Note from Chad/3

L'evoluzione delle nostre policy

Naturalmente questa ridefinizione causerà una revisione delle regole generali di Etsy su chi può vendere e cosa può essere messo in vendita. Le linee guida del nostro mercato sono rimaste praticamente invariate dal 2009. Vi abbiamo detto come abbiamo rafforzato le regole, ma il prossimo passo sarà avere una miglior struttura per il futuro. La nostra politica non è così chiara e le regole non si sono sviluppate di pari passo con le necessità dei venditori.

All'inizio di Etsy il "venditore" era una singola persona, un artigiano (più spesso un'artigiana) che fa tutto da solo. per alcuni negozi rimanere gestiti da una sola persona è ancora la scelta giusta. Mentre altri per raggiungere i loro obiettivi hanno bisogno di più aiuto. Sappiamo che non è ancora chiaro ai venditori se possono o menoassoldare persone per aiutarli a mandare avanti il negozio, e quanto della produzione può essere affidata ad altri, esterni o interni al loro business. Questa mancanza di chiarezza rende complicato a molti venditori attenersi alle regole anche per affari che non abbiamo nessun interesse a bloccare. Di seguito l'esempio di come una delle nostre policy sulle location impedisce una bella colaborazione tra madre e figlia:

Ho delle difficoltà a capire le ragioni dietroad una delle regole di Etsy... Miamadre è andata da poco in pensione, e ha ripreso il suo vecchio hobby di fare bigiotteria con le perline. L'ho incoraggiata ad aprirsi un negozio su Etsy, ma non è capace di gestirlo senza assistenza... Pensai che sarebbe stato bellissimo sorprenderla aprendole un negozio e gestendolo, inizialmente, per far in modo che prenda confidenza con la vendita online... o chiesto il permesso di gestire al posto suo il negozio, permesso che mi è stato negato eprchè non vivo con lei. olti figli adulti che hanno i genitori in pensione cercano il modo di aiutarli a portare avanti iloro hobby e a tenersi al passo con la new economy. Questa regola ci impedisce dicondividere la gioia che dà essere parte di una community come Etsy, ed è perlomeno sconfortante.

Ecco, questo succede quando una regola nata con la buona intenzione di evitare l'entrata di mega industrie impedisce senza intenzione l'accesso ad una realtà familiare. Sappiamo che questo deve cambiare. Il motivo per cui non l'abbiamo ancora cambiata è duplice. Per prima cosa è un lavoro molto delicato autorizzarvi a crescere mantenendo comunque intatto quello spirito di handmade che ha reso Etsy unico. Ci stiamo ancora ragionando sopra. In seconda battutanon possiamo decidere dei cambiamenti senza un imput da parte vostra. Per questo motivo non abbiamo sistemato nessuna delle nostre regole durante il periodo delle vacanze, ma abbiamo intenzione di aggiornarvi nel prossimo anno nuovo. Nel frattempo, ci piacerebbe davvero sentire le vostre storie, come quella riportata qui sopra. Sarebbe poco lungimirante pensare di poter crescere senza cambiare le nostre politiche, ma abbiamo intenzione di farlo in modo che a dettare la direzione siano i vostri traguardi.

Celebrare e ricompensare il successo

Vogliamo costruire una community dove sia possibile che ognuno decida le dimensioni del suo business, ma comunque il successo sia ricompensato. Abbiamo sentito alcuni venditori che hanno iniziato da nulla a costruire il loro successo, ma non fanno altro che minimizzare quando ne parlano nei forum o nei team. Francamente penso che si atragico. In un mondo dove molte persone lottano contro la finanza, avere regole che scoraggiano la gente a condividere il proprio successo e ad ispirare gli altri è un fallimento.

Ho sentito chiacchere secondo cui l'unico motivo per cui Etsysostiene i suoi migliori venditori è per evitare la perdita che conseguirebbe al loro abbandono. Non è così che la pensiamo qui dentro. Abbiamo chiesto ai venditori di successo i Etsy perchè abbiano lasciato questo posto, ma non abbiamo mai calcolato la quantità di rinnovi persi da quando se ne sono andati. Come compagnia emergente, ci interessa fornire strumenti e servizi che servano alla direzione che i nostri membri stanno prendendo. I "top sellers" ci indicano che direzione sta prendendo il nostro futuro.

