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J’ai eu hier soir le grand plaisir de converser avec Madame Lew Yew Fai. L’arome d’un curry en ébullition titillait mes narines quand je faisais ma marche quotidienne dans les corridors de mon block d’appartement. Avec aisance j’arrivai à tracer très rapidement d’où la senteur m’arrive : appartement 35 celle de mon ami Deven.

Je me pointe chez lui pour le taquiner, il m’invita d’emblée pour venir voir et goûter le somptueux repas il préparait pour sa belle famille. Ainsi me voila installer entre les convives de la soirée mais plus important pour moi, ce soir c’est de faire  la connaissance de  la brave madame Lew Yew Fai. Elle était enchantée de bavarder en Hakka et notre longue conversation intéressante débuta.

Aujourd’hui âgée de 85 ans, elle arriva à Maurice en 1938, du même village de Moyenne en Chine ou elle avait vécu sa jeunesse dans la campagne. Elle entreprit le voyage de Moyenne pour arriver à Swa Tow par une barge de canal ou elle résida quelques jours en attendant l’arrivée d’un navire pour Hong-Kong et une correspondance pour l’ile Maurice. Son convoyeur et accompagnateur pour le trajet était Monsieur Wong Yen Shin.

Madame eut 19 grossesses et mis au monde 18 enfants. Eh oui, ce n’est pas tous les jours que j’ai la chance de rencontrer une mère qui a enfanté au tant d’enfants. Encore plein d’énergie Madame Lew Yew Fai me raconta dans quelles circonstances elle a épousé son mari issu d’une famille possédante en chine dont le père avait trois épouses. Elle est du même clan Chan que moi, nous avons pu retracer un lien de parenté avec les Chin s qui tenait un commerce à la place de la Cathédrale : Chin Tsun lin Pak Mei

Comblée elle est aujourd’hui avec des enfants, et petit enfants disséminés à travers le monde. La majorité des ses enfants ont épousés des non chinois ou des métis chinois. Aucun de ses enfants ne parle le hakka et elle expliqua qu’ils n’ont pas eu la chance d’apprendre la langue car son mari et elle n’avaient guère le temps d’enseigner la langue car il fallait avant tout travailler pour nourrir les nombreux enfants. Tenir un petit commerce de campagne et une boulangerie, toute en élevant 18 enfants était toute sa vie de travail. Elle set heureuse qu’une fille a choisi la vie religieuse. Originalement pas reçu beaucoup d’instructions, elle est rempli de sagesse et elle vit dans un détachement étonnant attendant d’être accueillie par Dieu. Elle respire la joie de vivre !

Merci Madame Lew pour ce partage qui démontre le courage des immigrés chinois en terre étrangère et leurs tribulations.

When I tell my non Chinese friends that I have the family history back for 24^th generations, they are amazed. The reality is that my ancestors had the fore sight of planning their descendants. I rejoiced on reading an article published on L’Aurore, the Catholic Mission monthly magazine December issue No 125, by one of my distant cousins of the same clan Chin who explained how generations’ names were generated. Just like YIP TONG does not carry the clan name, the author of the article Leung Shing names was truncated by the civil status officers of the time when our ancestors landed in Mauritius.

A la conférence de Michel Maffesoli du vendredi 5 décembre j’avais une question sur la temporalité.

Maffesoli parle d une Saturation de la temporalité : plus de projet, de demain (no future). C’est ici et maintenant (carpe diem). Un élément primordial qui sera lourd de conséquences.

Il continue plus tard en disant que le présentéisme est comme source d’ une invention du futur.

Mes bien-aimés, il y a une chose que vous ne devez pas oublier : pour le Seigneur, un seul jour est comme mille ans, et mille ans sont comme un seul jour. Deuxième lettre de saint Pierre Apôtre 3,8.

Ne sommes-nous pas plus près de l’eternel ou Le passé, le présent et le futur seront unifiés ? Comte Sponville disait que seul le présent compte. Nous avons un regard du passé qu’au présent, de toute manière ce qui est passé est bien passé, et le futur est incertain. Il nous reste que le présent.

Les deux journees passees avec  le Prof. Michel Maffesoli continuent a habiter mon esprit. La densite et profondeur de ses propos sont envoutantes.

