Hindi pop and coffee

bollywood-dancerWhy is it that all female Bollywood singers sound the same?

Bear with me – I’m not sure if you’ve heard any East Indian female pop stars sing, but they all seem to have a similar high, thin voice.

Someone who does not drink coffee might think that all coffee tastes the same. As a real coffee drinker, I can tell them that they are wrong. And a real Bollywood fan might tell me that I am wrong.

It’s all a matter of perspective, perception and level of experience.

The photo is from Flikr. Thanks tony4carr!

If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing (or you can use one of the options on the button below). Thank you!

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Flashback Kenya

ruiru-01As some of my longer-term readers may recall, I lived 5 years in Kenya, East Africa.

During my last two years there, I had a very challenging role in administration. One day I took on a different assignment – photographer. I visited a facility run by the Kenyan organization we partnered with – the Ruiru Centre. My photos were to be used for publicity purposes. (I’m not sure if they were ever used.)

That day was a nice break.

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The way forward

resultsThe results of my little poll recently about how often you think I should blog… 17 said I should continue at 5/week, one said 2/week is enough and one said I should do more than 5 a week (as of this writing). Many made kind comments. (Thanks to all who took the poll or commented!)

So I will continue doing about 5 a week with an occasional extra thrown in here or there.

It’s good to check what people are thinking!

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Bad traffic engineering

bad-traffic2If American traffic engineers would mirror-reverse these two signs, thousands of gallons and hours could be saved, probably every day.

You see, whenever someone is in the right lane and wants to go forward (under the system shown in my photo), they hold up everyone behind them who wants to turn right (if the traffic is clear).

My way? Everyone in the right lane could turn, if there was no traffic coming.

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Injecting fun into it

wonka-barcodeCarrying the theme from yesterday (and leaving cars behind), the Willy Wonka Candy Company (part of the Nestlé empire) had the creativity to make this product’s bar code fun.

Takeaway: What fun thing can you do today to add some life to something that would otherwise be boring?

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Car design trends

car-design-trendsTop: The forth-coming Audi A8. Notice the resemblance to the front of a train. That design trend started in Europe because their pedestrian safety laws forced vehicle fronts to be more horizontal and less pointy.

Bottom: Matte-finish paint seemed to be popping up in a few places among the cars we saw at the Denver Auto Show. My son Jay and I both liked the visual effect. (Left is a Lamborghini and right is a Lexus.)

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Let’s be honest

bad-infoI saw this on an otherwise respectable website.

Maybe I’m too modest in my approach to communication, but I would never say something like that about a service or idea I offered. For one thing, it is simplistic. For another, it is not modest in any way – the claim is that the person who clicks there will get guaranteed results. If the vendor actually did guarantee the results, that claim might be believable.

We are all too smart today to believe claims like that. When such claims are made, most intended clients will shut down the message and not go any further.

Takeaway: Promise what you can truly deliver. Otherwise, give a visible footnote or two explaining that most people find your claim to be true.

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Effective snow fence

snowfence1One of the things I love about driving to Texas from Colorado is passing through the wide open spaces. Our normal route crosses the northeastern corner of New Mexico, where there is much beauty to be seen, if you are willing to stop for it.

We visited Capulin National Monument during one of our trips, five or ten years back. Well worth the hour or two we spent there.

I was struck by the effectiveness of this snow fence along Highway 87. There was hardly any snow for miles in each direction, but drifts were piled up just below the level of the porous slatted fence.

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