In my last post, I mentioned that Abby Kerr selected me for a Voice Profile. Her nuanced read of my [...]]]> I hope this note finds you well. Summer is turning in to closed-toe shoe season here in Chile, and I’m looking forward to the domadura (like a rodeo) and Easter egg hunt this weekend.

In my last post, I mentioned that Abby Kerr selected me for a Voice Profile. Her nuanced read of my blog is  fascinating and re-affirming, almost eerily so. The title of this post comes from her statement about my tone and the relationship I’m inviting my audience to have with me. I thought you, my sweet readers, might be interested in reading it. Curious to hear what you think.

{THE VOICE PROFILE} Leslie Forman

I’d also like to share a handful of resources that have inspired me in the last few weeks. In the spirit of Abby’s profile, they are all related to being honest and connecting with people:

Redhead Writing: What It Means When You Lose a Reader. I read this right before sitting down to write this post. A sweet, raw reminder.

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone? In this TED Talk, Sherry argues that our obsession with smartphones and social media is a hyperkinetic and over-edited way to avoid listening to our true selves.

Laura Calandrella: Are you running a clean energy campaign? Laura’s vision is to “work with socially conscious millennial women who have a desire to change the world through their work – and fall in love with life while doing it.” I’ve had the honor to work with this wonderful coach and I highly recommend her personal, intuitive, and practical approach.

Why Fascinate? An Interview With Sally Hogshead: I absolutely loved this interview. I’ve downloaded it to my cell phone and listened to it more than once. I wrote about Sally Hogshead’s work back in 2010. This whole interview is a vivid reminder to cultivate on what is special about you, rather than getting lost in boring conformity.

What’s been on your mind today? 

I love that it has given me a way to keep in touch with faraway friends and family. I love that it has connected me with like-minded people all over the world. I love that it has given me the opportunity to review books

This is how I sit and think. At a colorful threshold. When I have a team of professional photographers documenting my moves. How fun would it be if this were an every day thing!? Photo by Kyle Hepp (www.kylehepp.com)

A confession: I love and resent this website.

I love that it has given me a way to keep in touch with faraway friends and family. I love that it has connected me with like-minded people all over the world. I love that it has given me the opportunity to review books before they go on sale.

But I resent how it fuels a steady stream of doubt.

At least five times in the past few months, I’ve showed up at a meeting with a Chilean I’ve met through mutual acquaintance. Almost always, this is a man with an engineering background. We speak Spanish.

Not far into our conversation, he’ll politely say, “So, I looked at your website. It’s interesting, but I don’t get it. What are you and why do you write that thing?”

What are you – qué eres – is a way to ask if I am a journalist, a lawyer, a publicist, an engineer, or something like that. A title. Defined by a university degree, which often takes five or six years to complete.

My history does not fit those categories. I usually say I am a translator or an entrepreneur.

I should revise this blog to say that. Make it specific, concrete, perhaps in Spanish.

But the doubt doesn’t just come from potential collaborators; it comes from inside my head.

Changing sidebars / pages / design forces me to think: what, how, why. To do. To write.

Am I writing to update friends and family on the coolest places I’ve been lately? To share my research on mineral rights regulation in Chile? To reflect on how my perspective has changed? To illustrate why you should hire me?

Face to face, I’d never bring up those topics in the same place, in the same way, especially since I live in more than one language.

Asking those questions makes me not want to write.

At least not here.

I write a lot. Scribbles crowding unlined notebooks.

But those scribbles don’t seem fit for this Google-friendly, quasi-official version of who I am and what I do.

I want to work face-to-face with professionals here in Chile who value how my experiences living in three very different cultures can help them explain why their work matters. This is translation: a form of translation that goes beyond words and digs into what is left unsaid.

I also want to show young North Americans that it is possible to build your career overseas. Not easy, but I can help you find your way.

I should write for those audiences – or even better: just one – not for people who have been following me all along. (I love you Mom!) But I’m not sure how.

I must be brave: to stand for my vision and stick with it long enough to see what works. I must listen carefully, filtering through contradictory advice, especially from the people closest to me. I must stay humble enough to change course.