Seeing our island from the perspective of a Newzelander is an interesting experience. I invite you to read a press article written by Heather Ramsay last thursday. Apparently there are resemblances between Mauritius and New Zealand !

I have also learnt from the article the links between Tasmania and our dear island.

In 1642 Abel Tasman called at Mauritius on his way to “discovering”
Tasmania and New Zealand, but despite these parallels, it doesn’t take us long to realise that Mauritius isn’t an Indian Ocean version of home.

On the dawn of 17^th August 1744, the Saint Geran , a majestic vessel under the command of Captain Delamere appeared in the North of the island. It was its first trip in the region.

Six months earlier, that is, on the 24^th March, several passengers boarded the vessel at the port of Lorient, along with cargo which included windmills ordered by Mahe de Labourdonnais for Villebague Sugar Estate, situated near Pamplemousses.

All of a sudden, at two in the morning, the ship was violently shaken. The alarm rang. Everybody, some still asleep, rushed outside on the deck. They were terrified by what they saw. The main mast was broken, crushing the lifeboats under its weight. Merciless waves had split the vessel into two. The passengers knelt to pray, the crew made a raft, which rapidly sank with its victims.

There were only nine survivors inspired by the tragic plight of these lovers, Bernardin de Saint Pierre wrote “Paul et Virginie” in 1787.This novel which vents the charms of the tropic has become over the years, the symbol of love and fidelity.

C’est un navire dont les Mauriciens ont toujours partagé avec fierté les secrets, surtout quand Bernardin de Saint Pierre l’immortalisa dans son roman « Paul et Virginie «.

Armé de 23 canons, avec un tirant d’eau de 600 tonneaux, il fut lancé à Lorient le 11 Juillet 1736 le capitaine Laurent du plessis lui fit prendre la mer pour son premier voyage de Lorient à Pondicherry le 11 novembre 1739. Par la suite, il fut commandé par le Capitaine Porée de la Toche.

Le Saint Geran devait faire naufrage le 17 août 1744 au Nord de l’île de France, aujourd’hui appelée Maurice. Ce fut le Capitaine Richard de Lamarre qui accompagna le SAINT GERAN vers son destin, avec à son bord un équipage de 149 hommes, 13 passagers, ainsi que plusieurs esclaves.

At Toastmasters, the members practice the art of thinking on one’s feet. Here are some tips which I collected from the web.

Staying Cool and Confident Under Pressure

“So, Susan, your report indicates you support forging ahead with the expansion but have you considered the impact this will have on our customers? Surely you remember the fiasco in Dallas last year when they tried the same type of project?”

Yikes! If you’re Susan, you’re likely feeling under pressure! You have to answer the question and allay the CEO’s concerns about the disruption to customers. What do you do? What do you say? How do you say it? What if you can’t think of anything to say?

This is not an uncommon situation. Whether you are put on the spot while attending a meeting, presenting a proposal, selling an idea, or answering questions after a presentation, articulating your thoughts in unanticipated situations is a skill. Thinking on your feet is highly coveted skill and when you master it, your clever and astute responses will instil immediate confidence in what you are saying.

When you can translate your thoughts and ideas into coherent speech quickly, you ensure your ideas are heard. You also come across as being confident, persuasive, and trustworthy.

Confidence is key when learning to think on your feet. When you present information, give an opinion or provide suggestions, make sure you know what you are talking about and that you are well informed. This doesn’t mean you have to know everything about everything, but if you are reasonably confident in your knowledge of the subject, that confidence will help you to remain calm and collected even if you are put unexpectedly in the hot seat.

The secret of thinking on your feet is to be prepared: learn some skills and tactics, and do some preparation for situations that might put you under pressure. Then when you do find yourself faced with unexpected questions and debate, you’ll be ready to draw on these tactics and preparation, and so stay poised while you compose your thoughts and prepare your response. Here are some tips and tactics:

1. Relax
This is often the opposite of how you are feeling when you’re under pressure, but in order for your voice to remain calm and for your brain to “think”, you have to be as relaxed as possible.

• Take deep breaths
• Take a second and give yourself a positive and affirming message
• Clench invisible muscles (thighs, biceps, feet) for a few seconds and release.

