Ramblings from the Desk of Dreams

Student Cash Giveaway

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Abbey is giving away £50 an hour, every day, for 30 days in a huge cash giveaway to promote its student account. All you need to do is the following:

1) Be a student

2) Become a fan of their 'Abbey Students' Facebook Page

Sounds pretty simple, right? And on top of all this, they're automatically entering everyone who becomes a fan into a prize draw to win one of 31 Scalextric sets.

Considering that all you need to do is click a button, it's certainly well worth a try, right?

The 'Experience' Experience

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:44:00 +0000

On the way to the commuter train every day, I pass a sushi bar in the station. Next to the company logo are the words ‘More Than Sushi’. Normally, I walk past it without a second glance, but this week has been one of my fish-craving ones, so I stopped to contemplate the sign.

It seems to be that in this day and age, providing a product or service is not enough: customers require an ‘experience’. There must, it appears, be some reason for custom beyond the reason itself. Rather than eating food, we must reflect and experience a certain type of lifestyle: sumptuous, decadent, artistic, on-the-go. Throughout this process, where is the customer? Where is their own subjectivity, their own first-hand experience untainted by the company’s blueprint?

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Twitter: Because we have to know there's sunshine somewhere

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:43:00 +0000

Image Credit: istockphoto.com & Smashing Magazine Twitter Icon

Logging on to Twitter on a gloomy, overcast English morning, I was cheered to find that someone had tweeted: ‘WOOOHOOO!!! Sunshine and warm today in Minneapolis!’ It made me smile, and I thought that perhaps there was a chance of good weather over here at some point. Well, you can only hope!

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How Much is Too Much?

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:26:00 +0000

It is eleven o’clock on a Friday evening, and you have been working now for seventeen hours. Your brain is barely functioning, your fingers keep hitting the wrong keys, and you keep stealing glances at your watch, knowing you’re going to miss the last bus home. But yesterday you got to work slightly late; today you went to your colleague’s leaving do; and you simply cannot justify leaving your desk until everything is finished. The problem is that it never will be: unless your business is truly floundering, there is always something to do.

Many successful businesspeople are chronic workaholics. The drive and enthusiasm they have for sticking at a project until it is absolutely, definitely finished propels them to the top spot and allows them to stay there at least until they are driven out by someone younger, someone more enthusiastic, someone able to work twenty-four hours a day instead of twenty-two. But keeping enthusiasm alive for something when every minute of every day is spent dwelling on it, thinking about it, fretting that it will all go wrong, is difficult to say the least. So how do you know how much is too much? When do you have to work through the night, and when are you just following a pattern that may damage your relationship with your job?

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In Weakness There Is Strength

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:25:00 +0000

Six Degrees of Separation – the idea that you are connected to everyone else in the world by no more than six links – has been championed throughout the world of social media since the latter’s conception. The further in we go, and the more friends we add on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the like, the more we see that this is true.

Rather than a few strong connections, today we are used to having a multitude of weaker links with those around us. On Twitter, we may not have met many of the people whose ‘tweets’ we follow, but these contacts often prove useful. Want to know how to make a soufflé? Run a marathon? Find out about volunteering opportunities? A quick note on one or more of your social networking sites will bring adequate results.

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Wordle

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Personality in the Digital Age

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:40:00 +0000

As soon as Sophie had closed the gate behind her she opened the envelope. It contained only a slip of paper no bigger than the envelope. It read: Who are you? -
Jostein Gaarder

Jostein Gaarderintroduced me to philosophy, and furthered my interest in how people define personality, particularly in relation to themselves. A teenager when I read Sophie’s World, I found it fascinating. The girl’s quest to discover who she was through a mélange of philosophers, friends and foes had me wondering about my own identity, and how it was decided. A comment on my previous post saw the author remarking, that in this digital age he was noticing ‘an epidemic of misshapen and lop-sided personalities’. Is this so, I wonder? Is the “Net generation” doomed to a life of confused ideals and squashed individuality? Is there anything we can do about it if they are?

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Self-expression in 140 Characters: The Twitter Phenomenon

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:39:00 +0000

‘I’m a sucker for messy hair and tight girl pants.’
‘I didn’t mean that in a slutty way at all, although I don’t know how anyone could possibly take anything I say in a slutty way.’
‘I am writing my own ending.’
‘My heart is racing. In a good way.’

