Intellectual Thirst - Seth's Blog

Something interesting from my big brother Seth Godiney, a very short post indeed (see, even he does it, so it's ok!) in which he ponders which comes first, success or intellectual curiosity (as expressed in reading books and, nowadays, blogs). I tend to think intellectual curiosity comes first and in fact needn't necessarily be followed by 'success', whatever that means.
But I take the point, all 'successful' people (by which I mean people who are truly human, not that necessarily make a lot of money or have a big, important job, though it's ok to do these things if you want) are intellectually curious, of that there's no doubt in my mind.

Puumaja Mees Is Unwell

I am ill today, will be back online tomorrow I hope.

Don't Believe The Hype - Seth's Blog

This is a (sorta) regular blog post dedicated to blogging the blogs of one of the most successful bloggers in the blogsphere.
Sethie Godiney is the diminutive sidekick to Seth Godin, an internet marketing guru, by my own unimaginative and lazy summation.My big brother's just posted a great piece about how irrational people are when they make purchases. Everyone 'knows' it's ok to, say, eat salmon at a wedding regardless of what the effects of salmon farming might be on the environment. People make purchases based on the flimsiest of try outs (kicking a car's tyres is one example he gives) and the experts know this. I'm guilty of this - once I just instructed an IFA (Independent Financial Advisor) to get me a deal whereby I could keep my old flat and rent it out and buy a new one (in which I rented the 2nd bedroom out) so he set me up with what was the UK equivalent of the Sub-Prime mortgage, the collapse of which in part started the current recession. I agreed on the basis of him running some meaningless numbers past me. I found out later he'd told the mortgage lenders that my income was about double what it actually was. Nothing particularly bad happened in the end (though the rental lost money and I'm having to sell that flat now) and a lesson learned, but better to learn from someone else's.
Essentially, he says, people are irrational, and there's a great example of this around the swine flu 'epidemic' and his cynical but sensible thoughts on marketing a swine flu vaccine..

'One Of Our Boys Is Missing - Contractual Obligations' Part 3

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.
In part 3 Charlie's older brother Ted leaves home to join the army, leaving a dejected young deliverer of death and destruction in the making behind to keep watch on the home front.

Ted was two years above me and left school at 16, to go and join the army. I was impressed. My mother wasn’t so much and had wanted him to stay on and do his A levels (as I think all her friends’ sons were staying on) but in fact he ended up doing science A levels at Shrivenham military college, before going on to a career in the Royal Signals. I remember how jealous I was of him the day he left, he had several girls hanging on his every word and looked the part as he donned his motorcycle helmet, ready for the step into the unknown. My mother was crying, my sisters had come back from Uni especially to say goodbye. I was resenting not being the centre of attention but there seemed little I could do to change that. This was Ted’s day, not mine, and my turn in the limelight (or UV light) would come one day.

‘Hey Caspar, I’ll write you’ he said.

What US film or TV programme he’d been watching and why he thought it would sound cool was anybody’s guess but he didn’t half sound like an arse saying it. And he’d never called me ‘Caspar’ before, it was weird. But as I said it was his parade so I let it go.

‘I sure will, Teddy-baby’ I replied, and with a manly punch on the shoulder and a wink, he was off, flipping his visor down as he did so. Or at least he made it to the end of the street before skidding on a patch of oil, hitting a parked car and ending up on his side with the motorcycle on top of him, bent and damaged. The screams were distressing enough from inside the helmet, and were twenty times worse when we’d removed it. “My ankle’ he squealed. Minutes later he was sitting upright on the sofa in the living room, his leg stretched out on a chair, loving the attention. He’d just twisted it a bit and it had swollen a little and needed some ice. But to see him carry on, curling his lip at the assembled gathering of admiring girls and playing the wounded soldier, you could be forgiven for thinking he’d escaped from Colditz. Later on that day our mother put him on a train to Shrivenham, the bike had to stay behind (I had my eye on it) and Ted’s military career was on its way to a slightly inauspicious start.

I was pretty lost after he’d gone, and started thinking about what I was going to do once I’d left school. I was 14, and time was ticking. Indeed next birthday I came to realize I’d be 15, so a short mathematical calculation showed to my horror that I wasn’t getting any younger. I was hugely influenced by Ted’s letters home. It sounded great, heavily subsidized bar, all the food you could eat, a great social life, woman hanging off every extremity. He was due to go to Cyprus as soon as he’d finished basic training and that sounded fantastic. There was no army tradition in our family – my recent ancestors were, so far as I can tell, complete losers, who never got further than such dead-end pursuits such as International Aid Work, prison rehabilitation, nursing and other such pansy vocations.

