It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
‘It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.’ is a truism with an edge. It instructs us that the well-connected will always have better professional and social opportunities. But what about the newcomer? For us, the ‘who you know’ can be very limited. This is a serious dilemma as we try to establish ourselves […]
Be seen and not heard
Growing up, our father warned us ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’ It was his parental way of controlling or at least stifling our behaviour. If my sister and I were expected to be seen but never heard—we were being trained to be passive observers without a voice or opinion. This saying has an emphatic […]
And the runner up is…
As I wrote and revised The Newcomer’s Dictionary, there were a number of excellent words that I did not have the space to include. ‘Nomad’ lost out to ‘Newcomer’; ‘Alien’ was left behind for ‘Abroad’; ‘Immigrant’ was the runner up to ‘Itinerant’; ‘Homesick’ won out over ‘History’ and ‘Transient’ beat out ‘Transfer’. At times, I […]