Our Interview with Susan Koshy
… and the ‘Aussie Salute’

Last week we published a blog post, Connecting Globally, Talking Locally, about our wonderful day out with our friend and Appreciative Inquiry colleague, Susan Koshy, and her husband who were visiting Australia from Chennai in India.

Below is the interview that Susan conducted with us about our work with Appreciative Inquiry, which she has now posted to YouTube.

This was a very casual, unscripted chat. We had no idea what Susan was going to ask us, and it was definitely not a formal interview!  As Susan explains in her YouTube description, it’s an unabridged, undoctored recording, midst the murmur of the soft winds, the occasional bird, dog and people, and a persistent fly, wanting to be on camera.

[youtube clip_id=”HAt9Rd75WlU” width=”424″ height=”241″]As mentioned in our blog post, we were very interested to see this video ourselves and learn what we had actually said! 

We also learned something we’d completely missed at the time – that the dog’s name was Charlie.  :)  In addition we realised that, as well as explaining some aspects of the work we do, we were demonstrating that quintessentially Australian gesture, the “Aussie Salute”!

Susan mentioned a persistent fly. Although visitors to Australia may not necessarily mention this when telling you about their visit downunder, it’s definitely something every one of them will have experienced.

In Australia, we are blessed (or should I say cursed?) with an abundance of flies. Bush flies, house flies, March flies (that sting), fruit flies, blow flies .. we’ve got ’em all.  The “Aussie salute” refers to the necessary custom of regularly waving one’s hand in front of one’s face to shoo those pesky flies away.

Lords of the Fly has more information (very tongue in cheek) about this little piece of Aussie culture.

So there you have it .. we hope you enjoyed our interview with Susan AND appreciated our bonus demonstration of one small but very pervasive aspect of the Australian way of life. :)

And finally, by the way, visitors downunder be warned! Failing to honour this Aussie custom can lead to dire consequences, as one American visitor to Melbourne discovered!
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