Interviu cu George Iacobescu, CEO Canary Wharf

Interviul cu ceea ce se pare a fi cel mai bine platit roman din lume... Isi petrece omul 14-16 ore pe zi muncind si spune ca are maxim o zi de week-end, insa pentru el chiar se merita efortul in comparatie cu atat de multi oameni care muncesc cate 10-12 ore pe zi pentru un salariu mediu.

Tot articolul este, dupa parerea mea foarte interesant, insa un alt aspect in mod deosebit interesant este raspunsul lui la intrebarea ce ar face daca ar da faliment... nu va spun :-), cititi si veti afla :-)

http://economie.hotnews.ro/stiri-companii-5175689-interviu-george-iacobescu-ceo-canary-wharf-criza-masina-tocat-care-intrat-toate-bancile.htm?cfnl=

Help explain...

In ultimul timp a tot circulat un email referitor la ulei pe care il aruncam la chiuveta si sincer...nu inteleg de ce se spun ca "UN LITRU DE ULEI FACE APROXIMATIV UN MILION DE LITRI DE APA NON POTABILA, CANTITATE SUFICIENTA PENTRU O PERSOANA PENTRU 14 ANI". Apa care se scurge de la chiuveta, masina de spalat, WC este considerata deseu, nu? Oare astia cand "recicleaza" apa chiar recicleaza orice tip de apa din orice tip de scurgere casnica si dupa aia zic ca e potabila ca pun ei niste clor in ea?
Daca stie cineva procesul exact si raspunsul la intrebare, enlighten me.

Grazie!

Alegeri 2008

Greu de crezut ca dupa mai bine de 6 luni de zile in care nu mi-am mai exprimat vreo opinie sau...nu am mai postat vreo stire sau video pe blog, incep cu un subiect de genul acesta..., dar pentru ca il consider important si pentru ca poate mai reduc din timpul pierdut in cautarea informatiilor despre alegeri, firesc pentru cei ce citesc blogul ;-), incep cu acest lucru.
Inainte "sa intru in paine", vreau sa fie clar, nu am mai scris nu pentru ca in acest rastimp nu am mai avut opinii ;-), ci pur si simplu accesul la net a fost mai dificil, am inceput un nou job etc...oricum de exprimarea opiniilor nu duc lipsa, chiar daca nu pe net, prietenii stiu de ce ;-).

Pe scurt, de curand cand am incept sa ma uit sa vad pe cine sa votez, am constatat ca este dificil sa gasesti informatii relevante despre acest vot uninominal. Prima oara am intrat pe site-ul BEC, dar stupoare, nu am gasit nimic despre alegerile din 2008. In seara respectiva am vazut pe Prima o stire conform careia ca sa vezi colegiul din care faci parte, trebuie sa intri pe site-ul: http://www.becparlamentare2008.ro/ si aici vezi si candidatii. Documentul publicat de BEC este un pdf cumplit de neorganizat, cauti in el o gramada de timp pana iti gasesti strada in dreptul unui colegiu. Oricum, in momentul in care ti-ai gasit colegiul, atunci e mai simplu. Inchizi nenorocirea de site BEC si te duci pe site-ul: http://www.alegeri-2008.ro/candidati/ unde poti vedea impartiti pe colegii, candidatii la Senat si Camera Deputatilor, cu poze sau fara si link-uri catre ceea ce se vrea un profil al lor. Desi site-ul este la 5000 mile distanta fata de batjocura de site a BEC-ului, cu parere de rau va anunt ca unii candidati in afara de poza si eventual numele profesiei, nu prea au nimic completat, gen program, ideologiile lor, propunerile de lege pe care si le stabilesc sa le faca dupa ce sunt alesi etc.

Va dau exemplul meu, vroiam sa aleg PNL de la un cap la altul sa nu am batai de cap si pentru faptul ca eu, overall, consider ca guvernarea PNL-ista asa cum a fost a fost mai buna decat cele precedente si pentru ca in PNL sunt cativa exponenti care mi se par ok, pe cand in PD-L nu ma regasesc deloc si mi se par doar niste oameni care fac mult zgomot "in vane" ca si conducatorul lor iubit. In fine, cautand informatii despre cei 2 candidati PNL la colegiul de care apartin am constatat ca unul are o poza in care se observa un om prostovan si urat si gras pe deasupra si m-am dus repede pe link gandindu-ma ca poate cine stie ce informatii aflu si ca ambalajul poate induce in eroare...ei fratilor.... aflati ca nu am gasit NIMIC...decat ca domnul in cauza este inginer de profesie...Nici o alta informatie pe acolo...acum, la 2 zile dupa, am gasit un comentariu postat de un potential alegator din cartier care il ruga el pe acest domn candidat sa-i dea vreo data de contact, sa vorbeasca, sa inteleaga si el daca il voteaza sau nu pentru ca, probabil ca si mine vroia sa voteze partidul PNL si nu stia totusi ce inseamna asta la nivel de reprezentant al partidului pentru colegiul din care facem parte....

