Are you awake?

My year 2011

2011-12-30T22:07:00.000-08:00

Continuing the tradition I’ve had for years now, I summarize my year’s main events and thoughts into one blog post. It is a nice way to keep track of my own life and memorize special things happened in a given year. Those words I am writing from Bekasi, Indonesia (a suburb of Jakarta). Also this post will be very long, as always. I added a recent photo of myself here for the ones who haven't seen me for long and forgot who is this person whose blog their Google reader presents them few times a year.

The start
The first minutes of 2011 started in a wonderful beach near Krabi, Thailand. I was there on a holiday with Dessy and we were surrounded with hundreds of (mostly) foreigners and a great amount of fireworks. Krabi is such a wonderful place for a relaxing holiday. Could not have been a better start for a year.

Traveling between Thailand-Cambodia
Since I was living in Phnom Penh until June and Dessy was living in the same in Bangkok, we spent a lot of time visiting each other countries. Luckily for us, both countries celebrate a huge amount of public holidays, which enabled us to see each other approximately once a month.
There were two options to travel this distance. One was to take a 1h flight and other one a 14h bus ride. I was fortunate enough to mostly use the plane option (Bangkok became my transit airport whenever I had to go for a business trip abroad), but sometimes I just saved the money. You can have a lot of fun in Bangkok with the money you save on tickets.

As I’m already talking about Thailand, I find Bangkok one of the coolest cities I’ve ever visited. It has a lot of international business and all the urban conveniences and in the same time all the relaxing fun Bangkok is usually known for. People are generally very open-minded, especially about their sexuality, and that is in my opinion a sign of a healthy society.

Life in Phnom Penh
After all this talking about Thailand, I need to be fair and mention that the country I spent most of my time in 2011 was Cambodia. I was working as the president of AIESEC Cambodia until June.

There is something about Cambodia that gets to your heart. It really became my home during the one year I was living there and sometimes I think of myself as a 100% Estonian and 50% Cambodian.

Life in Cambodia is just somehow easy. It is hard to put it in words, but most people who have stayed there for even few weeks find the same. Just go and experience it yourself.

Living in Cambodia gave me quite a different perspective to the world. As an Estonian I was used to compare my country with other European countries and think how much there is to develop if we compare the country with the most developed European countries.

And then suddenly you live in a country which total GDP is lower than your country’s with 10x bigger population. It gives another dimension of how far my country has gone and how much more responsibility we should take over global issues. In global scale, Estonians should be way more active in building up countries which have only recently got the liberties we have been using for 20 years to transform from a poor Soviet occupied state into a thriving European country.

Of course this responsibility brings some very nice benefits – more business opportunities, more global power. Netherlands should be in a way a role model for Estonia of how a small population can have a huge influence in the world just because their forefathers were adventurous and aggressive enough to sail their ships and explore the world. We can now do the same without all this occupying and violence.

Traveling
In the year end summaries I always list the countries I visited last year. So in 2011 the list was following, in the chronological order:

Thailand (various reasons)
Cambodia (living there)
Spain (two half-day transits which enabled me to explore Madrid a bit)
Mexico (AIESEC International Presidents Meeting)
Vietnam (AIESEC Asia Pacific Exchange and Leadership Summit)
Netherlands (AIESEC financial subcommittee meeting)
Estonia (visiting home)
Finland (two half-day trips to get Indonesian visa)
Indonesia (a trip to visit Dessy in June, living here since September)

I think last time this list was so short was in 2007, main contributing factor was getting a steadier job. And for the first time I added Estonia to the list, because this year I actually was visiting it.

Finishing my AIESEC career
Having been an active AIESEC member for the past 6 years, 2011 marks an end of my active AIESEC involvement. It was a wonderful time, a transformative period and I will always remember it with warm feelings. AIESEC deserves a separate blog post, but let me write here a bit about how was the leaving process.
At the very end of my president term, we had a National Planning Meeting with the leaders of local committees and also the new management team of AIESEC Cambodia. The last session my team delivered was a sharing session. Three of us – me, Klara and Chetra – had set up a room with candles and we shared each about the highlights of our experience.
We have similar tradition in AIESEC Estonia and every year I faced the same issue – how do you put in words your whole year of intense experiences where sometimes the most powerful moments were not some events, meetings or results but the feelings and lessons you learned in the hard way.
The last hours of my president term we spent with Klara and Chetra in Sihanoukville (beach resort in Cambodia). We had a lot of fun and at midnight we found the new team and threw them to the ocean. It was a feeling of relief, freedom and sadness all in the same time.

Visiting Estonia
Being a visitor in your own country is a strange feeling. I became nervous from the moment I stepped into Frankfurt-Tallinn plane and heard after a long time the always identifiable Estonian accent.

It was supposed to be a nice holiday for me and Dessy, meeting my family and going around Estonia. Unfortunately things didn’t go this way as the Finnish embassy decided it was too risky to give her a Schengen visa. The rejection cause, for three times, was unclear intention to leave the country.

Having been away for over a year, I saw my country from a different perspective. It was much cleaner, greener and smaller than I had felt while living there. Tallinn is just the cutest town – so small and yet is enough urban to make you feel like living in a proper city.

Seeing my friends after a while was a bit like going back in time. It was again same people (although some of them had got new girlfriends), same topics and same activities. I guess that’s how it’s supposed to be and I really enjoyed it.

I also spent a lot of time just staying at home. It was good to meet my parents again, seeing them doing well and telling them some fun cultural experiences I had just had. I also met my sister after almost 1,5 years and it was great to see how she had grown up and become a confident and ambitious person. I know they are among the few people who will actually read this post until here, so I use the chance to tell that I miss home and can’t wait to visit Estonia again in 2012.

Working as PR consultant
In September I moved to Indonesia and started to work In Fortune PR as a new business development officer. My job is to prepare proposals and communication strategy for international clients who want to run PR activities in Indonesia.

Getting a job after managing AIESEC countries for past two years was an interesting experience. Suddenly I had a boss and no employees to manage. It took some time to get used to the fact that I was no longer a decision-maker in the organization and people actually delegated tasks to me. In a way it was humbling and sometimes it was just frustrating.

I have been learning a lot about PR (many things I wish I knew in my previous AIESEC positions), about what drives people in the office and how effectively or ineffectively a business can be run.

Anyways, after few months I felt that being an officer in a company is not really what matches my capabilities. I did not get all those organization management experiences to follow a common corporate career path. That’s why while writing those words I am one month from finishing my job and starting to live as full time entrepreneur.

Life in Jakarta
To be honest, I find Jakarta not the greatest place to live. What make it livable is Dessy and all the business opportunities here, but the city infrastructure is just horrible. About 20 million people live in greater Jakarta area and the government has failed to build even a metro system.
So this means every day it takes about an hour to get to office and an hour to come back. And I live quite near to the office. There are people who take almost three hours every day just to get to office.

It is incredibly polluted and taking care of health is essential. In the first months I had to constantly cure some health issue and still now feel sometimes dizzy due to lack of fresh air.
If any of you is watching Terra Nova, then Jakarta is probably the first city on earth to look like the city pictured there in 2149.

Starting a business
It was early November when it suddenly became clear that I’m going to be an entrepreneur. There’s an investment, there are products and there are already first clients. We are building up a company called Indosight (www.indosight.com), which offers market entry services to Indonesia.

It feels a bit similar to being a president of AIESEC Cambodia. You need to start everything from the scratch, define products, find clients, and convince people about your organization. It is definitely a very exciting time and I really hope this will work out.

The End
It is the last hours of 2011 and soon I will be serving my first self-made sour cabbage. Or Kimchi (a Korean version of our hapukapsas) as Dessy calls this pot of cabbage in our kitchen.

This year started in a beach and will end in an urban jungle. Has been an eventful year and I feel things will only get better from here on.

Why did we shut up?

2011-12-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Some years ago when blogs became popular it seemed like a start of a new kind of journalism. Suddenly everyone was given the space to share their thoughts and this way the traditional media no longer had the monopoly to publish articles.

Over the years I added to my RSS reader perhaps 20-30 blogs of people who I personally knew and who used their blog just to share whatever came to their mind.

Few years back I started to notice a trend. The folder “personal blogs” started to be updated less and less frequently, until to a level that today I’m surprised to see any new blog posts from my friends. It happens just maybe few times a month.

What happened? Did we run out of things to say?

I guess the fatal factor here was the growth of Facebook. It takes only few seconds to update your status and the feedback is instant. You get “likes” and comments and often dozens of them. In the same time the average-Joe-type blogger is lucky enough if anyone bothers to comment a blog post.

But there’s something I don’t like about this trend. Blogs were supposed to give everyone a chance to express themselves. And yet we still settle for having articles chosen by editors of news corporations. Who choose whatever would be appealing to masses.

What about standing up for what you believe in? Changing the world one blog article at a time?

The whole industrial age when we were trained to be merely the receivers of information is still in us. Myself included.

Reflections on Estonia

2011-09-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in Estonia before leaving to Indonesia. Being home for over 2 months has given me chance to explore my country from a bit different angle.

Distances

You don’t really realize how small Estonia is before you go to a massive crowded place such as Java in Indonesia or with poor roads like Cambodia. Going from one corner of the country to the other takes hardly longer than 2-3 hours by car.

Tallinn is a cute little city where the word “traffic jam” means waiting for 4 cycles in an intersection and arriving home 10-15 minutes later than usually.

Cleanness

In the 90s I remember talks how clean are the other countries compared to Estonia. In 2011 it’s fair to say that Estonia is a really clean country itself now. You can wear flip-flops for the whole day and still come home with rather clean legs. You can easily drink tap water, breath fresh air and will hardly find garbage on the streets.

Lack of smart phones

We Estonians like to brag about our IT achievements like e-elections or mobile parking, but compared to South-East Asia, we are really behind in mobile communication. It’s probably partly related to the paragraph “distances” and partly with cultural differences – young people in Estonia can freely meet so we don’t need to use iPhones or Blackberries to communicate.

Limited world

When Estonians talk about working abroad, it’s always about Western Europe. The assumption is always that we go for either well-paid jobs we are over-qualified for (like working in turkey farms or constructions) or wouldn’t get a decent salary in Estonia (like doctors).

What about going to the emerging markets and with the same skill set be a much more respected professional due to Estonia’s good education system? What about exporting to markets where competition is still low due to political constraints in recent history?

Take either Cambodia or Indonesia, you still see the same old countries aggressively expanding there. USA, China, Japan, Western Europe. We will never become among the wealthiest countries in the world if we are always few steps behind and wait for markets to be made mainstream by others.

Religion

Even though Estonia lists as the least religious country in most rankings, it would be too much to say that Estonians are really rational people who value scientific evidence over myths and fairytales. A recent study in Tartu University demonstrated that Estonians are willing to believe anything as long as it doesn’t come from Christianity or other forms of organized faiths.

Over half of Estonians believe there are people with side-kick powers, horoscopes are published in most mainstream newspapers and everybody knows that a black cat crossing a street in front of you is a bad sign. Igor Mang is an opinion leader who makes front pages with his predictions about the future.

Separation of powers

Trias politica principle is something that has been in Estonia for long enough that we take it for granted. We rightfully complain that the parliament opposition is weak and often the coalition passes laws that are still raw. But those are more like cosmetic errors compared to most of the world and how politics is run there. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t keep setting higher standards for ourselves.

Separation of politics and religion is obvious if you read the previous paragraph, but should be still brought out. In Estonia law makers cannot manipulate people by saying “because bible says so” or some religious commission decided something is haram (forbidden). Perhaps with two exceptions – one is gay civil partnerships and other is cannabis. I don’t understand why a country that is not tied to religious dogmas still treats a part of society unequal to others or bans herbs that are not more dangerous than sugar.

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Conclusion – Estonia is my roots. In Cambodia I read Estonian newspapers on a daily basis and probably knew more about what is happening here than many people who never leave Tallinn. I care about how it’s developing and feel I’m giving my contribution by living abroad, learning about the world, and one day, if not now, become a valuable resource for my country.

Living abroad is not unpatriotic, with a world as open (for us Estonians) as this one, it would be just stupid not to explore it and limit yourself only with a small geographical area such as Estonia or Europe.

I will be away but I won't be a stranger.

Right and wrong

2011-07-25T13:06:00.000-07:00

#BlameTheMuslims

Sanum Ghafoor is my hero. She started yesterday a massive Twitter Trend with her ironic tweet containing #BlameTheMuslims. The original idea was to highlight how ridiculously we fall into conclusions that everything bad in the world is caused by Muslims.

Take for example the recent terrorist act in Norway. Who of you assumed it was organized by some Islamic extremists? Well, I did. And for sure there’s a good reason for that, because let’s be frank, a lot of terrorism in the world come from some radical Islamic group. But hey, this time it was a radical Christian instead. And throughout history, Christian extremists have used terror the same way as Muslims are doing it nowadays.

But I’ll save the discussion about terrorism and religion for another blog post. What I want to talk about is the insane amount of people who were demanding Twitter to ban this hashtag. That it’s racist (since when are Muslims a race?) or spreading hate towards Muslims (did those people even try to understand the idea of this hashtag?).

And that’s something that annoys me big time. Whenever it’s something even remotely connected to religion, we become narrow-minded and ignore any kind of freedom of expression. And my quarter century of life experience tells me that whenever some conversations become stigmatized, that’s exactly the kind of conversations we should have.

I’ve travelled quite a decent amount around the world and seen it everywhere – we believe that order is achieved by bans and regulations rather than values and role models. Don’t like someone expressing their opinion connected to Muslims? Let’s ban it. Let’s make it forbidden to think and act in a way we don’t like.

Religions are especially eager to do it. Not trying to be an expert in theology, religions have a huge tendency to define what’s right and what’s wrong. And no debating about those rules.

Being a non-religious person, I have a problem with that. Those rules, be them written in the Bible or Quran, are just some people’s opinions about right and wrong. Those books are written by people with their own intentions and agendas.

I know I’m touching a very sensitive topic. Religion is something we are born into. Rarely somebody chooses to be a Buddhist or Hindu, we are raised as one. And once it’s part of your flesh and blood, we don’t really question anything about it.

I believe there’s nothing wrong with teaching your kids your beliefs. I too will one day raise my kids following certain set of values I believe are right and most probably my children will follow them. But the important question is whether we are willing to openly debate with our children one day – why is it important to do good things to others? Why should we not kill? Etc. And accept that if the opinions are grounded, our children have a right to develop their own set of beliefs and opinions, not necessarily being identical to ours.

Now when it comes to religions, such discussions don’t seem to be possible. Especially in countries where religion and politics go hand in hand. Take Islam – governments can glue labels “haram” or “halal” to just about anything that is matching their political goals. The ideals of religions are secondary; religion is used to control people. Short-term political aims are dressed as laws from god, making it a mere way of manipulating the masses (got to agree with Marx on this).

……….

This here was a brief and messy expression about freedom of speech. Freedom to think with our own heads. Bono already said that “we are one but we’re not the same”. We don’t need to agree with all the opinions in the world. I have mine, you have yours. But if we are not willing to listen, misunderstandings happen. And misunderstandings lead to breaking friendships, lovers, countries, everything.

Sticking together is a struggle. Not being a flock of sheep makes it perhaps more difficult but that’s the only way we have. Respect. Listen. Agree and disagree, but hear out.

When human beings become bureacracy machines

2011-07-20T10:58:00.000-07:00

I am an Estonian. Estonia belongs to European Union and Schengen visa area and for years I thought it’s a wonderful system to make traveling between European countries easier.

Having now been on the other side – the side of a person outside of the system wanting to enter the Schengen area – I’ve seen the ugly side. My girlfriend is an Indonesian and we were supposed to spend the summer together in Estonia, visiting my family and exploring my home country.

