“Whenever there’s a downturn people outsource more, not less. Organizations want to take costs out wherever they can,” says Gartner analyst Linda Cohen. While outsourcing deals slowed down in 2008 and (early) 2009, a lot of work still find their way offshore. Some analysts even suggest that businesses don’t decide whether they should outsource work anymore; what can be outsourced will be outsourced. It will be a tough time for both buyers and vendors, but don’t write off the industry yet. Hat tip: raise the cap on H1-B and retain talent and taxes.
EB’s fearless forecast for outsourcing in 2009: it’s all about cost-savings. From plateauing pay scales to consolidation, money is a major–if not the only–consideration. Oh yeah, there is also the Obama effect.
“We consume books, movies, music, and visual art primarily to fulfill the internal emotional needs that are fundamental to our personalities. But we also make choices about art based on a desire to carve out identities for ourselves—to articulate the stories of our lives. By the same token, we look for those stories in others. We also feel intuitively that we can judge others by their tastes. …
“People high in neuroticism—less emotionally stable people who are anxious, sensitive, and easily upset—tend to be artistically creative and gravitate toward emotionally turbulent art, including films, songs, and literature often seen as romantic, according to Burt’s research. They decorate their living spaces with inspirational posters bearing messages like, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference,” or, “Until you spread your wings, you’ll never know how far you can fly.” These self-affirmations help neurotic people manage their tendency to worry and become blue, explains Gosling. “The posters are a visual form of self-medication.”
Filed in Books, Musings by Kaye on August 26, 2008
“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other’s tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life…
Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, ‘casualties may rise to a million.’ With individual stories, the statistics become people–but even that is a lie, for people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child’s swollen, swollen belly, and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, his skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears?…
We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
And life that is, like any others, unlike any other.”
Freedom of choice, tolerance, security, and a great sense of belonging or solidarity played the biggest roles in the life satisfaction of people from the happiest countries in the world, according to World Values Survey. A strong correlation between wealth and happiness still exists, though. Majority of the top 10 are from Europe, joined by countries from Latin America, and then Canada. Denmark is still the happiest place on Earth (GDP Per Capita: $37,400), while Zimbabwe is the most depressing (inflation rate at 2,200,000%). Our happy country is 38th in the list, with a GDP next to Switzerland (7th happiest with GDP per capita of $41,100), but with 84 million more mouths to feed and per capita income of $3,400. I guess that our tolerance for corrupt politicos, gossips and traffic, penchant for borderline insane religious beliefs, and having strong family ties make up for what we lack in the money department. We may be 122nd in the purchasing power parity list, but hey, we’re not doing so bad when it comes to finding reasons to be happy…somewhat.
“…freedom of choice and social acceptance are the most powerful forces behind national moods. ‘Money’s pretty powerful, but it’s not the whole story,’ says Inglehart, though he maintains that a strong correlation still exists between high standards of living and happiness measures.
“Generally, a rising global sense of freedom in the last quarter-century has eclipsed the contribution of pure economic development to happiness, he says. This is especially evident in developed countries with stable economies, where the freedom of choice gained through wealth has made people happier—not necessarily the wealth itself.
“What’s more, ‘there are diminishing returns to economic progress,’ Inglehart says. In poorer countries, happiness can be linked to solidarity among tight-knit communities, religious conviction, and patriotism, which probably explains the happiness of some relatively poor Latin American countries,’ he says.
“Social tolerance is another important factor in how happy a country rates itself…’The less threatened people feel, the more tolerant they are,’ says Inglehart. Tolerance simply has a rippling effect that makes people happier. “
A New York Times article debunks some of the myths about/against coffee. I equate coffee with caffeine here because in my book, coffee is useless without the drug. Decaffeinated coffee is loathsome, while Coke and other soft drinks are cop-outs. And no, don’t even suggest Kopiko. I go for old-fashioned brewed coffee with sugar. The fanciest stuff I buy at Starbucks or any of those boutique coffee houses is either latte or cappuccino, and if I didn’t have enough sleep the previous night, then it’s a tall coffee of the day for me.
So here be some coffee myth busting:
Coffee is a diuretic, but only if it contains more than 575 milligrams of caffeine. That’s more than what 1 Starbucks grande contains.
