Feeling alienated?

"Life is hard, and then you die."
~Woody Allen

Conclusion: Enjoy life. =)



Humans have a higher nature which...includes the need for meaningful work, for responsibility, for creativeness, for being fair and just, for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well.

~Abraham Maslow
(that dude you faintly remember from your psychology or business class =))


*RELATED POST (maybe): Generation X by Coupland

"Creative Collaboration" article excerpts

I looooved Cultural Studies as an undergraduate student. Now that I'm at a stage where I have to figure out how to convert my nerdy passions into "bread and butter" (or in my case, rice, cuz I'm Asian), I've developed an interest in organizational culture. I find that many of the rhetorical stuff I learned concerning culture, politics, society, blah blah, are applicable in the business environment. I just have to develop a stronger nose for business, then combine it with my humanist (idealist?) background to develop insights that utilize "the best of both worlds," so to speak.

(I did major in business, by the way, but dropped out of it because my interest in humanities and social sciences was too strong to ignore. Besides, I didn't like my classmates in business school. And yeah, I sucked in Accounting. There, I said it.)

Anyway, here are excerpts from an excellent article, a case study about company cultures, published in a trade magazine. The article's title is "Unleashing the Power of Creative Collaboration: A Look at Three Real-World Stories About Human Potential." Here's the author.

Communicators are helping people interact and connect with each other. They have, in a literal sense, become architects. They are using their expertise to not only design events and speeches...but also to help design office environments that encourage collaboration.

...

Success in today's global economy boils down to the single, universally recognized objective of getting more for less--with one exception: human resources. Human labor is not a disposable commodity. It is a unique creative resource for the future of the organization.

...

We're not talking about money now. We're talking about liberating untapped potential, about energizing employees and engaging their commitment and enthusiasm.

Give people a chance to grow and they will blossom. Entrust them with greater authority and they will take on greater responsibility. Educate them to understand the changing business dynamics and they will make excellent business decisions. Encourage them to collaborate and they will amaze you with their inventiveness.

If you're further interested in this article (for educational, non-commercial purposes), I can lend you a copy (as long as copyright geeks won't sue me for it). Just leave a comment or contact me.

How good "Aha!" feels!

You know how good it feels when you reach a "Eureka" ("Aha!") moment of enlightenment?

A couple of nights ago, I was reading my back issues (from as far back as 2003!) of subscription to a trade magazine. In an old issue, I read this case study of something. And then all of a sudden, that moment of "ting!" (sound of a bell ring), as though I were in a comic strip and a bulb lit up above my head.

My heart started beating faster. Ideas raced wild inside my head; I could hardly contain my thoughts (and the delight that accompanied them). I shivered a bit; my hands and feet felt cold. In that serene yet ungodly hour of the stark night (or morning), I let out a crazy laugh. It was like cerebral orgasm. It was a moment of intense satisfaction. I was so inspired. I kissed that page of the magazine. I said to myself, "Yes! This is what I want to do!"

Since then, I've been waking up each morning with extra energy, a fierce fire in my belly, a warm glow to my soul, a peaceful clarity of mind. I can feel my mind, body and spirit coming together as a strong, coherent whole. My vision is clear and almost everything in my life feels right. All of a sudden, all my regrets and moments of shame--the seemingly unbearable mistakes from the past and all--fell in a proper place, like necessary pieces to a tricky puzzle. I can now see the bigger picture, and I like what I'm seeing. I've found my calling once again! What an incredible time to be young and mature and alive!

I love my life!

...
* Image Source and Credit: "Joy," found here.
* What is a "Eureka moment," you wonder? Here's a funny story behind it. Archimedes is said to have "coined" the famous word, usually uttered in flashes of discovery and inspiration.

Welcome, 2007!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

To welcome a new year of blogging, I'm announcing my new, repurposed blog: From Hippie to Yuppie (formerly called "Books + Worms + Isms"). I'm expanding it to house not just my "literary geekeries" (book-related rants and reviews), but also my career-related musings. I find it necessary to do this as I make a full transition from a New-Agey, Left-leaning Ivory Tower spoiled brat into a career-oriented young professional. It should be interesting as I graduate from the lofty world of Social and Critical Theory and now face the realities of "making a living" as I further integrate myself into the corporate world to pursue my career.

From learning to be literate to learning to be corporate. Damn, I have an interesting year ahead of me. Wishing you one, too! =)

For the uninitiated:
* A "yuppie" is a young urban professional. (details)
* And what's a hippie, you ask? Here.
(I'm a "hodgepodge hippie," by the way. =) I've appropriated and do live so many of the liberal ethos, politics and styles associated with The '60s Counterculture.)

Very Nice Commercial! (On branding and change and markets and stuff)

Remember my favourite TV commercial? I gave a quick semiotic analysis of it in a previous blog. Looking at the ad from a more businessy point of view, though, I think the ad is brilliant because:

• It seamlessly marshals the growth of a brand, thus effecting the company's overall marketing strategy (which I'm sure involves maximizing its reach in a multicultural market). Through the ad, Tim Horton's manages to welcome the changing boundaries of Canadian identity while still reaffirming the good old "Canadian tradition" branding that has made the company successful. I.e., it moves the meaning of "tradition" from its old "white culture" connotations to embrace something more current, more multicultural.

How do you introduce subtle (but important!) changes to a brand without upsetting the "old tradition" aura that has made it successful? I.e., how do you modernize something without alienating the old? How do you do it in a way that's still believable to your target markets, old and new?

White food (Tim Hortons) + Hockey (Canada, eh?) + Ethnic faces (new, multicultural Canada) + Tradition/Nostalgia for the good old days (sepia tones, flashbacks, historical allusions) = Seamless blending of old and new. "Old Canada" market segment not alienated and "New Canada" market addressed and incorporated. Nice.