Since Estonia doesn’t have an embassy in Indonesia (in the fourth most populated country in the world), the visa applications are processed by Finnish embassy in Jakarta. First hand the Schengen tourist visa application seems pretty straight-forward – you need to gather a list of documents like travel insurance, invitation letter, flight booking etc. All criteria are listed in their website and seem pretty reasonable. Now to the ugly side.

Firstly, it takes minimum 14 days to process the application. Based on my visual observation in my 2 visits to the embassy, the embassy barely received more than few applications on those days. I have no idea what they do in those 2 weeks – most probably they throw the application to some shelf and take it out when 2 weeks are passed. I doubt that inserting a person’s name to Schengen database to check whether any other member state has anything against this person entering the area would take longer than 5 minutes.

Secondly, the embassy refuses from any support regarding the visa application. All they do is stating that list of needed documents is on their website. They don’t suggest that perhaps we would be more convinced if you’d also add your employment contract or any other proof that would show that you have an intention to actually come back to Indonesia before visa expires. If your visa is refused, they refuse also from any comments that why your visa was refused and what you should add to the next application. All they say is that go to website, read the list again and think whether there is something more you could submit next time.

Thirdly, there is no legal right to a visa. The embassy has a right to refuse giving you visa based on whatever they want. They don’t even need to explain. You can submit everything requested on website and even more and the embassy won’t still have any problems refusing your visa.

Fourthly, if your visa is refused, the appealing process takes minimum 30 days. So if you applied for a visa, got a refusal, appeal the decision and got lucky, you’ve already spent 1,5 months waiting for a visa. Talk about mobility here…

This is all based on my girlfriend’s case. She has a university degree, a good job in Indonesia, a boyfriend who has same return flight to Indonesia as she has and still twice she has got a refusal under cause “your intention to leave Member States before visa expires could not be ascertained”.

For example during the visa interview they had doubts whether the employment contract is valid. Did they ever contact the company to ask about it? Of course not. They also had doubts whether my dad, who wrote the invitation letter, actually knows my girlfriend. Did they ever call my dad to ask? You know the answer already.

I don’t know whether I’m more ashamed by the refusals itself or the way Finnish embassy is treating her. Giving no advice, delaying decision-making, deciding based on personal biases.

I wonder how human beings become such cold bureaucracy machines who don’t understand that behind their decisions are people’s lives? Nobody will bring back the summer of 2011 I intended to spend with my girlfriend when both of us took a few months break in our careers to spend some quality time together exploring my home country.

Lauri Lahi

Laurilahi.blogspot.com

New beginnings

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

First of all, I'll give you a small heads up in case we have not been keeping in touch lately. I finished my job as the AIESEC Cambodia president in June, then moved to Jakarta (Indonesia) but came back to Estonia for the summer. After 6 wonderful years in AIESEC I'm looking forward to start a new chapter in my life.

I've been back home for few weeks now. I have absolutely no responsibilities so I have plenty of time to reconnect with whatever comes to my mind. I decided to pick up some hobbies from the past - bicycling, painting, writing, playing piano. All of those activities were among my main leisure time activities at some point- some 3-4, others even more than 10 years ago.

As I look back, it seems like every hobby I've had, had a certain expiry date. Once it was passed, it was simply replaced by new hobbies. For example I never played piano since 2001 even though for all of this time I've had an electric piano in my room. It was used for storing clothes.

Now I have decided to rediscover my old hobbies. It has been a lot of fun since my usual daily agenda consist of art, sports and just hanging out. I feel how I'm using (again) my brain in a way I never used it in my professional career. For example trying to paint a human face, playing a piano simultaneously with your left and right hand, coming up with a consistent storyline, breathing correctly in open-sea swimming etc.

The challenges are exciting and yet frustrating. Take for example painting. In 2003-2004 I went through different art classes in Estonian Art Academy and I can say among arts this was one of my strongest. And yet when I made my first strokes after 7 years to the canvas the result did not make me happy at all. Time passes and you don't start from where you stopped last time. No, you take many steps back and start as a beginner again.

Sometimes it's fun and sometimes I just want to give up. The biggest issue I'm struggling with is the strong results-orientation I've picked up in my professional career. Even though in the back of my mind I know I don't need to become a world-class pianist, I still feel annoyed that after hours of practicing I still struggle to play songs I'd like to play. In the end it's the process of playing that's more important and yet the lack of "results" is what often is making me mad.

Whatever new you start, it won't come easily. And that's the good thing. If it would, it would have no value.

Same applies for the next steps in my professional career. I know I will start facing challenges that make me feel as a beginner again. Having the artistic challenges of this summer under my belt, perhaps I will be a tad better prepared for it.

Fighting obesity by first creating it

2010-12-19T06:44:00.000-08:00

This week Nestle announced the take over of a weight-loss organization Jenny Craig. Business as usual unless you look at what is the product portfolio of Nestle - chocolates, high-sugar breakfast cereals, ice cream, ice teas full of artificial ingredients etc. All of which anyone seeking to lose weight healthily should keep far away from.

Seems a bit odd, but even stranger is Nestle's comment on that: "Chocolate in moderation can be a fun part of a balanced diet, as a treat."

Of course, a moderate amount of cocaine is good for writing psychedelic poems just as developing moderate disability helps average athlete to excel in paraolympics . Anything can be good for something if using a bit of creativity and optimism.

So how does it work out for Nestle? Seems like a smart business model. First you create the obesity problem with your first product group and then you offer the weight-loss plan once the first set of products have done their job well.

Perhaps Nestle could even develop a frequent eater program. Every time you buy Cheerios or Kit Kat you earn points. Once you collect enough points you get a special offer from Nestle stating "based on our estimation, you should be fat enough to qualify for a 20% discount at Jenny Craig's".

Asian students outperforming the rest of the world

2010-12-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

This week OECD got to my consciousness in two ways – Estonia finally became fully a member of it and few days ago the PISA scores were released.

PISA is measuring the academic performance of 15 year-olds across the world, mainly in the OECD member countries. Every three years the scores in math, science and reading tests are published and this way it is probably the most objective way to measure country’s education system performance.

This year’s star performer was Shanghai, outperforming all the other “countries” by far in all three subjects. Other top performers were as expected the Asian top economies – Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Finland was the only western economy competing with top asian countries, beating Singapore in reading and not falling far behind in math and science. Estonia was doing very well, placing at top 10 among the OECD countries, being comparable to Switzerland and the Netherlands. Interestingly, traditional education powerhouses like UK and USA got beaten by Estonia in all categories.

Those numbers really got me thinking…

Are the test results adequate to predict the children’s later success in life?

PISA has been accused a lot for being too “preparable”, meaning the schools that test the children more often, are able to perform better than their counterparts who are not used to extensive state tests. That might be true to some scale when we talk about asian countries, but doesn’t explain why Finland is doing better than almost anybody else in the world.

Barack Obama compared the results to Sputnik in 1950s – a call for action that USA is falling behind and further investments into education are absolutely needed immediately. I think it’s an excellent comparison – we (I refer to western countries) might comfort ourselves for some decades, but it’s inevitable that if west wants to keep the power, it needs to change.

Where would I put my children to school?

At Estonian Youth Forum 2010 professor Marju Lauristin asked this question from the audience demonstrating how most of us will still be placed in Estonia even if we explore the world for a while as young adults.

I don’t take Estonia as an obvious choice for both personal and pragmatic reasons. But would I want them to go to school in Shanghai? I’m not sure either. I read a bit, and a lot of Shanghai’s (and most of asias) success seems to be based on the huge amount of studying hours and testing – even up to 80% of Shanghai’s students have an extra private tutor to boost their test results. Which leaves them little time to deal with extra-curricular activities such as sports and art. Perhaps this explains why Chinese team is not even able to qualify to football World Cup.

Being an advocate for a balanced lifestyle, I’d probably be OK if my kids would score just slightly above OECD average if it comes together with the active lifestyle full of arts and sports. Somehow I believe that though academic performance determines a lot in life, leadership skills, creativity and fitness start to matter more and more as we start to progress as adults in the “real world”.

However, it’s not a “one or another” debate. It’s not academic performance vs extra-curricular activies and we need to find ways how to excel in both.

What should governments learn from this study?

It is clear that all top ranking countries are there because they have invested a lot of money to their education systems. This is an absolute must. However, it doesn’t explain why for example UK has dropped dramatically over the past 9 years in PISA rankings while doubling the investments to education in the same period.

It means that there are areas where the investments bring a higher return. Based on what I found studying the success of Singapore, Korea and Finland, there are few areas that governments need to focus their investments:

1. Teachers quality. Two determing factors –their relative wages and education. Teacher salaries must be at a level that it would attract the top university graduates to become and develop as teachers. This would solve also naturally an issue schools are facing – the inadequate teachers. As the competition is increasing, the better ones will stay in schools.

2. Accessability to high quality primary education. Every person must be able to receive a high quality primary education (first 9 grades) no matter where they live or what is their parent’s background. This ensures that all the talented students proceed to best high schools no matter where the schools are geographically located.

3. Centralized and highly-funded R&D. Give best teachers best teaching methods and you quarantee the best outcome. There must be national education labs that constantly involve the latest advancements in science and technology to the everyday teaching. All teachers must receive constant education about those and this needs to be tied to their progress in schools.

It’s obvious that any kind of extra investments require a lot of political will and the decisions are never too popular since there will always be somebody who has to tighten the belt. But there is one area, where I see huge savings could be made – it’s the pension system.

The access to medical treatment and our increasing understanding of healthy lifestyle means that keeping a retirement system where people starting from their 60s are from fiscal perspective mere costs, is not a sustainable solution. We are seeing how Japan, China and whole Europe will face huge social problems in the near future due to the aging population.

Traditional debate around aging is around the birth ratios, but perhaps this is a natural evolution process – if we live longer, we need less young people. Or in fact the phrase “young person” will just get a new meaning. And we should just accept it and start thinking how to work with the new demographic situation.

I don’t see a reason why a person who is my age now (I’m 24), should retire at age of 65. My take on this is that if we make the right choices, most of us could easily be active on labor market when we are 70, 80, some even 90 years old. As we get older, our experience starts to compensate whatever we lose while aging.

So what if we just move the national retirement age at once let’s say to 80. How much money would we save? Billions to invest into education.This should also have a stimulating effect on people to stay healthy and make smart financial choices in their lives.

My good friend Erik even suggested few months ago that let’s just drop the general pension and work till death. Might seem like a contradictory idea, but if we change the meaning of “work” from a routine obligation to a self-realization, it makes sense to me.

A dead rock-star and little creatures in my head

2010-12-09T03:40:00.000-08:00

Mr Mojo Risin

Mr Mojo Risin*

I’m still affected by the documentary “When you’re strange” I saw last weekend, a movie about the short but eventful life of The Doors. The picture of a bearded long-haired Jim Morrison keeps appearing on my mind reminding me how unconventionally we can live our lives.

I keep on thinking about little creatures in my head, each fighting to get fed by my thoughts and in the end determining my choices.

Master and a slave

Conformist and a revolutionist

Artist and a drudge

Once a creature becomes noticeably stronger than its opponent, it wins a battle and takes the lead. If the imbalance of power strengthens, one day one creature might kill the other one.

We become slaves if we kill the inner master

We conform if we avoid the revolution

We become drudges if we stop being artists

Just for the record, I don’t think there is any universally right nutrition plan for those creatures. As long we make the choices ourselves.

Lives of people like Jim Morrison are merely romantic stories for most of us. We didn’t feel their pain nor will we follow their lead. But they keep alive the idea that there are numerous ways of living your lives and the choice is ours.

*Mr Mojo Risin is anagram of Jim Morrison used by himself in his song “LA Woman”.

PS! This post was written being totally sober, perhaps slightly affected by the Doors playlist :)

Why You Aren’t Buying Venezuelan Chocolate and Studying In Estonia

2010-12-07T07:03:00.000-08:00

Best wines come from France, suits from Italy and watches from Switzerland. Those associations are based on a centuries-long reputation that has branded the products of those countries as pretty much automatically high-end ones. Leaving their counterparts from other countries facing a barrier where for the same quality consumers are willing to pay significantly less.

In the December 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, Rohit Deshpandé in his article titled “Why You Aren’t Buying Venezuelan Chocolate” writes about a Venezuelan chocolate company called El Rey. El Rey is processing some of the best cacao beans in the world, used by chocolate producers in Switzerland and Belgium as well as by the company itself.

While the Swiss and Belgium producers are able to sell their chocolate at very high prices, El Rey struggles to find a comparable market share with their own chocolate. The quality is the same, but the line “made in Switzerland” beats “made in Venezuela” with ease. It’s the perception of Swiss chocolates being excellent and Venezuelan chocolates being unknown that makes consumers pay notably more for the first one.

I am a supporter of meritocracy when it comes to almost anything. It is clear that in an ever-changing world there is no constant even when it comes to conservative industries such as wines or watches. A company in China or Pakistan can invest into R&D, hire the best expertise from around the world and produce pretty much anything with a comparable, if not with higher, quality as the most highly regarded countries. Yet the associations of certain brands being better due to their geographical location makes it impossible to fairly compete and thus sustaining the monopolies.

Relating it to Estonia, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip stated recently that Estonian universities need to start attracting a higher amount of foreign students. From a first glimpse seems like a great idea, but how feasible it actually is that the Estonian universities would be at some point able to start attracting remarkable amounts of top students?

It is obvious that among the education brands Estonia cannot be compared anyhow with USA, Germany or England. It’s the historical brand that attracts all the investments, best professors and best students to those countries. And if the brand itself doesn’t stand the competition, every dollar invested into education in Estonia brings a significantly lower return than the same dollar would in USA.

If Estonia would be China, this would be a competition that would probably be worth the fight. The huge population can afford the temporary relative ineffectiveness of the investments until the tipping point where the scale of resources beats (or creates new) historical brands. For Estonia this is not the case. It means we need to find another, smarter, ways of getting our people the best possible education in the world.

Few thoughts:

1. Let’s create a huge scholarship program for Estonian students to study in the top 25 universities in the world. In the end, every Estonian student should be able to apply to those universities without being concerned whether they can actually afford it. If they get accepted, they get the scholarships needed. Money for the program should come both from public and private sector and the increasingly growing alumni network of such program.

2. If we want to attract more foreign students, we need to find a clear competitive advantage. It won’t be the quality of professors, infrastructure or climate since there are dozens of countries who are already competing for those advantages. Estonia would need its own blue ocean – be it immigration system, business environment or anything where we stand a good chance of beating the competition.

What happens if the state starts to massively support students to study abroad? I doubt it would mean a huge drain of brains (this is a pseudo-issue caused by the traumas of Soviet Union), rather Estonia having ambassadors around the world in top universities. That every graduate of Harvard would know one at least one Estonian from whom he or she heard great stories about whatever we are doing well.

I can even offer a concrete vision for such program: that in 10 years, a percentage of Estonian students out of the nation’s total student population studying in Ivy League universities would be higher than the same percentage among any other nation in the world.

As a final remark, Finnish president Tarja Halonen encouraged Finns living abroad to be the cultural ambassadors of Finland. My sympathies, I hope Estonian politicians would also start seeing Estonians abroad as an opportunity rather than a resource that needs to be brought back home immediately.

Illustration by Harry Campbell. Harvard Business Review, December 2010.

My first marathon

2010-11-23T05:15:00.001-08:00

On Sunday I fulfilled one of my personal goals for 2010 and completed a marathon. My first 42,195 km run took place in Bangkok and ended up with 280th place and time 4 minutes over 4 hours.

Prologue
Although the goal to run a marathon came already in the end of 2009, for the majority of this year it seemed like I'm not going to do it. I had great running routine in January-February, when I was running often despite the freezing temperatures in Estonia (-20C regularly) or intense conference in Tunisia for 2 weeks.

And then I got elected to my job in Cambodia and my running schedule was turned upside down. My first runs in Cambodia were so tough, I hardly could run for longer than 20-30 minutes and somehow gave up on regular running. Until September I didn't have a week when i would have run more than 30km. In some weeks it was a plain "0".

