My existence in the virtual world

The nomad world is growing day in day out. With the advent of mobile telephone, the potential of mobility of storing data in relatively large quantity on various mobile equipments, and the accessibility of wireless internet, a new nomad way of living is in construction.

With my black berry, I have access to the data available on the web whilst on line. More importantly I can down load data may it be text, books, music or video images store and watch them in my time and wherever I may be.

My greatest pleasure this week was to learn that comics which may be construed as a mixture of text and images can now be downloaded on an iphone. A special software developed for this purpose is now available. My greatest satisfaction was to know that the software is developed by the start up company owned by my son Olivier.

I invite you to visit his website and encourage you to avail yourself of the software. I understand that it only works on exclusively on iphone or ipod to start off with because of the quality of the resolution and that Apple has screened his application.

They currently have the first version of their application, Comicstrips, on the iTunes App Store. It is a great way to help other artists/creators get out there.

They currently sell their application at $1.99 on the iTunes app store.

The product allows people to

1. read “featured” comics for free, some of which are “bundled”, i.e. get downloaded automatically to their iPhones.

2. upload comics on their website to be synchronized with their iPhone.

This event then is the start of  getcomicstrips. I pray that his venture will grow in becoming a world standard for reading comics in the nomad world. I yet have to verify that it is a world first for comics reading on a phone by a Mauritian born software designer.

I would have to wait for the blackberry version to read my old  favorite comics…KIWI, RODEO, BLEK le roc, PIM PAM POUM, PIPO…

Seven pyramids have been identified on the African island of Mauritius. Remarkably, in construction, they are identical to the ones found on the island of Tenerife, an island on the opposite side of the continent. It underlines the likelihood that one civilisation sailed to various islands off the coast of Africa and constructed these structures.

I have known and seen these pyramids for years. I discounted them for a very orderly way of stacking the field stones to make space for planting sugar cane. We have now a story which enriches our Mauritian culture and gives some jazz to our tourist guides to embellish their presentation.

How far is the story true and historically verified? Does it matter?

Thanks to my school pal Paul now based in Canada who is a true Mauritian at heart who informed me of the story.

You are invited to read the Antoine Gigal ‘s account.

Antoine Gigal is a French writer and researcher, and the Egyptian correspondent for the French ‘L’Egypte’ magazine.
Gigal’s early years were spent in Africa and South America, where her father worked as journalist and diplomat. This has taken her all over the world exploring diverse cultures and civilizations. She studied at Sorbonne Paris III University and the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO), where she graduated in Chinese and Japanese languages and civilizations.

I just love this article written by CATHY L. GREENBERG & JOHANNA DILLON. This is very much what I have been trumpeting through my work career and still is by signing my email ‘be happy’.

Last thursday,after some 8 years, I revisited Rogers House, the place I have toiled for decades. I had the joy of meeting  some old colleages and be reminded of the days where we were a happy group and enjoying benefits for us and the owners.

How eventful, when today my heart is filled with joy as I celebrate the day when our Lord Jesus has risen from his tomb, signifying the victory of life over death for all mankind. As an Easter gift I would like to share this with you.

Any company can profit from a natural resource it already has—happiness. The secret is to engage your best talent through whole-brain function to overcome fear with appreciation. It’s teachable and transferable. Use happiness to improve performance—and deliver profit-providing useable insights.

Whole-Brain Function

Think of something that makes you smile—for example, praise from a trusted mentor. Now, think of something that makes you frown—for example, your mentor goes away from your life tomorrow. She is your favorite co-worker, the one who believes in you and pushes you to be your best, but she’s dying and leaving work today. Hold a visual of your time together and the threat of her leaving forever, both at the same time. Can you balance joy and fear in your mind?

If you say yes, I won’t believe you. It’s impossible to feel fear and appreciation simultaneously. You can’t feel hope or appreciation while experiencing sorrow, guilt, or anger. You can’t experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously. Whole-brain function is required to make decisions, but first you must engage your emotional state before taking action. Unfortunately, you will only use that portion of your brain that is available; in many cases, that state is fear, anxiety, or grief. In the best of all worlds, it’s appreciation—an attitude of gratitude.

As a behavioral scientist, executive coach, and business consultant, I want everyone to know that being a happy company is the single greatest transformation a company can take to retain talent, improve its competitive position and top-line revenue.

Let’s start with five HAPIE principles:

• H – Heartfelt, humble, inclusive, inspirational, innovative leadership
• A – Adaptive, enthusiastic, emotionally intelligent employees
• P – Profit for all who contribute to return on people (ROP), in addition to ROI
• I – Invigorated stakeholders, vendors, and clients who market the company
• E – Engaged, constructive, community partners who share their success

From these five traits emerge a set of behaviors that create a positive, transformational climate of inspiration and happiness. When applied together, they pave the way for a culture of appreciation or a Happy Company Climate.

