Bliss English Club

Date: Aug. 10, 2019

Host: Harrison

Topic:  "Stories behind the Pictures"

Attendees: Ellen Wang, Ellen Huang, Hanny, Tony, Mike, Naihsin, Sophia, Selina, Emma, Angel, Antonio, Winnie, Mike, Monica.

Meeting Photo Link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TNJ32CaUVpS2AT2t7

The Host~Harrison

This Sat, Angel invited her good friend “Harrison” to share his travelling stories, which really attracted a lot of travelling lovers to join the meeting. To get familiar with Blissers, Harrison started with an introduction about his study and job background.

His journey around the world begun when he joined in electronical industry which lasted for 10 years. As he had majored in mass communication and worked as journalist, his perspective is a little different from the people in electronic business. Then Harrison switched his career to solar industry and has lived in San Jose since 2016. After 3 years living in the U.S., he finally blended in US culture and realized that we can only get people’s mindset and understands how they think or act in a long-term base.

His Tips of Learning new languages~ mimicking

Harrison also shared us his secrets why he can learn a language so efficiently. It’s because he likes to mimic people.

A Demo of Mimicking

We didn’t know he is so talented in mimicking until he started to imitate the local driver’s accent in China. It’s like a “wow” virtual trip, embedded with Harrison’s visual photography and audio effects, which brought us to the scenes where Harrison interacted with the local people.

His Tips of Learning Exotic Cultures Taxi Drivers & Books

Following Harrison’s stories, we learned the best way to know the characteristics of the place is by chatting with local drivers. He also bought the local books to know more information.

It’s very helpful for us to get connection with that country and people and triggered us to know more for our next visit. 

His Tips of Being Immersed in Exotic Cutures~Observation & Do as Romans Do

As Harrison visited most of the countries during his business trip, he shared us some anecdotes happened during his business meals and led us to discuss the differences in drinking culture. Per his observation in the past, Korean people like to get guests drunk to show their hospitality. Japanese like to do business while drinking. What we need to keep in mind is to have their cups full of wine.

Ellen also shared with us that French people appreciate the taste of the wine and treated it as a joy of life (C’est la vie) which is totally different from Asia drinking culture. 

Then in the next session, Harrison taught us some cultural or historical stories for some famous European tourist attractions. With his vivid explanation, we were all turn up the curiosity for the history towards these places. The stories are too many to mention. Below is one of them.

Stories behind the tourist attractions

The origin of Europe- According to Greek Myth, Europa is the Phoenician princess who was so beautiful that Zeus likes to get her. So, one day, Zeus transformed himself to a bull and played with Europa and finally he took her to Crete and made love with her. After all this, Europa was so sad since she lost her virginity to a stranger who disappeared after she woke up. To explain all this and ease her pain, Zeus sent Aphrodite to her and brings her a message. The message was ‘To memorize Europe’s beauty, Zeus decided to make Europa as one of the Goddess and name the land after her name.’ That’s how the name Europe was coming.

At the last session (POP quiz), Harrison shared us some useful slangs he learned in the US which listed as below. We all learned the usage after his humorous explanation.

Useful Slangs in Daily Life

u Face the music-To accept the unpleasant results of one’s action

u Sleep on it-To take some time in decision. No hurry.

u Go fish-Impossible, in your dream.

u Photo bomb.-Unexpected person shot in the photo

u Under the radar-To keep low profile.

Thanks for Harrison’s interesting and resourceful meeting. Through the discussions, Harrison’s sharing is like butterfly effect which stimulated and inspired Blissers to have more motivation to explorer the world. Below are the reflections from Blissers.

Attendees’ Feedback

1.   Couldn’t sleep on it in instead punch out a few lines about today’s gathering.  The vibrant opening got all drawn into the “Stories behind the pictures” topic hosted by Harrison. It was amused by the lingual interactions in China where Harrison exposed his super skills in mimicking a way different and alien accent.  Geographically has he covered almost the whole world sharing the exhilarating anecdotes that were truly entertaining.  I bet all has immersed into entire scenario.  Great vibe, isn’t it?  Travel is like a journey not a destination.  The footprints we followed will lead us to another horizon.  It never ends.  At this point, it would be good staying calm and planning out a travel map.  Probably will be craving for an overseas adventure.  ✅It was a very enjoyable story telling meeting.   Finally, is today just a sneak preview?!  Next official n original film will be released soon by Harrison, won’t it?🎉Terrific!  Way to go!  And it will be on the radar!✅

