You pronounce the a, not the I.
The rain in spain falls mainly on the plain.
See the film (Americans say movie) My Fair Lady.
Austalians have the accent I instead of AI pronounced AY.
However, the rest of the English speaking world pronounces AI as AY.
Don't complain. Or I shall say it again.
I think we would all agree that we are living in a diverse world. We all love it. this has been going on for the past couple of centuries. Whether visitors were invaders, colonialists, or economic migrants or tourists, they brought new foods. The Jews brought fish and chips. The people from Poland brought bagels. The Italians brought ice cream. The Pakistanis introduced Indian restaurants and kebabs. The Chinese gave us Peking duck.
And the locals complain, until the visitors go, then the locals want them back. I remember after the Americans stopped visiting the UK, the hotels discovered that the two suites at the top of the building were making the different to the sustainability. A five per cent difference was the difference between profit and loss.
Now after Covid-19 worldwide, we have to adapt to the new normal. Without toruists, the airlines and restaurants have to re-think how to employ the staff and the buildings.
You have only to look at food. The Normans gave Britian the word boeuf which evolved into beefstaek. England gave back the Sandwich. In come the French croissant, the Italian capuccino.
The world changed. America was united into the unisted states considered a good thing. Britain joined the EU, considered a good thing. The Italian states were united to form Italy.
Then along come people who think it better to sepaatiorate into different language groups, nationalities and religions. Singaproe separates from Malaya which becomes Malaysia. Pakistan and Bangladesh are split. Ireland is divided, until the EU comes along and wants to build a border, and the two halves of Ireland want to be united.
I travelled to Singapore and discovered . We are making marmaldade from a minature trees which are dispalyed and
The Americans exported McDonalds and in Singapore my favourite seasonal drink was durian flavour.
In England the favourite foods are no longer chicken and roast beef at weekends. Now the most popular take away foods pizza and kebab. lAlong comes delivery.
Covid-19 has sent us all online from our workplaces and socially. This has two advantages. We can hold meetings with people in other countries. We can practise our languages.
We can also work from home, run businesses from home, and we can hide our faces so we do not suffer discrimination from somebody who doesn't like our face.
So Diversity is working well. What about equity? Equity is not the same as equali gty. I have heard it said that quality is giving every one a shoes. but equity is giving everyone a shoe that fits.
We have all heard this before. Karl Marx had bright idea of to every person according to his need, Communism. It worked well on a small scale, such as an Israeli kibbutz, but on a large scale, you ended up with the capital of the country getting the roads and the trains, the provinces being ignored.
On the other hand, when my husband heard that a remote island wants a brand new school, his reaction, was, why lives in the middle of nowhere and exspect millions of dollars in subsidis. Come to the city.
You also hear that Britain and America are not sufficiently inclusive. But other people say, if things are so bad, why are people from all over the world flocking here, instead of building up their own countries. Many people have seen the story of the man in the remote mountaintop village who built. What I like about Singapore is that it always had a long term plan. the railway of the future, the city of the future. Education for all, full employment, taking into account how far a person in a wheelchair has to go to cross a road. The mistakes of the past are quickly put right. At one time it ws forbidden to collect rainwater or grow plants on your roof. Now we are looking at sustainable hotels, challenged people running food businesses. The internet means that we can all work together for a win-win situation. Diversity, equity, inslusion,the first step is to be bilingual, and to have a smart pone and computer. Next everybody multilingual, like the children in Nepal and Russia who can speak 7 languages. When we cannot agree, we can agree to differ.
But I have more friends, in more countries now, than I had as a teenager. I never thought I would see the President of the United states sit chatting to the head of North Korea in Singapore. I never thought I would see a couple of Middle Eastern countries discuss recognizing Israel and then doing so. The same for the Israelis allowing a bit of their country, their third of the old Palestine, to become a new Palestinian state. I never thought I would see Google translate and Esperanto as an international language online. In all cases there are for and against on both sides, within the same families.
Diversity, equity, inclusion, we have started talking, and that's the first step.