Happy Organizations

Few leaders understand the importance of engaging energy like “happiness”. In a hard-nosed, numbers-based business, they misinterpret happiness to be a time-waster that doesn’t support bottom-line results. Cynics imagine everyone singing “Kumbaya.”

Here’s the truth.

• Corporate happiness is a deep commitment felt when people engage their sense of purpose while contributing to a fulfilling corporate mission.
• Happy companies see reality through a positive mindset, even in adversity.
• It perceives the market as a place of abundance with many opportunities.
• Great leaders choose optimism over pessimism because a positive culture inspires creative, pragmatic approaches and draws out the best in people.
• Honesty pervades a happy company, infusing it with personal respect, appreciation, and trust and contributing to business success.
• Every stakeholder and community respects and appreciates happy companies because of their constructive force that enhances the quality of life.

Happy companies create optimal conditions that enable the ultimate engagement of our mission at work. They are best prepared to succeed long term. Everyone wants to work in a profitable, happy company.

The Truth Really Hurts

Why do few companies apply these principles and achieve “happiness = profit”? They focus on reacting to problems and fear, which blocks their ability to engage happiness factors.

Most companies are only vaguely aware of their fear-based state because they spend more time trying to focus their energy on solving problems rather than building on the success of their strengths. Management does not know how unhappiness severely hurts performance. Why? Because they lack skills to perceive, measure or change behaviors known as happiness factors to bolster success, or how unhappiness causes failure. Leaders of unhappy companies know they are struggling and get stuck. Despite their best efforts, they can’t match their competitors. Employees work harder, even though they try to work smarter—”the faster I work, the behinder I get!” Unhappy companies only sustain positive energy for short bursts (during a crisis) but fear poisons productivity with politics.

The best leaders know you can’t run a successful, dynamic business based on fear. Fear prevents people from contributing their best and hurts profits through increased absenteeism, turnover, and redundancy.

In many organizations, fear is a dominant management technique.

• We fear missing a deadline, losing a sale, or receiving unfair treatment (even if we make the numbers).
• We induce fear based on unknowns in business; we fear many things—our competitors, their high-quality or low-price alternative, missing profit projections, even successful growth that may be too much to handle.
• We have financing fears: of interest rates, bond rates, exchange rates or a downturn in the capital markets.
• We have conflicting fears: management fears spiraling wages, healthcare, and possible strikes; labor fears abusive management and low raises.
• We even fear weather that might disrupt our production, our delivery, or our customers’ buying patterns.
• And some fears haunt us all: terrorism and the cost of war.

Fear has many immeasurable costs—talent, wellness, and energy. Yet, fear is everywhere. It so saturates our spirit and cultures that we accept it as “normal.” But does fear motivate us to perform better? No. Fear is a limited motivator because it triggers a state of activated stress which results in a limited set of responses: freeze, flight, or fight. These old-brain behaviors limit whole-brain function. Often the reaction is fear-based hostility, a primal, reactive reflex. Fear is great for split-second survival, but it thwarts long-term prosperity because it “short-circuits” higher thought, shutting down the part of the brain that enables us to see possibility. Fear drains both the individual and the franchise of energy and imagination. Instead of motivating us, fear depresses our spirit of innovation and can even kill us physically through stress-related illnesses like high blood pressure, heart disease, alcoholism and diabetes.

What’s the good news? We can beat our wiring, even though fear and imagination still operate in different parts of our brain. Fear-based management behaviors mimic our caveman ancestors; biologically the behaviors are identical. Our primal emotions are the same, since fear trumps reason.

Try this exercise. When we see a lion about to pounce is our fear-based reaction healthy? Are we dreaming of a peaceful coexistence with nature? Think again. Those in the past who pondered such crises often died.

But if fear wins every time it is activated, then in today’s world, where wild animals wear suits, live at desks with access to unlimited information, commute on planes, and join boards and committees, how can we overcome our biology?

Happy people and healthy companies think before they react and apply enabling coaching techniques to explore and engage the best in everyone. They learn to recognize fear and apply HAPIE principles of positive psychology. Primal emotions, while required for survival, short-circuit the higher emotions needed for performance as a competitive weapon in the war for talent. Emotions and thought are closely entwined. While fear can drive us down, optimism can elevate us because it reshapes behavior and enables us to bond, find strength in numbers, feel appreciation, achieve creativity, and create a sum greater than our parts.

Happy companies succeed because people engage using positive, reinforcing emotions that maximize their diverse strengths. Their people constructively work together, find meaning and satisfaction in their work, and deliver high-quality service and products that positively contribute to their franchise and society. Profits follow naturally. Now, you can see now how Happiness = Profit!

I must admit that the book of Stephen Covey the 8^th Habit did not impact on me as much as the former the 7^th habit. For quite some time I have been wondering the reasons for this lower impact of the 8^th Habit on me, though I was a great fan of Stephen Covey, a keen disciple of his teaching and a certified trainer of the Covey Leadership centre.

