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A few months ago a friend of mine sent me a copy of Allen Carr’s book Easy Way to Quit Smoking. To be honest at first I thought it was somewhat foolish and I never tried to read it.

First of all, I must say I have been smoking for 11 years now. I only quit smoking while I was pregnant, and after I gave birth to my son I got back to the habit. Since my son was born things started to get more and more complicated, as we never smoke in his presence, so I was always looking for a way to smoke, like going our for a walk, or similar. The bad part of it was that when I felt like smoking, my son didn’t feel like taking a walk and so on, so our relation was quite affected by my smoking habit. In April I started to question whether this could affect him more than I could see, so I decided to look for a way to try to quit smoking, so I started to read the book. I read it in one day and from that day, the 13th of April I never smoked again or even needed to smoke. I think it is one of the best things I could do for me and my son, as we now have a much better relationship and I am much happier, and apart from that, I feel comfortable everywhere in smoking or non-smoking places.

Three weeks ago my husband read the book and he also quit smoking very easily and he is feeling really good.

We used to smoke a lot, more than 20 cigarettes a day and we tried many ways to quit smoking, and with the book it was very very easy. If you want to quit smoking, try the book, maybe it will work for you too :)

A year and a half ago I came back from my maternity leave and I was given a brand new project: to create and manage a new team in Chile in order to give support to our customers: answer the calls from Spain, e-mails, and integrate with our team from here.

It’s been one year and a half working 19 hours a day in order to make this work, doing my best to have time for my son, my family, my studies and for myself also, but now it finally works, and it works really good. I had a lot of positive and negative experiences during the process and I learned a lot from this project. It’s not easy to work with persons from another country, with different culture and different habits, it’s hard for us and hard for them. Here are some tips to make it easier to create and manage a team from a quite important distance.

1. Get familiar with the local labor legislation

You need to know the rights of the employees, the benefits you can offer to them (courses, etc), the sick leaves, the holidays, etc. You have to get full understanding of everything that regulates the rights and responsabilities of the employees in order not to create an environment of confusion and chaos.

2. Know the people and their culture

In most of the cases you have to travel to the country in order to interview at least one person that will bring the other members of the team, to rent a place where the office will be located, etc. Make the most of this trip in order to know the places and the culture of the country, because this way you will have more things in common with the team. Let them know your country also and talk from time to time about cultural differencies and similarities. It helps to bring people together and distroy virtual frontiers.

3. Get personal and keep personal

In order to overcome the difficulties caused by the distance you have to get closer at a personal level: try to know better the people, get closer to them when they need it, when they have a problem, give them a call when they are sick, call to congratulate them on their birthday, etc. You have to be very close and help them when they might need it, in order to keep a good contact and make them feel as part of the organization.

4. Integrate them into the whole

You have to help them know the members of the other teams although they don’t need to interact with them in their day-to-day activities. It is important for them to know the organization in which they work, otherwise they will not understand the mission and values of the company and they will not take it seriosly. In case it is possible invite one of them to visit the HQ periodically, so that they get a better idea of the company.

5. Plan the visits

It is important to have a plan of periodical visits to the new office in order to understand the needs and know the environment in which they work and make sure it is comfortable. These visits must be organized and planned in advance in order to let everybody get prepared for the visit. In order to get the most of it, everything should be prepared in advance; if the visit is a surprise and if it is a short visit (like most of them), people will get very nervous during the first days and you will not be able to understand the real situation.

6. Communicate and reward

Working from a distance is difficult because it is hard to get feedback, this is why it is so important for you to organize regular meetings with the team and also individual meetings in order to communicate the news, know the needs of the team and the individual needs and detect the problems that might appear. It is also important to reward the efforts that are made in order to improve the quality of their work, in order to motivate the staff. It is also convenient to add to the conferences local members in order to improve their integration into the whole.

