Bee-Hags February 9, 2010

Bee-Hags or BHAGS or the full phrase is  BIG HAIRY AUDACIOUS GOALS -

is the thing I learnt about last week in class. And I found the phrase really funny! I can picture some big hairy creature and that what made this concept really memorable for me (maybe its looks like Sully from Monsters Inc )

(image credit to here)

This concept is proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

It is defined as “…an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future.” It must be clear and compelling. It is a “unifying focal point of effort” and it has a “clear finish line”.

I am yet to read the book, and until then, I am just going to share what I thought of the concept alone. I think it’s really important for business to have a BHAGs as this is the fuel that will drive the company forward even when the road is steep and rocky.

However, the real challenge with BHAGs is the creating of it. Most people, myself included, have a tendency to set a ‘perceived achievable’ goal because we are afraid if we set up crazy ambitious goals and we did not achieve them, we will be a failure. And we will feel bad about ourselves. This is the challenge of the mind.

I use the word ‘perceive’ because what we think achievable or not achievable, concerning our goal for the future, is all in our mind. It has not actually happened yet. The concept of ‘achievable’ depends on the ceiling we put on our mind’s capacity. It is also shaped by our experience and our conditioning. For example, what is perceived as achievable by Tiger Woods would be different from say, my achievable goal if I would want to play golf competitively. This is because he has been playing golf since very young and achieved tremendous success very early while I have never played golf in my life. Hence my perceived achievable goal in golf would be very prudent.

Therefore, it might be difficult at first, but like all things difficult, if we put our heart and mind into it, and we practise – there’s nothing that can’t be done. Start slowly and build it up as we go along. Keep our analytical mind quiet by being conscious of its role and by fully engaging our imaginative right brain.

So are we ready to create our BHAGs today?

Today is my Social Media Day February 9, 2010

I started out my dayy with TweetDeck orientation programme and I ended it with Gratitude Log. Pheww. For somebody who’s very technically challenged, I did myself proud

I have a healthy (ehem) fascination with Social Media since I started blogging 10 years ago. OMG, has it really been 10 years? I started blogging during my first year in Lancaster and that was 2001. My first blog was very purple, very teenage-ish, very i-eat-this-for-breakfast-and-i-eat-that-for-lunch.After that I have a few more blogs that comes and goes as I changed and becoming more mature.

In recent years I mainly used blogs for marketing my Elwarda Dance and Event business. I also started a blog for the extension of Elwarda brand, Elwarda Accessories, that is now non-functioning, as I do not have enough resources to run them. I also am now mantaining another Elwarda blog called Elwarda Style, to share my Polyvore sets of modest fashion. I am also mantaining this blog as my personal blog. In short, I am a blog girl

Of course, social media evolved and there’s Friendster, which I no longer use and have deleted the account. MySpace which somebody has created for me without my permission and I have to do the whole taking-picture-with-my-e-mail and sent it to them to verify and only than the account could be cancelled. And now I am using Facebook, Twitter, and most recent, in fact just a few minutes ago addition, Gratitude Log, as my other social media tools. And oh, I almost forgot, I also have a LinkedIn account and Ecademy, which I use for professional connections and sadly, is very out-dated.

So, what does that mean to me? A lot of to-ing and fro-ing at the moment I am afraid as I am working on juggling and adjusting all these different tools that I have. This morning I downloaded TweetDeck after being disappointed with Ping. And I have to learn how to use Tweetdeck. It took me a whole day that’s how slow I am.

Also, there’s issue of privacy versus publicity. At the moment, I am keeping my Facebook account only for friends that I know in flesh and blood and even then I am always trimming them from time to time . Which means Naziehah’s Twitter is public account that you can follow, if you want to. And now I am adding a new one, Naziehah’s Gratitude Log. Feel free to follow this one too.

So, there you go.

I am pretty sure there’s more coming up and I can almost hear programmers clicking away in the distance as I typed. Technically challenged or not, this is the now and I fully embrace it, eventhough it means having to go through orientation after orientation of social media tools

Tate Liverpool and African Drumming February 8, 2010

Last minute changes in my weekend activities has brought me to Tate Liverpool on Saturday and made me attend an African drumming workshop on Sunday.

Tate Liverpool was amazing! It’s no surprise that I love art galleries, but I found Tate Liverpool is just so lively! It walls are painted with bright colours and when I arrived there’s this man telling stories to little kids and there are lots and lots of young people! Something I rarely see while doing things that I like..hmm..

I saw the sculpture exhibition and I am inspired at some of the exhibits, and scared out of my wits at some other! I realised what I really like with arts, either painting or sculpture of movies or books – is that I can really see how the artists think. Sometimes it forces me to expand my own way of thinking, challenging my beliefs and sometimes it made me questions the artists way of thinking and interpreting things. I also realised that I learnt a lot about history, sociology, psychology, and to some extent political issues concerning their art piece. This is because artists as I came to learn, worked as sort of a recorder or interpreter of the events that is unfolding around them. For example, this piece by Salvador Dali depicts the civil war and he interprets it so amazingly as how this clay-like thing sort of eating each other. It just blew my mind!