2. Listen
It comes as no surprise that listening is critical to thinking on your feet. Why do you need to listen? To make sure you fully understand the question or request before you reply. If you answer too soon, you risk going into a line of thinking that is unnecessary or inappropriate. To help you with your listening remember to:

• Look directly at the questioner
• Observe body language as well as what is being spoken
• Try to interpret what is being suggested by the question or request. Is this an attack, a legitimate request for more information, or a test? Why is this person asking this and what is the intention?

3. Have the Question Repeated
If you’re feeling particularly under pressure, ask for the question to be repeated. This gives you a bit more time to think about your response.

At first glance people think this will only make them look unsure. It doesn’t. It makes you look concerned that you give an appropriate response. It also gives the questioner an opportunity to rephrase and ask a question that is more on point. Remember, the questioner may well have just “thought on his or her feet” to ask the question, so when you give them a second chance, the question may well be better articulated and clearer to all.

By asking to have the question repeated you also get another opportunity to assess the intentions of the questioner. If it is more specific or better worded, chances are the person really wants to learn more. If the repeated question is more aggressive than the first one, then you know the person is more interested in making you uncomfortable than anything else. When that’s the case, the next tip comes in very handy.

4. Use Stall Tactics
Sometimes you need more time to get your thoughts straight and calm yourself down enough to make a clear reply. The last thing you want to do is blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind. Often this is a defensive comment that only makes you look insecure and anxious rather than confident and composed.

• Repeat the question yourself. This gives you time to think and you clarify exactly what is being asked. It also allows you to rephrase if necessary and put a positive spin on the request. “How have I considered the impact on customers in order to make sure they have a continued positive experience during the expansion?”
• Narrow the focus. Here, you ask a question of your own to not only clarify, but to bring the question down to a manageable scope. “You’re interested in hearing how I’ve considered customer impacts. What impacts are you most interested in: product availability or in-store service? ”
• Ask for clarification. Again, this will force the questioner to be more specific and hopefully get more to a specific point. “When you say you want to know how I’ve analyzed customer impacts, do you mean you want a detailed analysis or a list of the tools and methods I used?”
• Ask for a definition. Jargon and specific terminology may present a problem for you. Ask to have words and ideas clarified to ensure you are talking about the same thing.

5. Use Silence to your Advantage
We are conditioned to believe that silence is uncomfortable. However, if you use it sparingly, it communicates that you are in control of your thoughts and confident in your ability to answer expertly. When you rush to answer you also typically rush your words. Pausing to collect your thoughts tells your brain to slow everything down.

6. Stick to One Point and One Supporting Piece of Information
There’s a high risk that, under pressure, you’ll answer a question with either too much or too little information. If you give too short an answer, you risk letting the conversation slip into interrogation mode. (You’ll get another question, and the questioner will be firmly in control of how the dialogue unfolds). When your reply is too long, you risk losing people’s interest, coming across as boring, or giving away things that are better left unsaid. Remember, you aren’t being asked to give a speech on the subject. The questioner wants to know something. Respect that and give them an answer, with just enough supporting information.

This technique gives you focus. Rather than trying to tie together all the ideas that are running through your head, when you pick one main point and one supporting fact, you allow yourself to answer accurately and assuredly.

7. Prepare some “what ifs”
With a bit of forethought, it’s often possible to predict the types of questions you might be asked, so you can prepare and rehearse some answers to questions that might come your way. Let’s say you are presenting the monthly sales figures to your management team. The chances are your report will cover most of the obvious questions that the management team might have, but what other questions might you predict? What’s different about this month? What new questions might be asked? How would you respond? What additional information might you need to have to hand to support more detailed questions?

In particular, spend some time brainstorming the most difficult questions that people might ask, and preparing and rehearsing good answers to them.

8. Practice Clear Delivery
How you say something is almost as important as what you say. If you mumble or use “umm” or “ah” between every second word, confidence in what you are saying plummets. Whenever you are speaking with people, make a point to practice these key oration skills:

• Speak in a strong voice. (Don’t confuse strong with loud!)
• Use pauses strategically to emphasize a point or slow yourself down
• Vary your tone and pay attention to how your message will be perceived given the intonation you use
• Use eye contact appropriately
• Pay attention to your grammar
• Use the level of formality that is appropriate to the situation.

9. Summarize and Stop
Wrap up your response with a quick summary statement. After that, resist adding more information. There may well be silence after your summary. Don’t make the common mistake of filling the silence with more information! This is the time when other people are adsorbing the information you have given. If you persist with more information, you may end up causing confusion and undoing the great work you’ve already done in delivering your response.

