Podcastigation!

One of my clients/students is a Director at a large company here in Poland. His requirements are very much focused towards communicating on energy issues and the nuts and bolts of heat production and electricity distribution. They don’t make a textbook for that. As part of genning up on the energy sector in order to get the best out of our time together I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on energy issues. Along the way I've learnt just what a huge number of free podcasts there are out there.

In another language class I have used a Freakonomics podcast on the game theory of penalty kicks to stimulate a discussion about incentives and outcomes. I can’t say that the conversation went on for a while, but I have committed myself to make my English teaching as relevant to business and culture as it can be even if it means more prep time than just photocopying from a text book and asking students to fill in the gaps, which is becoming increasingly tempting!

This evening I've listened to Antony Seldon giving a talk at the LSE on Gordon Brown's period in Number 10. Content wise nothing revelatory but one of the most succinct, polite and well structured demolition jobs of the strategic, HR and intellectual failures of the former PM that I have ever heard. Regardless of what your politics happen to be it's always interesting to listen at length from someone who absolutely knows their stuff about what Seldon concludes was a, “fascinating, tragic, turbulent and troubled period.”

Anyway I feel I may have droned on about UK politics a bit more than legally permissible recently. Let's call it all those repressed desires for political self expression finally tunnelling their way to freedom, shall we? Tomorrow I’ll blog again on Culture Shock theory, why the comedian Frankie Boyle was right about performing comedy shows abroad and 'Babcias on Buses'. 

Food update: I managed to find Worcestershire sauce and bottled Guinness in Real! What a store that place is, to wander its aisles is to consider the adventures of the whole world and all that lies within. And to think I had decided you couldn't best a 3-sided delicatessen. What naiveté!

Dobranoc!