Cosa significa questo per il futuro

Guardando avanti stiamo cercando modi di incoraggiare il successo e ricompensare l'ambizione. Non abbiamo intenzione di cambiare il mondo pensando in piccolo. Per creare più guadagno possibile, mentre conserviamo il cuore e l'anima di Etsy, ci servirà il vostro aiuto.

Stiamo costruendo la strada verso il futuro, ma per costruirla davvero abbiamo bisogno di sapere come vedete la vostra di strada. Sappiamo che la parola successo ammette molte diverse declinazioni su Etsy, ecco perchè vi chiediamo di mandarci le vostre storie e i vostri pensieri all'indirizzo di posta: future@etsy.com

Voglio che Etsy sia una compagnia indipendente il più a lungo possibile, e ancora più importante che permetta ai venditori di essere indipendenti, e che gli permetta di vivere, non di sopravvivere. Cambiare il mondo significa pensare in grande, e vogliamo pensare in grande con voi.

Translating into Italian

Etsy is growing... and learning a new language: Italian.

The project started, and many members of Etsyitaliateam are helping in this great issue of translating etsy into Italian.
I've never translated a web-site before. I am very gratefull to my informatics course at University, otherwise html would be an enormous difficoulty. These codes are everywhere while translating and sometimes they make it difficult to understand the real meaning of a very simple sentence or phrase.
It's tricky, but so far is also interesting.

What is strange about it is that it must be functional, there is very little to "read". What we are translating are basic information to surf the great sea of shops on Etsy. Thus, we need to focus on the very use of words.
Another thing to take into consideration is lenght. Bottons and links are supposed to take the same amount of space of the english ones.

Luckily, we have a thread to compare our doubts and talk with the admin to be sure of doing a good job. Once again, what makes Etsy different from other places on the net, is the main idea of community.

Working (and living) with what has to do with languages, I've been wondering about this project before joining. We are doing it as volunteers, we are just partecipating in what we want to became real. We first wanted this site to speak Italian. But translation is also a serious matter, people do it for a living, so... how fair is it doing it for free?
I hope someone is supposed to revise our whole work, in the end. Someone that do it for a living.
So far, once again I am learning something new!

Language learning: two languages, two experiences

foto from Flickr

In my long journey as a language learner I've understood a couple of things; I've experienced it as a student, but also studied it. I started studying English when I was quite young (10 years old), and my teacher was Italian. With German, things were different. I started to study it when I was at University (20 years old), my teachers were mainly mother-tongue. These differences made me think about how I apprehended these two languages.

English at the beginning was totally a matter of fun! our teacher showed us cartoons, and then taught us some words and phrases. I can't remember any writing exercise during the first year. We learnt to say something and mainly how to use those phrases. Nothing about grammar or how to build up sentences. Then time for grammar came: present simple, Subject Verb Object structure, and so on... but only later. What we learnt first of all were Formulae. It was not important to learn the rule, but how to say things, because we need to spend time talking, somehow.

German came to a very different time of my life. After so many years at school there is something in your mind that tells you that the way to learn thing is to deeply understand them. Unfortunately that is not always true!
The first time my teacher came in class I was so scared! She started talking in German, only very few of us could understand what she was saying; I remember I thought something like: "How am I going to learn anything about it if she's not going to stop and explain us what she's saying?!" I was wrong; what they were trying to do was a total immersion in the language and also they tried to make us used with the sensation of not understanding each and every words they say.
Something in my mind was not helping me, because I wanted explanation, but actually I didn't need them.

The first thing is talking. That's why I started this new topic giving just phrases and words and not rules. I'll give some basic rules, if the time comes. In the meantime, stay tuned!

sources and words

Writing academic essays in English, I've sometimes found it difficult to translate technical words. I mean those words that refers to a very specific meaning but sounds like other words. I'll make an example to be sure you can understand. Last week I was wondering how to translate "sensibile" from Italian to English, but I didn't mean the adjective (sensitive), but the substantive that indicates a particular musical note that in a scale risolves to a note one semitone higher. Putting just 'sensibile' on google translate or any other online translator I could not find the word I meant.