Use words to indicate you are summarizing (i.e. “in conclusion,” “finally”) or briefly restate the question and your answer. So – what did I do to analyze customer impacts? I reviewed the Dallas case files in detail, and prepared a “What if” analysis for our own situation.”

Key points:

No one enjoys being putting on the spot or answering questions that you aren’t fully expecting. The uncertainty can be stressful. That stress doesn’t need to be unmanageable and you can think on your feet if you remember the strategies we just discussed. Essentially, thinking on your feet means staying in control of the situation. Ask questions, buy time for yourself, and remember to stick to one point and make that one point count. When you are able to zoom in on the key areas of concern, you’ll answer like an expert and you impress your audience, and yourself, with your confidence and poise

Do you know why the name of ile Bourbon was renamed Ile de La Reunion?

Well I shall be in l’ile de la Reunion for today and tomorrow and  shall find out..hopefully.

Until then it would be possible that I shall not have access to my blog. Excuse me dear reader who reads me daily. This was heart warming to recieve yesterday a call from one of my dailyreaders to tell me that I miss a day in my posting.

This was written from the airport internet facility.

 

I invite you to access the link: www.businessballs.com/freematerialsinword/personalitytypesperceptionsmatrix.doc –

The four temperaments – aka the four humours/humors

The Four Temperaments, also known as the Four Humours, is arguably the oldest of all personality profiling systems, and it is fascinating that there are so many echoes of these ancient ideas found in modern psychology.

The Four Temperaments ideas can be traced back to the traditions of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations over 5,000 years ago, in which the health of the body was connected with the elements, fire, water, earth and air, which in turn were related to body organs, fluids, and treatments. Some of this thinking survives today in traditional Eastern ideas and medicine.

The ancient Greeks however first formalised and popularised the Four Temperaments methodologies around 2,500 years ago, and these ideas came to dominate Western thinking about human behaviour and medical treatment for over two-thousand years. Most of these concepts for understanding personality, behaviour, illness and treatment of illness amazingly persisted in the Western world until the mid-1800’s.

The Four Temperaments or Four Humours can be traced back reliably to Ancient Greek medicine and philosophy, notably in the work of Hippocrates (c.460-377/359BC – the ‘Father of Medicine’) and in Plato’s (428-348BC) ideas about character and personality.

In Greek medicine around 2,500 years ago it was believed that in order to maintain health, people needed an even balance of the four body fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These four body fluids were linked (in daft ways by modern standards) to certain organs and illnesses and also represented the Four Temperaments or Four Humours (of personality) as they later became known. As regards significant body fluids no doubt natural body waste products were discounted, since perfectly healthy people evacuate a good volume of them every day. Blood is an obvious choice for a fluid associated with problems – there’d have generally been quite a lot of it about when people were unwell thousands of years ago, especially if you’d been hit with a club or run over by a great big chariot. Phlegm is an obvious one too – colds and flu and chest infections tend to produce gallons of the stuff and I doubt the ancient Greeks had any better ideas of how to get rid of it than we do today. Yellow bile is less easy to understand although it’s generally thought have been the yellowish liquid secreted by the liver to aid digestion. In ancient times a bucketful of yellow bile would have been the natural upshot, so to speak, after a night on the local wine or taking a drink from the well that your next-door neighbour threw his dead cat into last week. Black bile is actually a bit of a mystery. Some say it was congealed blood, or more likely stomach bile with some blood in it. Students of the technicolour yawn might have observed that bile does indeed come in a variety of shades, depending on the ailment or what exactly you had to drink the night before. Probably the ancient Greeks noticed the same variation and thought it was two different biles. Whatever, these four were the vital fluids, and they each related strongly to what was understood at the time about people’s health and personality.

Imbalance between the ‘humours’ manifested in different behaviour and illnesses, and treatments were based on restoring balance between the humours and body fluids (which were at the time seen as the same thing. Hence such practices as blood-letting by cutting or with with leeches. Incidentally the traditional red and white striped poles – representing blood and bandages – can still occasionally be seen outside barber shops and are a fascinating reminder that these medical beliefs and practices didn’t finally die out until the late 1800’s.

