Entries Tagged 'General' ↓

I really enjoyed this talk and wanted to share it with you.

If you haven’t explored TED yet, you’re missing more than you can imagine right now.

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I was coming back from a remote village in the Bali. My translater Wayan suggested to stop at one of those hole in the wall restaurants with magnificient view of rice paddies.

Locals didn’t think much of the rice patties in fact for them it’s just farm land.

A few minutes later a bus full of tourists stopped on the side of the road and start snapping pictures of the “farms”. What I noticed was while tourists were taking pictures of the patties at some of the lower patties locals were destroying the patties to build pansions (house with lots of rooms to rent to tourists for nightly rates)

Growing up in Bodrum a small fishing/orange grove town of 9000  became the #1 tourist destination in Europe I have seen this view many many times. Where the locals (to accomidate the tourists) destroying what was attracting the tourists in the first place. Until that is all the orange trees are replaced by hotels, bars, McDonald’s etc. and naturally tourists stop coming because nothing special left to see.

Apple is experiencing such “tourist explosion” with the successes of ipod, and now iphone. It was a small company (compared to PCs) with loyals (like a small sleepy town in remote island of Bali with locals) and now the word is out Everyone wants to visit the Apple land, wanna buy a white laptop, black iphone, RED ipod. Apple deserves all this success, but many old school Apple users are able to see what tourists don’t.

Apple is destroying all the rice patties, orange groves in 1 Infinite loop dr. to accommidate the tourists.

Apple is the new PC with all the updates that don’t function, apps don’t run properly, can’t get good customer service, and nice clean stores with cool guys and girls with more tattoos than understanding of the Apple Culture.

I haven’t been in Bali for a few years now, so I don’t know how they’re playing out, but in my town there are no restaurants that serve good local food, not a single orange tree, no more than 20 fishermen left, and now locals are crying about lack of business and looking around to find the tourists.

I’d like to be wrong on this, but my money is Apple….. First one I used was Lisa, first I owned was 2ci has begun the descend.

I hope I am wrong.

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Great truths about life you knew when you were  little:

* No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.

* When your mom is mad at your dad, don’t let her brush your hair.

* If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.

* Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.

* You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.

* Reading what people write on desks can teach you a lot.

* Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

* Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a tic tac.

* Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time.

* School lunches stick to the wall.

* You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

* Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.

* The best place to be when you are sad is in Grandma’s lap.

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My favorite thing to do is to take my dog Djembe for a hike in the mornings. We’re normally the first ones at the park and pretty much have the trails to ourselves. This allows both of us to enjoy Mother Nature off leash.

What I’ve learned during these walks is that my dog does not care what day it is, all he cares about is that we are at the park.
He doesn’t care which trail we take, he’s just excited to be taking the trail. He absolutely never thinks something terrible could be waiting for us around the corner (like a mugger or a big bad dog.) All he knows is we are at the park and he is happy to be there.  One day we had to return back home right after we arrived at the park. He didn’t complain once. He just sat there smiling in the back of the car….           Meanwhile, I was complaining and fussing about it all the way back to the house and pretty much the rest of the day.
The moral of the story?
Just because you are “holding” the leash doesn’t make you the wiser one.

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This expression feels very current to me. It refers to the fact that a busy cobbler will be so busy making shoes for his customers that he has no time to make some for his own children.

I’ve been so busy past 6-8 months preparing for the launch of my training site and my forum I just remember I haven’t send out anything to my list all this time.

I’m afraid they’ll think I forgot about them.

Silver lining to all this is I’ll be done with 2007 in couple days and that is a great feeling.

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Saturday was Charlotte Marathon (AKA Thunder roll).

I’m not a runner, and after seeing how unprofesional the event was handled by Run Charlotte I don’t plan to become a runner any time soon.

Being stuck in my neighborhood because of all the roads being blocked did not stop me from looking for something to learn from this experience (besides boycotting all Run Charlotte events.)  I learned life is like a marathon. Everyone has to go in their own pace. There were fast runners, and slow walkers. There were slow walkers ahead of fast runners which indicated they were faster runners at one point, but in time the people they past at one point will catch up and/or pass them.

It became obvious to me marathon is like life an individual experience. You are among your peers,  but it’s you the runner has to determine your pace, when to speed up, when to slow down, when to stop and start again. All of those decisions must be based on minute by minute changes in you.

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Originally uploaded by Turk Akbay

Djembe had an operation Friday and was shocked when he heard the vet’s instructions: No running, No jumping, No chasing of cats, squirrels or lions for 10 days.

I remember when I was his age I had an operation and I wasn’t allowed to run, jump or chase lions either, and was just as frustrated.

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Finally the computer technology has caught up with my vision, and I can finally teach.

The biggest reason why I’ve been lagging on my posts is because I’ve been trying to learn about Interactive learning environments.  Don’t get me wrong. I’m still learning, but I’m confident starting early 2008 I will have interactive classrooms for you to learn anything/everything you wanted to learn from me.

Stay tuned

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I just heard on NPR that reading numbers are down again.

Less and less Americans are reading. Study cited 58% of the college grads who read books don’t pass page 18.

This is great news for me other reader alike . As long as we’re willing to read and learn continuously we can’t help but become more valuable. If nothing else for our ability to learn.

I just wish the unemployment office required people on welfare to read to collect welfare checks.

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