The solution is easy, anyway. If you don't have a specialized dictionary (which is a very good way to solve the problem, but it is quite difficult to have one specific for each and every semantic field!!) you can just go on wikipedia, and search in your own language the word you are interested in. Then, you can click on the list of languages on the left and what you get is the corresponding entry in English, so your perfect translation. Moreover, the complete entry makes you certain to be perfectly right.

wondering.... surfing....

One of the best way to be serious in my "start again" could be making the same steps of the first time. Since my blogroll is not so updated, this must be a really effective starting point.
So the blog I signal today is very relate to my new topic, Italian Lessons, the url is

http://becomingitalianwordbyword.typepad.com

You can find language hints to discover Italian, but also, some little story on how we use the language. The comparison, of course, is with English language.
Italian habits and lifestyle are described in a very interesting and "colourful" way.
It defenitely deserve a chance, click and see it!

Try Again!

Yes, That's it!

Now it is a year (and some day) since I last wrote something on these pages... I feel a bit ashamed, but since I need it, I really want to try again!

Try again to write something ( I hope) interesting.
Try again to be diligent enough.
Try again the trick of blogosphere to help my language learning.

I hope I'll do it better this time!

About love

image taken from here
original text taken from here:

Eine Kleinigkeit
(für Catherine)

Ich weiß nicht was Liebe ist
aber vielleicht ist es etwas wie das:

Wenn sie
nach Hause kommt aus dem Ausland
und stolz zu mir sagt: »Ich habe
eine Wasserratte gesehen«
und ich erinnere mich an diese Worte
wenn ich aufwache in der Nacht
und am nächsten Tag bei der Arbeit
und ich sehne mich danach
sie dieselben Worte
noch einmal sagen zu hören
und auch danach
dass sie nochmals genau so aussehen soll
wie sie aussah
als sie sie sagte -

Ich denke, das ist vielleicht Liebe
oder doch etwas hinreichend Ähnliches





A littleness

I don't know what love is
but perhaps
it is something like this:

when she
comes back from abroad
and proudly says to me: "I've
seen a water rat"
and I remember these words
when I wake up at night
and the day after at work
and I miss that
these very words
once more I hear her saying

and again and again
exactly seeming
as they seemed
when she said them

I think that perhaps it is love,
or at least something very similar to it.

translation is mine, any advice is welcome.

Dictionaries and co.

Foto from Flickr
If you study languages, or are interested in language learning one of your best friend is called dictionary. I often use online dictionaries, because it's quicker than turning pages. You just type in a word and wait.
Doing my german homework I've found a couple new sources that deserve mention in this blog. The first is the online version of SANSONI provided by the italian newspapaer "Corriere della Sera", which is a really good dictionary and of great help. But one of the greatest problem when you study German is the possibility of creating new words that could generate confusion in the reader, and here the second source could be of great help. Bab.la is something more than a dictionary, because provides you the meaning of the words, but also an example of use. But the thing that deserves mention is this: whenever you cannot find there the word you need you can look for it in another source (so far, quite obvious)and then put it there. It will be checked, but in the meantime it is available with the red writing "non verif." (not checked).
That's great for a basic reason, language is something alive, then changes and enlarges itself, so obviously a living dictionary is a great advantage.
Of course there is the negative aspect that we always find talking about online sources: reliability. But as always the solution is to take it as a starting point and not as a universal truth. To have an initial meaning (the most unprecise it could be) it is better than wondering without knowing.

A new Banner

There is a new banner in my blog, it comes from a page that has something to do with language learning.
When you start learning a language one of the most important thing is vocabulary. To learn new words is the first step to express yourself in the target language, and I found a way to improve your vocabulary and help to fight hunger.
Freerice is an opportunity for language learner, for those of you who want to learn English French German Italian or Spanish.
When you open the page, you'll find a quiz, there are words you are asked to translate in English, and for every word guessed 10 grains rice will be donate through the World Food Program.

I found it some time ago thanks to Karenuccia, but after my last template change it went lost, now I redescovered it for my German training, I'm always trying to find new ways to improve my vocabulary, and I think that is a great way!

For any other information have a look to the page!

