Of Rivers and Wild stallions

The unconscious has been explored by Freud and many other psychoanalysts. What this 'thing' is, is largely unknown - simply because we cannot hold down the unconscious and look at it. After all it is that which is beyond conscious scrutiny. Yes there are loads of theories on the goings on in the unconscious but there are no hard facts. This is simply because the unconscious is not readily open to empirical scrutiny. (I'm not talking about 'the subconscious' - and I'll not explain that further.)

But the unconscious is observable by others when it is not at all visible to the individual's own scrutiny. This is a fact stemming from the reality that we often are unable to see ourselves as others do.

I often see people reacting or not reacting to something said or done. It is the consistency of the reaction or lack of it that says something. So the unconscious can be touched - likened to putting a long stick into a pond  - the bottom of the river cannot be seen but it can be felt. Just as the stick transmits the resistance from the floor of the river to the one holding the stick, that is how the unconscious can be touched.

So too with the mind, it is the resistance to new ideas, new thinking, changes in general that tells of the unconscious. Of course, this is not to say that people do not consciously resist certain things. However, when resistance to change is seen for no logical reason or no discernable reason, that is your base of the river. The floor of the river determines to some degree the flow of water at the top.

What people say they will do often does not match what they actually do - we all know that. But I often ask myself "Why say you'd do something - commit to it - and then not do what is required?" Laziness? Sure - but that's too easy an explanation. What is more important is what produces the so-called 'laziness' - and the contour of the river's floor might determine the resistance to flow on the surface.

The unconscious is also like a wild stallion - difficult to tame. The stallion is easily spooked by events, instinctual drives, raw emotions - it knows little about logic and is not good at reasoning. Our conscious existence - meaning our self-aware worldly existence - is the product of a 6 mm skin of brain - which is far more highly developed than in so-called lower animals. Keep in mind that before we became conscious, our remote ancestors got by on 'the unconscious'. So the unconscious has become skilled at survival, and the things that challenge survival over thousands and thousands of years.

But hold on, it is a new world - a very fast world, with much larger and complex issues to manage. The unconscious often fails us in this new world. It's not geared up to crunching numbers, balancing complex values and other abstract ideas. The wild stallion was good for getting us from A to B, but in today's world it struggles to cope with the demands we might place on it. It is burdened to get to Z via umpteen other subroutes or combinations of routes.

And now we are caught in a world where logic and reason is meant to prevail, but we're all left riding wild stallions that are lost, scared and hard to control. How will humanity survive this amazing and mounting tension? I'm thinking about it - but I sense danger ahead for the human race. 

I am Superman

Not often am I inspired by goodness in the human condition. Saturday 20th September 2008 was different. I bought the book "The Book of Lies" by Brad Meltzer and came across the site: Book of Lies Soundtrack.

Then I came across http://www.ordinarypeoplechangetheworld.com/ which then took be to songs by 'Five for Fighting'. And then I got the song 'Superman' - and lyrics here:http://www.lyrics007.com/Five%20For%20Fighting%20Lyrics/Superman%20Lyrics.html

Today:

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
Inside of me
Inside me
Yeah, inside me
Inside of me
I'm only a man
In a funny red sheet
I'm only a man
Looking for a dream

I'm inspired by the human condition or a small portion of it - my misanthropy put on hold.

Today and hopefully for the foreseeable future I am delighted to be counted as one of the nerds who say 'I am Superman'!!

Grief

Friend o' mine called up yesterday and asked me something about 'how you manage or deal with grief'. Yeah grief.

Well, it's one of those things you have to laugh about - and we did - in retrospect. I had an initial thought, but did not say much as he explained.

This is the funny part. When he first asked me - and I told him this later - my first thought was, "I just give um grief back!"

I gotta laugh at myself really. Well of course I also understood that he meant 'loss of a loved one'. But you know in life you don't actually tell people what crossed your mind - it could be embarrassing.

For those who don't know, 'grief' in England is used to convey things like stress, aggravation, hostility or bother - alongside its more usual meaning. I didn't know that when I first came to England.

