Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

Following up on my step towards “my paperless society”; Yesterday I got rid of my Brother HL 2030 Laser printer. It was actually getting old and the prints were really bad in the end (even my accountant commented it). I have no plans of buying a new printer. We still have a small photo printer which can be used for photos, or in emergencies normal prints as well. In part 1 of this little series I told you my next step would be to by the scanner Canon P-150. I haven’t done that yet but it will be my next step. As I see it for most affairs e-mail will do just fine. I think it will be mainly for scanning letters I get (if I need to keep them) or scanning signed documents before sending by e-mail. If I by this also reduce the amount of stamps I buy it will be an added value I guess.. If the postal service didn’t shake in their boots before, I bet they will now..;)

Those words can either be interpreted as really demotivating or as a motivating call for action. Think about it; Who can actually make you happy or bring you down? Who can make sure you fulfill your dreams ? Who can make sure you meet the expectations set by yourself or others?

It can be exercise where you train for a certain goal or just to get in better shape. It might be your spirit is a bit low a certain day, or you are in a bad mood a whole week. It can be meeting the expectations set by yourself for self-development, or evolving professionally according to a plan set by your employer. Finally getting started on those travel plans, making arrangements for a great personal event or making an old dream come true in any way.  

Goals can be set by others. Other people may put obstacles in your way, or try to bring your spirit down. People may have a bad day and try to inflict that on you. We also know that envy many times can cause other anger and despair.  All of these challenges can be beat with the right “jedi-mind” and “good old perseverance”.

Remember The Matrix ?

You have to let it all go. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free Your Mind.

On the positive side; you have friends around you that want to help you on your way. You have co-workers and bosses that want to see you meet your challenges and goals. All of these will try to help you if you let them. But no matter how much help you get from others, it will still be all up to you to make it come true.

I am not going to try to convince you that you can fly or jump 100 feet between roofs!
But I would like to convince you that when it all comes down to it, you are the one in control of your own mind. You can decide whether you want to be in a good mood or a bad mood the rest of the day. It might take some practice but you can turn your day around. You need to make the difference yourself when it comes to making plans and making your dreams come true. Nobody will exercise for you. Others might try to live your dreams but for you to make them happen for yourself you need to do the work. 

In a way those words can be de-motivating. Or they can be up-lifting and liberating.
Let’s try to stay positive..

J.

On a couple of occasions I have wondered whether I am about to turn into a “real old geezer”… Now, don’t go saying “I knew that”.. I am not! But I was a bit unsure for a bit. It seems like I, over some time, have developed an intolerance for noise. Which really is a bit early, and strange. I am turning 36 (not that old really, and for any stray 20 year old visiting.. “you will know what I mean when you hit 35″), and I am still just as found of music as I have been before. And it is not just the volume being set wrong or my ears being a more sensible before. I did a test –  just to make sure – you see Though parts of it was outside my preference in music I  managed to go through huge parts of the “News-section” of both iTunes and Spotify listening to new Pop, Rock, R&B, Electronic, Alternative, Indie, Techno, House etc… and loud ! My ears behaved perfectly normal, and though there were parts of it I found rather weird I sat there listened to great music for hours acknowledging my love for good music. Thank G.. !

So where does the feeling come from? I’ll tell you. TV and Radio!
I think I have massivly reduced my TV-watching over the last couple of years, but I still enjoy a couple of good sit-coms, entertainment shows or documentaries. So occasionally I sit down to watch one of my favorite shows, for let’s say an hour. What used to be an hour of quality TV has now turned into 40 minutes of what I want to watch – and 20 minutes of advertisements for future shows of some kind, weird noises, clutter, bad jingles with noises made to peak  any audio frequency – not just dogs, shouting, screaming and some more weird noises.  And turning on the radio – it’s exactly the same only they not having visual images to support their message so they have to make a bit more noise. Oh my g.. !

So, what’s the issue here. I have a suspicion that this is something that slowly has increased a s a problem in parallel as the internet services have advanced (and this is really no surprise for any of you ..I know). “Old medias” like TV and Radio need to evolve to keep track with online music services, social media, online chat, video on demand and other great services with advanced user interfaces. These are known facts. But is their approach really to bomb us with this kind of noise, clutter and jingles for the next fifty years? If so, I’ll cut the cable today.