First, the 8^th Habit lacks the novelty effect on me. Way back in 1992, when I first read the 1^st book, I was really impressed. I recalled that all through the 10 hours flight from Hong Kong to Mauritius, my eyes were glued to the book. I highlighted the parts of the book that was directly touching my life then and saw in the book possible avenues to better my life. The examples given in the text were so near the reality that I was then living and provided at the time the necessary thoughts that I needed. The benefits I could derived from the reading was so proximate and realisable. My enthusiasm was aroused at its peak to bring me to action. Secondly the direct and tangible benefit of reading the book is not so obvious.

The above reflection now has taught me a great learning which I am applying today.

The interest that one has in any particular subject is proportional to the use one can make out of it. If you want to get the attention of someone of a subject, present to the person the benefits he will be able to derive from it. WIFM stands for What’s in for me. Should I need to convince someone of something: talk of his needs?

Now I am reviewing the 8^th Habit with a new perspective: in my present situation, WIFM in reading the book.

Here is a commentary of Ken Shelton which covers beautifully and succinctly Covey’s book.

Leaders often sense a painful, Grand Canyon gap between potential greatness and actual contribution. It’s one thing to be aware of problems and challenges at work and another thing to develop the personal power and moral authority to break out of those problems and become a force in solving them.

So asserts Stephen R. Covey, author of The 8th Habit. And his solution: “One word expresses the pathway to greatness—voice. Voice lies at the nexus of talent (your natural gifs and strengths), passion (those things that naturally energize, excite, motivate and inspire you), need (including what the world needs enough to pay for) and conscience (that still, small voice within that assures you of what is right and prompts you to take action).

“When you engage in work that taps your talent and fuels your passion—work that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet—you discover your voice.”

Take Four Steps

According to Covey, those leaders on this path to greatness find their voice and inspire others to find theirs. He notes that they often find their voice when they face challenges and take four steps:

1. Tap into your talent. “Tapping into your talents starts with understanding where you excel,” suggests Covey. “It involves recognizing your strengths and positioning yourself to leverage them. To tap into your talent, consider the question: What am I good at doing?”

2. Fuel your passion. “When you take part in activities that fill you with positive emotion, you are fueling your passion,” notes Covey. “Pursuits that spark your passion bring excitement, enthusiasm, joy, and fun. To fuel your passion, ask yourself: What do I love doing?”

3. Become burdened with a need. “When a problem in society lodges itself in your heart and won’t let go, you become burdened with a need,” he says. “Perhaps, the need is an injustice you wish to remedy. Maybe it’s a disease you would love to cure. Whatever the case, a burden gnaws at your conscience. To take stock of your biggest burden, wrestle with the question: What need must I serve?”

4. Take action to meet the need. Once a need has arrested your attention, you can find your voice by taking action, he continues. “A need compels you to do something besides criticize from the sidelines. To meet the need, think about this question: How can I align my talent with my passion in order to meet the need that burdens me?”

A Promise and a Challenge

Covey then extends a promise and a challenge.

The promise: “If you will apply these four capacities—talent (discipline), passion (emotion), need (vision), and conscience (spirit-directed action) to any role or responsibility of your life, you can find your voice in that role.”

The challenge: “Take two or three of the primary roles in your life, and in each role, ask yourself these four questions: What need do I sense? Do I possess a true talent that, if disciplined and applied, can meet the need? Does the opportunity to meet the need tap into my passion? Does my conscience inspire me to become involved and take action?”

Covey guarantees that if you answer all four questions in the affirmative, develop a plan of action and then go to work on it, you will begin to find your voice in life—a life of deep meaning, satisfaction, and greatness—and you will begin to inspire others to find their voice.

The choice to expand your influence and increase your contribution is the choice to inspire others to find their voice, he says. You unleash “latent genius, creativity, passion, talent, and motivation. Organizations that reach a critical mass of people and teams ex-pressing their full voice will achieve breakthroughs in productivity, innovation, and leadership. As you find your voice and inspire others to find theirs, you increase your freedom and power to solve your greatest challenge.”

This morning I had for breakfast, thin slices of specially cured ham for the Dordogne region on my toast. I was wonder for my taste buds specially the fat part of the ham which is the main carrier of the flavour. I would sense the explosion of the flavour of the acorns that fed the pig wondering in the wild of the Dordogne fields under the walnut forests. Magnificently cured for some 6 months or wrapped over in a layer of lard and flour to keep the red dark flesh moist and juicy with the right tint of salt.

My first encounter with ‘Jambon cru’ was way back in 1968, when I was visiting Reunion Island in the days of Air India life. As the representative of Air India, I was required to entertain my customers. At the then famous gastronomic restaurant of Hotel Le Labourdonnais in St Denis de la Reunion, on the advice of the chef who was himself from the Basque country, I was initiated to the taste of Bayonne Ham.

