WordFood

WordFood - how we feed or starve our realtionships

- Julia Hubbel

Julia’s ability to get this group of type-A executives to engage in true networking was incredible. She is truly skilled at motivating the group to engage and interact with each other, and her openness and honesty really come through.

— Shelley Stewart, Jr.,
Senior Vice President of Operational Excellence and Chief Procurement Officer, Tyco

January 6, 2011

Thai WordFood

Filed under: Uncategorized — Julia Hubbel @ 6:28 pm

It’s a fascinating thing to be in another country where people largely don’t speak your language. I spent three months with Rosetta Stone and a coach learning as much Thai as I could- and it’s a challenging language. I can get around enough, and the smiling, kind Thai people genuinely appreciate and respond to my attempts to speak their language with enthusiasm and gratitude and much encouragement. However, there is a single WordFood currency that is spoken everywhere I’ve been on this trip: through Peking, Hong Kong and here in Thailand, as I’ve met people from Germanhy, England, Denmark and Japan, and that is the language of courtesy, regard and kindness. Whether or not we all commune with the same spoken language, we do express the same things with our faces, our body language and our tone of voice. We are so able to say what we mean and express our intention using these methods, to show others we have their interests at heart. Whether standing at a respectful distance, using a moderated voice tone in Asian cultures and making sure you don’t raise your voice in order to save face where there might be a misunderstanding, or to help a stranded tourist to find her way, there is a universal language called kindness. We all can speak that WordFood and the world needs plenty of it. The Thai people have much of it to give, and when we Westerners travel here, we might remember that that have given much of their lovely country up to tourism for our pleasure- and have done with smiles and we should be grateful back. And what a country it is. They have much to teach us about courtesy and kindness in daily interactions, the acknowledgments of everyday greetings and honorifics, and the sweetness of exchanges. It’s not just the Thai food that is good here, is the feeling that their words leave you with…that you have been uplifted by the exchange. And that is true WordFood.

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