Deci, cei care nu au timp sa se uite pe toate programele, la toate stirile, inteleg ca nu au nici o sansa sa poata vota in cunostinta de cauza...In prezent sunt debusolata complet in ceea ce priveste acest vot, pentru ca sincer nu stiu pe cine sa votez fara sa-mi para rau dupa aceea si nici nu cred ca voi putea obtine suficiente informatii pana pe 30 noiembrie pentru ca de TV all day nu am timp.

Daca mai gasiti informatii, site-uri, va rog sa-mi scrieti in comentarii sau pe email ca sincer as vrea sa votez pe cine trebuie si nu un partid by default, partid in care sa am increderea de mai bine, dar care sa aiba candidatul nepotrivit. Spun asta pentru ca am auzit si sunt convinsa ca exista si multi membrii PNL corupti si care nu ar trebui sa existe in politica si cu atat mai putin la carma unor institutii publice.

In incheiere, ca si indemn pentru cei care chiar vor sa voteze si nu oricum, ci in cunostinta de cauza, cautati fratilor cautati informatii, ca ele nu vin la voi...

Bafta!

Philosophy on friendship

So beautifuly said, so...hard to do all of those...in our rushed, angry, stressful world... Thank you to my friends!!!

Hungry...hm...WORLD'S 50 BEST RESTAURANTS

First published by Restaurant magazine in 2002 and now in its seventh year, The S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants is recognised around the world as the most credible indicator of the best places to eat on Earth.

The list is compiled by The Nespresso World's 50 Best Academy, a group of prominent food writers, critics, publishers and commentators, who each represent a different global region and chair a carefully selected voting panel for that region. This ensures a truly authoritative list and one that is becoming more and more globally representative each year.

On short, first ten include...3 SPANISH Restaurants...surprise...and only 2 French. Rather strange...there is a British Restaurant on 2nd place...and totally strange.. there are 2 American Restaurants in top 10... good it's not McDonald's :-).
Below the top 10 & the link for those who really want to dive into it :-).. ah, BON APETIT!!! :-):
1 El Bulli - Spain (World's Best Restaurant; Best in Europe)
2 The Fat Duck - UK
3 Pierre Gagnaire - France
4 Mugaritz - Spain
5 The French Laundry - USA (Best Restaurant in Americas)
6 Per Se - USA
7 Bras - France
8 Arzak - Spain
9 Tetsuya's - Australia (Best Restaurant in Australasia)
10 Noma - Denmark

http://www.theworlds50best.com/2008_list.html

How To Do What You Love

I found the article below - in English, so practice some :-) - and seemed interesting to read...it's pretty long, but easy to read...doesn't mean you have to agree with everything he says.. I don't :-), but it has some interesting points he brings out. The author is Paul Graham - essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple Bayesian spam filter that inspired most current filters. He\'s currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the partners in Y Combinator

For those interested in the subject...here it is:

"To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tedious because it was preparation for grownup work.

The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.

Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.

I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. [1]

Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.

Jobs

By high school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. Adults would sometimes come to speak to us about their work, or we would go to see them at work. It was always understood that they enjoyed what they did. In retrospect I think one may have: the private jet pilot. But I don't think the bank manager really did.

The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was presumably the upper-middle class convention that you're supposed to. It would not merely be bad for your career to say that you despised your job, but a social faux-pas.

Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? The first sentence of this essay explains that. If you have to like something to do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do. That's where the upper-middle class tradition comes from. Just as houses all over America are full of chairs that are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of chairs designed 250 years ago for French kings, conventional attitudes about work are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of the attitudes of people who've done great things.

What a recipe for alienation. By the time they reach an age to think about what they'd like to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled about the idea of loving one's work. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than schoolwork. And yet all the adults claim to like what they do. You can't blame kids for thinking "I am not like these people; I am not suited to this world."

Actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've been taught to regard as work in school is not real work; grownup work is not (necessarily) worse than schoolwork; and many of the adults around them are lying when they say they like what they do.