Never before had I ever tasted raw cured Ham. In my younger days, ‘jambon bouilli’ was a feast which was reserved for the festive season. My Mum would prepare her version of ham from air cooled salted dried leg of pork imported from Australia. After soaking the ham in water for a couple of days, the leg on the bone was boiled for hours with a concoction of herbs, namely citronella, dark beer. Thereafter the ham was oven baked. The whole ham was studded with clover seeds before being served. The taste of home prepared ham has nothing akin to the ham we get from the supermarket today.

Later I learned to taste Prosciutto di Parma with a slice of melon during my trips to Italy. More recently the pata negra of spain provided me another source of pleasure. Last but not least have you ever tried a shark fin’s meal cooked in Hunan’s ham?

La musique tzigane est confondue avec la musique hongroise. J’étais élevé dans cette musique Tzigane que mon père adorait. Ainsi la Hongrie c’est d’abord et avant tout la musique. Déjà Tsardash retentit dans mon être et vive ce mélodieux son de la musique gitane. Mon père nous faisait écouter des notre berceau de son gramophone ces 78 tours des Valses et musique Gitane d’Hongrie.

Quelle merveille d’atterrir la semaine dernière à Budapest. J’ai passé un moment fort agréable dans des conditions excellentes. Une découverte d’histoires et la visite d’une ville qui a connue son apogée dans elle était la capitale de l’empire Austro-hongrois des années 1870.

J’ai eu droit à une intervention d’un expert dans la matière qui nous a conté les 1500 ans d’histoire de la Hongrie en 50 minutes. Le temps impartie semblait plus tôt à 5 minutes tellement j’étais accroché a ses lèvres. J’étais totalement absorbé par la présentation et maintenant je suis un fan de la Hongrie et les hongrois. Depuis j’ai pris á l’assaut wikipedia pour me documenter encore mieux.

Une histoire de la langue hongroise incompréhensible mais  fascinante!

Magique je qualifierai de ma visite, car c’est en Hongrie qu’est né le grand Houdini.

I am invited to  a HR seminar on next Friday  3rd April at the Hilton hotel. Some 150 professionals will flock to discuss the challenges of HR in Mauritius for the coming years with the background of greater mobility of the work force and the economic and financial adjustments of the world. I am told that the liberations would be pod casted live.

Perhaps  one of the main theme in HR could be the hiring of people. Matching people to jobs which have been clearly defined.

Stephen Covey had much to say with his laws of hiring in my work active days.  The fundamentals  are still valid,one needs to adjust and supplement  Stephen Covey’s ideas  with today’s reality. I am a great believer of  “you are allowed to copy me provided you improve on me” as we shall not start reinvent the wheel all over again.

10 Laws of Hiring

How do you break those bad hiring habits? Here are my 10 laws of hiring.

1. First, realize that hiring is more important than training. Most executives hire on the basis of urgent need. Because they desire most earnestly to fill the position or solve a pressing problem, they believe most easily that virtually anybody will do. They read resumes and interview candidates with eyes and ears of hope, but hope, writes John Updike, “reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.” They don’t explore in depth the complete track record of that person. They don’t find out the pattern of that person’s motivations. And when they don’t pay the price in the hiring process, they pay ten times the price later with the problems that come down the road. They may then try to train, mentor, coach, and counsel people in an attempt to compensate for bad hiring decisions.

2. Pay the price to know each other well. Let them know you and the mission of your organization, so they have to make a decision before you ever hire them. Take the time, even if it takes a few weeks, to go in depth with the person. Let them know you and your vision and mission. They need to feel in harmony long before they make the decision. Also, you need to know them, particularly in the gap areas of their lives—those things they don’t write in their resumes. Pay the price to get to know these people. Don’t be in a rush.

3. Start with the person’s early life, and ask him or her, “What is it that you did very well that you loved doing?” You might ask, “What did you really enjoy doing when you were in grade school?” “What did you do well?” “What made you feel good about yourself?” “What did you really love about your childhood?” “Tell me a little about the paper route you loved.” When he or she talks about the paper route, you may discover this person is very proactive and took much initiative. Ask, “How did you collect the money you received?” “Did your parents drive you around?” “Did you get yourself up early in the morning?” “What did you do well that you loved doing, starting from your early years?” Then ask about high school and college, and you will see what the pattern of their life has been.

4. Study the life pattern, and you will begin to discover their deepest motivations. You may find, for example, that the pattern is one of independence, not one of interdependence. That teaches you a lot. It may be a pattern of self-glorification rather than contribution, or the opposite. When you see eyes light up, you begin to realize this is what excites this person. When you ask him or her about high school, college, graduate school and first jobs, you begin to see patterns that persist over time. Now, people can break those habit patterns if they are sufficiently self-aware, have strong desire, exercise their talents, set themselves on a new path, and surround themselves with a strong social support group. Still, it’s not easy.

