8 posts tagged “articles”

winding down Edit

Currently drinking: Dilmah Jasmine Tea (from my Aussie pal)

Just trying to relax now. Reading my feeds. Trying to read the camera manual because good god, why can’t an expensive camera like this take bad pictures in my hands?! After being patient enough to look at where everything is, I’ve managed to take some decent photos. Hurray!

Interesting links for today:

• Small amount of chocolate lowers blood pressure. Small amount = 30 calories of dark chocolate.
• Canadian National Do-Not-Call list in the works.
• Firing a Client. Sometimes, you just have to. Things to consider:
  
  

  - Does the client frequently pay invoices late, or not at all?
  - Is the client questioning details of your invoices (don’t mistake attention to detail and frugality for serious problems)?
  - Is the client missing deadlines for reviewing materials, affecting your ability to meet project milestones?



• ESOTSM? An amnesia drug is being researched for ‘dampening’ memories of trauma victims:
  
  

  Prof Karim Nader, of McGill University, said: “When you remember old memories they can become ‘unstored’ and then have to be ‘restored’.

  “As the memory is getting restored, we gave patients a drug that turns down the emotional part of the memory. It left the conscious part of the memory intact, so they could still remember all the details but without being overwhelmed by the memory.”

  The research suggests memories can be manipulated because they act as if made from glass, existing in a molten state as they are being created, before turning solid. When the memory is recalled, however, it becomes molten again and so can be altered before it once more resets.

  The drug used by the scientists is thought to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow the memory to “harden” after it is recalled.
  [link via BoingBoing.net]

• New excuse when you’re caught yawning: It makes you more alert.
  [link via BoingBoing.net]
• Ever wondered why your shower curtain tries to attack you while you shower? This is why.
  [link via Kottke.org]

Morning routine before work:
Drink tea and/or eat something, check sites to make sure they’re all up and running, then read my feeds (my current addiction, which had led to further deterioration of my eyesight). This morning I tried the Kashi Honey Puffed cereal with milk and sliced banana. Not bad. the cereal reminds me of the Filipino food I used to love, love, love as a child: “pop rice“.

While going through my 100+ list, this article on CTV News caught my eye:

Workers being short-changed on the job: study [link]

Canada’s workers are not reaping the rewards of economic expansion and the hard work they are putting in to increase productivity, says a new study by a left-wing think tank.

The report released Thursday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says that Canadian workers’ productivity has increased by 51 per cent in the past 30 years, but they have little to show for it.

Had their real wages reflected productivity and economic growth during that period, the average worker’s pay cheque would be $10,000 more a year than it is now.

[…]

But that’s not the case of Canadian corporations, which the group says has been gobbling up the lion’s share of the benefits of higher productivity.

I’ve always thought this was the case when I was working as an office drone two years ago. It felt as though the company was getting more revenues, but you wouldn’t notice that from my paycheck and the utter lack of benefits that have been promised for a year. I guess here is the proof now. In fact, then, it seemed as if it cost me to work!

I love Canada, I love Vancouver, and I know we’re not even in the top 10 most expensive cities to live in, but the hype of a great life here doesn’t measure up to the financial scenario. It is expensive to survive here when you stack it up against the wages. Sure, the executives are earning more and getting more value for their shares. Good for them! For the common middle class worker, it’s just more and more work and the same, or lower pay. And this is exactly why I opted out of the corporate scene. Instead of sticking with The Man, I stuck it to The Man. I ventured out on my own. Why earn less and pay more taxes, I say.

Of course this news doesn’t affect me that much (all the management I can bitch to about my salary is myself), but I still empathize with the rest of the working populace because that could’ve been me! I could be working again for a company other than my own and slave away for less than what I’m supposed to be getting.

I keep tabs on the industry wages for web designers, developers, graphic designers, and the likes, and it baffles and infuriates me to see that companies in the US pay $5,000USD more at the very least compared to Canadian ones. Why is this so?!

Why are Canadian workers being stiffed? Are we too kind and reticent to demand more? I hope not, because I find us to be good, honest, highly talented and skilled workers who need to get what we deserve.

Some hotels have good service. Others have excellent service. Then there are a few who give exceptionally memorable service that stands out and is talked about. When I hear “Four Seasons”, it brings a good memory of the service I/we received. The price you pay is worth every penny of the almost-anal attention to detail and warm service.