I remember a day in early September when I arrived back from a month of conferences and traveling in Thailand and India. I was in a poor shape and had eaten way too much junk food for past weeks.

I opened my Facebook and saw that several people in my Facebook list had completed Tallinn Marathon. This was the moment that rang a bell - Lauri, if you are serious about it, you must do it now. There can be no excuses.

I looked up in the internet what are the nearest marathons and found one that seemed scarily close - Bangkok marathon and just in 9 weeks. This was it - I had a goal and I needed to find a way to make it work.

Preparation period
I started to read a lot of articles about how to prepare for your first marathon, mainly focusing on how to actually survive it. There are tons of articles about running marathons. Common theme of them seemed to be that you need minimum around 3-4 months of preparation to be able to go through all the 42 km-s.

I didn't have that time and I had another 2-weeks trip coming, where I knew I'd be lucky if I can run even 2-3 times per week.

I designed myself a running schedule and planned to run 420 km in the 8 weeks I had left until marathon. Symbolically 10 marathons before the actual event. Actual result was 320km, so I fulfilled around three quarters of my plan.

It was commonly also said that you need around 2-3 long runs of over 25km prior the first marathon. I had one 20km run just 2 weeks before the marathon.

In the last weeks I was preparing myself for the intense heat of Bangkok. Assuming the starting time would be 3pm, I had several runs starting exactly at 3pm during weekends, feeling like a grilled chicken every time. Then during the race check-in I found out it was actually 3am, so all my afternoon runs were useless and instead I should have practiced night runs.

Arriving to site
On the marathon night itself I took a cab 45 minutes before the marathon was supposed to start and I knew it should take around 20 minutes to get there from the place I was staying during daily traffic. Of course I ended up with a taxi driver who confidently nodded that he knows where the place is. And then we started to drive around.

Finally he left me to a place where there were few runners praying. I paid my 100 bahts, ran to the runners and asked where can I leave my bag. One runner came to me and said: "wait a minute, are you going for full marathon?" It turned out I was 10km away from the starting place and it was just 5 minutes till the start.

He took me with his car to the nearest place to the marathon start and once I stepped out of his car, I saw in the distance marathon runners starting their race. It was a horrible feeling. I had messed up my marathon start.

I ran quickly to the starting point. Asked girls from the media tent to just take my bag (with 200 dollars in it) and entered the start area. The people clapping for the starters had just started to leave when I popped out from nowhere, without any warm-up and setting up my iPod and headband while I was making my first steps of the long race.

So for a while I actually was the last runner of Bangkok marathon.

The race
It is probably called the "magic of race day" but somehow the kilometers started to come very easily. It was a beautiful clear night, 25 degrees and I started to feel better with each kilometer. My only concern was peeing, since I didn't have time to go to the bathroom before the start. But I figured I can do it somewhere during the race.

As kilometers passed, I started to pass more runners. Until 32km point I had been almost only passing other runners, making me feel light and fast. Later checking the 15km and 34 km check-point times, I had been making up over 10 minutes between those two check-points compared to most of the runners finishing around me.

As a funny thing, I ran the whole marathon with a feeling that I need to pee but I can hold it until the next toilet point. I just didn't want to stop my good rhythm.

Passing the 30km point I started to feel that there is no way back anymore. I will actually be able to do it. And it all had seemed easy so far.

And then the kilometer signs started to come harder and harder. 30 to 32 was OK. 32 to 34 was slow. 34 to 36 was painful. 36 to 38 was horrible. 38 to 40 seemed like forever. 40 till the finish was just plain torture.

I kept repeating myself that there are only 20, 15, 10 minutes till the end. It might seem forever at that point of time, but later I will only remember it as a nice memory of a personal struggle to fulfill my goal.

It works well in theory but in reality my legs became dead heavy. I was just somehow keeping on moving hoping the finish line will come.

Seeing the finish line 500m in front of me didn't raise much excitement. Those were the longest 500m in my life. I could jog them easily in any other day, shape but when you have 41km already behind you, it requires enormous effort.

But finally the finish line came and there I was. I completed my first marathon.

Completing a marathon is a dream of many, and somehow falls to the list of crazy things one can do during lifetime. After the initial exhaustion and dizziness started to fade, I was already starting to think about my next physical personal goal.

Left temporarily goalless, I know now from my own personal experience that there is no better thing than a goal to actually achieve something. I had been thinking of marathon for years, and in the end all it took was 8 weeks of preparation. Seems like a lot of time wasted, but having that experience I can use it to achieve anything in my life.

It's a great feeling of accomplishment. I didn't feel it during the race nor even after the race. But as 2 days have passed, I feel satisfied when I see my shiny medal and now I can already google articles about marathon recovery and how to increase your performance at the next one.

I don't know what is my next personal goal but I know with a little more confidence now that it just takes a clear attractive target, a plan how to achieve it and then just sticking to it.

All those lessons I knew for years and I had been using them in my professional life. It was time to make them work in my personal life as well.

Do ideals exist?

2010-11-17T04:10:00.000-08:00

Ideals exist only in ﬁction but shape our thinking. |...|

Ideals are figments of our imaginations. They are a collective will and desire for something to be that isn't there. |...|

If Google knows all the answers, then those were the first replies to my question. The food for this thought came from a book I've been reading for the past few days - a book written by a Cambodian woman titled "First They Killed My Father". It's one family's story during the Khmer Rouge, a period in the second half of 1970s where over 2 million Cambodians were killed. Under Pol Pot's leadership the Khmer Rouge wanted to transform the country into a pure agrarian society and of course the ones who suffered were the Cambodian people itself. I strongly advise you to read this book, it makes many of the world's cruelest regimes seem like a walk in the park compared to this one.

As with any regime, Khmer Rouge had also its winners and losers. There was the high class, middle class and low class, of course their meaning was different than in a modern democratic state, but those classes were all there, especially the high and low one. And if you read about any social system, then no matter what are the ideals, it still seems to produce this class separation.

But who were those people who were voluntarily not only obeying to the system but also helped it to spread and grow? I have a hypothesis that for very big majority of human population, the ideals simply don't exist. They are dominated over by the personal drivers.

A personal driver is a certain characteristic that directs your choices no matter in which paradigm you currently are. Most of us accept the paradigm with its sticks and carrots and then start living our lives based on whatever is driving us. If your driver is to make religious career, it doesn't really matter is it a Catholicism, Islam or Buddhism - we accept one of it and then become as good and important inside it as possible. For example if pope Benedict would have been born into a muslim family, I'm sure he'd be an important man in Islam rather than leading the Catholic church.

For a lot of us, living a comfortable life is a driver, so we seek for ways how with minimum efforts ensure a stable comfortable life. Whatever it could mean in a certain paradigm.

Probably 99% of us just accept the paradigm and then fulfill our drivers inside it. Some of us get further than others, and this way expand the borders of the existing paradigms. For example the Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip is a good example of it - he was leading Tartu region during Soviet Union and later after independence became mayor of Tartu and even prime minister. It does not mean he is a person without a worldview, he just has a strong driver for political leadership and he is excellent at it. He takes the worldview of the existing paradigm, adapts to it and later evolves the system even further.

The pure idealists - the ones who are put to live inside one paradigm but would really like to change it into another one - rarely succeed in it. They are the misfits who most probably are never given the status to really change anything.

It's the case where idealism needs to meet pragmatism - without the latter one, you just find yourself running against a wall. Perhaps even getting murdered (think of Copernicus) or just ignored. The ability to adapt to the current paradigm first seems to be the only way of gaining a position to change it. If your ideals are the strongest drivers, then it might be very difficult if not possible.

And yet there are some people who despite all the odds turn their ideals into reality. They are the ones who truly change the world. Think of Jesus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Picasso, perhaps even Mark Zuckerberg? If you think you could be next in the list, you are most probably wrong. Most probably but not definitely.

Marketing lessons from Sambo the elephant

2010-11-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

Today, in the middle of a working day, I was distracted for over half an hour after Klara read a very sad news - Sambo, the only elephant in Phnom Penh, is being kicked out of Wat Phnom (a small important mountain in the middle of the city) where she has been earning money by taking customers around the mountain.

Her story is very emotional, you can read about it here. As a young elephant, she was separated from her family and being carried around until one young man started to take care of her. She even survived the Khmer Rouge regime, where most of her fellow elephants in her village were killed for food or just for pure fun of killing.

After the regime she had been living a simple life together with her owner, earning enough money for their food by carrying tourists around one of the main tourist attraction.

Now the officials have told that she cannot stay anymore at Wat Phnom, because she is interrupting traffic. This means that she nor the owner have anymore a source of income for food.

Immediately I felt compassionate. How can I give few dollars to support Sambo? How can officials be so cruel to Sambo?

***

Now imagine a different case. A lot of animals are in bad condition in the region, whole species are endangered due to illegal hunting and destroying their habitat.

If an NGO worker would come to me at a coffee shop, asking to donate 5 dollars to support some animal protection initiative, what would I do? I would say "no, thank you!" and not even bother thinking about it more.

I don't give donations to beggars or organizations, because I feel it's not making a systematic change - by my 5 dollars they don't reduce the need for later donations. This is a fraud business model and by supporting it, you are keeping people on the streets and organizations struggling with bad business models. Instead of having to figure out how to create sustainable ways of earning incomes.

***

My rational side understands perfectly, that giving Sambo 5 dollars is also not a sustainable solution. Only sustainable solution is to invest money or time into something that helps Sambo to zoo or finds a way how she can continue carrying tourists.

If we talk about animal campaigns, my rational side dominates. It's abstract. I keep away from it.

If we talk about one individual with an emotional story, my heart cries. I want to help. I don't care if it's a sustainable solution.

Chip and Dan Heath described something similar in their book "Made To Stick". If you want your story, your marketing campaign, to stick - you need to create emotions. It's easy to feel the pain of one suffering animal, it's abstract to read about thousands of them in poor conditions.

Sheepmarketing

2010-10-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had to scan few pages so I decided to go to one of the various print shops available here in Phnom Penh. In fact, every major street seems to have a dozen of print shops here, delivering services like printing, photo-copying, name cards etc.

What is remarkable about those stores is how unremarkable they are. Every single one delivering exactly the same services for the same price. The only way to distinguish between them is the location.

So I entered one of them and I was told it will take around 5 minutes to scan my seven pages of documents. Knowing the Khmer way of underestimating time, I decided to go and do something useful and come back in 15 minutes.

I arrived back, entered the shop and sat down to the chair which I had refused 15 minutes ago. Then I suddenly noticed how the receptionist, who I remembered to be a young woman, had transformed into an old lady. It was then when I realized that I had entered a wrong shop, just 10 meters away from where my documents were being scanned.

This small and insignificant case illustrates very well the typical Cambodian way of doing business – every single business in the industry is copying each other – the price, location, design etc. It seems like there is some scam going on where business owners are secretly agreeing how we do business in our industry.

For example, go to Ochheuteal beach in Sihanoukville and try to find a bar that is anyhow different from the others – that would be clean, playing relaxing background music, wouldn’t allow beggars in, etc.

I’m sure it’s not any scam behind it and it’s just the typical way of doing business. And if to think more about it – this kind of sheep marketing you can see everywhere in the world – not only in Cambodia and even in the biggest corporations in the world.

Think of Nokia’s attempts to compete with iPhone or Blackberry smart phones as an example. Nokia’s response was to create similar (definitely not worse) smart phones without actually creating anything that would stand out from their main competitors. Neither with the price, design or functionality.

Having worked with top university students for 6 last years, I’ve seen how even the smartest and most creative ones are regularly falling to a trap of doing something in a certain way it has been always done without questioning whether the industry standard is really what’s the best solution. And I’m not excluding myself from the same crime.

By being remarkable, by creating reasons to be noticed, you can ask for higher price, beat the competition, and hire the best people. Often the simple question that “what would make us stand out?” is underestimated and too quickly the existing dogmas are accepted.

Very old marketing truth, but why do we then so often fail against it?

Can you be useful to your country without living there?

2010-10-18T03:04:00.000-07:00

In recent days there have been several opinions in Estonian media how the country should attract Estonians who are working abroad back home. It's a noble idea of course but I believe it's making one false assumption: that your geographical location is defining how useful can you be for the country.

An Estonian setting up global business in South-Africa or Turkey is without a doubt useful for Estonian economy - either indirectly by raising the awareness of Estonia as a country or directly by paying taxes, recruiting talents or moving some business operations to Estonia. The latter one can be fostered by the government by creating world-class tax and legal systems for international businesses.

So perhaps the whole focus of the campaigns should be rather to introduce to the Estonians abroad opportunities of being useful to their mother country either by returning home or doing something where they currently live?

We are talking about how Estonian companies should export more. There's a clear match - Estonians abroad can help local companies to find new clients, markets, business ideas. Let's encourage this kind of collaboration.

It becomes especially useful with less-known markets. Why not could Estonian companies become market leaders in new developing markets that are not mainstream yet and where competition is low? Expats from Estonia can get this way their high-paid jobs, being hired by Estonian companies.

The cartoon: Estonian daily newspaper Postimees 18.10.2010. Translated as "Home, home. You have been fooling around in your warm country for long enough!"

Building schools to everyone

2010-10-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled upon a Postimees interview with Hannes Tamjärv, the founder of the high school I graduated. He mentioned in his interview that some of the students are planning to open a school in India.

This is really inspiring!

It made me thinking - what if every school in developed world would found another school in a developing world? Anything from a tiny school with 20 students in a rural village to a mega-school in slums of some metropolitan city.

The schools in developing world would have to be entirely free for the students – no tuition fee, free books, and free transportation from home to school and back.

Even with such model, the costs would not be huge – a lot of work can be done on voluntary basis using the students, teachers, parents and alumnis of the developed-world school. The school could be financed by the parents and alumni donations.

For the developed-world school it would give an amazing school-assignment opportunity – a hands-on course about world issues and how people in some entirely different environment live and think.

Imagine for example every student spending one summer in their high-school life in this developing-world school? Interacting with local children, teaching them, and taking part of peer education.

There is no way after such experience those students would become ignorant citizens who don’t have a clue how the rest of the world works outside of tourism resorts. This would be an eye-opener for themselves, their parents and friends.

--------------

I am a true believer of education being the only effective measure to systematically and sustainably fight against world’s biggest problems. Living here in Cambodia, I see small kids speaking fluent English and yet not going to school because their parents cannot afford it or need them to beg for money. Obviously those kids have a lot of potential, but how much of it will really be nurtured and used in their future life if the kids won’t get a proper education? Not much – they will stay in the system and their kids will be in the same condition as they are.

If the world is really serious about fighting poverty, let’s just build free schools to everybody. For sure the formats need to differ from country to country (e.g. how to convince parents to put their kids to school for at least half a day), but the aim is the same.

If every young person in the world gets an education, every young person will have a chance to do something with their lives. Imagine 6 billion people working out solutions to world’s biggest problems and what kind of crazy ideas it could unlock?

While thinking about this idea, I read about a guy called Bernie Krisher who has opened hundreds of schools in Cambodia. He put it really nicely:

"Earning $2 a day instead of $1 a day might feed a family or put a roof on a house. It might help them manage their life a little better, but it won't help them reach their potential -- for that they need to go to school."

We need a new paradigm instead of just improving the current one. Recently Mark Zuckerberg (founder and CEO of Facebook) donated 100 million USD to transform Newark (USA) education system into a role-model for the whole country. This is a good start; let’s see with what the guys in Newark are able to come up with.

Or just go and open your own school, like Nicholas Kristof did: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/we-start-a-school-in-cambodia/

A mix of posts from here and there

2010-10-12T07:50:00.001-07:00

Today, when I was asked when I arrived to Cambodia, the answer surprised even me - “Almost 5 months ago”.

5 months used to be ages. It’s more than half a school year, almost half of AIESEC term. And now, I feel still like I only got started.

