Being you own boss

This idea started when I was thinking about my work duties as a self-employed professional, and then I realized it is also applicable to every aspect of life.

I see individuals as being their own bosses. This means they are responsible for deciding what needs to be done, motivating themselves to do these things, providing quality control and feedback, and rewarding themselves for successes.

Have you ever thought, “If I were my boss, I would fire myself”? This sort of disappointment in one’s performance often results from things like procrastination or doing something with less than one’s full attention.

Imagine the sort of boss you would like to have. This person would be responsible, sensitive, fair, and would provide appropriate, constructive feedback. You would like your boss to take all aspects of your life into consideration, be aware that apart from work you also have a family, friends, hobbies, and your own personal needs. At the same time, your boss needs to help you keep your priorities straight. A good boss doesn’t accept excuses, and is aware of the difference between genuine reasons for avoiding doing something and the avoidance that results from “just not wanting” to do it.

Now, imagine the sort of employee you would like to have. This employee has a clear set of priorities, does what is most important first, takes responsibility, manages time efficiently, and is honest.

In our lives, we have both these roles. We are our own bosses and our own employees in living our lives. To function well, we have to take responsibility for all our actions, thoughts, and feelings. We have to decide what is important at each given moment, and act accordingly.

For example, what started me thinking along these tracks is a particular piece of work I have been procrastinating about. I find myself sitting down and doing other things instead of starting working. I know that I need to finish it and get it out of the way. I know I am capable of doing it well. I also know that I don’t particularly enjoy it, and so I find myself avoiding it. So I started imagining a boss observing my actions.

Self-employed people can benefit from imagining they have a boss standing behind them. This will encourage them to spend more time working and less time engaging in the sort of avoidance activities that have become so common: checking email, visiting social networking sites, reading online news sites and blogs, and so on.

Extending this metaphor from the work arena to the management of our entire lives, we can think about ourselves as having bosses watching over us at all times, motivating us to do what we know is important. We can be benevolent bosses to ourselves, balancing what we need to do with what we want to do. This should help both productivity and happiness, as avoiding the things we need to do but don’t want to ultimately leads to pressure, guilt, and stress.

Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

Audrey Niffenegger, Her Fearful Symmetry, Vintage, 2009.

Spoiler warning!

I enjoyed the author's previous novel, The Time Traveler's Wife, so I was looking forward to reading this book. As I expected, it contains the same combination of present day realism, detailed characterization, and a less convincing supernatural element.

The story takes place in a house adjacent to Highgate Cemetery in London (which sounds like a wonderful place to visit), and tells the story of the occupants of the building's three flats (apartments) following the death of one of them.

From the beginning it is clear that this is a ghost story, with Elspeth Noblin dying and becoming a ghost. The ghost element is not clearly explained, reflecting the inconsistent portrayal of ghosts in popular culture. The ghost seems to be energy rather than matter, but with time she learns to move physical matter and to manifest and become visible to some people. Also, it is not entirely clear why she is confined to her flat (not the place of her death), unless this is related to the psychological reason for her afterlife. The characters encountering Elspeth's ghost, and the readers, cannot infer from her existence that everyone becomes a ghost upon dying, or that all ghosts are confined to their former place of residence.

The main characters are Elspeth, her lover Robert, who lives in the flat below her, her American twin nieces Julia and Valentina, who inherit her flat and move in, and Martin, who lives upstairs. Their stories become intertwined, as the twins, rather predictably, form complicated relationships with Robert and Martin. There are also hints of secret between Elspeth and her twin sister Edie, which explains why Elspeth chose Edie's daughters as her heirs.

Robert is writing a history of the cemetery, and gives guided tours of it. Valentina starts a relationship with him, which is overshadowed by his grief for her aunt, Elspeth. Martin writes cryptic crosswords, and suffers from OCD, which is depicted very well. His wife moves out, and eventually Julia tries to help him recover.

The relationship between Julia and Valentina is described in great detail. Julia, the elder, is more outgoing and confident, but also overprotective and possessive about Valentina, who wants independence. Identical twins have always been interesting characters in fiction, sometimes because their similarity enables swaps and mistaken identities, and sometimes because their closeness is something most of us never experience. Much has been said about people's fear of the other, the different. I think there is also a deep-seated fear of the identical, which explains people's discomfort with the idea of clones or of humanoid robots. The phrase "you all look the same to me" is never a compliment. Twins have not only the greatest possible degree of physical similarity, they also have an intimacy grown out of shared experiences that in many cases seems to inhibit the development of their individuality. In this case, Julia and Valentina still dress in identical clothes at 21, and have yet to embark on career paths or have boyfriends, mainly because this would separate them from each other. As the story progresses, Valentina starts expressing her separate identity. This leads to inevitable and painful conflict. It made me grateful that I'm not a twin, and I wonder how many twin readers will identify with this sort of situation.