I am lucky. I’ve won a contest that might help: a Voice Profile by Abby Kerr. She describes her role as Copywriter and Voice Ally, and she has profiled the distinctive voices of dozens of online entrepreneurs. I invite you to read more about it on her blog.

Hopefully this will help me choose words that better answer that troubling question – qué eres? – especially in translation.

Today is International Women’s Day.

International Women’s Day is not a holiday that I grew up celebrating. I first [...]]]> First of all, check out my brother’s project. The ZBoard: The Weight-Sensing Electric Skateboard. On Kickstarter! It’s so amazing to see how many people have already backed the project. Keep up the good work, Ben!

Today is International Women’s Day.

"If you are a woman, enjoy the delicious and exquisite cookies that Co-Work gives to you to celebrate your day."

International Women’s Day is not a holiday that I grew up celebrating. I first celebrated it in China. I remember that my Cameroonian colleague in China said it was a big event in her homeland.

In Chinese, people often refer to holidays by the date — month then day. Since International Women’s Day is March 8, and March is month #3, the holiday is 三八 (san ba) or 3-8.

San ba is also a common insult for a gossipy woman. A forum on learning Chinese gave the following definition:

the sentence :

ni hen san ba.

means you are a person always like to talking about others’ business,privacy,etc. or wanna intervene others’ business.

san ba means 妇女 in chinese, eapecially refers to moms and middle aged women. from international women’s day,so it exists only in modern chinese language. but it refers to old chinese women. in old days, chinese women were not well educated and couldn’t go out for work. they had lots of time , some of them then always had time and concerns with others’ business.

Curious about how this double meaning affected Chinese women’s perceptions of the holiday, Anna Sophie Loewenberg, perhaps better known as Ms. Sexy Beijing, interviewed women all over the city.

Click the title of this post if you can’t see the video. Enjoy! 

I loved this video and it made me feel less alone in my complicated, multilingual impression of this holiday. Our personal histories shape the way we interpret the simplest things: holidays, words, phrases, events.

Enough overthinking! I’m off to grab another cookie. Chocolate.

Update: Isabel, the woman who put out the cookies pictured above, sent me this fascinating article about the hidden history of this holiday (in Spanish.)

There is a myth is that women were sewing in a factory on March 8, and while they were petitioning for better working conditions, the boss burned down the factory. The cloth they were sewing was violet, and therefore, violet is the holiday’s official color.

But this is not true. The day that this revolt supposedly happened was Sunday and the factory was closed.

The article goes on to explain the work of various feminists and revolutionaries, and then concludes: [This holiday is] “an offense for all who died to bring us out of ignorance, slavery, and submission. Because we don’t want gifts, we just insist on our rights.”

What comes to mind when you think of International Women’s Day? Cookies? Labor conditions? Rights? Men running races in high heels? 

They all refute an assertion by Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University [...]]]> Today’s New York Times features a Room for Debate section about the need to learn multiple languages. Six panelists, including author Stacie Berdan, agree that it is crucial to learn more than one language to operate in the new, globalized world.

They all refute an assertion by Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University and former secretary of the Treasury (and a man with a history of making blanket statements), who wrote What You (Really) Need to Know.

 The world is much more open, and events abroad affect the lives of Americans more than ever before. This makes it essential that the educational experience breed cosmopolitanism — that students have international experiences, and classes in the social sciences draw on examples from around the world. It seems logical, too, that more in the way of language study be expected of students. I am not so sure.

English’s emergence as the global language, along with the rapid progress in machine translation and the fragmentation of languages spoken around the world, make it less clear that the substantial investment necessary to speak a foreign tongue is universally worthwhile. While there is no gainsaying the insights that come from mastering a language, it will over time become less essential in doing business in Asia, treating patients in Africa or helping resolve conflicts in the Middle East. [emphasis mine, read more here]

This strikes me as arrogant and short-sighted. Even if more non-Americans are learning English and Google Translate is getting better, that does not negate the value of learning other languages.

Being able to speak more than one language has had an immeasurable impact on my own life.