I’m here on a mission. To establish a youth-run organization called AIESEC in Cambodia which will be the lighthouse for the leadership development in this country. It’s time to evaluate what we have achieved and whether we are moving fast enough.

It also means I have around 7 months of active participation left in AIESEC. A bit scary feeling considering it has been most of my life for the past 6 years. Another reason to push those last months and really leave a legacy.

Sometimes when I have more time to reflect on why am I working in AIESEC, I picture myself 10,20 years later as an alumni and seeing that I made something that enabled the next generations to get an extra push to their dreams, actions, lives. Generations of Estonians, Cambodians, global citizens who are living meaningful stories. Changing organizations, transforming countries, building families, loving what they do.

Here in Cambodia we made a decision few weeks ago that it’s time to leave aside all boundaries and really create something awesome. To create a new paradigm for AIESEC projects – both in scale and in societal impact.

I have also been traveling – in August chairing SPARK conference in Thailand, attending AIESEC 62^nd International Congress in India, delivering Summer Conference in Cambodia, chairing Management Board Conference in Indonesia.

I have learned a lot about Asia, especially South-East Asia, and feel it’s a very promising region. The market sizes, natural resources, and people – they all make me feel that this is a region where I would like to stay for longer

There are amazing products created everywhere around the world and by enabling local producers to find customers around the world, you can really help valuable products to spread and this way make the whole world a bit happier. I believe international trade will be the area which will be my next AIESEC.

---------------------

One thing many people living abroad have told to me is that they become very nationalistic abroad. I kind of knew that coming and equipped myself with some books. Actually out of my 20KG of luggage around 7KG were Estonian books.

There were some gaps in my reading and I’ve started to fill them slowly. I just finished Andrus Kivirähk’s “Rehepapp” and now took Lennart Meri’s “Hõbevalge”. In order to understand where I come from, I want to learn more about the history of Estonians and how we have been evolving from simple peasants into the people we are today.

History has thrown quite some challenges into the evolution of Estonian nation. We are living in a unique time where actually there is no serious threat to Estonian independency and it will be our generation’s duty to wash out the entire negative from the past 700 years of occupations and enable the next generation to really be global players.

When other countries were exploring new lands, building empires, growing their populations, economies, Estonians always had to be stuck with some foreign power that really didn’t care much about how we were doing.

Fortunately Estonians are stubborn and against all odds carried the Estonian mind from generation to generation. Our bodies were often tortured, raped and destroyed, but the minds and dreams stayed.

It makes me feel even glad, that we were mostly under brutal occupations – the amount of evil was simply too much for Estonians to adapt and lose our identity. If we would have been part of some more enlightened empire, I’m afraid this would have been way more difficult.

Estonian Chamber Of Commerce released a new program to bring home talents. It’s a nice idea and it was good to see that guys from my old high school and debate club were behind it. I wish them good luck and do see how it can shape Estonian future in a positive way.

However, I strongly disagree with the idea that often comes from the Estonian politicians that we need to keep young people in Estonia.

What is the harm if a young person sees that she can get a better degree in a foreign university or wants to tests his skills leading some organization in the other side of the world. Eventually we will all come back because that’s where our roots are and then already with all the skills and experiences we have obtained.

Previous generations concerns are of course understandable, they saw people escaping from occupied Estonia who never returned. This created associations that once you leave, you leave for good, lose the language, traditions etc. It’s a whole new story with the independent country.

In Estonian Youth Forum 2010 Marju Lauristin opened her presentation with an interesting thought. She told that although most of the people in the audience feel that they would like to go abroad, most of us would still like to see our kids go to school in Estonia. And this relieves all her concerns regarding this topic. Smart lady.

I read that two great Estonians – Jaan Tätte and Marko Matvere – have left the country and gone to an around-the-world trip. And probably for this reason there have been a lot of articles about Jaan Tätte music and its strange effect.

I am listening right now his last CD “Tulemine”. The melodies and lyrics are extremely simple, you could say even primitive, yet there is something powerful in them. He speaks with you with a feeling that it’s not a person but it’s the Estonian mind speaking with you.

That’s who we are – simple people with great hearts. Those simple songs represent that entirely. I believe we should keep it no matter how wealthy, free or global we become.

Updates from Cambodia

2010-06-19T02:40:00.000-07:00

For a week now I am a proud owner of the first motorbike I've ever had (or driven if not considering a scooter experience last year). It's a used red Suzuki Viva 110. I'm getting better with it, learning to drive in a city where another bike might appear from nowhere any minute and direction (including the opposite direction, whatever works to get from point A to B).

Yesterday I completed my first over 10K run. It's tough here, every km seems twice as hard but yesterday once it was dark and slightly raining, it felt even reasonably warm.

I got my first item stolen here. I left my helmet tied to my bike to go running and lost 12 USD just like that. Now never leaving my helmet anywhere in public.

I also was stopped by police because of ignoring red light (it was a very early one though, something I might even do back home) and having my lights on during daytime. I was given two choices - either go to the office and pay 50 USD or propose some amount right on spot. I got away with 5 USD, something you can call facilitation fee here.

I visited hairdresser today. Prices are quite interesting - haircut is 4 USD (it's a bit more expensive compared to the regular ones) but washing your hair before that is 3 USD additionally. I wonder what kind of shampoo do they use there, fortunately I saw prices before and managed to skip that part.

Traffic of Phnom Penh

2010-06-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

Before coming to Cambodia I didn't actually realize how big part of my lifestyle used to be walking. After 10 days it is the thing I might miss the most.

Phnom Penh is definitely not a city for pedestrians. The only people besides me who walk longer distances than 100m seem to be Buddhist monks, all other people use a motorbike, tuk-tuk or a car to get around.

I can understand why because the traffic here is crazy. I came here with a habit of looking first left and right before crossing the street and once there are no cars, to quickly cross the street. If you would stick to this here, you would never be able to cross a street because the traffic never stops.

So here's how it works: you step on the road in a random time and slowly but confidently start moving towards the other side of the road. Then others will (hopefully) notice you and pass you from either side. Good thing is that traffic moves very slowly here, maybe 20 km/h, so it's kind of easy to slip through two cars.

Since Buddhist monks believe in reincarnation, I guess that explains also how they can move around on foot so easily here.

Bottom line is that I will get myself a moto soon. I'll have to collect a bit of money though but then Phnom Penh will have one less pedestrian.

Running is complicated here not only because of the traffic but also because of the heat. I tried it but I was so dead after 6km. Only proper time for running would be somewhere in the middle of the night / very early morning, but so far I've preferred to sleep at that time.

Running in the gym is not even nearly as fun, but at least helps to keep your running muscles alive. The gym I'm going to has a very concrete name - "The Place" - and instructors here are Swedes. It's considered to be the fanciest and most expensive gym (I'm paying 3.75 USD per training at the moment) here, but at least with aircon and proper machines. And a sauna!

I cannot post any pictures I've made, but here are some that I downloaded from internet to illustrate the point:

Usual picture of Phnom Penh traffic. In Estonia I would never cross such street but here it's quite OK because everybody knows to expect random pedestrians or drivers appearing from nowhere.

Riverside area in Phnom Penh. So far my favorite area in the city and also the only one where you can walk more than 100m in a row without having to cross some street.

View from the gym. The statue is the Independence monument, my hostel is maximum 500 meters from there. It gets dark here already at 6pm, so days are pretty short if you don't wake up very early.

First days in Cambodia

2010-05-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

After 24h in Amsterdam, 12 hours flight to Singapore and another 2h flight to Phnom Penh I finally arrived to Cambodia. It was 9am and already first steps out of the airplane made it clear what I will be dealing with – heat.

After getting an on-arrival visa for 25 USD and just 10 minutes, I left the airport and found a group of AIESEC members outside. It was very cool, each LC here has their own colorful t-shirt and many of them came to the airport.

Already few hours later I was in a seminar organized by AIESEC Cambodia. It had 300 attendants who wanted to know how to better prepare themselves for their career. It turns out that many Cambodians do simultaneously 2 or even more degrees, so many of them study like crazy.

If you think that Cambodia is a poor country, then this information is for you - most popular car brand seems to be Lexus and some local committee shirts are Tommy Hilfiger or Lacoste.

Phnom Penh itself is a very dirty city – a “Let’s do it” campaign is definitely needed here. Interestingly also there seems to be no consistency in the streets – a decent house is neighboring a nearly collapsed building etc.

For the first weeks I will be living in a hostel which is located in a very promising street – 1 1 1. Street numbering follows some logic yet unknown to me that was created by French colonists. The room is OK, only issue is that I don’t have a window, so if I’d stay here for whole day, I wouldn’t have a clue if it’s day or night.

That’s it for now, if you want me to talk about something specific, let me know!

Going to Cambodia

2010-05-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

I'm writing those words during the last hours in Estonia. Little by little it starts to get me - I'm leaving and all the things that seemed so common in my past 23 years will be replaced by something I have only read and heard about from other people.

Who still doesn't know, then I'm going there to be the president of AIESEC in Cambodia. It is a very new organization, founded just in 2008 and although I will be carrying the same title as this year, then I expect the experience to be very different.

Birgot asked me few days ago that how do I expect Cambodians to be? And that it would be interesting to compare my thoughts after some time. Well, right now I've heard it's a very friendly nation and the people I've talked with have left me an impression of very smart people. Cambodia is small in Asian terms (around 14 million citizens), economy is still very poor but growing faster than European economies.

Trade between Estonia and Cambodia is quite small - Estonian companies exported goods for 50K euros and imported for about 600K euros. It means, if for example I'll support few Estonian companies to do business with Cambodia, I can personally affect macro-economic data quite considerably.

The weather seems very hot, nowadays up to 40C and I expect first 6 months to be very rainy. Weather forecast promises thunderstorms for every day right now.

Phnom Penh, the capital and my next hometown, seems to be dirty and traffic insane (without public transportation). But I've also seen some amazing pictures of historical buildings. Let's see, there has to be a good reason why many people are so passionate about living there.

I also heard about Estonian Hotel in Sihanoukville, seaside city, which I for sure want to visit some day. I'm not aware of many other Estonians, but I suppose there are still more than I can expect. Reporter TV magazine introduced few of them. I also know there is quite a considerable amount of expats from other countries.

So this is pretty much all I know right now. I will update my blog a bit more often from now on, to let everybody know how am I doing there.

Exciting. For the first time moving out of Estonia. I feel it won't be for just a year, but let's see.

Take care meanwhile!

My year 2009

2009-12-31T05:01:00.000-08:00

Keeping the tradition, this will be a relatively long blog post about my year. For myself and others who might not been able to follow my whole year. Especially since I've been incredible passive in updating this blog this year.

Starting a new job

This new job is in the same organization, same office, but in a different room. In January I was elected as the president of AIESEC in Estonia and this has been the dominating force in my whole year. I have never worked so much in my life - often doing 10-11 hour work days, going to the office around 8.15 for most days, having no boss but being myself one, representing Estonia in the global network.

It has been a good year for AIESEC and especially for AIESEC in Estonia. We managed to grow 185% in exchanges and 100% in membership compared to last year. Every record was turned into history. It's something that makes me proud, especially knowing that in 2010 we have a chance to take Estonia to new heights. We are walking on a land nobody before us has been to.

Traveling

Countries I visited this year:

Italy (AIESEC's International Presidents Meeting)

Sweden (Weekend ferry cruise)

Finland (Shopping)

Latvia (Hitch-hiking trip, bicycle trip)

Lithuania (hh)

Poland (hh)

Czech Republic (hh)

Slovakia (hh)

Hungary (hh)

Romania (hh)

Serbia (hh)

Croatia (hh, CEE and WENA Presidents meeting)

Slovenia (hh)

Malaysia (AIESEC International Congress)

Portugal (AIESEC European Congress EuroCo)

Bulgaria (AIESEC conference ACT, CEE Presidents meeting)

16 countries visited which took around 2,5 months of the year. Traveling is in my nature, if I don't go somewhere in 5-6 weeks, I become a bit restless. Down here I will describe some of the coolest ones from 2009:

Hitch-hiking trip

In spring I got an idea that I have to have something exciting between my MC and MCP term. So I took 2 weeks of holidays to go hitch-hiking. It's something I had never done before, so it was a way of challenging myself and also seeing a lot of places in the same time.

I asked Kadri if she would like to join me. She had a full-time job and no chances of getting a holiday for 2 weeks. She doesn't like camping and prefers more comfortable ways of traveling. What did she do? She quit her job and we did the whole trip together. Respect!

I believe there is a certain beauty in traveling by land. You don't skip any country, it takes more time to go through a country, you start to understand the geography better, get a feeling of distances. So hitch-hiking is an excellent form for it - you discover yourself very often in the middle of some road and having no idea if it takes 10 minutes or 2 hours for some car to stop.

You meet all kind of people - businessmen, simple workers, bastards, very hospitable people. People who speak english and people with whom you had to use your tiny german or russian skills. The latter one was surprisingly useless in eastern europe. Each person with a different perspective to the country. Amazing.

Bicycle trip

My friend Erik who had spent a year in military service, got an idea that let's go out of Estonia this time. After hitch-hiking I preferred to see more Estonia but we found a compromise - we spent half of the trip in Latvia and half in Estonia.

Me and Erik took a train to Pärnu, then met Peep and started to move towards Latvia. It was the first time when there were only guys in the trip - it also meant the speed went incredible up and it was even difficult to keep the pace with my old bicycle. Luckily in the next day we were joined by two girls - sisters Liisa and Mari - and we could start moving in a normal pace again.

North Latvia was fine, weather went very bad and it definitely affected our Latvian experience. It seemed gray and boring. But the company was nice and the highlight was definitely finding a street called "Lauri".

With some help from Peep and my screwdriver street "Lauri" has one less sign. Sorry Latvians but I had to steal it. The story of how we got it was also funny. At some moment one of the girls lost her cell phone and they went to look for it. So we, the guys, had to wait for few hours in front of a store. It started to rain. What would you do in such situation? Rigas Balsams helped out - this horrible drink tasted quite OK after few rounds. Once the girls arrived we took off and after 20 metres found this street.

Being encouraged by some Balsam I took my screwdriver and started to remove the sign. Suddenly from the same house a guy sticks out his head and starts to shout something in Latvian. I said something in return in Latvian (saldejums ar alus, usmanibu, and some other latvian words we had learned) and went away. But the sign was still in my mind. After 1km I told to Peep - let's go back and get it.

Peep, being also encouraged by Balsams was of course in. We went back and very carefully removed the sign. Now it's laying on my table in the office. I know it's very bad and irresponsible but somehow I feel I would do it again. If you, the nice Latvian family read it somehow, I'm definitely willing to cover all the costs of replacing the sign. Just approach me.

Trip to Malaysia

This year the International Congress took place in Malaysia. A great change to experience Asia and travel around as we went there a week before. Most of it I spent in Langkawi island.

I know that Malaysia has many amazing islands and Langkawi might be a touristic one. But it was anyway beautiful, tax free and just in the right size to make a trip with a scooter around the island.

It was the feeling of freedom, driving 100km per hour with a bike that probably is not meant for such speed. Seeing all the paradise beaches, obnoxious monkeys and having time to think and just relax.

It had been a dream of mine for years - each time I was overloaded with deadlines in school - that I would be instead in a paradise island sitting under palm tree and watching ocean. Now I have done it.

I also had an accident there. Just 30 minutes before I had to return my scooter I thought I'll make one more short trip. I turned away from the main road and turned to some small road. I suddenly got a bad feeling about the place, especially the muddy ditch on the left and decided to turn around and go back. As I had been driving over 200 km with the scooter in 24h I was already confident in my skills but in reality couldn't handle the bike and drove straight to the ditch.

Imagine the feeling - you are suddenly in a muddy ditch with your scooter. In such a ditch where in the movies I had seen alligators. First thought was - I wish there was a ctrl+z button. Second thought - oh damn, it will cost me a fortune. Five seconds later - how can I push the scooter out from the ditch.

