An eclectic IT career: Mayo Takeuchi

Since childhood, I've found that if I devote a certain amount of concentrated effort thinking in one language, there is a transitory period where trying to speak another language is frustratingly difficult. The worst experience I had of this was a few years ago. After a few weeks of only working, reading and dreaming in English, I bumped into a Japanese faculty member at DCU. I sincerely hope she doesn't remember the incident, as it was painfully humiliating for me: practically no Japanese issued from me at the time, but stubborn pride kept me from switching to English. The fact it was a chance encounter definitely exacerbated the situation, but I was no stranger to this phenomenon. When I entered the Canadian school system, I'd had practically no prior exposure to English. This meant that for a few years initially, I'd answer questions posed to me at school in Japanese, and at home it would take about an hour before I'd revert to Japanese with my parents. Saturd...

A few years ago, I met a director-level gentleman whom I consider to be quite maverick and not too politically correct, from what I'll call "Geography A". He was known for his habit of opening meetings by saying the following, where I've omitted the nationalities: [Geography A], speak up. [Geography B]. shut up and listen up. Although I can't really feel comfortable saying this myself, I did understand his viewpoint. Behaviourally speaking, I have found that one's experience in school influences how one conduct him/herself in the workplace. Personally, I am mainly a product of the Canadian education system, which akin to the American, emphasized in-class participation ("speaking up" in discussions). However, I also have exposure to the Japanese schooling mindset albeit in a distorted fashion: there, as in what my past colleagues (as well as spouse) describe as the Irish system, classrooms remained predominantly silent except for the teacher's v...

One of my numerous, albeit fairly minor, peeves concerns when someone who "has the floor" (for the non-native English speakers, this equates to "is in the position to be speaking" or "is commanding the audience's attention") chooses to use interjections in a noticeably frequent way. It's a technique we often use to buy thinking time, rather than pausing long enough to fully formulate sentences prior to delivering them. A couple of common ones in my experience are "at this point in time" instead of just saying "now" and "you know". The second example is one I've used on occasion (much to my chagrin), usually when trying to rephrase a point to be made. In German, it seems that the equivalent phrase I hear most often is a  translation of the Latin "id est" or "i.e."; " das heißt" . Another one I used to hear discomfitingly frequently was "to be perfectly honest with you". Af...