The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. [2] Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. [3]

It was not till I was in college that the idea of work finally broke free from the idea of making a living. Then the important question became not how to make money, but what to work on. Ideally these coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases (like Einstein in the patent office) proved they weren't identical.

The definition of work was now to make some original contribution to the world, and in the process not to starve. But after the habit of so many years my idea of work still included a large component of pain. Work still seemed to require discipline, because only hard problems yielded grand results, and hard problems couldn't literally be fun. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them.

If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school.

Bounds

How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don't know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you'll tend to stop searching too early. You'll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia.

Here's an upper bound: Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second. Even Einstein probably had moments when he wanted to have a cup of coffee, but told himself he ought to finish what he was working on first.

It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a) spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.

But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.

Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the concept of "spare time" seems mistaken. Which is not to say you have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do something else—even something mindless. But you don't regard this time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you endure to earn it.

I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.

So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading books. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences, there's no test of how well you've read a book, and that's why merely reading books doesn't quite feel like work. You have to do something with what you've read to feel productive.

I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn't start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then.

Sirens

What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn't worry about prestige. Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to consider the opinions of people you don't even know? [4]

This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. [5] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd like to like.

That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies.

Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.

Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.

The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living." (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn't thought much about what they really like.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?

This test is especially helpful in deciding between different kinds of academic work, because fields vary greatly in this respect. Most good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other end of the spectrum, the availability of teaching jobs is the driver: people would rather be English professors than work in ad agencies, and publishing papers is the way you compete for such jobs. Math would happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.

The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money. It seems safe to say there are more undergrads who want to be novelists and whose parents want them to be doctors than who want to be doctors and whose parents want them to be novelists. The kids think their parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves, simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.

Discipline

With such powerful forces leading us astray, it's not surprising we find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money. How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.

It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.

Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—because the way to do great work is to find something you like so much that you don't have to force yourself to do it—finding work you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception. More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.

Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out, or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments early on, when they're trying to find their niche.

Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it. Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the habit of doing things well.

Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction, however bad? As long as you're producing, you'll know you're not merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too palpably flawed one you're actually writing.

"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

Of course, figuring out what you like to work on doesn't mean you get to work on it. That's a separate question. And if you're ambitious you have to keep them separate: you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible. [6]

It's painful to keep them apart, because it's painful to observe the gap between them. So most people pre-emptively lower their expectations. For example, if you asked random people on the street if they'd like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would say something like "Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Because the fact is, if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty years, they'd get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years. And so to protect themselves people say "I can't."

Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do work they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. Really? How do you make them? In the US the only mechanism for forcing people to do unpleasant jobs is the draft, and that hasn't been invoked for over 30 years. All we can do is encourage people to do unpleasant work, with money and prestige.

If there's something people still won't do, it seems as if society just has to make do without. That's what happened with domestic servants. For millennia that was the canonical example of a job "someone had to do." And yet in the mid twentieth century servants practically disappeared in rich countries, and the rich have just had to do without.

So while there may be some things someone has to do, there's a good chance anyone saying that about any particular job is mistaken. Most unpleasant jobs would either get automated or go undone if no one were willing to do them.

Two Routes

There's another sense of "not everyone can do work they love" that's all too true, however. One has to make a living, and it's hard to get paid for doing work you love. There are two routes to that destination:

The organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to increase the parts of your job that you like at the expense of those you don't.

The two-job route: to work at things you don't like to get money to work on things you do.
The organic route is more common. It happens naturally to anyone who does good work. A young architect has to take whatever work he can get, but if he does well he'll gradually be in a position to pick and choose among projects. The disadvantage of this route is that it's slow and uncertain. Even tenure is not real freedom.

The two-job route has several variants depending on how long you work for money at a time. At one extreme is the "day job," where you work regular hours at one job to make money, and work on what you love in your spare time. At the other extreme you work at something till you make enough not to have to work for money again.

The two-job route is less common than the organic route, because it requires a deliberate choice. It's also more dangerous. Life tends to get more expensive as you get older, so it's easy to get sucked into working longer than you expected at the money job. Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention.

The advantage of the two-job route is that it lets you jump over obstacles. The landscape of possible jobs isn't flat; there are walls of varying heights between different kinds of work. [7] The trick of maximizing the parts of your job that you like can get you from architecture to product design, but not, probably, to music. If you make money doing one thing and then work on another, you have more freedom of choice.