It was very difficult. The ditch had high banks and soft mud everywhere. There was no way I got lift it out. But I was determined to get out of this place. I discovered that If I use all my strenght I can lift one wheel at a time. So I made progress and got the bike to the edge of the bank. But it was still too heavy to lift it up. After some time three locals found me. So we, 4 guys, were finally able to push the scooter up.

And then it turned out -not surprisingly though - that the scooter didn't work. Water had got to the engine. Use any dirty word here to describe the situation.

The guys left, telling me to wait. I was barefoot - my flip-flops vanished to the ditch on a very hot asphalt. And suddenly the bike started to work.

I left quickly, driving barefoot and covered with mud and went back to the hostel. It was still only 10 minutes after the deadline. I asked some tools to clean my bike and myself and did my best to make it look as nothing had happened.

It seemed to look nice and I returned it to the rental place. The lady came to check the bike and I saw how the muddy water started to come out from some places. What a timing. She became a bit upset and started asking where I had taken the bike. I told nowhere, just had to cross some mud puddle in some village. She didn't buy it, she thought I had been driving in the beach which was strictly forbidden. I was charged 50 ringitts (around 10 euros) and that was it.

Conclusions

It's getting long and I have to get prepared for my final run in 2009. So those few stories had to describe my year. I guess it actually gave you some idea - it was adventurous, full of new situations and people, responsibility, learning about myself etc. I think it's time to audit my goals stated exactly year ago:

-I will run at least once 10k under 40 minutes - not done, best run was 42 minutes something

-I will organize another bicycle trip - done

-I will organize EDU conference 2009 - not done, Youth in Action doesn't support projects that are happening for the second year

-I will publish "Passion 2009" ebook - done

Goals for next year:

-Finish a marathon

-Achieve 85 exchanges with AIESEC in Estonia

-Move to a foreign country

-Register my first company

Some things I already know about next year

I will finish my term as president of AIESEC in Estonia. It was the last thing I had to do before leaving Estonia. So from summer I will be moving to some other country. I still have doubts whether to continue in AIESEC, go to an internship or focus only on building a company.

It will be a year of changes - like was 2005 (graduating high school and moving to Tartu for university) or 2008 (graduating university and moving to Tallinn for MC). Exciting.

Estonia - the most ambitious country in the word

2009-12-25T02:47:00.000-08:00

Few years ago Andrus Ansip, the prime minister of Estonia, said out a vision for Estonia that immediately caught attention of most Estonians – his idea was to take Estonia among the five wealthiest nations in Europe in fifteen years. After that his party won the next elections, gaining personally more votes than anybody else before and securing his reelection as prime minister.

His vision was set in good times for economy – Estonian GDP growth was beating almost all the other countries in the world. Now, after being in the exact opposite of the GDP growth – joining the countries with biggest GDP decrease – this vision is often accused of being populistic, naive or any other characteristic that would describe an impossible idea.

But that's the problem with this country – once somebody has a bold idea, we are masters of finding reasons why it would not work. Especially after first setbacks. We are lacking ambition.

Last weeks, in the Estonia is looking for superstar show, we have seen several very talented young singers. I'm wondering, was there anybody of whose ambition was bigger than becoming another well-known singer in Estonia who is doing summer tours in small cities and occasionally performs in some musical?

Last seasons experience shows that probably not.

There was definitely enough talent. But as Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates in his Outliers, even for Beatles being talented was only small part of the success. It's the hard work – Beatles were performing in Munich bars 7-days per week playing in few years more than 10 000 hours on stage. More than most bands in their lifetime.

And then there is of course ambition. To really want to get to the world league.

Estonia with its 1,3 million citizens is just a small fraction of human population. If every person in Estonia would become amazingly good in something, the world would probably not even notice.

Top athletes work every day to get the best out of themselves. To be the best they can be.

What if each Estonian would start living in the same way – take some field they are good at and decide to become extraordinary in that. And stop comparing itself with the neighbor but benchmark the best in the world.

So that Estonia would become the most ambitious country in the world.

Just to be fair - I'm also asking it from myself - what is my contribution? I believe in the present day it's working as the leader of AIESEC in Estonia and going to the office every day with a thought that how can my organization be the best in the whole network? And then of course spending needed hours to achieve that. 185% growth rate this year is showing that things are moving in the right direction. But it's also far from being enough.

Thoughts from the ice rink

2009-12-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

After some time of silence I decided to start posting here some thoughts from the everyday life and my associations with those. Or just whatever is in my mind as the description of this blog states.

I'm currently in Bulgaria and today had a chance to do some ice skating after some time. The rink was full of people, especially kids and I could identify four types of people:

1. People who fell down a few times and then left the rink

2. People who fell down again and again but kept on skating

3. People who were moving very slowly but never fell

4. People who were moving in a good pace but never fell

I assume that for most of the people, the last status would be an ideal. And the second status hurts the most.

If we take the comparison to whatever field is important to you - what would be the ideal state to become really good at it?

Whatever approach you take -

if you are not falling, you are not moving fast enough

If you quit after few fallings, you don't care enough.

If you don't fall but are moving slowly, then you'll just not learning.

If you are not increasing your pace but keep on falling as often, then maybe it's time to get some advice.

And...

If you are moving quicker than anybody else but still are not falling then maybe it's time to start comparing yourself with better skaters?

PS! I especially admired one girl with pink jacket. She was falling down after each 20 seconds but she stayed on ice for 40 minutes. If she'll use this kind of persistence in some field she's actually talented, great things can happen.

Some things will change

2009-09-04T01:52:00.000-07:00

My almost month-long adventure in Malaysia will get over in just few hours. It has been fun. Several months ago while buying tickets to Kuala Lumpur I decided to unite the chance of getting the cheapest possible tickets with a nice holiday before and after the conference. Back then I didn't know how good decision it was.

The AIESEC's 61st International Congress was an amazing congress. Full of great people, content, ideas, connections, friends. But what I feel that happens too often is what can be called "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" effect.

We go through amazing experiences but once getting back to reality we just continue doing the same things in a same way and getting the same results. That's a pattern which in a best case scenario can bring a nice growth until you reach the potential inside the current framework.

Until you stay in the current framework things are easy - we feel the joy of a nice growth, get confidence in our abilities to do the same things even more and better. Everything is secure.

I got hungry to revolutionize things. Break the common ways of thinking. That's why this reflection period before and after IC has been so useful. It helps to sort out what's really important.

I'm full of ideas and even more full of questions. Many people will hear from me next week the question of "how can we create new standards with this project?". We will think together and I do expect things to get to another level. So that future generations would be even more challenged to rethink what we were doing.

It's 4th of September and we still have 10 months to go.

If you feel somehow connected with what I said, I would really appreciate your comments/thoughts/ideas either through this blog or direct messages in twitter.

Any other special day

2009-07-26T01:53:00.000-07:00

Today is my birthday. I'm 23 now. Don't know what to think of it besides that it's just a day I always waited as a kid and that nowadays is just another beautiful day.

Life is full of beautiful days. I'm starting to understand less and less why we make some days more special than others just because the date. Just some examples:

Why is 31st of December a better day to make resolutions of how you will become a better person than any other day?

Why is the date you started a relationship giving you more reasons to do something special with your partner than any other day?

Why is Valentine's day a better day to say you appreciate your friends than any other day?

Each day can be made special just as much as each day can be considered to be "just another boring Tuesday". Life is short, there is no reason to wait for some "special date" to make this day special.

And if you want to be part of my birthday wish: do one thing you have never done before in your life for others. Preferably something cheap and easy, but that makes somebody's day brighter.

I will prepare some sandwiches for the homeless today. Tomorrow I'm going to donate blood. I hope it will make somebody just a bit happier.

In the picture: me and Peep racing in the annual bicycle trip I'm organizing every summer with Erik. This time it was from Pärnu to Latvia and all the way to Tartu. Thanks Erik, Peep, Liisa and Mari for the great 6 days!

You can follow my trip via twitter

2009-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

If you want to know where I will be with my hitchhiking trip between 16-31st of May, then I will make occasional updates about my locations to my Twitter account (twitter.com/laurilahi).

Modern technology is fun - with a 3.85EEK (around 25 euro cents) SMS you can let almost anywhere the whole world know what you are doing.

Heading for a great trip

2009-05-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

This Saturday I will be leaving Estonia for 2 weeks to hitchhike across the Europe. It's very exciting as before this spring I didn't have any kind of hitchhiking experience and I still have no idea how long it takes to get from Estonia to - let's say - Greece (one of our potential destination).

Tomorrow I will buy my first real estate. A tent. Did you know there are tents that weight just 700g, can fit two persons and still protect you from rain and cold?

Wish it sounded ridiculous?

2009-05-04T07:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw a movie called "The Boat That Rocked". It's a great movie for anyone who loves Rock'n'Roll, 60s and crazy humor.

The whole story was that in 1960s BBC was only allowed to play 45 minutes per week rock music. As it was certainly not enough for the young generation, a big number of pirate rock stations were broadcasting from the sea where it was out of the regulations.

It took a year for the government to find a reason to ban pirate radios. And why to ban? Because rock music encouraged prostitution, bad manners etc. Totally ridiculous of course. Looking back now.

The movie made me think again that if we take it - let's say - 50 years from now on, what are the things we laugh about 2000s? Ridiculous laws, behaviors, prejudices, principles.

And what if we could realize the ridiculousness not in 50 years but right now?

Some people probably do. Sometimes they are called revolutionaries, sometimes minorities, sometimes they are nobodies.

What do you WISH would sound ridiculous in 50 years that is totally OK right now?

Push ups are fun

2009-04-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

I found a cool website 100 push ups which guides how most of us could train in just 6 weeks to do 100 consecutive push ups.

I haven't tried the program but I did something similar last summer. In 1st of June I did 26 push ups (it was not my maximum but still amount that required effort) and then every single day I did one extra push up. In the middle of August I had reached to 100. My goal was completed.

That was a nice exercise of setting a goal, working every day for it, and then in the end realizing that "oh, it was not that difficult". The lesson was that achieving great results does not require any miracle or huge workload, but it for sure takes persistence.

My goal for this summer is to run 10K in less than 40 minutes. My moment of truth will be annual SEB Sügisjooks in September. Let's see.

Great way to get to know more about yourself

2009-04-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

In camping there is an easy rule - to get to where you want to get, you need to first be able to find on the map where you are currently standing.

Last week I sent to 25 people an email with some questions about myself. Questions were about my strengths and weaknesses of being a leader and more in general how other people see me.

I chose those 25 people quite carefully - from long time friends to people who rarely know (like) me - and asked them to send the answers to Kristina, my predecessor in AIESEC. She took all the answers and put them together to one file.

The result was 8 pages of thoughts about me - I don't know who said what (I only know that majority of people answered) but many thoughts were similar and I could build up an image of myself. A lot of food for my thoughts.

The photo above is taken in 2006 in Valga where me and some good friends started our great bicycle trip series. This year something like this will happen again for sure.

Assumptions

2009-03-24T08:17:00.000-07:00

Assumptions are dangerous.

-We assume that economy will recess so we cut costs, fire people, buy less so economy for sure will recess a lot.
-We assume that other person meant xxx by saying yyy so we are mad at that person.

Human beings are irrational. Facts are to justify our assumptions not vica versa. So our assumptions start generating new facts.

Maybe we can benefit from by only assuming the positive?

-I assume that if I act smart, my business will benefit from the difficult times.
-I don't understand why she said so but I will find out what she meant by that. I assume I just misunderstood her and everything is alright.

How much faster would economy recover? How many people would get along better?

Might be two different topics inside one posting, but in the end what's economy? It's you and me trading goods between each other. Two irrationals trying to figure out a rational deal.

More human

2009-03-07T08:12:00.000-08:00

On Thursday I was a replacement-lecturer in Tallinn Technical University and gave a 2h lecture about creative management. Lecture of course in my terms, meaning not a 2-hour monologue but rather time spent together with smart students discussing topics like creativity, management and motivation.

What I like the most about teaching (or rather facilitating) is that it helps to clear your mind. One idea that keeps on coming back to my mind is that whatever topic we talk about, it finally goes back to the essence of human nature. Just an example:

Everybody is creative. Great leaders just create environments where this creative potential is realized into innovation.

So creativity is a very human thing. Things that block your creativity are most likely unhuman. So maybe all that it takes to become a good manager is just to study a bit about how human brain works like? And then have enough skills to implement it to everyday work.

On a bit different note, in last few months I've seen two very interesting tourism enterprises starting. Dey sent me a link of Weekeego, which is offering trips to exciting places around the world focusing on letting you experience the local communities. Marko, Deniss and Viljo are doing something similar for Estonian ecotravelers, Reisid Vabadusse.

I feel those two companies are following the same "more human" principle. In fact, they actually let you see what is "human" in the places you are visiting. Experience what kind of lives are local people living, hear stories that are not brand-aligned, see places that have not been sterilized.

Or at least that's the feeling I get about those two projects. But I recommend you to find out yourself.

My life in last few weeks

2009-03-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

Since I haven't updated my blog for some time, I decided to give you some updates about what I'm up to right now.

One dream fulfilled
In case you haven't heard yet, then in January I was elected as the new president of AIESEC in Estonia. It means from this July I will be responsible for leading one of the oldest and biggest NGOs in Estonia for one year.

It's quite an interesting time I'll be taking over the management. AIESEC in Estonia is finally growing after many years and everybody expects the growth to accelerate next year. In times when economy is doing exact opposite.

I'm really excited to have 12 months to bring the best results AIESEC in Estonia has ever showed. Looking back how great predecessors I have, accomplishing that is something that just makes me move.

Back in Italy

I have a video in my laptop, shooted in last June, where I'm sitting on the edge of Trevi Fountain in Rome and throwing a coin to it. Apparently the magic works because it took me just 8 months to get back there. Me and Kristina (my predecessor) were participating in AIESEC International Presidents Meeting (IPM) in Rome for last two weeks. Probably the most professional conference I've ever attended - relevant discussions, inspiring people, loads of ideas, stronger personal network.

I was also witnessing the elections of the global AIESEC International team. The newly elected president of AIESEC International - Aman Jain - gives me a lot of confidence that AIESEC will be fit to perform well in the difficult times.

Funny thing about IPM is that as there are only 2 people from each of the 107 country in the network, majority of the people you remember not by their name but by their country and whether they were elected for the president position or they are currently there. So my identity for the last two weeks was "Estonia elect".

Smart dream

2009-02-08T02:29:00.000-08:00

Today I had a weird dream. I was back in university and I was visited by a lady I met in one conference (by the way, she was not naked nor was she younger than 50).

She was standing in my dorm room and suddenly a fire alarm started to ring. I didn't pay any attention to it. Then we had the following conversation:

Lady: Why are you not concerned about the fire alarm?
Me: Oh it's just false alarm, it has happened few times before already.
Lady: But based on what are you saying it's a false alarm?

I was speechless. Of course she was right. Just because there was not visible smoke or fire, doesn't mean that for example first floor could be in fire which could soon spread to all over the dormitory (my dormitory had 9 floors).

How fool I had been that every time an alarm rang, I automatically assumed it's nothing. What if one day there would have been a real fire? I probably would have stayed in my room calmly until it was too late to rescue myself.

The lady did some calls and arranged a fire drill next week for the dormitory. The alarm started to rang and we ran out of the house. Based on the drill scenario, the fire would have spread in the speed it would have given only 10 minutes to get out of the house alive.

Just small number of students were out in less than 10 minutes. Few hundred students would have died in case of real fire this night.

I believe we have to start taking fire alarms more seriously. Let's start by organizing fire drills in every dormitory in Estonia. And after that send every student a video that would show what would happen in real life if students would have acted in the same way they did during the drill.

We don't need a real tragic accident to do be concerned about it. Let's prevent this potential threat.