This reminds me of a couple of advertisements I actually have enjoyed. One of them is for “Spotify” where one of the voices breaking through my free spotify subscribtion from time to time says something like “This extraordinary Spotify moment was ruined/spoiled by…. ” OK. The voice is a bit intrusive and bothers me, but at least they signal the value of their Premium accounts with a sense of humour I think. The another one I can’t remember what was for but it was a radio commercial where they actually muted everything into silence for maybe 20 seconds, following with a brief message saying something like ” we think you should have some more quality time in your everyday life…” and then a smart angle for their product. But the ad-spot was delightful and enjoyable for me at that time as it gave a break in the rest of the commercials. This leads me to one of my points here;

Do media and advertisement think they can win me over with peaking audio frequencies like they do today? Will they continue till my head explodes? Will they beat me on stamina? I think I rather will buy that product that from time to time actually brings me some silence on the frequency rather than just clutter. I will buy the detergent that, during a short break, actually serves me Chopin, Satie, Clapton, Nickelback or Metallica – without annoying clutter or noises ! And this is really not just related to the commercials. The way television shows are produced these days are really a lot of the same way; it is supposed to be fast, catchy and  attract young people. But does it have to be noisy and bad quality? What happened to good journalism and the spoken word? Listen to me.. Here I go on like the “old geezer” again…

But seriously; I hope for, and really feel that it is need for, media to change their angle and approach to attract viewers, listeners and subscribers. One of the things that the new era of internet has taught consumers is that assortment of different services is massive and that you can find both high quality and low quality stuff out there. I hope the era of on-demand services teach us to avoid the noise and clutter where we can and instead enjoy quality TV, movies and music. I am sure the advertisers will find ways of attracting buyers. They could try with moments of silence, a poem or some nice music perhaps, and let us instead choose what kind of noise we want to listen to on our own.

As I have firmly stated before.. “Enjoy The Silence”.

As it is the period for turning in the personal income tax report here in Norway I (once again) contemplate the tax rates. The tax rates are different in each country around the world, which is totally understandable as we for sure have different standards, social service systems, pensions and health care systems. A country with higher personal income tax usually have a higher degree of added social services in their community. Searching the web I find some statistics provided by the Paris-based think tank OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Looking at the graphics for 2005 I see for instance the range for personal income tax in Norway is up to 47,8% with an average of approx 37% while corporate tax is 28%. Looking at the range from lowest to highest personal income tax in other countries there is a gap from 0 and 1 % to the highest around 60%.  This is also dependent on your social situation, whether you are married or not, have children or not etc. Now, this is really outside my area of expertise so please forgive me if I miss any elements here. I have not had the chance to quality assure these numbers either.

My question is: Is there a universal interpretation and opinion on what the “right” tax rate should be?
For instance; living in Norway there are obviously some differences in opinion, depending on what side of the politic you are on. Some parties urge for a shift into lower taxes while some want to keep it as it is, or maybe also increase the taxes. The level of taxes surely affects the  standard of living in a country by elements of pension, health care and social services. It also has an effect on other parts of every day life like transportation, highways, urban development, cultural life, agriculture and industrialization.  So, with all types of different people in the world, all political point of views, opinions, cultural and social backgrounds the answer should be given, right? There are too many different people for us to have a joint understanding of this question. Or is there?

Many times I also see examples of how much a like people are, regardless of background and political opinions, and I am reminded of the Hierarchy of Needs described by Abraham Maslov. I am also quite sure that the majority of people see the need for a tax system where everybody contributes to a common good. I also think that, even though mankind is perceived as egoistic and self-centred, and some people don’t want to share with others at all, there is a common understanding that this is to be calculated from certain percent rates of income rather than fixed amounts. I certainly see the need for contributing by paying taxes and if I one year make more money I am also prepared to pay some more in taxes. But if my rate of 42% is appropriate I am not so sure. I think the rate is quite high, knowing that there are countries paying more than that, and would definately welcome a lower rate. That being said I also want to keep up a certain standard of living in my country, having a certain level of social services, but also maybe delegate parts of it for the tax payers to govern and prioritize. So, at the end of the day, it all boils down to the utilization of the taxes, prioritizing and politics

Anyway, I ask again: Is there a universal interpretation and opinion on what the “right” tax rate should be?  What do you want to pay?

A couple of weeks ago I set out in the world on what was supposed to be one week in California,  more specific San Francisco, Napa and Monterey. Little did I know about a certain volcano lurking in the shadows ready to erupt. But not many days after the  plane put its nose wheel on the ground did the beast start bursting out clouds of ashes covering most of Europe. Returning to the airport seven days later it was really no surprise that the flight was cancelled. An hour later, after twentytwo tries to tackle an automatic answering machine with the airliner basically telling us “We are in awe over the situation. Please call back later. Click.”, we managed to talk to a person in the ticket office advising that just rebooking the ticket was likely the best option. First available seats (if the volcano would just calm down) was in four days.  Now it was more a matter of coping with the situation and finding out how to cover the basic needs.

The first reaction is “money”. Do you have money to manage through the situation? Even with a good travel insurance neither they or the airline company would prepay anything. “Collect receipts and we’ll pay you back” was the answer from the travel insurance. This was not that much of a problem, even though it seems like the payment will be a couple of weeks late. But for many other people sleeping in the airports for three and four days was the only solution. That is really not good enough. I can not help to feel that the airliners and travel insurance companies should feel some ashamed by their handling of the situation. I can understand they may have been caught a bit off guard by the enormous rush of people, but they saw this coming easier than the common man. I also can not help to think that it is really the job for a travel insurance agency to be there to assist when everything else fails.

