It was going to be a tough ride to Chicago at this time of the year and so I would have to make sure that I was properly equipped for the journey by upgrading my riding kit and finding some brand new knee sliders. I already had been there for my new leathers and was happy to go again for my other needs.

So off I went and after a tricky three day journey into the teeth of a freezing wind I made home base in Chicago and set about looking for work. No easy task there either but I found a company that was looking for someone with the skills that I had amassed in IT. I am living there now but still miss home, but thanks to liberationchildren.org I can at least share with others in the same situation.

Wie zijn wij (bevrijdingskinderen)? En waarom zou ik deelnemen aan deze reunie en ontmoeting?

Wij zijn kinderen of kleinkinderen van Nederlandse moeders en Geallieerde soldaten uit Canada, Amerika, Groot-Brittanie, Australie, Rusland, etc. Na de bevrijding van Nederland door de Geallieerden in 1945 ontstond een periode van vrijheids vreugde onder Nederlanders, waaronder ook onder de Nederlandse vrouwen en Geallieerde soldaten. Uit deze relaties zijn ook kinderen ontstaan en vandaar de term bevrijdingskinderen. Deze ontmoeting/reunie kunt u gebruiken om in contact te komen met andere bevrijdingskinderen en deze beter leren kennen en uw verhalen met elkaar te delen. Het zou ook goed mogelijk zijn dat u met deze ontmoeting in aanraking komt met andere bevrijdingskinderen die op zoek zijn naar een ouder die toevallig in hetzelfde regiment of uit dezelfde regio komt als die van een andere bevrijdingskind. Kortom, een leuke manier om nieuwe kennissen te maken en informatie met elkaar te delen.

This is certainly the case on the up-coming beach of Thong Nai Pan Noi on the Thai island in Koh Phangan. For the last few years the beach has graced several lists of Top Ten beach destinations in the world. This has lead to a spate of new construction by the three major resorts on the beach – Panviman, Rasananda and Santhiya. They seek to maximize their profit per square meter of land owned. The rooms may offer air-con, iPod docking centers, folded towels, LCD televisions etc. but actually the luxury of space is being sacrificed.

People are also being put off going to Thong Nai Pan Noi by the high prices for rooms. $100 a night doesn’t secure anything great, but $1,000 does. This prices many potential visitors out of the market.

The solution is private villa rental in Thong Nai Pan Noi. There are now a few private villas for rent in the area that offer great value for money. The best of them is Sunrise Villa. It is 800 meters from the beach at the top of a hill. It commands magnificent sea views both from the second floor master bedroom as well as from the wide balcony.

The villa is set in over 1,000 sq meters of garden. It is a haven of tranquility where the beauty of nature can be observed rather than the wet swimming costumes of neighbors.

Sunrise Villa has 3 double bedrooms with air-con. Each room is en-suite. There is lounge, dining area as well as fully equipped kitchen. For just 5,000 ($166) Thai Baht a night it represents excellent value for money and offers the luxury of space that the other resorts don’t provide.

My two younger girls have a different role because they are too young to take the dog for a walk on their own although we do encourage the three siblings to do it together occasionally.  My youngest daughter, aged 11, is responsible for making sure the dog, cat and budgie are all fed twice a day, once before school and once after we have our dinner.  My middle daughter, aged 13, thinks she has the hardest job (probably true!) and that is cleaning out the budgies cage and the cats hidden litter box.  I tend to agree with her but I have noticed that she always gets her little sister to help quiet a lot so its nice to see them bonding with each other.

Obviously, my husband and I always have the over ridding responsibility of looking after the pets but it is a great way of making the kids feel empowered.  They all take their responsibilities very seriously and even though mishaps do sometimes happen, you can really tell that they are growing and enjoying their roles as time goes on.

]]> http://www.liberationchildren.org/teaching-the-children-responsibility-with-pets.html/feed 0 http://www.liberationchildren.org/liberation-doesnt-mean-distruction.html http://www.liberationchildren.org/liberation-doesnt-mean-distruction.html#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:06:07 +0000 jonnyd http://www.liberationchildren.org/?p=116

Marc Bolan claimed you ‘can’t fool the children of the revolution’. That was the 1970s when the notion of liberation was still very much connected to the idea of social revolution. Young people partied as a way of rebelling, and of protesting. The great example of this is the Woodstock festival in America that was 3 days of peace and music.