Coffee does not increase the risk of heart disease. In fact, drinking one to three cups of caffeinated coffee a day decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Coffee only induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. Emphasis on “small, temporary.”
Coffee does not increase the risk of either pancreatic or liver cancer. One study found that compared to those who do not drink coffee, coffee drinkers’ risk of having liver cancer is cut by half.
Coffee does not make you thin even if caffeine helps you burn an extra 75 to 100 calories a day. This also means you should stay away from the 650-calorie mocha frappuccino. Just because it’s liquid doesn’t mean it doesn’t make you fat.
Coffee does not cause osteoporosis. Even if you lose up to 5 milligrams of calcium for every 6 ounces of coffee, you can replace it by adding 2tbsps of milk to your coffee. I hate adding milk to my coffee, but I guess that’s what ice cream or a bowl of cereal with milk is for.
Coffee makes you happy. Consuming up to 200 milligrams of caffeine allows you to have an “improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability,” said Roland Griffiths of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.” However, having too much caffeine in your system causes you to be easily frazzled or have stomach discomfort. Ewww.
Coffee makes you alert, therefore…
Coffee makes you smart because it helps you concentrate or maintain attention, have better memory, and perform complex tasks.
Coffee helps your performance in aerobic activities.
Roger Federer drinks coffee. I’m not 100% sure about this one, He confirmed it, and heck–I’ll [still] drink anything he’ll serve me.
I never paid much attention to the lecture that got the rounds of blogs, press, and video-sharing sites featuring inspirational anecdotes by its lecturer, Randy Pausch, who announced at the event itself that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Probably I was too cynical to even watch a video that was supposed to cheer me up, or that I had had enough of stuff like Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet In Heaven, or Paulo Coelho’s overrated The Alchemist. I still think Alchemist is overrated, the others are too pa-senti, and I don’t deal well with sentiments.
Carnegie Mellon University spearheaded a lecture series which it used to refer to as “The Last Lecture.” Professors were asked to give lectures as if these were their last. Pausch, who had less than a year to live at the time of his lecture, shared valuable wisdom on how to “really achieve childhood dreams.” He passed away last July 25, five months later than the deadline doctors gave on his lease on life, and after co-authoring a book that reached the New York Times best seller list and having a cameo appearance in a Star Trek film.
Sit through the lecture for it could be one of the most inspiring, feel-good 76 minutes of your life. The video received more than 4 million views on Youtube alone.
Some random lessons learned:
* We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
* Respect authority while questioning it.
* Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
* Never lose the child-like wonder.
* Decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eeyore
* Help others.
* Loyalty is a two-way street.
* Never give up.
* Brick walls let us show our dedication.
* When you do the right thing, good stuff has a way of happening.
* Get a feedback loop and listen to it.
* Show gratitude.
* Don’t complain; just work harder.
* Be good at something; it makes you valuable.
* Find the best in everybody, no matter how long you have to wait for them to show it.
* Be prepared; luck is when preparation meets opportunity
* Most of what we learn, we learn indirectly (or by “head fake”).
* It’s not how you achieve your dreams; it’s how you lived your life. If you live your life the right way, karma will take care of itself.
* You can’t get there alone.
* Tell the truth.
* Be earnest.
* Apologize when you screw up.
* Focus on others, not yourself.
“The separation of Church and State, of course, does not mean that religion has no role in our democratic society. It only means that no religion can enjoy preferential treatment to the disadvantage of others….
“If our secular state treads carefully so as to ensure that religious freedom (and freedom of conscience) is respected, particularly in the case of religious practices by minorities, it is less careful about the religion practiced by the majority of Filipinos. This is what sets the question of the separation of Church and State with regard to the Catholic hierarchy apart. The faith and morals of Catholics happen to be the articles of faith of the majority – and we are a nation that subscribes to the principle that questions of policy and leadership are best solved by invoking majority rule.
“Any serious Catholic is under the same obligation as any decent Filipino to defend his principles, to the death, if need be. To demand of Catholics that they restrict the application of their faith and morals to the confines of their homes and churches is essentially to ask them to commit apostasy. But it is fair and just to remind the hierarchy and the rest of the Catholic citizenry that our Republic does not exist for Catholics alone, and this means that their faith and morals cannot be made the exclusive basis for state policy.”