7. Don’t take anything for granted

This is a rule which is present in all aspects of our life, but in this situation it has a special role. At the distance, when a team works without a local leader it is easy to have issues between the different employees because of different personalities, etc. In most of the cases there will be a few persons that will talk to you about internal problems, and others that won’t. You have to keep in mind that there are two ways to manage this: ignore it and let them solve it internally or get involved. If you want to get involved, first of all you have to give equal credit to every employee and listen to all of them in the same way. In the regular visits you should do some extra-work activities in order to better know the persons and find the way to better communicate with each of them.

Conclusions

In order to better manage a team from a distance you have to really do your best to know every member of the team, know the culture of their country and share with them the culture of your country. You have to make them feel integrated into the company, and you also have to visit the office regularly in order to spend time with the employees and get closer to them. You have to have lots of patience in the beginning but when things start to work fine and you get used to the new routine you will be thankful for being able to know the people and their culture, and it will be a pleasure to work together with them and achieve any objective that you wish together with you new and strong team.

I never enjoyed the stories about superheroes with superpowers that supersave superpeople, but this time I wanted to give it a try. All I remember about Batman from my childhood is that a neighbour of mine wore similar clothes and he was always saying that he would save us all. In fact, one day he came and said (I was 11 years old at that moment) “at 3pm the thiefs are coming to Vaslui (my natal town) and they will attack us, but don’t worry I will save you all”. I remember being scared and not telling all this “secret” to my parents (??) and I remember him with the Batman costume shouting “come, thiefs, come, I will show you who is Batmaaan”. As a grown up, this neighbour of mine, is a completely normal person, in case there were doubts.

Anyway, going back to our theme, despite of what I expected from the movie I was very impressed. The movie is an example of how to make a movie based on a comic. It keeps all your senses awake until the end, it does not let you breathe, it always surprises you, and apart from this the photography and special effects are just perfect, they could not picture better Gotham city and the fear that its inhabitants felt, it could not picture better Harvey Dent, and of course, it could not picture better the Joker. After watching it I came to like Batman, he is a superhero, but the kind of superhero that does the things by himself, not the superpowers type of hero.

I assume there will be a second part of the movie, as for some of the characters the ending is not definite and I believe it was this way intentionally.

The movie has a rating of 9/10 on www.imdb.com with more than 300.000 votes until now and that makes it the best movies of 2008 and I think that is a fair rating and recognition for Chrisopher Nolan’s work. A great movie, indeed.

2008 was a quite tough year, taking A to the nursery school didn’t go as well as we thought it would, we had him ill for more than 3 months because I think he is a virus magnet. I hope in January it will work better otherwise I will have to clone myself in order to keep up with all this.

Anyway, here is what I plan for 2009:

1. Go to Romania - very important. If nothing goes wrong we will go in April, because it’s been almost two years since the last time we went to Romania and I really need to go and spend some time with my family and friends and, of course, introduce A. to everyone.

2. I’m working on a new website about books and literature in general, something like a community. It’s still in beta and I think in 2009 it will be up and going.

3. Save some money for a new apartment.

4. Get my driving licence and convince Bruno to get his.

5. Go back to my programming days.

That would be all for 2009, there are much more things I’d like to do but they can wait for 2010.

Happy New Year!

First of all I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone and a very Happy New Year. I hope you already made the new year’s resolutions, I’m still working on mine because I want (and need) 2009 to be an year of changes. But it will all be said in the appropriate moment.

What have I been doing during these months? Well basically nothing new, taking care of A, working (too much) and not much more, but this has been keeping me very busy so I could not post as much as I would have liked to.

With all this being said I declare myself back to the online world and I hope 2009 will be a richer year in terms of blogging (if, of course, A does not fall ill again).

