Snow Swans
Floating on silence, idling into joy, with a sparkly winter scarf to keep warm all through the holidays.
My love-hate relationship with origami is unveiled.
It seems we are at peace for now.
All it took a drop of silver twinkle and 45 minutes of my life.
Reasonable enough.
Smiling 10 times back
They say it’s all in the details, but I don’t want to get all too jelly-melly about it.
I like the feeling of joy & the one of things to come, hugging people, smiling back 10 times, making lists of what they like, of what you like, list of what never ever to do next year and what to definitely stick to.
It’s a sickening happiness, so sickening each winter holiday I hope for people not to get over it. 
Happy holidays everyone – yes, I’m smiling 10 times back.
Snuggle in
Image source via All things bright and beyootiful
we love the cold.
we snuggle, we tuck in, we feel the coziness, the warm blankets, the smell of hot chocolate, tingling in our fingertips, the touch of a warm porcelain cup and the heat of its edge .
yes, we love the cold.
SPA in a cup of tea
People say there’s nothing a nice relaxing bath can’t solve.
Add a few bubbles in there to fade out even the toughest problems. The dynamic behind is quite simple: you soak in, while the bubbles take hostage each and every negative thought/worry/concern, wrap them up and wash them away.
I love the Esther Horchner “bath” tea set.
It seems like extreme relaxation for an autumn day. Let’s call it Monday. I love the details of it and the “oh, so” feeling it (disturbingly) breaks into you.
I totally recommend it to begin your week with. At least hide your phone under a pillow and stare at the picture for 30 seconds – it does wonders.
For a complete spa treatment, click here.
Image sources: courtesy of
http://www.estherhorchner.nl/
p.s.: doesn’t her website just charm you altogether ? I couldn’t help to add a preview of it below.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
Cultural icon, love, soul, belonging, music, visual, sounds, experience, dance, energy, words, calligraphy. And, yes, Louis Vuitton.
The word, spoken, tactile or written is a wave of intention and a drop of energy. At least that’s the philosophy which stands behind ancient calligraphy, a few of the world’s main religions, NLP and basic advertising.
Guillaume Huret speaks about sensorial branding ( Louis Vuitton in particular, as he worked on their Champs Elysee flag ship ).
It goes down to psychology, sociology, cognitive, artistic, design, semiology, marketing, strategic, architecture, leading straight to building a Sound Strategy.
The basic idea crossing all those fields is to associate a sound, a statement with a brand – so powerful in our minds that it sets nesting on, branching out with other things from our lifes, like memories, experiences, feelings. I can’t be easily moved, as it soon creates its own neighborhood around.
“There are only 3 means of expression in brand communication: image, text and sound. Apart from in advertisements, 80% of brands avoid using sound as a tool, even when there have never been so many types of media available for sound communication.
How can you meet the new demands of consumers, and at the same time differentiate yourself in an environment that is increasingly inundated with signs? Of all the various possibilities for identification, association and differentiation, sound is often used too little, if it is used at all.
[...]
If I serve you a dish with classical music in the background or the same dish with reggae music in the background, your general feelings about the dish might change, even though it is exactly the same dish! Sound is not more important or has more impact than the other senses, its impact is just different
[...]
Physical properties:
- It represents the emotional language par excellence
- It is a universal language
- It is a timeless language
- It is a language that crosses the generation gap
- It is a language that speaks to both the reason and the spirit
- It affects many senses (emotion, physic), not just hearing
Psychological properties:
- Power of association (with a brand)
- Power to evoke (a memory or experience)
- Power to identify (express who I am)
- Power to segment (e.g. according to age)
- Power to unite ((ex/ national anthem) “
People are usually reluctant, because sounds impliy an uncontrolled experience: movement, rhythm on and off out of their reach, starting suddenly, not demanded, not asked, a disturbance of their natural flow. Too often sounds are understood as an emotional spam, rather than a facilitator.
You see, sound is not a lonely creature, it’s always the +1. We commonly perceive it visually - when watching tv, a movie, a video, looking at the person in front of us when she’s speaking - or tactile when touching the control buttons of the player. We rarely perceive sound by itself, in it’s pure form, stripped of our other senses.
Even with our eyes closed, we imagine things and feel away in the dark, being almost afraid to be alone with…sounds, with spoken words, with the intentions and energy of a word said aloud.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, cause nothing is greater than sound strategy
Coursera.org – advocate for humanity
“Higher education that overcomes the boundaries of geography, time and money! – Gerald Dicen.
Join 1,593,867 Courserians “
Coursera.org is an online platform offering free courses through partnership with top universities around the world (Columbia, Standford, Princeton, Barkely, Mount Sinai etc). It’s spreading fast and, much like a viral phenomenon, it buzzes the internet. I thought I’d share from my experience what is all about.
First of all, I loved that the curriculum is large and diverse. You can choose from a wide range of topics, from computer science to neurology, business management, networking, psychology, mythology, the art of gastronomy, gamification, music, engineering and so on. Everything looks amazingly attractive and only at a few clicks away. Because that’s all you need to do – create an account and join course.
This is definitely creating courseaholics. I myself joined 28 courses for the following 2 semesters and plan to join others as well. I don’t have a lot of free time, and their way of organizing things fits my crowded schedule.
For each course you have a dedicated webspace with videolectures, messages from the professor, tests, quizzes, assignments and a forum. You don’t have to be logged online around fixed timetable – you can check the video lectures whenever you have the time, so it’s very flexible.
There are no restrictions, you can follow the class lightly or super seriously, get involved as much as you want or even place things on hold until you have the time needed in your life.
You may be interested in presence and active involvement, as well as a final acknowledgement of the education process. Now learning and certification are 2 distinct concepts – some universities are open to both, others only to online learning. What it means is that in most cases if you do your assignments, get good scoring for the quizzes etc, you receive a signed certification from the university offering the course. Whether a certificate is given or not is specified in the description of the course.
However, you may not be into this and simply be passionate about the info. In this case you may watch the video lectures just like you would be watching a video on youtube or the TV and enjoy the experience.
The video lectures last from 10 to 30 mins and there are series of them throughout the course. Should you watch them and them alone, it requires the amount of time equal to the video duration. Should you get involved in writing assignments, taking a quiz, doing peer review, it may take around from 30 min to 1 extra hour of your time for that class.
For me it’s like reading a book or watching a movie, with having someone else drawing the learning path to follow.
And best of it all it’s the experience. The number of people joining is unbelievable.
On the networking course there are over 14.000 people enrolled. Yes you read correctly the first time. Sure not all of them will follow through and not all of them will do their assignments, but the percentage of those who are interested in a topic enough to watch the video lectures is impressive.
There’s also a sense of community, especially after professors organize groups of peer reviews, like in the world music course. People are active, they share info and among the tonz of info dropped daily it’s most likely that you’ll find something new/fresh/fascinating/worth the minutes spent. Half of the people in this class said they would like to take the course again, as they feel the info itself was beyond the video lectures, spreading mostly from what everyone shared.
I know I sound enthusiastic about it.
That’s because I am.
Did I also mention it’s free ?
