How insignificant...

So I came across this poster, an inspirational piece for those cynics amongst us - God bless each and every one of you!

What really drew my attention is, ultimately, its raw truism ! It is as funny as it is versatile: parody of inspirational imagery it might be, but really who amongst us hasn't come across someone who needs to be shown this to put things into perspective?!

Picture this scenario (admittedly based on territory I am familiar with, but equally relevant to your profession of choice/passion): you have spent the previous night with the team trying to put together what you consider to be the opus of the previous 3 weeks of work. The tees have been crossed (with the right fonts, within the right margins, equidistantly positioned across the slide), and the i's have been dotted (to the exacting radius a top tier 'dot' should be, of course).... oh, and the content ain't half bad either! You have packaged this opus, and have sent it to the senior 'thought' leader of the team for feedback. A small rectangular box fades into the lower right hand corner of your screen, announcing the arrival of the much anticipated feedback email:

Dear team,

Thanks for the good work [well, it does happen, sometimes!!]. I have a couple of comments:

• 
  
  The use of the word 'word' is not very intuitive in the context of slide xx - we need to find a better word for 'word' there... what do you guys think?
• 
  
  Shouldn't the boxes on slide xx and slide xx+50 be of equal dimensions, colour, and placement - otherwise the flow would be interrupted.... what do you guys think?
• 
  
  Instead of having an overview section, we should have an introduction section - please make sure that the new section now flows
• 
  
  ......[you get the point]

Thx

BigShot PaidALot

... wouldn't it be GREAT to hit the reply button and in the body of the email paste the above image? That would be the CONCISE way to respond - and yes, I do believe that 'insignifance' would be the right word to describe what we guys think...

Yup, I can picture it now - alas, I can only picture it in my head... but I have a very VERY vivid imagination!!!

Proficient in 10 languages... understand none!!

PA: 'Fast Growing Airline - FGA' would like to welcome you on board our flight to Cairo. Our cabin crew today speak English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, French, Spanish,Tagalog, German, Bulgarian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Thai, Malay, and Africaans. Please don't hesitate to reach out to one of our cabin crew for any assistance
.....

Stewardess: Mr. Khayrat, how can I help you?
Me: Can I please have a glass of perrier with a slice of lemon, no ice
Stewardess: Certainly!
...
Stewardess: There you go
Me: ahmm, this isn't perrier, I think this is 7 up
Stewardess: I am sorry, I forgot the ice... I will be right back

!!!!!!!

Fly Fast Growing Airline - we speak a thousand languages, just not on any of our flights!!

If it ain't broke, try re-writing it!!

It is funny how it took me close to 5 months to come back and start writing again. Of course I have a myriad hangers on which I could neatly place the blame, but the truth of the matter is, I just wasn't up for sharing my inner most thoughts with the keyboard of a 2 year-old IBM (sorry, LeNovo) laptop! Sorry, still a novice at the whole i-geek thing.

So on to my thought of the day...

They say that while you exhale your final breath on earth your entire life flashes before you, presumably with all the excitement that accompanies watching a first run hollywood summer hit - or at least you would hope so! And therein lies the thought that has been irking me for the past few days - what kind of a feature will my life sum up to?

If we assume, just for the sake of argument, that this idea of 'personal feature film' - a posthumous blockbuster if you will -  is what's waiting for all of us after a long and fruitful stint this side of hereafter, then how do we make sure it is an contender for a 'divine' academy award? What would make a great posthumous blockbuster? The answer, in my humble opinion, is a good plot of course!! A good plot sewn around a protagonist that is constantly seeking and embracing experiences, without wasting time or energy on defining those experiences in terms of 'good' or 'bad'.

And what if the protagonist gets tired with a slow moving plot? Well... a plot re-write is in order, of course!