Starting a new work

Foto from here

I met Henry James for the first time when I watched "portrait of a lady", and I must confess that I didn't appreciate the film, this led me to avoid the book, and in my literature studies he was never mentioned directly, I mean, studying Joyce I found referrment to James' work, but the interesting thing is that he has no chapter dedicated in the Norton Anthology (my literary bible).
Now I'm dealing with him because of my final dissertation and I'm starting to believe that he deserve something more...
I'm reading his novella "The turn of the screw", rather, I've already read it and I'm now analizing its content and the way it s organized, That's why I'm not referring to it as a ghost story, because first and foremost I'm aware it is not. We cannot define it in a specific genre, because the author himself wants us to be confused about it. The "ghost story is full of hints of a paranoia of the narrator, the young governess who went and lived in Bly. The reader is led to doubt on what she describes, and in tragic scene at the end of the story is no longer sure of what has happened.
The story has caught the attention of many artists and critics since when it was written and in 1954, when the Biennale commissioned him a new work, Benjamin Britten chose this very story, and "The Turn of the Screw" became an opera. The particular ambiguity of this story created several problems to the composer and the librettist, Myfanwy Piper, but the thing on which I'll focus my attention will be the interpretation of Britten who found himself to choose between Innocence and Experience, and this time chose Experience.

Stay tuned for next steps...

The House of Sleep

"The house of sleep" is one of my favourite book, a novel by Jonathan Coe and the topic of my final dissertation at the end of the first three years University.

The novel is diveded in six sections, the first is titled 'awake', then you can find the four phases of sleep and the last one R.E.M. phase, in the end there are three Appendixes (Poem, Letter, Transcript). Each section consists of three chapters, odd-numbered chapters are set in 1983-84, even-numbered chapters are set in June 1996.
The different sections of the novel are closely linked through words, they don't come to an end just dissolve, like an interrupted dream, in an incomplete sentence, the final word of each stage of sleeping is picked up at the beginning of the following one, but in another context and sometime even by another character.

The story deals with a group of students that share a house in th '80s and fall in and out of love, the we see them in the '90s with their lives changed. We can say that the very protagonist of the whole novel is Sarah, she suffer from narcolepsy, and in the 80's she's not aware of it. Narcolepsy is characterized by Eccessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS), cataplexy, vivid hallucinations, brief episodes of total paralysis. Who suffer from Narcolepsy can fall asleep even in active conditions, like eating or talking, what is called sleep attack. Adult patients often perceive narcoleptic symptoms as embarassing and social isolation may result. They may experience interpersonal problems, and are perceived as lazy or are suspected of illegal drug use.
Sarah's symptoms will cause a large number of misundedrstanding throughout the story, sometime caomically and sometime less. At the beginning of the story Sarah has an affair with Gregory, a fastidious student of medicine, who seems to be more interested in her as a medical case than as a person, and her girlfriend. We will find him as a doctor in '96, a very precise doctor who run a clinic for sleep disordes who starts to hate sleep, because "the sleeper is helpless; powerless. Sleep puts even the strongest people at the mercy of the weakest and the most feeble". Then she knows Robert, who falls hopelessly in love with her, Robert seems to be one of the few to understand that she suffers from a real desease. At the beginning of the story he's studing modern languages, but then he change to psychiatry, probably to find a way to help her. He has is life totally changed by this woman. Terry is a student at Ashdown with Robert and Sarah, he sleeps almost 14 hours per day, then he will be one of Dr. Gregory patients because of his insomnia, he says that is his curse, always tired and never tired enough to sleep. As a student he was "plagued by dreams" and then he became a journalist obsessed by movies, a kind of dreaming without sleeping.

Sarah's symptoms cause a large number of misunderstandings throughout of the novel, but narcolepsy is also an excuse to talk about medicine and doctors. There is a comical conference with psychologists who try to sustain their own ideas even when everything demonstrate they are wrong. Doctors who consider research even more important than their patients' lives. Jonathan Coe is humorous but while you're laughing inevitably think about the context in wich the scenes takes place and some characters in the story are frightening when they have the chance to explain their own vision of life.

In the end is one of the best novel I have ever read, it is well-written, witty, never banal. Give it a chance!

On facebook

Photo from Flickr

As I wrote more than once, I've learned that modern technology can be really useful to learn a language (particularly English, of course), and I've discovered many different tools that I'm currently using (this blog of mine, for example), during last year course at Uni.

I can easily remember during a reflective lesson about Personal Leanguage Environment, a collegue of mine talking about social network, in particular she was referring to myspace, but then facebook was named too. I ignored what these things were, and I could not have an idea of how to use them. Then we spent some time to talk about it, and I could make some theory on these things, but they didn't sound so good to me.

