A latest research conducted by Olivia Joules & Co has conclusively proved that individuals who work from home more than 2 days a weeks are likely to perform better in mentally challenging and high competitive Channel 4 programme - Countdown.
So what exactly causes such a dramatic improvement in one of the most cognitive abilities, we asked one of survey respondents "I set an alarm for 15.16 everyday which gives me just enough to make a nice cuppa tea and get pen and paper ready for the programme to begin"
We have also known that many companies have approached Olivia Joules & Co to discuss these results to improve productivity amongst knowledge workers. This might even lead to a petition at the Downing Street as workers demand more time to work from home.
Forget game rooms in the offices, its the a cup of 'cha' and countdown which are the latest in human resources textbooks.
Human Over Population is a delicate subject.
We are a highly reproductive and adaptable race. We rabbit even more than the rabbits do.
Millions of people around the world live in abject poverty, children die of malnutrition and malaria, women sufffer from poor sanitation facilities and die during child birth, even men have little to look forward to.
And we are aware of this, me and you.
We would even dig into our pockets for £2 a week required to help these people.
Developmental economics theories postulate that better allocation of resources, educating our populations, adopting urban lifestyles are to be our best attempts at eliminating poverty from the world.
But perhaps, one of the best way to address these issues is legalization of Gay Rights around the world. Liberalisation of Gay Rights is not only important from a human rights point of view but also from a purely economic perspective too.
So, at the next Climate Change convention, perhaps Gordon Brown and his allies should discuss addition of this to the treaty.
It's the only way forward.
Since I have been feeling ugly recently, I have taken to extreme measures of not talking to anybody directly.
Whilst e-mail is my preferred method of communication, I am also online on three different instant messengers for work related issues in case somebody needs my valuable assistance.
I am almost sheepishly staring at my screen so I dont have to show my full frontal view of a spotty chin to anybody who walks past my desk.
To an extent, I have also been trying to overhear any noise in the tea/coffee area before stepping in and surreptitiously going to the toilets to see if my hair too greasy and my skin too bad.
In the extreme circumstances when I really have to go to speak to somebody about work then I have a scarf around my chin - where the greatest concentration of my spots is to be found.
And while I find that all this works, I am also beginning to find out why Librarians, Geeks and others of the socially awkward job situations are so - mostly because people are spotty. That's probably why you never find a socially awkward beautician for example....
Given the frequency of Airline Crashes recently, I am beginning to feel that it is in fact a conspiracy of the Environmentalists/Governments/Train Companies to enstill a fear in people's mind so they don't fly - that way our emissions from air travel don't increase so much.
Perhaps, what we thought was an abstract in Gordon Brown's approach in tackling climate change is not abstract at all?
What do you think? Have the number of crashes scared you from flying, yet?
Hindustan Times, India's National Daily has yet again shown where it wants to be in shaping of Modern India - in a direction which leads westwards.
I am not a fascist or even a luddite. I give my humble consent to adoption of policies, practises from societies and cultures when they may infact be unavailable in our own society or be more efficient than already existing systems.
But our very own Hindustan Times has blind foldedly taken to comparing everything that does exist in India and comparing it to the west. Repeatedly you'd find news in Indian papers such as Yoga is applauded in the west, Western Scientists say that Ayurveda is good for your skin, oh ho ho, Jesus visited India and oh, lookey! even Newton got inspiration from us! Aren't we cool?
To me, India's biggest newspaper comes across as a 15-year old who is seeking validation at every step of the way whilst pretending that he has got his own opinions but in fact, he is nearly always shooting off somebody else's shoulder.
Media shapes a society. And conversely, a society consumes media. That's to say if the whole world wants to learn about Amy Winehouse's antics, Evening Standard would oblige, as would Guardian if only in the G2 section.
So there is a consumer demand for knowing our standing in the west. May be several people can't visit the west to make their own decision and perhaps in fact, they don't even want to research themselves to find out. But it's the fundamental belief in all things western are good is what Nestle's advertisement of Breast Milk Substitutes work so good that it works so well.
And instead of questioning and possibly even disproving these to our society's benefit, the Indian Media has taken the easier way to consumerism which is rife in every part of the country.
Just to site a few examples, only recently they were talking about Indian Rupees in Millions, Billions and Trillions! I don't exactly understand why because we have an equivalent of lacs (10 to the 5), crores (10 to the 7), arabs (10 to 9) and kharabs (10 to the 11). Do they fail to understand that this is in fact disadvantaging our own people by losing the basis of all human communication and even civilization - language. Is that infact their whole point?
One may argue that since they are Indian Newspapers written in English, it shoudn't be so surprising to learn their market consists of people who are infact eager to learn English. But we all know, that when vernacular press came into India it was started in English as there wasn't a common language that bound the 18 states of the country and not because they wanted to disadvantage the poor which is what the aim of these newspapers seems to be.
It's not just this example, the yearly awards for High Achieving Non-Resident Indians is another malarkey - out of the six contenders for this year's awards three of them have given up their Indian citizenship. Wouldn't it be wise to think again that these people left India a long time ago with the intention of never coming back.
