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!

: Published: 31 August 2020

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by Katie Harwood, Haut-Lac International Bilingual School

Sometimes parents hesitate when faced with choosing between English or bilingual streams. Which will be best for their children?

This article is here to demystify that decision, as neither option is right or wrong. Both can suit any family. It just depends on what is best for their lifestyle and expectations of the future.

Why English?

English is currently the world’s most connected language.
It’s a language used for worldwide communication, so achieving competency or mastery is an incredible asset for anyone.
English will open up a student’s future.
Young students who are still early in their international school career will find that knowing English will be a boon when creating friendships. Older students who demonstrate a good level of English will most likely be more appealing to employers worldwide.
International students whose families are often on the move may also benefit from focusing on learning solely in English, rather than beginning to learn French before moving on again. English will be the constant language in the lives of international school kids, so it is best for them to develop their skills in this language as fully as possible.
Following the English programme may also benefit local and Swiss families, who wish to give their children a deep English immersion, so as to raise their level more quickly than would happen in public school. It will also benefit students who arrive with neither English nor French. Rather than learn two new languages right away, English will be the easier language to take on first. When they feel ready, students may always try the bilingual programme later.

A gentle introduction to bilingualism: If learning French feels like a very large task, the English stream can be an easier way to get started. Students will get a period of French a day in the primary and infant sections, and can take beginner French classes in secondary. By building their confidence slowly, they will know in time whether they’re ready and willing to transition into the bilingual stream or not.

: Published: 27 August 2020

Honza Emler

By Elizabeth Ballin, Life Coach https://ballincoaching.ch

As summer holidays come to a close, I am always reminded of how I felt as a teenager about to start a new school year. Sitting on the plane, heading home from vacation, I would be excited at the idea of returning to school. I made many promises to myself: I would be a great student, be physically fit, have lots of friends, maybe even make my parents proud! But every year, I discovered that meeting those goals wasn’t so easy to do. Each time I faced adversity, my self-esteem plummeted.

Many students seem to have a difficult time overcoming obstacles and accepting failure. They lose motivation and fall into the habit of procrastination. They can have high aspirations but can easily be dissuaded when confronted with life’s changes.

For a lot of us, not just students, our expectations do not match the reality of what it takes to reach our goals. If we don’t succeed, we can become trapped into not believing in ourselves, as I did when I was young. We freeze, we ruminate, we catastrophize. We’d rather do nothing than face failure; anxiety builds up, and we step away from what could be an opportunity of a lifetime.

Granted, not all students were like me. Over the past 15 years working with teens, I have noticed that some just thrive in the face of challenge. They bounce back from failure and are even able to manage personal trauma. They have what is known as resilience - the ability to “transform hardship into challenge, failure into success, helplessness into power’*.

As a life coach and a mindful practitioner, with a leaning on positive psychology, my interest in resilience grew. I began to notice that people who were more resilient and more mindful were handling life’s demands with a more positive attitude and were generally happier.

: Published: 13 August 2020

1040

by Patrick Hoza, US Tax & Financial Services

While the Streamline Program has been around for quite a few years, it’s worth mentioning again for those US persons that have still not filed their returns or corrected past mistakes but were not aware of the program. The IRS accepts that taxpayers should not be exposed to extremely harsh penalties for a non-wilful failure to comply with all the various tax reporting requirements. The IRS Streamlined Voluntary Disclosure program is specifically for taxpayers who can certify that their failure to file all information, report all income and pay tax was due to ‘non-wilful conduct’ – that is, due to negligence, inadvertence and mistake, or good faith misunderstanding of these legal obligations.

The program is applied differently for US Persons that can qualify under the offshore version of the program, and those that must use the US resident program. We speak to the offshore version below.

Are you eligible?
To be eligible for the Offshore Procedure the taxpayer must meet a non-residency requirement. This requirement is met if:

in any one or more of the most recent three years for which the US tax return due date, or properly applied for extended due date, has passed (the ‘covered tax period’)
the individual did not have a US abode and was physically outside the United States for at least 330 full days

File the returns, pay the tax
For each of the most recent three years for which the US tax return due date (or properly applied for extended due date) has passed, the procedure requires that the taxpayer:

file delinquent or amended tax returns, together with all required information returns
file any delinquent FBARs (for each of the most recent 6 years for which the FBAR* due date has passed)
pay the full amount of tax and interest due with the delinquent or amended returns

: Published: 24 July 2020

dosanddonts

By Claire Doole, www.doolecommunications.com

Are you suffering from Zoom fatigue as you rush from one online meeting to another? I am using Zoom as shorthand for all the different platforms that are jostling to sign you up as a customer. In my opinion, Zoom is by far the most interactive and participatory platform, although MS Teams and Webex are catching up.

But the platform is not the biggest challenge to facilitating an online meeting. According to participants in my eWorkshops it is the passive audience, made even worse when people turn off their cameras! Number two, by the way, is lack of non-verbal cues and number three technical glitches.

As a meeting facilitator you have to work hard to get and keep people’s attention. And even harder if you want to break through the virtual divide and get people to engage and participate. In the real world, our brain switches off every 10 minutes if it is not stimulated, so imagine how quickly it tunes out in the virtual world.

The solution is to view facilitating a meeting like running a training session. You have to borrow tools and techniques from training to build engagement and participation.

Here are some of my most effective tools to boost your meeting.

: Published: 24 July 2020

Video link to recipe here: https://youtu.be/fr0ffjn7CMM

Christmas in July: If you think turkey and stuffing are just for the holidays, think again!

Summertime is also a "holiday time" and I love using the Weber Ranch Kettle barbecue to cook large meals. This succulent and moist roasted turkey breast with casserole stuffing is just the thing!

At the end of the video, I just show you a glimpse of an alternate recipe.

TURKEY
1kg turkey breast
1 onion
mustard
white wine
preserved lemons (fresh lemons can be substitued)
fresh cranberries (dried cranberries can be substitued)