Sorry, could not resist...

Can't explain it, other than to say, I couldn't resist....
               

What the world needs...

I know I haven't been here very much over the last few months. Still holding on. Still thinking of you guys. Thanks for dropping by.

Doing your watch well

Don't you love the poetry of machinery? The wish to carry on tradition? The beauty of craftsmanship well executed?

Towards the end of the video, John Kristensen, the proprietor of the press is asked if he is not saddened by the inevitability of dimise of his profession. He responds, "No. I am just here to do this watch." Implicit is doing his watch well.  You could say this about living a life well, couldn't you?

My project today is to make up a set of luxe moo cards. They are for a new e-learning business English training program I am hoping to launch in another four weeks time.

I've been using moo products since they started years and years ago. They are one of the few online companies whose product quality has remained excellent. (I am not being paid in any form to say this. I just want to give praise where praise is do.)

This could happen

                                   
The problem with so many modern dance styles (popping, krumping, b-boying ) they are amazing to look at, if what you are looking at are the creme de la creme dancing their top performances. Yet, for most of us, there is just no way we would everever try it out. There is just no scenario where the musc is playing and the people are dancing and I'd break out, let's say,  krumping.



The wall you have to jump over in order to start dancing these dance styles is so high, it must make it almost impossible for the normal dude to participate. Maybe it is meant to be so; you have to have some street cred before you can do the dances. I've always thought that dancing was meant to be done by all. 

If you watch the top video a few time, don't you think there just might be a possibility that Azonto is something we could do? Not the expert version of the video, but the swishing of the foot and the hips beginners' version. A beginners Azonto that would let you join in, without looking totally ridiculous.

Putting the Great back in Britian

Okay, it is just an ad for Adidas. And granted, Adidas is a German company, so what the heck? Why do I like it? Out of respect for the British team that brought in more metals than they have in over a 100 years. And in recognition for hosting the games in a manner that brings back the Great to the Britain it has become.

Mixed Messages

My husband bought a new shower gel from a very internationally known soap maker (think niv-ia) with a brand name Powerfruit, Relax. Really, power fruit relax... not power fruit energise, or serenity fruit, relax, or think about it... fruit... do we need fruit in the name at all? Is there ever any fruit in soap?

Did anyone attend the marketing meeting when they were coming up with this name? If so, have you ever heard of mixed messages?

Hippy Sappy Happy Spot

Ronni put me on to this viral video and my heart melted. As the guy says, its a happy spot sport.

When I saw the video for the first time, it got me wondering about those persons who decided to introduce Nordic Walking into the mainstream. "Hey, lets get these ski poles and vigorously swing them back and forth as we walk... we got to pretend this doesn't look funny, it will be great... come on, guys!"

This man (sorry, I have no idea if he is well known in the States or not) should be given a metal for standing before a camera and starting, hopefully, a new and wonderful sappy happy spot sport. Can't you just imagine in 20 years time Dance Walking as an Olympic sport?

The question is, would you take up dance walking? I think I would if;

• I was in a city where I knew no one
• If people knew the existence of Dance Walking
• If I could wear sunglasses

.... actually, I'd probably not have the courage to do it. So, maybe I'll just have to pick out some solitary path in the woods and hope the birds don't break out giggling.

A first... "mark as read"

Usually, when I come home after vacation, I take a few days to go through the emails and my google reader. Today, just an hour after stepping through our front door I pressed "mark as read" on my over thousand google reader articles... never thought I would do so... but hey, it felt good.

We were down in southern Germany enjoying the sunny and warm summer that has alluded us here in the north. We were spoiled with good food and good company by our dear friends. It is almost 30 years ago that I came to Germany and the friends I met then have become part of my inner circle of chosen family.

Private Sanctuary

My paternal grandfather lived out with my grandmother in a beautiful white full-terraced house in the countryside outside of Ottawa. He had many occupations to keep his days busy; reading, gardening and woodworking being the central ones. He was a quiet man with quiet pursuits.

