated speeches at conferences in France and typed up speeches in correct English for speakers at conferences in India.

Angela Lansbury B A Hons, author, speaker.