video killed the radio star

as i told you all last week, my TEDx experience opened up a whole new avenue for me - on nationwide talk radio! it was a bit nerve wracking to "appear" on the radio in a language not my own, and i'm sure i made mistakes (that whole det and den thing still eludes me), but i'm also pretty happy i was able to do it. i also managed to find the clips to share with you.

my radio "appearance" on october 27 with the new US ambassador to denmark, rufus gifford. fast forward to around 35:00, that's where i begin - in danish initially, but in english once the ambassador joined. and i would like to note that just as i began to answer their first question, the ambassador and his entourage (including a guy who puzzlingly had a herring sandwich on plate) came in and i was very distracted. i was nervous, but my fumbling around was much more due to my utter inability to multitask than to my nerves and i did get better:

the conversation i had  that day led to a second "appearance" this week, in a conversation with lise thomsen, who is responsible for a website called expatindenmark. this whole thing is in danish, but you can catch a word here and there (chicago and golf club). i was much more at ease the second time around and i feel so privileged to be part of opening the conversation around the expat experience in denmark (the very next day, berlingske ran a piece on the unfriendliness of the danes by a 12-year-old girl!). the only way to change things is to talk about them and i'm glad we're finally doing so. this one starts at about 41:40:

* * *

big storm heading for south dakota.

watch more of this guy's videos on youtube, he's a worldwide weather man. 

have your rubber boots ready!

a tweet will take you pretty far

© photo credit us embassy denmark via this tweet.

probably the coolest thing that came out of my TEDx Copenhagen experience happened the day after.

but first, i have to back up a little bit. during the afternoon break at TED, i was standing in the long line for coffee. i tried to break into the conversation the two guys in front of me were having with some or other funny remark. i was rebuffed completely. so, feeling fed up with the way that danes often are unwilling to talk to people they didn't go to kindergarten with, i tweeted, Dear Danes, you suck at talking to people you don't know. #tedxcph. almost immediately, @TEDxCopenhagen tweeted back that i just needed to keep trying. i answered them that i had seriously only talked to fellow ex-pats that day and wrote in danish that i even spoke danish, so i didn't get it. i saw a few retweets and favorites of my tweet before my phone ran out of battery and gave up the ghost.

i didn't really think anymore of it until i got home that evening and plugged the phone in and got it charged up. there were a whole lot of retweets (more than the 4 that show when i click the tweet, which is weird) and a lot of answers to it. and people weren't mad at me either, they admitted it was true and that it was sad and that we should do something about it.

but it got even more exciting when i checked my mail, where i had an email from a radio journalist who wanted to interview me on the air on friday on a national talk radio station about the tweet. it also happened that the new us ambassador to denmark, rufus gifford, would be in the studio as well, so they thought it would be fun if i gave him advice about living in denmark, since i'd been living here for 15 years. i couldn't say no to that. so on friday afternoon, i found myself giving the following advice to obama's top fundraiser:

~ book a holiday somewhere warm and sunny in january, because it gets really dark here then.
~ buy a bike and ride it.
~ visit all of denmark, because there's a lot going on, even over here on the mainland. in fact, the top three richest people in the country all live in my geographical area.

it also didn't hurt that the ambassador was a bit of a hottie (as is the journalist for that matter).

and tho' i'd rather gone off twitter, it kinda restored my faith in it as a happening place. and it goes to show that just a little tweet will get you pretty far. so get out there and start tweeting!