My Igloo home

Recently I moved into a new flat in the Wynberg area; I have never lived in a place as cold as this flat is. Some days I can hardly sit at the desk to do assignments because it feels like my fingers will freeze and break. I have been using more than one pair of socks and the hot water bottle has been a good friend. Winter jackets and gloves are being used inside the house often. Inside the flat it is actually colder than outside!

 

Today I found out the reason for all that cold. Apparently there is a river running underneath the building! Now it actually makes a lot of sense since there is a little river/pond garden like area in the middle of the building. I just always thought that it was part of the landscaping, not an actual river.

 

Well, I guess we learn something new every day, now “check if there is a river running underneath the building” has made it to my list of “house search criteria”.

Conventional is a good fallback position isn’t it?

Well, I guess it depends on what you wish to achieve. If it is the ordinary, then “yes, it is”, but if you want to have excellence then if you go conventional you are going the wrong way.

In order to be great sacrifices need to be made one way or another. People who achieve great things have less or no “what ifs” in their lives because they tried the utmost to take the opportunity when it was presented to them in their lives.

However, they don’t just sit and wait for the opportunity to fall into their laps.  They will go after them by getting ready for when the opportunity comes, preparing themselves in every possible way they can. At the end of the day “success is when preparation and opportunity meet”.

You cannot chase two rabbits at the same time

Sometimes we want everything but trying to run after everything can sometimes get you nothing because you won’t be able to run fast enough in all directions, just like chasing two rabbits at the same time.

For that reason it is important to know what your priorities are. Know what you want most and be capable of letting go of something else that you want in order to get to the one that is most important.

We must always strive to work for everything we want, but knowing what you want the most and having a back-up plan in case you can’t have it all will allow you to at least have something rather than nothing; hopefully this something will be the thing you want most.

Surviving PR Btech

I may still have a few months to go until I have completed my Btech but I believe I can already give some tips for surviving Btech to the 2012 class, especially the crazy part-time people who are doing all the subjects in one year like I am. So here goes:

1. Get a BlackBerry. You will definitely need it and it will save you a lot of airtime and Internet costs.

2. Ask questions (and take notes while doing so) until you are sure of what you are meant to do or otherwise you may confuse yourself.

3. Plan and organise. Very, very important! Assignments cannot be done the night before.

4. Have a calendar. Do not only mark it with the due dates of assignments, but also the nights you are planning to work on them.

5. Have an assignment folder. Have a dedicated folder with the assignment briefs in order of due date. For those with no brief, a page with the title will do.

6. Colour code. I am a visual person so colour coding is very effective. Each subject has a colour assigned and I use this colour on the calendar, for emails, in the assignment folder, etc.

7. Have paper. Lots of it! You will probably print more than you printed throughout the whole of the National Diploma (this also means that you must be prepared to read a lot!).

8. Exercise at least once a week so you can stretch your body. Even if it means waking up early on a Saturday morning. It will do you more good than sleeping late.

9. Get a massage. Get one at least once a term. Carrying all that paper around doesn’t help your shoulder muscles.

10. Think outside the box. You are a Btech student now. Be creative but always with reference.

11. Social life. Forget it! You do not have one. The closest you will get to a social life is when you are meeting your fellow students for group assignments. But always remember that when November comes it will be worth it!

Changing schedules

After almost four years studying part-time I will be moving to full-time classes in two weeks time (29^th August) for the final nine weeks of University.

 

It feels weird to think of being in class during the day to tell you the truth. I have been used to working during the day and then going to class in the evenings and now I’ll be doing it the other way around. I actually think that I’m more awake during the evenings than in the mornings. lol. I guess I will get used to it, plus there is a bonus of sleeping late on a Friday J

 

I will definitely miss my part-time peeps but I guess it will be nice to meet new people and in a certain way visit what it would have been like to have gone to University straight from High school.

“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you only have one idea” (Alain)

What this statement means is that when a person has only one idea this person is at risk of just seeing things in that one way, becoming obsessed with that one idea and not seeing a world of opportunities that are available.

 

It is great to have a focus or a goal in life, but having only one can be dangerous. Not only because of the risk of obsession but also because if that one idea does not become a reality, one may end up with nothing at all.

 

We need to have a career goal, a personal goal, a community goal and for each goal more than one idea on how to achieve it. We also need to be flexible with our goals and ideas so we don’t get stuck at a dead-end trying to make an idea that will never be successful happen.

 

I think that the more ideas you have the more you get it.  It is almost like pedalling a bike, when going from a standstill (no ideas), then the first pedalling (first idea), the, as you gain speed it becomes more difficult to stop than to keep on going.

 

We all ride our bicycles at our own speed, the important thing is to keep on riding and gaining speed.

Communication in the information age

I was thinking the other day how funny it is that we are in the information age and each day there are more ways to communicate and less attention is being given to what is actually being communicated. It is almost as if everybody reads the headlines but nobody reads the articles.

 

Miscommunication is so common and it made me think about being in the information age. It is indeed a time in which information is everywhere but not necessarily a time in which people are well informed.

 

People don’t have the time to read and observe all that is been said all around them and they end up losing even more time by trying to figure out what is going on while hearing bits and pieces rather than if they had just read or paid attention to it properly in the first place.

 

Have you figured out the second head fake?

  “It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.” Randy Pausch

 

I am a huge believer in the above statement. I think that the energy you put out into the world will always come back to you, maybe not through the same channels or straight away, but it will.

 

But it is not only for this reason that it is important to live life in a positive manner. It is also important to have dreams. Dreams can come true if we really want them to. As Pausch said in his last lecture, the walls (obstacles) are there just to keep those who don’t want things badly enough from getting to them. If it is your dream you will want it badly enough.

 

So dream away and go chasing after them. Live fully and live well to bring good karma into your life.  What goes around comes around.

Something to think about

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pine.

Albert Pine is so right on his statement. It is actually funny, isn’t it?  Particularly if you think that nowadays people seem to care more about what they do for themselves than what they do for others. Taking Pine’s quote into consideration one could say that people nowadays want to be forgotten.

I guess that nobody really wants to be forgotten or remembered for negative reasons. We all want to be remembered for our good qualities.  In order for this to happen we need to touch other people lives in a positive way.

There is another quote, this time by John Bunyan that says, “You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you”.  I guess when you do something for somebody who can never repay you, you will become immortal for that person or that community.

How hard is it to follow instructions?

I guess it is all dependent on the introduction to the task, the sender and the receiver of the instruction as it is in any kind of communication. I must say that sometimes it can be frustrating giving an instruction in detail and not getting the results that you so obviously should get.

I guess that when instructions are not followed the fault lies on both sides, more on one side than the other but always both sides. In order to have instructions followed effectively the sender must consider their audience, speak in clear language, try to make the instruction as comprehensible as possible, ask the receiver if he understood the instruction and also try to put it into context.

There are things to be considered by the receiver such as asking questions until you understand the instruction completely, do not try to do it if you think it is “something like that” and to make sure you know what you are doing.

Something that I have learnt and found to be very efficient and effective in one-on-one communication is to ask the receiver to repeat the instruction back to me. It seems to make the instruction stick in the mind of the receiver.

If the above doesn’t work, it could be an attitude problem; the receiver understands but just does not want to do it and this can be for various reasons that are very complex.