Praa...praa..praa....praaahh

Man, I just got off the phone to some mega-idiot! Trust me there is such a thing. I really wonder why I go on the phone at all to utility companies.

Every bloody time I call one of these call-queuing things, my blood pressure goes up!

Yesterday I wasted bloody 52 minutes of my time. Today 22 mins.

Invariably this is what happens:

1. I'm in England but I get put through via crackly telephone line to somebody sounding like they're in India. How do I know that? Because I bloody well know what an Indian accent is, and it leads me to imagine I'm speaking to someone in India. Look I don't care if they're really in Tristan da Cunha - okay.
2. Next they speak in this bloody polite tone that is stilted and frankly annoying.
3. They usually don't understand anything I say - although they speak well articulated English. So then I have to repeat myself.
4. Then they speed up in rate of speech, because now they sense they don't know what the hell is going on.
5. And now comes the pain, this Indian or whatever accent, becomes more accentuated with the rapid speech and begins to cut me across in mid-sentence. Like wait to bloody hell until I finished what I'm trying to explain!! Christ man!
6. So then I tell them in stern words to STFU (well not like that) - basically I cut back across them and say, "Hang-on a second - I'm in mid-sentence here when you cut me up - that's very rude. You couldn't possibly know what I was going to say next."
7. Then they shut up for a bit. Listen up but continue to get nuance of meaning wrong.
8. Oh I forgot to say that all the above might happen up to three times while I'm passed from department to department, one not knowing what the heck the other is doing.

So - at the end of these calls I'm shattered. Why do I endure it? Well I'm seeking a better deal for myself. On one occasion I thought I might save myself £36 per year.

If you know what I'm going to say like why should I speak at all. Look this thing seems to happen mainly with people sounding like they're from India. I ain't got nothing against people from India, but heck man - just learn the language, learn to listen and have some manners, for God sakes. Oh I know what, I'm supposed to feel sorry for these people and blame their employers. Well I do blame their employers, but I'm sorry the 'messenger' or frontline staff will get shot when you cross me.

But now I'm thinking, "Heck  - the real financial cost to my health is probably gonna exceed what I save in money on bills! Is it worth it?" And hold on a second, what about how I value my time on the phone. What's the cost of that? So between yesterday and today I've spent over an hour on the phone getting nowhere and probably damaging my health. So I'm no better of financially for the call, and my health is probably affected if I do this too often. Is that a good deal? I don't think so.

Conclusion - let them take the money! It's always about money - isn't it. Your money or your life! Who the heck cares.

What's the measure of friendship?

It's an question that's been on my mind for quite some time. People go "I have many friends...or I only keep a few close friends". Of course, defining what a friend is, is central to the question. However, friendship is the core issue and someone who maintains a real friendship is by definition a true friend.

The discerning may ask, "Well is there such a thing as an 'unreal' friendship?" Sure. That's where someone claims to keep a friendship or simulates it very very well. There are some people who take a big interest in what you say and what you do. However, you come to a nagging awareness at a gut level that that interest is an investment for their future possible needs.

Well, yes friendship is different things to different people - and yes 'it depends', those famous words often uttered by idiots who like to live on the fence.

Oh and I should declare a bias, that I hope does not upset some who think they are my friends - I only ever had one very serious friendship. He died about 23 years ago. You will notice I refer to the word friendship. It is a qualitative thing, similar to 'friend'. However, friend is more a fixed kind of thing. It lends to the idea that either you're a friend or not - or that your 'in' or 'out'.

But friendship can have 'shades of grey'. In other words there can be degrees of friendship. And we all know about this at a gut level. In a circle of friendships, there are those people one keeps closer to than others. That may be based on different qualities and how you weigh those qualities up. If you value someone who listens attentively you might rate one who is a good listener highly. Another person may value 'trust' more than listening skills. So for that latter person s/he will keep different sets of people closer.

The meaning of friendship as I know it, and how I think others might value it, is as follows. None of the following ideas are meant to be well demarcated.