I learned Spanish before the age of five, thanks to my wonderful Nana Petra. While my parents were working, she totally spoiled me with home-cooked Mexican meals, lacy white dresses, and games of Lotería. She drilled me on pronunciation (A, E, I, O, U) and taught me nursery rhymes.

This early exposure to Spanish paved the neural pathways in my brain to let me think in more than one language.

I continued to study Spanish all through school and all through college, including a year here in Chile.

When I graduated with a degree in Latin American Studies, I moved to China to teach English at a university near Shanghai. I’d never studied Chinese and never been obsessed with Asian culture, but I was able to quickly pick up the basics of child-like Chinese through conversations with vegetable vendors, security guards, and migrant workers on the train.

Over the next few years, I took many private lessons and small-group classes. Thank you Layla and Xiaofei for helping me elevate my Chinese skills from toddler level to that of a nine-year-old who likes to talk about wind turbine engineers and garbage incinerators. Learning Chinese gave me access to get beyond China’s single story, beyond the world of tour guides and textbooks, to take part in everyday life.

Now back in Chile, I use Chinese less. In the last month I’ve used it twice: at a restaurant and with a new Start-Up Chile entrepreneur from China. But linguistic crossover shapes the way I see the world.

Last week I led an entrepreneurship seminar at Casa de la Mujer, a community center in a poorer neighborhood of Santiago. The last day, fabulous Start-Up Chile video intern Javiera came with me to film the class and interview me and the ladies about our experiences. (The video will be ready soon!)

I talked about the course in English and it was SO HARD!  You might be thinking, but Leslie, you’re AMERICAN. English is your first language. How can it be hard?

Since I taught and thought about the class in Spanish, explaining it in English felt distant, foreign, and even patronizing. I stumbled over words; I felt like English made the distinctions between myself and the ladies too dramatic. In Spanish it felt more communal, more egalitarian, more personal. My testimonial, of how leading discussions with these woman has inspired me as an entrepreneur, flowed with enthusiasm in Spanish, but in English it felt forced, hesitant. Good thing Javiera took lots of footage: there should be at least a few clips in which my English is fluent and confident.

Linguistic crossover has had such a profound impact on my worldview. It has given me a broader understanding of words and grammar, but more importantly the tools to navigate the world with flexibility and empathy.

I truly can’t imagine life in only one tongue. I wish every preschooler could have a multilingual headstart!

From today’s El Mercurio: (translation and emphasis mine)

When I was a sophomore in high school, for a chemistry project, I studied baking. I decided to research the chemical properties of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder vs. baking soda, etc. I then ignored printed recipes and attempted to create tasty treats. The first few were [...]]]>

Students at work! Photo courtesy of Fundación EcoScience

Do you remember doing hands-on science experiments?

When I was a sophomore in high school, for a chemistry project, I studied baking. I decided to research the chemical properties of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking powder vs. baking soda, etc. I then ignored printed recipes and attempted to create tasty treats. The first few were far from delicious: a cake chock-full of chalky cocoa powder, concave lemon cupcakes, a mushy cake with too much mint extract. Eventually, by cake number 25 or so, I had created two real recipes: mint chocolate chip cake and apricot muffins.

Why am I telling you this?

Because it’s one of the few school lessons that I can remember in detail.

Why do I remember that baking soda is a base, and it needs to be combined with acidic ingredients like lemon or buttermilk or cream of tartar in order to produce the carbon dioxide bubbles that enable the cake to rise?

Because I didn’t just read this in a book; I discovered it with my own hands and nose and tastebuds.

I believe that hands-on science education is absolutely critical for the next generation of citizens, everywhere in the world. One must have a fundamental understanding of ecology, biology, and other disciplines to be able to make good decisions about food, transportation, and the world in general, but students will only truly remember those lessons if they discover them with their own hands!

My friend María Cuellar is developing a fabulous science education project here in Chile. It’s a bus specially equipped with science experiments, and it will travel to underprivileged schools throughout the country, to reach 10,000 kids per year. I love the name: Con = with, Ciencia = science, and ConCiencia sounds the same as conscience.

María’s enthusiasm is contagious; here’s her description of the project.