Which route should you take? That depends on how sure you are of what you want to do, how good you are at taking orders, how much risk you can stand, and the odds that anyone will pay (in your lifetime) for what you want to do. If you're sure of the general area you want to work in and it's something people are likely to pay you for, then you should probably take the organic route. But if you don't know what you want to work on, or don't like to take orders, you may want to take the two-job route, if you can stand the risk.

Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it's wrong.

A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell "Don't do it!" (But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way—including, unfortunately, not liking it.

Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.

When you're young, you're given the impression that you'll get enough information to make each choice before you need to make it. But this is certainly not so with work. When you're deciding what to do, you have to operate on ridiculously incomplete information. Even in college you get little idea what various types of work are like. At best you may have a couple internships, but not all jobs offer internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball.

In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you get better results if you use flexible media. So unless you're fairly sure what you want to do, your best bet may be to choose a type of work that could turn into either an organic or two-job career. That was probably part of the reason I chose computers. You can be a professor, or make a lot of money, or morph it into any number of other kinds of work.

It's also wise, early on, to seek jobs that let you do many different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like. Conversely, the extreme version of the two-job route is dangerous because it teaches you so little about what you like. If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have enough money, what happens when you quit and then discover that you don't actually like writing novels?

Most people would say, I'd take that problem. Give me a million dollars and I'll figure out what to do. But it's harder than it looks. Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.

Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you're practically there."

FELICITARI Dan Patzelt pentru INITIATIVA

Desi nu sunt conducator auto in prezent, nu pot sa ma abtin sa nu il felicit pe Dan Patzelt pentru initiativa lui cu stickerele "Eu nu blochez intersectia"...
Vedeti Dvs, pentru cei care merg cu orice mijloc de transport la suprafata, firesc incluzand taxi-ul este mult mai profitabil daca nu ar mai fi atatia "grabiti de prost gust" care sa blocheze complet traficul... Am pus link-ul la blogul lui Dan in categoria The Roll On Effect Section si acolo puteti gasi cum procedati daca vreti un astfel de stick gratis.

Felicitari si HotNews ca a publicat stirea...eu cel putin asa am aflat..

What more can be said? Congrats again to Dan and JOIN him!!!!

Funny politics...no comment

Forbes - The Global 2,000

Pe 4 aprilie 2008, revista americana Forbes a publicat topul celor mai de success 2.000 de companii din lume. In acest top nu se regaseste nici o companie romaneasca, insa se regasesc companii din tari intrate si ele relativ de curand in UE - Ungaria, Polonia si Cehia.
Daca stam sa ne gandim, pe de alta parte avem 2 romani care se incadreaza in cei mai bogati 1000 de oameni in lume: Dinu Patriciu ($ 2.7 miliarde) si Ion Tiriac ($ 1.1 miliarde) si companiile "lor" nu apar in topul primelor 2,000 de companii din lume...
Oare ce concluzie sanatoasa putem trage din aceste 2 stiri? Ca in Romania, o tara unde PIB-ul este 25% din media pe EU, exista oameni extrem de bogati, dar nu exista companii suficient de puternice - nici macar una- care sa se incadreze in primele 2,000 din lume...si te intrebi...in ce consta reala putere a acestei tari?....