Why honour them instead of somebody who is using UN money to teach people in Chennai slums? Or how about the efforts being made by some Individuals, volunteers who have gone out of their way to bring life back to people who wouldn't have dreamt it otherwise.
Is applauding an NRI another evidence to their badly formed theory that everything western is good?
One can never be sure if they even have an ulterior motive but they are not going the way they had started 60 years ago when Mahatma Gandhi heralded their first copy. So shame be upon them!
There, rant over.
A strange trend appears to have surfaced in our office after the holiday period where people went to see families and friends around the world.
Out of 12 people who went abroad either to see family or friends in their home country or otherwise on a holiday, 10 have gotten a haircut. So our otherwise shabby office is full of neat men and pretty women with their fancy and not quite so fancy haircuts.
On a business level, I see an opportunity here: 83% of people got a haircut when they went abroad. This is a Business Process (BP of the abbreviation in the title) which is already being Outsourced (and the 'O' above) without a direction from the corporates but from the individual. There's a real chance here, I tell thee.
And, belonging to a country where more than half of the rising middle class depends on the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) for their livelihoods, I think I am better placed than your average joe to take this opportunity and turn into multimillion Rupess business success.
So, after much deliberation on how this idea could be materialized I have come to the conclusion that whilst sending your head to India for a haircut is the most efficient and cost effective way of driving this business but it probably is a leeetle impractical. And therefore, my idea is that it could be implemented by the creative kinds - the kind of people who draw pictures for Threadless!. I am sure there are many budding hair cut artists, several many who can't really make it to the Tony and Guy and the kinds.
We take these budding hair dressers, and give them your photo - possibly a 3D one so they can get the feel of your hair - may be even a strand of your hair could be asked from those who don't believe in Vodoo. A description of what you would like to be done to your hair, and then voila! they could give you step by step instructions on cutting your own hair!
Although I realise it might be slightly difficult to cut your own hair, may be you could get a friend to cut your hair? It could even become a facebook application where you could rate how each of your friends cut hair?
Ok, so may be for the first few times you friend might screw up and you might look stupid but hey it's hair and they are a renewable source of beauty!
Isn't this idea excellent? Given my laziness, I doubt that I'd actually follow this idea through but in a few years, when you read about a multimillion website called www.DIYhair.com then you'd know who to give credit to.
]]>So, there was a guy at University who looked slightly weird, wore slightly weird clothes and spoke slightly weird but in my naviety, I befriended him. I spoke to him casually about classes and perhaps he took it to mean that I fancy him because FOUR years since I last saw him or spoke to him, he still keeps e-mailing me, adding me on social networking sites and sending him his birthday reminders!
Everytime I leave his e-mail unanswered I feel guilty. But I think it's the fact I exist on WAYN now that has ascertained for him that I am, in fact, still alive and he has his chance of e-mailing me.
So here goes his e-mail:
hi Olivia
I hope you are well.
What are you up to these days post uni?
I have seen you on WAYN, the social networking site?
How was your christmas? Mine went well. Get any nice presents? I got plenty of nice presents.
Have a happy new year,and send me an email soon.
Happy 2008.
Daniel
ex-<my uni>(I remember you from class in the 2002/03 academic year)
I want to reply, I want to tell him that please stop testing my patience by sending me these stupid e-mails. Earlier in the year, he had e-mailed me to say that he had become a porter at some hospital - and I wanted to reply back with no thanks for this information and wondered if I should tell him about my married life and three children alongwith 2 dogs.
But I chose to ignore in case, he goes mental at the new of my happily married life *cough*.
So this time I have chosen to reply with this:
We regret to inform you that Olivia died 2 years ago and we only just discovered this facebook account.
Sincerely,
Facebook/WAYN Admin
and its consequences get more complex the more I think about them.
Half of the fight for Climate change is to maintain the lavish, even wasteful lifestyles of Americans and Europeans, while the rest of world goes on a mad goose chase to achieve the same.
Humans are adaptable. We have come a long way from living in the caves to comfortable centrally heated homes, work places and even smoking quarters. We are survivors - we will deal with climate change just like we evolved to survive everything else that's happened in our history on this planet.
Or at least some of us will anyway. Of course, life won't be same for anyone but we WILL survive - the question is how many of us?
Food, health and shelter isn't available to most of the human population. In countries where the NHS does exist, its future looks bleak. Within a decade, we will be unable provide medical support for everyone. In the most socialist republics, post war promises of food, clothing and shelter for everyone are already diminishing.
And that makes one question is or will climate change be the only threat facing us?
How long can we get our bananas from Costa Rica, coffee from Kenya And water from France? The answer is probably infinitely for a limited population.
There are only so many people our planet can support, we have by no means exploited all its resources but perhaps climate change has now become the limiting factor.
So the fight is not to save the human species but to save developers to automise everything else when the manual labour has sunk in the Bay of Bengal.
And for that, deeply personally, I feel that the fight is just as pointless as nobody really wants to give up their lifestyles...