Dear friends,

I’ve told you a little bit about this before, but I’ll explain it again briefly. I am part of a group of scientists and entrepreneurs working on a project called el Bus ConCiencia, a mobile laboratory on a bus that will take scientific experiments to the most remote and impoverished schools in Chile.

Although we have enough funding for the investment part of the project (i.e. the bus, the laboratory modification, the development of the experiments), we still need to find funding for the operational costs for 2012 (i.e. gasoline, materials for experiments, teacher trainings, printing costs, etc.). So, we launched the Bus ConCiencia fundraising campaign! It’s on a lovely Argentinean website called idea.me: http://idea.me/proyecto/89/busconciencia

What we want to achieve with the website is crowdfunding. This means that we are interested in having lots of donations, even if they are small. So, if you want to donate 20 or 5 dollars, that’s really helpful!

Here are the instructions, just in case:
1. You go to this website: http://idea.me/proyecto/89/busconciencia?siteLang=en_US
2. Click on the green button that says “I WANT TO SUPPORT!”
3. Go down and click on your “Reward”, that is, how much you want to donate.
4. Choose whether you want to pay for the shipping cost (for us to mail your reward).
5. Go down and click on “CONTINUE”.
6. Write down your information for ideame (this is what we will use to send you your rewards).
7. Click on “I have read and accept the ideame terms and conditions.” Then “SAVE”.
8. Choose your payment method (I highly recommend PayPal).
9. Write down your information and pay with a credit card.

Please share this link with your friends!

Thank you!!
xoxo,
Maria

So far this link has been shared, retweeted, and favorite’d 15 times, which is a lot more than most of the links, pictures, and observations I share on Twitter.

Why this tweet? I have some ideas.

1) Clear Audience. I addressed this tweet towards China-philes. This is a [...]]]> Yesterday I tweeted:

So far this link has been shared, retweeted, and favorite’d 15 times, which is a lot more than most of the links, pictures, and observations I share on Twitter.

Why this tweet? I have some ideas.

1) Clear Audience. I addressed this tweet towards China-philes. This is a relatively broad, inclusive, and self-defined category, and there are a lot of China-philes on Twitter.

2) Specific Keywords. A grad student friend once referred to Harvard as the H-bomb. This name catches people’s attention!

3) Immediate Benefit. The course is available online. It’s free. A Harvard education for anyone with an internet connection and the attention span to sit through a lecture (or 37!)

What do you think? When do you find that your tweets get a lot of attention?

For now, here is a translation of the list scribbled above:

Motivations for Entrepreneurial [...]]]>

We asked women aged 13-70, from the Casa de la Mujer Huamachucho´s Escuela de Verano, about their motivations for entrepreneurial endeavors. This is what they said.

With several Start-Up Chile entrepreneurs, I am leading a five-day seminar at Casa de la Mujer Huamachuco, a community center in one of the poorest areas of Santiago, in the comuna of Renca. Soon I will write more about this experience.

For now, here is a translation of the list scribbled above:

Motivations for Entrepreneurial Activity (emprender is the verb form of “start something, as an entrepreneur.” Perhaps the best translation is “bootstrap.” If you have a better translation, let me know!)

• occupy free time
• generate resources
• grow more
• feel more useful — don´t depend on husband
• feel good about yourself at any age
• surge in life, be something
• be independent, own schedule
• teach values to the children
• develop as a person
• have your own money

Esta semana es el año nuevo chino. Feliz año del dragón!

Nos ofrece la oportunidad de destacar un ejemplo exitoso del comercio chino-chileno: la [...]]]> To celebrate the Year of the Dragon, I am trying something new: posting about trade with China in both English and Spanish. The English version of this article is here.

via Wikipedia

Esta semana es el año nuevo chino. Feliz año del dragón!

Nos ofrece la oportunidad de destacar un ejemplo exitoso del comercio chino-chileno: la exportación de las cerezas chilenas para este feriado importante.

Roja, dulce y empacada en cajas de regalo.  Las guindas chilenas son consideradas como algo especial en el año nuevo chino. El eje principal de las exportaciones desde Chile a China ocurre durante este feriado.

