a new mantra - an old blog

hello blog,

it's so nice to have you back! now I can actually do some old-style blogging again, and not only post those limited status updates and links on fb, although I like the way it just captures a picture from the website I'm linking to, because that saves me the worry of wondering whether I respect all rights of the original creator of content, but hey, in case I'm disrespecting it, please accept my apologies, and please know that it wasn't done with any malicious or commercial intent.

So here comes, a new mantra. Because I've recently learnt, that no matter my past achievements, I have to prove myself over and over and over again, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing, just exhausting, but not bad.

via Sole on fb

Test

Testing a blogging App :)

Test 2

trying to post again :)

2nd try

This time from another app

1st try

Trying to post from my mobile since I can't post anymore via blogger


- Mobile post

just push play

Soundtrack: Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

Soundtrack: The Gossip - Heavy Cross

Soundtrack: MGMT - Kids

Just that sequence of songs was playing in some disco in Munich a few days (weeks?) ago. Time is passing, it’s accelerating. I need to find strategies to grow roots in a different place again. Zurich is a hostile place. It doesn’t want me to find a flat. And while all the signs are pointing to stability, I haven’t wrapped my head around it just yet. Trying hard to live life consciously. What helps? Friends, talks, train rides, staring out the window, staring into the air, breathe, breathe, breathe, actively discovering Zurich, checking out places, events, hanging out, doing the „I live here“ thing: shopping for groceries, going for a drink, walking home, buying the tram ticket, sitting at the new favourite coffee place, go to parts of the city I haven’t been to, doing other stuff than just work. Remembering: my life’s best lived as a sequence of stability and change periods, I thrive when being faced with challenges, my two top feel-good strenghts are curiosity and appreciation of beauty and excellence.

So hey, I put my skinny pants (so cheap, so comfortable, so from Cork ;-)) and my sneakers on and the world is mine again.

***

Resolutions for 2010 – be well, curious, and keep growing

• do something passionate every week
• go visit at least one far-away country where I have friends
• continue taking care of myself (sports, food, wellness)

I completely missed my resolutions for 2009, but if there were any I think they were patience and discipline. But it’s hard to say whether I reached them because they’re so undefined. I think 2009 was still about completing the ones from 2008:

• taking a spanish grammar course – tick (DELE Nivel Intermedio)
• dance – tick (reached 3rd poisition for swiss championships with a great gymnastics team)
• learn to play the guitar – still on the list :)

- ***

There’s a new category of „friends“, the kind of acquaintances from work-context that I probably wouldn’t go have a drink with, but it feels good to have some familiar faces and funny personalities around at those work-context dinners and drinks and other events. Yay to managing a coherent conversation after a few glasses of wine.

***

Ideas for passionate things: because they charge my batterie

• read a book
• go to a networking, entrepreneurship, music, design event
• sit in a café and read the newspaper
• cook a big meal
• decorate our flat
• write a birthday card
• light a candle
• help out on the farm

***

I guess it’s true what they say: The difference between the people who write a book, and the one’s who say „oh, I could have written that book“, is that the first ones actually did write it. Hm.

***

Why is it that when it’s about receiving people at an event, or booking hotels, or getting coffee, it’s always the „girls“ - women actually, and respectable, succesful ones at that - who get asked to do it? That’s how close we are to real equality. Then again, I don’t think I’d like to abolish gender roles completely. Especially if I can’t have my „I’m a cute young girl with a crazy cool background and I’m rocking my career, b******! Yeah, now you’re looking surprised“-bonus. So of course, gender roles or prejudices will never cease to exist, so they better work for my advantage than against me. Plus in the end, what probably worries me more is to make sure I can actually deliver on the expectations put on me. Phu... tomorrow’s another day for that.

***

written 19.11.09, when there's no internet connection but space to think

Beauty, Inspiration

Soundtrack: Sony Advert - Soundville

Read Director Juan Cabral's comments on the making of here.

And another one by the same director, aren't those bunnies cute? Especially the little yellow one at 0:35 :)

Link

I love this city

And while I'm discovering the little corners and places around Zurich that are not about LV-bags or big cars or self-conscious "Szenies" (hm, how to translate that, maybe hipsters?) C. posts this link on fb about the website (and the blog) of a genevan girl that collects cute shops, cafés or other places and presents them by neighbourhood. Makes me miss Geneva a lot, places like "La Sixième Heure" a café/secondhand furniture shop where you can have an old-style hot chocolate and then buy the cup if you like it, or the chair you're sitting on. Or "Les Recyclables", a secondhand bookstore where I love to browse through the english-section and then start reading the book I bought while having coffee and homemade cakes... awwww... I think I have a goal for the next three months, start discovering places I like in Zurich, be it like them or different, be it about the people or the environment or the objects.

the one life that we've got

Soundtrack: Imogen Heap - Wait It Out

indeed, time heals everything...

Wow.

