Snapshot of the Day

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

Yesterday was the closing ceremony of the winter Olympic games in the world competed in different events after 4 years of preparation. One thing I like about the Olympic games is precisely that, the efforts, discipline and devotion this athletes have done in order to participate in this event. This year was a particular one that I follow because this one was host by Canada and because overall Canada had one of the best performance in the historic of Winter Olympic games achieving a new record for a hosting country obtaining gold medalls. But also in this games there were several individual stories behind the athletes which made them really special. For instance Alexandre Bilodeau, obtain the first gold medall for Canada not only in this Olympic games, but as the organize country in its history. During these emotional momments the camera shown his brother who suffer from a disease. Alexandre tell us his old brother had been his inspiration during this years of preparation and dedicated his first place to him and his family. Or take the figure skating Joannie Rochette bronce medallist who decided to continue participating after the suddenly death of her mother a couple of days before her first performance. A difficult decision to make but also a brave and courageous one. Olympias are great athletes and some time the story behind can inspire us even more.

[click] Feb. 28, 2010(Mon) 11:31 pm

Photo by Archangeli