Spiritually there are other very old four-part patterns and themes relating to the Four Temperaments within astrology, the planets, and people’s understanding of the world, for example: the ancient ‘elements’ – fire, water, earth and air; the twelve signs of the zodiac arranged in four sets corresponding to the elements and believed by many to define personality and destiny; the ancient ‘Four Qualities’ of (combinations of) hot or cold, and dry or moist/wet; and the four seasons, Spring, Summer Autumn, Winter. The organs of the body – liver, lungs, gall bladder and spleen – were also strongly connected with the Four Temperaments or Humours and medicinal theory.

Relating these ancient patterns to the modern interpretation of the Four Temperaments does not however produce scientifically robust correlations. They were thought relevant at one time, but in truth they are not, just as blood letting has now been discounted as a reliable medical treatment.

But while the causal link between body fluids and health and personality has not stood the test of time, the analysis of personality via the Four Temperaments seems to have done so, albeit tenuously in certain models.

The explanation below is chiefly concerned with the Four Temperaments as a personality model, not as a basis for understanding and treating illness.

early representations of the four temperaments as a personality model

Richard Montgomery (author of the excellent book People Patterns – A Modern Guide to the Four Temperaments) suggests that the origins of the Four Temperaments can be identified earlier than the ancient Greeks, namely in the Bible, c.590BC, in the words of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel, who refers (chapter 1, verse 10) to four faces of mankind, represented by four creatures which appeared from the mist:

“As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.” (from the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 1, verse 10)

Montgomery additionally attributes personality characteristics to each of the four faces, which he correlates to modern interpretations of the Four Temperaments and also to Hippocrates’ ideas, compared below.

 

Je note avec une grande joie l’annonce d’une intention louable et un objectif qui se dirige vers un développement durable. Cela a paru sur l’express du dimanche 23 Nov.

Exploiter l’énergie en abondance qu’est le soleil pour le convertir en Electricité. La technologie existe et elle est déjà exploitée dans des nombreux pays. Il se poserait le problème de rentabilité ? Peut-on produire au jour hui une unité d’électricité au même prix que produise la CEB par ses centrales de production ? Quel sera le prix de rachat que la CEB offrira qui inciteront les individus à investir dans un tel projet ? Doit on que voir une rentabilité pour la CEB dans le présent ? Et quid de notre émission en CO2 dans les centrales thermiques ? A-t-on la volonté politique de mettre en chantier l’exploitation des sources énergétiques propres et non polluantes ?

Nous devons donc encourager ce projet. Je suis pour un retour sur investissement sur les panneaux voltaïques égal au taux bancaire de l’épargne.

■ L’objectif de Chavansingh Dabeedin

Pour la première fois depuis sept ans, c’est un membre issu du personnel même du Central Electricity Board (CEB) qui a été nommé directeur général de cette organisation. Installé à ce poste alors que la question de l’énergie préoccupe le monde entier, c’est à juste titre que Chavansingh Dabeedin s’est fixé comme principal objectif l’exploitation de toutes les sources d’énergie renouvelable disponibles à Maurice. En tête de lice figurent les énergies éolienne, hydraulique, solaire et celle produite à partir de la bagasse. « Pourquoi pas inclure dans nos priorités, l’exploitation du créneau de l’énergie renouvelable produite par les individus et dont le surplus pourrait être vendu au CEB et basculé sur le réseau national ? »

Last night with very great pleasure, I attended the 100^th year celebration of the Chinese chamber of Commerce in Mauritius. Our family has always participated to the chamber activities. Grand farther, YIPTONG, founder of the family in Mauritius was himself President of the chamber in 1938.

The very able and dynamic President in her speech made a review of the achievements of the chamber and repositioned the vision of the chamber in the perspective of the future with its new challenges. She concluded her speech in wishing the chamber to live up another 100 years.

Objectives of the chamber

To protect and promote the business interest of the Chinese Community in Mauritius

To represent the interest of members vis a vis governmental and non governmental authorities

To promote interaction among traders and industrialists

To facilitate meetings between members and their foreign counterparts

To promote business activities, local and overseas, for the benefits of traders and industrialists

To promote benefits to members of the Chinese Community, during sickness or infirmity or old age and death

From the Souvenir magazine produced for the occasion,I went through the list of founder members and the list of Past Presidents. I found it most interesting to see the names of the persons.