Thursday 29 January 2015

The future of 'Healthy' in Economy

Living and working in Denmark make me pay 60% of my salary
To the tax department. How to get rid of this. I couldnt. There is NO easy way or hanky panky alternative that can hide my income from being acknowledge by them. During the first year was like a pain in an ass, trying to adapt the expensive lifestyle, hefty food price, oil/benzine Price that goes up every day on the chart. But when i reached my third year here, i began to understand the situation and keep my lifestyle in a moderate tempo..no more Prada, Hermes, Burberry shopping like when I was in Zürich. So I bought this garden house to do gardening, to grow veggie, to enjoy fresh air, to have that 'old-age' community (everything bio-logic farming) and started to walk/bicycle to work. I can see the different lifestyle that i had. I hardly sick, never had cold in winter. That the Danish healthy organic-living, eco-logic, bio-logic living that is good. Limited luxury shopping due to expensive cost of living, healthy living option and do more exercise. At first, it is very difficult to understand, later on we kind of understood that those expensive cost of living leads us to healthy lifestyle (option/escapade) . And how this cheaper option leads us to healthier life and productive nation.

But Healthy populations are the backbone of a sustainable economy – they are more productive and less expensive for both employers and healthcare systems. Reductions in illness and mortality are estimated to account for about 11% of economic growth in low-income and middle-income countries as measured in their national income accounts. However, very often health is still seen as a cost rather than an investment.

Objectives

The project aims to highlight the value of healthy populations and their ability to boost socio-economic growth. Three specific objectives are to:

Articulate the systemic links between health and other sectors such as employment, education, GDP and competitiveness
Re-think the concept of return-on-investment in “healthy” for governments, businesses and society, and establish the investment case for healthy populations
Transform the investment models for the eco-system of healthy.

Maximizing Healthy Life Years: Investments that Pay Off
In times of economic uncertainty and slow growth, it is more important than ever for economies to find alternative ways to gain a competitive advantage. Healthy populations can be the solution. Through increased productivity, reduced healthcare costs and overall higher levels of well-being, investments in the health system yield a proven return in terms of health outcomes and economic growth.

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Wednesday 28 January 2015

Every age, every life, make the best of this short-lived stay

Every age has its turn
Every branch of the tree has to learn
Learn to grow, find its way,
Make the best of this short-lived stay

Take this seed, take this spade
Take this dream of a better day
Take your time, build a home
Build a place where we all can belong

Some things change, some remain
Some will pass us unnoticed by
What to focus on, to improve upon
In the face of our ancient tribes

Feels so clear, feels so obvious
To each one on their own
But we are here, together
Reaping what time and what we have sown

We don't choose where we're born
We don't choose in what pocket or form
But we can learn to know
Ourselves on this globe in the void

Take this mind, take this pen
Take this dream of a better land
Take your time, build a home
Build a place where we all belong


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Brain and kindness

What happens to your brain when its focus is on kindness? Did you know that performing acts of kindness has been shown to increase the positive energy of all involved, both the one who gives and the one who receives.

"Intelligence plus character, that is the true goal of education."


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Sunday 18 January 2015

Broccoli as a Spa Food and Cognitive effect

This is my favorite veggie. Little that I know it has plenty of other trace minerals that I never thought of. The reason I love broccoli, it is because its crunchiness, high content of selenium n calcium. Often broccoli, cauliflower n Brussels sprout not a favorite veggies among the Danes.






Broccoli's nutritional profile is impressive. It contains high levels of fiber (both soluble and insoluble) and is a rich source of vitamin-C.

In fact, just a 100 gram serving of broccoli will provide you with more than 150% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin C, which in large doses can potentially shorten the duration of the common cold.1

Broccoli is also rich in vitamin A, iron, vitamin K, B-complex vitamins, zinc, phosphorus and phyto-nutrients.






So this is what this green lumps do -

Prevent osteoarthritis - a British study revealed that broccoli contains a compound called sulfophane which may help fight osteoarthritis3 - sulforaphane can block cartilage-destroying enzymes by intercepting a molecule that causes inflammation.

Protect your skin against the effects of UV light - broccoli may help prevent skin cancer, not by eating it though, but by applying it directly to the skin. An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the damaging effects of UV (ultraviolet) radiation can be appreciably reduced with the topical application of a broccoli extract.

