When mentioning Iceland till now I was always referring to my experience in 2006, when I visited country twice to assist the development of a student association BEST. Then I was amazed and surprised by the warmth of people, by beauty of nature.
Today I am again in Iceland. This time – traveling for business.
Iceland these days has a lot of coverage on the international news channels, especially if you follow British media.
Here I want to share my observations during last two days visit of Reykjavik. Let it be my subjective contribution making Iceland known as a great place.
After arrival I met my old friends from student association. Surprisingly, out of dozen I knew, only around half of them live in Iceland right now. Others are studying and work all over the globe – like Hawaii, New Zealand, France, or Denmark.
To my enjoyment locals (both friends and business partners) today are not declaring, but living by the saying – “in tough times see opportunities rather than problems”. I really was not expected so much of positive energy from Icelanders. However, bits of sadness shows through (let’s wait till the salary payment time this month – if people will not receive money, there might be riots; some suicides happened already because of bankruptcies..).
So what is happening? First of all, the official prices for USD or Euro in Icelandic Kroner rose +35 percent. On other hand, European airlines already inviting people to come to Iceland for Christmas shopping, I suggest to consider doing that – and help Iceland to export more! You can get Tax Returns, when was the last time you experienced that?
Two banks had troubles and were taken over by the state. The third one – Kaupthing – was perceived doing well, but was kneed by British antiterrorist law applied to its assets. It seems that nobody knows (but there are plenty of rumors) how wrong translation, wrong communication was misunderstood by British, and not dealt properly with both sides.
I have arrived here with two of my colleagues from UK and from I heard quite a good coverage on how people in UK see the case. It seems that there is no common understanding point from both media sides. At least the willingness to discuss among simple people exists, no outrages and inappropriate blames.
Anyway, right now when Icelander travels abroad upon presenting of the flight tickets at a bank he can exchange up to 250 GBP for personal use. If he uses his credit card in Europe, the exchange ratio happens to be double than one in Iceland. I was a small boy but still remember the times when Lithuanians had issues with currency – in Soviet Union, or in restored state in 1990s. Currency limitations are not a pleasant thing.
Icelandic people are disappointed and angry with European states, which turned back their shoulders and did not help their economy. Did you know that Iceland was the first country recognizing Lithuanian independence in 1991? And did you know that in 1944 the first country who recognized Icelandic independence was Russia? I would never imagine that. But it comes into different light, when Iceland goes and asks now for help from Russia.
Let’s move away from economics. Iceland has a population of 300 000 people. Everybody should know everybody. I am searching for a friend whom mobile phone is not working anymore, and email has changed. We met in 2002 in Skopje during an internships of IAESTE. It would be easy to find him in the world of Internet unless his name is John Smith. Or Icelandic equivalent – Bjorn Bjornsson 
. Let us see if I could dig the contacts again via my other friends in Iceland.
And finally- I would like to share my most enjoyable experience today – with the taxi driver Gunnar B. Gaistar. He drove me to the business meeting in the morning and I asked him if he could pick me up again in one hour time to drive to airport. He agreed and offered to keep my luggage in his car while I was in the meeting and even pay later for the first trip. Would you agree for such a thing? I did, and later had a lovely discussion with him on the way to airport about Icelandic habits and trust. Imagine the culture of the people, who come from a village in the west part of the Iceland, where 1000 people were coming only from two separated families. Trust and honor are essential to prosper in such environments.
And probably this is the same reason, why in the bars or airport shops it is enough to swipe your credit card without any authorization – pin or signature.
Definitely, I want to live in such society, especially when having experience of Kazakhstan or Brazil, and do you?
New things often come in a bundle. This short post is for my friends to get updated on what is new in my life.
Most importantly, I am getting married with a beautiful Lithuanian girl, called Lina. We met in salsa classes in Vilnius, and started getting along, rode bikes, traveled and ended up in a strong relationship.
The wedding ceremony is going to happen on 12:30, 4th October in St. Peter and Povilas Church, Antakalnio Str. 1, Vilnius.
Second important change in my life is employment. I am starting at Dell (Dell Emerging Markets EMEA Ltd) as Solutions Consultant. There are plenty of great things about this job:
- As previously at CA, it will be a Pan-Baltic position plus Iceland (after visiting Reykjavik twice for training fresh BEST group, I felt in love with the country and people there!)
- From previous job’s “Dream team” of 3 persons, two of us are coming to work to Dell. I can enjoy great relationship again and again!
- I wanted to work for Dell just after my PhD as I heard many great words about it from my Ex-colleague from Motorola. However, I wanted to return home even more, thus I did not stay in Denmark. Dreams come true, and now I am again colleague with Marianne – my great friend and coaching master!
What I learned in Baltic and Scandinavian markets, that in particular industry (let’s say, IT , people have careers in such way, that it becomes a network of relationships. Like: Compaq-HP-Dell, GNT-Novel-CA-Dell, Motorola-CA-Dell, DEC-CA-IBM, DEC-Dell-CA. Now bet, what are the chances, that these people know each other via Scandinavian or Baltic operations?