5. Determine if the person’s habit patterns, motivations, values, and lifestyle fit well with the culture of your organization. Generally, I find that those motivational patterns persist in the future. You can tell if people are independent or interdependent, selfish or service oriented. You can begin to see the totality of their lives. You can then better determine if they will fit well with the culture of your organization.

6. Allow team leaders to hire and fire. To take the time to hire right in every position at every level would be difficult, if not impossible, unless you allow team leaders to hire their own people. The personnel department or human resource department shouldn’t do any hiring. They should do the announcing, screening and processing. The people who should be hiring are the team leaders. Candidates should come before the teams, present themselves, and get to know each team member. When people approach me for a job, I tell them, “I don’t do the hiring. You’ve got to sell yourself to these people, and they are going to get to know you.” Even when my personal friends approach me, I say: “You have to go through the process.” Most of them are not hired. It’s also the team that does the firing. If some people aren’t pulling their oar, it’s the team that throws them overboard, not the helmsman.

7. Seek to build a complementary team in an interdependent culture. If you are trying to develop an interdependent culture, you don’t want to hire independent-minded people because the fit isn’t there. You have to decide, “What do I need and who do I want on my team?” The natural tendency is to clone yourself rather than to set up a complementary team where one person’s strengths compensate for your deficiencies. Since likeness attracts, you clone yourself, and your strength becomes your weakness, rather than saying, “Where am I strong, and what are my deficiencies? I’ve got to hire for strength in my areas of weakness. That means I need to hire people who are different from me. That means they are going to do things differently. Am I emotionally prepared to go in that direction?” Most entrepreneurs are not. But entrepreneurs and corporate managers alike must learn: don’t clone, complement. That takes a lot of emotional strength, and a lot of self-awareness.

8. If you must choose one among many good candidates, invite those who aren’t hired to keep trying. If all six hiring choices are good, you say to the other five, “Keep us in mind. Keep at it. Now is not the right time, but come back in six months.” When people make a second, third, fourth, or even fifth attempt to get in, they usually do. That’s a measure of the power of their motivation. People who are highly motivated usually get the job they want. They begin to adapt themselves; they learn the culture; and they learn how to make an effective presentation.

9. Avoid being shocked and surprised at entry or exit by having clear criteria. Train the people who do the hiring to use the same criteria you were hired under. Set guidelines and criteria for team leaders to work with when they are hiring their own people. The criteria should come from your mission statement. If the culture buys into that mission statement, then the criteria is written in people’s minds and hearts. Our own Client Services Group is a good illustration of this. They have inside themselves these criteria for hiring.

Also, departure should not surprise or shock an organization, yet it often does because managers fail to practice preventative hiring, nor do they anticipate turnover and attrition. So, they allow a key position to go vacant for six months. The more all members of the culture have the criteria of the mission statement inside them, the less shocked they are with hiring and firing decisions. The less members of the culture have those criteria, the more shocked and dismayed they are when someone departs. They wonder “What is happening around here?” Then they wait for the next shoe to drop. “When is it going to happen to me?” They feel guilty or depressed about the person being laid off—and that usually robs them of their highest level of motivation and contribution.

The more all team members share the criteria of world-class performance against world-class standards, the fewer people are shocked when someone leaves the organization. The more the criteria is based on performance rather than the politics, on principles rather than the principals, the more congruent your hiring and firing is with the concept of principle-centered leadership.

10. Create a covenant, not just a contract, and have a few ceremonies. Remember: when hiring, you’re creating an economic marriage, hopefully one based on covenant, not contract. In a covenant relationship, both parties give 100 percent instead of 50-50. In a covenant relationship, there are really two decisions: the decision of one party to hire, and the decision of the other party to be hired. That produces a powerful covenant.

In a typical employment contract, only one party (the person who is doing the hiring) is making a decision and commitment; and so both parties feel that the relationship could end at any time. The relationship is transactional, not transforming.

Also, when entering into a covenant relationship, you expect to pass through some sort of ceremony, symbolism, initiation, or rite of passage. Consider: what ceremony would best symbolize the “covenant” that comes with joining this organization? For example, many churches baptize their new members; many clubs have an initiation ceremony; many schools have an orientation; many families have a celebration with the birth of a child. In some way the new person gets inaugurated into the society.

Being Hired Right

The proactive person is smart about being hired right. To be hired right means knowing full well what you are coming into, having common expectations, and hammering out clear performance and compensation criteria. Ambiguous expectations lead to disappointment, because people act in good faith in the beginning, but as events transpire, and expectations are violated, they get into an accusatory spirit, defensiveness, and adversarialism. Then they look for evidence to support their claims, and, of course, they find the evidence. It’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To clarify the expectations up front, create a win-win performance agreement, a mutual understanding and commitment regarding expectations in five areas. First, identify specific desired results in terms of quantity and quality, targets and timelines, allowing people to select the best methods and means. Second, set guidelines in terms of principles—go light on policies and procedures to allow for individual initiative and judgment. Third, identify available resources, including yourself, to assist people in meeting goals. Fourth, define accountability—performance standards along with evaluation criteria (usually a combination of measurement, 360-degree feedback, and discernment). Fifth, agree on consequences: rewards, compensations, and possible punishments.