Secondly, if you have the money, you think about where to stay. Being in the airport the first thought was just to find a basic motel or anything close by to get roof over your head. We were also told it was difficult to find available rooms. Silly. Of course it was difficult to find available rooms in the airport hotels: They suddenly got a couple of thousand new customers over a couple of days. It must have been like chrismas and new years eve at once. It took us a couple of hours after checking in to the “very mediocre” airport hotel before checking online and finding lots of available rooms downtown. Next day was moving day.

Third, you start to think about the responsibilities you have. Either work, family or friends. How do you take care of business while being away? Carrying with you a laptop and having internet access these days give you almost everything you need. I sat in a hotel room in downtown San Francisco in evenings and in the mornings with phone conferences over Skype staying in touch with my projects. I had full access to my server and files back home and could really run my business from there. The only issue was the timezone difference (9 hours). My “new business hours” were approx 6 hours per day; 2 hours in the evening (23-01) and 3 hours in the morning (05-08) local time meaning start and of business day in Oslo, and 1 hour in the afternoon to check e-mails before going out to dinner. It was not a bad situation. Just not used to it. Other people in same situation also used their laptops to have “breakfast over Skype” with their family back home. Not really a good substitute I would guess but for a period of time it seemed to work.

Fourth, and this is where it starts to get nice, you start to think about what to do with all the extra time. I was really supposed to be back home working and doing all sorts of “normal day stuff”. Even though I could run my business from there, being in that situation puts you in a “force majeure mode” where you acknowledge that it is actually acceptable to be a bit offline as well. So what to do with all the extra time. Well, you enjoy it. You go out to continue to explore the world. Eating good food, drinking good wine. Meeting nice people. Seeing awesome nature. Sitting in the park watching people. Contemplating how adaptable we are. Because we are, really.

Situations like this might throw us overboard for a minute. We might be confused, in despair, and run around like headless chickens for a while. But give us some time to calm down and  rationalize and we will come out of it most likely on top, with a bit more “life repertoire” and we will adapt to most situation. Even though I am quite convinced this applies to people in most situations and location, I must confess that SF surely is not the worst place in the world to adapt to.

A Thousand Words from Ted Chung on Vimeo.

Many years ago I used to work in the “theater business”. I worked both behind the stage as a stage technician and for many years I worked part time as a host/attendant at one of the major theaters. Nice gig when you were young. Those days I got to see a lot of theater. Actually most of the major plays that was on. And it was great.

Yesterday we went to the opening night of the play “Don Carlos” by Friedrich Schiller at ”Det Norske Teatret“ in Oslo, first time in the theater for maybe 2-3 years. A very nice experience, which also inspires to try to go more plays from now on. I think I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the theater and this was kind of like a boost, though not the least challenging one. It was one of those plays were you can not look away and let your mind wander for a second, no superfluous furniture or props on stage. The play was set up with very elegant but minimalistic set design and the dramaturgy was very basic but efficent.  All you had was the gestures, facial expressions and dialogue of the actors.

The play reminded me of the joy of good theater. The joy of just listening to a good dialogue. I try to compare with both reading a good book or watching a good movie which I also enjoy very much, but I can’t. They are very different experiences, all to be enjoyed, and not to be compared.

I am getting sick and tired of paper. Getting paper, reading paper, storing paper, going through paper over again and again and finally tossing paper out (in the paper recycle bin of course). There doesn’t seem to be much initiative in the business world to eliminate, or reduce, use of paper even though the solutions are there. Every week I get invoices, magazine, advertising pamphlets, ordinary mail and just tons of garbage in my postbox. All these could have fit perfectly in my e-mail (and some in the spam filter of course..). I almost never buy a newspaper (in paper). I only read them online. I do like the feel of a good book, but it seems like maybe the iPad or other devices will cure that soon too.

So, today I feel like I took the first step towards my area of paperless society. I had a gigantic box filled with user manuals for everything from hard drives to tv’s, cameras and dishwashers. I took them one by one, found the electronic version online, downloaded it and stored it. I then threw the paper manuals in the recycle bin and went for a walk. I feel this is a good step in the right direction. Next step for me is to purchase a small scanner and scan all mail I receive, while I try to convince my accountant to receive vouchers and bills through e-mail. I also hope to train some of the organisations sending me mail to “go electronic”.

I am looking at a Canon P-150 , or at least something in that size range. If someone has experience on this or similar scanners, please let me know what you think.

I have to share this one with you… Wear your seatbelt!
(first seen at Thomas Moen )

Just wanted to give you a look at the winter in Oslo these days. It is terribly cold, but it sure can be beautiful too:

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