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I intend to visit Brazil for vacation before my retirement. That begs two questions to be answered: 

1. Why Brazil?

2. Why not after retirement?

The answer to the first: I think of its beautiful carnival dancers in bikinis and Brazil’s breathtaking beaches to soak in.

To answer the second: Please see the answer to the first.

But I didn’t realize that until recently (mid 1990s) the crime rate in Brazil was very high. Watching the movie City of God changed my view of the country. If it is not safe enough for the local residents, how would it be for the visiting tourists? I am sure you will agree that it is not a good idea to get shot and come back in a coffin after a memorable vacation. Imagine you won’t be around to answer the question, “How was your vacation?”

I am not exaggerating. Some of us Canadians had that privilege extended to us as part of the package tour, when we visited Mexico three/four years ago. To this day, they are investigating the cases to figure out the answer to the classic / cliché question, “who dun it?” When Mexico tourism promotes itself as “Mexico, beyond your expectation,” it is probably true to its words.

Meanwhile it is reassuring to note (as this article points out) that Brazil’s crime rate has fallen considerably. Hopefully by that time I visit, it has fallen so low, that it will be like I am in my city Toronto. Apart from the deliberate actions of the community of Brazil, its police and change in demographics, I think one other reason for the fall in crime rate could be its rising middle class and Brazil’s improving economy.

Some of my readers who have firsthand experience may contradict whatever I said here. Before I could agree/disagree with them I want to find out for myself. An unexplored life is not worth living, what do you say?

We take it for granted our ability to think. Often it happens unconsciously i.e. we don’t even know that we are doing it until we bring it into focus (like when we breathe). As much as it is a blessing it turns into a curse if done unconsciously.If we inspect our thoughts, too many of them are repetitive and destructive. We brood over our lack of resources, past failures, betrayals, missed opportunities, etc. They only generate a sense of self- pity, anger, jealousy etc with nothing constructive coming out of them.  I am sure you would have read enough literature on similar lines, so I don’t want to repeat what you know already.

The purpose of this post is to remind you (also remind myself) to be cheerful, look for possibilities when presented with a problem, solve it in a creative way and become wiser. What better way to learn to appreciate our ability to think, then to watch an animal which is endowed with even lesser faculties than we have, that goes about solving problems.

Recently I saw a video clip (see below and click on play) in which a chimpanzee does a courier job. Let me admit that I don’t know the Japanese language as well as the purpose of this experiment (if I can call it as one) as all the commentary of the events is in that language. However as we see the clip; we can get a feel of the situation, draw conclusions and we won’t be far off the mark.

Here is my interpretation of the events:

Pan fails to notice how the package (lunchbox) is tied on the carrier (James in our case) for safe delivery
	Still it takes its job seriously and later it makes it up by its persistence. It didn’t come back with some lame excuses for a failed mission.
When coming to an intersection, it decides to go one way after some deliberation. May be it had drawn from past experience or intuition. I don’t know which one. The point is it didn’t choose to remain stuck in one situation.
	When it was time to cross the stream or creek, (a very complex operation for its intelligence) Pan chooses to pause and think for a minute and evaluate the risks involved. It chooses a course of action that minimizes the risks for everyone involved (James in this case).
Every step of the way Pan gives its due attention (and not lost in its thoughts about its past or future)
	When it was sure that James could jump the last 1 meter, it uses all its persuasion (force in this case). I am sure Pan would have used other methods to persuade James if it can communicate with it (James).
Finally Pan takes pride for a job well done (no matter how trivial or menial and not giving itself to thoughts of self-pity like “why me?”).

Incidentally did you notice that it didn’t miss to have fun while doing its job.
P.S. Those of my readers who know Japanese language if you could enlighten me/us about the actual experiment and commentary of events as they happen, I will be very thankful.

There is an universal belief that no two persons are alike. Each one of us is unique in our physical makeup, mental abilities, personality traits, our life experience, and so on. A news article I read in National Post recently has weakened my belief that we are unique in this world. It is not my concern whether the lady Ms. Bernann McKinney was really Ms. Joyce McKinney in disguise or the former is the clone of the latter as the title of the article suggests.

But what interested me was that she paid $50,000 to clone her dead dog Booger and became a proud owner of five black puppies cloned from it. That reminded me how close we have come to reality from the science fiction movie, The Sixth Day in which Arnold Schwarzenegger starred with his clone(??!!) Do you remember in the movie there is this pet shop where ‘made to order’ pets can be picked up by their proud owners?