I'm no seasoned marketing/branding/change-mgmt pro, but I know that introducing changes can be a tricky situation. It could spell either success or disaster. The "business-minded go-getter" part of me is revelling in the dandy nuances of this Tim Horton's ad. To me, it represents some smart branding, marketing, and change strategies because it has managed to resolve those questions quite well.

*A note: On the Change Strategy side, Tim Horton's has been acquired by American-owned Wendy's, and therefore it's arguably not a Canadian company anymore, as corporate ownership has been transferred to American hands. Yet, Tim Ho still manages to hold on--seamlessly, may I add--to its Canadianism (the core of its brand). Its brand-appropriation strategies (amidst ownership change) have been executed so well that I just have to blog it off. =)

**Readers, please note comment below (re: Tim Horton's ownership).

...

Merry Christmas, Fellow Bloggers!

PS: I'm in the process of rebranding this blog... it'll be out in New Year! =)

Blogtrix Reloaded

I will be rebranding this blog so that it's not just confined to my "literary geekeries" (i.e., bookworm-related venting). I will be expanding it to make it more of a career blog, and shall include my career-related mullings, my attempt(s) to crystallize my goals, searching for inspiration/motivation, sharing relevant articles, etc.

I'll be changing the blog's name and tagline... suggestions for a new blog name welcome! Name has to be short, snappy, and well captures the aspirations/ambitions of someone who's still searching for her place in the world.

Thank y'all!

The Pressure to be Exotic (article)

"Ethnic Girl" image source

Writer Azita Osanloo discusses the pressure emerging writers face in a marketplace that increasingly favors memoir over traditional narrative fiction.

Read article...>>>

Who do you write for? That is the question.

Here's an article by Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most internationally celebrated novelist and this year's winner of the Nobel prize for literature.

Readers with interest in postcolonial literature would appreciate Pamuk's observations on the jagged link between nationalism and writing in a global era.

Who do you write for? That is the question (excerpts)

by Orhan Pamuk
(Link to the source article)

To understand the significance of this question, we must remember that the rise of the novel as an art form coincided with the emergence of the nation state.

Balzac, Dickens, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy wrote for the emerging middle classes of their nations. Behind their narrative voices one can sense an observer troubled by the nation's state of health. By the end of the 19th century, to read and write novels was to join a national discussion that was closed to the outside.

In the age of global media, literary writers are no longer people who need address only the middle classes in their own countries, but people who can address - and address immediately - readers of "literary novels" all the world over.



Today's literary readers await a new book by Gabriel García Márquez, J.M. Coetzee or Paul Auster the same way their predecessors awaited the new Dickens novel - as the latest news. The world readership for literary novelists such as these is far larger than the readership their books reach in their countries of origin.

Writers write for their ideal reader, for their loved ones, for themselves or for no one. All this is true. But it is also true that today's literary writers also write for those who read them. From this we might infer that today's literary writers are gradually writing less for their own national majorities (who do not read them) than for the small minority of literary readers in the world who do.

So the needling questions, and the suspicions about these writers' true intentions, reflect a disquiet about this new cultural order that has come into being over the past 30 years.

The people who find it most disturbing are the representatives of non- Western nations and their cultural institutions. Crisis-ridden non-Western states that are anxious about national identity - and reluctant to face up to the black marks in their histories - are suspicious of creative novelists who view history and nationalism from a non-national perspective.

In their view, novelists who do not write for national audiences are exoticizing that country for foreign consumption and inventing problems that have no basis in reality.

There is a parallel suspicion in the West, where many readers believe that local literatures should remain local, pure and true to their national roots: Their secret fear is that a writer who addresses an international readership and draws from traditions outside his own culture will lose his authenticity.

It is because all writers have a deep desire to be authentic that even after all these years I still love to be asked for whom I write. But while a writer's authenticity does depend on his ability to open his heart to the world in which he lives, it depends just as much on his ability to understand his own changing position in that world.

Link to the original article: here

Goes well with comfort food!

Finished reading THE UNDOMESTIC GODDESS by Sophie Kinsella [book synopsis here]. Here's my quick, half-baked review:

A bit too literal, too commercial. It kinda reminds me of the "pocketbooks" I used to read in high school -- you know, those predictable love stories aimed at wetting young girls' panties. Boy-meets-girl...then-live-happily-ever-after kind of stuff.

A bit too literal, too commercial. It kinda reminds me of the "pocketbooks" I used to read in high school -- you know, those predictable love stories aimed at wetting young girls' panties.

Only this time, the story is geared towards a more mature and sophisticated audience: twenty- to thirty-something "yuppie" women. (Indeed, main character Samantha Sweeting is a lawyer who, at only 29, is up for partnership at a prestigious law firm in London. She's witty, attractive and ambitious. A high-powered gal, yay!)

I'm relatively new to the "chick lit" genre, so I hope I'm not making it sound like this is a bad or shallow book. Actually, it's NOT bad -- not bad at all! I mean, if I wanted something thought-provoking or depressing, why would I pick a bright yellow book with cutesy fonts and illustrations, right?

Truth is, THE UNDOMESTIC GODDESS is very charming and at times hilarious. It's perfect for when you just want to relax, curled up in a cozy couch with a breezy book on your lap and a cup of hot choc within arm's reach. Goes well with comfort food. A cheerful read indeed!


Quotable from the book:

You don't always have to plan your life. Sometimes it's enough to just know what to do next.

(or something like that... sorry, I can't find the passage, so I'm merely paraphrasing it here, hehe!)

Synopsis >>>