Guest Blogs
Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!
To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.
We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!
By Dr Michelle Wright, Director of HealthFirst.ch
You never know when your First Aid or Basic Life support skills could be called upon. Every week I hear stories from friends, colleagues, and patients about how they have had to react in a medical emergency to help someone in need.
Recently I had the privilege of working with the Swiss Resuscitation Council to translate and record the voiceover for their BLS Quick video, published on their website: resuscitation.ch
BLS stands for Basic Life Support and BLS Quick training is aimed at the general public to raise awareness about:
• When someone might need Basic Life Support.
• How to alert the appropriate emergency services.
• And how to begin providing CPR and using a defibrillator, under the guidance of the telephone operator on the other end of the line.
Collapse
The video is well worth a watch. It runs through a scenario where a woman is walking in the forest and comes across a man who has collapsed whilst running. She shouts for help, hoping that someone nearby hears her. She then checks to see if the man is responsive and breathing. Upon finding that he isn’t, she calls 144 for an ambulance and speaks with the telephone operator (the role that I played).
Once advised about the location, the operator immediately deploys an ambulance. Then, the operator then stays with the woman and with her phone on speaker mode, guides her through resuscitation.
By Claire Doole, www.doolecommunications.com
I have waited two years to tell you this story. In January 2020, I went on a guided walking tour of Vienna with an Austrian friend. It was memorable because it was bitterly cold, and we wondered if we would last the two and a half hours. Forty of us were huddled together at the meeting point stamping our feet and rubbing our hands as snow threatened.
We should not have worried as our guide Wolfgang Rigon from Good Vienna Tours was a master storyteller, who kept us all captivated as he showed us the sights.
We stopped at least a dozen times as he told us a story, bringing alive the glorious and not so glorious history of the city. I recorded a couple of those stories on my phone. Have a watch of a powerful storyteller in action.
He must have told this first story about Marie Theresa, who gave birth to 16 children, hundreds of times. For us, the audience, his passionate delivery made us feel as if he was telling it for the first time.
First one is about Marie Theresa. See how he connects with the audience by making it relevant to the modern-day experience.
By Marta Koncz, www.agateexperience.com
For many people, going to the mountains is a sole summer activity; and, as autumn arrives, they cease going outdoors till the following summer season.
It is true, that the cable cars and gondolas shut down during fall for few weeks for maintenance, however they reopen with full force by the time the first snow falls. There is a lot to do in the mountains during winter!
Skiing
The good old classic downhill skiing is probably the first comes to your mind when thinking about winter activities. It is indeed a popular and well-established sport in Switzerland dated back to the 19th century.
As such, there are plenty of options. My favorite resort is Portes du Soleil. Located between France and Switzerland, it is easy to reach both from Geneva and Lausanne; and it is the largest ski area in the Alps with 600 km of slopes, suitable from absolute beginners to very experienced people.
If you are not fan of speed, you can also try cross-country skiing. In this case, I suggest visiting Vue des Alpes. It is on the border of the French speaking part of Switzerland, one hour from Lausanne and 1 hour forty minutes from Geneva; but its worth the effort. It offers 110 kms of cross-country tracks and amazing panorama to the surrounding Alps, Jura, and Vosges!
🍫🍐 Follow Lisa: Gooey Chocolate Cookies with Dried Pear - Belle Hélène
This recipe makes 18 cookies
- 40g flour (8 teaspoons) (or 50g gluten free flour)
- 50g unsweetened cocoa powder (10 teaspoons)
- 120g white sugar (1 cup)
- 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 120g dried pear, cut up (1 cup)
- 90g chocolate chips (3/4 cup)
- 1 egg
- 60g of melted butter (4 Tablespoons)
By Claire Doole, Doole Communications
Everyone loves a good story. Our parents read us stories, and we tell them naturally to friends and family. So why is it that in a professional context, we are so reluctant to tell stories?
I ask this question at the start of my storytelling workshops. Participants come up with a number of answers ranging from it is culturally inappropriate, too personal or a lack of ability.
Often people tell me storytelling is too Anglo-Saxon and not appropriate in Mediterranean or other cultures. In fact, I would argue that Africans are fantastic storytellers due to their oral traditions. But I think this reluctance is because people associate storytelling with the high drama of Hollywood with its rollercoaster of emotions.
In fact, storytelling is much simpler; it is about adding colour to the facts.
Ethos, pathos, logos
The Greeks got it right 2,500 years ago. Aristotle said if you want to persuade someone of something, you need to appeal to ethos (credibility), logos (logic) and pathos (stirring emotion in the audience). In the workplace we often have ethos and logos, but shy away from pathos.