PS! I don't know where this dream came from. I have never been passionate about this topic. But now I feel I should do some calls on Monday and do something about it. My inner change agent keeps on pushing me whether I like it or not.

Bill Gates, a role model

2009-02-06T07:48:00.000-08:00

10 years ago, as a young teenager, I knew exactly who is Bill Gates. The riches man in the world. Being the richest meant he is the coolest.

Few years later I became to understand that there are more sides when we talk about Bill Gates. On one hand a technological genius who has improved enormously the way we can process, store and spread information, on the other hand a leader of an evil corporation who is forcing other people to use Microsoft products, runs over smaller companies by buying everybody who becomes even little dangerous, stealing other companies ideas etc.

Nowadays I look Bill Gates as a true role model. He was a guy who already in very early age found his way to the software industry, innovated it in any imaginable way and when he felt he had done it long enough, quit his job and became a hardcore philanthropist.

I've been talking about this topic a little bit in passionalism blog (see the posting here) that what the world needs for true change is people with characteristics which enable to generate a lot of revenue (they usually work as successful businessmen, CEOs or in some other well-paid job) but who put their efforts to solving some serious issue in society.

Bill Gates is a true example of it.

In fact, I like people like Bill Gates or Clinton a lot more when they are not either in business or in politics. Business of doing good is the field where people with strong skills to make things happen are needed.

Here's the TED talk by Bill Gates so many blogs are writing about right now:

Exciting week ahead

2009-01-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday evening. I'm sitting in my room and having a good feeling that next week will be awesome.

I am already sure right now, that next week will bring memories that will go into "Top Moments of Lauri Lahi's AIESEC story". A book I've been writing for almost 4 years and which I still want to continue some time.

From next week I will always remember...

...how we brought together people like Mart Laar (former prime minister), Aivar Pohlak (Estonian football pioneer), Aarne Saluveer (he lead 25000 young singers in last Estonian Song Festival), Artur Taevere (pioneer of social entrepreneurship), Indrek Sei (Olympic swimmer) and Kristiina Ojuland (one of the greatest female politicians) to an AIESEC conference. All legendary people in Estonia. Not just for what their business cards say but how they have expanded those roles with their persons.

...how it took just 2 weeks to get 250 people to register to this event. Without a single poster or flier but only using the magic of great product, internet and word of mouth marketing.

...how I applied for AIESEC Estonia president 2009/2010 position and how this decision affected my life.

Those are facts. Real memories come from emotions and before they've been lived through I can only assume they will be something memorable.

But one thing is certain. If it's Sunday evening and you start thinking about the upcoming week and a big smile comes to your face - well, it's a really good sign.

Borrowing and adjusting words from Stereophonics: have a great week!

Weekend in the office

2009-01-11T02:52:00.000-08:00

I am now 7th day in a row in AIESEC office. Today I woke up at 8:30 and my inner devil asked from me: "Why the hell are you doing it?"

I got a quick answer.

Success sometimes needs an extra mile.

If you aim high and see the final image that makes all those effort worth it, sometimes staying weekend in the office to do some cool stuff is OK.

As long it doesn't become a habit of course.

How long can you keep going?

2009-01-10T11:56:00.000-08:00

Estonian Miniter of Social Affairs, Maret Maripuu, is probably one of the most unpopular persons in Estonia. Because of her (and some other people's) inability to manage the ministry, there is now a lot of confusion how elder people will start getting their pension.

The case started from a plan to save costs. Until now, every senior citizen has a right to get their pension delivered to their home in cash without any extra charge. From this February, this right should only go to the physically disabled people and others start getting pension to their bank account or have to pay delivery cost.

In my opinion a reasonable plan. What amazes me in this story is not Maripuu's bad management skills but the nature of our elder people.

If you read newspapers, listen in public transport, you get to know many things. For example if you are 70...

...you are not able to do any work
...you are not able to do any sports to keep yourself fit
...you are not able to learn new skills like for example using internet
...you are not able to travel

Basically, because you are old and have very small pension your life is over.

And then there are other kind of people. Those who do every day some physical excercises to keep moving (without any cost), those who read books to learn about things they never had time while working(public libraries are free), those who start selling their experiences to younger people (after all you have >40 years of working experiences), those who start working for NGOs to make a difference in an area they care about.

Or people who become top photographers in the age of 80, like Marjam wrote in her blog.

IF I could say one thing to those wussy-elders, it would be:
Being old is a lame excuse for not having a life. You are alive, so act like it.

Creating cool stuff

2009-01-06T09:04:00.001-08:00

During my AIESEC career I've been involved with some cool initatives where we have made things differently, more creatively etc than it has been donebefore.

One of those things is the Estonian Youth Forum. We took a small event which was part of our Annual Conference and made it big - Estonian Youth Forum - where we invited some very famous Estonians like Mart Laar or Aivar Pohlak (check the list of the people I'd like to meet in my life).

We put those successful people to one panel discussion to discuss the role of youth in the development of Estonian economy.

If you are in Estonia at 23rd of January, you must be there! Check out the website eestinoortefoorum.com

Troubles with present

2009-01-05T07:58:00.000-08:00

First thought when I woke up today was: "Damn, I want to sleep more".

Of course, when you had only slept 3 hours.

Next thought: "Oh those good university times when you almost never had to wake up before 9-10".

Thought after that: "In few years when I have my own businesses, I will organize them so that I can work like a rockstar - whenever I have inner drive and most probably not in the morning".

Then I took shower and realized simple truth.

Things looked always easier in the past than they do now.

Things will always look easier in the future than they do now.

Happy people are those who manage to see the beauty in today. Why today things are just great. I could become one of them. Maybe you already are.

Deadlines and making a decision

2009-01-02T16:32:00.000-08:00

I have a big decision to make.

There are so many pros and cons. I know I will only make the decision because the deadline is so close. Deadlines make life less complicated, because they just make you to decide. Otherwise there would be endless back doors which just postpone the decision making.

I wish there could be deadlines in some other areas as well in my life. Such deadlines that you have to meet, where even being one minute late is not good enough.

------------------
To my students I gave 8 recommendations for life. One of them was that "no decision is as important as it seems in the beginning". I'm exactly in the point where I need to remind it to myself.

Changes in my blogging

2009-01-02T09:04:00.000-08:00

From now on this blog will be my personal blog. Meaning if you care about what am I up to, how do I feel about something (probably not about somebody) or just random thoughts, this will be the place.

The blog about passionalism, creative management and current business can be found at passionalism.com.

So what am I doing right now? It seems I'm starting to figure out what I want to do with my life in next 5 years. It's pretty scary as my vision about my future has never been that clear. Now trying to fit together all the pieces about what do I need to learn, who are the people I want to work together and what is AIESEC's role in it.

Passion 2009 book is ready!

2008-12-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

2008 is very soon to be over. In the last day of the year, the extra day thanks to 29th of February, I gave last touches to the first ebook I initiated.

Together me, German, Marit, Birgot and Kadri invited people to share an answer to the question "what makes your eyes shine?". Here you can see the result: http://www.passionalism.com/Passion2009.pdf

My year 2008

2008-12-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

Once I decided that I will start using my blog as a test ground for internet marketing, I decided that this blog will be platform for collecting my business-related thoughts in quite a flexible way. It has worked quite well and my blog has been visited in the last 3 months more than the previous year together.

It also meant that I decided not to write here personal things, because I saw my blog starting to have readers from around the world including places where I don't know having any friends. Although in AIESEC you can never be sure.

Those people read my blog because they are interested in my thoughts not in my life. And having people from around 30 countries interested in your thoughts is something I really enjoy - I just hope more people would share their thoughts back to me, not to have so much one-sided communication.

This post will be about me

This post is different. It is about me. Because in December 2009 I want to read it and reflect on my past year. I could write it to my word file and keep it only for myself, but talking alone has never worked out for me too well.

So you are free to leave this time, in January I will split my blog and start writing my business thoughts to passionalism.com page and keep this site as a personal one.

My 2008

Travelling

First word that comes to my mind is travelling. This year I travelled far more than in any other year, here comes the list of countries I visited in a chronological order:

Russia - Saint Petersburg (EuroXpro conference)
Greece - Athens, Thessaloniki (Helping Estonian businessmen to import cheese)
Italy - Rome (Graduation trip with Kadri)
Germany - Berlin (City trip and overnight stay between transfer flights)
Brazil - Sao Paulo mostly (AIESEC International Congress)
Netherlands - Amsterdam (City trip between transfer flights)
Latvia - Riga (Energy conference)
Poland - Krakow, Warsaw, Gdansk (Solidarity Express conference)

I also spent some hours in the airports of Vienna, Stockholm and Kopenhagen, so if those counted, I visited 11 countries this year. Out of those 6 new ones for me.

Bicycle trip

My highlight of this year's domestic travelling was of course the annual bicycle trip. From the regular gang, only me and Helen managed to be either in Estonia, outside the army or having the bike at that time. We were joined by the newcomer Mart, so just three of us enjoying probably the best weather of the summer.

This year's trip started from Orava, the furthest place you can travel with train in Estonia. There were many remarkable events during that trip, again in chronological order some of them.

Use your butt not your mouth with females

Communicating with random cows on day 1. They were soon bored by my words and returned to eating grass. But as soon as I bent to take some stuff from my bag, one brown cow was near the fence tongue making flirting movements. A lesson learned that women are not interested in your words but more of your butt. Thanks for the lesson!

Milking a cow

Few days later I already used my knowledge and while meeting another cow, I could first try milking a cow. Cool experience!

Sleeping in the most beautiful places

We didn't have clear idea before the trip about where we will sleep each day. My experience had taught me that most probably good tenting places are near lakes or sea. "Trust the process" and "in the end it will work out fine" were the lessons I really appreciated during this trip. It worked out more than fine, it was just perfect.

First evening - Vaskna lake with fireplace and table (plus toilet but forest smelled better)

Second evening - Lõõdla lake with most hospitable guy I have ever met in my life. I'll talk about it in the next chapter

Third evening - Mart's countryside house

Fourth evening - Võrtsjärv, Valma with most beatiful sunset I have ever seen

Trusting the process

During the second day we were targeting sleeping place somewhere near Antsla and as there were not so many lakes, Lõõdla seemed like the only good option. The map even said there is a tenting area but it turned out to be a private land 20m from the road. So we decided to look around the lake and find a better place. But the lake is mostly surrounded by forest, so we couldn't find any place. I finally saw a private house with big yard and decided to give it a try - maybe the people there will allow us to use 10x10m area for our bikes and tent.

I entered the yard, hoping there are no angry dogs there and was knocking on the door. Nobody was there. But the place itself looked really beautiful - not like a home but like a cool campsite with water bike, non-smelling toilet and fireplaces. So I called to Mart and Helen to come here and although nobody is there let's just stay here.

They came and soon came the owner. We asked politely, to be precise used Helen to ask politely, as her voice works better on guys than mine or Mart's, whether we can stay. The owner said of course.

We unpacked our tent and discovered we were missing sour cream for the salad. It's not that big deal, we could have survived being without it, but the owner said - let's take my car and drive 10km to Anstla. So we did.

After returing he showed that the metal trunk in the yard had some more features. It was a sauna on wheels. He said he has some friends coming over in the evening and we are more than welcomed to join. That we did.

He also told we can use his water bike and boat if we like. As Helen had birthday next day, we decided to give her a really special birthday gift - took the boat with cake and candles and rowed to the center of the lake. Imagine moon in a clear summer night reflecting on the water. You in the middle of it. Could there be a better birthday gift?

All of this just thanks to the thought "oh screw it, let's just go and ask if we can sleep there!"

Here I decide to end my stories from the bicycle trip, because it's getting too long for even myself.

Graduating university

Probably the most revealing moment of this year came when I realized I will graduate this year. Part of it thanks to a really good instructor, Triin Kask, thanks to whom I realized writing a thesis and research simultaneously is not that big deal. I could handle it. I chose the topic that interested me a lot - project management in strategic management and got a B for that. As always, I put very little working hours into it and in the end even thought if I had only tried more, I could have got my first A throughout my studies. Ah, go to hell, you don't even care about the marks, good that it's over.

About my thoughts about the university you can read from one of my previous postings here.

Becoming full-time AIESECer

If you are not from AIESEC, which I actually don't believe because otherwise you wouldn't be that far, AIESEC is a voluntary-based organization. With few exceptions who work full time for it and call themselves MC-s (member committee). In June I became one of those people.

This year AIESEC Estonia was lucky to have so experienced people to apply for MC. Based on my subjective observation, AIESEC Estonia hasn't had that high potential MC during the times I have been around (from 2005) and I'm glad to be part of this team.

I have also understood that working from nine to five in the office is not something I want to do for long time. It's a rule that comes from factories when the production would have stopped if one person wouldn't have showed up exactly when needed. In today's offices I don't see why it's relevant but, yeah, to some people rules help them to work and it's not that big sacrifice from me to follow this routine.

Actually understanding how differently different people work has been a very valuable lesson. I am having every day a more clearer picture about what kind of people I enjoy working together with - who give me energy and creativity and who take it away.

I have also understood that there is a direct correlation between my performance and the responsibility I have over the result. I am a kind of person who works better if I'm working cross-functinally and really bad at leading a single functional area. Fortunately I was not given any functional area and I have the most cross functional position after team leader.

The last understanding also made me to take an important decision - to apply for the member committee president of AIESEC Estonia. I think it's something very exciting - managing a big organization during challenging times in economy. I tried to convince me for a long time not to apply, but sometimes your passion is bigger than your will.

EDU project

Until this summer I was the project manager of EDU, an education project that wanted to make learning for the high school students more creative and interesting. For that we organized a conference for 10 days in August and invited people from 9 countries to join. It was the most special conference experience for me - organizing it together with really good people, having a conference agenda that allows people to connect not only during coffee breaks. EDU conference will be my legacy for AIESEC Estonia. Even though it's not an AIESEC-centered conference. It's something that fulfills my heart with a warm feeling, you probably get my point.

You can imagine how happy I was when Kadri told me that she wants to organize EDU conference 2009. I hope this will be enough to start a tradition.

Becoming a teacher

This autumn I held a course at my old high school. I was given 27 students from 10-12 grade and the course was called "Creative management". The course will repeat for new students in the spring.

It was the most intense trainer experience I've had. I've been critical to teachers and professors for a long time, but this time instead of complaining I had to perform myself. I think it was good course and I became much better as a teacher, leader, communicator.

Passionalism

I am the owner of the passionalism.com site, donating 75kr each month for having a virtual playground. While writing blog posts here and reading some good books (especially Tribes by Seth Godin) I realized human kind is approaching a new world order. We are growing out of the industrialism and don't consider ourselves anymore just as a person with a job. A good sign of it is a conversation which you might have had with somebody:

In the old times

-Hey, my name is Mike!

-Nice to meet you, I'm Jenny.

-Who are you, Jenny?

-I'm a secretary

-Aha, I'm a doctor

In the new times

-Hey, my name is Mike!

-Nice to meet you, I'm Jenny.

-Who are you, Jenny?

-What do you mean? Is it some 'what's the meaning of life type' question?

Jenny leaves because she's not in the mood right now of having deep conversations about the essence of herself

You are not your work. You don't have a job. You have your passion. It probably pays the bills as well.

I have created a network for people who agree: http://iquitmyjob.ning.com/

Me and some of my friends are running a campaign about passion: http://passionalism.com/2009/

During one posting I came up with the name to this world order - passionalism. Please spread the idea if you like it.

Next year

January 23rd will be a very influencial day for me. Because then the national plenary of AIESEC Estonia will decide who will be the next MCP. I don't know who will also run for this position, but I know that things can go either way.

If I will be elected, next year will be focused a lot on AIESEC Estonia strategic development.

If I won't, I will leave Estonia after EDU conference and go to Singapore, New York or some other cool place and do something interesting there. In fact MCP of AIESEC Estonia is the only thing that can stop it.

