The London experience

It was the 1st of November on a cold London morning when I landed at Heathrow with my driver waiting for me with a placard with my name and company name on it. "Mamma I made it" the little voice in my head screamed, not because I had finally arrived in London to work at the head office of one of the biggest banks in the world but rather because all my life all I've ever wanted was for someone to wait for me at the airport with a placard with my name on it!

After an hour on the road mainly because of getting lost, we finally managed to find my temporary home, a cute apartment in the heart of Canary Wharf. And so my London experience began...

Working in London...

My first day at work was a bit of a blur. I spent half my time trying to figure out what the hell was going on and the other half pretending I knew. Everything was 10 times faster. I was now in an office of close to 8000 employees from our South African office which has about 200. There was such a buzz and occasional announcements made from one squawk box or another and everything being due yesterday, phones ringing off the hook, people sitting in front of multiple screens and a funny looking phone which I later learnt is actually called a dealerboard.

I worked with the most amazing team comprising of Russians, Turks, French, Bulgarians and of course Brits. I also learnt that yes in Russian is "Da" which sounds more like "nda" when said out loud (hmmm, Tshivenda much?)

Dating in London...

Ok I'm just going to come straight out with it because my colleagues have already judged me to no end...

I used Tinder to kick start my dating life...*as my street cred drops*

I managed to secure two Tinder dates, one with what turned out to be an unemployed Spanish guy (whose Tinder pic clearly failed to show his one missing tooth). The other was an Italian hairdresser...he had a great personality (?) *clears throat*

Anyway...I did manage to go on two other dates with guys I met in more conventional ways. Ends there. *hides*

Now this is the thing ladies, dating in London is expensive! (...or maybe it was just my luck). Prepare to spend money on a return trip and also on going Dutch when the bill comes. I'm sure you'd appreciate that after 5 or so dates and the exchange rate, I had to humbly turn in my resignation and step down from my position as serial dater. 

Shopping in London...

...is an absolute dream! I must've shopped almost every weekend. When the likes of H&M, Bershka, Forever 21, Zara, Top Shop and River Island become your pocket friendly shops, the temptation just becomes too strong to resist!

Partying in London...

...is even better than the shopping. Barring the ice cold weather, I had the most amazing times going out. Shorditch and Soho are definitely my uncontested faves!

That miserable London weather...

...will never stop you from doing stuff. No matter how cold, if I wasn't visiting friends or eating out I was at a market or museum. Londoners never let the lack of sun steal their fun!

Lastly, traveling in and around Europe is so cheap! Makes you realize how much we are over charged in South African. Bleh...

And that's my London experience in a nutshell, quite an amazing and humbling one at that. 

Now to work on that Wall Street dream...

Learning to think

You've done all the preps, you know the textbook back to front, up down, right to left...then you get into the exam room and none of the questions look anything like the 1000 past papers you've done. Your confidence goes into a coma and your guaranteed pass slips with. 

Sounds familiar? Well I've experienced this a couple of times in my life and over the years I've grown to understand the root of this problem, rote learning. 

The problem I have with rote learning is that it fixes your thinking to what you've only memorised so once the plot is twisted, you're completely thrown off. Yes, there are some instances where it's pure medicine, like basic education maths (remember how we were taught time tables?) but I think schools and sometimes even parents get it all wrong! They focus on getting the child to simply memorise rules and such when what is more important is understanding the thinking behind the rules. 

I have recently been involved in two organisations that are trying to change this, Junior Achievement SA and ENTACTUS (google).

On my first project with JA, we visited a school in Alexander, Johannesburg where we taught kids about money. How to save, make deposits, withdrawals and general financial decisions. We played a game similar to Monopoly but instead of being property based, it was financial, involving bank transactions and business acumen. At the end, the group that made the most money from their transactions won. With my group, instead of simply pushing them to make as much money as possible I would ask them to justify each and every transaction. Want to buy a business? Why? Not planning to run an ad campaign? Why? Are you going to spend or reinvest the profits? Why? 

With ENACTUS, I sat on the judging panel for their nationals. Here a representative team from different higher learning institutions from around the country would present two to three projects (existing small business) they have adopted. They would then have to take the audience through how they have improved the business economically and socially. Let's just say, I was the Simon Cowell/ Randal Abrahams of the panel because I was not going easy on the questions. Don't get me wrong, I was not "the mean judge", I just wanted the contestants to THINK instead of regurgitating what they had rehearsed/advised by their mentors. Overall it was an amazing experience with a group of smart, forward-thinking students. This type of involvement will definitely make their transition into the working world that much smoother. 

So guess what I'm trying to say is...

1. We need to encourage kids to think   and question. I find that in traditional black homes, questioning is not encouraged and this feeds through to the child's learning behaviour and ultimately the kind of adult they become. This separates leaders from followers. 

2. We need to make learning more interactive. We need more active learning.

If we can get this right, then half the job is done.