1. Genuine interest in what each other think and do. And I must distinguish this from the obvious 'patronising interest'. And genuine interest would cover things like 'caring', protecting, helping.
2. Total disregard for status, wealth, power or influence. Yes true friendship cannot be contaminated by these things.
3. Friendship is not about sexual relations. In general I think that friendship is not to be contaminated by primary 'survival' or biological needs. That's a different thing to my mind. I think that biological and social needs are about satisfying herd instincts. I see friendship as a purer psychological phenomenon i.e. it is not necessary to have 'biological' or 'social' glue to hold the friendship together.
4. Respect for what each other stands for. No person is perfect. Having respect (and I'll not be distracted by defining 'respect') for what each other does well is central.
5. A willingness to give. No I'm not talking money. I'm talking about the things money can never buy e.g. time, effort, help, genuine consideration, listening, genuine feedback. How would you know it's genuine. You feel it in your bones.
6. Boundaries. Yes - whilst friendship is a unifying space, each member of the friendship retains individuality. It is individuality and boundaries which, strangely to some, maintain a friendship.
7. Building. Friendship is something that builds and fortifies. Two or more minds working as a whole are stronger than the force of each added together. It's a different kind of mathematics.

The things that test the integrity of friendship, or the possibility of friendships are:

1. Money - or lack of it.
2. Fame or good fortune.
3. Power
4. An attractive potential mate.
5. Scarcity of essentials basic to life.
6. Time pressure.
7. Illness or disease.
8. Disagreement.

The list is by far incomplete.

What about love? No - to my mind that is state of mind driven by survival instincts. But that's a big and separate debate.  And I'm not in the right spot to debate the number of different kinds of love people might conceptualise.

There is a kind of superficiality to friendships, where people go 'Oh let's move on...nothing is ever perfect'. Nope that's not my thing.

Who are the people who find closer friendships with me? (notice the word 'closer'). Easy - people who subscribe to my values and my modus operandi - people with very thick skins on their backs, who are willing to go 100 extra miles. If you're not in, I'm happy that you're out.

I don't know if I'm right. It wasn't my intention to be right about it. I just wanted to put these thoughts that have been in me for many many years. I may modify them as I learn more.

What changes minds?

It was  00:30 2008-09-13 - when I decided to start writing this. Crazy? So what.

I've been thinking about what changes people's minds about things. For example what changes your mind about accepting something, believing something or doing something. Why the heck am I interested in that? Because of my statement that "The human mind can move mountains, yet there is no mountain as immovable as the human mind".

But somehow minds do change. And over the last few hours it's been at the back of my mind to list the things that I've seen or heard of that change minds.

1. Culture
2. Shared experience
3. Force of authority
4. Compelling logic
5. Pain and suffering
6. Feedback from multiple others
7. Direct experience
8. Traumatic events/experiences including pain or suffering
9. Kindness
10. Threats
11. Time
12. Leaders

I've decided to stop there with the list, because there is an important observation that 'reason' and 'evidence' are not on the list. And that's interesting in itself, because I have little faith in 'reason' and 'evidence' changing minds. When I say evidence I mean some kind of research; something that is very very reliable. Why do these two factors not change minds? Because minds are free to find alternative reasoning or to disregard evidence.

So that led me to think about the things can cause minds to resist change. I think this could be a big list.

1. Fear
2. Uncertainty
3. Anxiety
4. Tradition
5. Culture
6. Shared experience
7. Personal experience
8. Image of one's self
9. Habit
10. Lack of time to update knowledge, think or effect change
11. Inability to see the consequences of change
12. Lack of perceived benefit for self or loved ones
13. Narrow focus on basic human needs
14. Narrow focus on life
15. Personal characteristics - e.g. stubbornness, laziness

Okay - I'm gonna go away and think some more about this. If anyone out there has other ideas do post up some comments.

Will

Will is the ability to direct and control one’s body and mind. Each of those underlined words is important. Will power is the strength with which one focuses the mind or controls the body. Normally we all have control and direction over some parts of our bodies and minds. This however, is not absolute. It is limited because we simply cannot control every part of our bodies or minds.

