Why Keen?

Here’s a warm welcome to my partner, Hwei Min to this blog. (Partner sounds very gay doesn’t it? But wife sounds so passé though.)

I had intended the very first incarnation of this blog, tweak-me, to be about both of us, that must have been 2-3 years ago now, but never actually got her to contribute even a single line to this blog, I am glad she is finally going to contribute!

We’ve just watched an excellent Pixar movie, UP, and I guess we were both pretty inspired by the film. I had to use our dear boy Harkman as a leverage to finally get her to take action by telling her that this blog would serve as a journal about him growing up.

Do catch the movie, watch it with or without 3D, but please do watch! As usual, Pixar is unrivalled when it comes to solid storytelling with a universal message, this is another gem that would last for many years to come.

You know how most of us are thought that 93% of communication is body language, and only 7% is verbal? Well, it’s time to let go of that myth. It’s a classic case of oversimplification and making use of statistics out of context. Here’s a short video to illustrate, watch it, it’s an interesting 5 minutes:-

And here’s more about Albert Mehrabian on Wikipedia, the psychologist whose work is still being misquoted at communications seminar.

One thing I’ve noticed, though, body language does count a lot when it comes to holding the audience’s attention, so the lesson is still accurate as far as I am concerned.