It seems we always miss something, someone, some place, some… some… And we also regret something, something we said, something we didn’t say. I do, you do, I think everybody does. Sometimes you can solve it out, sometimes you cannot do it. Yesterday I testified a happy resolution, a very happy one in fact, and that made me think and made me remember lots of fortunate and unfortunate events. It made me remember the first days with B, we didn’t know each other, we didn’t know how to react in specific situations, but we managed to find the right way and now here we are. It made me remember my friends back in Romania: Cornelia, Sabina, Alina, the two Cris, Vali, all of them. I miss them so much. It made me remember that I was a bitch to some and I never tried to explain my behaviour, and I have this “nice” conscience that makes me remember it when I’m down, down, down… I remembered when I gave birth to Alex, the best thing I ever did. It made me remember when I was feeling a complete stranger in this country, now I feel I belong here, with my husband and my son. It made me remember lots of things, some that I wanted to remember and some that I didn’t…

I also found out that this “nice” conscience or something made me delete my old blogs. I never understood why, but thanks God, archive.org exists so I could save some posts which I published in Mandarinux with the original dates. Maybe the one that most impressed me, and made me want to travel to Romania NOW NOW NOW was this one:
Last Saturday at work… I miss you so much, guys, you are all very special persons to me.

Well, that would be all for today. I am very happy I FINALLY got to meet Estela, and that she brought back to me all these special memories.

As I will need to buy lots of books in English the next 5 years for the University I have looked for libraries which sell books in English here in Barcelona.

1. The first one I have found, in fact, I have visited it many times and bought quite a few books there is Come in. In this one you can find most of the books your teacher could recommend you, but I think that the classical novels have a poor quality.

Contact:
Llibreria Anglesa Come In
C/ Balmes 129 bis
08008 Barcelona - Spain
93 453 12 04/93 453 18 06

2. The second library I want to mention is Hibernian Books, a secondhand English bookshop. Here you can find basically everything and as it is a second hand shop you can find better editions for a cheaper price. I bought yesterday a very nice edition of South of the border, west of the sun by Murakami for just 3 euros.

Contact:
Hibernian Books
Calle Montseny 17
08012 Barcelona
Tlf.: 93 2174796
www.hibernian-books.com

3. Elephant Bookshop - this one was recommended to me but I didn’t get to visit it yet. This library offers secondhand books in English for not more than 3 euros. They are moving right now, so I don’t know the new address but if you’re interested keep an eye on their website and you’ll find it out.

4. BCN Books: this library also offers books in English. There are three BCN Books Libraries in Barcelona and one of them is very close to where I live so I hope to be able to visit it soon and post about it.

Contact:

BCN BOOKS BOOKSHOP
Roger de Llúria, 118
08037 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 4577692
Fax: 93 2081445
bcnbooks@bcnbooks.com

BCN BOOKS BOOKSHOP
Amigó, 81
08021 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 2007953
Fax: 93 2009483
amigo@bcnbooks.com

BCN BOOKS CASH & CARRY
Riera d’Horta, 32
08027 BARCELONA
Tel.: 93 4763343
Fax: 93 4763340
cash@bcnbooks.com

You can also find some books in English in the most important libraries (Casa del Libro, Fnac, etc), but in these ones you can find mostly everything you need for a much better price.

Living in Barcelona is not cheap at all, but when you also have children it can be painful.

A. is already 9 months old and as here in Spain the maternity leave is just 4 months we decided to take him to a nursery school in September when he will be one year old. We knew from friends that finding a place in a public nursery is something close to impossible, but we felt like trying at least. The system is quite bizarre, it works like this: you have to submit your request, then all requests receive a number and then another number is generated randomly and based on this last number you take part in a draw. No, not an usual draw. They basically choose a number starting from which the requests will be accepted. This is something I really did not understand. Of course, when the number was published we realized that we weren’t lucky so we started to look for a private nursery thinking that we would be more lucky. WRONG! We visited a few and they were full, no place. Finally a colleague from work managed to obtain a place for A in a nursery not so far from home.

I really do not understand how this system works. In Barcelona a place in a public nursery costs 250 euros per month, while the private costs between 400-500 per month. We will take A to this private nursery 5 hours and a half and we will bring him home to eat and sleep, as this way we can save 200 euros per month. I think this price is exaggerated, and if all the nursery schools are full is not because everyone in Barcelona is rich, it is just because we don’t hope for a solution and if we want our sons to grow up well we have to make this sacrifice. It’s sad and I hope the Government will look into this as soon as possible and solve this problem, otherwise Spain will start to ask the immigrants to come here, as they are the only persons that still have children nowadays in Spain.