Take the functions of our bowels, normal adults have a good degree of control. Or take sleep – you can’t just will yourself to fall asleep instantly.

What about our thoughts and emotions? In everyday practice we can discipline ourselves sufficiently to organise our thoughts, for example if we had a certain amount of planning to do. Or we could direct our attention at task we must complete, ignoring distractions around us. We can delay laughing about certain things until after work. Of course, this is never perfect but we can exercise some control. Or if someone made us angry, we could control our expression of our emotions in response to that person.

What things affect the will? For starters, physical or mental illness can weaken our sense of control and direction. The more powerful the emotion the less control we might have. Fatigue and stress are in there too. The list is perhaps longer than I first imagined.

Our basic needs when heightened can sharpen or weaken the degree of control we might exert. Hunger, thirst, and sex-drive are examples of things that can alter the balance of control. Of course non-basic needs such as thirst for power, fame and fortune can cause similarly direct our will. It depends very much on the balance of these ‘forces’. However, basic needs have survival advantage and when heightened are especially powerful. The need for self-preservation or survival is also a powerful basic need, which when seriously threatened can either weaken or enhance our will.

The avoidance of pain, suffering or stress are also things that affect how we direct our will.

Some glossaries will say that will is a 'mental faculty'. This is true but not the whole truth. Will may be largely an ability that is produced by the mind. However, it is possible to direct one's actions unconsciously. When a badminton or table tennis player reacts to the shuttle or ball moving at high speed, and returns the shot that appeared impossible - how does that work? Is the player fully aware of all 'calculations' that effect the right force, angle and speed of return? I assert - no! This kind of wilful reaction is the result of a body and mind working as one. The whole thing directs itself. Thinking too much in tennis, badminton, cricket - almost any sport can actually impair performance.

I'm spitting out these words on this screen with minimal effort. Do I know how my fingers reach for the letters on the keyboard as I touch type at 80 wpm? No. I don't know where the keys are. If I think about it too much I slow down and lose accuracy. By some mysterious process my thoughts are connected to my finger tips. That I activate my fingers is undoubtedly the product of my will. But my point here is that will is not simply conscious intention.

Or take driving. I sometimes drive hundreds of miles in one day. Yes I'm conscious while I'm driving, but do consciously will every turn of the steering wheel or every shift of the gear lever? On one occasion my car picked up a skid on ice. Only after I came out of it, I realised that I reacted correctly. How did I do that? There is an autopilot sitting in the background some where - I suspect. Sometimes it takes over when my conscious mind or will is too slow or inefficient.

I do not set out above to make an exhaustive list of things that can affect 'will'. I only wanted to put this in a space that I can look upon it - reflect on it - refine it. I thought it was important to do this because increasingly over the years I've wondered how 'free' I am to direct myself.

Everybody slow down

I'm amazed by how people rush around madly and actually create more work for themselves and more confusion for others.

Here's a quote from an email I received in response to an enquiry:

"XXXX will authorise both tests. I should have made this clear to you in my response. I am rushing to catch up with a mountain of work having just returned from annual leave!!"

What happened above?

1. I send an email setting out a request for coverage  of costs on two tests - which I itemise and specify.
2. Person A sends it to Person B, who would authorise them (notice this is plural).
3. Person B emails me authorising one test (singular).
4. I have to email Person B repeating what I told Person A.

Then Person B gives me the response above.

What Person B has done is admitted that s/he has acted inefficiently by rushing with his/her mountain of work. But in so doing has actually added to his pile by having to respond to me.

Inefficiency on his/her side has resulted in me spending 5 min to draft an email. Do you see what I mean?

Oooooh..but hey this is England where bosses never see crap like that - or bosses couldn't care a monkeys (as they say over here). Oooh but bosses can't admit to that - can they?

Here's my pretend English response:

"When people get back from holidays they are in fact rushed of their feet and need time to get back into gear. The mistake is understandable. You can't expect perfection of people all the time - are you perfect?! Have you never made an error like that. You shouldn't be so hard on people!"