The supernatural story-line involving the ghost develops mainly in the second half of the book. It was very clear to me quite early on what would happen, so one of the main plot events was no surprise to me. I personally found it hard to accept, but readers who more easily suspend their disbelief might find it satisfying. The long-kept secret is revealed, and many loose ends are tied up in a way that gives relatively happy endings for most of the characters.

The writing is good, both in the descriptions and in the dialogue, where the author often conveys the personalities of the different speakers through their words. In some places there were turns of phrase that distinguished American and British characters and indicated their age and social class, something that many authors fail to achieve.

This novel is worth reading for the characters' interactions and development, even for readers like me who find the idea of ghosts difficult to accept.

Jeffrey A. Carver - Sunborn

Jeffrey A. Carver, Sunborn, Tor, 2008.

Usually when I read a book, it is a book I chose, based on knowing the author or reading a review, or at least a book I received from someone I trust. In this case, I picked up the book without knowing anything about it, or the author, just because the bookshop was offering a "second book at half price", and I couldn't find anything else I wanted for the second book.

The first indication I got that I might have made a mistaken choice was when I opened the book later that day and saw on the inside front page: "Volume Four of the Chaos Chronicles". I feel very strongly that books in a series should mention this fact on the outside cover. In fact, I have often avoided buying books for exactly that reason. If a book is part of a series, I would prefer to read the first in the series before deciding whether to continue. I wonder if this is, in fact, why the publisher failed to make it clear on the cover. I feel slightly tricked, and this is not a good feeling to have toward a publisher I often buy books from.

Different authors have different approaches to writing series. Some assume, correctly in my mind, that the series will be marketed in such a way that readers are likely to read the books in order. This leaves them free to develop the characters, the world and the plot line over many volumes, as if the series were a much larger work that can be taken as a whole (and some series are eventually issued together, in an omnibus edition). Other authors prefer to consider each volume as a stand-alone novel, and state that readers can read the books in whatever order. This requires them to include a lot of explanatory background material about previous events in each volume, which is often insufficient for readers encountering the series for the first time, and can be annoyingly repetitive for readers who have followed the series. In this case, I think the author managed to strike a reasonable balance, which may explain why it was not considered necessary to state on the cover that this was book four of a series.

The following review is from the view point of a reader unfamiliar with the series, encountering this author for the first time.

The plot is a standard quest. Our hero is a human called John Bandicut, who is travelling with three aliens and two robots. They all have translator stones, some sort of advanced technology or sentient artifacts, enabling them to communicate with each other. From what I understood of the backstory, they were given these stones and then taken from their home systems and sent on various missions. Bandicut also has a telepathic connection with some being called a quarx.

These characters are brought in to try to prevent a major disaster. It is unclear why they are considered qualified to do this, apart from having succeeded in their previous missions (described in the earlier volumes). As is usual in this sort of story, they encounter various dangers, team up with powerful allies, and eventually there is a happy ending as the disaster is averted.

I have to state here that I did not really enjoy this book, and found it lacking in many ways. I spent a lot of time while reading it trying to work out what wasn't working for me. I consider it insufficient to say "it wasn't well written", and more interesting to try to find out exactly in what way it was deficient. However, I did read it to the end, as I usually finish books I start (which is why I try to be careful with my choices).

First of all, the nature of the story meant that the characters were helpless. They were thrown into the mission without having any say in the matter, without any real reason for them in particular to be suited to the task, and without any driving motivation to solve the problem, other than the threat to all biological life in the galaxy... As the mission proceeded, at each point, the more powerful allies undertook the most important parts of the action, and our team on their own would have achieved nothing. Even the self-sacrifice at the end, a theme I seem to appreciate in most cases, did not involve one of our heroes, since in this sort of story they must all survive to the happy ending.

The characters were superficial and stereotypical, and despite the author's best efforts, did not engage my sympathy. Bandicut had the typical combination of courage and inner anxiety. His three alien companions were insufficiently drawn (perhaps on the assumption that readers knew them from the previous volumes). They didn't seem to have specific talents that would account for their being chosen by the translator stones or sent on missions for the good of the galaxy. The female alien, Antares, is an empath, one of the tritest stereotypes for females in SF. She is also humanoid enough to have a sexual relationship with Bandicut, which serves to reduce his sense of isolation in a way that does little to enhance the plot. The other two, Ik and Li-Jared, are male. It is not surprising that the aliens designated male adhere to human male attitudes, though Ik later joins Antares by developing his empathic side. The relations between these characters are explored to some extent, as is their reaction to being exiled from their worlds and everything they knew, but this failed to impress.