Reverse diabetes heart damage - eating broccoli promotes the production of enzymes that help protect heart blood vessels5 and reduce the molecules that damage them.

Reduce cancer risk - eat broccoli just three times each month and you could potentially reduce the chance of developing bladder cancer

Broccoli plant compound detoxifies air pollutants in the body .














On top of this, there is evidence that the chemical compound sulforaphane found in broccoli can protect the brain from post-injury damage. A study published in Neuroscience Letters in 2009 reported that mice that were given this compound performed much better in a maze test than those who were not.

The vitamins in broccoli help convert tryptophan into serotonin, your good mood brain chemical, and the large amounts of vitamin K in broccoli enhance cognitive function and improve brainpower. Try adding green veggies like spinach, broccoli and brussels sprouts to your diet. The easiest way to add green veggies is simply to add a salad to your lunch and dinner.














- Opinion is solely mine when I made this article.




Friday 9 January 2015

So you want to work with me? I check your Emotional Intelligence

When I hosted an interview at the office, I always observe one's emotional intelligence apart from their CV and impressive résumé. In my personal opinion, this is vital when u have to work as part of the team, to see how do u deal with stress, challenges, in order to achieve your target, completing your tasks in a very limited time and represent yourself as an 'ambassador' to the company u are attached with.

Often, people can't really give their best at work when stress is included in a project. To control 21 male 2 female (18 male 3 alpha male, 2 seasonal femme brutale) staffs in my department ain't easy. Gender, age differences, education, ethnic background, time constraints piled up in my decision to construct endless motivation, risk management, back-up plan while keeping your stress at bay and flaunt that subtle 'You-better-be-ready' smiles.

Earlier this year, Container Store CEO Kip Tindell said one of the most important things a leader can have is high emotional intelligence.










“Emotional intelligence is the key to being really successful,” he told Business Insider’s Jenna Goudreau.

Perhaps that’s why more and more companies are asking interview questions that are designed to measure a candidate’s emotional intelligence — which is the ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions.

Assisting HR Department to choose the expertise in my team, I am the second person u have to deal with after the HR Manager satisfied with your Education qualifications. Often, I have my own questionnaires to ask these job applicants. I usually promote and let them talk/tell about themselves while answering my question.

Here are some of the most common ones:

1)How will this role help you to achieve what you want in life?

2)What makes you laugh?

3)When is the last time you were embarrassed? (What happened? How did you handle the situation?)

4)What activities energize and excite you?

5)How do you have fun?

6)What are two personal habits that have served you well?

7)How good are you at accepting help from others?

8)How good are you at asking for help?

9)What is one of the internal battles to have each day?

10)What makes you angry?

11)What aspect of your work are you passionate about?

12)How could you create more balance in your life?

13)Who inspires you? Why?

14)On an “average day” would you consider yourself a high or low energy person?

15)On an “average day” is your main focus on results and tasks or people and emotions?

Believe me, handling a job interview in a Nordic country, this seems a new thing to be included. This something that learned from the Swiss while I was in ABB. Male job applicants are intimidated to open up and to answer. To avoid these, your intonation while asking does matter(please note this should be an above casual interview but not an interrogation) and your attire play a role (don't get me wrong, nothing should be flashy here). Present yourself as a feminine interviewer rather than a female-bossy interviewer.

Please be prepared that question no 5 might lead to an unexpected answer. Once a job applicant answer - making love/having sex. If u have this kind of answer, dont crack a laugh. Instead..smile, and execute another question, how that making love/sexual activities benefit his day. #becreative Well..I appointed him as part of team not because that unexpected answer but because he wants to be himself, showing the truth of him can be accepted (I'm in a country that practice #freedomofspeech and he earn positivite vibes after his fun activities that he chose.

Hope this will work!

“Emotional intelligence multiplies the results and effectiveness of intellectual intelligence,” and remember "Emotional labor is the most difficult type of work to do and up until now, the easiest to avoid. It is the essential education we need to embrace the unimaginable"

#emotionalintelligence #creativity #employment #leadership #leadnotplead #leadwith thebest #jobinterview


A story from some of #aileennoura life at office





Thursday 8 January 2015

Truth tellers and their role in our life

My eyes wide awake. Blink! And blink..and blink..!

Legend says..when u can't sleep at night, it's because u are awake in someone else dream. It's a legend, don't believe that. He probably snoring or sleep so good there.