My pretend un-English response to that:

"I'm thankful you're you're not working in my company...I don't expect perfection. I simply expect work practices that deliver efficiency..rushing around and working inefficiently can create a bad image for my business amongst my customers. All our business is geared towards customer satisfaction. If people are over-worked on return from annual leave, they should speak with their line manager and get something done about it."

So a proportion of people reading this would also think 'I'd stay clear of his company!' - and I'd support that! Wankers - stay away!!

The important learning lesson in all of this - before people distract themselves too much with my 'personality' - is to 'slow down'. Slow down at work, especially after returning from annual leave. Rushing around madly could add to your pile and cause others to work inefficiently.

Is that ten?

At about 2008-09-08 16:00 GMT, I was at a local supermarket delicatessen counter.

So as usual I ask (in well articulated clear English at a reasonable volume), "Could I have 10 medium cut slices of the Spanish Chorizo please?"

Idiot behind the counter reaches for the Spanish Chorizo, is about to put it on the machine, then asks me, "Is that ten, yeah?"

And I go, "Yes that would be ten medium slices please."

Him: "Ten, yeah?"

Me: "Yeah, ten medium slices."

So I'm thinking while he's slicing, "Why the heck did I take the effort to speak up and to speak each word clearly? I might as well have made a grunt; that would have saved me some effort." Reality bites. This is England.

Behind counters in England you have a bunch of flesh covered robots. They're only there for the money. Their minds are elsewhere. And some of them are racist robots, so anything said by a person looking coloured or sounding a little different gets ignored - and they do a double check, just in case the person cannot speak English properly. So maybe I'm victim of that, on this occasion - I don't know. You never really know do you.

Oh...now let me play some English mind games for you. I'll pretend I'm English right.

Pretend English me: "Actually, he could have been very hard working chap, who is highly trained to verify each order. So he's only doing his job as he was trained. You don't have to be so hard on people all the time."

Real me: "If it was my business my staff would be trained to be attentive to customers, and listen more carefully. He should have said 'Thank you, that's ten medium slices of Spanish Chorizo coming up!"

But what's missing from this story? I'll tell you. You weren't there! You weren't witness to the vacant disinterested look in his eyes. You didn't see that he was looking at a woman's bottom as she passed by, and couldn't give a shit about my order. Oh yes, males have greater selective attention for bottoms compared to their employer's business.

Not driven by logic

You know many of us hold logical thought as something very prized. If something does not hang together logically we're likely to discredit it, have doubts about it and so on. We like to think that we are logical reasonable people. And in general we avoid people who are confused and illogical - simply because they're 'a pain to be with'.

We tend to believe that in our person we are logical. We believe we are driven by logic or commonsense in most of our actions. All our decisions have a 'method to its madness' - our way of justifying what we do.

Over the last few years I've wrestled with a reality that I don't operate on purely logical principles. I'm not Mr Spock, however much I admire the clarity of the fictional characters brutal clarity of thought.

The National Lottery plays on my mind in all of this. 'Why on earth such a deviation?' you might think. I've proven mathematically that the National Lottery is the thing that most people should take a regular chance in. Yet the majority of logical people I know do not - even when presented with my argument that is not disprovable so far. There is an interesting prelude to this - when I ask people what is 1 divided by zero, the majority say "zero". Do it on a calculator and see. The answer is infinity!! In fact any very small number like 0.00000001 divided by zero equals infinity!!

So here's the logic:

1. The chance of winning the UK national lottery jackpot is 1: 14,000,000 (or something of that order) = 0.0000000714285
2. The chance of winning the Euromillions lottery jackpot is 1:76,000,000 (or something of that order) 0.0000000131578
3. The chance of winning the either of the above without a ticket is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 - you get the point.
4. But either of the above small numbers divided by zero equals infinity.
5. Therefore the chance of winning the Jackpot in any lottery anywhere in the world is infinitely greater with a ticket than without!!

Logic would dictate that if you wanted to infinitely increase your chances of becoming rich quickly that you should spend on at least one ticket in each lottery draw.