Revenind la topul Forbes, ca un overview:
- In timp ce primul loc se afla banca britanică HSBC Holdings, cu o valoare de piaţă de 180,8 miliarde dolari şi un profit net de 19,13 miliarde dolari
- urmatoarele 4 pozitii sunt ocupate de companii americane: locul 2- faimosul General Electric (locul patru în topul celor mai recunoscute branduri din lume); locul 3 - Bank of America; locul 4 - JP Morgan Chase si locul 5 - ExxonMobil
- daca in afara de GE primele pozitii sunt ocupate de companii din domeniul bancar, ExxonMobil incepe pleiada companiilor din industria petrolului si gazelor - industrie ce are 6 reprezentanti in primele 20 de pozitii ale acestui top.
- 60 de state sunt reprezentate de nume de companii în acest top, cea mai prezenta ramanand Statele Unite.
- China, India si Brazilia s-au remarcat în acest an prin creşterea semnificativă a numărului companiilor prezente în top.
- China- prima companie listata apare pe locul 30 - PetroChina; India apare cu prima companie listata pe locul 219 (State Bank of India Group) si Brazilia intra in top cu prima companie listata la numarul 233 (Unibanco Group)
- Dintre companiile pe la care lucram sau de la care ne cumparam diverse produse/servicii, mai jos sunt locurile pe care le ocupa in top:
8. Toyota Motor..the Toyota way...urca in continuare
9. ING Group.. si totusi bancile ING duc mare lipsa de IT..
21. Banco Santander - Spain...Uri la ei te-ai inscris ? ;-)
24. Citigroup ...si cand te gandesti ca acum cativa ani buni erau nr 1 in lume...
33. Unicredit Group.. mascaltzonii se descurca..oare se si spala bani pe aici?!
36. Volkswagen Group
37. IBM
45. Nestle -mmmm...yami....
50. Siemens
53. HP
55. Royal Bank of Canada..still looking good ;-)
59. Samsung Electronics
63. Microsoft...oare daca se aliaza cu Yahoo (loc 648) pe ce loc ajung?
68. Honda
69. Nokia... acum ca vin si la Jucu sigur vor creste'n top ;-)
96. Nissan Motor
98. Carrefour Group
100. Boeing
101. Aviva - oare pe ce loc vor fi cand ies la pensie? daca raman asa o sa iau o
pensie grasa ;-) ;-)
102. Societe Generale Group...si BRD-ul din Romanica tot varzuca e...
115. Nordea Bank...aici cand iti scrie "rahat" is coming sa te bucuri, ca iti vin
bani ;-)
128. Renault... si totusi masinile lor nu mi se par deloc ergonomice..sa mai ia
lectii de la nemtzi ;-)
131. PepsiCo...oare pe unde o fi rivalul Coca-Cola?! ah la pozitia 487 doar ;-)..
asta pentru ca a plecat George de la ei si nu au mai rezistat sus in
top ;-)
133. Royal Philips Electronics...good, quality stuff they do
138. Canon ... the best cameras for basic users ;-)...i love mine and i'm not the
only one ;-)
155. Fiat Group
159. Canadian Imperial Bank
176. Oracle...Andrei a urcat 24 pozitii in acest top prin mutarea de la noi la
Oracle...
177. Volvo Group
178. Apple...super dragutzul Apple..interesant de vazut unde are mai multa piata
totusi in US sau in Europa?
182. Sony
189. Bank of Montreal
192. Dell
199. Ericsson
200. Honeywell International
206. L'Oreal Group...dar in topul preferintelor mele mult mai sus ;-)
213. Google...probabil ca atentia lor pentru angajati le mananca mai mult din profit
217. McDonald's...inca se mananca muuulllttt junk food in lume
218. Metro AG
261. FedEx...competitorii directi sunt in urma: TNT- 560
289. Erste Bank
299. Groupe Danone ...cahhhh - cata lume se insala cu publicitatea lor...
309. OMV Group...astia oare ce fac? dau cu spatele? merg mai prost ca Indian Oil
348. Fujitsu...da' laptop-ul meu este foarte fain si fancy ;-) in afara de Vista cu
care se vinde, n'am nimic de reprosat..
403. Raiffeisen International...Alex...vezi ce faci acolo, sa ajungi manager sa
ridici firma pana la cer..sau macar la o pozitie mai sus ;-)
407. Vodafone...si la cat ii ingrasam noi cu facturi...nu ai zice...
464. Nintendo...si numai la cati oameni cunosc eu care au Wii :-)
498. Alpha Bank Group...da' ce sedii au...;-)
509. Peugeot Groupe & Suzuki Motor...2 pe loc pentru prima oara'n top ;-)
525. MOL ...si uite cum Ungaria exista si inca bine in top....sa nu mori de ciuda?
532. Ford Motor...unde e Fordul de altadata?..
573. General Motors
629. Thales...France...this is for i know who
650. National Bank of Canada
656. Piraeus Bank...iar grecii destul de bine pozitionati
686. OTP Bank...si ungurii bine...din nou...
700. Mazda Motor
702. British Airways...stop being angry when they loose all your luggage...they
need to do something to go up in this top & they thought of
starting with ...luggage ;-)
724. Marriott International... si e frumos si foarte scump la ei... oare unde e
Hilton-ul?
801. Volksbank
829. Carlsberg....si ce melodii "mumoase" au la publicitate
885. Mitsubishi Motors
890. Samsung
910. National Bank of Abu Dhabi...uitati-va aici ca sigur anul viitor va fi mult
mai sus
922. Western Union... cred ca au ajuns asa sus si ajutati serios de romanii nostri
din strainatate
1017. Reuters Group...hopa si media
1055. Dubai Islamic Bank...super crestere ce va avea si banca asta in urmatorii ani
1102. Wipro...prietenii stiu de ce ;-)
1108. Estee Lauder Cos...no lo posso creer..donde es Dior?
1191. Hoya...si eu ma intrebam daca au tehnologii mai bune decat Zeiss ;-)...oricum
ochelari..lentile de 10 bulioane sper sa merite...altfel ii dau jos
d'aci..
1604. Parmalat...Italy...pentru cine cumpara de la ei..