The only person I'd come across in early life who did live up to this ideal was my uncle Don, who used to come round sometimes when my Dad was away on business, I think to keep us company. He'd been in the commandos in World War Two, partaking in the Normandy landings and subsequent action in France. He'd been wounded twice, married thrice, and didn't have a girl in every port so much as inhabit a kind of girl-filled free port, of which he was the chief customs inspector. The first thing he taught me was how to play french cricket. The last thing he taught me was also how to play french cricket, as one day my father came home from work very distracted and said that we wouldn't be seeing him again. It was a real shame as I always identified much more with Uncle Don than with my father, I was much more like him both in temperament and looks.

But I decided to follow Ted’s lead and go for the army. My mum was beside herself
‘I’ve already got one son in the army, what if there’s a war and I end up losing both my sons’ she whimpered. Mothers eh? it’s just self, self self.

My father seemed a little more receptive to the idea, probably getting me off his case was the major consideration.

‘Well your brother seems to have done well out of it. He got his science ‘As’ and has been made up to lance-corporal already’.

Yeah, he also got two local girls in Shrivenham up the duff I thought to myself. So the extra pay his promotion brought in will come in handy.

The very next day I was off to the army recruitment office in nearby Coventry, a small, functional place (the office I mean) tucked inconspicuously away between the Navy and RAF recruitment offices. It was covered from top to bottom in glossy posters promising a life of glamour, excitement, and lots of out-of-focus flames rolling out in the middle distance, or recruits standing around in the sunshine holding spanking new shiny weapons whilst a smiling NCO looks on. How little we knew. The only time it was ever anything like that for me was when we appeared on an episode of 'Blue Peter' doing a sponsored four tonne lorry-pull to raise money for Biafra. Most of the avergage recruit's time would be spent crying into their blankets, their teddy bears taken from them, wishing they'd never joined.

To be continued...if you didn't see the previous 2 parts and are having a sleepless night, see Part 1 here and Part 2 here...

Starting A Business Is As Hard As They Say It Is

Just put in my first order of Dodo Juice products. Dodo Juice produce a range of car detailing products, waxes, clay (for removing all the grime from a car's paintwork) sealants and a whole lot of other things that are a far cry from the bowl of washing up liquid and old sponge from under the sink, or exhorbitant swirl-o-matic paintscratcher machine, every four months or so.
It's been a learning curve just getting my head round the products but as luck would have it a buyer, a car valeting service here in Tallinn, got in touch with Dodo Juice who passed him on to me. Could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
The niceties of buying items at trade price, VAT in the UK and the Sales tax here, setting prices in the pegged Kroon and having to buy the products in the floating pound,  previously things that happened to other people, are slowly starting to make themselves known. What HAVE I started? Could be something good...watch this space for the forthcoming website..

Kitten Madness

..it started in the cellar of the puumaja.....nieghbours reported that items had been moved around, strange shadowy figures had been seen, and there was an odd smell in the air... Then the workmen finished and left, but not before they'd managed to inadvertently kill one of the two kittens that had been nesting there - the wee thing fell down a crack in the pile of rocks which I've inherited and guess I have to remove at some point, and froze to death. The mother, a very prolific begetter of kittens by all accounts , removed the sole surviving kitten and took up residence in the garage at the bottom of the garden. I'd decided to take it on as a pet, had wanted a cat for ages but never got round to it, and having cleared it with my flatmate the neighbours said it's all yours.
So now it is, I guess it's about a month old and so can't really walk but can certainly squeak a lot. I've got this bottle that's much the same as a baby's to feed it with even. If only people back home could see me now. Looking forward to when it starts doing some cool stuff, attacking things etc.
It was really a dry run to see if I could cope with a baby; not that that's on the cards any time soon. I thought that if I couldn't look after a cat then kids are out! And it's going well I'm glad to say. Anyway it won't be a kitten for long.
I keep referring to 'it' because it's too early for a layman to ascertain it's gender! It's name is Hapukoor which is gender-neutral anyway.