Amazingly when the above argument is presented to people the response is something of a smile, with a look of puzzlement and suspicion. No one to date has ever said "Right - I see the light...that is perfectly logical and my actions will hereafter be driven by this robust logic...I will now take a chance in every lottery I can afford". Nor have I heard, "No - your logic is wrong for this..this..and this reason". The logic surrounding the lottery thing is mathematically sound and so far no one has shown that it is incorrect.

The point of this thread was to use an example to highlight that, as human beings we prize very highly actions driven by logic - but that in reality we are not at our core so driven. The lottery argument is just one example. However, in everyday life I see loads of people doing things that just make no sense - oh, and I'm not immune to this phenomenon. The cluttered desk at work is another example. Research has shown that 'the method to the madness' of a cluttered desk is flawed - and that people in general work less efficiently among excessive clutter. But many convince themselves that the clutter is necessary.

Now as I write this I'm thinking, "Is my time spent here actually determined by some logical process". Answer - No! Why then? It's because this stuff has been weighing on my mind for some time. Yesterday I had a discussion with a friend and it triggered my thinking about this again. This is important to me at this time, but I've not done a logical analysis of why I should spend my time writing this, right now. It's not driven by logic - though I can find vague reasons, none of which would compel my actions to write this.

So, I'm now driven to analyse why I've begun blogging at all. I'll come back with some thoughts another time.

The meaning and importance of privacy

In the UK the law is not only made up of Acts but by Regulations, which then drills down to quasi-legislative codes of practice.

The DPA Acts deal with data and privacy relevant to individuals in two main ways. I'm not in a mood to give a lecture on this today. Those interested can Google the stuff.

Data Protection legislation is meant to provide protection of 'privacy' - and those protections were driven to the UK by European Directives back in 1995.

There is a tendency in the UK for people to bawl "DATA PROTECTION! ..DATA PROTECTION" for anything they want to withhold or at some subjective feeling that their activities are being 'discovered'. This reminds me about patients in health services, and prisoners, bawling "HUMAN RIGHTS...HUMAN RIGHTS..YOU BREACHING ME HUMAN RIGHTS". In reality these pieces of law are very carefully worded and apply in very specific ways. I normally ask people "What part of the Data Protection Act...or which of your Human Rights have been breached?" - a confrontational approach you might think, instead of the anglocised emollient approach. Well, you should see how people begin to stutter when they realise that they don't know WTF they're talking about.

Contrast this 'lurv and respect' for privacy, with the tendency in the UK and probably other countries, for people to take your private email address and lump it with hundreds of others in the 'To' or 'cc' field - and blast it around the place! Actually, that is equivalent to taking my personal telephone number and putting it on a messageboard somewhere for the entire world to see. It's fine if I want to do that, but it's not fine if a 'so-called' friend of mine somewhere was to take it and do that without my prior approval.

How hard a line do I take on that. Well here's a bit of email exchange that might interest you (between me and a trusted 'friend')

CW early on 27th Feb 2007 [In response to a 'friend' forwarding to me someone's email without their consent, I said]:

"Do keep in mind that none of my emails to you nor my email address should be copied to others accidentally or otherwise - without my express written approval. I treat my email address like my private telephone number."

[I don't think I could have been more specific]

CW on 5th July 2007:

"You said on 27 Feb 2007 10:36AM [quoting the person] 'And I will never share anyone phone numbers or any kind of address to anyone. Without the person knowledge. …….Please I will never give out your information, because I would NEVER like anyone to do that to me.(sic)'

If even one of the 11 people you have copied my email to decide to act ‘accidentally’ as you do then what happens to my email address? It is very easy to see what will happen. However your email actively tells others to forward on the email. Your letter sparks of a chain from which my email address could be all over the Internet within days.

Person responds
"Please accept my apology; you may not believe this but I DID SCREWED UP. It was a mistake and I do apologize.

I know you trusted me I just don’t know what I can do to change that but I am very sorry ok."