Some fellow Oxonian said..people with the highest IQ stay up late at night because their brains have increased mental stimulation between 1.30am till 4.30am. I looked at the time, it was 3.30am.

I started to think about work, nothing crucial, but man..why on earth that I am so creative at this wee hour. In a way I like it too.

And suddenly I think if u are in love, u will definitely miss someone. (Blushing..!feel the warmth on that face) Your love one probably away and communication is less than usual to each other. Perhaps don't even think that the messages u sent 5 days ago ever reach him. Network difficulties and communication breakdown. Angry..? No. Sad? Not really and rather put the understanding word here. U kind of take it at a slow phase because u trust your heart, your brain, your six sense that your love one can be trusted. Perhaps your love is away solely on duty. What have U miss? The closeness when both of u talk, chatting, sharing stories and intense feeling together. U trust him because u know he is honest. Throughout your relationship he has a good history of being honest. When u told him your pain, your hardship he tried to help. He tried his best there. Understanding that he has ownership of his own life. So..he is your truth teller there.

Do u know the important role of truth-tellers in our lives is to keep us in balance (usually the people closest to us)?

Toxic people is everywhere. Most of us know one or two. If u've ever spent time with truly toxic people, u already know how destructive and exhausting they can be. They are mean, mentally, verbally and maybe physically.







Truth teller can be your beloved one, your childhood friends, the one u trust. They will say how they feel straightforwardly..about themselves and about u. Once u have one or few of them in life..keep! They hard to come by. Your life probably already happy. Adding a truth teller in life can make u laugh bigger, smile wider, grow better, lust, want, crave, feel, make u mad but happy, keep that. That's euphoria





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Monday 5 January 2015

'Literally,' Emojis, and Other Trends That Aren't Destroying English

Below, is an article that I copied from the online newspaper #theatlantic Due to difficulties to open that note with various ads and mini banners, I decided to copy and paste it here. Written by #ScottPorch , it's something worth to read from a Brit point of view.

As an experimental psychologist, Steven Pinker thinks about writing. As a linguist, he thinks about writing.

In The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, the author and Harvard professor mines both the science of cognitive psychology—how the brain processes language, how we associate words with meanings, etc.—and the art of language to re-engineer the writing guide.

I spoke with Pinker about his new book, his grammar feud with The New Yorker’s Nathan Heller, why the misuse of “literally” doesn’t literally or figuratively drive him crazy, and how italics—as used in the first paragraph of this interview—may be the writing tool you’re not using enough.

Scott Porch: Do people write the way they talk?

Steven Pinker: Not really. Clearly, there’s overlap and some people write in a more conversational style than others, but it is striking how a transcript of a talk given extemporaneously does not read well on the printed page. I first noticed this when I was a teenager and read the Watergate transcripts—the conversations among Nixon and advisors like Haldeman and Ehrlichman and Mitchell. A number of people at the time who had never seen conversations transcribed were astonished at how difficult they were to interpret.

Porch: What do you think about the flagrant misuse of the word “literally”? Does it literally make your head explode?

Pinker: [Laughs.] It’s understandable why people do it. We are always in search of superlatives, of ways of impressing upon our hearer that something that happened is noteworthy or even extraordinary. And the words we use to signal that eventually lose their meaning.

Porch: Like “awesome.”

Pinker: “Awesome” is a recent example. In the UK, “brilliant” is used for the most banal observations. Before that, words like “terrific,” meaning inspiring terror, “wonderful,” inspiring wonder, “fabulous,” worthy of fable. We see the fossils of dead superlatives that our ancestors overused the way we overuse “awesome.” “Literally” is a victim of a similar type of inflation. The figurative use doesn’t mean the language is deteriorating. Hyperbole has probably been around as long as language has been around.

Porch: I don’t think it’s hyperbole. I think people don’t know what “literally” means.

Pinker: I think people know what it means but can’t resist the temptation to overuse it. When I give a talk and point out that someone doesn’t “literally” explode, everyone in the audience laughs. I think they get it.

Porch: Does the comma go inside the closed quotation mark or outside?

Pinker: If I ruled the world, it would go outside.

Porch: That’s terrible. It looks terrible!

Pinker: Our British cousins don’t find it that ugly.

What many writers before have never asked is: What makes a rule a rule? Who decides? Where does it come from?
Porch: It looks untidy. It looks like a bedroom with clothes all over the floor.