Now, I'm one of the I-Don't-know-how-many people who have an account on it, and I'm much more familiar to social network, I know what it is and how it works, still, I cannot understand how I could use it to improve my language. As it is described in Facebook homepage, it helps you to connect and share with people of your life, and that's definitely true! Moreover there are people in my life, that I could not be in touch withouth something like facebook. A friend of mine lives in Chile, and even though I have his mail address, facebook is a much better tool to be in contact with him. But considering the short message I leave on other people's wall, and I usually write more to those people who are part of my life everyday, I really cannot catch the use of it as a language learning tool.

Anyway, it is a great fun, and I must confess that I spend even too much time with it!

Teaching English...

Foto from Flickr

…is a serious matter! I’m not only a language learner, of course, I’m also a language teacher. I said ‘of course’ because when you start to study at University, people start to have a different consideration of your knowledge. You become somehow an “authority” and when they need help in your field, they come and ask.

But studying English at Uni you understand that rules work a bit differently from what your teachers used to tell you at liceo. And here starts your dissidio interiore. You want your students to be part of this truth that has been revealed to you. You want to tell them the whole story. For instance, you don’t want to tell them that ‘some’ is used in affirmative sentence, while any in negative and interrogative, but you can’t provide them an alternative rule… You don’t want to show them schemes for MODALITY where it is said that can translate the Italian ‘potere’ and HAVE TO is used when it is not possible to conjugate must and so on.

But if you try to do something like this your students will start to look suspiciously at you. No more rules in English? And what about all the things that have been said so far?! What about books written that way?! Those books that provide you few simple rules to use and understand English?! And you, as a teacher, give up and provide them those schemes and rules that make them feel safe (because that’s what their asking you).

Sometimes, you give them a different example, nevertheless, an exception that could convey to what you know is the4 whole story! Who knows, it could even create some… doubts…

Nice trip into science world!

No photo this time!

Another meeting for bloggers, but without any evidence! I'm just back home (well, I had dinner before start writing!) from Pisa, where I met A.C. and qualcosa di bello, and her "baby"! We spent a beautiful day trying to understand something about scientific research. If You have any question ask qualcosadibello, she knows!

It is always a surprise that there are so many different ways to get in contact with people, and that just writing some random thoughts, you have the chance to meet such beautiful people.

I have no other words for tonight, (I had few words during the whole day!)...
but thank you!

foto from Flickr


I'm back to my last courses at University, and because I know I will have no time for choosing books to read, I read a final book for my pleasure before starting!

Of course, when you start reading a book you hope it will be pleasant, but when I started to read "girl with the pearl earring" I was totally and completely fascinated by the story of this young maid. I entered her world in her house and then starting to feel what she felt. It is so well written, that even though I read it in English ( I'd rather read in the original language when I can do it!), I was really involved in the story! I watched the clouds with her trying to figure out the different colours, I felt ashamed for the attention of a butcher's son, and confused for the secret errands she had to do for her master...
The story deals with the life of a girl who is the maid in Vermeer's house, and besides her duty as a maid she starts helping her master preparing the color for his paintings. There is nothing morbid about their relation and the way they work together, but there is a kind of unsaid attraction between the two. Things become a little bit complicated when Vermeer's Patron notices the girl and wants to be painted with her...
I won't tell you anything more, but be sure that is worth reading!

Language learning is relative....

My father always says that learning Italian is quite easy.

Then he usually goes on saying that the reason why Italian is so easy is that words are pronounced the very way you write them. This is more or less true. We have pronunciation rules, that's all. German too! But we also have a very complicated verbal system composed of several modes and tenses.
At this point in the conversation my sister usually says :"Some modes and tenses are no longer used in Italian!". She refers to passato remoto, and some kind of congiuntivo. Go and ask to southern people if they no longer use passato remoto!!

Passato remoto is used to narrate events that happened very long ago, or at least that's what my teacher told me when I was 6! Speaking Italian I very rarely use passato remoto (telling once-upon-a-time stories, imitating southern people...), a class mate of mine, who come from the south of Italy used passato remoto to tell me about events that occurred the day before...

When I spoke to Elena (American student), during the exchange, I had the opportunity to ask her what is her greatest difficulty speaking Italian. I expected she to say: Italian verb system. She told me several things that were difficult for her, but she didn't mention verbs! I must confess I was a bit disappointed!