There are some new year's resolutions as well for myself:

-I will be honest with myself and others

-I keep good people close to me

-I will keep a good balance between my mind and body

-I say "thank you" to the people who deserve it

Besides that some more easily measured goals:

-I will run at least once 10k under 40 minutes

-I will organize another bicycle trip

-I will organize EDU conference 2009

-I will publish "Passion 2009" ebook

It has been a long but interesting posting for me. I would be surprised if somebody read it through, but that's not the most important. Most important is that I have many people who even without reading this post care about me and my life and I do the same.

I thank everybody who were part making this year as it was. It was a very interesting year, not the easiest for sure, but I somehow feel it laid a good ground for building up "Lauri Lahi" I want to be in 1,5,10,50 years.

Thank you!

What is my favourite book?

2008-12-21T03:41:00.000-08:00

My favourite book is my Google Reader and the author of it is... you.

There are around 25 blogs I'm subscribed which is in my case an optimum which I'm able to follow daily. It actually means a lot if your blog is among them, as much it means for me if my blog is in yours. It means we care about each other thoughts.

As we still have the same amount of hours and minutes per day as our ancestors had few thousand years ago. But the information that tries to reach us is way bigger. So we become more selective on what to let to reach us.

In this kind of situation trust and personal connections become relevant. In the blog case, there are millions out there but still only very limited number we follow. Think about what is common for all of your blogs? We trust that what they say is interesting for us so it's not a waste of time to read it. Either because we know them personally or what they say is just relevant.

Earning this trust doesn't cost any money (or at least very little) but something much harder to gain: to have a meaning, a story to tell.

I thank You for the trust! Thanks for those 3 minutes spent on this blog today.

Do you really care about your customers during difficult times?

2008-12-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

Last weeks City Motors, the reseller of Renault cars in Estonia, has been publishing full page ads in Postimees (biggest newspaper in Estonia).

The ad says a simple message: "This is not a commercial. It's a message from a company who cares about their clients even hard times. That's why we have lowered the car prices". And the next page is another full-page ad with the cars and their prices.

Now, a full-page ad in Postimees is not a cheap thing. Probably not very different from the price of their cheapest cars.

If City Motors, and every other company, really would care about their clients, they would not spend a lot of money that actually brings no value to their customers. An ad in newspaper doesn't bring me a cheaper, safer etc car. It only increases the costs of the company who sells the car to me. And of course, customers are those who in the end pay the price.

So cut some costs from the places that bring very low value and invest it to somewhere where it actually makes a difference for the customers. That's caring in my opinion.

What makes your eyes shine?

2008-12-16T06:13:00.000-08:00

This December me and my friends will collect the answer to this question from people around the world and gather to an e-book.

If you want to be involved, just add your passion here:

passionalism.com

If you like the idea, please share it with your friends, blog about it etc! Let's get together as many responses as we can.

Selling God

2008-12-12T05:19:00.001-08:00

Today I had an interesting lecture during my way to the office. A middle-aged man suddenly entered the trolley bus and started giving a lecture about God.

In business language he was trying us to sell the idea of believing in God. Although in general he made some good statements like 'He doesn't expect you to be perfect" or "everybody goes to hell voluntarily, it's your choice", he still made one very big mistake in sense of marketing.

He was not able to talk in its listeners language. He started his lecture with saying how good God is and how we are fooled by satan. Even if it's true, then those people who believe it are already in your tribe. But you were there to get the other people joining, right?

Other people don't want to hear about how God did this and that. If they would, they already would be in the tribe. You have to approach the others in the language they understand, and it most probably doesn't involve stories about almighty God.

Quite a big part of his lecture involved ideas about how material values don't make you happy if your soul is empty. That's something many of us believe without having to believe in God. That's the language your potential tribe members understand. You can tell them about God when they are already in.

Randy Pausch called this kind of teaching "brain fake". A method where students do something fun and later they discover how they learned something difficult. Like computer programming for random students or believing in God to somebody who never had before.

Voluntary work

2008-12-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

Voluntary work or being a volunteer is an interesting term. By that we usually mean doing something for a good cause and for what we don't get considerably paid. Like work for NGO's.

On a second thought, it should also mean there is some sort of required work. What would it be like? Something for not so noble cause that you get paid well for?

That's ridiculous. There is no such thing as a required job. Every job, unless you are forced with a gun, is a voluntary work. We have choosen it ourselves which means it's voluntary and why the hell it shouldn't be for a good cause? If it isn't then what motivates you to work there?

So any job in the world is a voluntary work, at least should be. Something we do foremost because it follows our passion and it's only natural it's able to pay the bills.

Is the most attractive girl always next door?

2008-11-29T02:52:00.000-08:00

Majority of Estonian companies when expanding to foreign markets firstly think about Latvia and Lithuania. Markets that are almost as small as Estonian and having similar macro-economical challenges.

If you were to find a girl, would you automatically choose the girl next door? Even if she's not that pretty? Or would you go for the best looking girls no matter if they live few blocks away?

I get it. Companies are afraid that they don't know markets like China, India or Brazil because they are too far away and too different. Well, there's a pretty easy solution: get to know these markets. Find employees from target markets, visit events about those markets, go and investigate the markets yourself.

Just because some country is close should not be the reason why you choose to expand there. Just as you don't start dating anybody just because they live close to you.

For whom are you first choice?

2008-11-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

In business second place usually doesn't pay much. For us as customers it only matters who is able to offer us the best product and although there might be two very good products, you still need only one. For example if you go to the cinema to see just as movie, you will pick whatever seems more interesting and all the others lose. At least this time.

So it's the question of being number one choice. It doesn't even matter if you are choice number 2 or 2000 to all the others until you have enough customers for whom you are number one.

Estonian Air doesn't get it. In my opinion. Some time ago Estonian national airline was turned into something like budget airline, with cheaper prices than most of the other airlines. With a price of not getting food on board anymore. But if you want to fly as cheap as possible, you can most probably get a cheaper deal with Easyjet or Ryanair.

Same thing you can see in any other business. Playing it safe and being a good choice to everybody is probably the most dangerous tactic of all.

It's like the paradox of nice guys: girls like them but for a wild one night stand they prefer somebody more spicy.

In memoriam: Industrialism

2008-11-25T07:27:00.000-08:00

Some time ago mankind lived in stone age. Then standards changed until one day we reached to industrialism. Masses of people left their farms and moved to cities to work in a production line. It was because technology had developed and the new society needed a lot of goods that could be produced more cost-effectively and in bigger quantities than before.

It brought a lot of positive change to society. And we thank you industrialism for everything you have done! But now it's time to say good bye. This is my letter to you:

INDUSTRIALISM

18-20th century

REST IN PEACE

What a ride it was! You brougt us almost 300 of the mankinds most decisive years. Thanks to you we have finally free weekends, ability to go to vacation, travel quickly to far destinations, buy cheap products etc. We will never forget you!

But now we have to move on, without you. We have discovered that there is more in life than just working hard and getting paid for it. We now demand the opportunity to follow our passion in everything we do. You surely could have seen some signes some time ago already. Did you notice that:

-We started to change our jobs more often

-We are creating companies that have a mission

-We are taking part of NGOs and some people even work there as full-timers

-More people call themselves as artists

-We are no longer afraid to break up our relationships and marriages if we are not happy

- We care about what is our ecological footprint

-We are paying huge amount of money to take part in self-development trainings

etc...

It's clear that you have lead us to a new era. To an age of passionalism. Where we believe that being happy is a human right and we take responsibility over being that. That we do by doing things that have a meaning, that follow the passion.

Good bye industrialism! We will now read about you in history books.

Why students can be better managers than real bosses?

2008-11-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Solving case studies in management classes is a fun way of learning. An interesting phenomenon is that usually everybody, no matter whether they have had even any real management experience, has loads of ideas on how to solve complex management issues.

Quite often the same people, when facing a real life management issue, would do nothing to solve it.

Why is it like that? Why people are creative and decisive while solving case studies but in real life would often be the opposite?

1. There is no risk involved. Even if you make a wrong decision, nobody (including you) loses their job because that.

2. Any decision you make, you don’t have to worry whether some of your colleagues like it or not.

3. You have a clear picture of the problem – it’s written down on paper.

4. It’s not actually you who makes the decision. You only give recommendations.

Basically, solving a case study versus taking a real management decision makes you just a better leader. One that is willing to take risks, unpopular decisions if need. One that has a clear picture about what’s going on.

So why not use it in real life next time having a management issue? Make it a case study and pretend to be a business student solving an abstract task.

How to become extraordinary good?

2008-11-16T07:15:00.001-08:00

This is Hamburg. A city in Germany that plays a very big role why a band from Liverpool, called The Beatles, is who it is.

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

Read Malcolm Gladwell's article in Guardian.

An amazing article about very succesful people and what they have in common. One of the conclusions is that they work a lot harder than others. Bill Joy, Bill Gates, The Beatles, exceptional violinists.

A rule that can be brought out is following: besides talent and external conditions (which you cannot directly influence), it takes around 10,000 hours to become exceptional in something.

10,000 hours is 3-hours per day for 10 years.

It made me think: what are the things in my life that I do for at least 3 hours per day? And where do I want to be exceptionally good in 10 years?

Are those things matching?

If not, what will I change?

Where will I focus more? What kind of expert I don't want to become?

One conclusion for myself is that in 10 years I want to be excellent story-teller, an idea executer. So telling stories and making things happen is where to focus.

On the other hand, I don't want to become an exceptional complainer - so I will pay attention not to complain about things I never do - or could do - something about.

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Beauty In Stories

2008-11-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

We do a lot of things in life. Quite often the success of our activities can be measured by how many people hear, buy, vote, tell to friends etc. about the things we have done.

It's pretty simple. There are things that create stories and that don't. Those that create are more likely to succeed.

A friend who speaks, eyes shining, about a movie she saw, tells a story that very likely will make me buy a ticket and go to see this movie as well.

A friend that speaks about a movie, still emotionally, how it was so annoying, can make me buy a ticket because there was something in her story that made me curious.

A friend that tells about a movie she saw just that "it was OK" will most probably make me ignore any advertisment about this movie from that point.

The movie doesn't even have to be about purple cows. Sometimes common things in a well-told storie can touch you even more.

I have made a commitment to myself: Lauri, from now on, whatever you do in life - have stories to tell about it. I believe that's the most fool-proof success criteria.

Musicians have a very beautiful way of telling stories through their songs. Here's a beautiful song but with another beautiful video story. It is compiled by somebody for her parents 60th anniversary and contains videos and images from her parents youth. Beautiful - and I have already twittered and blogged about it.

I love to spread beautiful stories.

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Noise in management

2008-11-10T07:34:00.000-08:00

This is probably what a typical person (including me) is dreaming of when he has a lot of deadlines and responsibilities to meet.

I wish I could be on a deserted island, lie under a palm tree and just spend my time doing nothing but thinking and maybe even writing down my thoughts.

Now having for the first time in my life a daily job (although I never call it like that) some things regarding this dream are coming clear: this deserted island is a symbol for noise-free environment. Whenever I feel the noise is going too big I feel a strong need to reduce it.

Normal offices can be very noisy - too many tasks we have to do simultaneously or which relevance we don't understand, workspaces that are unhuman (e.g. cubicles), colleagues who whine but never do anything to improve the situation. You can continue the list. Luckily most of the things on the list I hear from other people but even though I feel sometimes an urgent need to get away from the noise.

In a world where rapidly increasing number of people are getting paid for what they like to do instead of getting paid so that they could do the things they like, the ability to reduce noise will become a key competency for managers.

Why? Because noise holds the team back from being creative, thinking out new ways of doing things, questioning the current status. In a noisy environment a team is just focusing on getting the job done.

If you are team leader, what can you do to reduce the noise of your team members?

Add to del.icio.us

We can!

2008-11-06T07:13:00.000-08:00

The market for something to believe in is infinite

From Seth Godin's "Tribes"

I believe that current week is one of the most outstanding weeks in the world history. For one single reason - never in my lifetime I remember a day when people around the world spoke so much about hope and belief for a better tomorrow. And that in a time of biggest economics crises over decades.

One person who won presidential elections is just a peak of the iceberg. A symbol for a fresh start, that things can be different and everybody no matter which is their background is able to bring a positive change to the society.

If you saw Obama's victory speech, then it was not actually "Obama's victory speech". It was a victory speech for everything that America principally stands for. Powerful ideals about everbody's right to fulfill their dreams.

One election victory that gave people from all over the world confidence that if we work together, we can build something great. And it has to start right now.

Amazing.

Do schools take away responsibility?

2008-10-26T03:27:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen sir Ken Robinson's TED talk about "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" then I advise you to do it right now. Or at least after you have finished my today's posting. You can find the talk here.

For the last 15 years I was a student. 12 years in high school and 3 years in university. It all ended up with a bachelor's degree and restless feeling whether I had used my 15 years wisely or not.

Ken Robinson claims that everybody has an interest in education. His right, just ask any random pal what do they think of the current school system and most probably you will have a lot to talk about.

One conclusion I've made is that not only schools kill creativity, they also do the same with responsibility.

Let's look at the system.

In early age you grow up in an environment where raising you up is trusted to couple of amateurs. Your parents. Just (if you are lucky) two people who do their best to enable you becoming a decent world citizen.

You learn from a very early age that when you follow the rules you will be a good child. And quite often thinking with your own head leads to trouble. So what good children do? They do what they were told to do.

Now, once you become old enough to go to school, things should change, right? You are given more responsibility over your own actions. From now on it's your responsibility to get smart?

I believe it's not like that. Schools are still designed as factories. Teachers are still the ones that hold the responsibility of students to get smart by telling exactly what and how to do.

There are some powerful tools in their hands. Biggest of them is giving grades. With grades they make it obligatory to attend classes and study for tests and exams.

The outcome is that grades become more important than curiosity and knowledge. The ones who get best grades are the ones who give the best-learned answers to tests.

And how much is remembered one month after the test? Teacher don't care, students don't care as well.

That's a classical example how teachers take responsibility over their students learning. We study because we have to get good grades. Not because we feel the curiosity to get to know more about things that interest us.

What if there would be no grades in school? What kind of motivators teachers would have to use then?

I believe that the only real learning can happen because it's interesting and we do it voluntarily. And that should be the basis of any school system.

Imagine if children would grow up in schools where they participate in classes because they are curious about what are the stories they hear about today. And they are more than glad to do homework because it gives an opportunity to find out more about the things they are interested in.

It only requires teachers who have are passionate about their subject. Who have stories to tell about their own life and their subject. And an ability to deliver it to students.

And then...

You go to school because you love it. And simply by that you take responsibility over your own learning. And not delegate it to somebody else.

Some books are too good to finish

2008-10-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

I've discovered that I am not able to read books. At least most of the time.

There are basically two options: first is that the book doesn't start to have a conversation with me soon enough so I get bored and use my freedom to put it down and start a next one.

Second option is that the book is too good to read. For example already 1,5 months ago I started Harrison Owen's "Open Space Method". The book touches me in a way that in every page I read some thought that activates few other thoughts of how will I implement what I just read in some future conference.

So it takes damn long to read this book. Usually 15-20 pages are maximum I can handle at one time.

Now it has happened that I forgot this book to a place where I cannot get it for some days. So I started another book which German gave me. It's Seth Godin's "Tribes".

Amazing how this book starts to talk to you. I read just 10 pages on my way to LC Visit (a way of how AIESEC people call visiting some other city in your country) and had to close the book. Because I had million thoughts in my head. How what I just had read was exactly what had been going on in my mind for some time already.

Now I'm in page 45. And my own thoughts are starting to become clear. Mainly about the new order of the world we are facing nowdays.

It used to be industrialism where our role was to fulfill what somebody else expected from you. Your boss, parents, society etc.

Now it's coming more and more about what do you want? What do you care about?

More people around the world are asking this question. And bad news for the status quo: more people are getting over the fear of following the answers.