Pinker: Your aesthetics may have been shaped by a lifetime of seeing it in the American pattern, but this would be a case in which any aesthetic reaction should be trumped by logic. Messing up the order of delimiters in a way that doesn’t reflect the logical nesting of their content is just an affront to an orderly mind.

Porch: Should it be “the news media is” or “the news media are”?

Pinker: I tend not to be a pedant about Latin plurals. I like “the media are,” but I’m in a fussy minority here.

Porch: What about “data”?

Pinker: I prefer data as a plural of datum—so I refer to one datum, many data— but the linguist in me recognizes that it is quite common for Latin plurals to become English singulars, such as “agenda.” Originally it was agendum “is” and agenda “are.” Likewise, candelabra is now singular, and it used to be be the plural of candelabrum.

Porch: Are you an Oxford comma guy?

Pinker: [Laughs.] I put my vote with the Oxford comma.

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Porch: I like the Oxford comma. It keeps things clear.

Pinker: I do, too, though I think Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young would disagree with us!

Porch: Nathan Heller dinged you in The New Yorker for having what he considered a loose approach to usage rules on things like “who” vs. “whom.”

Pinker: Nathan Heller’s an ignoramus. He really does not know what he’s talking about. He said that in the sentence “It is I” that “I” is the subject of the sentence, which is just a howler. Sentences don’t have two subjects. He is doing exactly what I said one should not do, which is to confuse meaning, case, and grammatical relations, which is what he does in that preposterous claim. If you were to say, “I think we should break up, but it’s not you; it’s I,” you’d sound like a pompous jackass.

Porch: He’s making an argument, though, that language needs committed rules to give writers a baseline, which is different than a writer knowing the rules and taking license with them.

Pinker: He’s wrong. That’s absolutely not what I say. As you and I have noted in this very conversation, I have motivated guidelines as to how one should or shouldn’t write. It’s not that good writers have chosen to flout a rule; it’s that the rule is not a rule in the first place. What Heller and many writers before him have never asked is: What makes a rule a rule? Who decides? Where does it come from? They write as if there’s some tribunal or rules committee who makes the rules of English, which there isn’t, or that it’s a matter of logic or objective reality, which it isn’t.

Porch: In the book, you cite a flyer that had some accidental language about an event featuring “sex with four professors.” Can you talk a bit about that?

Pinker: [Laughs.] It was about “a panel on sex with four professors,” which sounds racier than it was. We tend to connect material to the immediately preceding words as opposed to words even earlier in the sentence. The intended reading was that “with four professors” modified “panel,” but we associate it with the immediately preceding word “sex.”

But that does not work when it is a “a panel of four professors on drugs.” We store the patterns of usage when we learn phrases like “on drugs” and “sex with.” That overrides the expectations we have that sentences are right-branching.

Porch: Italics are a good way for a writer to telegraph what he means by telling you how to say it in your head, but they seem informal to use. Are they?

Pinker: No, I’m a big fan of italics. I think your intuition is correct that it eases a reader’s task of parsing and interpreting a sentence in the way that a writer intended. It’s particularly useful in emphasizing contrast, which echoes what we do in conversation. There’s a strain of Jewish humor that hinges on which word is stressed in speech, which corresponds to which word is in italics in writing.

I remember a joke from my childhood that Stalin had read a letter from Trotsky that said, “You were right, and I was wrong. You are the true heir of Lenin, and I should apologize.” And a man ran up and said, “No, you forget that Trotsky was Jewish. The proper reading is: You were right, and I was wrong? You are the true heir of Lenin, and I should apologize?”

Porch: When you recognize that a phrase is like Faulkner or like Hemingway, is there something about the syntax and style of those writers that a linguist can actually describe?

Pinker: That is largely unexplored territory at the intersection of linguistics and literary studies that I would love to see filled. There are computer algorithms that look at statistics of word choice and transition probabilities—how often you use one word after another—that can distinguish writerly styles. It has been used, for example, to figure out which passages of The Federalist Papers were written by Madison or Hamilton or Jay and to determine whether Shakespeare had a co-author on some of his plays.

Porch: And plagiarism is being discovered that way.

Pinker: Indeed, it is. Even though those statistical techniques can ascertain authorship, they don’t provide much insight as to what makes a style a style. I think a literary scholar with training in linguistics, or vice versa, could comment insightfully on what makes Faulkner Faulkner.