It's been a month since I last blogged. Wow. I think I've rarely gone that much time without blogging and I suspect it's due to two things: 1. the abundance of time spent in front of a computer and 2. the lack of time spent on a train.

In the last month I just happened to move to Zurich, subscribe for a 10km run, prepare an Apéro for 30 people because my parents were on holidays and welcomed Sheer Khan's second round of babies for this year, kitten therapy all over again :)

Oh and yesterday I did Zurich-Lausanne retour, enjoying the beauty of the landscape, and the unmistakeable signs of autumn.

Inspirational reading for today

"I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try."

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

Read the entire speech here.

If I was in Zurich tomorrow and had the afternoon off...

I'd first go visit the lifefair.2009, the exposition for sustainability, where restaurants, magazines, environmental protection organisations, the airport (?), networks, tourist offices, tofu producers, university institutes and the administration and many more are presenting their products and services or maybe their efforts in the area of sustainability.

And at 5pm I'd go to the Traktor Getränke-Apéro (Info here) at the "Day of the open wine bottle" - that's what it's actually called, I'm not kidding! :)) to enjoy some of their swiss made organic smoothies.

(to the right is one of their redesigned bottles, the labels are really cute!)

Or, alternatively, I'd go first to Traktor, then to the Opening Event of Lifefair on "Green Business" at 7pm (subscribe here) and keep the exposition itself for Saturday or Sunday :)

It's time to move to Zurich I think...

for inspiration

Ashoka's New Fellows Annoucement:

		New Fellows Announcement August 24, 2009

Please join us in celebrating the election of these leading social entrepreneurs, elected as Ashoka Fellows from December 2008 to April 2009. Read on to learn about their system-changing and innovative work. HUMAN RIGHTS Alito Alessi, Mexico, Senior Fellow Eliminating prejudices and misconceptions towards disabled people through mixed-abilities dance that enables expression for all people. Read more here. Tasneem Siddiqui, Pakistan, Senior Fellow Overhauling the traditional housing scheme by granting former slumdwellers access to affordable and developed plots of land. Read more here. Asad Danish, Afghanistan, Fellow Bringing harmony to war-torn Afghanistan and the Pushtoon tribal belt in Pakistan by encouraging a culture of reading and increasing the literacy rate. Read more here. Junior Smart, UK, Fellow Providing new avenues of reintegration for prisoners through a peer mentoring system led by ex-offenders. Read more here. See the complete New Fellows Annoucement with people working in the areas of Health, Economic Development, Learning/Education, Civic Engagement and Environment.

Eat Real. Eat Local.

So until I get that great name for a food blog that isn't taken yet I'll just post about things related to food here :)

Like this initiative by Hellmanns, a canadian mayonnaise producer. Weird, I know. Why would they care about good food? They have a pretty ok explanation over here (click on the jar on the bottom). While I don't know their motivations, I do like the points they're making in the video about the amount of food imported into Canada and the benefits of local produce. Watch it yourself:

Hellmann’s - It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

Insights at 8am

Alain de Botton - A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

That's why I love TEDtalks, because talks like the one from Alain de Botton suddenly give me a new insight, a different perspective to look at things and because I'm made to think differently.

Love his thoughts on how we have replaced god with nature, to worship something non-human. Oh, and his explanations of "snobbery":

(...) A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are, that is snobbery. And the dominant kind of snobbery that exists nowadays is job snobbery. You encounter it within minutes at a party when you get that famous, iconic question of the early 21th century, "What do you do?". And according to how you answer that question, people are either incredibly delighted to see you or look at their watch and make their excuses." (...)

No wonder we care about our careers so much :)

(...) So what I want to argue for, is not, that we should give up on our ideas of success, but we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas, and make sure that we own them, that we are truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough, not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want, and find out at the end of the journey, that it isn’t in fact what you wanted all along. (...)

Alles Neu

Soundtrack: Peter Fox - Alles Neu

if you see a crazy person in a blue and white striped shirt dancing on the streets of Zurich, iPod in her ears, it might be me :)

ya, I know, I'm kinda late with liking Peter Fox, but what the heck. Check out the video, especially the last 40 seconds :)

"Nur noch konkret reden, gib mir ein ja oder nein.
Schluss mit Larifari, ich lass all die alten Faxen sein."

Ever heard about Edupunks? :)

"The challenge is not to bring technology into the classroom, he points out. The millennials, with their Fa.ce.book and their cell phones, have done that. The challenge is to capture the potential of technology to lower costs and improve learning for all."

Read the whole articel at Fast Company:

How Web-Savvy Edupunks Are Transforming American Higher Education

And the challenge is to get swiss schools and universities to see how technology is not substituting a teacher but transforming learning.

things that caught my attention

are now often posted as links on my fb profile, don't know why, it just happened like this and I think it has to do with the automatic reaction that comes when posting a link: a selection of thumbnails to choose from, a few lines from the website the link goes to and some space for me to comment. The downside of this? I don't post these things on my blog, and therefore will never look at them again. Gonna change that :)