The two robots in the team, named Napoleon and Copernicus, in a human-centric naming trend that appears throughout the story, are intelligent but annoyingly servile. It seems to me that once AI exists and becomes superior to natural intelligence, "artificial" beings will not be subordinate or inferior to "biological" beings. These robots were supposedly intelligent, and played a role in the story, but their actions and words did not portray much of their intellectual superiority over the biological characters. Also, they were unfortunately and patronizingly, given childish nicknames, Nappy and Coppy. I assume that Americans may not know that "nappy" in UK English means "diaper", but any readers familiar with this usage will probably find it amusing.

The other beings in this story include two other robots, Jeaves and Delilah; an alien whose world is under threat; two entities from another universe; several sentient stars; and the enemy, known as the Mindaru. It bothered me that characters were referred to as male or female despite not being the sort of entities that require two genders for reproduction or social purposes. I would have referred to them all as "it". The enemy was another standard theme, the advanced artificial sentience that wishes to obliterate all biological life. This sort of enemy has been portrayed much more persuasively, and chillingly, by other authors.

The novel also contained another story, interspersed between the chapters but mostly unrelated. It features Julie Stone, Bandicut's human ex-girlfriend, who is on Triton, working with the Translator, an advanced entity connected to the translator stones the main characters possess. This story interested me more, as it was easier to relate to characters in a human setting. Julie embarks on her own adventure, showing a bit more initiative than the other characters (despite also having an advanced and powerful ally), and eventually survives. The happy ending implies that Julie and Bandicut will meet up in the next volume, which will be complicated by Bandicut's relationship with Antares. A love triangle! How original!

One of the most frequently cited bits of writing advice is "show, don't tell". This book was almost entirely "tell", with everything being made explicit. The attempts to show us the characters' inner feelings usually involved either spelling out their inner thoughts, or sometimes conversations about these feelings, rather than showing how these feeling influenced their behaviour and relationships. The descriptions of the empathic communications assumed a basic similarity in concepts that would enable some degree of understanding between vastly differing beings, that was bridged by the various advanced entities involved. All the impressive speculative astrophysics was explained in great detail, somehow removing the sense of wonder that it should have invoked. The great contrast between the immensity of the mission and the banal nature of the characters, who go through so much, mostly passively, and emerge unharmed and largely unchanged, makes the whole thing seem like a waste of time.

I do not expect I will read any further work by this author, unless I am given persuasive evidence that his writing, plotting and characterization have improved by at least an order of magnitude. In future, I will be even more careful when selecting books to read. Caveat lector!

Leaving BNI

Today an important stage in my life came to an end. I left my BNI chapter after four years of membership.

BNI (Business Network International) is the world's largest networking organization. Each chapter has one representative of each occupation, and members meet each week to give each other business referrals through word of mouth marketing. The weekly meeting is structured, with members and visitors presenting their business, a central talk by one member, and the passing of referrals. Members are also required to meet each other for personal "one to one" conversations.

When I was invited to join, I was unsure how useful it would be for my translation business, but I knew it would help me develop new skills. Being a member of BNI taught me how to speak confidently in public, how to present my business, and how to interact with business people from all walks of life. My development was relatively rapid, and my newfound confidence enabled me to give a public lecture at a professional conference.

It was also good for my business. During 2007 and 2008, one third of my income came from BNI referrals. This is considered a good result. Members achieve differing levels of income from referrals, but most cover the cost of membership many times over.

Throughout my membership of the Haifa chapter, I have been an active member of the chapter's leadership team. I have served as Visitor Host (several times), VP, Education Coordinator, Membership Committee, and President. My term as President was an important achievement for me, and I learned a lot about leading and motivating a team. I was also chosen by the chapter as the Outstanding Member for 2007, and my name was recorded on the chapter's cup (see photo).

My main reason for not renewing my membership for a fifth year is a change I am planning in my business. I am reducing my translation workload to make time for my own writing and creative projects. This new business is less suited to word of mouth marketing. I feel I have given and received a lot from BNI, but now it is time to move on.

I would like to thank the following people:

BNI Founder and Chairman, Dr. Ivan Misner, for establishing this organization that has helped thousands of business professionals worldwide over the past 25 years. I listened to Dr. Misner's podcasts each week, and was thrilled when he graciously commented on a blog post I wrote here about International Networking Week.