hm...nu am regasit DHL-ul si Di(h)or-ul ...alte 2 firme apropiate de inimioara mea..
Daca vreti sa cautati o firma anume sau whatever, here is the link with all 2000 companies:
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/18/biz_2000global08_The-Global-2000_Rank_20.html
Daca le gasiti pe cele 2 numite mai sus sa-mi spuneti ;-)

Bye bye for now..., but...I'll be back!!! ;-)

3 zile de istorie....2-4 aprile 2008...Summit-ul NATO la Bucuresti

Fiind parte a istoriei recente, nu pot sa rezist sa nu ma pronunt... nu stiu cat s-a vorbit in afara de acest summit, insa in Romania toata lumea a vorbit despre el...mai exact despre lucrurile adiacente lui...au fost multe emisiuni la TV in care s-a vorbit despre cainii maidanezi care traversau nestingheriti in timp ce se faceau simulari cu cateva zile inainte de summit...oamenii nu aveau voie sa treaca pe acele culoare in Constanta- nici macar pe jos, pe trotuare!!!!- in schimb au fost razbunati de cainii maidanezi...Am inteles ca pe traseele principale pe care au circulat invitatii au strans cainii maidanezi...uffff, ce rau imi pare ca nu a fost si Barbu Vacarescu pe acest tronson...asta ca sa nu amintesc de „faimoasa” strada a Oltetului care desi este „autostrada” spre faimoasele cluburi „Cuba” si „Bamboo” arata cel putin deplorabil...acum ce sa zicem...bordurile s-au schimbat...poate in deceniul acesta urmeaza si strada....
Revenind la summit....sunt mult de spus insa o sa incerc sa sumarizez in cateva categorii:
1)Aspecte pozitive
- expunerea Romaniei la nivel mondial (au participat reprezentantii a 26 state membre ale Aliantei, 23 tari care fac parte din Parteneriatul pentru Pace – practic au venit in Romania peste 6.500 de invitati din 49 de tari din care 48 sefi de stat si de guvern, plus 3.500 jurnalisti)
- trei recorduri mondiale pentru Palatul Parlamentului mentionate pe site-ul World Records Academy:
o cea mai mare cladire administrativa cu destinatie civila (are 1.100 de incaperi, pe 12 niveluri la suprafata si parcarea subterana are 20 de mii de locuri; se intinde pe 360.000 metri patrati, avand un volum de 2.550.000 de metri cubi)
o cea mai masiva (constructia ridicata din materiale exclusiv romanesti, intre care 700.000 de tone metrice de otel si bronz, 900.000 de metri cubi de lemn, un milion de metri cubi de marmura, iar la fabricarea corpurilor de iluminat s-au folosit 3.500 de tone de cristal)
o cea mai scumpa constructie (in 2006 estimata la aprox 4 milidarde USD)
- am trecut cu bine peste „learning curve-ul” organizarii unui asemenea eveniment si daca chiar am crede ce a spus Bush si alti aghiotanti ai lui, atunci chiar am iesit bine la capitolul organizare eveniment...din cate am vazut au fost anumite probleme cu sunetul si cu traducerile, dar nu foarte mari...oricum ar trebui sa ne mai gandim cred cand ne mandrim atat cu faptul ca in Romania oamenii sunt poligloti... tot la capitolul organizarii, destul de ciudata intrarea in forta a politiei in cei cativa zeci de tineri care protestau anti-NATO. Erau o mana de oameni, tineri si foarte tineri care pareau mai degraba dezorientati decat fiorosi si politia i-a cam „sifonat” ...se pare ca Tericeanu a cerut o ancheta privind aceste incidente...ar fi fain sa se si termine vreodata aceasta ancheta...oricum, per ansamblu la cat de mare a fost acest eveniment, cred ca se poate spune ca organizarea a fost buna si daca cu ocazia asta au mai fost plantate niste flori, vopsite niste garduri si curatat Bucurestiul...cu atat mai bine...
- Basescu i-a mentionat lui Bush despre cazul Teo Peter...poate intr-un final apoteotic il va inchide cineva si pe asasinul american al lui....desi pana acum s-a vazut doar ca nu conteaza ce crime savarsesti daca ai imunitate americana..
- Tariceanu i-a „pus pe tapet” lui Bush situatia vizelor pentru America...in prezent in Romania se acorda foarte putine vize si ... pentru ca suntem V.I.P. dupa cum spuneam mai devreme, nici macar nu sunt date explicatii celor care nu primesc viza...in schimb sunt luate amprentele digitale si de iris de cum intri in Ambasada, chiar daca nu primesti viza...asta mi se pare cam mult...