However, it also made me realised that there’s so much in arts that is inspired by sufferings, confusion and a lot of rather unpleasant things. And when you are around these things for quite some time, it can affect you in a rather unpleasant way too. And if artists is the recorder, does it mean that our world are so lacking of beautiful things to record?

During my wandering around the gallery, I couldn’t help but wish that wouldn’t it be nice if there’s a space where art is solely dedicated to recording, interpreting, and creating beautiful things? Like happiness, and kindness, and gratefulness. Like strong will, and devotion and dedication. Like mother’s love for their child. Like random act of kindness. Like nature and all it’s glory. I would want to live in that kind of art gallery!

Anyway, that’s just my thought on my adventure on Saturday.

(a rather cold and senget-looking me)

On Sunday, I found out that there’s this Day of Percussion in RNCM so since I have free time, I figured it might be good to go and check it out. I attended the African Drumming session because I have always loved African drumming. The session was really good. I learned a lot about the rhythm of the West Africa. I also learnt a bit more about their culture and their ceremonies.

And as always, drummings always made me feel like going up and dancing to the beat. But I didn’t because it’s England and everybody sits and listen

All in all, it’s a rather inspiring weekend and now I am full of inspiration to be channeled into my work

Have a good productive week people!

Oh, and here’s some of the pics around Albert Dock that I managed to capture using my trusty camera phone

pretty self-explanatory

how brilliantly blue the sky was!

a construction of constructions

although the day is bright and sunny, it is so cold here!

i wonder how old that plank is.

a red boat!

What a hoot! February 4, 2010

What a hoot! by Elwarda

I love the owl bag! What a hoot!

A little African inspired set for you today!

Check out Elwarda Style for more colourful modest fashion inspiration!

Managing personal competitiveness February 4, 2010

I went to a netball tryout today and I have never felt better. I was actually quite surprised at how quickly my body remembers what to do although I have stopped playing for 5 years!  Muscle memory is a really amazing thing!

I decided to go because I realised I need to have an avenue to compete – healthily. This might sound ‘duhhh’, but I just realised I like winning. I mean, I really, really like winning. And I am a naturally competitive person. I said naturally because I am the firstborn; hint FIRSTborn. So having to be the FIRST, is natural for us.

As much as I love winning, I have a love-hate relationship with ‘competition’. To a certain degree, I don’t like this notion of ‘having to compete’. I have loooong theory of why I think competition in business in unnecessary, but that’s for another entry. And I despise people who compete on petty personal things like who’s prettier than who, who has smarter kid, who has bigger pay, yada yada yada. These are the sort of people who would not be my friend, even on Facebook. That is how strongly I feel about this sort of people. So if you are not on my Facebook, and you think you should – take a hint!

If you are naturally competitive, and you like to win, and if you haven’t been winning for quite some time – it will make you cranky, to put it mildly. And that, I realised what sort of happened to me for quite some time So I realised I need to find an avenue to compete healthily. Something on the side. Not my business, not my relationship, nothing that is of high priority. A side dish. Not the main course. So, maybe a competitive sport

And I think a lot of people who shared my personality traits, didn’t realise this fact, as how I did not realise it too. So what happened is, they knowingly or without, channel their competitiveness into their personal relationship. And this is a terrible thing. You should not feel competitive with you siblings, with your husbands, with your wives, with your friends, basically with people you cared about. These sort of things will turn you into an ugly person, on the inside. And nobody likes being around an inner ugly person. Outer ugliness you can mask, there’s make up, cosmetic surgery whatever. But inner ugliness, there’s no way of covering that up. People will sense it, and they will run away from you.

Therefore, realising that, I decided to find ways I can compete in non-harmful ways. I am going to enter more competitions, stupid silly competitions, but competitions nonetheless – so I can have this channel for my competitiveness. This is my managing personal competitiveness strategy. Let’s see how that is going to work for me

netballers, 7 years ago. omg, has it actually been 7 years? there’s the year on the pic!

Shoots spotting January 31, 2010

Winter has been real fun, but now I am really looking forward to Spring!

Look, I found my first Daffodils shoots! (I hope it’s daffodils)

Aren’t they cuuuteee??

Oh look, here I come!

Young shoots beneath an old tree

It’s something about nature sprouting out from earth that made me feel like singing and dancing through the park. If only my life is a musical…*la la lil lala..