These are just a few of the Tweets that have landed on my Twitter homepage in the past couple of days. Personally, the idea of broadcasting my sexual fetishes/depressive ramblings/thoughts about love on a social networking site where I only actually know one of the people I’m following seems both incredibly weird and more than a little bit terrifying. Even updating my Facebook status gives me the heebie-jeebies; how much to say? Will people think less of me if my status says ‘Scarlett de Courcier is having a bad day and wants to go back to bed’?

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(Dis)organise Your Desk

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:38:00 +0000

“…but then I tidied it, and now I can’t find it!” How many times has this refrain echoed through your household as you stand forlorn in front of your spotless working area, looking for that piece of paper you had last week? Do the merits of a tidy desk really outweigh the stress of not finding that thing you’ve been looking for?

There are myriads of articles out there telling you that you must have a tidy desk, or risk losing paperwork, missing deadlines, feeling ‘out of control’. Whilst having an organized desk is useful, however, this is too often associated with being tidy, which is something altogether different. Having an ‘inbox pile’, a ‘pending pile’, and an ‘out pile’ is a good idea; the fact that they occasionally become one need not cause alarm. If something ‘out’ ends up in your ‘pending’, then when you finally get around to the pending jobs, there’s another opportunity to check the completed work. Often, this highlights errors or potential changes that had previously been overlooked. We all know how good it is to cast a fresh eye over something, and piles merging into one another can provide an excellent excuse for this.

Piles of paper, books and scraps relating to different projects can also be useful things to have spread all over a desk. Projects are augmented by their applicability to other areas; writing a paper on human developmental psychology that incorporates elements of comparative psychology will be enlightening and interesting to both the writer and their readers. There is, after all, a reason why you have so many things on your desk: because you’re interested in them. And if you’re interested in them all, there are probably links between them that grasp and hold your interest. Bringing these links into your work makes it attractive to a wider audience; and often connections spring into the mind when prompted by external phenomena, such as an interesting picture sitting next to an academic article which ends up inspiring an example to be included in your work.

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How did you arrive where you are today?

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:36:00 +0000

Primary school. High school. College. University. Job. The commonly accepted ‘normal’ route into the world of… well, almost anything. Whether your passion is academia or advertising, philosophy or physics, the job you’ll spend much of your life toiling over awaits you at the end of university.

This is the advice I may have been giving next weekend, if Cambridge Science Week were happening a couple of years ago, and if I had followed the conventional route to where I am today. As it is, however, I doubt that this would do much good. In today’s market, if you don’t have a job already, then finding one is going to be tough. The rate of job loss is growing steadily, with such previously secure careers as banking and advertising suffering alongside smaller enterprises whose profits have fallen. Now, people are becoming desperate: everyone wants anything, just to make ends meet. When my husband applied for a usually very unpopular kitchen porter position some time ago, one hundred other people were at the interview. Under normal circumstances, the number would have been less than a dozen.

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How to love your job

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Allison’s excellent post on being a good boss left me thinking about employees and their place in a company. Having a good boss is a great starting point, but if a business’ employees mope around feeling lost and miserable, the whole thing will fail. As an employee, it can be difficult to muster up enthusiasm for a job you’ve possibly ended up in out of desperation, exasperation or just plain necessity. Yet it is possible. How?

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:43:00 +0000

Unlike George Bush, who famously cited The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle as one of his favourite books from his childhood despite it having been published when he was 23, I was born after its publication and have very fond memories of reading it as a child. This year marks its 40^th anniversary, and it is still a much-loved classic. Yesterday also marked the beginning of spring, building a flourish of activity around all symbols of new birth and fresh growth.

Our childhood favourites stay with us throughout life – walking past the windows of bookstores, we smile as we stare in and remember Dogger, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Little Engine That Could. When our own children appear, we seek out these old classics, wanting to impart the same warm, fuzzy feelings we had when we read them, and pass the eternally entertaining stories down to another generation of Very Hungry Children.

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What Should I Wear?

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:41:00 +0000

Going to work presents a dilemma. Obviously everyone is nervous on their first ever day in the office, but no one expects you to have qualms about going to work the rest of the time. Yet looking in your wardrobe, standing in front of the mirror, hopping on the bus in the morning, do you ever experience a flutter of apprehension? Wonder if you’re giving the right impression? Think you perhaps should be ‘power-dressing’ more? How do you create the impression you want to give? Here are my personal morning rules.