Well it has become a reality now and from now on, at least for those who can afford, they need never have to suffer any loss or tragedy on the demise of their pets. In one of his comedy shows the late George Carlin makes fun of pet lovers who bring home a pet and shower it with all their love and tender care. He said that they really have brought home a tragedy while they may think it to be a bundle of joy. His reasoning was that one day or the other the pet has to face its demise and that will be before its owner passes away. Sorry George, for once you are proved wrong.

Human Cloning

This story also made me wonder whether human cloning too is going on illegally somewhere on the high seas? Let us be optimistic that currently there is no large scale human cloning. I said optimistic because the unique talents that we develop as we go along, is our only insurance in this uncertain job market. Already we have enough competition and we stand even less chance if our clones start competing against us. Don’t you agree?

Talking of uniqueness, did you see Robert Muraine’s audition in the TV program ‘So you think you can dance?’ Of course the judges and the audience where blown away by the awesome performance of Bob. But one of the judges scored his performance to be so unique that he would have difficulty approving Bob to the next level of the competition. For a moment I too was thinking this young man has wasted a part of his life learning something too unique. But this time I was proved wrong.

Look at the recent IKEA commercial in which Bob replicates his success so well and I am sure he must have made a ton of money doing this commercial. As of this date no one in the world can do what Robert Muraine has done and do you understand now why I stress developing our unique talents and also why I fear my clone ?

If only we ask this question every time we start a new project, how much would it save everyone associated with it? It is so fundamental that we assume that it was asked by someone already and we run with it. You will be surprised to note that it took a disaster like Challenger explosion (28th Jan 1986) to ask the purpose of the space shuttle program. Instead of running with a task handed down, a simple question like, “Why are we doing this or to what end?” would benefit us immensely.

We may defend, “Well that was in 1986, ever since that we come have a long way.” Not really. Time and again we see this folly of not asking this question in our everyday life. Recently Microsoft discontinued its Live Book Search project after nearly 2 years of scanning 750,000 books and 80 million journal articles and spending close to $ 10 million. I wonder if anyone part of the project group raised this question, “Why are we doing this anyway?”

Assuming I am a consultant and my client states a problem with a fat pay check for solving his problem, it would be unwise to accept the stated problem and start collecting data to solve the problem. At the least, asking this question, would expand the perspective of the client, expand the possibilities and change how the solutions are presented. It may even prevent me from tackling his wrong problem!

According to the Purposes Principle, in the book titled ‘Breakthrough Thinking’, the authors implore us to seek the purpose of everything. To quote verbatim from the book, “If the purpose of a shoelace is to tie a shoe, ask what the purpose of tying a shoe is – and then watch the possibilities for alternative, innovative solutions unfold before your eyes.”

Having stated an immediate purpose of solving a problem, we should expand the purposes, to still greater purposes until we have an array of purposes to tackle. Then out of the many we choose the one that would have a greatest impact using our limited resources.

Let me explain with a simple personal example:

Suppose I ask myself the purpose of writing this blog I will come up with the answer: to educate, inform and entertain the visitors to my site. And if I were to ask again what in turn the purpose of that is; my answer would be to encourage more visitors to visit this site and so on.

Eventually my purpose array would look like the following:

1. To create content for my website to educate, inform and entertain the visitors to my site.
2. To encourage more visitors to visit my site.
3. To expose visitors to relevant advertisements displayed alongside.
4. To click on the advertisements that are of interest or use to them.
5. To collect payment from my Associates for qualified clicks.
6. To create an additional income stream through the Internet.
7. To have more disposable income on hand.
8. To invest in assets that enhances quality of life.
9. To enhance quality of life.

Now in my purpose array I may choose to focus on the initial purpose (level 1) of just creating the content or I may choose to focus on level 2 i.e. to encourage more visitors to visit my site or level 6 i.e. to create an additional income stream from the Internet.

At each level my course of actions will be different. For instance if I focus on level 1, I need to focus on what would be topical and interesting to my visitors and what additional research is required before I complete this post, what improvement in presentation or style of writing is required etc.


If instead if my focus is on level 2, my focus would be to explore other options to attract visitors to my site (like buying quality content from other sources, or other incentives like creating contests with free gifts for winners on my site) other than myself spending time creating the content.

If I have the money I may choose to focus on level 6, I may open an online store promoting my own products or if I am resource poor I may opt to promote others products by becoming an affiliate. Or at level 7, I may choose to ignore the Internet altogether and see more conventional ways of creating additional source of income.

The point is, asking the purpose of doing anything, expands my options. I hope you agree with me.