Hospitality is the relationship between a guest and a host, or the act or practice of being hospitable, that is, the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers, with liberality and goodwill.
Look of recognition; can you recognize it when it is genuine? How do you react when someone claims that they know you but you haven't the faintest idea of who they are?
How do you decide when to hand out a business card relative to asking to receive one? Has there been a situation in which you were told you'd be contacted after giving out your business card but never were?
Couchsurfing; everyone who is open minded should have an account, the sense of community is simply amazing. I photographed a wedding of two people who met through this site, and many of their friends had met through it as well! I had a fantastic experience couch surfing in Japan as well. I find a lot of people with great educations behind them and very open minds tend to consort on such websites, why do you think this is the case?
http://xkcd.com/657/large/ How long do you think it took them to complete this assuming that it is accurate?
What do you like about your new phone that you didn't have in your old phone? What do you miss about your old phone or a previous phone that your new phone doesn't have?
Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation I think that motivation is extra-ordinarily important as it is largely a frame of mind. If we view the tasks ahead of us as challenges and puzzles, we may actually begin to enjoy the work that we do. More on this in the linked article on motivation.
Creativity story: During my trip to San Diego to learn more about the different methods of education at UCSD, I had the grand opportunity to photograph alongside Alice Fan, who has hundreds upon hundreds of followers on the image sharing website flickr.com.
After the shoot, it was brought to my attention by Stephanie Liu who was also in attendance that I should take more creative photographs. I thought that this was a particularly interesting revelation as I have become so accustomed to shooting 'commercial' photographs for my clients. This mentality has limited my creative expression because I have always been so concerned about what the clients will think. In this regard, I feel that Stephanie pointed out something that I would have not realized otherwise, and really got me thinking of how I was initially interested in photography - for the art of it, and not to just flatter people. Thank you immensely for pointing that out!
View some of Alice's incredibly creative and consistently impressive photos here:
explaining how rewards and the threat of punishment does NOT work in today's society , and in fact hinders our productivity. Both the article and video explain why.
'Commitment is a freely chosen obligation'. It is also 'larger than the self': "The committed activist creates a better world not for him- or herself but for the generations to come."
I also feel that these posts may be somewhat disorganized to some degree, and I can help remedy that situation by collecting and categorizing my different portions of my different posts so that people can go to one definitive source of my collective knowledge and things that I have written about so far in order to learn more more effectively and collaboratively!
I will soon create a google document and invite those that have expressed interest.
I'm also working on a definitive list of sites that everyone should know about such as Pipl, Bit.ly, Tokbox, Reddit, Stumbleupon, etc... Let me know if you have any thoughts on this!
"A ship in port is safe...but that is not what ships are made for"
Grace Murray Hopper
Enjoy, and sorry this post was so rushed, I've had a rather eventful past few days. More to come tomorrow and later as my thoughts come together, will have more than just surface-level content as well. I am debating using the content that I begun publishing for myself since 09-09-09, and will share more thoughts on that later as well.
Todo: Learn how to format blogs and write more comprehensively.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Weak-willed people need excuses such as birthdays, events, and holidays to do things like be thoughtful, have fun, give gifts, and begin blogs. As such, I’m going to start this blog on 09.09.09 because this is something that I have been wanting to do for a while. I know that if I don’t, the idea of settling with mediocrity would otherwise consume me as it does with so many others.
Realizing that I just need to type my thoughts every day, regardless of how underdeveloped they are, I hope you understand that this wouldn’t be here otherwise. In addition to this ongoing writing, I will be updating a google calendar that should denote particularly interesting aspects of my life, and is not currently publicly available. I won’t even be sharing this blog for the first couple weeks except for an exclusive few.
Beyond that, and in this blog, I will hope to include a daily Wiki, Blog or article, and media of the day.
This is of course the first word of my blog, and you can probably guess what the next two days will be on. The reason why I chose this word as the title and url of my blog is because I feel that it is critically important that we have more of this going on in the world. There is an incredible amount of potential that we have to learn SO much, and yet most of us forgo it on a daily basis. We don’t ask enough questions and we don’t make near enough use of our surroundings. Take for example the iPhone or smart phone. So many people have them and yet so few of them actually use them when they’re out and about waiting in line to look up new articles, how lines work, or to write their thoughts during the day. I feel that we have shamefully had the natural curiosity taught out of us from a very early age due to the conventional schooling systems streamlined view on how to educate the most kids most efficiently.
Also, I wanted to touch on a concept introduced to me by my friend Carly W. a few years ago. She said that someone she knew had been theorizing for a while and had mentioned a story to her about how we as humans learn exponentially slower as time goes on. I feel that this is incredibly true because everything that we have experienced and do experience in life is compared to what we have previously experienced prior to that point in time, and so we should absolutely go out and experience as many things as we can in a state of mind that can actually appreciate them so that we can have broader, more experienced perspectives to ensure our future decisions are more informed and level headed. In this way, I also apply it to life in general, everything you do now will mean exponentially more than it ever will in the future. I suggest that you go out and start experiencing all the normal things you normally do, but on a deeper level. Notice the sensation of the clothes on your skin, feel the air entering and exiting your lungs, breathing slower and from your stomach, realize how intricate the world is around you, the textures of your keyboard and the seat you’re on, not just here but experience everything that’s going on all the time and be amazed at how incredible the experience and beauty of being human really is. This is perhaps one of the greatest things I currently believe that I have ever done in my life for myself. (and through hypnosis, for others.)
'Imagine having the greatest powers and sensations in the world - and then never using them'. That is what it's like to live a normal, particularly uninteresting life without a constant strive to learn and experience the world. This I feel, is our greatest downfall.
And with such a disappointing note, I should leave my first blog entry that should have thoroughly alienated myself from most of my audience.
Remember - “Everyone is good at something, and if you don’t think so, than thinking is probably not one of them” -Alton Sun, for The Syndicate club of networks
