My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

In both business and personal life I've always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages cultures scenery food and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.

Frankly the reason I joined MENSA is because I was dating a guy at the time who spoke five languages and could solve a Rubik's Cube literally with his eyes closed because it's just an algorithm.

No one who set out to design a form of communication would ever end up with anything like English Mandarin or any of the more than six thousand languages spoken today.

A degree of lying - you know white lies - seems to be inherent in all languages and all forms of communication.

It's like there are all these languages available especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.

I've had a very interesting career. I get to do amazing things and work with amazing people and travel and learn languages - things most people don't get the opportunity to do.

It's amazing how age after age in country after country and in all languages Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.