It takes a critical mass of people and - boom - things start to happen. Ideas spread and real change comes from the movements that as snowballs will crab more people along.

In "Tribes" a factory is defined not just a place with a lot of machinery but also as any place where people are told what and how to do things.

According to that I believe we still live in industrialism. At least most of us.

So what will happen if more people won't accept this world order anymore?

My posting is already too long, so I will write about my thoughts once I finish "Tribes". And then I will borrow you the book.

15 people I would like to meet in my life

2008-10-20T05:43:00.000-07:00

I'm having a day off after a 3-days conference that took away my whole weekend (and I don't regret any second of it) but as it's Monday it means I have spent the whole day alone with my thoughts. I got inspiration by one of the interviews during the weekend and decided to create my own list of people I would like to meet in my life.

· Tom Hanks
· Steve Jobs
· Seth Godin
· Richard Branson
· Mohammad Yunus
· Mart Laar
· Leonardo Di Caprio
· Lance Armstrong
· Ken Robinson
· Hugh Hefner
· Garr Reynolds
· David Beckham
· Bill Gates
· Bill Clinton
· Aivar Pohlak

This list doesn't have a hierarchy but those are these 15 people who came my mind during 5 minutes of reflection that have that kind of passion I admire. Let's talk in 15 years if I have met those people or not.

A perfect job if you like to travel*

2008-10-05T03:35:00.000-07:00

There have been so many stories about young people in their early 20s or even younger who work as stomach carriers - they transport cocaine wrapped into plastic with their stomach. Capsules are quite small (smaller than an egg) and stronger guys can "consume" over hundred of them. Each succesfully delivered capsule brings about 20€ for the carrier. So think of the profit!

I know a lot of people who love travelling and who want a job where they can travel a lot as well - so that's perfect! Especially as your "work" will take you to the exotic places as Colombia, Mali etc.

Now I understand why we were searched through after our arrival from Brazil in Tallinn Airport. And why they were suspicious that four young people were there "on a conference".

*If you happen to be a police agent and found this post through researching potential drug dealers then this posting can be labelled as "irony" and in any way I don't support this kind of activities :)

Who benefits from the depression?

2008-10-02T06:24:00.001-07:00

For a long time already I have noticed how media is determined to make all the people in Estonia to be depressed. Economic slowdown, high inflation, bankruptcy, budget deficit, rise of taxes, increasing interest rates...
I'm not saying it's not happening. But I'm also saying that things are not that dramatic as well.
In todays Postimees (well respected newspaper) you could read a story how the electricity and gas prices are increasing. And it was illustrated with the picture up there (http://www.postimees.ee/?id=37659). What a drama - a guy hugging his heater with almost a tear in its eyes.
In yesterdays Reporter you could see a story by Üllar Luup (a journalist) who said that from next year when you make a toast you should think carefully whether you can afford to put a slice of cheese on it as well.
So even if it's true that for a lot of families things will get a bit more tougher, then there are ways of dealing with it. One is finding solutions, other is just feeling bad and complaining. I feel that media is encouraging the last attitude.
Economy is greatly built around emotions: if everybody is optimistic about the future, things will go up in reality as well because we consume and produce more. And vica versa.
So I ask again: who benefits from the depressive news? And isn't there anything good happening in economy? For example growth in export?
Or do only bad news sell?

Where the hell is Matt? (2008)

2008-10-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This idea is just awesome! I love all the three versions of it. It makes me think what could be my travelling brand?

I'm improving my web presence

2008-10-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Hey!

In case you are still interested about what's going on in my life, then now you have a more updated place as well:

www.twitter.com/laurilahi

This blog I will still keep for longer thoughts.

Check the dates man!

2008-09-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't know then sports & fitness is something I'm quite passionate about. One of my favourite activities to keep myself fit is jogging and once a year I go and realize it in Sügisjooks (biggest running event with 10,000+ participants in Estonia).

This year it didn't go as well as planned. For the whole August I was in AIESEC conferences and didn't actually go any single time running. And when I returned from Brazil I got sick and it lasted until Sügisjooks itself.

So I still went there, ran my usual 10K while being underprepared and still sick. Time was 44:20 what was 2 minutes and 100 places worse then last year. But it made me wonder: what could I have been able of while being in the best shape and healthy?

Thanks to my Nike+iPod set I can track my performance very easily. Best times in my home Kakumäe track were ran in the middle of July - 35:30 one Kakumäe lap.

Before Sügisjooks my Kakumäe lap time was 39 minutes. After two weeks of regular practice I managed to come back to 36:28 this Thursday.

So I planned to realize myself during Rahvajooks, which is another, although not far as popular, running event in Tallinn. This time expecting a 10K time around 40-41 minutes. Which would be my personal best but also quite realistic looking at my overall running base this year.

Guess what happened then. I looked from the internet when the Rahvajooks takes place - aha, this weekend. Then made my training schedule according to being in good condition this Sunday, meaning tomorrow.

And today evening, while watching news, suddenly the results of this years Rahvajooks came. What a surprise, I had missed the run, as it happened Saturday not Sunday...

You can imagine how stupid I feel right now.

2008-08-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you had a

deep conversation with... yourself?

Bicycle trip 2007 best moments

2008-06-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

Today my good friend Erik started his military service. Good luck man! But during the last weeks of freedom he managed to cut a video of some moments from the last year's bicycle trip. By the way, next trip will happen already 21-25 of July if you want to join us.

Running gets even more fun

2008-06-15T05:49:00.000-07:00

Today I got a perfect graduation gift - a new 8gb Ipod Nano together with Nike+ running set. What a fun tool - like running together with a personal assistant!

So here's my first run with the new set:

Have a look at the right menu of my blog where I will be starting to upload the challenges I will take in nikeplus.com.

End of a chapter

2008-06-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

You are who you are of several things. One of those those influencers for sure is the school you are going to - from kindergarden to university. The peers you meet, the classes you take, the teachers that you experience.

For me the official education will end tomorrow when I will defend my bachelor thesis. Probably not for ever and it will be time when I feel I want to get a masters etc degree but not for now. I'm happy to get away from the system.

I am a person who never actually fit to the school system. Instead of doing my homework I have always asked - why can grown ups leave the office and go home and have a rest while children are expected to stay in school and continue doing homework after that.

That's one of the crucial flaws of the system - most of the real learning is meant to be done at home. In the classes and lectures the information is transformed but it has to be 'learned' at home. Biggest motivators for students to do it are difficult tests, exams and the grades you get for it. What a bullsh*t!

What if the only tool for teachers in school to motivate people to learn would be to make their subject as attractive as possible, so that students would actually voluntarely learn? And the only tasks that a teacher could give must be the ones that can be done during classes and not even give grades for that? Because the only grade would be your curiosity.

Right now the flow is simple: you learn hard, get good grades and you get a chance to learn even more (college). If you learn good there as well you get a good job. Good in sense it brings in more money (school=grades, work=money). What nice motivators?

What if it would look like this: you study hard because it's so damn interesting. That will give you chance to study even more because that will be even more damn interesting. And that will give you jobs that are damn interesting as well.

I believe in happiness where people are not guided by good marks and high salaries but about their gut feeling that says them what feels interesting, challenging and fun. Why not have schools like that and lose the official (=bad) motivators?

That will probably never happen, because it's always easy to say that "we are not ready for it" or "too many people are thinking differently". Maybe, but accepting what is not YOU is probably the worst thing that can happen to anybody.

Anyway Tartu University, thanks for the boring lectures that made me interested in communication, thanks for the bad marks for making me dislike formal motivators, thanks for teaching me that authority without respect is worthless, thanks for guiding me to a wonderful organization called AIESEC.

Right now I will also make a promise to myself: the only reason why you, Lauri Lahi, will go back to school some day, will be because you feel that it will be the most fascinating thing you can do at that time. No other reason allowed!

Stuck in the elevator

2008-05-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

I have been living for the 3 last years in a dormitory and been regularly using elevators as my room is on the 8th floor. Although I have heard stories about how people got stuck in the elevator, nothing like that had happened to me. Until today.

Just a week before I'm going to leave this dorm for ever, the lift suddenly stopped and that was it... 15 minutes stuck in the elevator. I immediately called to the maintenace and the lady there said not to worry, that the repairmen will be right there.

But "right there" is a very relative term, especially if you're spending it in a room with very little air and no comforts. So in few minutes I called them again, asking how far were the repairmen. The lady said again, not to worry, they are on their way. And then brilliantly said "just wait, wait, they will come".

Like I had any other possibility rather than to "wait". What a stupid way to just say "repairmen will be there in 5 minutes". Just wait is probably the worst thing you can say and instead of calming you down will make you angry as "wait" will leave you totally glueless whether help will reach you in 1,5 or 60 minutes.

But at least I can say now that there is another thing I have done during university time. And my hello to Anastassia, 2-year gene technology student, who was stuck in the elevator together with me.

Giving up on the noise around you

2008-05-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Although the Garr Reynolds authors@google presentation has been uploaded already for several weeks, not until now I had time to see all of it. His blog was the first blog I started to read regularly (dec 05) and probably it has been the most impactful blog to my way of thinking as well. The PresentationZen is a great place to learn about design, presentations and communication in wider terms. But be aware that getting into those topics will only cause you a lot of head aches when you lose your immunity towards bad powerpoints and presentations.

As with most of the good lectures I have experienced, they don't say you anything what you should think about things. It only gives a background to you think about what you think. So I had several thoughts in my mind.

It is the amazing unwillingness to deliver our messages to others. Why on earth do so many people think it's OK to waste somebody's time by giving a presentation that nobody is able to listen? Why still a good powerpoint slide has heading, bullet-points and even slide number? Why are we unable to speak when we don't have a slideshow, flipchart, notes etc supporting us?

Where did it all go wrong?

On Tuesday, I had a pleasant accident at marketing lesson. We were supposed to give a 7-minute presentation and of course had some slides prepared for that. I was not satisfied with the slides at all, they were overloaded with unimportant information but I had no motivation to do something about it as well, because in (at least my) university nobody even expects you to be interesting while presenting something. But it appeared that my usb stick was not recognised by the class room computer. So we were left there without slides nor prepared notes and had to somehow deliver what we had to say.

It was enjoyable! If you don't have it written what you have to say, you will probably forget a lot of details. And remember only the most important things. That was our case as well. We just shared for 7 minutes the results of our course work as it was a pleasant hobby of us to go round the shops and monitor price changes.

I believe it would only do good to the world if we would lose the ability to use any kind of notes, slides or flipcharts during our presentations. It would mean we would have to communicate face to face as normal people. Why should public speaking be any different from talking to your friend. After all, the goal is the same: get your message that you care about to others.

Watch the presentation and next time giving a presenation, save your slides to a broken usb stick and forget your notes home. It will be good!

Career Advice '08

2008-04-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

| View | Upload your own

Spring is there

2008-04-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

What is the most foolproof way of saying that spring has really arrived? At least in Estonian climate, it's the people running on the street. Of course, why not. The days are getting longer, temperature is increasing and the beach season is getting close. Perfect time to burn some fat, getting in shape or just enjoying the weather and fresh ideas a nice joggging brings.

Or what's even better? It's the feeling you get if you remind yourself all the hours spent in gym or snowy tracks over the winter. It's paying off now. The light feeling when you pass another "holiday jogger" and the feeling that you are crossing another limit that you couldn't a year ago.

That's what I like about fitness. Nothing comes easy and you have to work constantly. If you miss few week of trainings, the next week you feel setbacks. But if you have managed to keep a healthy routine for some time, you feel how each muscle in your body can contribute more than ever before.

Stay fit. Enjoy the weather. See you soon.

What is the real killer?

2008-02-16T08:59:00.001-08:00

I'm convinced that out of all the problems we have in the world it's not the biggest problems (or solutions) that get the most attention but it's the most "cool" ones. See my earlier post about problem marketing in the same topic.

Definitely what we eat and how does it affect our body is a problem that needs greater attention than it right now gets. You don't have to be an expert to notice that there are more fat people out there and even more fat children. And as the scientists say, in most cases (95% or so) it could be preventable and revearsable in case of right nutrition.

Watch this very short (3 minutes) TED talk by Dr. Dean Ornish who talks how the rest of the world is starting to eat as americans. And therefore die as americans too. This seems more dramatic than for example global warming because nutrition is something you can actually deal quite effectively with (no Kyoto's in this field). But without action, the consequences are horrible.

Quote of the day

2008-02-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

Today found a cool quote from my google first page:

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
-Phyllis Diller

Quite often you see people quoting some people who they have never heard about. In my opinion it's not a very wise thing to do because famous people quotes are not famous because they are so good sentences. They are famous because of who said it and when. If you don't know the person, when it was said, then you lose a lot of impact of those words.

Therefore checked from wikipedia who I quoted today: Phyllis Diller is a stand-up comedian or at least was as she is over 90. According to wiki, a very successful one.

During her shows she took a role of a housewife who made jokes over her fictional husband "Fang". I guess that's the idea behind the quote but it can be easily expanded to any area in life. My first idea: never give up on things that matter to you. Keep on going and don't let brick-walls stop you from moving on.

Who do you want?

2008-02-11T12:30:00.000-08:00

I'm looking for someone who can make me laugh, who I think is cute that wants to go do stupid things still.

You might think those words belong to someone young. And you're right, they belong to somebody who just won't accept of being old. It's 61-year-old Cher. That's the spirit! Don't ever accept to be somebody who you don't want to be and keep looking. Whatever it means for you.

Last Lecture: The Randy Pausch Story

2008-01-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

Few days ago I saw a great movie called "The Bucket List". It features stories of two men with totally different background - one is a billionaire, the other a car mechanic - who are put together as roommates in a hospital. They are both old and the illness let's them to live only few more months. But meanwhile they are in a reasonably good health that allows them to spend last months outside the hospital. That time will they use for fulfilling what was written down in their bucket list - a list of all the things they would like to do before death.

Bucket list is a must-see movie, definitely. But today I found something that moved me even more. A lot more. Even so much more that if I were a more sensitive person, I probably would have dropped few tears. It's the story of Randy Pausch, a 46-year-old university professor at Carnegie Mellon.

In 2006,

Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That is the most deadly form of all cancers giving him only few percentages possibility to survive. A year later, doctors gave him 3-6 months to live. Thanks to some successful treatments, he still has 2-4 months left nowadays.

Anyway, Randy is a really positive person. And a person who has done so much during his life. In September 2007 he gave his "last lecture" in the same Carnegie Mellon University. It was about his childhood dreams, fulfilling them, and meanwhile enabling others to achieve their dreams as well.

I watched all the 104 minutes of the lecture. You can do it as well here. If you don't have so much time, then there's a short version in Youtube as well here.

I won't go too much into details of his lecture. But for sure that has been one remarkable life. I especially liked his course about creating digital reality, where students from very different faculties worked together in small project teams to create their digital projects. The course was so popular that to the final lectures, where the outputs of the projects were presented, even parents, roommates and friends came to see what had been created.

Reminds me bit the "Self Development Course" we had in high school. And reminds me bit what we are doing in AIESEC in the EDU project. That's a story I want to tell another time.

Randy also described the obstacles - the brick walls - he had while trying to fulfill his childhood dreams. I will copy-paste few lines from the lecture transcript:

But remember, the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not
there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how
badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people
who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

Sleeping challenge achieved

2008-01-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

15 days have passed and together with exams my 2-weeks of waking up early campaign has finished. What are the conclusions?

Firstly, days are longer and more effective. When before I had done nothing before lunch, then nowadays time before lunch is very effective. And when managing a regular sleeping schedule, waking up and going to sleep at desired time is quite easy.

What are my next goals? I won't be as strict to my sleeping schedule. In following days I want to see what happens if I go to sleep and wake up only based on my biological clock. And eventually how to transform from 8-hour sleeper to 6-7 hour sleeper. If it's possible I don't know but I'll find out.

I'll keep updating.