Tangerine’s PoV

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 :)

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).

I’ve been tagged by Cris to write 8 random facts about me. So, this is how it works:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

All this being said, let’s start with the 8 facts:

1. I always wanted to be a young mother, but still, when I got pregnant the first thing I thought was: “Oh my God, I’m too young to be mother”. I still think I’m too young, but well…
2. I hate it when people don’t let you get off the metro/bus/train before they go in.
3. I have big issues with living in the present; I use to get lost somewhere in the past now and then.
4. I have problems finding what I really like: I have started three degrees (economisc, English and Spanish philology and finally advertising and public relations), and I still don’t know if what I study now is what I would like to do in the future. Maybe I have to be what they call the “eternal student”.
5. I read boring literature (everytime I lend a book to someone, a book that I enjoyed a lot they are not able to finish it, or if they can they declare it the most boring book they have read in their lives).
6. I like to watch contests like ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ (not exaclty this as here in Spain the host of the show is disgusting).
7. I hate it when the company I work for is not organized and does not establish rules to be followed by everyone.
8. I am scared to death by the thought of giving birth. It’s been two or three weeks now since I dream about it every night.

Now I would tag Sabina, Cornelia and Cris but I would first have to convince them to start a blog. Tough task! So I tag anyone who is interested in sharing with us 8 little random things about theirselves.

We use to say that we are multitasking because we are able to do more than one activity at one time successfully. We can speak with a client by phone, write an e-mail and respond to colleague who is asking if we want coffee or not. But do we really do all these things at the same time and do we really concentrate on each one of these things? Cientists have different opinions and until they make up their minds and come to a conclusion we will not know if we can really be multitasking or not. I always considered myself able to do various tasks at the same time, but still, science might study this and discover if this is really possible and how can it be achieved.

For the moment I have found some very interesting videos which demonstrate that the most important skill that helps us realize more than one task at the same time, aka the short term visual memory, is limited. We can only concentrate on 4 things at the same time. False? See the videos on this page and see how long it takes to find the difference between the two pics in each video.

“So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, “Wow, it’s hot in here!”

And the other muffin replies: “Holy cow! A talking muffin!”

Did that alleged joke make you laugh? I would guess (and hope) not. But under different circumstances, you would be chuckling softly, maybe giggling, possibly guffawing. I know that’s hard to believe, but trust me. The results are just in on a laboratory test of the muffin joke.”

A very interesting article published in New York Times that demonstrates that laughter is not what we think:

“Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along.”

Full article here

Here we have the first photos of the little person to be.

Welcome little bug.

UPDATE:

And more images of our little alien here.

We all hear people talking about spam and more than that, unfortunately, we all receive lots of spam everyday.

In 2003, in the United States a new law that prohibits any form of spam and phishing was published. You can read it here:

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003

Yesterday, it was the first time when applying this law a defendant was found guilty of phishing attacks.

“

A California man who defrauded users of AOL by sending e-mail messages requesting credit data became the first defendant found guilty by a jury under a 2003 federal law barring Internet ”spam.”

“

Full story here: Man Convicted Under Antispam Law

Will we receive less spam from the United States starting from yestarday?

Source: New York Times

A few weeks ago we could see in Barcelona a group of people anouncing free hugs. A lot of persons went there, got their pat on the back and went home. Some of them told this to their friends with an enthusiastic tone, other just hid it with an embarrassed look. But, in the end, does this really help? I mean, do you really feel better after hugging a complete stranger?

I always look at the people in the metro and I see their sad faces, their worries written with wrinkles and I always wanted to do something for them, like make them smile at least one. I wanted to found an ONG to help “metro folks” smile, or something. First I though of putting a poster at the metro entry with “Free shoulder to cry on”, but then I thought that maybe no one would come, because they would not trust. Maybe I wouldn’t trust either. So I gave up waiting for brilliant idea, not that risky.

I thought of things that use to piss off the passengers, like the delays of RENFE here in Spain. It seems they never come on time and people are getting really tired of this. I thought of a poster with “Free complaints about the delays of the trains… If they won’t listen to us, at least we’ll laugh together”. It seemed risky to me as I don’t know the laws in this country so I’ll have to wait a bit. Maybe this would have made them smile, at least once.

So, what can be done to make them smile without forcing them to pay the ticket with smiles? I’m sure that they all have issues they are worried about, we all have, but it’s quite sad to travel by train or metro. Let’s not forget that in specific moments, if not every day we’re converting into “metro folks” and we’re all sorry about the other “metro folks”. So, solution? Smile more, so the ticket will cost less ;)

Bruno is out of the office, the one handed man is at home trying to move the fingers from time to time. So, I am here again supporting the customers. It’s nice to rememeber the old times, but it’s not that nice to live the old times again. I still cannot find the way to tell a customer that it’s not the product’s fault, so I keep saying “Ok, you are right, I understand you, Yes, indeed”. It’s been a long time since I last used these expressions, but it’s seems i didn’t lose the skills xD.

And there is one more thing that I don’t understand. How come you buy an antivirus product just to have a good looking product? I can’t understand how these persons are more concerned about how the product looks than about what the product does. What if a virus enters in your computer? How would you react then? Anyway, I’m quite surprised with the customers today :(.

So I hope Bruno will be ok soon and I hope this week finishes soon and I get to finish all the tasks I have for this week for the university. I still think that Pompeu Fabra su**s big time, but what I study is very interesting. It’s like Romania, so nice if it weren’t for the people…