Sheep cheese from Italy

 When you go to Italy, look out for sheep cheese, called pecorino, all over Italy. You'll find it if you happen to be in The Marche region on the  east coast, near Ancona airport, near Macerata, or Recanati, towns. Visit a working farm to buy their cheeses and charcuterie, called salumi in Italian. The word comes from the Latin word for salt, sal, salted meat to preserve it dating back to Roman times.

Cheese, like wine, and people, is aged. Some people are keen on cheese which is young, new and fresh. Some are are keen on what is aged, firmer texture and stronger flavoured. I liked the newer cheese. I was surprised to learn that most other people do, too. Well, not necessarily, most people, but more people. It is the most popular of the three cheeses I was shown.

They also have cows and make cheese from cows' milk.

So there you have it. Now you know.  Industrious and energetic farmers from ancient times until now, benefitting themselves and customers from all kinds of animals, sheep as well as cows, and in all seasons.  By preserving milk and meat so it it is salted or dried or kept cool, to keep it edible and tasty in winter time and summer, all seasons.

Regarding their company name, it consists of the Italian word for of, di, then two Italian male first names, Pietr (Peter) and Antonio.

 Useful Website

www.dipietrantoniosnc.it

Please share links to your favourite posts such as this one and my other posts on Italy and Italian food and food and restaurants worldwide.

What's the Same And Different? New Zealand And England/UK Compared

NEW ZEALAND

Drive on the left, like in England.

Farmers hate birds which eat their crops. Crops have netting, noisy gun noises, drivers circulating, lasers.

Peanut butter is a breakfast favourite.

Marmalade is unusual in hotels, and only teeny quantities with little visible orange peel.

Long stretches of mountain roads on the north island crossing mountains with hardly any cafes, most permanently closed or closed at 4 pm.

Lots of sheep, cows, and sometimes horses or goats.

Farmers' Markets everywhere.

Hotel fridges empty so you can store food. Drinks can be ordered at the bar or from room service.

People are friendly but quietly spoken with teeth clenched together so you have to listen hard. They say yiss for yes.

Place Names

New Zealand place names are mainly Maori, every vowel pronounced, wh pronounced as F. Often hard to recognize and remember.  

Hints - Te is the (just remember to drop the h, but prounced tay). Wai means water. Adjectives are second, after a noun.

Paua shell jewellery. Single items such as pendants on chains, and sets of three, ear rings and pendant.

Shop in Soflans Winery near Auckland. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Baseball caps are decorated with the letters NZ for New Zealand and embroidered kiwi birds.

Fruit  

Kiwi Fruit.

Wineries and cellar door tastings 

All over the North Island and the South Island.

Ice Cream  

Numerous small shops and kiskos selling ice cream home made with local fruit.

Affogato on dessert menus of all kinds of Mediterranean restaurants.

Skiing on the South Island, at Mount Hutt, and Queenstown.

Soft Toys: 

Kiwi birds, sheep, cows.

Soft toys - sheep - in Soflans Cellar Door Shop. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Second Hand Shops - 

Hospice shops and SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) abound. Also Op Shops, short for opportunity shops.

Sandal Names

Flip flops.

Jandals (a brand name combining sandals and Japanese word.)

NZ Shops & Supermarkets

Spotlight. Harvey Norman. Woolworths.

Pedestrian Signs

Flat discs in orange either ends of pedestrian crossings to alert traffic to stop.

Food

Lamingtons (also in Australia0

Pavlovas (you can buy meringue pavlova shell bases in supermarkets to fill with fruit, strawberries, berries and kiwi fruit and whipped cream 

Supermarkets

New World. Woodworth's. Pak N Save. Farro (more boutique). Four Square (seondary size, in Pak N Save group, in a smaller town). 

Monuments

War Memorials.

Captain Cook.

Jean Batten, aviation heroine.

Maori carvings which might remind Americans of Totem poles.

Seasons the reverse of the UK. Skiing in August, UK summer time. Warm weather in January and February which are school  holidays. 

The British tourists, especially the retired, visit NZ in Jan-Feb which is New Zealand's summer to escape the British cold weather.

ENGLAND / UK

UK Fast Food

Service Stations

Pubs and fast food places everywhere, petrol stations with coffee machines, Tesco Express open 7 to 11 serving buttery freshly cooked croissants.

