Tips
Excellent tips by Warren Buffet: (Thanks Mario!)
On earnings: never depend on single income, make investment to create second source.
On spending: if you buy things you don’t need, soon you will have to sell things you need.
On saving: do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.
On taking risk: never test the depth of river with both feet.
On investments: do not put all eggs in one basket.
On expectations: honesty is a very expensive gift, do not expect it from cheap people.
Now:
M
Flip The Tape And Wait
You know when you discover “hidden tracks” in a CD, or when you discover a “Side B” to a tape? At first, the songs sound too new, not familiar enough, you can’t sing to them and find trouble following the melody. It’s annoying. But once you’ve listened to them a few times already, you start to actually enjoy them more than the “side A” tracks.
Aaand when you do go back to Side A, you appreciate the “old” songs even more.
Same goes with everything.
A few nights ago, I went out with the girls, and I realized that I started liking my new routine, after a big lifestyle change. And while we were shouting and laughing (there was even clapping at some point), in the middle of a pub, I thought to myself that wherever you go, whatever you do (even if it is unemployment that you are doing), the dust will settle and you will start developing a taste for your new habits.
(Picture taken in “Chaplin” pub, Beirut)
M
Magic
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”– Carl Sagan.
M
We Have It In Us
Nope. I am not gonna write an angry post nor a sad one. I think enough of them have been written about last week’s tragedy in Beirut. I’m taking on the challenge to write a more positive one (and trust me, its is a BIG challenge).
What I want to talk about are our after-shock reflexes. On one side, it is sad that we have these reflexes to start with.
Nevertheless, the mass-solidarity reaction we witnessed this weekend, although shadowed by so much anger and political speculations, was remarkable.
The first reaction Lebanese people have when hey hear a “boom” is to call their loved ones before the lines are jammed. once this is done, they play the intermediary between people who are not able to reach each other. Once that is done, they call their friends abroad to make sure their families residing here are safe. First Reaction. ok you might tell me that’s a human reaction- anywhere in the world. fine.
What about starting a chain of kindness to the ones who were left behind:
People offering shelter to complete strangers:
Hotels opening their doors free of charge:
Blood banks requesting donors to stop coming in, because of the excess amount of blood received:
“Donors, do NOT go anymore”. Damn.
So in the middle of all of this mess. and although we feel hopeless,
We know that there are quite a few who think like that:
And I guess we’ll have to cling to that idea, and look at these little things that make our people extraordinary.
Hats off to Yorgui & all the DSC team, as well as to all the organizations/people who have mobilized in the name of the country as a whole.
M
To my Small, Yet Magnificent, Country
Stand tall, stay strong.
M
Smail of the Day 