I wrote this from Pichilemu, a tiny, idyllic surf town on the coast of Chile, about three hours south of Santiago. It looks like California, but without the highways, chain stores, hotels, malls… if you took a bare stretch of the California coast and added a few little guesthouses, family-run pharmacies, ice cream parlors, sidewalk […]
I just read One White Face, a memoir by Hilary Corna, a young American woman who moved to Singapore right out of college and spent three years traveling the the Asia-Pacific region training Toyota dealerships in Kaizen. I enjoyed it, especially her descriptions of Toyota’s business culture and the reverse culture shock she felt when […]
Over time I’ve learned several super-convenient Internet tricks. This is the first post in an occasional series. A quick overview of this long, detailed (and useful, I hope) post: Use Google Alerts to monitor your favorite topics. If your topic is international in scope, set up Alerts in multiple languages. Add the Google Translate plugin […]
I’ve been chatting with Stacie Berdan about international careers for more than a year. She has been very supportive of my international professional and entrepreneurial adventures. I was delighted when she sent me a copy of her new eBook, Go Global! Launching an International Career Here or Abroad. I wrote the following review for Ms. Career […]
These days I give lots of speeches. In Spanish. A language that is not my mother tongue. A language that I speak fluently, without hesitation. But my accent reveals: I come from somewhere else. On the way to an event, I thought of a comment by Rachel DeWoskin. Rachel’s first book, Foreign Babes in Beijing, is […]
I recently wrote my first opinion column in Spanish, for the website of a Chilean human resources consultancy called Conexo. I met Matías from Conexo when I spoke at the Meetup in Viña del Mar, and he wrote this nice piece about my talk. He invited me to write an opinion column for his site. […]
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. This is no secret. I included this information in the first line of the bio I wrote for this site, and last year I posted so many Halloween posts that my dad made fun of me. Since it´s October, that means I can start celebrating, right?? While searching […]
We met online. I was just getting over the end of my relationship with the University of California – Berkeley, and looking for something new. You had always been there, across the Pacific Ocean, and in the veins of so many of my fellow Golden Bears, but I had never really considered you. My heart […]
“If you want some paid work doing some voice over reading for an English textbook, call Dan [number redacted]. He needs a female today.” The day after I saw that text, I took the subway out to a residential area in western Beijing, then a car took me to a brand-new, concrete apartment complex, with […]
That quote is from Lulu, one of my students at Jiaxing University. I could not have said it better myself! In one quick sentence, Lulu encapsulated my mindset in 2010. Beyond thinking about Chile, I’ve been on an occupational adventure. Projects Completed in 2010 (in chronological order, with some overlap, for various companies/clients): Trained 6 […]