'Delivering the goods' like freshly squeezed OJ

Just read a blog post about how ‘delivering the goods’ aka being great in business, management, leadership, getting hired or keeping your job is like freshly squeezed Orange Juice... It goes for pretty much anybody.

Orange Juice represents getting that ongoing everyday enjoyment from something, even though it is the same thing over and over again, day in and day out. It’s great. It works. It delivers. It does the job. It’s perfect.

Do you deliver the goods the way real freshly squeezed orange juice does?

• It always delivers on the promise
• It’s honest-to-goodness real thing
• It does the job perfectly every time
• It serves a purpose and fulfills a need
• It’s best when present - past success is no guarantee of future results 
• It’s best when on time - every day delivery keeps them coming back
• It’s best freshly squeezed, not frozen, diluted or in any way diminished
• If it’s great in one situation, it won’t necessarily be great in another setting 
• It’s widely accepted in every country and city 
• It makes its mark on the w-o-r-l-d.  
• It's consistent, day in, day out.
• It can be enjoyed everyday!

Think of yourself, your staff, your product, your company as having the qualities and value of orange juice! Set your sights, lock in our trajectory, and set off to deliver the goods like freshly squeezed OJ.

How do you ensure success?

Stick to these points and you’ll go far in this world:

• Striving to be exceptional - a rare commodity
• Showing up on time armed with creativity and enthusiasm
• Being open to communication and dedicated to grow
• Setting glitches or mistakes straight right away
• Being committed to help solve problems
• Making sure that what you provide fits the need 
• Respecting the ecology and well-being of all

The Prophet

This must be one of the most inspirational books of all time. On a daily basis quotes from it are shared between friends and associates to provide comfort and encouragement for handling daily events.

This inspired me to embark on an artistic journey with this book to exhibit what the poems mean to me in other formats, such as the word-cloud on the right, 26 individual artworks and readings which are accompanied with music created to fit each one of the poems.

The word-cloud consists of the 82 most commonly used words in the book. The size of each word reflects the relative frequency of the use of the word.

Here's a snippet on Joy and Sorrow:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked...
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain...
I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

They got me so emotional!

This performance group acted out the life stories of a couple of women through abstraction, mostly movement... man-oh-man, I had to bite my lip, think of other things and so forth, but the emotions they stirred in me was almost over-powering... others in the audience also felt that way. It is something about the performing arts that catches you so off guard, there's no scope for hiding from or becoming comfortably numb to it. It makes me wonder, are those the emotions we should be feeling about everyday tragedies around us, rather than just shrugging it off as we need to get on with our lives?

At last, a dictaphone!

Thank goodness that my next assignment requires the use of a Dictaphone, which I got today - it is something I always wanted :-) at the age of 8 or so, I fell in love with office equipment, from staplers to rubber stamps!

The Dictaphone is a really cute compact black number, records in stereo, great sound quality - records every squeeck even when under the table or inside a jacket pocket! Have a look:

So, I am hoping to make very good use of it for various projects in future - for doing interviews for writing articles, and much more. The trick would be keeping all those audio files organised :-)

Below is just an abandoned ice-cream box I saw on the way. 

"Pre-design" for my next artwork

Depending on what one's approach to design/art is, creating what I like to call a "pre-design" before one actually starts producing the design can be very helpful in saving you loads of time. A pre-design is ideally done  quickly - it is left looking relatively unattractive and contains all of the important elements you envision seeing in the final work, such as layout ratios, representations of the elements that will be present, roughly sketched, but firmly in place. This is the ideal time to do your ratio-ing, as elements are flexible and changes, resizing, moving, adding, removing can be done quickly and painlessly. This stage also give you lots of freedom to find new inspiration, to simplifying and enrich the artwork. Knowing that this isn't the final artwork takes a lot of the mental blockages out of the way.

To produce the pre-design below, I first sketched the idea I had in mine, then I downloaded some free vectors of trees, created the art-board in the golden ratio, set up more ratio lines and plonked the trees on, and added a bit of rough color. The artwork can now be finalized, which will involve merging photos I took of grass and acorn trees into becoming a photo-realistic artwork resembling this scene.

The inspiration for this artwork: One day, a security guard at a building where I had my office told me to go sit behind his desk. Not really knowing what he was getting at, I did so... this was a surprisingly pleasant experience... In front of me I saw a very wide panoramic photo of a nature scene, stuck on the inside of the reception desk. The photo made me feel like I was out and about frolicking in nature. And this is why I am creating this artwork... to provide the viewer with that feeling that they are in nature, soaking in the sunlight, laying or walking on soft grass, surrounded by numerous shades spring fresh greens, and hugged by timeless, caring acorn trees.

Here's a snap-shot of the starting phase:

Spring is here!

Spring fresh!

 

Spring flower...

Spring is in the air...

 

Spring is on your doorstep...