His woodworking shop was at the back of the house. We could access it through the kitchen. It was his private sanctuary. A place he could go to to smoke his pipe. To design and build his masterful woodwork. And, most likely, to escape the noise of visiting family.

We had to wait to be invited into the his shop, which didn't happen very often. When we were allowed to sit on one of the benches and watch him work, we did so quietly. Hoping he would forget us and let us stay forever.

Alas, we were just normal kids with persistent questions that constantly escaped out our mouths from inside our overactive brains, and our legs took to swinging and kicking the stool legs rhythmically, and we couldn't just look with our eyes, but also did so with our fingertips... eventually, grandpa would ask us quietly and gently to go outdoors to play. Which we did, but never without s slight feeling of regret.

Things to come?

There are probably very few people out there in the blogsphere that haven't at sometime, or regularly, ordered something from Amazon. Maybe you will find this video strangely plausible.

I remember when Amazon was a budding online bookstore. A site where I could, amazingly, order English books. This was the most marvelous innovation for an ex-pat living in Germany. In those years, it would take up to four weeks to get an ordered book delivered to a local bookstore and the book would cost up to three the regular price. You can well imagine my delight to be able to order books directly online.

Part of me wishes Amazon had continued being a bookstore. You are right... nostalgia.

Baaba Maal telling stories in a boat

A Room For London

Many warm summers ago, my family sailed with another family, the Rantis, over some weeks on Lake Champlain in the States. They were in their boat. We in ours. It was a very loose arrangement. Each boat would sail around during the day as we so wished in whatever direction the wind took us. We met up at some per-arranged destination in late afternoon. We spent the evenings together watching bats fly, swatting mosquitoes, squishing black flies, talking about sailing, and laughing at silly jokes. The parents teasing the children. The children nudging our parents stories into forbidden areas according to the consumption of rum they were imbibing in.

When our boat was anchored on those late afternoons, it meant my siblings and I had an hour or two to go off in the dingy and explore the coastline or island we were anchored near before dinner was served. When the Rantis put down anchor, it was time for the family to play music. The parents were professional musicians and had to practice the pieces for the next symphony season. The two children (flute and oboe) also had their practice sessions.

So off my sisters and brother and I would go out in our dingy accompanied by their music bouncing over the water right to the corners of beaches and rooks and wooded areas we explored. It was an magic experience.

Boats, dusk into night, family, friends,  stories, music... magic... Baaba Maal, Jim Palmer and Mamadou Sarr performance in A Room for London is all that and more.

A matter of intent

Ken Burns: On Story from Redglass Pictures on Vimeo.

"Ken Burns: on Story" is a very compelling short film about storytelling. He argues all of storytelling is manipulation. It is just a matter of deciding whether what you are doing when you tell a story is an acceptable form of manipulation or not.

It is difficult to get my mind around this idea. If you look at the definition of the word,

"Shrewd or devious management, especially for one's own advantage"

or of psychological manipulation,

"a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics",

then obviously storytelling being a form of manipulation can't be good, right?

What if we separate the intent (a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others) from the means (through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics). What if the means we use arise out of a genuine honest wish to share or explore our ideas with others? Is that just splitting hairs? Is it just another form of manipulation?

Slowing down and speeding up

April, May, and June were crazy months... lots of contracts to fulfill, lots of people to talk to, lots of ideas turning around in my head. As of two and a half weeks ago, most of the busy-ness came to a standstill. Now, I will have time to slow down.

Sleep in a bit later if I wish. Got to be a bit earlier... And, this did happen. I felt the tension leave my shoulders. I watched rather too much meaningless television series. Read some light lit. Went out for some walks late in the evening with my daughter.

The whole time I was picking up project work I had put aside and managed to finish the last details. Even the pile of tax stuff is ultra thin. Nice to get those off the list. Tick.

Slowing down was doing the trick. Then I sat down on Saturday morning to type in some dialogs for a series of podcasts I am producing for a client and wham... seven hours later my brain was steaming and my fingers were typing away and I was speeding along with ideas. This state of creativity hasn't stopped since.