To be sure, almost everyone who stays at Four Seasons has a personal testament to the service: the concierge who donned fins and a snorkel to find a wedding band lost in a lagoon; the hotel operator who spent 45 minutes on the phone directing a lost guest all the way to the hotel’s entrance; the man who asked room service for a martini shaker, only to find a tuxedoed server standing at his door-accessories in hand-ready to do the shaking.

Then there was the time Arthur de Haast took his wife to the Four Seasons George V Paris to celebrate the couple’s 21st wedding anniversary. When they arrived in their room, they not only found a bouquet of red roses waiting, “but there were exactly 21 of them,” recalls de Haast, chief executive of investment adviser Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels. “My wife counted them.”(Only later did he admit to her that the idea wasn’t his.)

Four Seasons is hardly the only hotel operator to track customer histories and preferences in order to bolster service. “But most fail to deliver,” says de Haast, “because their people don’t pay enough attention to detail or follow through with the same level of consistency.”

In an industry that suffers worker turnover that can approach 100 percent annually, Sharp learned early on that the only way to achieve such consistency is to “hire for attitude, not skill,” then train workers thoroughly and treat them with the same respect he expects them to show hotel guests-a golden rule he calls the company’s “ultimate secret” to success.

He cites as an example the company’s opening of its first hotel in Hawaii in 1990, the Four Seasons Maui at Wailea, where workers with relevant experience were hard to recruit. “We signed up a lot of laborers from the sugar-cane and pineapple fields, workers carefully screened for positive attitudes,” he recently explained. “And within a year, they made Four Seasons Maui No. 1 on the island,” according to a ranking in Condé Nast Traveler magazine.

Pursuit of happiness. To that end, all job applicants are first subjected to at least four rounds of interviews, the final one by the hotel’s top managers. Rather than poring over résumés or drilling candidates on their skills, “the question we try to answer is, ‘Are you an innately friendly, happy person?’” regional Vice President Thomas Gurtner says of his queries for the 4,000 people who applied to Four Seasons’ Westlake Village hotel before it opened last November (only 10 percent of whom were hired). “I can teach you to be a doorman or a bellman or a bartender. But if your mama didn’t teach you to be nice, then I can’t either.“

[ link ]

One of the things that I have been wishing for that is coming true:

Researchers from MIT were able to light a 60watt light bulb wirelessly from a distance of about 2 meters. If the MIT scientists have their way, in a few-year’s time we will all be charging our cellular phones, MP3 players and laptops using wireless technology without ever worrying about running out of power.

[source: TFOT]

I am just drooling about the thought of charging my PDA and cellphone wirelessly. Love it! (Well, as long as I don’t get electrocuted wirelessly…)

In other news, I have been going back to my GTD (Getting Things Done), thanks to Emdot’s recent post. I purged a lot of mail, and I’m still at it. It is gloooooorious!

The weekend is coming and I’ll be sorting and packing again. I’m done packing 65% of my stuff. Woohoo!

As any adult webcam chat room will show you, we’re asymmetrical, we have scars and lumps and bumps, we gain weight or become gaunt as we age, and if we’re American women who get naked around other people — online or off — we probably treat our pubic hair as topiary.

That was a surprise for me at the spa. All of the women, mature as well as young, maintained some kind of hair removal ritual. Most were completely bare; those who weren’t had delicate hints of landing strips.

The only exceptions were an eastern European lady and yours truly. It’s been months since I have tried anything more exotic than a shower.

If you look back through the history of nudie pictures, you can see the changing fashions for pubic hair over time. But with the advent of the web in the mid-1990s, suddenly everyone could see how adult entertainers trimmed, shaped and buffed. Formerly exotic practices like Brazilian waxes and stenciling your partner’s initials into your personal parts became The Thing.

In fact, it’s so The Thing that last year Missouri passed a law requiring parental consent for minors seeking to be waxed “on or near genitalia.”

[source: Wired News]

the spa culture?

The ‘topiary’ bit made me snort water. Maybe this is so funny only to me.

I have been lucky enough to not have the experience of prolonged exposure to topiaries at the spa because for some reason, the steam rooms, saunas, and shower rooms at the places I’ve been to have been virtually empty when I was there. However, the past month of sharing communal showers at the yoga studio has changed my odds completely.

