technical difficulties

• current

my laptop is broken, again. it was broken freshmen year, stolen junior year, and broken again senior year. luckily i have most of my files backed up this time except, as i just realized, a lot of my pictures. so, this post will not have much in the way of visual support. however, if i am able to successfully navigate my last repair, apple care, and find an authorized repair center here, i should might be able to recover them.

with reduced cpu access i have turned my free time to books. namely, finishing off revolutionary road and starting shogun again. read this quote from revolutionary road. it comes from april wheeler, a young & unsatisfied suburbanite.

"i had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic-super people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I belonged among them, that I was one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among swans."

I enjoy this quote because I find it easy to relate to, in fact I was planning to spend my social time with those marvelous golden people once I'd returned to Madison this fall. Also the bit about never having to make the best of a bad job, at the moment I am considering not working this fall if I don't find a job that fits my requirements. But perhaps it would be better to have some experience rather than none?

as far as shogun goes, it's a much more entertaining novel. i am able to follow the tale of pilot blackthorne, an Englishman washed ashore in Japan in the ... 1600s? Forced to fit into their culture and survive, succeed,etc,etc. This choice was inspired by my recent stint in the Japan and is an excellent way to spend my time.

• news

my brothers have made it to the spanish language village in MN. i think there was a bit of a fuss as they settled (liam y grady son mis hermanos) but hopefully they are having a better time. i think my friend from mac, tim, is working there around this time so maybe they will spend the 2 weeks together? i still remember when tim visited our house one fall break and we played monopoly with my little brothers. liam (age 9 at the time) landed on one of tim's properties and tim failed to notice, and did not collect rent. once the next player moved and it was too late to collect the rent. liam teased tim for being "stupid" in front of paul and nis and the rest of us. liam was little and excited to brag about having tricked a college student. tim is gentle and not usually competitive, so he was a bit hurt to be mocked. the game continued until a few turns later, when tim was able to pull the same trick at liam's expense. at which point he blurted, "WHO'S STUPID NOW? LIAM!" Hahahahahah. That's the same fall break as 'which seat in the suburban is the safest?' and 'scoop it out, matthew', stories some of you already know and the rest may hear eventually.

we spent the last week working in the IKEA in DFC. it was a good place to be, the people were friendly and the environment was comfortable. IKEA follows a very strict franchise model, so it is one of the places we have visited with the least obvious Al-Futtaim influence. We actually learned a bit about business practices, they were very open about the IKEA concept and the way the design every aspect of the store to take care of the customer and earn money. Some of the lessons might have been good to know during the StarBooks era ... Early on while at GMASCO we learned the AIDA marketing technique: Attention,Interest, Desire, and Action. All steps in the consumer purchasing process. IKEA hasthe best method to induce ACTION that I have seen, in the form of their Breathtaking Items (BTIs). They are the small things (this month scrub brushes) placed at the entrance and sold at prices low enough to only cover cost. This technique immediately turns the client from visitor to customer, and starts the spending process.

It was also fun to hear about the stores' founder, whose stubbornness and swedishness make me think of nis ...

we are putting together our .ppts for our japan trip & experience a little difficulty on the group cooperation end, but hopefully the troubles will solve themselves shortly. putting together a bizniz presentation is much different than aschool one. basically it has to be much more interesting and much less grounded in fact/research/anything...

• morale

with the computer difficulties, just so-so. but i am having some fun spending time with haider and osmoon. and mail from the states (and france) is starting to find me here at sofitel, so i suppose things will be just swell. also the movie funny games is showing here in dubai (i have no idea why/how) but i look forward to seeing that when able.

• end

next week is at ACE hardware (why?) that seems like too long to learn about a big box version of a familiar brand ... but they follow the a licensing model more than a franchise one, so maybe we will learn on that front.

wish me luck getting my cpu back -- i'll most certainly need it

-molson golden