Numerous giant eatery malls at intervals along motorways.

Starbucks. 

Caffe Nero (Italian). 

Ice cream parlours from the USA with 36 flavours, such as Dayvilles, Ben and Jerry's, fruit and chocolate flavours. 

Affogato (coffee over ice cream) in Italian restaurants.

UK Skiing & Snow

On artificial indoor slopes in England.

Outdoors in Scotland in the UK winter.

Snow sometimes after Christmas in January, February, occasionally even March (1979).

UK Soft Toys: 

Teddy bears, Disney characters.

Sheep and soft toy sheep featured in Wales and Scotland.

Woollens and tartans in Scotland.

Yellow Belisha beacons, spheres, at both ends of pedestrian crossings which have back and white 'zebra crossing' stripes.

Supermarkets

Marks & Spencer. Waitrose. Tesco.  Aldi. Lidl. Central London and some suburban areas have large super size hypermarkets which are open 24 hours. 

Monuments

Queen Victoria and the royal family.

Numerous historical figures.

Trees

Oak, plane trees in London, weeping willows, silver birch, chestnuts with conquers in autumn.

Seasons

Cold weather in winter, November - March. Summer April - October.

New Zealanders visit the UK in December/Christmas/early January which is their long summer break.

Useful Website

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/maurice-yock-trademarks-jandal.

Patisserie and desserts and petits fours - favourite stand displays

 Favourites around the stands.

Photos by Angela Lansbury

Useful Websites

www.fhaHoReCa.com

The story of IRCA

https://www.dobla.com/en-vn/about-dobla/history

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Misunderstandings - Lost in Translation in New Zealand

New Zealand

My husband and I asked directions to our hotel in rural New Zealand. A passerby told us, 'It's just beyond the station, you can't miss it.' 

We missed it. 

We drove back, found the same man, and asked him to mark it on the map.

'You can't miss it,' he said again.

'But we did. We saw a lot of sheep, but no railway station.'

'There's no railway station. It's just beyond the sheep station.'

'Oh. You call it a sheep station!'

'Yes - what do you call it?'

'In England, trains are in stations, and sheep are on farms. Come on, we have to go, we\re now late for checking into our guesthouse.'

Have you had any misundertandings?

 Write and let me know on facebook. 

USA  see previous post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and English teacher, tutor and trainer worldwide and online. Active English Language Evaluator at Toastmasters International Zoom meetings. Blog posts on the American continent, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and occasionally South Africa and Africa, Russia and surrounding countries, Cyrillic, and the Middle East including Hebrew, Israel, Arabic and Arabic speaking countries and cultures and restaurants, museums and homes of famous writers and linguists. With a touch of humour. And an eye for the amusing, entertaining and absurd and unusual. Pick up a few foreign words as you read about Angela's travels, and shopping successes and disasters.

Where next? If you are not travelling today, travel around my blog posts.

Please share links to your favourite posts.

Getting To Grips With Chinese Language

  When I get in the lift (elevator) in Singapore I read the Chinese and English instructions. I look for the simple signs, like the double curve like the running legs pronounced ren for person. The English instruction mentioning the guard uses three symbols, including this one.

Another simple source is the children's card book I bought which shows the flags. I have learned the sign for Japan. Ri ben. Sun origin. Sun, like a squared off sun, doubled, like sunrise and sunset.

The Chinese sign for America is beautiful country, or beautiful kingdom. Wei, meaning beautiful is the sign for sheep. 

(That reminds me of the slightly rude joke about sheep in New Zealand: 'Why do you have to fetch the sheep in before it gets dark? So you can see them and recognize them. Otherwise, you only get the ugly ones.')

Useful Websites

books

Chinese for toddlers and beginners

Academic

The language of Language by Madalena Cruz-Ferreira and Sunita Anne Abraham

duolingo.com

wiki Chinese language

How to remember the words for countries in Chinese (Mandarin)

The flag of China. 

Written Chinese uses many symbols. That was how our alphabet evolved. Think of the word Taurus, for bull, and the letter T comes from the initial. In Chinese some symbols still stand for the object drawn in a simplified form. For example, 'one' is just a horizontal line. Two is two parallel horizontal lines. A river is a couple of vertical parallel lines, one being a bit wavy.

