A380 Roll-in-Event 19.5.2010

Emotion, speechless. That is why I don't say more.

It seems that I am prolific?

I have received an award, a big one from A Lady's Life and I consider this a great honor. If I am blogging since 4 years now, she has started much later than me but she has a huge output. Putting me in troubles because often I lack time to comment on all her posts. And that is a pity. Because between serious issues and funny posts, you will find a wealth of things to please you. She is really prolific.

Now, I have to pass this award on.

The rules for this award stipulte that:
Each Prolific Blogger Must:
1. Pass it on to at least 7 other deserving prolific bloggers.
2. Link to the blog from which he/she acquired the award.
3. Link back to this post which explains the origin and motivation for the award.
4. Visit this post and add his/her name in Mr. Linky so we may all get to know the other fellow winners.

Now, I am at a loss. I have to pass the award to seven other deserving bloggers. As I think it would be silly to just pass it back to the people who gave it and received it, I will take some time to fulfill the 4 obligations.

But I will come back. With, hopefully, good choices. And very soon.

They got it!

My great Lufthansa received its newest aircraft.

The huge Airbus A 380. Let me fly in it.

Soon!

Bullshit and Rubbish

Today I am in a nasty mood. That is perhaps because I am to "kind-hearted". My boss says I am like that. She might be right. The thing is, when you do my kind of work, you need to become a bit hard, but you never should "close" your heart. To be continously exposed to the suffering of people needs a balance of hard and soft. But for me, the "soft" is much bigger. And more important. I am fully in my work. And since so many years. And I have come across a lot of rubbish.

I mean rubbish of words and talk.

In the last weeks, we had a lot of visitors. All kinds, donors, international agencies and others. For various reasons they come and see what we all do here. When they come, there is always a briefing for them. Of course, they will be hearing situation reports with figures that are often wrong. Or you have to listen to endless presentations on a subject nobody is interested in. And when the visitors ask questions the often get useless answers because the question was not understood.

And also, they get beautifying answers just to give a good impression. In my field the question is often asked: "Do the people sell the food you give them?" Or: "Are you sure that the people receiving the food are the right people?". Many say "No" for the first question and "Yes" for the second. And this is rubbish. People sell some of the food, they have some needs like medicine and they have no cash. So they trade a bit of their food. And there are people who are getting food and should not and you have people who should get food and don't. But these are things you cannot avoid when cater for hundreds of thousand of people.

I don't like when talk is rubbish. But I frankly hate when I am bullshitted.

There was one visitor who came, stayed a week and came again and always said how terrible the situation was and that assistance to the people will be needed for a long time and that he will recommend that funding will continue to be made available. For us to learn a few weeks later that funding will stop.

I understand that there were ecomomic and political reasons and that the situation has improved and is now a "post crisis" one. Of course! Bullshit!

Is it true that the situation has improved? A family returned to their place of origin. Comfortably sitting on chairs, plastic ones. They were back home. Under a tree. Because they could not go to their house. One meter behind the tree was a yellow band along their land. With red signs attached to it. It said: Danger, Mines.

Rubbish and Bullshit.

Canadians, Kiss me!

And I hope that the two first Canadians to do so are "Baron" and "Lady's Life". Today the Swiss Federal Railways announced the order of new trains for the amount of 1.8 billion USD. And where did they shop? In Canada. The order went to Bombardier.

We will have beautiful double decker trains.

You can see that Bombardier also makes airplanes.

On the lower deck, second class will look like this.

And on the upper deck, I will travel first class.

Congratulations, Canada, and thank you, Swiss Federal Railways, for this good choice.

Multitasking

I know a young lady. A charming one. Fresh, witty, funny. With a heart that cares for people. A heart that bleeds when she sees the suffering of people. When she is around, there is no "Sound of Music". But her laughter is like "Sound of Music". She is British. Well educated. And speaks English with a perfect accent. And she has a huge sense of humor. She is black. So, I told her when I met her the first time: "You are British, you say, but the United Kingdom not being known as a place that is very sunny, may I ask you were you got your suntan from?". She burst out laughing and told me where her roots were.

Once she was on field trip and we had breakfast together. She was preparing her breakfast drink: A little sachet of Nescafé to be torn open, another one with Coffee Mate, also to be torn open and a spoon of sugar. During the same time she was talking to her husband with her mobile phone. Squeezed between her ear and her shoulder. When she had finished, I told her that she had created her first stress situation of the day. Smiling, she answered: "Oh, but I am multitasking". Aha!

I started to think about this. And then I looked up "Wikipedia" for the definition of multitasking:

Human multitasking is the performance by an individual of appearing to handle more than one task at the same time. The term is derived from computer multitasking. An example of multitasking is listening to a radio interview while typing an email. Some believe that multitasking can result in time wasted due to human context switching and apparently causing more errors due to insufficient attention. Other research illustrates our brains are capable dealing with certain 'dual multiple tasks' at the same time.[citation needed]

One sentence struck me: "Some believe that multitasking.......". I believe strongly that multitasking is not possible. Just be it the sheer combination of tasks. A farmer, for instance, cannot milk his cows and drive his tractor at the same time. Or, look at the picture below:

Apparently a perfect multitasking work place. You can work on your computer whilst you talk on your phone. So, you perform two tasks at the same time. And whilst you do that, a third task might have to be done. But as soon as that task is completed, you will be reduced to singletasking. Because you will need both of your hands to complete the third task.

So, I am not really convinced about multitasking. Unless you revert to the method as shown in the poster above.

But again, I doubt it. Because if you use this method, you will be able to perform just one task: Trying not to go crazy.

Jazz on the 5th, Nr. 24

A jewel. A short one. "Bugle Call Rag" performed by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra. Pure swing.

Lovely sounds

It is so nice to travel in this world and having good music on one's iPod. I have good music, at least for my taste. Over the years I "collected" from various sources, online, from other "machines" and even mobile phones with bluetooth transmission. But the best way is still from a CD. Because you can choose to put the whole CD or only certain songs on your player. A few month ago I came across something that lets me put the whole CD on my iPod: Putumayo.

It is a company that specializes in world music.

They are absolutely great. The CD's are thematic.

The choice of music is fantastic. And it is music you can listen to. Every track, on every CD.

They take you to regions of this world and

have CD's dedicated to countries.

Visit Putumayo. You will be astounded by the styles, types and varieties they offer. You can also listen to samples of the songs. And they are on the move all the time. To know what Putumayo is up to, I have put their blog into my favorites.

I am sure you will like what they have. And what you will hear.

This post looks like an ad for them. Somehow it is, but Putumayo is not aware about it. And I simply wanted to share this experience with you.