2.      Thank you for Harrison's sharing and brings us been through an abundance of visual and auditory trip experiences.  After you travel a country, you bought local traveling books, search information that you care about and by business trip to been the country again that made you be more familiar to this place...From your experiences, it’s inspire me how to know a country more.  The most impressive things for me is wine culture different for each countries and understood why Korean like to drink and ask people drink and drink...before the meeting, I think it’s just the way for social and they just like to drink, I don’t realize their positive intention. Now I knew that, and be more acceptable for this. Thank you for sharing and efforts. We expect to join Part II in the coming days. 

3.      @Angel Thank u so much inviting your friend Harrison hosting in BLISS today for us, we all had a wonderful afternoon with a lot of laughter and WOW from his amazing opening till the end the Asian and several European country travelling experience sharing ...I specially enjoy how he engage himself to the places by reading books bought locally, this is what I haven't done from my travelling experience and I shall learn from him on this.

4.      Also, I totally agree with him that you will need to stay a place longer to understand local people's mindset and why they think and act that way, and through this, it could be a good reflection toward our home country Taiwan then Pity he can't finish all his presentation files with photos he took and hopefully he can share with us his part 2 soon in next year 😉

5.      Thanks again for Harrison’s informative and interesting meeting. It’s definitely the best entertainment for Sat afternoon. Not only the laughter but also the knowledge of culture and history we gained from his meeting. It also triggered me to find out more stories and history about the places I have been. Thanks for all the participants’ feedback and sharing. You made my bucket list longer and longer. Hope Harrison can hold the 2nd meeting soon next year.

6.      Traveling is not just to see beautiful scenery, but also to interact with local people. I'm impressed with Harrison's sharing his experience of interacting with local people. That always brought interesting culture shock.

7.      It's a pity that the topic relating traveling is a huge topic. Though Harrison has so much experience, he couldn't share everything with us due to time constraints and that led to the time control was not that ideal. That was slight imperfect for this meeting.

8.      I learned that although traveling itself alone may not get me to know the visited places in depth, I could see each trip as the start of the journey to know the place better and try to learn more stories about it afterwards with the interests having been further aroused after the visit. By this I could have deeper understanding or stronger emotional connection to the places ever visited. Harrison also encouraged us to start the practice somewhere near easily, some place in Taiwan for example, and we may experience the difference in travelling! It's such an inspiring and practical advice that I like to follow immediately.

Host Harrison’s feedback-

Thank you all! I like to share all my stories with you guys which also trigger me to dig out for more information that I don’t know yet. And from the sharing, it also refreshed my memories with all these trips.

--

Bliss English Club for Communication & Conducting Skills since 1997

Bliss Blog : http://blisstaipei520.pixnet.net/blog/post/212900702

Bliss FB : https://www.facebook.com/bliss.taipei

Bliss 粉絲團 : https://www.facebook.com/bliss1997/

Picasa: https://plus.google.com/101726755048448689917/photos

2019 Bliss Staff :

President (P): Ellen Huang cbad5@yahoo.com.tw

Education manager (EM): Annie Hsu taipei9713318@gmail.com

Vice Education Manager(VEM)/Daniel Chen jenkai.chen@msa.hinet.net

Public Relationship Manager(PRM): Winnie Tu toto7683@gmail.com

Bliss 2019 Calendar: 2:30~5:30 pm every Saturday

No meetings:1/19,2/2;2/9; 2/23; 3/2; 4/6; 4/27; 5/11;6/8,7/6; 8/3; 8/31; 9/14; 10/5; 10/12; 11/23, 12/14,12/28

Outings:Q1- 3/30; Q2- 6/29; Q3- 11/2

YEP:12/21

In 2019, Blissers are going to read and discuss the following 4 books together, please sign up to this google registration form if you feel like to read and discuss any of the books below together with other Blissers in 2019

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeBPscDMfegW9F2kp1zCt3EBgJe_6HjcffkX2GCdrwsmyOOUg/viewform

Venue: 東豐喜藝文空間, TOHOHI Arts Corner with Minimum charge: NT$150 per person with a cup of drink (Coffee or Tea )Address: No. 13, Lane 68, Shih-ta Road, Taipei, 師大路68巷13號, Near Exit 3台電大樓 MRT station

--