  In Chinese the word for a country is guo.  I bought a set of flashcards in the form of a book for toddlers. 

Flag of America
 

The flag name I learned first was the sign for America, mei guo, which means beautiful country. The symbol for beautiful is sheep, with several horizontal lines like a woolly coat sticking out. A beautiful sheep or coat, beautiful. America is a beautiful country. I want to go to there, to that country Guo is a country. May I go to America? Mei Guo.

Guo is the country or land you go to. Here is another easy to remember flag name in Chinese. For Thailand.

Thailand is Tai guo.

country

The symbol for land or country is a square, like the borders. Inside the square is the sign for the king. He has a throne and a crown and welcoming arms. Three horizontal lines and an upright linking them. By his foot is a little diagonal sign, his bag of money, or a jade decoration on his shoe. (A rich king with jade.) A land or kingdom.

China  ( Chinese : 中国;  pinyin :  Zhōngguó ),

The sign is easier to remember than the sound. The sign is a slightly flattened square or horizontal oblong, meaning central, with a vertical line through it, big country north to south, in fact a continent. In Hong Kong you will see lots of signposts with the sign for China. The first sign you see repeatedly and recognize is the simple bisected square.

England, France, Germany, and China also end with the symbol for land or kingdom. 

Flag of France

England is ying Guo. Think of ENG land go. You go. Ying Guo.

The name France is abbreviated to Fa. France is fa guo.

Flag of Germany

The name  for Germany, which the Germans call Deutchland, is abbreviated to De Guo.

The name for China is Zhong Guo.

Pronunciation

Wiki gives this handy table

The four main tones of Standard Mandarin, pronounced with the syllable ma.

0:06

Examples of Standard Mandarin tones

Characters	Pinyin	Pitch contour	Meaning
妈/媽	mā	high level	'mother'
麻	má	high rising	'hemp'
马/馬	mǎ	low falling-rising	'horse'
骂/罵	mà	high falling	'scold'
吗/嗎	ma	neutral	question particle

Standard Cantonese, in contrast, has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be "checked tones" and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such:^[74]

Examples of Standard Cantonese tones

Characters	Jyutping	Yale	Pitch contour	Meaning
poem / poem	si1	this	high level, high falling	'poem'
history	si2	Yes	high rising	'history'
kill	si3	and	mid level	'to assassinate'
hour / hour	si4	sìh	low falling	'time'
city	si5	síh	low rising	'market'
Yes	si6	sih	low level	'yes'

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/zh/en/Learn-Chinese

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

Chinese flags board book

ISBN 978-7-80704-787-2

Where it is usual and unusual to see sheep in the street? Samsun - the city where the sheep flocked down the street

Turkish flag

I usually see sheep in fields in Wales and New Zealand. in New Zealand I asked the driver to stop so I could photograph a sheep in the field. As I stood by the fence taking my photo, up bounded another sheep, then another, until a crowd of them were behind the fence staring at me expectantly. Were they expecting to be fed? I was heavily outnumbered. I was quite scared and raced back to the car.

Often in Rural Wales you encountera street obstructed by sheep crossing the road, usually from one field to another.

Photo by Jonathan Billinger in Wikipedia under Sheep.

I loved the video which has gone viral on Facebook of a seemingly endless flock of sheep invading the city street dual carriageway. The sheep baaed and bleeted. The sheep bells rang. The traffic was stopped. The sheep dogs ran ahead. The shepherds brandished their sticks or shepherd's crooks. The river of sheep ran on and on.

Some sheep lost their way, like the one in the nursery rhyme. When I checked, it was not the sheep that were lost, but Little Bo Peep who had lost them, as recorded in Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. (Why mother goose? Amazing the number of things you do not question as a child,or even an adult.)

Never mind. Here the lost sheep were not lost for long. The intrepid sheep jumped back straight through a seemingly impenetrable hedge to join the rest of the flock.

I had wondered whether the videoed sheep were in New Zealand. But a search on the internet for sheep in the street brought up a video of the sheep on the British Guardian newspaper with the vital information of the location. Samsun. Where is that?