2) aspecte negative
- scutul antiracheta acopera aprox 80% din Europa si, cum pe parcursul istoriei ne-am obisnuit cu importanta care ni se acorda si cu faptul ca suntem in sfera de „trade off” a marilor puteri...ghiciti din cei 20% ce teritoriu face parte....exact, Romanica noastra ca noi suntem V.I.P = very important papagali...trist, mai ales ca s-a vazut clar ca decizia doar a fost comunicata la Bucuresti si in nici un caz dezbatuta sau ca noi am fi avut vreun cuvant de spus....ca si „compensatie” se pare ca ne-a fost pasata o iluzie conform careia Romania va fi aparata de un nou scut creat de NATO care va fi complementar celui american din Europa. Dar si acest lucru este o iluzie pana cand vedem cine finanteaza proiectul etc...
- incruntarea gospodinului Putin: "Dacă o ţară e membră NATO, e considerată şi democratică, dacă nu e membră NATO, nu e ţară democratică. Gândiţi-vă câte ţări din afara NATO sunt ţări democratice. Aceasta e o teorie ciudată. Eu cred că aderarea la NATO nu duce automat la democratizarea ţărilor respective". "Astăzi nu mai există Uniunea Sovietică, aşa că de ce mai există NATO astăzi?" s-a întrebat retoric Putin. Apoi a continuat: "Ce se poate face fără Rusia în problemele dezarmării sau terorismului?" Putin şi-a răspuns singur: "Nimic!" "Existenţa NATO nu răspunde eficient la ameninţările actuale. Dar, colaborăm cu această Alianţă", a spus Putin. "Eu am auzit astăzi că extinderea NATO nu este îndreptată împotriva Rusiei. Noi am eliminat bazele din Vietnam, din Cuba. Şi ce am primit? O bază în România, una în Bulgaria, alta în Cehia. Hai să vorbim cinstit despre NATO", a declarat Putin.

3) controverse
- cea mai controversata personalitate a acestui summit...culmea nu cred ca a fost Putin, ci ...prima doamna a Azerbaijanului, Mehriban Aliyeva, de ce controversata? Simplu: in timp ce tututor barbatilor le-au iesit ochii din cap uitandu-se la orice poza, filuletz si captura de ecran, a aparut si o doamna analist al vestimentatiei primelor doamne. Verdictul a fost clar si scurt: cea mai indragita doamna de barbati (care intre noi fie vorba arata super bine pentru orice varsta, cu atat mai mult la cei 46 de ani ai ei) a fost „cea mai prost imbracata personalitate” de la summit pentru ca nu a respectat eticheta, in timp ce pe locurile fruntase au fost Laura Bush (care se imbraca ca si Nancy Reagan si Jackie Kennedy de la Oscar de la Renta) si Baseasca noastra ...spun Baseasca pentru ca la cat de invizibila este intotdeauna nici nu imi vine acum imediat in minte numele ei..ah, da, Maria Basescu...oricum muuullltttt mai bine asa decat ca minunata ei fata ale carei „succesuri” au atins culmile nebanuite ale prostiei dusa la extrem. Si luati aminte...ca aceasta „minunata fiinta” Basesciana se pregateste pentru politica la nivel inalt...adica nu pentru Romania, ci sa reprezinte Romania in UE... Asa ca, mai bine ca mama ei, sa zambeasca non – stop fara sa scoata o vorba si sa li se faca mila celorlati sa o ajute...cum au fost nenumaratele cazuri in care Laura Bush o tragea la propriu de mana pe domna Basescu ca sa-i „arate calea” ... era ca si cum rolul gazdei ar fi fost inversat...
http://212.146.105.161/antena3tv/webroot/website/?videoid=10354

