Snapshot of the Day

We all know that we never should drink and drive because it can cause fatalities that can cost our life or someone else life. However, today I will talk about the other drink and drive that can also cause accidents.

I remembered long time ago when we were going for a trip with my family and I was drinking my coffee while I was driving. At that moment my older son said loud half complaining half commenting what he had just read in one of the highway’s sign: “Don’t drink and drive”. Even though my wife and I smiled for his comments I though that he actually was absolutely right about the chance of having an accident while someone behind the wheel is drinking a coffee.

So I decided that I should never drink my coffee while I am driving and that’s has been the rule since. As a secondary effect, I cut off my drinking habit and no longer drink coffee in the morning. Improving health, save some money and more important driving safe.

Last weekend the person who was changing my balcony’s railing was telling me how he started in the business of working with metal and stone for the interiors and exteriors. Back home he was a mechanical engineer who due to the circumstances of that time he had to start doing this kind of part time job at the beginning but later on it became a very well paid full time work.

At that time very few people could afford the kind of custom made decorations made by him but the few who had access to paid very good for this kind of artistic metal work.
While I was looking his work and the level of detail he was putting into his work, I was thinking to myself how people can adapt to situations life put us on front and somehow come out with an original alternative.

Well there is the transferable skills, the actitude to take action but also the pasion for what you do. I could easily see in his face the pleasure to do something very good, no leaving anything randomly. When he was doing the final touches of paiting with his paint gun, I notice him adjusting his sights by closing a little bit his eyes like he was adjusting the focus of a camera lense. Also by changing different position to have different angles of the piece of metal he was painting even though the baranda color was white.

You can call it being professional with his job and responsible in the quality he delivers. However, I am pretty sure it was more than that. Did I tell you that this was not a regular paid work but a service exchange?

Recently I found an excellent and very useful tool that help me collect and store lots of resources and ideas. The product is called Evernote a very useful external brain (does how they call it) where you can store text, image, sound, web pages, pdf files, spreadsheet, etc. The application also has a mobile version for Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, Windows and Mac and most recently iPad.
You could actually retrieve any stored information anywhere and anytime as well as capture anything you might find useful. By applying tag you can even set subcategories that can help you retrieve information better. Most of the features come with the free version; however, the premium version give extra features such as optical character recognition in your PDF files, https encryption, extra limit to upload files, among others.  One of the thing I recently started to do is selecting recipes from different bloggers and saving it in my recipes folders that help me build my weekly menu. An excellent tool I highly recommend it.

I just found this interesting speech about personal projects and how to make it happens. Some time we need to remind our self that a great idea it is just simply that: a great idea. Nothing will happen if we actually do not take action to implement it.

[click] Apr. 08, 2010(Thu) 04:41 pm

I was about to start my lunch today in the food court when I noticed in front of me two young men having their lunch as well. Theres was something unusual about the situation thought. These two fellows looks very young in their twenties maybe, but one of them had a stroller with a baby sleeping inside. All the suddenly another older person joined them and start having a casual conversation about the baby laying down on the stroller.

I couldn’t hear the whole conversation but this older gentleman was talking something about the responsibility to had risen 4 kids all by himself pointing out to the next table where in fact 4 kids where eaten as well. It was a unusual scene because the fact that in both tables there were  moms around. It made me wonder about what could be the story behind in both cases the older with their older kids and the young man with his baby.

Wherever was the reason no mothers were present I just thought to myself  how lucky those kids are because they still have someone to look after them.

[click] Apr. 05, 2010(Mon) 12:48 pm

Last weekend my family and I flied to Washington D.C. for a quick trip that coincided with the Cherry Blossom Festival. I just learned that the cherries were a gift from the city of Tokyo-Japan to the the city of Washington D.C. that ocurrend 80 years ago.
The city was all packed because of this festival, the  Spring break and most important the nice weather blue sky, sunny and around 27 degree Celsius. You could see the Sakuras (cherry in Japanese) along the Potomac river in the maximum splendor.  Really a beautiful scene.

