Tag: Sheryl Crow

Fun as motivator

Cyndi Lauper and Sheryl Crow both touched on “wanna-have-fun” theme.

(Girls just want to have fun, All I wanna do).

The upcoming Olympic in Brazil should be a fun place (certainly more than polluted Beijing).

Fun ranks up there as one of the highest motivators.

It’s wired in our fabrics.

Pure fun. Wholesome fun. Grand ball. Sight, sound and scenes.

Smoke machines, sound machines and special effects.

Googlers are seen each year in the Mojave Desert (Burning-Man Festival).

CES in Las Vegas kicks off each year in January.

Kids open their electronic toys Christmas morning. Fun, fun, fun.

“I got this feeling that I am not the only one… .”

Men are fated to toil the ground and tame the beasts.

But after hard times comes harvest times.

In a Korean’s novel (Please Look After Mom) we find a landscape utterly foreign yet familiar. Agrarian culture, with everything done by hand, in transition to a bustling Seoul subway where an aged senile country mom got lost.

Yet, even in this bleakest of portraits, we still find some romance, and occasional laughters.

Fun.

I often found people chuckled in the midst of drinking.

Apparently, there were fun injected into the blood stream besides alcohol.

My friend’s favorite has been Seasons in the Sun. “We had joy we had fun”.

Fun doesn’t belong to but is often associated with youth.

Everyone can and should have some fun. Even at work.

Wait not for Halloween or Valentine.

At Zappos, they set up desks deliberately in the hallway, so co-workers are forced to “bump” into each other. Gone are the cubicles. The wall came tumbling down.

Now, just collaboration, not competition.

Southwest Airlines associates wear shorts and shirts, sing FAA regulations in a way that draws out a smile in each passenger. Fun culture retains great talent.

It adds healthy numbers to the bottom line.

Know the motivators like the back of your hands.

Work them into your HR policy. Practice them at the front line and in the back room.

Then people wouldn’t need to wait for Happy Friday or Happy Hour.

They are happy at work. It boosts up morale and team spirit.

I love to work with workers who are not grumpy. Unless it’s at Disney Animation.

Becoming yourself

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize Winner, told a story (in the Black Book) about a writer

whose wife left him for no reason at all. Restless and sleepless (and perhaps facing writer’s block) he imagined living out his former single self ( the status he now found himself in ). After a while, the mind played trick and he got used to being single. Until one day, his wife returned to him for no particular reason at all. He again found himself in a situation precaire.  Would you once again imagine yourself  being married so you can get used to it?

I am not sure what the moral of the story is, except that we are not  content with who we are. I guess once we figured out our boundaries, our strengths and weaknesses (painful), we are on the way of becoming ourselves.

Not the kind of person our families wish us to be, nor who we thought we were.

Just is.

After millions of encounters, negotiating and coordinating, including navigating the Wild Wild West  (wow! they did that) and World Wide Web (wow! they are doing that?)  we are on the way to becoming.

With one new revelation, one turn of event, one special encounter, our lives take on a new shape and contour. Dramatic events tend to dominate and serve as bookends to our otherwise uneventful lives. But most lives are lived in “quiet desperation”.  Having said that, what looks like boring to us might be very peculiar and interesting to others (if not for people in other place and time). From future vantage point, our action and inaction during this Housing Bubble  make interesting historical studies (the same as we study the Dutch Tulip Bubble – now with hindsight, we can see it as bubble. But to them, at the time, not jumping in was akin to suicide. The same with the Chicago World Fair, and how for the first time, attendees saw electricity. They simply thought they were in Heaven).

I guess part of the fun in living is discovering. Not so much about places and people, but about how we give and take, turned on and off by a certain place or people. Then we learn about our chemistry as well as our social identity.

Orhan Pamuk moves back and forth on the East-West continuum, so he is more attuned on the subject of identity e.g. women who put on veil or unveiled in Snow, his other novel.

We too in some small way, assumed multiple identities every day. Even if we don’t want to, people still put us in a box, a number and a place in line. NEXT.

Now serving G24 at window number 9.

Please punch in your last 4 digits.

Don’t stand too close to the vehicle etc….

So many web sites, so many log on ID‘s.

Avatars and photos. Inner and outer circles.

No wonder at times, we feel neurotic.

Split identities. Being one thing online and another off-line.

And yet another when we are utterly alone, with a clock or a cross on the wall.

Who are you? Who am I? The color of my skin? The pronunciation of my name?

Or the size of my bank account? If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad (sings Cheryl Crow). I hope tonight I don’t have to wish I were my former self. It had its own set of problems back then. Just as now. So just live out the present self. I like it. I like my becoming self. Who else can put up with me besides myself? Wife comes and goes, for no reason at all. It’s me who has to negotiate with my restless self (and muscles) to get some sleep. In restless dream I walk alone,..

Third place, third screen, third world

Known as the third place (away from home and work), Starbucks did not stop after opening up in Forbidden City, China.

It has just opened for business in Vietnam (where the I-phone, our third screen – after TV and desktop – recently made a stirring appearance).

Vietnam young consumer segment and older generations with French-cafe habit are low-hanging fruit.

It will have to acquire prime real estate and make an inroad into tourist centers, or M&A with existing Viet-Thai International who operates Highland coffee chain.

Either way, the WiFi Third Place is here in once Third World., Cheryl Crow‘ s pipe-in music (if it makes you happy, and why the hell are you so sad).  After all, Hard Rock cafe has beaten Starbucks to the punch.  Now the hard part is how to translate those “tall ice latte” into Vietnamese.

Those slim bodies are ready to put on some weight.  Soon, location-based promotion will pop up on those I-phones, showing tourists where to get a foamy caffeine fix. It’s no longer Third World but where ever there is a Third Place with Third Screen, that’s home.

No need for coded song (White Christmas) to launch an evacuation. Just stay put for the next Cheryl Crow’s spin on an old Carpenter’s song “While life goes on around him everywhere he’s playing solitaire”. Third Place, third screen, anywhere.