The co-National Directors of BNI Israel, Yarden Noy, who has been a role model for me since I first met her at my first MSP, and Sam Schwartz, whose lectures at various BNI events have been an inspiration.

Dr. Itai Plaut, who started out as a member of my chapter, and later became Area Manager of the North of Israel, and accompanied my chapter. Itai gave me guidance during my term as President.

Danny Weiss, another member of my chapter, who was President when I joined. Danny chaired the Open Table meetings I attended every month, and generously shared his knowledge of BNI procedures.

Finally, I would like to thank all the current and former members of BNI Haifa Chapter for the time they spent with me, for the referrals and connections they made me, for supporting and witnessing my development, for giving me the opportunity to become a leader, and for everything I have learned. I will keep in touch, continue to make referrals when possible, and perhaps one day return.

Windsor Day Tours

During my reports on my holiday in England last September, I mentioned that my sister-in-law Jill took us out on some of the tours she planned to offer as part of her new business.

Now I am pleased to announce that she has opened her tour business to the general public. Windsor Day Tours offers personalized private tours, including the sites we visited (Jane Austen country and Stonehenge) and others.

Some may have considered it unethical for me to write a testimonial on Jill's site, being a relative (and therefore possibly "unobjective"), so I haven't done that. Instead, I feel I can write about Jill's tours here, with full disclosure of our connection.

Jill has always loved travelling, and throughout the years of our acquaintance, I have enjoyed many trips in her company. She has extensive experience in guiding small tours, first for friends and relatives, later also for overseas students. Since deciding to set up her own tour business, Jill has studied the background to the places she visits, and also explored each site fully. She has invested in a luxurious car, and acquired all the licences and insurance coverage required to drive small tour groups. Jill is a people person, with an outgoing personality, and her previous work experience in nursing and teaching English as a foreign language, make her a pleasant and considerate companion for adults and children.

The tours are ideal for small groups wishing to explore various aspects of England's landscape and heritage with a personal guide. Many people are reluctant to join large coach tours, where they might not get an opportunity to ask the questions they want, and where the schedule is dictated by others. On the other hand, some find it difficult to tour independently, by car or public transport. There is often a feeling that even with a good guide book, it is hard to know the best places to see. An experienced private tour guide can solve these problems and create the ideal day trip.

If you visit Jill's site and decide to contact her about a tour, I would appreciate it if you told her that you first read about Windsor Day Tours on my blog.

Porcupine Tree live in Tel Aviv, July 7, 2010

Last night I saw one of my favourite bands perform live, and it was the best rock concert I have ever seen (not that I have seen many...).




[Photo of Steven Wilson from jonklinger's flickrstream]

Porcupine Tree is a British progressive rock band with metal influences. In my opinion, they are the best current progressive rock band, and among the best rock bands I know in terms of musical skills. Their songs are complex, interesting, and varied. They usually combine loud and quieter sections, original rhythms, various solo sections featuring the outstanding musicianship of each member, and thought-provoking lyrics.

This concert was held at the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds, in a large, airconditioned venue. I find it hard to estimate numbers, but it seemed to me that there were between 2,000 and 3,500 people there. I have been unable to find any report of audience numbers online. That makes this quite a large concert for a band that is not quite mainstream, and shows the band's lasting popularity in Israel. The audience seemed to be 60-65% male (which seems normal for rock concert audiences, judging by videos I have seen), and probably about 60-65% aged under 30, though there were several older people and a few pre-adolescents.

There was a long wait outside before the audience was allowed in, and the female ticket holders were asked to stand in a separate queue so their bags could be checked by female security guards. I have never seen this done anywhere else, and wonder where this idea came from.

The acoustics and sound balance were probably not perfect, but sounded good enough to me. I don't have enough experience to say if another local venue would have been preferable in any way, and the airconditioning  helped make it more bearable on a humid summer's night than an outdoor concert would have been. Unfortunately, people were smoking, and this is the first time in years I have been exposed to so much smoking, which I hate, but it was to be expected.

The supporting act was an Israeli band called Eatliz. I hadn't heard of them before, as I'm not really interested in Israeli music, I don't really like female vocalists, and so I can't say their music was to my taste. Some members of the audience appreciated them, but I got the impression most were impatient for the "real" concert to begin (especially after the long delay in getting into the venue). Supporting acts are always in a difficult position, playing for an audience that is waiting for someone else to come on stage. Also, the sound during their show was quite bad, for some reason.