The timing was perfect, because the cherry blossom last just 7 to 10 days and after that the flowers start falling down. In Japan, there is a special activity called Hanami, which the literal translation would be flower viewing. During Hanami, people goes to the park and contemplate the Sakuras seating closing to the trees and doing picnics.

Hanami, represents a very unique occasion for people to go out and enjoy viewing the cherry under the trees. That’s remind us the futile and ephemerals our pass is in our life and if we do not enjoy it at the moment, we might miss it.

[click] Apr. 03, 2010(Sat) 01:52 am

Customer Service is something I really value regardless of cost. Today something unusually occurred when I went to buy my daily coffe at the local coffee store. I got one of those free coffee prize you get from a promotion and decided to use it and redeem my prize. I was waiting on line and when it was my turn, before ordering anything I showed the piece of paper that reads won a coffee and asked for a large size coffee.
To my surprise, the cash register smiled and showing cheerfulness responded with a: “…whoao congratulations! How would you like your coffee?”
I mean it wasn’t a big prize, but it sounds sincere and with good intentions. I thought to myself in my way out. It isn’t amazing, how taking your time to actually connect with your clients and share joyfullness can actually make the customer service a totally different experience.

[click] Mar. 24, 2010(Wed) 08:38 am

Literacy is very important skills that every single child should learn, but as important as that so is creativity. Unfortunately, schools are not focusing on it enough. What are your thoughts?

I work in a office located on the fifth floor of a building and even though 3 elevators are available, I decided to take quite often the stairs for 2 main reasons: The first one, because usually it takes a while to get the elevator and the second reason is because I think it is a good opportunity to do some physical activity at work.
Some times, I even take the challenge to go up faster than colleagues who use the elevators because at rush hour there are more people that stop in every single floor even to the second floor. I do the same challenge when I want to go down and to my surprise I won quite a lot of these personal ego-guest who is faster- kind of races myself. Usually I do this 3 times a day when I arrive at the office early
morning then after my daily walk in the parking lot when I had finished my lunch and the last one during a break time in the afternoon.

Yesterday I was counting the steps from one floor to the next and found out there was 20 in total, that multiplied by 5 floors makes it 100 steps. Later on I tried to figured out how many calories this activity can help me burn and found on that per every step up you burn 0.11 calories and 0.05 for every step down according to a research.
By doing the math 100 steps times 0.11 calories totals 11 calories and 100 steps times 0.05 when I go down totals another 5 calories. They all together adds 16 calories if you do it twice a day is 32, three times is 48 and so on.
In terms of total calories burned it is actually no much, but the activity itself brings me other extra benefits like increasing my capacity to oxygenation, raising my heart rate, off course working out your muscles and even a few minutes of meditation that I am really happy to have.
Taking the steps might seems irrational, but I started to find a increasingly popular choice these days where most of our times we spend seating in front of the computer for long hours.

[click] Mar. 20, 2010(Sat) 06:24 am

Photo by Jared Tabel

We are so used to say or heard thank you in our daily routine to the point that it becomes some time as an auto response. The real meaning somehow is lost until there is really a situation where the thank comes from a really special situation. Yesterday during lunch time I was waiting my order of sandwich when a lady besides me was paying for her order. She dropped a coin, 25 cent I belief. Rapidly and without hesitation I ducked grabbed the coin and return the coin to the lady.

Usually you will get the thank you right away, but in this opportunity was different. Is funny how 2 seconds delay can cause a totally different feeling when someone take the time to look at your eyes smile and say thank you. I could totally feel that was a genuine thanks different from the regular one. Don’t get me wrong, but sometimes our words come out as instinct auto response rather than a sincere expression of ourself. What a valuable experience from a simple act.

[click] Mar. 16, 2010(Tue) 12:32 pm

Photo by TheTrueAbout