De acuerdo a los reportes de Portal Fruticola: 

El próximo 23 de enero se celebrará el Año Nuevo Chino (ANC) fecha durante la cual no se puede descuidar ningún detalle, siendo uno de los más significativos la fruta y en especial, las cerezas.

“Las cerezas se han logrado posicionar como un elemento característico del ANC y especialmente en las grandes ciudades donde  las cerezas son consideradas como un producto de lujo: es un producto importado, por lo que da una aire de exclusividad a quien lo compra y consume; es caro y escaso porque se puede encontrar sólo en esta época. Por último, el color rojo de esta fruta influye ya que todos los adornos van en rojo y dorado. Estos factores producen que se genere una alta demanda y la gente esté dispuesta a pagar muy buenos precios, que es lo importante para los exportadores”, explica Arturo Aranda, country manager de “The Foodlinks” en Shanghai.

Este año nuevo chino será dos semanas antes que el año pasado, lo que es un desafío para los exportadores, lo que significa que el periodo de cultivo también tendrá que ser antes. Tres flotas especiales fueron enviadas a finales de diciembre y llegaron a China aproximadamente entre el 16  y 18 de enero.

De acuerdo a Bernard Wu, el supervisor commercial de la importadora Zhxing Runfeng Food en Guangzhou, “las cerezas chilenas son bien evaluadas por los consumidores chinos principalmente por su calidad, delicioso sabor y buena presentación”.

The FoodLinks, una empresa que conecta a los proveedores chilenos con compradores chinos, plantea que sólo un 3% de los alimentos chilenos exportados son enviados a China y solamente un 0.7% de la comida importada a China viene desde Chile. Esto significa que hay un enorme potencial de crecimiento que sólo requiere un cuidadoso alineamiento entre lo que los consumidores chinos quieren y lo que los agricultores chilenos pueden ofrecerles.

Feliz Año del Dragón!!

In honor of this holiday, I would like to spotlight a successful example of Chile-China trade: Chilean cherries for Chinese New Year.

Red, sweet, and packed in gift boxes, Chilean cherries are a special treat. The holiday is centerpiece of Chile’s exports of high-end [...]]]> This week is Chinese New Year. Happy Year of the Dragon!

In honor of this holiday, I would like to spotlight a successful example of Chile-China trade: Chilean cherries for Chinese New Year.

Red, sweet, and packed in gift boxes, Chilean cherries are a special treat. The holiday is centerpiece of Chile’s exports of high-end fruit to China.

image via Wikipedia

As reports Portal Fruticola:

January 23 is Chinese New Year, a date when no detail can be ignored, since it is one of the most significant dates for fruit, and especially, cherries.

Arturo Aranda, country manager of The FoodLinks in Shanghai says, “Cherries have successfully been positioned as a characteristic element of Chinese New Year and especially in the big cities where cherries are seen as a luxury product: it is an imported product, which gives an air of exclusivity to those that buy and consume them; it is expensive and scarce because it can only be found in this season. Finally, the fruit’s red color matches all the red and gold decorations. These factors lead to high demand and the people are prepared pay very good prices, which is important for the exporters.”

This year Chinese New Year is two weeks earlier than last year, which presents a challenge to the exporters, because it means that the critical date falls earlier in the growing season. Three special charter boats left Chile in late December, to arrive in China between the 16 and 18 of January.

According to Bernard Wu, commercial supervisor of the importer Zhxing Runfeng Food in Guangzhou, “Chilean cherries are welcomed by Chinese consumers principally for their quality, good flavor, and good presentation.”

The FoodLinks, a company that connects suppliers in Chile with buyers in China, states that only 3% of Chilean food exports are delivered to China and just 0.7% of food imported to China comes from Chile. This means there is big potential for growth. It just requires careful alignment between what Chinese customers value, and what the fruit can bring to the table.

Here’s to health, happiness, and prosperity in the year of the dragon!!

China Post issued this stamp for the year of the dragon. Some found it "too ferocious." Read more here on NPR: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/01/04/144671003/chinese-year-of-the-dragon-postage-stamp-deemed-too-ferocious