Take the time and make the effort to hammer out those guidelines and the criteria for assessment. Before you make the decision to be hired, get to know the organization—its leaders and its vision, mission, and values—and know how you will be evaluated. Then think about it; talk it over with your spouse, mentor, or advisor. Ask yourself, “Am I really prepared to give myself to this?” If the answer is yes, you come onboard well prepared to succeed.

The hiring process should be one of the best proofs of the win-win spirit of your organization.

Jn 12,20-33.
Parmi les Grecs qui étaient montés à Jérusalem pour adorer Dieu durant la
Pâque,
quelques-uns abordèrent Philippe, qui était de Bethsaïde en Galilée. Ils
lui firent cette demande : « Nous voudrions voir Jésus. »
Philippe va le dire à André ; et tous deux vont le dire à Jésus.
Alors Jésus leur déclare : « L’heure est venue pour le Fils de l’homme
d’être glorifié.
Amen, amen, je vous le dis : si le grain de blé tombé en terre ne meurt
pas, il reste seul ; mais s’il meurt, il donne beaucoup de fruit.
Celui qui aime sa vie la perd ; celui qui s’en détache en ce monde la garde
pour la vie éternelle.
Si quelqu’un veut me servir, qu’il me suive ; et là où je suis, là aussi
sera mon serviteur. Si quelqu’un me sert, mon Père l’honorera.
Maintenant je suis bouleversé. Que puis-je dire ? Dirai-je : Père,
délivre-moi de cette heure ? – Mais non ! C’est pour cela que je suis
parvenu à cette heure-ci !
Père, glorifie ton nom ! » Alors, du ciel vint une voix qui disait : « Je
l’ai glorifié et je le glorifierai encore. »
En l’entendant, la foule qui se tenait là disait que c’était un coup de
tonnerre ; d’autres disaient : « C’est un ange qui lui a parlé. »
Mais Jésus leur répondit : « Ce n’est pas pour moi que cette voix s’est
fait entendre, c’est pour vous.
Voici maintenant que ce monde est jugé ; voici maintenant que le prince de
ce monde va être jeté dehors ;
et moi, quand j’aurai été élevé de terre, j’attirerai à moi tous les
hommes. »
Il signifiait par là de quel genre de mort il allait mourir.

=======================================================================

Ce matin la lecture de ce passage de Saint Jean, me conduit à jésus qui est bouleversé.

Un verset avant Jésus me faisait la leçon qu’il faille perdre sa vie pour porter beaucoup de fruit, et qu’il faille perdre sa vie pour accéder à la vie éternelle.

Pourquoi était- il bouleversé ? Devant l’angoisse de la passion et les supplices qu’il voit venir Jesus  est angoissé. Il demande à son Père de le délivrer de cette heure et pourtant il se ressaisit immédiatement sachant qu’il est venu que pour cela. Devant sa mort, il est bouleversé : il prend sur lui le poids que la mort de toute l’humanité pour le faire traverser vers le royaume de son Père. Il  donne de sa vie pour le faire, il se sacrifie pour qu’à partir de ce jour la voie est ouverte.O Jesus merci!

Ou tient-il cette force pour faire ce pas ? Comme une obsession, son regard est tourné vers son Père qu’il ne cesse de rendre gloire. Que signifie rendre gloire à Dieu ? Père glorifie ton nom. Honorer et célébrer. Etre conscient de la présence de Dieu et être rempli de Lui.

Comment faire pour que je sois toujours en Sa presence? Simplement en Lui demandant. N’est il pas notre pourvoyeur de notre tout?

Sans toi je ne suis rien. A tout moment Seigneur donne moi de Te glorifier, et surtout dans mes moments d’angoisses fais que mon regard soit tourné vers Toi. Notre Père qui est aux cieux. Je garderai toujours Seigneur Ton nom.

I am lucky to have been exposed to on-line communications for over three decades. The airline industry as far as the early sixties communicated on line: first with telexes then later through a network of computer terminals. This form of communication is quite distinctive to the normal written letter and mail mode. Communicating through emails which is now the most common way requires different reflexes. Texting and SMS are invading our communications sphere. What are the rules to obey? Do you consider the usefulness of the message sent to your addressees?

This recent article, entitled ‘Mere Words’ from the web highlights some aspects we have to watch out in particular with the internet.