Samsun, North Turkey
Samsun is in North Turkey, on the Black Sea coast. I tracked back and found the video was taken in May when the city was in a four day lockdown.

How many were affected? The population a million and nearly a half.

Giant Landmark Statue
I then checked what there is to see in the city from a tuouris's point of view. The main landmark is equestrian (horseback) statue of Turkey's revered leader Ataturk.

Museums
The Population Museum is about the exchange of Turks from Greece and Greeks from Turkey in 1923.

What else is there to enjoy in Turkey? Turkish coffee and Turkish delight.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tourist_attractions_in_Samsun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ala%C3%A7am_Population_Exchange_Museum

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and phtographer, author and speaker.

See Sheep Statues in London, England, Scotland, the USA and News Zealand

Sheep statues in Dordrecht, Holland, The Netherlands, Europe. Photo by Eric Zachte.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dordrecht#/media/File:Schapen_in_de_Hoefijzerstraat_in_Dordrecht.jpg

In theory you can also see the Dordrecht sheep on streetview.

Sheep statues in the USA.
...................... to be added

NEW ZEALAND
Te Kuiti on the North Island of New Zealand is known as the sheep shearing capital of the world.

Photo of Sheep Shearing statue on New Zealand by Sonorama in Wikivoyage.

You can buy a sheep statue or a whole flock on the internet from ebay, etsy, amazon and numerous other places.

SCOTLAND, UK

Sheep statue in Moffat, Scotland, UK.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MoffatHighStreet001JM.jpg
Moffat is an hour from Glasgow by bus or train. The sheep is missing its ears, an error of design. it was created by the same sculptor who made the famous Greyfriars Bobby, the legendary or real dog in Edinburgh, capital of Scotland.

Scotland has many shops selling woollen garments. In fact their shops are all over the UK.



Paternoster, also known as Shepherd and Sheep or Shepherd with his Flock, is an outdoor 1975 bronze sculpture by Elisabeth Frink, installed in Paternoster Square near St Paul's Cathedral in London, United Kingdom.

A much older sheep statue is in the British Museum in London, England.

Granite statue of Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, British Museum.

 Jon Bodsworth - http://www.egyptarchive.co.uk/html/british_museum_53.html Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Innotata using CommonsHelper.

Granite statue of Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, in the British Museum. Ref. No. EA 1779. From Temple T at Kawa, Sudan, 25th Dynasty, 690-664 BC.

Useful Websites
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Sheep_in_art

Travel from the UK to the USA
visittheusa.co.uk

New Zealand
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Te_Kuiti
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Te_Kuiti#/media/File:SheepShearing.jpg

Noah's Ark replica's worldwide
https://www.ninjajournalist.com/science/noahs-ark/41/

What Would You Want From Cardiff Airport Development? Read My Exciting Ideas

CROESO - Welcome

I've never been to Cardiff airport. I didn't even know they had an airport. It's not in Cardiff, airports normally aren't - you occasionally get helicopters alanding in cities but mostly airports are outside.

Cardiff Airport is about 30 minutes away from the city centre. Every twenty minutes the Cardiff Airport Express bus sets off from the airport to the city centre.

If you are travelling by car, on the M4 from London, or further into Wales, it is 13 miles from Junction 33. The area is the Vale of Glamorgan.

Cardiff from the train. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I take the train through Cardiff about twice a year (into Wales and out), and have done for at least ten years.

To get me to visit Cardiff airport from London, paying for a flight, would mean I would need
1 quick check-in with hand baggage; cheaper price than the train from Paddington.

However, many people do fly in, about a million a year. From Cardiff Airport you can connect by direct flight to Dublin and many other cities for a city break. It's not all hops. Their website tells you that you can also do an indirect flight with a stopover, going on to as far away as the Middle East, and Malaysia.

I would like to see an Aviation Museum with quizzes; some interactive activities on a Welsh theme with a huge model of Wales and lots of photos and quotations and life stories of Welsh people such as Dylan Thomas. Add signs to transport to attractions all over Wales. Show photos of events involving the airport: NATO Wales Summit, Rugby World Cup and UEFA Champions League final. (UEFA stand for Union of European Football Associations.)

Conference Centre
I would like to see a conference center at the airport, part of the big hotel or beside it. The conference centre could be underground, like the conference centre I went to at a hotel in Brighton, England.

