Thank you for visiting my site. I am an educator, tech entrepreneur, filmmaker, and writer. My main area of interest is foreign language acquisition. I use a combination of AI and video to create interactive video experiences for people who want to become confidently bilingual. I truly believe that speaking someone else’s language is a way of showing love. It says, “I care about you enough to learn how to communicate with you.”
When you start learning a second language, you’ll often start learning about another culture. Then you’ll start to understand why people think the way they think, do the things that they do and say things the way that they say them. Language and culture go hand in hand and they can never be separated.
For this reason, over the years I’ve become a cultural chameleon and when I travel, I try to immerse myself in the culture as much as possible.
These are a few of the cultures that have influenced me along my language learning journey.
#1 – Jamaica
I was born in Kingston, Jamaica. I am a native speaker of English. I also speak the Jamaican dialect which is called Patois. Every single picture I found of me growing up in Jamaica was faded or blurry. Below is a picture of me right before I came to Canada. The photo on the left will make it easier to see the facial features of the blurry face on the right.
#2 – Canada
When I moved to Canada, the first French teacher that I had completely ignored me and left me out of the class. I’ll never know why. Perhaps she thought a Caribbean Kid couldn’t handle or wouldn’t be interested in French. Thankfully, my grade 8 French teacher included me and treated me like any other student. This led to a love of languages and winning several language awards during High School. My grade 12 French Teacher, Mrs. Scholz, was an amazing supporter and mentor. Not only did the modern languages department present me with a French award at my High School graduation, but Mrs. Scholz continued to support and encourage me while I was studying at Queens University.
#3 – Japan
Some of my students in Chigasaki, Japan decided they wanted to see their teacher in a Kimono. So they stayed after class to dress me up. Did you know that it takes 40 minutes to put on a Kimono?
In Japan, I taught every age group, from toddlers all the way up to retired senior citizens. This was one of my cutest students.
This is just outside Osaka Castle during that time of year when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.
On a trip back to Japan in 2016, I met two men outside my hotel at a noodle stand. They told me they were going for a drink and asked me if I wanted to come along. I told them that I don’t drink. (I also don’t go off to bars with strange men.) Later, I looked out my hotel window, saw them walking down the street, and changed my mind. Japan is relatively safe and in my 5 previous trips to Japan, nothing scary had ever happened at night. So I went outside and told them I’d join them at a nearby Izakaya. I also mentioned that the next day was my birthday and I was going to Nago to meet up with an old friend. So at midnight, they threw me a birthday party complete with the whole restaurant singing me happy birthday. We had a terrific time. After that, I went back to my hotel, perfectly safe.
Disclaimer: I don’t recommend that anyone reading this go off with strange men.
#4 – A quick side trip to Taiwan
I think the only thing I knew how to say in Chinese was stuff I learned from the movie Rush Hour. Thank you and Hello. Xie Xie and Ni Jiao.
#5 – Costa Rica
In Jamaica, you learn Spanish in High School, which starts in Grade 7. However, I distinctly remember getting 20% on my last Spanish test right before I left Jamaica. Then, many years later, as an adult, I had a job where all of a sudden, a whole bunch of Latino Clients showed up. This is how I ended up going to Costa Rica to study Spanish and live with a Costa Rican family for 12 days.
#6 -A quick side trip to Panama
What happened a few minutes before I took this picture? I asked this Native Panamanian Spanish speaker why he spoke English with a Jamaican accent. He told me he was a descendant of Jamaicans who came to Panama to build the Panama Canal. Coupled with finding out that Jamaicans built the railway in Costa Rica, I started wondering, “Do Black people just go around the world building wealth for other people?” I was already a business owner and this made me want to be an entrepreneur even more.
#7 – Back to Canada
There was that one time I got lucky and a Costa Rican neighbor came to Canada for a visit. However, quite often, when you come home and want to keep studying a language, there’s no one around who you can have a conversation with every day. The solution to this is Fluency Fix, an on-demand practice partner who is always there to practice foreign language conversations with you.