Mere Words:

How to improve your online communication

by Barbara Neal Varma

You’re trying to figure out why your wife’s brother just sent you a flaming e-mail-at work, no less-when a message pops up from your boss with only question marks in the subject line, (that can’t be good), your daughter texts you to ask for permission to stay overnight with her “BFF,” whatever that is, and you’ve got close to 200 e-mails all with red priority flags like ants on your screen. You rub your gritty, glare-strained eyes and wonder: When did simply communicating get to be so hard?

You’re not alone. With today’s popularity in e-mailing, blogging and texting, more than half of our conversations are written instead of verbal. While convenient, experts say confusion can easily occur when the usual visual cues such as facial expression are not present. “It’s easier to spot signals when meeting someone face-to-face,” says Dr. Will Reader of Sheffied Hallam University in his recent study on online social networks. “It’s harder to spot signals online.”

So how do we get our messages safely across the virtual divide? Follow these easy steps to make your electronic communication more clear and comprehensible.

At Work

Get to the Point – Ever receive an e-mail so long it made your Starbucks turn cold? Or do you stop reading after one paragraph? Studies show that the attention span of online readers is significantly shorter than those reading printed material. “In research on how people read Web sites, we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across,” says Web page usability expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen. He recommends using half the word count or less than conventional writing when composing electronic messages.

Another good habit to practice: write in active, not passive voice; “Jill promoted Jack” instead of “Jack was promoted.” The latter begs the question, by whom? Busy business folks don’t have time for mysteries.

Begin your message with your main points: your question, your answer, your researched information then fill in the details behind instead of starting with a yawner of a preamble. Think of any follow-up questions your recipients may have and address them in your original message to avoid a rush of return e-mails.

Get it Right – Every social scientist or hiring official will tell you within the context of face-to-face communication, appearance means everything. Political correctness aside, people tend to form quick impressions based on others’ outward appearance, the golden rule for every dress-for-success seminar. Don’t let typos or sloppy grammar ruin your good image online. Remember, your e-mail has the potential to be shared with every other colleague and client in the company. Avoid leaving a legacy of cyber errors with your signature at the bottom. Don’t depend on Spell Check to catch every spelling mistake. Some misspellings make perfectly spelled words by themselves and, therefore, don’t generate a red squiggly line alert.

Keep it Professional – Hey, no one likes to be YELLED AT. Using all caps in your message means you are shouting, and if your recipient is the company vice president or an important client, he or she might not appreciate your uppity tone. Remember, your readers are not seeing you on their computer monitor, they are seeing your words; guard them and your reputation well. “My e-mail is a piece of professional communication that speaks to the person who wrote it,” says Human Resources Director Diana Clark during a recent career readiness seminar. “Don’t use slang,” she advises. “Don’t use capital letters. Don’t use inappropriate dialogue with a co-worker. Somebody else is going to see that, then it goes to the boss.”

And save the winsome daisy background and jumping graphics for your MySpace page. There’s no crying in baseball and there’s no room for emoticons (smiley faces and their winking cousins) in business e-mail. Using cartoons to punctuate your prose just looks, well, cartoonish.

At Home

Think Before You Send – “Susan” stared at the computer screen, not believing her eyes, but there it was: a flaming e-mail from her brother listing everything he felt she’d done wrong regarding their elderly mother’s care. His words were harsh; he said things she had no idea he was thinking, let alone willing to say. But that’s the point: he hadn’t said them at all. He’d e-mailed her instead.

Social psychologists liken these e-mail eruptions to the “road rage” phenomenon when otherwise calm folks suddenly become avenging drivers, exhibiting symptoms of outrage and anger not consistent with their everyday behavior. The key and catalyst in both road rage and e-rage is the perceived sense of privacy and power the car/computer conveys.

So what to do if you are on the other side of a hostile e-mail? First, like in any good emergency, stay calm. Your options are to respond in kind (tempting…), respond with calmer words to explain your side of things, or ignore the e-mail but pay attention to the sender and give them a call. You might discover there was more emotion to the message than sincerity and with a verbal conversation, you can better figure out the core problem. If the message is truly an attack on you, your family, or your golden retriever, simply delete it without reply and perhaps restrict your interaction. You’ve learned something about this individual and how they prefer to handle stress-by venting at you.

Be Versatile – Sure, you may yearn for the good old days when talking to someone meant they were actually in the same room, but with today’s variety of virtual communication, you might just as easily have a conversation with your friend in Timbuktu as you do with your next door neighbor. Instant messages, Web blogs, Facebook, MySpace; today’s technology has advanced our ability to stay in touch almost to the point of Star Trek’s famous “Beam me up, Scotty” communicators. Cell phones, especially, have become the new communicator to the current generation of teens and twenty-somethings, bringing forth a whole new cyber-lingo with enough acronyms and abbreviations to seem more code than conversation.

Take a computer course, learn how to use the latest e-mail programs and read that instruction manual for your cell phone that you’d tucked away thinking you already know how to use a phone, right? As you become more proficient at the many and varied ways to communicate today, you will not only expand your circle of friends and family ties, you’ll be opening up opportunities for connecting with others on a world-wide scale.