Changi airport, Singapore, is full of flowering plants. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Changi's Award-Winning Attractions
The airport could be a kind of theme park. Go and look at the website of Changi airport's current terminals (which include a butterfly garden). The butterfly garden is stunning. Giant butterflies are attracted to huge cut tree stamps. Detailed descriptions explain everything you would like to know about butterflies.

Butterfly Garden at Changi Airport. See Wikipedia.

Changi Airport terminal building with indoor gardens. From Wikipedia.

The plan for Changi airport's next terminal.

A proposed new Changi terminal includes a giant fountain and waterfall. I've seen the outside started, as I drive past.

In Cardiff, build at least two storeys underground to make more space; and a safe refuge area - with an escape tunnel.

Airport Hotel Or Hotels!
The Draft Masterplan says the Cardiff development organizers are considering building a hotel, implying just one hotel.

However, Wales on line talks about a four-star hotel plus a budget hotel, which sounds a better option, pleasing more passengers.

My view is, don't just have one hotel, but two or three, at different prices. Better still, six types of accommodation, 1 to 5 star. Also have short term bunks, like the Japanese hotels, with alarms for people who want to sleep, rest, or hide away and shut eyes with their belongings secure, between flights.

Activities
Have a masterplan of connections with other airports so that people can plan a two centre holiday, staying at both airports in the airport hotels.

Run a Welsh language course at the airport, or even a three hour or one day course for business people, those relocating, or a weekend away.

Have an underground garden of things which can grow in the dark, such as mushrooms and potatoes, and serve them in the restaurants or export them freshly picked on flights to other countries, or as Welsh airline meals. Plus leeks.

How about a mascot, the flying sheep.

Welsh Music
I would hope to hear some recordings of Welsh music.
A Welsh male voice choir.
A Welsh harp.

This lady performed at Writers' Holiday in Fishguard, Wales, where I have seen her several years running.

I would like to hear a specially commissioned Welsh song - in English and Welsh so everybody can sing along. Something along the lines of Men of Harlech, Que Viva Espana or Take me back to Sorrento.

Bilingual Signs
I'm delighted to hear that all the signs are bilingual. The same applies to the motorway signs and the railway station signs. Before you reach your destination, as soon as the train or car crosses the border, you start to see the Welsh words. You think: I'm in another country, another language, I'm on holiday!

Welsh Food
See my posts on destinations in Wales, Welsh food and drink, learning the Welsh language. Please share links to your favourite posts.
Wales has Welsh cakes.

Welsh cake. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Welsh cake with butter. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Welsh Drink
Wales has wine and whisky.



















Penderyn whisky Distillery, Wales. Photo supplied by the Distillery. (I met the people who run it at an educational slide show at a wine and food show in Singapore.)

I've driven to Wales, I've taken the train from Paddington to Wales. Maybe it's time I took a flying visit.

What to See in Cardiff
Cardiff Castle.
Cardiff Museum - free!

Elsewhere around Wales -
If the Cardiff airport is not only a connection to Cardiff, but the gateway to Wales, you have lots to see. The Dylan Thomas boathouse and Dylan Thomas trails.

Fishguard's embroidery of the Last Invasion of Wales is fascinating. (A few feisty Welsh women in high black hats frightened off the French soldiers.)

Onward Train Connections
Heathrow and Changi airport both have underground railways into the capital city centre. Cardiff should have the same.

Instead of competing with the trains, the airlines and trains should co-operate on combined tickets. You could even do the travel equivalent of a triathlon. Fly into Cardiff. See Cardiff.

Take the train to Fishguard. See Fishguard.

Stay overnight at the old Fishguard Bay Hotel, where Liz Taylor and Richard Burton stayed, filming Moby Dick and Under Milk Wood.

Take the ferry from Fishguard to Ireland.

Bilingual sign on Cardiff Central railway station.

A million people fly into Cardiff, Wales. Now you know why.

