The Agenda

This is a show hosted on National Canadian channels at night time. The guy usually picks up interesting themes to discuss. Sometimes I like to listen, sometimes they are boring for me. Tonight he had "What's love got to do with it" and then after that "The secret of happiness".

On the first one there were 4 people, two professors, one matchmaker and one scientist for match making. The whole thing falled into comparing India with Western. In India, marriages are arranged, in Western people want romantic love right away. In India, people get married and then fall in love, in Western peopel fall in love and then get married. One of the guys said that the Western love is more of a lust while in India, love comes after a long period when people have lived together and learned how to live together. At the end, they all agreed that is the guy that takes teh check in any part of the World. You can go and check myloveskills.com, about 70 questions that might tell you something about yourself.
On the second discussion, the speaker was Arthur Brooks, a professor that just wrote a book about happines and that has been the reason he has been happy lately. He compared different religions, political belifes and geographics. Americans, althought they live to work, they were happier than French that work to live. Looks like in North America you have more options to have the job you like and that makes you happy. While in Europe this is not the case so people work jobs they do not like and that doesn't help to make them happy. And since people that are happy live longer, the average of North Americans that are happy with their jobs live longer than Europeans. Also, religion is one thing that brings happiness but is more into the people that practise religion than others that do not. Alos, Conservatives looks like to be happier than Liberals, based on what the basis of your life style is and what are you looking for. But being an extreme Liberal or extreme Conservative, they are happy equaly. This is because they have no doubts they are right! The bad thing is that they try to bring their extreme beliefes to others and make them un-happy! Go check thehappyway.com

My daughter made me cry

So this morning, I asked my little girl to get ready to leave home and go to daycare. Got the clothes for her ready and then I took the garbage out (was literally garbage day!) Made some milk and gave her a little banana for breakfast. She decided not to eat the banana, just hold it and altho' I kept asking her to eat the banana and put her shoes on, she didn't and after me asking about 3 times, she decided to start crying. When she cries, she considers me as a towel so was trying to come and put her head on me. Her mouth was open, with spit all over, tears too and I had on me a white shirt, all ready to leave for work any second. So I got irritated and raised my voice telling her to stop crying for no reason, just put the shoes on and let's go. No result. She actually called me "mean". Put the shoes on her myself (asking her to eat the banana meanwhile) and when she was ready I opened the door and asked her to come with me. By that time, my husband, still in bed, told her that she can wait and go to daycare with him instead. So instead of coming with me, she went upstairs to him. I left home, got in the car and on the way to work, I started crying. I felt horrible for leaving like that, she crying and me angry and my husband thinking he got the situation under control. It just made me feel not needed. Seemed like my presence was not required at all and I was the kind of person that is not able to give back what a child needs. I really felt a failure as a mother. So later on, I called my husband to check how did it go after I left and he said that things were just fine. Looks like the main issue was that she didn't want to eat the banana at home but at the daycare. He told me that she started eating the banana when she arrived at daycare and was showing to her teachers how she could eat that. I felt a little better but still I was not happy. When I picked her up from daycare, she seemed just fine, actually in love with Dimitri, one of the little guys at her daycare. The morning was completely forgotten, she was laughing with me again and we had fun in the evening.
So, she cries, she calls me mean, she gets over with it during the day and things are fine.
I take care of her, I forgive what she says to me, I cry and I can't get over with my day.
When do we start taking the kids seriously? When do we treat them like adults, when do we treat them like kids and when do we treat them like babies? I am sure that some of you that have kids, are probably laughing with me on this, but she made me cry this morning. And I try not to cry easy. Lyrics from Coldplay:

God give me style and give me grace
God put a smile upon my face

In other conditions I would have given more attention, but that is a luxury in the morning when you are already late and still at home discussing with your kid how to eat a banana. In other conditions, I wouldn't have tried to make her reason and put logic into what to do but rather just hug and kiss her and she would have forgotten the little protest against me. In other conditions, I wouldn't have cried today on my way to work. I guess I am just human and depending on the magnetism around me, I become a positive or a negative field of attraction.

CEO blogs

I was trapped to spent some time in a room with some geeks and the most interesting thing I found was a magazine (off course on IT). Was reading through and found a piece that was talking about these COE-s in some big companies, that were having their personal blogs open for anyone on internet. So I came back to my computer and I thought I will check out their blog sites. It is interesting to see how these successful guys think and it is a privilege to be able to read and learn from them.

1- http://www.jimestill.com/
Quite interesting. I like the fact that you can see he is a smart chap and takes only what he needs out of a situation, book, email or meeting. He is also funny in some of them, nice sense of humor that doesn't hurt. I especially enjoyed "World as 100 people".

2-http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/
More related to work, not very personal and I like that he is visual too, tries to put pictures and faces on the things he talks about. He seems sort of laid back guy.

3-http://blogwrite.blogs.com/
Apparently she is considered the Queen of blogs because she knows allt he trick someone needs to know when writing a blog. From that IT magazine I was reading, she said that the blog has to be no more than 500 letters, has to be updated often, no need to put company confidential information (Figure!), need to be attractive enough so it doesn't get dull. In short, she was saying that when a CEO writes a blog, is almost as preparing a speech or writing an email that will be received by public.

4-http://marklogic.blogspot.com/
More theoretical and old school. I do not get the vibe of humor or being up with the "day-to-day what the teenagers are doing" kind of guy, very business oriented but definitely smart and intelligent. His blogs are long and I can loose attention before the end. But that's just me!

5-http://www.blogmaverick.com/
He is a very successful entrepreneur and there is a lot about him if you just Google his name. His blogs are long and you can see that all he cares is "money making ideas". You have to speak a certain language to understand and enjoy him.

6-http://www.klynch.com/
Is more of "How I think we should advertise Adobe" kind of site, very much oriented to his personal business.

7-http://www.novell.com/company/blogs/cmo/
Sleek looking blog. He is actually Chief Marketing so his blog is more into marketing. He is also work oriented but has some good thoughts on how marketing should be the key to promote something that is not doing very well. I enjoyed "Fat free French fries"




Well, there are tons like these out there but I will stop here and let you check the rest and decide what you like. This was just some food for your thoughts and now that you are hungry, let's get the menu :)