Tag: attentive

Greetings

Posted on by Olaf

Are you a ‘smile, high-five or a wave’ person? What’s your preference for written greetings and sign-offs:  Hi, Dear, Hey, Yours Sincerely, Best Wishes, Kind Regards? No doubt it depends on the person you’re contacting and the context.  You can seldom be sure these days due to the many communication options whether there will be any top or tail let alone some abbreviation you don’t understand.  The old order of things has gone out of the window with spelling and handwriting becoming ever more unpredictable.  This is true also of the forms of physical greeting – no longer a reliable handshake in the West or nose rubbing in New Zealand. During Lockdown, we saw the arrival of fist salutes and elbow bumps. Greeting cards may still be big business but nothing quite matches a card received that a person has actually bothered to make for you.  Do you still like to send and receive them? Perhaps this Booster has been sent to you as a greeting – if so, congratulations or commiserations as appropriate!

  • ‘What I've realized is that the joy of meeting and greeting people from all around the world is universal’ – Joe Gebbia

The Whisper of God

Posted on by Olaf

How are your ossicles today?!  These three tiny bones in your middle ear are known as the malleus, incus, and stapes.  More commonly they are referred respectively to as the hammer, anvil, and stirrup.  Although these are the smallest bones in your body, each play a vital role in your hearing.  'Shell-like' has been used to mean a person's ear since the late 19th century. Clearly this refers to the ear's shape with its opening and possibly the fact that shells were used as the earliest form of hearing aids! The earliest citation of the phrase ‘shell-like’ is Thomas Hood's romantic poem Bianca's Dream, 1827: ‘This, with more tender logic of the kind, He poured into her small and shell-like ear’.  What do you hear in your shell-like? It all rather depends on how close you are to the one speaking and how much noise is going on around you.  This applies to the two types of hearing – natural and supernatural.

  • ‘You never really learn much from hearing yourself talk’ – George Clooney