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Watch MANGO's 'What Should I Wear?' video

Wise Words from Dr. Seuss

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:38:00 +0000

‘Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.’ – Dr. Seuss

Wise words from another children’s author. Yet in this age of branding, of social media, of digitisation to the extreme, how are we to know who we are? Rather than staying at home and pondering their choices, people go around the world to ‘find themselves’, when the reality of who they are might well be more easily discovered mouldering under a dirty pile of washing in the corner of their bedroom. It feels as if now more than ever we are made to know who we are, and to present a consistent picture to the world, because the world of people with whom we communicate is moving gradually onto a different plane – the digital one. How do we cope with this? How to decide which parts of ourselves to present, which parts to keep private, which parts to wheedle out and throw away? In a time when friends, enemies, colleagues and bosses have access to all our intimate details via social media, it is a question worth asking.

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Creating Your Home Office Environment

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:09:00 +0000

It’s everyone’s dream: getting up after the sun rather than with it, slumping on a sofa with a cup of coffee, and not standing up again until lunchtime. Which is, of course, dictated by you, not the boss. Because in home working, there is no boss but yourself. Is it all it’s cracked up to be? Where to start? How to succeed? What are the primary principles of a properly-run home office? In my first few posts, I’ll be looking at what makes a comfortable home office and a successful home business.

Working from home has become increasingly popular now that the Internet has grown to such a monstrous degree that many of us are now either employed or self-employed to spend most of our time on it. If, like me, a large proportion of your working day is spent sitting in your home office, you will know how important it is to be comfortable – but not too comfortable. Thus we arrive at the problem of home office furnishings.

Step One: The Office Chair

Arguably the most important element of an efficient home office is a good, solid chair. It may even be more important than the desk it accompanies. Chairs have that wonderful quality of being able to effect a mood in the sitter: a good sofa makes you want to fall asleep; a good armchair makes you want to curl up and read; a good chaise lounge makes you want to lie down and spill your inner troubles. What, though, of the humble office chair? Is its quality really linked to the level of productivity achieved in it? Does the fact that it is leather, wicker, or fabric make a difference?

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A confusing email that landed in my inbox this morning

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:08:00 +0000

I received an email today inviting me to pay around £60 to learn how to 'work a room with ease and style'. I didn't read the email fully, but it seemed to be a workshop to tell you how to act when going to networking events. This confused me a little; when I go to networking events, I just go. Granted, some people may be shy, and need a little help. Others may need 'toning down'. But this is just part of life: it's what we do to fit in with any social group.

I'm different when I'm with my husband, when I'm at work, when I'm at a networking event, when I'm with the research team, and so on. I don't believe any of these people see a deceptive version of myself, merely an edited one. But it's not a conscious thing, and I'm not sure that making it into one would be of any use. How are you supposed to network when it's not really you who is networking?

People are attracted to others for a variety of reasons. This is why we don't all end up going after the same men. Something one person might find attractive will drive another person crazy. Something that catches one person's eye will pass entirely unnoticed by someone else.

If I go to an event and see someone standing alone, looking like they're watching what's going on intently and paying attention, whilst not really engaging with anyone, they'll immediately catch my attention. Why? Because I like people who listen, who understand, who ask intelligent questions and who don't bound into the office with energy bursting from every pore and enquire about my personal life. For someone else, this may not be the case. They may notice those who are moving around, glass of wine in hand, chatting happily away to everyone they come across. Perhaps they prefer an enthusiastic, bubbly extrovert; whether this be for personal or professional reasons.

I think the excessive grooming of yourself in order to fit in with what other people might like may, in fact, end up being detrimental and will quite possibly seem fake. If the aforementioned quiet, watching person morphed into the bubbly, chatty one, then I'd be less inclined to approach them, because they may not be what I'm looking for.

There have been far too many 'I's in this post. Tell me what you guys think.

Recession-proof careers

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Is there such a thing as a recession-proof career? In the current economic climate, this is a question that is vexing many jobseekers, as well as some who have until recently been comfortably employed. Suddenly, a job has gone from something people turn up at grudgingly in the morning, counting the hours until they can leave, to a precious, treasured position; a luxury item not to be thrown away at any cost.