Useful Websites
cardiff-airport.com
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/plans-new-hotels-cardiff-airport
http://www.changiairport.com/en/airport-experience/explore-changi/things-to-do-articles.html#recommend-4 (Shows the butterfly garden and giant sculpture and flower arrangements.)
visitwales.com
visitbritain.com
visitcardiff.com
http://travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2018/04/where-to-find-welsh-whisky-and.html
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/days-out/regionwales/wales
https://www.duolingo.com/course/cy/en/Learn-Welsh-Online

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

Learn Welsh words for animals: bear, bird, elephant, horse, sheep

Problem
How do I remember them?

Answer
By similar letters.

Welsh - English
arth - bear ( Think of ARth beAR or Arth(ur) the bear)
aderyn - bird (Think of a b(c)de - ryn
ceffyl - horse (think of see 2 foals grow up to be horses c e f f y l)
eliffant - elephant (think of  eliFFant and ElEphant double f in the Welsh, twice E in the English)
dafad - sheep (think of the double e in the English and daft sheep with double letters a and d)

English - Welsh
bear - arth
bird - aderyn
elephant - eliffant
horse - ceffyl
sheep - dafad

To learn how to pronounce Welsh words, go to
www.duolingo.com

For information on Wales see my previous posts and
www.visitWales.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, language teacher. I have more posts on the Welsh language, visiting Wales and other languages. Please share links to your favourite posts.

What do You Eat, Walking and Trekking?

Problem
What do you eat, on a walking and trekking holiday?

Answer
If you are just out for the day, with a group breakfast at a hotel or hostel, a group lunch picnic or meal arranged, and supper back at the hotel in the evening, you might take the standby of Kendal mint cake, solid white sugar, with a dark chocolate coating. Plus of course water. And something spare, such as a sandwich, in case you get stuck.

Tea House or Tent?
Some treks stop for food at tea houses. Others are based in tented camps. Find out which, and decide which you prefer, before you choose and commit to a trekking holiday company.

Porters
On a longer trek, over several days and nights, you are likely to have local porters. They carry your food. For the large communal meals. (You still want something in your pocket or rucksack or day pack in case you get separated or stuck.

Meat and vegetables
An experienced trekker tells me: "What you need in Pakistan when taking a long trek or climbing up and down hill is protein. No problem with halal or kosher food. You don't take meat on a trek. It won't keep. It goes off too quickly.

"However, we did buy a sheep from a hill farmer half way through a trek. We were a group of 60 people, trekkers and crew.

"Usually your diet is vegetarian. You get your protein from beans and pulses.

"The diet is not dull. The porters take spices and garlic and onions. You can't taste so well at high altitude, so garlic is good. They cook up casseroles and curries, stews and soups."

Protein
How do you get protein?

"We got protein from cheese and eggs. We had yak cheese. Delicious."

Eggs
If you went up for a day or two, for the weekend, you could take cooked eggs. But on a longer trek the porters took eggs.

"On one trek we had a porter whose sole job was to carry the eggs. He had a wire cage, a cage with compartments and an egg in each cell for thirty people.

"That lasted until half way through the trek. Then he went home, back downhill again, because he was no longer needed.

"In Nepal and Tibet we had porters. In Tibet they weren't Tibetan porters but Nepalese."

One way to lose weight.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
Amusing
Naughty but nice
Global, glamorous, game, gorgeous and gifted
Eloquent expert
Language specialist
Author

How To Impress With Statistics

Problems
1 You have no idea of the size of the country you are visiting or how long it will take to travel from the airport to the capital city or beach resort where you are staying.
2 You don't know the population of your home country, nor the country you are visiting.
3 You don't know the race of religion or language of the majority of the people living there.
4 You have no facts to impart to anybody else. You don't know whether what your guide or friend is telling you is true, out of date, or just a guess.
5 You have listed the statistics for yourself or a business presentation but can't remember them or think of a way of making your audience remember them.

Answer
1 Check distances and time travelled from airport to destination. Find out frequency and costs of shuttle bus, taxi, and hotel's own car. (If the hotel offers to send a car is that free? If not what is the cost? Will they meet you at the barrier? How long do they wait if your plane is delayed? Who do you phone if you can't see the driver?)
2 Next time you see useful statistics, note them at the back of your diary on a page headed statistics, or inside the back cover of your diary.

Stories
Tourist Boards are often good sources of information. The marketing department usually knows which country sends the most tourists to their area, and the second and third largest market. When I visited Umbria in Italy, on a press trip, they told me that the English market was high on their list.