It’s not that I try to look really. I mean, spare me, it’s the least of my interests. Sometimes you have no choice because they’re just…out there! Surprisingly, I’ve gotten used to randomly chatting with other women whose names I don’t even know–in the buff. It was weird but I guess I had to get over it. And get over it I did in one day. I adapt easily.

Since then I’ve had interesting, uncomfortable brushes (pun intended) with female topiaries (hmm…I’m really liking the term! harhar). Now I don’t want my blog to be the ‘tales from the shower room’ nook of the ‘Net, but here’s one incident:

I was talking on and off to someone beside me in the shower stall. I stooped down to pick up my conditioner bottle, and tried to figure out for a quick second which one was the shampoo and which one was the conditioner (they’re both purple liquids). From my peripheral vision, I could see a mass of hair on my left side so I assumed the woman I have been chatting with was at eye level with me. So I turned to continue our conversation.

GAH!!! It turned out I was trying to talk to pubes! :(

- - - - - - - -

I mentioned this blooper to one of my gal pals…

T: “I DARE you to give her a gift certificate for waxing!“
Me: “No way! I pay $80**. They don’t call it the West Coast Forest Fire for nothing–it burns a hole in your wallet.”
**relaaaax, $80 includes tip and taxes

Sometimes, I have to say, I feel like taking some of ‘em on a field trip to the spa and introducing them to the world of waxing. Or shaving. Or damnit, I just have to accept the cultural differences and preferences…because I don’t have to deal with them/that on a personal level anyway. Man, it’s winter now…you know, frizzies season. Ugh. Don’t want to go there…

One other thing, I’m curious to ask at my spa whether they refuse waxing for underaged girls. I’ll get back to you on that!

- - - - - - - -

Ok, that’s my weekly contribution to grossing you out. You can stop screaming “TMI, TMI, TMI!” now.

Happy weekend! HAHAHA.

Crashing at stranger’s places while you travel is hip?

NEW YORK - Jim Stone, a 29-year-old from west Texas, has been traveling nonstop since March of 2004.

Sometimes in a pickup truck and other times on a motorcycle, he’s trekked through much of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. But he’s slept in a hotel just one night over that stretch of nearly 1,000.

That’s because Stone is part of a growing network of people online who’ve gone a step beyond hotels, hostels and even apartment swapping in their travel planning: They sleep on each others’ couches.

A number of Web sites have sprung up to help pair travelers searching for a place to crash and hosts with a spare couch. Sites like hospitalityclub.org, couchsurfing.com, globalfreeloaders.com and place2stay.net are often free, serving only as middlemen and offering tips on how to find successful matches.

[source: Yahoo! news]

Oh, teh wanderlust! Without getting into paranoid mode, I love love love its social aspect, the premise of social and cultural connection, and the plain random-act-of-kindness about it. My interest is definitely piqued and would be bold enough to say that I would consider trying it. However, I am 100% sure that neither my family, friends, nor boyfriend would approve and they would all agree I am insane to even think of it!

I love traveling, I love meeting new people (as shy as I am, I do!) and learning things from locals that I wouldn’t otherwise know from a travel book. Is it weird that I find this piece of news so exciting?!

What about you? Would you consider couchsurfing? Or offer your couch/home to people (on the Internet)?

Nick Hornby, “How to Read“, from the The Daily Telegraph:

“All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it. You won’t remember it, and you’ll learn nothing from it, and you’ll be less likely to choose a book over Big Brother next time you have a choice.

[…]

But there it is. It’s set in stone, apparently: books must be hard work, otherwise they’re a waste of time. And so we grind our way through serious, and sometimes seriously dull, novels, or enormous biographies of political figures, and every time we do so, books come to seem a little more like a duty, and Pop Idol starts to look a little more attractive. Please, please, put it down.

And please, please stop patronising those who are reading a book - The Da Vinci Code, maybe - because they are enjoying it.

[…]

I don’t mean we should all be reading chick-lit or thrillers (although if that’s what you want to read, it’s fine by me, because here’s something else no one will ever tell you: if you don’t read the classics, or the novel that won this year’s Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud.

The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can’t, it might not be your inadequacy that’s to blame. ‘Good’ books can be pretty awful sometimes.

[via kottke.org