Revenind la femeia controverselor, pentru cei care doresc sa vada cu proprii lor ochishori ce este cu aceasta controversa, urmati link-ul si vedeti despre ce e vorba in propozitie: http://www.antena3.ro/index.php?left_choose=fotogal&id=47559&id1=3423
- traficul...e bine ca mai mult s-a vorbit despre el decat s-a circulat in zilele respective...strazile care nu erau incluse in traseul unic (traseul pe care circulau participantii la summit) au fost incredibil de libere – asta si datorita faptului ca toate organizatiile publice si private care erau pe linia traseului unic au avut liber, la fe scolile si universitatile si alte firme care au decis ca pot da liber angajatilor pe aceasta perioada, fie din bunavointa, fie obigandu-i sa-si ia din zilele lor de concediu...asa ca din acest punct de vedere ar fi bine ca sa se mai organizeze astfel de evenimente in Bucuresti... :-)
4) no comment
http://vs04.netstairs.ro/antena3tv/webroot/website/?videoid=10255

Wise

Sa nu-l uitam nicicand pe...THE KING

Pentru ca am un TIZ ca nimeni altul... :-) :-)
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935–August 16, 1977) - cultural icon, "The King of Rock 'n' Roll"



ufa, si pentru ca nu ma pot abtine...chiar daca Frank a fost primul ... parca tot Elvis il canta mai bine :-) :-)

Pe graba ...o urma de kara cu iz de Frank...il cunoasteti pe Frank...Sinatra...

Primul video de kara e asta , prietenii stiu de ce....si isi iau vata pentru urechi cand il cant...tot d'aia ;-)

Gata, sunt pe fuga, trag oblonul ca iar intarzii...ufa....dar ce as fi eu daca nu as intarzia...probabil ca nu m-ar mai recunoaste lumea ;-)...da' stiu...IMI CER SCUZE!!!!!! da' nu pot sa promit ca nu mai fac! si va rog eu mult sa nu mai speriati sufletzelul meu de copil nevinovat chiar daca nu puteti sa nu va abtineti de la misto-uri ;-) ;-);-)

"Putem sa evitam sa luam decizii nefacand nimic, dar pana si asta este o decizie." - Gary Collins

Deci, sa ne bucuram de primavara caci cel mai bun mod pentru a rasplati un moment frumos este sa te bucuri de el.

Small fish in a big pound

Sub egida: "Small fish in a big pound" = Angajat la multinationala

Invata de la toate

Invata de la toate - din folclorul norvegian


Invata de la apa sa ai statornic drum
Invata de la flacari ca toate-s numai scrum
Invata de la umbra sa treci si sa veghezi
Invata de la stanca cum neclintit sa sezi
Invata de la soare cum trebuie s-apui
Invata de la vantul ce adie pe poteci
Cum trebuie prin lume de linistit sa treci
Invata de la toate caci toate-ti sunt surori
Cum treci frumos prin viata
Cum poti frumos sa mori!
Invata de la vierme ca nimeni nu-I uitat
Invata de la nufar sa fii mereu curat.
Invata de la flacari ce-avem de ars in noi
Invata de la ape sa nu dai inapoi
Invata de la umbra sa fii smerit ca ea.
Invata de la stanca sa-nduri furtuna grea.
Invata de la soare ca vremea sa-ti cunosti
Invata de la stele ca-n cer sunt multe osti
Invata de la greier cand singur esti sa canti
Invata de la luna sa nu te inspaimanti
Invata de la vulturi cand umerii ti-s grei
Si du-te la furnica si vezi povara ei
Invata de la floare sa fii gingas ca ea.
Invata de la miel sa ai blandetea sa.
Invata de la pasari sa fii mereu in zbor.
Invata de la toate ca totu-I trecator.
Ia seama fiu al jertfei prin lumea-n care treci
Sa-nveti din tot ce piere cum sa traiesti in veci!

Observai ca e mare moda dom'ne cu blog-urile astea...in fine...asta normal ca nu ma deranjeaza, dar ce mi se pare dezamagitor este ca foarte multe practic au ajuns jurnale de "bord" in care lumea vede numai partile negative ale vietii... clar ca si ele fac parte din viata, dar eu imi propun sa le contrabalansez cu partile bune, vesele, lucrurile care ne fac sa zambim sau sa radem cu pofta!
Suntem prea des, prea suparati pe viata...d'asta VREAU sa postez MAJORITAR lucruri care sa incante ochiul...firesc ca inevitabil voi posta si reversul medaliei - mesaje, peisaje, lucruri care sunt urate, care ne fac viata un calvar, dar sper sa ma mentin in "DO Minor" la ele ;-)..

Pentru inceput filmuletzul cu magneztii mei cu sound de oda a bucuriei " Alegria" pentru ca nu este asa..."To Travel is To Live" - H. C. Andreson.

To TRAVEL is To LIVE