The notion of turn on, tune in, drop out as formulated by the Timothy Leary made the connection between taking drugs, opening your mind and rejecting the status quo. In the 1960s and 1970s young people went wild but they felt they did so for a purpose. They wanted to show the older generations that the new generations were different: they could live without war, they didn’t fear communism, that materialism was not everything, that music, art and love were more important. Whereas, the older generation drank the new one smoked marijuana and dropped acid. They wanted to open their minds to forms of consciousness.

Nowadays, young people have the same predilection to taking drugs. Even more so – there is now ecstasy and other designer drugs to choose from. What young people who attend full moon parties in Thailand do not have is an agenda, or a social point of view. They are not getting drunk and high to challenge the old order of things, to protest the Vietnam War or patriarchal society. No. Their indulgence signifies nothing beyond the desire to get wasted and maybe sate their lust.

Some might view this approach as at  least more honest, less hypocritical. Others bemoan the lack of a political consciousness in the young of today. After all trance and house music has no esoteric political message. It’s just beats.

I was always worried every time my son got into the car. Not because I knew one day I would be filing  traffic accident claims with our insurance company but because he loved to speed.

My worries were legit. His lead foot got the best of him one or twice. Nothing too big just in too big of a hurry to do the actually speed limit, until one rainy day he hydroplaned right into the neighbors fence.  He was ok, the car was a bit damaged and the fence destroyed. The only really good thing about my fear was that I was prepared for much worse than what actually happen.

Of course I want him to experiment. It would be a pain to not listen to a band or artist evolve. And I don’t expect to love everything a particular artist does. Bob Dylan infamously went through a similar phase when he went electric in 1965. But I think in a time like now, label pressure should be nearly non-existent. Hopefully he does not given in to what he considers label pressure for the next album, Food & Liquor II: The Great American Rap Album.

While Lasers has moved him forward in the mainstream scene, the album was all over the place, at its worst being politically-charged lyrics with mismatched club beats. Hopefully a closer return to his early form will be able to bridge the gap between the electronic sounds he’s going towards and the socially-conscious rap sound he once put forth.

Between my failed startup attempts in college and working as a management consultant for several years, I grew to realize that a successful business is all about business strategy.  It has very little to do with the innovative concept on which the company was founded.  This is why many first mover companies fail and are easily overtaken by more polished companies down the road.

So, what is exactly is business strategy?  It’s a vague term, I know.  However, in essence, it boils down to sales strategy and marketing strategy.  If you have a crappy product with solid marketing and sales teams behind it, it will still make money.  If you have the opposite situation, a stellar product, but not business team pushing it out, it’s doomed for failure.  The dream of a great product selling itself via word-of-mouth marketing is just that—a dream.  There may be exceptions, but those are very rare.  Most successful viral marketing examples are very carefully architected.  The word-of-mouth illusion is driven by a robust and carefully planned marketing campaign.

The beauty of business strategy is that the basics are easy to learn.  Most of all the relevant analyses are covered in various business frameworks – e.g., Porter’s Five Forces for competitive and industry analysis, Product Life Cycle for product marketing, Blue Ocean Strategy for market opportunity and growth strategy.  A business framework is a methodology for breaking down a common business problem into its rational components for analysis.  For instance, in Porter’s Five Forces (see the diagram above), the framework breaks down industry analysis into the 5 forces (e.g. key drivers) to analyzing the industry’s viability.  Furthermore, a business framework often also proposes specific strategic recommendations based on the results of the analyses.

This is the feeling experienced by every new job entrant, like when leaving their home and loved ones behind for a new place. After the initial excitement that I am on my own and without support, I am in control of my life and other similar thoughts; it is time to get homesick. This is where one should use diverting strategies and techniques to get a hold of them.

Socializing with the locals is the best way out of depressing thoughts, which might make you want to succumb to, when memories of house and loved ones engulf. In my case, this helped a lot. I started to train myself like it is the time to fly and test the skies, on my own and that, I need not fear or watch out for elders. My life, entirely under my control is what gave me strength, though I am in touch with mom and dad.