When I was writing regularly on honeymoons for magazines such as Brides, I once phoned the tourist board in Cumbria and asked if "Do you have any hotels with four-poster beds? If you do, which one do you recommend?"

The silence on the other end of the line unnerved me. I wondered, have I asked a silly question? Maybe they don't have any, and she doesn't want to admit it. Maybe she doesn't know if they have one.

Eventually, the girl at the other end answered, "We have dozens of hotels. Almost every one will have a four poster bed. Most will have at least two. Some have three or four. Depending on the size of the hotel, some have a four-poster bed in every room. The tourist board represents all the hotels, so it would be hard to pick one."

I had to choose another tactic to narrow down the choice. I asked, "Can you name some Michelin starred restaurants in hotels which also have a four poster bed or honeymoon suite? Can you name a budget bed and breakfast place which also has a four-poster bed. And a third one, mid-way, mid-price. That way I have something for my readers with different budgets."

USA
According to the statistics I found, the latest estimate of US population from 2016 is over 323,000,000. You might like to round up the figures in conversation to more than 320,000,000, more than 320 million. How would you remember? If you or anybody in your family is age 32 that's easy.
Remember 32 - 1. Compare 320,000,000 million (not 32 million but 320 million) compared to one million of any city of one million.
This is a state size to city size comparison. You can also compare two countries, two cities in different countries, city size comparison, or country size comparison.

Population total and Sub-groups
You can also make a similar comparison with numbers of population compared to smaller number or large proportions of goodies, baddies, VIPS, people with special needs, police, nurses, teachers, doctors, students, schoolchildren, city guides.

Compare populations and visitors: residents in summer and winter, hotel occupancy in off-season and school holidays.

Compare general population or number of tourists with availability of restaurants, taxis, buses, tours.

As a memory aid you could make yourself a slide show using the statistics and pice charts or bar charts.

Business and Social Slide Presentations
For a business presentation of slide show make colourful slides, ideally with no more than two pictures and two numbers to compare on one slide.

For a slide show on your travels to a travel club or your family, you might like to start with some visuals including people and animals and trees or rivers or wineries or restaurants or theme parks or hotels.

My favourite slides are the ones which show the numbers of sheep in New Zealand compared to the numbers of people. This is most amusingly compared with pictures of one person and many sheep.

Using Stats in Conversation
You will also find statistics at the back of your airline magazine. This could lead you to explain, I fly with such and such an airline because they go to so many (x number) countries around the world.

Or you might ask: why does your airline go to so many countries (insert number) but not to (Your home city) which has a population of (insert number).

You could start with a picture showing some destinations which speak English or French or Spanish. Or visited by the airline on which you have airmails. Or places which have safari parks. Or whale watching. Or honeymoon suites (dozens of hotels in England's Lake district have four poster beds.).

Have fun. Learn lots.

Handy stats:
US population 320,000,000 (2016 estimate - you can get a more precise figure).
The figures can be subdivided by sex, age, education, income/wealth.
Your city ...
Singapore population ..
Population of London England ...
Population of UK

Tips
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045216/00 (USA)
https://www.ons.gov.uk
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/publications/publications-and-papers/reference/yearbook-of-statistics-singapore

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

Easy German words: chicken, cows, wasps and more

Problem
How to remember German words?

Answer
Find an English word which sounds similar and make up a sentence.

Story
I find it useful to type up the words I have learned. It is easy to remember once, looking at the capital letter of the German when it matches the English. But when I start typing I forget where the dots go above the letters. I have learned that you press the key for the vowel and up comes a choice of accents. The ö and the ü are both with two dots above are both inserted by tapping the number two fast.