It is ten years since Porcupine Tree's last concert here, and accordingly they played not just songs from their latest album, The Incident, but also many songs from previous albums. I was easy to please regarding the choice of songs, since I like all the albums. I was happy to hear one of my favourite songs, Dark Matter, and didn't mind that some other favourites were not included. In general, the songs selected seemed well suited to live performance. Of course, there will always be some people who either have clear preferences among the songs and albums, or perhaps don't know all the material, and they are more difficult to please.

The band's leader, Steven Wilson, is known as a great friend of Israel, having lived in Tel Aviv on and off over the past few years. I have heard this originally started with an Israeli girlfriend, but that he continued to spend time in Israel even after this relationship ended. He started the show speaking in Hebrew, which impressed everyone. As you can imagine, Israelis are particularly sensitive to the way foreigners treat them, especially after so many artists either refuse to perform here or cancel shows at the last minute. So Wilson's attitude earned him and the band great respect.

Apparently, drummer Gavin Harrison didn't really want to perform here, as he supports the Palestinians. Of course, he is entitled to his opinions, and I really respect him for performing here with the band despite his personal objections. He is an outstanding drummer and gave a great performance. I don't think the audience held his opinions against him.

I am not a fannish person. In the two main fields of art I consume, music and literature, I have a tendency to collect all the disks/books of artists/writers I enjoy, but I don't feel the need to publicize my support by buying posters or t-shirts, and I don't need signed copies. For me, it's all about my personal reaction to what I hear/read, and it's a private thing that happens in my head.

So, I was wondering why I felt the need to attend the live concert. First, in practical terms, I know that nowadays bands obtain most of their revenue from live performances rather than from selling recorded music. It is said that in the past bands toured to promote their albums, while today they release tracks to support their concerts. This is one reason why I wanted to attend, to pay back the creators of the music I enjoy. I believe in rewarding artists I appreciate. Secondly, since there are so few concerts in Israel by groups I want to hear, the moment I heard my favourite rock band was coming here I knew I had to go. I bought the tickets at the end of March, when they first went on sale. I felt quite confident the concert wouldn't be cancelled, and I'm so happy it wasn't.

As I mentioned earlier, I haven't attended many rock concerts in my life, and I don't go out dancing. So before the concert started, I was standing around wondering why I was waiting among a loud, sweaty, and smoking crowd of strangers just to hear music that I can listen to whenever I want. As soon as the concert started, I began to realize why. The experience of live music is so different to recorded music. First, there is something magical about seeing the creators of music I love in person, making music and talking to the audience. It felt slightly more personal than just listening to recordings. Second, the live versions of the songs included some solos that are not in the albums. Third, the light show and the video art were very impressive.

For me, it was an other-worldly experience. I was in a large crowd, but felt completely alone and uninhibited in dancing and singing (badly) along with the songs. I was aware that every audience member was experiencing the music differently, and I just went with my instinctive reaction to the music, based on my feelings about the songs. I was able to forget about externals like how I would appear to others, and just make the direct connection between the music I was hearing and my expression of my response to it. I felt at home.

Thank you, Porcupine Tree: Steven Wilson, Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri, John Wesley, and Colin Edwin! You have made thousands of Israelis very happy.

(Also, thanks to the music shop manager who first thought I might like Porcupine Tree a few years ago - I did, and he benefitted from his successful recommendation when I bought all their albums in the space of a few weeks!)

Hit and Run Accidents

Recently there have been a lot of hit and run accidents, where drivers hit pedestrians and then drive away without checking to see who or what they hit, and without providing assistance. Some of these accidents are fatal to the pedestrians.

Sometimes the pedestrians are to blame, when they jump out into the road and the driver has no time to stop. Sometimes the driver is going too fast, or just not looking. In some cases the drivers are drunk.

The hitting may be an accident, but the running is not. Drivers often say they didn't know they hit something, or they thought it was an object rather than a person. This is not convincing, especially when one sees photos of the car involved in the accident.

The law states that whenever drivers hit something, they must stop and investigate. If they hit a person or caused damage to property, they must report it and get help for the victim. Apart from this being a legal requirement, it is also a sign of human decency and even common sense.

It is sad that so many drivers seem to think they can avoid the consequences of their actions, and are more interested in protecting themselves than in possibly saving their victim's life.

I call upon all drivers to drive carefully, never drink and drive, and to stop if they hit something. I also call on pedestrians to be more careful, and never assume that drivers have seen them or will stop for them. Our use of public spaces like roads requires us all to be responsible and considerate.