Cyril O

Jun

2011

Helping People

Several years ago I was traveling by car, on my own, from Los Angeles to Florida. In the middle of nowhere Texas – really, I was a lot of miles from anywhere, my car broke down. I did not know it then but my alternator had died and I just cruised to the side of the road in the middle of the desert. Texas is a pretty friendly state and a couple of people stopped to try and help but to no avail. Then a trucker had gone by me a couple of hundred yards and managed to back up his semi so that he could help me. And he did manage to get my car started. I thanked him profusely and we were on our way.

I shut my lights off so it would not die again and got things repaired and replaced at the next town.

This next chapter brings me to the point of my story. I was cruising along the next and beautiful sunny day and lo and behold what do I see in the middle of the afternoon but a elderly woman on the side of the road with a flat tire. I had been so grateful to the trucker that helped me and he would not take anything from me so here was my opportunity to ‘repay’. I pulled over. She could hardly believe it as dozens of cars were passing and no one had stopped. I was more than happy to help her change the tire. I’m quite sure she would not have managed the change on her own. I was almost done and a state trooper stopped and offered to take over. No way! He was nice but I wanted to finish what I had started. He helped us from getting run over.

The lady that I helped was extremely grateful and offered to pay me. I refused and told her that I had a better way to exchange. I asked her to find someone to help in the next week or two and kind of pass it on; like that really depressing movie: “Pay it Forward”.

She was thrilled with the idea and said, ‘I will, I will, I promise.” She beamed at the idea and I am very sure that she did.

I am very certain the the most wonderful sensation in the world results from helping others. Not getting something for it but just helping. If you are not sure that you believe me, please go out and help someone. I don’t care if it is something like mowing someone’s lawn that is away on vacation or anything that is some help in any degree. And if the person offers to give something in return tell them what you ask of them is to help someone else with something.

Next time you are feeling down, depressed or whatever, look a way to help others and do so and if you don’t feel better then do it again and keep doing it until you do feel better. You will – I guarantee it. And, seriously, don’t accept payment other than that person helping someone else.

Best sensation in the world by far!!

Oh, BTW, you don’t have to wait until you are depressed to or down to help. And it is OK to be greedy about it. You can help all the people and groups that you want. That’s pretty much the purpose of life: To help.

Jun

2011

Two Drills to increase your touch typing speed

Here are a couple of drills if you want to learn to touch type faster:

a;sldkjfghhgjfkdls;a

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Do these 10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks and you will notice a huge difference.

May

2011

A good spy novel

If you like a good ‘old school’ spy novel with hints of John Lecarre, try
Olen Steinhauer’s The Tourist.

May

2011

The War On Drugs

“What do international terrorism, the world’s financial markets, empire building and capitalism have in common? Their utter dependence on drug profits for their very existence.”
from Shadow Masters by Daniel Estulin

May

2011

Learning How To Research

The most valuable tool, I think, that I could leave my children is learning through research. It is not always that easy but learning and research do go hand in hand. Many people figure that when they are done school that is it. Most of the time that should be just the beginning as not much really useful information was gathered there.

For me, one of the best ways to research a subject is through periodicals – magazines.

Nowadays, this translates into online newsletters but it is the same idea. One of the main reasons a magazine or periodical is good for research on a subject or helping to learn to research is that they are generally geared to neophytes or people newer to the subject. For example, quite a number of years ago I started to learn photography. I wanted to learn everything that I could and started accumulating books but the most useful thing that I aquired was a subscription to a photo magazine. Most of the magazines that I found on the shelf were covering basics. I realized after a while that they were on a 18 month to 2 year cycle. They would cover a lot of basics of photography – the articles were simple, informative and would give one lots of material to practice with. Once they cycled through these basics they would start over again. I have subscibed to other magazines and although not as long with some, they appeared to be similar – a one to two year cycle of the basics.

Learning how to research takes a bit of practice but this was a great way to start. Take what you learn from these periodicals or newsletters and go practice to see if it works for you. As I learned more I bought books in the areas that I wanted more detail. I did not always read them cover to cover but looked for specifics of what I wanted to learn and apply.

For me the ability to judge what was important came with a lot of practise – taking what I learned and applying it. The more I did this the better my judgement got as to what was important.

The other key was making sure that I understood the terminology. This was vital. Almost any ‘niche’ or subject has its own nomenclature and if you don’t know the terms there is no way to understand the material around it. I’ve had people tell me that ‘you’ll get it from the context’ – believe me please, this is chancy at best. It is so easy these days to get the proper definitions – there are so many dictionaries online – it takes seconds. I’m old school and like my dictionaries but often if you are researching in a specialized subject there are terms and phrases that will not be in a conventional dictionary. I made sure that I had specialized photo dictionaries about as well.

These days the resources online are extensive. But make sure that you evaluate the material.

I would love to see researched based learning part of school systems but I don’t think that is going to happen anytime soon. Best to keep your kids at home and teach them how to read then if you are teaching them how to research they will be able to absorb and evaluate anything.

Learn to research properly and you can tackle anything.