And the point is exactly as the person states - there is nothing that can be done to change the irreversible. And..and..sorry does not help - irreversible acts. Why? Because when something is so important to you, when the act causes such a breach of trust - how do you ever trust again that 'most trusted' person. It is like a crack in a pane of glass that can never be mended. So that's what happened. I avoided contact with the person ever since. Chance? No. I don't give chances - especially after I was so specific and the breach occurred within a matter of months. Yes friendship severed by a serious breach of trust. In the grand scheme of things a 'stupid' email means little. But it wasn't about an 'email'. It was about TRUST i.e. the ability to hold water!

No. Listen. There are some things in life you just do not do. You don't shag your best friend's wife. That's an irreverisble breach of trust.

And similarly on the matter of privacy, I'd have to be afflicted by a serious mental disorder, to take a friend's phone number and put it on a messageboard on the internet. The act of sending a friend's email around to hundreds of unknown others without consent is the equivalent act and equally disrespectful of privacy. Yes, and I know that shagging your friend's wife is not the same as spreading around an email address or telephone number.

Now to join the two issues, by way of contrast. On the one hand people in general are oooh so concerned and protective of their own privacy, but what they do to others shows a remarkable contempt of privacy - especially when it comes to personal contact details.

Some times I wonder

It's happened so many times before in my life in England, that I provide clear and conspicuous information but people then ask me for clarification. I often wonder what the heck is going on.

Here's the situation. I send out letters to professional colleagues with my postal address, telephone contact details and email, clearly visible on a green and beige coloured box on the top right corner of my letter. I'm seeking responses on certain professional matters by a certain deadline, by postal mail only (due to the confidential nature of the matter). Letters went out last week. So this morning I receive and email from one asking me "I would be grateful if you could clarify where I should send my report."

Well I'll deviate to tell me what my initial psychological response to that was ( Imean my thoughts) i.e. "Did I not print the address on the top right corner?". You see this kind of question made me think 'Heck could I be at fault, have I cocked up again'. But no, I always check my paper correspondence about 5 times before sealing and posting them. Really! I consciously do a checklist of all parts of my letter like here at English Plus. Well, no! I have to stop doubting myself.

The next thing I'm thinking, "Can't he read..after all he's got the email address off the letter...and the postal address is just two lines above that." Or "Maybe he's too busy... Oh - right, so because he's busy I must spend my time duplicating information that is so conspicuous". No - it's not me. I've done nothing wrong.

And then I think "Hmm...is it something with my address? Is it too short? Does it look suspicious in any way?" It is factually a very brief address because it is a named postbox. What's that? In the old days you would have "PO Box 1234" or something like that. These days you can name your post box like 'BM Surgery'. Yes, the funny thing I've noticed about living in England is that people in general like to double, and triple check the obvious, with a sort of 'just in case' point of view. However, the strange flip side of that is that there have been monumental cock-ups with data security of names, addresses, credit card details etc in England. So you kinda have to wonder 'Well is it because of a culture of cocking-up that these people are so flipping suspicious and obsessional?'

So what did I do in the end? I replied to the email and politely give the same postal address. And then I decided to write this.

On a roll here - Skype is great.

I like Skype. I dare say I was one of the first people in the world to try Skype (www.skype.com).

Now, you reading this might think 'everybody knows about skpe!'. Well no - not everybody knows about skype. Half of the people I know are clueless about it and aren't even inclined to try it.

Skype gives me the following benefits:

1. It lives on my cellphone (aka mobile phone) - that allows me to call and chat with anyone in any part of the world. What's so great about that? Well I do it for free (well I mean included in my cellphone subscription). Not everybody likes 'free' - so I'm cool with that.
2. Skype lives on my computer. And? Well - I have a skype in number that looks like any old number so select people can call that number and get through to me while I'm at my computer. And? Well they can then talk to me like if I'm on a phone. And? And I can be in any where on earth!!
3. Skype then affords me a skype to go number that I can use from any other real phone to make international calls (at cost, at skype competitive rates).
4. From my laptop computer I can use Skype to make unlimited calls directly to landline numbers anywhere in the UK for £2.24 (subject to a 3p connection charge). Well this is actually very good because I make less than 50 landline calls per month from my home phone. So I don't need to pay the likes of BT or Virgin Media something like £7/month for unlimited calls.
5. Really good sound quality.
6. Conference calls - that can hook up people on landlines and those on skype.
7. Video conferencing.