Today I was listening to great John Lucht Interview on Manager Tools (the place I love more and more!) and got hit by the phrase:
Planning is everything, plans are nothing
This short message looked very true to me and I decided to google it. What a shame, it is known and written about at so many places! It was repeated over and over, is cited as sayed by many authors.
Most important, that when I compare my mental state before I heard the phrase to afterwards, it feels like I got infected by the virus, the powerful idea.
At least I have recognized it
Could make good case in point for “Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Chip and Dan Heath.
12. If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
(Source: Gapinthevoid: How To Be Creative, or PDF formated manifesto from ChangeThis )
I am happy to discover this statement. It helps pushing myself even further beyond fears and other mental blocking mechanisms.
- reactive behaviour reflects existing reality (ignoring the future);
- proactive behaviour reflects the future (ignoring chaos);
- creative behaviour changes the future (utilizing chaos).
“Organisational Development: A Manual for Managers and Trainers” by Dr. Artashes Gazaryan 2006
For me it describes that I find being a reason and a way of proper management of all own activities conducted daily.
In other words, how to manage the focus, balance, and energy between living today and preparing for the future.
Today I am maintaining daily routines, fix issues, solve problems, and enjoy life. As well, I drive myself to the future I want. Finally, out of complexity and mess I see I try to create something new and amazing.
For me it enhances the “view angle set” by Philippe Starck’s “Why design?” at TED.
Recently I have read two articles from The Economist on Cognitive enhancement and Smart Drugs, which discussed drug use (ex. Ritalin, Provigil) for healthy people.
Articles conclude that there cannot be strict regulations for use of drugs for boosting mental capacities , unless we start interfering with consumption of double-espressos as well. Here I would add energy drinks and a story from my student life.
Once during PhD studies in DTU in the student bar I started a discussion with Pakistani student about quality of black tea. Discussion rolled to the study experiences in Pakistan, area close to Afghanistan. It is common there for students to gather and smoke weed and stronger drugs after lectures. Such social smoking continues daily and lasts many hours. The interesting part is that during exam period smoking does not stop, but on the contrary. The reason is that when intoxicated you focus better and you can “push” study material easier to your brain, i.e. more narrow scope, tunnel focus.
My friend explained that such methods were not too healthy though – the price was that material did not stay long in the memory; as well the eye sight got affected.
Right now is the exam period in many countries for high school and college students. Last week my friend advised to visit a public library in Barcelona as I had to study for coming CISA exam. The library opened at 4pm, and in 10 minutes it was already full of young people studying silently. I loved that view, of youngsters learning. Not smoking then – but it seems they take their part in evenings – in parties many girls are smoking and some guys.
For myself I prefer to use sleep therapy to boost and stimulate my mental, emotional and cognitive powers – two days in a row to have more than 9 hours of comfortable sleep does the work.
It is amazing what enough sleep (more than 7 h every night) does to your emotions. You feel more at ease, relax and joyful! Especially, if you are going to bed before midnight.
I just love that!
I learned about mindmapping back in 2003 at 5th Trainers’ Camp of BEST. The technique intrigued me a so much, that I even gave the graduating training on the topic together with Ben (see photos).
Basically, mindmapping is about writing in colorful star hierarchical structure instead of intended list of items.
At the same time I learned that MindManager from MindJet is used all over in bonding’s management processes. All ideas and projects were presented in mindmaps. Most of my bonding friends were taking notes in mindmaps on their notepads with the set of colored pens.
My MSc defence presentation had mindmaps, and it was very successful, at least I was told so at that time.
Soonafter I tried to use mindmapping techniques for my PhD projects. Results were not too good though. It did not feel comfortable, it did not allow to organize information and materials easily as I wanted. Often hierarchical lists were more comfortable, and for advanced usage PersonalBrain from theBrain Technologies came instead, with One Note soon after from Microsoft. Though I remained on the mailing list of MindManager yahoo groups since.
Mindmapping returned on my working table in the role as Enterprise Architect working for CA. It appeared to be the simpliest tool to crystalize the case, indentify the drivers and their relationships, strip all unnecessary layers, and get to the core.
Other findings what I gathered about mindmapping:
- Often I find people quite emotional about mindmapping, which surprises me. At least for me and some of my friends the value of mindmapping is not easily evident. I read all MindJet newsletters and case studies from the mailing lists, and it did not come to me easy..
- For simple use FreeMind is quite a good alternative to commercial software
- Mindmapping technique is one thing, and comfortable usage, management of created mindmaps, integration with other tools – is another. Happily, MindManager is quite sophisticated product (unfortunately, it means that it takes seconds to load to memory and consume quite a lot of memory and CPU resources).
- Most natural use of the mindmapping software is to run brainstorms and sketch structures. However I personally do not see them working better than in a simple plain Notepad application.
I expect mindmapping to come back into my daily work and knowledge management in closest future for the analytical work, as well as designing and creating university course.
“Focused” and “narrow-minded” are synonyms in the meaning, but carry the opposite emotional messages.
How surprising!
Focus on simplicity!
There is acknowledged beauty in simplicity, discover it everywhere.
Simplicity caries power of understanding, where complexity roots in non-comprehension.
Blog to check and book to remember: lawsofsimplicity.com
