On behaviour

1. First, we admire people who work hard. We dislike passengers who don’t pull their weight in the boat.
2. We admire people with first-class brains.
3. We admire people who avoid politics – office politics.
4. We despise toadies who suck up to their bosses; they are generally the same people who bully their subordinates.
5. We admire the great professional, the craftsmen who do their jobs with superlative excellence. We notice that these people always respect the professional expertise of their colleagues in other departments.
6. We admire people who hire subordinates who are good enough to succeed them. We pity people who are so insecure that they feel compelled to hire inferior specimens as their subordinates.
7. We admire people who build up and develop their subordinates, because this is the only way we can promote from within the ranks. We detest having to go outside to fill important jobs, and We look forward to the day when that will never be necessary.
8. We admire people who practice delegation. The more you delegate, the more responsibility will be loaded upon you.
9. We admire kindly people with gentle manners who treat other people as human beings – particularly the people who sell things to us. We abhor quarrelsome people. We abhor people who wage paper warfare. We abhor buckpassers and people who don’t tell the truth.
10. We admire well-organised people who keep their offices ship-shape, and deliver their work on time.
11. We admire people who are good citizens in their communities.
    

Mantra, for my line

If they don't let you in through the door, you just have to climb in through the window.

Best Sales Mantra

If you can't convince them,

confuse them.

For record's sake

As I am so fond of lists of any kind....

Shiki and later haiku poets of Japan

Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902)
Kawahigashi Hekigotō (1873–1937)
Takahama Kyoshi (1874–1959)
Taneda Santoka (1882–1940)
Iida Dakotsu (1885–1962)
Nakamura Kusatao (1901–1983)
Ozaki Hosai
Ogiwara Seisensui
Natsume Soseki
Murakami Kijo
Akutagawa Ryunosuke
Hino Sojo
Mizuhara Shuoshi
Yamaguchi Seishi
Tomiyasu Fusei
Kawabata Bosha
Ishida Hakyo
Kato Shuson
Saito Sanki
Tomizawa Kakio
Matsuo Takahashi
Kaneko Tota

It's been a while...

since the last entry. and the last book. Been a bit over-steeped in the whole business and management world so decided to take myself out and jumped into some tomes that have been languishing in the corner ever since I brought them home from the store. Long Way Down is good, picking up from the last trip and journal Long Way Round, but this time more pensive and sombre, probably because of the more stops the duo made at Unicef operations in Africa and their thoughts about the good work being done there. Think the BBC documentaries will be quite interesting too. Had initially thought that this book would make good reading on the airplane, as we are due to set off for a short, can't-wait-for-it-to-come trip to HK. But I guess I was too impatient to get to it and am now at the last chapter and destination Cape Town. So it would be Hosseini's Thousand Splendid Suns then, which will hopefully keep me sane on the flight. (hate flying hate flying)

Episode 2

Just read some reviews of the LWD DVD. Seemed like a total flop due to an overly-commercialised feel (Ewan and his village - brother, father, wife - joining him on the trip = ooh star power), tensions between Ewan, who seems to be the star, and Charley, his sidekick (undeservedly so), overwhelming focus on logistical preparation, just to cite a few reasons. Reading the book, I could already feel the tension, and yeah, what's with bringing along the missus?

桐野夏生 - Grotesque

Picked this up at the neighbourhood library while waiting for Uncle Sam who was cutting hair, and also because there wasn't any decent non-fiction I could lay my hands on in the tiny library. I had heard about Out, possibly the most famous of all Kirino's works but it was not available so decided this would do. While the themes of bullying and the so-called "all nails that stick out must be nailed down" syndrome are not new, the author impresses with her uncanny ability to dissect the human and female psyches, so much so that it feels even a little creepy. And that photo, eeks!