Most Mispronounced Monday

Moët and Chandon

My brother recently graduated from Uni, so I picked up a bottle of Moët on my way home.

When we were living in Melbourne, we were lucky enough to tour some of the Yarra Valley wineries. Our final stop was the Domaine Chandon, where almost the first thing we learnt was that the “t” in Moët is actually pronounced! “Mow (the lawn) – et (as in etcetera)!”

Lip-reading babies

I had a recent visit with my neice, who is just over 3 and 1/2 years old, and I was impressed with how quickly her vocabulary and sentence structure had improved within the 2 months since my last visit  home.

I was recently browsing a website and found an older article from February this year. Studies have shown that during the time when babies transition from babbling to talking, so does their focus shift from watching your eyes to watching your lips. This finding means that lip-reading is just as important for the development of language as listening.

So make sure that your baby can see your lips when you speak to them (and can't see your lips when you don't want them to pick up other words!)

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337718/title/Babies_lip-read_before_talking
 

Women in Science & Medicine

 

I attended a conference "Women in Science and Medicine" that was held in Singapore this week. A strong focus of the meeting was to question whether women can "have it all" -- a successful job and a happy family. We were fortunate to hear from several successful scientists, clinicians and politicians, including Prof. Elizabeth Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2011.

A common theme emerged as each woman spoke: Yes, you can have it all. But it also seemed very clear that these women were fortunate enough to have a supporting family by their side to help with their children and an understanding husband. But, as one of the audience members (and a successful scientist in her own right) pointed out, what if you don’t have an understanding husband? What if you don’t have the support from your family? There are many women in these fields that simply have to make a choice – a career or a family.

In recent months, there has been some interest in this dilemma in the papers — have a career first or children first? In the Atlantic magazine (www.theatlantic.com), Anne-Marie Slaughter recently caught the attention of many women caught in this battle. According to The Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All" is among its most popular articles ever. Mind you, her downshift was from a powerful State Department official to a Princeton University Professsor: This is not quite the change that some women have to face when they quit work completely in order to be a stay-at-home mum.

One of the speakers at the “Women in Science and Medicine” conference, suggested that you need to define what “all” is to you.  Then, you can have it all by working out your priorities and doing your best to follow through. If “all” for you is to be a stay-at-home mum and work part-time, then you have it all. Another gem was to have confidence in yourself and not to wait for someone else to tell you that you did a good job.

But there is still a long way to go for women to be equal in the work force. Women are an essential element in the workforce, and the time has come for more flexible working hours, for both men and women alike.