Tips
German - English
Delfin (ein Delfin) - dolphin (Spelling memory aid - Germans are straightforward and simplify spelling. Ph becomes F. An elderly dolphin - D E l f i n. I had to insert spaces because spell checker turned the word into the English elfin. Maybe I should remember an elfin dolphin!)
Huhn (Das Huhn) - the hen / chicken (How do I remember Das Huhn? Why did the chicken or hen DASh across the road?)
Hörner - horns
Kühe - cows (Spelling memory aid: change the German K into CK as in kick and C - cows give cool, healing milk, only three or four letters, a short word)
Säugetier - mammal. (Spelling memory aid - S U c k l i n g , a s u c k l E R, a Great pig has a TIER of nipples)
Schafer - sheep (Memory aid for the sound of the first syllable: What SHApe is your Sheepskin rug?)
Sticht - sting
Streifen - stripes
Tiger - tiger (Der Tiger - spelling memory aid
Wespe - wasp (If the Vespa hits you it will sting)

English - German
chicken/hen - das Huhn
cows - Kühe
dolphin - Delfin
horns - Hörner
mammal - Säugetier
sheep - Schafer (Memory aid sentence for the spelling of the German word - you Sheep had been SHApe up, and stop CHAFing yourselves on the barbed wire)
Streifen - stripes
sting - sticht (Memory aid for spelling letters STIng - STIcht - ouCH! aCHT!)
tiger - Tiger (Remember capitals for German Tigers which are big animals with a big initial letter. The word the before TigER is dER - DER TigER
wasp - Wespe (pronounced like the Italian scooter, Vespa)

Author
Angela Lansbury, teacher of English, languages and public speaking.
Books on Amazon.com and Lulu.com

The Future of Food Production and Diets - What Would Benefit the world?

Travelling around the world you encounter different diets in different cultures. The Muslims and Jews don't eat pork. The Jews don't eat shellfish and won't mix meat and milk at the same meal. Hindus don't eat beef.

Animal lovers avoid battery farmed eggs and veal. Vegans avoid eggs and milk. Vegetarians eat vegetables and fruit and grains.

Health-conscious people aim for organic food.

Dieters go fro fruit juices and avoid starches. (Other diets avoid fats, or sugars.)

Americans avoid Malaysian vegetables, grown in 'night soil' - manure or sewage; whilst Malaysians avoid Australian vegetables 'grown in chemicals'.

Arab countries and poor countries admire the fat and wealthy, well-fed look.

Western countries like the thin and energetic look this century. (In the painter Titian's day fashions in female forms was obviously different. Maybe painters preferred patrons who were and looked wealthy.)

Shakespeare did not like the lean and hungry look. (But Shakespeare and Marlow also liked drinking in taverns.)

As for drink, Muslims and Hindus are against alcohol. But the Irish and British are fond of alcohol. In the last century it was safer to drink alcohol than polluted water.

What of the future? We hear and read a lot about global warming. The UK is now proving wines.
Foods from distant lands are imported.

If you were a visitor from Mars, what would you think would be the best solution?

Hindus who don't eat meat, to preserve cows and oxen, work animals which roam freely, eating wherever and whatever and belong to the ruling classes?

The Chinese and / or there view that you eat anything with four legs except a table? (That would include stray dogs.)

Certain African tribes which eat insects?

Eating game? This would include lions, birds of prey, and so on.

Eating domestic pets? Rabbits?

Licensing all animal owners.  Marking animals, not just sheep and cows, and dogs, but also cats and chickens.

Killing animals which eat or attack humans? This would include crocodiles, some elephants, lions, jaguars, leopards.

Killing animals which eat others? This would include killing lions and foxes. Large snakes. Crocodiles.

Killing animals which eat crops or damage trees. This would / could include d e e r, birds.

Introducing animals which eat others?

Moving animals which eat others' eggs? (Removing hedgehogs to new places when they eat birds' eggs.)

Allowing everybody to eat everything like the Chinese?

Making everybody vegetarian like the Hindus?

Having meat-free days, just as the Catholics used to eat fish on Fridays. Copying some Indian groups have vegetarian day? Giving up wheat food which was given up in Lent after using up the wheat leftover from last year in pancakes, to ensure no contamination by mould of the new crop?

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

Drive South of London across the North Downs

We drove around London on the circular M25 then turned across the North Downs. Why are these hills called downs and not ups?  I don't know. The South Down are on the South coast whilst the North Down are North of them nearer London. The area in between has been eroded into a hollow or plain called the Weald. I think of weald rhyming with field.

Having suffered many dull journeys along motorways I was delighted by the views over the treetops and hilltops through the forested North Downs. We drove towards Sevenoaks and Tunbridge Wells and Tunbridge which I shall describe later. 

Signs on the road warned us of cows and sheep.