My German teacher in my first year at the University, used to underline that Italian is far more complicated than German, because irregular verbs in German show their irregularity in precise "points": 2nd and 3rd singular person, Praeteritum, and Partizip. No more no less. While in Italian you don't know where you can find irregularities.
Anyway someone should remind her that German still have declination for nouns, articles, and adjectives, and there is no way at all to guess the gender of words!

So... time is not the only relative thing, I assume!

be correct-ed!

When we were having our student exchange with American students, Sarah told us to pay attention when we talk Italian with them, not to talk too fast, not to use strange words and structures, and not to correct them too much when they talk!

Then, I asked Elena whether it was all right, in our exchange, the way I talked to her, the words I used, if I was too quick. That was mainly because Sarah told us they were intimidated by our English, and their Italian was not at the same level (consider they've been studying Italian only for 4 years).
I've always said to Elena that she could feel free to correct me any time I deserve it, she's never done it, not because I didn't deserve it, just because she's very kind! I corrected her only if she said incomprehensible words or totally failed the structure, and that happened rarely too.
I noticed that sometimes native speakers avoid doing so. When I talked to Sarah, or with my cousins, I realized that I had said something wrong (always after having said it!), but they never interrupt me. I like the idea of finishing my sentence, but I also appreciate the opportunity of improving my language, so I don't feel uncomfortable when someone corrects me!

I didn't. Last week I had an oral exam on linguistics with an American (native speaker) teacher, she's never corrected me while I was talking about the subject matter, but when the exams finished she corrected me 3 times while I was asking about my other marks... I made some very silly mistakes (...she didn't told us...), and I felt so irritated! And I thought about those things Sarah told us about correcting people that are learning a language...

I still think I need corrections, probably what irritated me so much is the particular relation I have with that teacher, and so it was not the correction, but the one who was correcting me! But probably I've also learned that when you are learning a foreign language you need to talk, first of all.
My best friend went to live in Germany, and when she was trying t learn German her boyfriend's family always corrected her mistakes (German is a very difficult language!!), and she hates them doing so. I tried to explain her that they probably had the best intention, but without a real success.

Italian and German are not so popular as foreign languages (German is becoming more popular, but still schwierig!), and so Italian and German people are not used to talk with people who are learning their language, while English people are used to, and so a bit more polite, probably.

Anyway, probably you shouldn't correct each and every words one says, but sometimes I found useful that someone, politely, underlines my mistakes, to help me improving!

my boring, boring studying....

Once again I'm studying hard for my exams. Today and the day after I'll be sitting German (tomorrow I'll have a 5 hours written test: a torture!), then it will be English (linguistic) then German literature first and second part and English literature. And then I have finished for June and July, because I've done some continuous assessment during the lessons...

I don't have much energy for these exams, I hope they'll finish soon, but I know I will be feeling guilty in the end because I haven't done so many as I wish...

Anyway It has been such a full year for my learning that I can be satisfied!

Blogging or not blogging?

Actually, I've already found an answer to this question but the thing is: Will I be able to do this without Sarah asking me to write a post every week?

One could say that if I like to write my blog (as I've said more than once...)... well, Yes I can (It seems to bring luck, this slogan... not in Italy!)

Those little flags...that's the kind of help I need... and comments (also corrections!!), of course!

Will you help me?!

My personal language environment/2

Here we are thinking about our way of learning, the opportunities around us, and how to use them properly. Here we are, again.
I don't think there is much difference from the first time I analysed my personal language environment. The greatest change is that I am going to finish my classes at University (I hope, let's see my next exams...), and so the larger part of it will be informal. Those new tools I have added during this course, and in my years at the University, will play a different role. I have found many new occasions of improving my language and to test my intercultural competence, and I had the opportunity to decide what is better for me. I won't attend regular lessons (perhaps), and so I have to reflect on how keep on learning, and I'm ready to reflect on it,because I have many different tools.

I think the blogosphere is going to play a great role in my future learning experience, because I found an enjoyable way of training my skills, I found people who are (surprise, surprise) interested in what I write, and who give me advice and opinions. Relating my learning experience to people is a great way to keep on learning, because I'm always interested in communicating with other people and because, as someone told me recently, 'life is all about people'.