Practice Safe Text – On the one hand, e-mail lets us be ourselves. There’s no worry about spinach stuck in teeth or a lock of hair out of place. Men don’t even need to shave first. For those interested in meeting a potential dating prospect online, all this lack of posing and pretense makes e-mail conversations particularly personal: It’s just you and your chat partner with nothing between you but mere words.

But it’s that very bubble of easy intimacy that makes the Internet a virtual land of opportunity for imposters. Every year thousands of Internet users fall victim to identity theft, lulled like Cyrino’s Roxanne into believing that the message sender is who they say they are: a long lost friend, an enticing new acquaintance. A new-found love.

If you’re meeting new people online, practice the art of privacy until you are sure he or she (do we really know which?) is who they write they are. Don’t disclose your shoe size, your favorite American Idol candidate or your social security number to someone you don’t know well, and communicate via computer only in those contexts where you feel safe. Add a little restraint to your online chat and don’t fall for good-looking Subject lines suddenly appearing in your inbox. The person behind the prose might just well be a wolf in e-clothing.

Mi chinois, métis, que je suis, ou banana que d’autres prétendent que je suis, j’ai le désire profond de sonder l’âme chinoise. Dans ce brouhaha des écrits des textes fondateurs de la chine depuis de millénaires, peut on en tirer une philosophie chinoise qui pourrait élucider ses agissements type chinois comme nous decryptons par exemples,des façons de faire des européens du basin méditerranéen.

La chine vaste et multi ethnique me semble avoir une culture culture  et  unefaçon de penser car la magnitutude du territoire et peuplades font la difference.

Hakka que je suis, forgé par ma tradition familiale, j’agis bien souvent dans mon inconscient dans un registre qui est ancré en moi par mon héritage culturel vécu. Mon souhait c’est bien là de déceler et si possible de comprendre les codes, concepts, logiques qui fait mon univers mentale.

Comme je n’ai comme langues que le français et l’anglais, le Kreole,et ma la langue maternelle Hakka, je suis conscient que mes acquisitions de connaissances et mes réflexions sont voiles par les filtres des langues utilisés et m’exclut des nuances qui ne sont exprimées ou implicitees dans les textes originaux. Cela me fait penser souvent a ODED EL DAD, illustre professeur qui en français nous traduit la version hébraïque du récit de Caen et Abel , donnant ainsi des valeurs tout autre que la lecture du texte en français.

Existe-t-il une philosophie chinoise ? Qu’entendons nous par philosophie à la mode, gréco-occidental, ou la pensée à la chinoise ?

Je me régale en lisant un texte qui met en exergue les idées exprimes dans les écrits des nombreux auteurs autour de la pensée chinoise. Anne Cheng, dans La pensée en chine; Francois Julien, dans Chemin faisant, connaitre la chine, relancer la philosophie ; Jean Luc Domenach dans le retour ambigu de la chine en Asie ;Joel Thoraval, sinologue connu dans de la philosophie en chine a la chine dans la philosophie ; Mou Zongsan, dans neo-confucianisme ;et tous une pléiade de penseurs chinois contemporains tel Liu Xiaofeng, Gan Yang, Liang Shuming et autres.

En résume je retiens  une citation:

Pour reprendre l’expression du sociologue et politologue Gil Delannoi  « toutes les lunettes méritent d’être essayés, lunettes de la ressemblance, les lunettes da la différence ». En d autres termes, certaines approches se révèlent communes aux chinois et aux européens, d’autres sont différentes. Des idées comme celles de sagesse, de liberté intérieure, d’autonomie morale ou bien public se trouvent dans la pensée chinoise comme dans celle de l’Europe ancienne.

Certaines oppositions originelles paraissent cependant absolues. En occident, par exemple, les sociétés dérivent plutôt d’un modèle pastoral dont elles ont hérité l’impératif du commandement, du volontarisme. La société chinoise, au contraire, procède d’un modèle agricole, végétal, fondé sur la patience, et la maturation. Dans le premier modèle, la parole et la voix sont décisives, tandis que, que dans le second, « l’écrit est antérieur à l’oral et possède, dans la composition combinatoire de signes eux-mêmes (la composition graphique des caractères) sa base normative ». Pour la philosophie grecque, l’opposition entre la contemplation et l’action est clairement affirmée, tandis qu’en Chine prévaut l’idée de processus continu, de fluidité, de mutation infinie. Il est vain de tirer une plante en espérant la faire pousser plus vite, dit un adage chinois.

Eh bien je suis ravi, cela m’a donne l’image d’un Hakka écologique, vegetal, vivant dans un univers qui mute en processus continue, très plastique capable de se transformer s perpétuité au guise de son environnement. Est-ce là le modèle de Kreole Morisien que nous cherchons ?