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On the quantum nature of consciousness

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:40:00 +0000

The question of the quantum nature of consciousness is not one to which the answer is 'known' in any sense, even among the scientific community. Nonetheless, light is gradually being shed on the links between quantum theory and consciousness. But how can a theory of physics have wide-ranging implications for an area that has long been thought of as having its place somewhere between psychology and biology?

It would appear that the world as we know it is not so linear as it initially seems. Yes, causes have effects; yes, these effects or reactions are generally equal and opposite. But sometimes things are a little more complicated. Sometimes a reaction can be prompted by something so small that its effect would be predicted to be negligible; this is similar to the well-known "butterly flaps its wings in the Amazon, and a tornado happens in Texas" effect.

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Myths and truths about gang culture in the UK

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:39:00 +0000

There are numerous myths surrounding the issue of gang culture, and abundant misunderstandings concerning the reality of what gang culture is, and how it manifests itself. To many people in the UK, the term "gangs" refers to things they have seen on the television; things that happen in places such as New York and Los Angeles. With the recent newspaper reports of increased levels of knife crime in London, however, people have begun to wonder whether they have been blind to a subculture that has always been around in the UK, or whether it is emerging as a result of various direct and indirect influences. Many industries are being blamed - mostly the usual culprits, such as music, fashion and other entertainment media. But what is the truth about gangs in the UK? Do they exist? How do they function?

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Drawing similarities between social and physical sciences

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:37:00 +0000

The terms 'social', 'physical' and 'sciences' are difficult enough to define in themselves, even without attempting to find similarities between the disciplines. Nonetheless, similarities do exist, and arguably the further into the study of the physical sciences one goes, the more links can be made with social science, and vise versa.

Physical sciences can be loosely defined as the three whose constituent parts can basically be boiled down to physics: biology, chemistry, and of course physics itself. 'Social sciences' refers probably to psychology, and perhaps to sociology; the latter of which is definitely social, but may not be a science, due to the lack of empirical data available. Nonetheless, for the purpose of this article, the 'sciences' shall be divided into the two groups mentioned above.

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Passion

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:36:00 +0000

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

The number thirteen is unlucky , they say

But what do they know as they kneel, as they pray?

Very little, or so I suspect.

To know one does not is to follow a path

Down which Socrates travelled through Plato's remarks

In a dialogue 'twixt many men playing parts

In a drama we cannot reject.

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Beware the fuzzy rolligog

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Beware the fuzzy rolligog

That smithers in the myre

(Confuse it not with golliwogs

In fuzzy blue attire)

Beware the rolligogan wrath

(They can breathe fire, you know)

Just feed them up on tigermoth

And bathe them in the snow

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Are angels real or imaginary?

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:33:00 +0000

The paranormal realm is an area which is often neglected by scientific research, largely because by definition it encompasses concepts we cannot yet understand, and perhaps never will. Within the parentheses of the paranormal, however, lies a vast array of beliefs ranging from the thought-stimulating to the faintly ridiculous.

In the former category we could place, for example, the idea of alien life on other planets. The belief that perhaps some other planet in our gigantic universe contains species at some stage of evolution is one that is widely held; the possibility does not seem to be beyond the reaches of reason. The belief in angels, however, is wildly different from such a view.

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Poetry: Drugs

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:31:00 +0000

Lithium, light they write,

Like it's right, white delight

Striking bright, better tight:

Fine and dandy.

Glamourised in our eyes

The surprise as you rise

Heroine heroised,

Bitter candy.

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What is customer service?

scarlettdecourcier@gmail.com (Scar) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:29:00 +0000

'Customer service' as a term seems to be fairly self-explanatory. When presented with the question of what it is, many people will reply with a furrowed brow and a response somewhere along the lines of 'providing service to customers'. The more the subject is considered, however, the harder it seems to be to define. It is possible, for example, for a company with an awful product to have excellent customer service, and vice versa. So what are the main points of this niche discipline? Which companies have a particularly outstanding reputation?

1. Understanding a customer's query. This may seem obvious - indeed, one would hope it would be - however, many companies seem to hire people who read from a sheet of paper, without having any understanding of what the words on the sheet actually mean. A specific example of this is in the case of British Telecom, whose customer services advisors seem to be trained into not listening to customers. An illustration of this in transcript form is given below:

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