Porch: Eric Hayot’s new style guide for academic writing says graduate programs don’t put enough priority on writing instruction and that the things you have to write as a graduate student aren’t especially conducive to the things you would write as an academic. Do you agree with that?

Pinker: He’s absolutely right. The amount of writing instruction in a typical graduate program is zero, which is definitely too little. I find it interesting that the writing of graduate students is often worse than that of undergraduate students.

Porch: Hayot thinks that may be because students in masters and Ph.D. programs tested out of a lot of high school and undergraduate classes where they would have learned how to write well.

Pinker: That’s not mutually exclusive from my observation, which is that when you enter graduate school you enter into a tiny clique, a sub-sub-sub-set of your discipline. Your estimate of the breadth of the knowledge of the people you are writing for gets radically miscalibrated. Highly idiosyncratic ideas are discussed if they are common knowledge, and you lose the sense of how tiny a club you have joined. And you’re in terror of being judged naive and unprepared, and so you signal in your writing that you’re a member of this esoteric club.

Porch: And the professor you’re defending your dissertation to may not be a very good writer either.

Pinker: The professor may not be a good writer, and he’s exactly the person who knows all the idiosyncratic jargon and who talks about “stimulation used in a habituation paradigm” and may even have coined that jargon.

Related Story

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Porch: Is there anyone you would point to who is writing about language and usage today along the lines of what William Safire wrote for years in his “On Language” column in New York Times Magazine?

Pinker: The foremost would be Language Log, which has contributions from about a dozen linguists. The two main contributors are Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum, and they are both astonishingly brilliant and both are superb writers. Pullum is one of my favorite essayists in any genre. John McWhorter is extremely good. Ben Zimmer, who wrote the “On Language” column at one point, is also fabulous. Another is Jan Freeman, who has a blog called Throw Grammar from the Train.

Porch: There was a big think piece on emoji recently in New York magazine. Are you pro- or anti-emoji?

Pinker: I don’t think it means the death of language. One of the interesting discoveries I came across reading earlier style manuals was a manual written by F.L. Lucas in the 1950s. He said the English language really could use a new punctuation mark that indicated that the foregoing sentence was used ironically or in jest. He basically called for the smiley face 35 years before it came to email.

Porch: Can we talk about the hair, or is that off limits?

Pinker: [Laughs.] So what’s the deal with the hair?

Porch: There’s an illustration of you on your website with huge hair that looks like a caricature from the New York Review of Books.

Pinker: That is absolutely from the New York Review of Books by longtime artist David Levine. I bought the original a number of years ago and have it hanging in my study. A fair number of people approach me and say, “Are you Simon Rattle?” [Rattle is the conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and has lots of curly hair.] If I ever meet Simon Rattle, I’ll ask him if people ever confuse him with Steven Pinker and be prepared for the answer, “Who?”


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Friday 2 January 2015

Take challenge, Unleash your talent, learn something from the fish and shark

Often challenge brings u stress and worn out due to lack of capabilities, creativity to overcome it. How often do u able to twist them and gain positivities out of it. Ever meet an annoying boss who love deadlines? Ever meet someone who has endless energy, workaholic like a German engine or people who keep on smiling while handling stress.

Perhaps there is something we can learn from the the story of these Fish and shark.

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish

But the water close to Japan has not held many fish for decades.

So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever.

The further the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring the fish

If the return trip took more time, the fish were not fresh.

To solve this problem, fish companies installed freezers on their boats.

They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea.

Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer.

However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen fish and they did not like the taste of frozen fish

The frozen fish brought a lower price.

So, fishing companies installed fish tanks.

They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin.

After a little thrashing around, they were tired, dull, and lost their fresh-fish taste.

The fishing industry faced an impending crisis!

But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan.

How did they manage...?

To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks but with a small shark

The fish are challenged and hence are constantly on the move.

The challenge they face keeps them alive and fresh!

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired and dull....?

Basically in our lives, sharks are new challenges to keep us active.

If you are steadily conquering challenges, you are happy.

Your challenges keep you energized.

Don’t create Success and revel in it in a state of inertia.

You have the resources, skills and abilities to make a difference.

Put a shark in your tank this year and see how far you can really go....

This fish story if you have not come across..


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