So, here are my tips for you if you are looking for a place in a nursery school in Barcelona:

1. If you’re new here, or you are planning to come to Barcelona I really recommend you to rent a house or buy a house somewhere close to Barcelona but not in the city. If you have children or you’re planning to have children Barcelona is a very very expensive place to leave.

2. If you’re already here and you are looking for a place in a public nursery you should start all the process in April approximately. The nurseries first organize a visiting day for the parents to see the nursery school. This day is usually published on the web Escolas Bressol de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona. Here you can find info and photos of the public nurseries and also information about the admission.

3. Even if you request a place in a public nursery I recommend you start visiting private nurseries in february and book a place for your children there, just in case you are not lucky with the public one.

You can consult the list of public and private nurseries from Barcelona on this web page and on this page you can find more information about the admission process.

4. If you did not find a place in a public or private nursery you can still choose one of the toy libraries in town where you can leave take your son to socialize a bit and you can also leave him there with a tutor a few hours a day.

That would be all for today. Good luck!

I personally enjoy Michael Moore’s movies and when I found out that he produced Sicko i really wanted to see it. I had no idea what he would talk about in this movie, but I wanted to give it a try.

After the first two minutes I spend the other 1 hour and 58 minutes of the movie with my mouth open, I could not believe my eyes.

The movie is about how healthcare works in the US, not about the 47 millions of Americans that do not benefit of healthcare, but about the 250 millions that do, but that do not receive the treatment that they should. About the doctors that receive bonuses for denying treatments or worse, for letting patients die. It’s not the amount of money you pay for the healthcare, which is, actually, one of the highest in the world, but about paying all this money for nothing: they will find any excuse to deny any surgery, any treatment so that the company does not spend money and they increase profits (there are persons that are paid for doing this).

It’s a shocking movie. I am used to going to the doctor anytime I need without paying anything. I pay it through taxes and I receive a fair healthcare, as all the Spanish or foreigner people that come here.

There is a ranking that Michael Moore talks about in the movie. United States of America is the 37th in the ranking of the world’s health systems realized by the World Health Organization. Even Costa Rica has a better system than the US. Actually, in the movie Michael takes a few persons that helped in the rescue on 11/9 and got sick after that and who did not receive a correct treatment in the US to Cuba where they receive medical attention for free.

In this ranking I looked for Romania and I found it… rank 99. Romania has universal healthcare, but all Romanians know that if you need to see a doctor you will have to pay extra-money to be treated ok, otherwise you might see yourself forgotten in a room during a few days. It’s how it works and all Romanians accept it as something natural. You get medical attention even if you don’t pay, but in most of the cases the doctors wait for you to give them money (and not only the doctors, the nurses also and any other person in the hospital that you need to see).

This world we live in is very sad. I am so disappointed.

The World Health Organization ranking of the world’s health systems

After reading Kafka on the shore I could not resist buying a new Murakami novel. This time it was Norwegian Wood, the only realistic novel that Murakami ever wrote.

Toru Watanabe, a 37 year old man finds himself in an European airport and suddenly hears a song that brings back to him lots of memories from his youth. The song is The Beatles’ Norwegian Wood. The rest of the novel tries to picture these memories built around Naoko, a special girl with whom he has a special but very difficult relationship, and Midori, a very human, very lively girl. To many it might seem just a love story that doesn’t even deserve to be read, but I think it’s much more than that. I could identify in the novel many of the symbols that Murakami used in Kafka on the shore: cats, deep forests, etc.

I think reading Murakami is an experience which goes beyond the story that he tells. I consider the characters he builds striking, I found the dialogues very interesting, very human and very realistic, the descriptions are very thorough but not boring. I find it interesting to read Murakami, it makes me feel things, that’s what good writers do!

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That’s the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that”

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