Well I know I'm sounding like I'm a walking talking advert. Thing is that I'm not selling anything, and I ain't making any money from sharing this information. So you're under no pressure at all to look at skype. If you're technophobic don't bother to try it - see a shrink.

Why a Google Calendar

I like Google Calendar. The people who invented this really put a lot of thought behind it. It took me about a year to get using it regularly. I now wish I hadn't taken that long.

Here's how it benefits me:

1. I can store my agenda securely online.
2. I can have several agendas, some that I keep private and those that I want to show the public.
3. I can access it from my cellphone (mobile phone) which has Internet access.
4. I can set up to 5 reminders for each event.
5. The reminders can be days in advance or down to 10 minutes before events.
6. Reminders come as SMS, email and popup's (the later when I enter my Google Cal).
7. For important events I can stagger reminders over weeks down to minutes. That keeps me alert not to lose track of things.
8. I don't need to keep my agenda on a computer.
9. I can track UK holidays easily by importing a shared calendar from someone else, without any risk to my other agenda items.
10. I can share my calendar with others and they with mine.
11. If I want, I can sync my desktop calendars with my Google Cal. So changing either one reflects changes in the other.

I'm not recommending Google Cal to you. I'm just shouting about it because, I find it makes my life so much easier. If you happen to want to share an easier life, then try it.

Trapped

Yesterday something small occupied my mind. But it was something that repeatedly came to mind over the years.

I got into my car and drove off as usual. About a minute down the road, I could see a tiny fly in the upper right corner of my windscreen. It was bumping its head on the screen trying to get out. It was quite a distraction. So I slowed down, wound the window down and tried to brush it through the window with my left hand. The fly would escape the waft of my hand and get back to bumping its head on the windscreen.

I then drove off and hoped that with the window partially down it would get sucked out. That did not happen. Eventually I had to whack it. And that was the end of that.

So why the devil is this important? Well my dad used to tell me (probably between ages of 10 - 17) about flies being caught behind windows, likening that to people being trapped behind invisible boundaries. That served as a way of looking at things over the next  30 years.

It is so true - I see many people being trapped behind unseen (or unrecognised boundaries). They know the boundary is there; they just don't have the means to understand it and know what to do about it. So they continue to do what they always did and what they've been programmed to do.

But the hand that waves them in one direction is important. Sometimes a helping hand is extended to these 'trapped' people. However, they are so driven by instinct that they continue on the programmed path. The outcome? Not good.

The moral of the story is to:

1. Find the boundaries

2. Identify what needs to be done.

3. Do it.

Feeling whole again

It's been something I wanted to write about for some time - the feeling of wholeness. Like sometimes one of your prized objects doesn't work well and you simply feel 'not whole'. It could be something simple like a wrist watch. Or it could be your dishwasher.

Well in the last few weeks two things weren't right and I did not feel right.

First the dishwasher broke down - totally clogged. Next the Jag developed two problems. The right front door speaker went dead. Then she developed a strange hum and a mild vibration on the steering column about a week ago. At first I thought it's me just being hyper-observant of minor noises. But no, this got worse as the days rolled on.

To cut a long story short - and this is the good part - both 'objects' had extended warranties on them. So I simply called up and explained the problems. The dishwasher was fixed in a jiffy.

Then the jag was sorted out within a few hours today. It was a bad hub-bearing that caused the problem. Like whew! Because if I had to pay for that, it was gonna be major dosh. As it happened I did not see or hear of the bill. Jag service simple fixed and delivered the car back at home. The bill was dealt with imperceptibly with the warranty people. I don't even know what it is!

I took her for a test drive and she performed like day one.

So, hey - I'm whole again. I feel good. And I feel even better for having the foresight with these 'objects' to have purchased extended warranties.