The Story of Carmen

The Cincinnati Community Orchestra concert is this Saturday! Another one of the things I felt like I improved on last year was my violin playing... and it's making orchestra a lot of fun too. We're playing a Spanish theme concert, including Bizet's Carmen. There are many famous tunes in that piece, most famous is probably the song about the bulls. That piece of music has many memories for me. I originally played it in State Honors Orchestra, back when I was in high school. I sat in the middle of the 2nd violin section, right in front of all the cute flute players. That made it pretty fun. :)

After that experience, I figured I really wanted to see the opera. Finally, my senior year of college I had the opportunity as our local theatre put on the show (ironically, on the same stage that I played on for Honors Orchestra!). To top it off, I even brought a date. She was quite a trooper, as the show was three hours long and she had never been to an opera before. I got us $25 tickets, which I hoped weren't too nose-bleed. I was surprised when we were ushered to the first floor, smack dab in the middle, underneath the overhang, with a great view of the stage. I thought that was too good to be true! As the show started, I figured out why... two speakers on the overhang blocked our view of the English translation (this Spanish opera was sung in French) so we ended up having to lean all over each other to read the translation (a more suave guy would've taken advantage of that).

Unfortunately, as most of these stories end up, it also was the last date. But it doesn't matter, the opera was absolutely awesome because I love the music so much and I would definitely go see it again. Next time I'll be able to afford better seats!

Sigh

One point loss? The one-and-one rule is stupid anyway.

We'll get you in the tournament OSU!

The Big Game

This is it... such a huge game for so many reason. Wisconsin, my alma mater, playing for #1 in the country. They're playing for #1 against the state school in which I currently live in. I have 3 lunch bets going on this game. I'll be heading downtown to watch this game with the UW alumni club here. GO BADGERS!

Interesting weather advisory

Weatherbug warned me of the following advisory:


What exactly is freezing fog? Doesn't the pressure hafta be above the triple point for that to happen? Does it mean the fog is suspended in the air and freezes? Does that mean it would really hurt if we starting sprinting outside?

Moon

In response to Dave's comment... According to Yahoo's dictionary, "moon" is defined as a "natural satellite." It's also defined as "the bared buttocks" but that's not relevant here. So the Earth's moon really is named "Moon" kinda like if Dave re-named Lucy to "Dog." It's kinda like this who's on first condundrum.

Happy New Year!

Happy Chinese New Year! The traditional Chinese calendar is based on the phases of the moon (vs. the regular calendar which is based off the sun). This year, it happened to fall on the same weekend as President's Day, so I took the opportunity to return to Milwaukee visit the family. (Side note: did you ever notice that Earth's moon doesn't have a name? All the moons on other planets have names. We just call ours "moon."). One of the best traditions is the parents giving the kids a "hong bao," or red envelope, with money inside. However, my sister and I apparently have outgrown the tradition since we weren't given any this time. :)

Yesterday I played my friend Jason in tennis, and for the 347th straight time, lost. One of these days... I really need to play more out here.

On Friday night, my sister got me and 10 friends tickets to the Milwaukee Admirals game (our local minor league hockey team). The seats were awesome and the game was a lot of fun. My favorite Admiral is now Chris Durno, who had a hat trick and led the Admirals to a 4-3 win! So what do you think of the Admiral's logo?

Apprentice Thoughts for Tonight

Tonight's apprentice saw our pal Surya get a lot of air time. His teammates got a little annoyed at him because he figured he was the marketing guy for this task. I had to laugh out loud because he started talking about marketing and used ALL THIS PROCTOID language (they even mention P&G by name tonight)... the same language that annoys the heck out of me when I try to talk to someone about marketing. I'm so sick of hearing about first moments of truths. He even used the "RTB" or "the reason to believe." It goes to show, P&G tends to be very process oriented... to do marketing, you do this this and this... to do engineering, you do this this and this (times 250). Some quotes from his teammates:

"He uses a lot of business jargon."
"All he wanted to give me was theory and statistics."
"He understands it from a book standpoint, unfortunately for decision making... that was missing."

That's how I feel being around P&G at times! Sometimes I wish I could tell people that if we could boil down everything into these processes, why the heck would they need us anymore? Just feed it into a computer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still pulling for him... it's just a show, and he had to play the game to not get fired. The guy who they did end up firing was because Trump thought he was too quiet and not outspoken enough. This is one reason why I don't buy what this show is offering up in terms of learning about business. Surya survived, but he threw his team under the bus. It'll be interesting to see the team dynamics after that (speaking of team dynamics, how about a hookup of a couple of other people on that team?).

The guy who got fired, in his exit interview, said that he got fired because he wouldn't get up and critisize the other team. Trump loved the other chick in the boardroom this time who got up and shot her mouth at the other team. He said that it doesn't do any good to do that. I wholeheartedly agree.

The Ethicist

In my "Values Based Leadership" class, our assignment was to write up an Ann Landers type question and answer article. Since the professor was a United Way officer, I figured this was a pretty good topic to bring up. Would love to hear your thoughts.

I am an employee at a large, Fortune 500 company. Every year, the company holds a United Way fundraiser with a target goal of x number of dollars. There are the typical kickoff parties complete with speakers, food, and drinks. As part of the fundraising, the company assigns us all a “Fair Share” suggested amount (which turns out to be a rather sizable percentage of our salary). Is it ethical for me to choose not to donate my “Fair Share” or even to donate at all? What if I fear career repercussions?

The decision to donate to the United Way or any cause, no matter how worthy, should be a personal one. It should depend on your economic ability, your passion for the cause, and beliefs. A suggested donation is appropriate; however, your employer’s choice of words to call it a “fair share” is unfortunate. Your choice to donate or not to donate should not affect your career; however, the company may point to their desire to improve the community they are located in to encourage employee donations. Feel free to talk to your HR representative about your United Way policy.

Gotta love textbooks

So I'm here "studying" (reading the book for the first time) for my marketing research exam on Tuesday. I thought this topic would be interesting, to see different ways to do marketing research. Alas, I've got a typical 800 page textbook complete with a flowchart teaching you the proper 5 step process of designing marketing research.

Well, as I'm skimming along, I see one of those boxes that gives you a real life example of the stuff they're talking about. I'm glad they at least feel like a LITTLE real life application is important; my question, why can't the whole class be like that? Anyways, this one drew my attention as it was one of the many P&G examples. It reads:

The Sweet Smell of Success

When Procter and Gamble Co. were (isn't that supposed to was?) researching to build a better air freshener, they decided that they would ask the consumers about their "desired scent experience." Through this exercise, researchers found out that many people seemed to adjust to a scent after about half an hour... After considering all these views, P&G developed Febreze Scentstories, a scent "player" that looks like a CD player and plays one of five alternating scents every 30 minutes..."

I'm sure all the P&Gers reading this are laughing their asses off at the title of this... Scentstories has been the butt of a lot of jokes within the company. (What do you mean it doesn't play music?) It even received the kiss of death: we all got Scentstories in our Christmas boxes. Way to go textbook!

(In all fairness, Febreze has come out with Noticables, which uses that same insight, but only gives out 2 scents that alternate. That one is flying off the shelves.)