If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything (it can save your *tuut* from being sued) January 31, 2010

(hey it ryhmes, if you read is as ‘toot’ )

Ok, although I don’t read newspapers or gossip tabloids (no I lied, I love Grazia, but that’s mixture of fashion and make-up so that’s ok right? ), I always visited the notorious. the iressistable especially-when- you- are- knee deep- in- courseworks distraction place numero uno – CARI forum ‘Gossip’. I know, I know, boo me if you must but that’s true. I read Malaysian celebrity gossips in CARI forum. *hang head in shame

But there’s some good to it, for suddenly I had a sudden realisation about a certain situation involving one celebrity suing another celebrity for defamatory remarks.

Ok, I don’t want to name names, because well, I never name people in my blog anyway, so here’s the gist – this guy celebrity is suing this girl celebrity because she is telling stories to the press about what happened when they were in a relationship. Apparently, there’s also another celebrity ex-girlfriend who’s keen to telling stuff.

Personally, I think it really is stupid to go about telling people about what happened in your past failed relationship. I mean, only you and you alone knows what really happened in your relationship and no matter how you tried to explain it to other people – they will never get it. At all. So don’t even bother trying.

But what made me wonder is, why are these 2 celebrities, who are already quite successful in their domains were so keen to open their mouth? What that is all about? And here comes my thought..

Malaysian society, in my humble point of view, is a very patriarchal society. Although it is not so apparent now, and in relative to other countries and societies – to a certain extent, women who were brought up in a patriarchal society do have this tendency to feel suffocated and blamed when things go wrong in their relationship.

If you observed, it is just too easy for people to immediately blame the women when a relationship failed.

“Oh, padanla -pompuan tu tak pandai jage lagi/tak pandai masak/tak pandai kemas rumah/mandul (insert cliche remarks by makcik kepochi dlm drama melayu) and you pretty much get the picture.

Therefore, to a certain extend I understand why these 2 women feel the need to defend themselves, to talk and explain bla bla because honestly – I think most of uf, well, Malaysian girls, have been there. The only difference is that we are not a celebrity and nobody really cared what we said!

But even realising the effect of patriarchal society on us,  it’s no excuse to be a blabbermouth and talked bad about people. As much as it is hard for us to swallow the dirty remarks and the nasty accusations – it’s always better to choose the high road. Sure, it requires practise and an immense amount of self-control to shut our mouth from coming up with defensive remarks – but it is something that we must do, if not for anything else, to save our *toot* from being sued

So yeah, there you go.  Will my sociological comments even out the effect of my CARI-forumming?

Anticipating Spring January 28, 2010

Anticipating Spring by Elwarda

After a rather intense Winter, with snows and snots and slips, I feel like I really earned my Spring. So pardon my over-enthusiasm with this overload of flowers!

I really wouldn’t mind walking around in this even if people mistaken me as a bouquet! Hmmm..when I think about it, I kinda like being mistaken as a bouquet of flowers!

Smelling of Karma January 26, 2010

It all started with you, orange-y piece of heaven.

Then you, you green grainy thing.

Then you here, you crumbly swirly piece of non-doughnuts

And now, I have almost all of your family members – all tucked in the little corner of the bathroom. And taking over my basket of beauty goodies. Oh Karma, you are indeed a love at the first whiff.

This is truly a scent that either you get it or you don’t.  A rather complex multilayered scent with a mix of sweetness, spiciness and citrus. Suitable for a complex multilayered personality

And yesterday, after my last exam of the semester, I made myself a bath of Karma Bubble Bar (picture 3), and washed my hair with Karma Komba (picture 2), and lathered myself with Karma Soap (picture 1) – and I sleep smelling of Karma

*all image credits goes to link embedded in image.

This is what I think January 26, 2010

I don’t know maybe because I was triggered by the Haiti blog entries I just read but this is what I think.

I think we, able-bodied people, who have warm beds and study roofs over our  head, who can study and go to work and run our businesses, who can think and do and read and write – we have so many things that we need to do, just because there are so many more people who can’t!

And increasingly, everyday, more and more people are faced with challenges of various capacities – from financial calamities to natural disaster to war and oppression. See how the balance is tipped off very greatly now?

Therefore, in times like this, it’s up to us more than ever to extend ourselves to help – not because it’s the noble thing to do, not because we are good people, not because that’s what our parents or or our governments encouraged us to do – but simply because we can.

We can do all these things. And I am not saying we need to abandon all that we do and go to Haiti or wherever to help, of course if that’s what you really want to do, you can – but what I am saying is, this is the time that we need to do our best in our natural environment to help.

If we have fixed salary, this is the time we tighten our budget, cut our expenses so that we have more to give to charity.

If we run our business, this is the time we find more ways to increase revenue, or to cut cost so we have more profit to give to those in need.

If we are mothers, this is the time we look for other people’s children who also might need our nurturing.

If we are thinkers, think harder!

If we are doers, do more!

As long as everyday, we wake up in warm bed under a sturdy roof – we can always, always do more.