On Travelling And Returning Home

Canfield, Proctor, Nightingale, Zagler, Hill, Robbins, Tracy, Aaron... step aside please..there's a new success guru in town! Walt Gleeson is a highly successful, internationally renowned author of motivational books and CDs and other products. With a career spanning over half a decade, he has enthralled readers all over the world, from Alaska to Florida and from Hawaii to Rhode Island, with such titles as You Can Do It!, You Can Do It! Too, Literally Make Your House Work For You and Become a Millionaire Whilst On The Toilet.
Hey, it's Walt here again. I'm typing this on my  gooseberry device, because I can do that.
I'm at O'Hare International Airport (executive lounge) en route to hold a 'crush your opposition to dust and then piss on the dust' seminar in Solihull, England. I look forward to going to the old country, it's always a pleasure to see the little antique churches and police-bobbies (they don't carry guns, how quaint is that?!), go for a cold beer and traditional English pretzels in one of the 'pubs', and take tea with Queen Elizabeth and King Phillip.
I was reminded whilst I was sitting in the executive cafe sipping on a Starbucks, of the lesson that Buddha , an important spitirual leader who lived over a hundred years ago, taught us. He said that, and this took the form of one of his 'cones', that you shouldn't speak unless you have something interesting to say....and I happen to think he was right on that score, maybe not in everything else he said (eg giving up worldly possessions and becoming a renunciant loser). I had to chuckle - you know, I ALWAYS have something interesting to say, so I'm fortunate in that regard, something I remembered as the waitress I just attempted to engage in conversation made light work of clearing my table and disappearing.
Oh well, which of us is on the minimum wage?!

I can see my plane is sitting there like a giant bird made of metal, ready for me to board through the first class entry, and I remember just how far I've come since I was a high school flunkout working part time in the bicycle store in Disney, Idabama. And you can too! IF you're prepared to follow exactly what I say and not dare to question any of it (if you fail to follow all of my steps you'll have no children and die by drowning). So I'm very happy to be able to spread the messgae to the other side of the pond, if I can understand their murdering of the English language in the (pre-selected) Q&A session after the seminar, as they've been in the dark for so long (quite literally, I think some areas of that little country only started getting a regular electricity supply a few years ago).
But however great these trips are, it's always even greater to come back to the US and remind myself how wonderful it is to be American and normal. Have a killer of a day.
Walt.

Russian v Estonian (Languages)

Having lived in the Baltic States for the last four years I've come to realize what a useful lingua franca Russian still is. Not a popular statement with some, no doubt. But the fact remains, since I've moved between Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, eaten in enough restaurants, had enough run ins with police for minor traffic infringements (I was never once stopped by the police in 15 years of driving in England; in the first year of driving in Lithuania I lost count once I'd got into double figures) and tried to chat up one or two girls, it's become abundantly clear that Russian language skills are a must have here. Still.
The being held up for half an hour at the Lithuanian Polish border by officials suspicious of my UK passport and LT registered car ('I think he's from the Ukraine' one was heard to say, in Lithuanian) in pre-schengen days could so easily have been avoided; though I could have just spoken Lithuanian to them.
Here in Tallinn it's a bit different 'cos the standard of English is higher than in Riga or Vilnius (both of which were also good) in my experience, and also since Russian has a political connotation to it that's, if certainly present, not quite so seemingly contentious in the other two cities. But there's still a sizeable Russian speaking population here. Only yesterday I was surprised when the Russian shop assistant at my local Comarket perked up and said 'pazhalasta' in reply to my 'spaseeboh'; she had assume I was Estonian and used the standard 'aitäh'... since I'm neither Estonian or Russian it's not an issue for me and I give both languages equal footing.
There are few things more turgid or egregious in my opinion than ex-pats pontificating about Russians, or the relative situations of the Russian and Estonian languages here, seemingly almost always people who can speak neither language.
For the people that live here, sure it's a live issue. For outsiders, STFU. I don't think British people would think much of someone coming over there and gobbing off about Northern Ireland or, Scottish independence or the position of the muslim community in the UK regardless of their views.
So, I'm learning Russian and making really good progress. In fact in some ways my Russian is better than my Estonian already, even after just two weeks of learning (as opposed to a year and a half of Estonian). How so? Well, for English speakers, Russian is easier than Estonian, of that I'm convinced. There are plenty of cognates, and it is a very efficient language. But more than that (all foreign languages are hard in the end!) I've got hold of the Michel Thomas courses. For those not familiar, he was a language teacher who set up a school in Beverley Hills and whose clients were the great and the good, although he'd come from a Polish-Jewish background and fought in the French Resistance during WW2. In fact his discovery of the ability to block out pain whilst being tortured by the Gestapo was something he applied later to the language learning practice, which is effortless and certainly painless. No myriad of teacher's and student's books with catatonically dull or irrelevant subject matter and opaque grammatical explanations, no notes, no memorizing. His method's a bit like marmite, it tends to polarize people between likes and hates and it has its detractors. I'd done the German one some years ago and so was already a fan, and so I tried the Russian course, which is not done by the great man himself (he passed on a few years ago) but uses the same method and has an engaging lady teacher. One of the two students is intensely irritating, sitting  a bit close to the microphone I think, and abusing Russian pronunciation horribly, but not enough to put me off. I'll see how I go next time I'm in Comarket....