I know you can not force creativity, when it happens, it happens. Yet, I think slowing down does help to speed things up...

Making old men cry

On the surface of things, it might be hard to imagine why the words, "They combine to give us a combined significance of five standard deviations." were important. Yet, once the speaker speaks them, there is a momentary pause, a deep felt wonder, and then the audience explodes in clapping and laughter and a few old men cry. It does seem odd, doesn't it?

Not so, if you realise that what the speaker is saying, unequivocally stating is, "You were right. You aren't insane." And, more importantly, "Our knowledge of how the universe works is now forever changed by a combined significance of five standard deviations." The seats in the auditorium were filled with people whose lives were spent realising that significance. I imagine this new finding gives their lives new meaning.

Whether this finding is/was worth the cazillion dollars it took to find, we will probably not know in our lifetime. Presumably, hopefully, this was not purely done out of intellectual curiosity. Presumably, hopefully, this new-found knowledge can be used toward finding a new form of energy, a cure to cancer, a way to supply clean water to all beings on this earth. It has got to have some far-reaching significance, right?

If you want to know more about what the Higgs boson is, this video does well to give a simple explanation.

Just as an afterthought... It is odd, in Newton's time it took a falling apple to figure out how gravity worked...

One Classy Dame

I discovered this video on Ronni's blog today. What a delight. I love Rita Hayworth. And thank you, whoever you are, who spent the endless hours figuring out what films and what parts of the choreography best suited the song. Doesn't it make your toes tingle?

Unrequited Love

Long summer days spent lovelorn meandering an inner landscape populated with accidental encounters and meaningless light-hearted chatter laden with twisted subtext. Or not. Oh, the tortures of unrequited love...

We have all probably at one time wished we could stomp our feet loudly and sing bravely the words, "I belong to you. You belong to me in my sweet heart..." Yes, of course it is sappy, but dearly so.

Summer Hole

In Germany, we have this phenomena called the "Sommerloch", which translates literally into "summer hole". Most self-employed businesspersons, fall into this hole at the end of June and don't crawl out until sometime in September. There is just no one out there wanting any work done.

The hole is caused by every single person in All Of Europe going off for weeks and weeks of vacations. If you can imagine the huppla of a 4th of July weekend and just extend it endlessly over the whole summer, you get the idea.

This means, in theory, I have some time to twiddle my thumbs and write blog posts. So, you heard it here, I am back...

When Matt Grows Up

We probably have all grown up during the last seven years in matters of the internet, since the first "Where the Hell is Matt?" video appeared in 2005. Well, it shouldn't surprise you, so did Matt.

If you want to read a very interesting assessment about what that growing process encompassed, please read this article titled "When the world is your dance teacher" by Ethan Zuckerman. It points out some of those forks in the road Matt took while seemingly covering every corner of this earth.

Something silliy, something vain

It's been a while, not out of lack of interest, but life's wonderful challenges driving the direction my feet dance and where and when I can put my thoughts to pen, as it were, which isn't in ink or written in stone in these digital days. There are thousand small moments when I see quirky situations right outside me living room window or witness delightfully vain pursuits, like those of hairy legged skaters doing pas de deux with scrapped up boards in some shopping mall parking lot, when my heart bursts with the silliness that is our life, there comes the wish to share it all with you.

Please know that the sparsity of posting does not reflect in any way a lack of interest or willingness to explore or share my world with you... it is only an indication that self-employment is a cookie monster who never stops wanting more time or energy or ideas or TLC. Thankfully, things are running well at last, thought tentatively so...

A rant of sorts

There is so much that puzzles me about the US election process, politics, and economics. This particular election's elephant in the porcelain shop seems to be the government's failure to have increased taxes on high income earners. Nick Hanauer goes on this rather eloquent rant about this topic.

It is interesting how he tries to interject statical facts into his argument in a peripheral manner. Almost as if to say, "numbers are good, but common sense is better".