Eva Whatever

A Room with a View

Let's eat, drink and be happy: all at the staff party

I know that they say Do what I say and not what I do, but this time round it is really the time to let your hair down, have a chilled bubbly, put on that smile and embrace the well-deserved Christmas break. But in case you need to survive a staff party first - here's a few tips. Let's hope that yours is not on a boat so you could escape any time - but with these simple steps from FINS Finance US, you might actually use it to your advantage - and end up enjoying it, even if you hadn't planned to. 

The success at a conference goes above getting a nice goodie bag

A good while ago, when I was a first year university student, I had a meeting in a hotel lobby. As I sat there, waiting for the other person to arrive, I noticed the conference crowd registering for a conference - and boy, was it exciting! I had never been to a conference and so I day dreamed for a few minutes how cool it would be to actually be sent on one. Just imagine: for starters, you need to have a job, at which you are thought worthy to be sent to a conference during the working hours on full pay. And then you'd walk into a five-star hotel, pick up your attendee badge, pick up your goodie bag and head straight to the tea station, where you'd be effortlessly handing out your business cards and networking with the professionals alike - joy. 

Now, I have come a long way since then. I graduated, worked in a few jobs and I have been thought worthy of sending on a conference. Must I say, the hotels are not always five star, the speakers are often derogatory, the networking is tedious and inundated by sales consultants trying to score new clients - not to mention the info packs which are so full of advertising material, they are just not worth the papers its written on. Yet - it is the necessary evil: to get out, to hear a different perspective, to be stimulated intellectually and to win a prize every now and then (always happens to me, yay). And just today I have encountered an article which I wish was printed and put into every goodie bag - How to Get a Lot More Out of a Conference. It has tips for networking for introverts (it almost makes it easy), it tells you how to choose a stream in an unusual way, and most importantly, what to do with all of this new info you receive - an ingenious file-and-retrieve to quote system. I wish I had known it before, as it happens. 

Diversity is a synergy of uniqueness and commonness

It all has to have a catchy label and a beautiful beginning to grab one's attention and then hopefully get the audience to agree, doesn't it? Yet for some reason the beginning is often where it stops and then there is no end. 

Yesterday I attended at talk on diversity, and it did have a glorious title and had all of the signs of an interesting event: an art gallery for a venue, a stand up comedian for the speaker, the HR people for the crowd.  Yet I consciously failed to be engaged and I am still struggling to grasp where it all went wrong for me. 

We had to look at the powepoint slides and see the green, luscious meadows followed by an autumn carpet of fallen leaves. Green, harmonious, blooming, fertile - obediently we described  the first lot. Decaying, end of season, autumn, gloom was we attributed to the fallen leaves. And there we had it - diversity was announced to be akin to decaying leaves as it had more variety in it - in colour, shape or form, and size. Decay, as we learnt, had to happen in order for the green plants to grow. I kind of always thought it would be dependent on the season, and it is the green leaves in autumn which suddenly become the minority, but I did not have the courage to question a comedian. 

And I somewhat refuse to be compared with decaying leaves. I think I know a bit about diversity - after all, I am a woman, I am a foreigner, I have a physical disability (I know people who claim benefit for a similar condition), yet I am no decay - and I don't think you need to be rotting away to raise awareness. I think we can celebrate diversity without making anyone uncomfortable - we all are aware, and it does not have to be in your face-beware. After all, often the main thing about being diverse is the desire to blend in - and for that you just need for the season to pass. 

The pleasures and sorrows of work

Allan de Botton, the guy who invented The School of Life (a great doing in its own right) talks about what's happening to modern work. This is a thoughtful and entertaining talk (anyone to handle bad breath situation - HR to the rescue!) examining the meaning of work, motivation to do things - without a whip present and fulfillment. 

 

 


As Bad As It Gets

You would kind of expect better of the Employers and Manufacturers Association. When their CEO claimed that women earn less as they need to take time off to have babies and also that they are less productive as 
"Once a month they have sick problems" , I honestly though that it couldn't be true - that a person in that position simply could not say anything of the kind ! I still kind of think it was a poorly planned publicity stunt. This issue has got received an expectedly high amount of media attention - you kind of know it when you see a Tui billboard with "Alasdair Thompson got it right. Period". 

I would, however, support the group who are demanding his resignation. I would join the parade and I would throw tampons at him or the building of the EMA HQ, for that matter. I mean, whatever it takes - even if we have to do it monthly. 

So What

You have to try. You see a shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don’t get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk and swim.
And nothing works. The outlook’s grim.
You don’t know what to do. You cry.
You’re running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see a shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlook’s grim.
You go to yoga, cry, and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.

© Wendy Cope

A Hole in My Heart

 I am on the discovery path of Internet-shopping, since the real one takes too much time and effort these days. I almost bought a dress which seemed perfect enough - Greek goddess style, comes in black, can be worn anywhere from work to concerts - am I not asking too much? So was I stunned when I saw the option of wearing it - over the dress with holes. For a second I actually thought it was not meant to be, that the hole slipped through the editor and went to publishing unnoticed. But no, I was not the very first one to pick it up - this is just what fashion is nowadays. Meh.

(download)

REAL USSR dot COM

I often feel nostalgic over the past which I never had. I was growing up in a house with a garden, which belonged to my grandma and later in a new apartment block with birch trees all around it. I was never bullied, and I had friends, I even liked school, and I  didn't mind having a baby brother (for about two days, after that it was all downhill). Every New Year's Eve we had a decorated Christmas tree with  gifts under it. Everybody at the time seemed to live in a "nice suburb", because there were no "bad suburbs".

Phones were scarce so people had to visit each other, host dinner parties and cook yummy things. I never experienced food shortages, or hours of queuing for the essential; my parents were never sent to Siberia for work and my grandma had a fruit orchard. I guess I had it lucky. Not everybody else did, though. This is what this new blog is about. The USSR,  the largest and one of the most resourceful countries on the planet, was a fantastically inefficient place. Sending people to space was one thing, and it was easy.

Providing kids with toys was totally different, and boy look at those toys. They managed to build cars of the finest caliber, yet fashion was sooo behind, it makes me feel teary just to look at it. In one word, very controversial. Yet it is very dear to me, maybe that's why I so feel enthusiastic about it. See you there.

Happy Birthday To Me

What did I want? All I wanted was a lottery ticket, and fair enough, today's jackpot is 27m. And do I have a single lotto ticket? Of course not. Bye bye my millions, just like that. However, last night, when I was feeling lower than my carpet and had to physically stop myself from blogging "lousy lousy lousy lousy lousy Eva", I thought that if 50 different people wished me a happy birthday on the day,  I'd take that back. Guess what? I just counted my chickens, and there, the 50th* text message said: wanna wish you heaps but leave it to say personally. Go girl! ______ *Yeah, lousy enough to actually count.

World Wide Shame

I just do not seem to understand everybody's obsession with Susan Boyle. Yes, she can sing ok. Yes, she's got a strong and clear voice. I mean, hello, nowadays, who hasn't? Seriously, if you sing in a church choir for over 30 years with no silly distractions like family or career - you'd be there. Anyone could be a fairly good singer, or a businessman, or a Gordon Ramsey, given this long. Moreover, get yourself a solfeggio teacher, and in six months you'd nail all the Korean karaoke joints. In a year you'd sing in a local pub, and then the suburban sky is really a limit there. I just suspect that the whole success of Ms S Boyle is based on the contrast of how ugly she looks and how pleasantly she sings. Like hey, this crap's got talent. Oh well, shame shame shame.