Ah revisions!

When I'm supposed to be revising, I always tend to find everything more appealing than my revision notes. For instance, I'm always making up breaks and giving myself treats. You've got the tea break, the toilet break, the let's-cuddle-the-cat break, the let-me-put-on-some-kohl break, the what-I-am-wearing-tomorrow break and finally, my favourite, the let's-try-a-new-recipe break. As for my treats, they come in the form of an episode of How I Met Your Mother after each 2 chapters are done with.

Despites all those breaks and treats, I'm managing to progress with the revision fairly smoothly. I'm not rushing into it 'cause my exam is on the 2nd of December. Some people might find that short, I'm really thinking that I've got lots of time. I hope I won't be proven wrong.

The thing is, giving myself breaks and treats really motivates me to keep going and I'm actually close to finding the revision fun! So I'll say that this breaks-and-treats method is definitely a keeper!

Let there be kindness...

People don't always understand the importance of being kind in everyday life. In businesses in particular, kindness or politeness plays a crucial part. It's not just about greeting people or smiling at them, although it does start from these. It's also about the overall attitude adopted while meeting the customers or clients. Most importantly it's about how you welcome people to participate in your business.

In Mauritius, some organisations all too often neglect to give enough importance to how customers are being attended to, thus keeping an important part of their stakeholders unhappy. Shops and supermarkets are concrete examples of this. Quality service rarely prevails in those organisations, at best the service is acceptable.

Do you ever come out of a supermarket feeling satisfied or saying "Wow! That was one hell of a service!"?

You see, the low quality of service is so generally dispersed that customers could stop expecting something better. I mean, if you have no means to compare the service, you won't even notice if one particular supermarket's service is better or worse. The service would just fall in the mean, it would just be acceptable service, as usual. And that should be avoided.

Supermarkets should compete in terms of quality of service and other factors other than price. If we, as customers, start being choosy about quality of service then probably changes would start taking place. That might take some time but the most important part of it is to get out of that "zombie customers" state and to stop letting organisations choose the way they want to treat their customers.

All-in

So the cyclone was a disappointment, the next day, that is on Wednesday, we got the whole package of hot, sunny and slightly breezy weather. No dark clouds, no rain, everything had disappeared. But that was good as well. I attended classes and most importantly I played poker with my gals.

Apart from that, yesterday I got to know that the Saturday test I've been supposed to be revising for has been postponed and guess what I did after knowing about that? I started revising! Hell yeah! I was so grateful for this that I actually started reading my notes. Now how good is that as a motivator?

I'm off to revise dudettes and dudes, 'cause I've got no test. So, no pressure. See y'all!

A cyclone is a cyclone

We've got a cyclone coming up (hopefully) which goes by the name of Anja. Weird name if you ask me. The name does not promise the destructive intensity that Hollanda or even Gamede had. But I'm not going to judge a cyclone by its name. Instead, I'm going to hope and look forward to what it has to offer.

The weather has been cloudy and rainy right from this morning and that discouraged me from going out and kept me cozy in the warmth of my home. I've tried to revise for a test scheduled this Saturday but you know how distracting a day at home could be, at least for me it is. So I ended up watching TV, tidying up my room and taking two showers.

So now I'm off for dinner dudettes and dudes and I hope that the weather gets worse by tomorrow. Oh and I'm going to give my revisions yet another try! But I don't promise anything...

Coach Carter

Today started like any regular Monday morning. I woke up early, lazily read some blog posts and news in bed and managed to get myself late. So I showered in a hurry, dressed in a hurry, ate in a hurry, made my bag in a hurry. And in my hurry I managed to forget a thing or two at home. But in all this, I got to catch the Express bus without even having to sprint.

Yet, in our human resource development class, something "out of the box" happened. We got to watch the whole of this movie, Coach Carter, starring Samuel Jackson and that was awesome! I should have thought of bringing the popcorn! The movie, which is based on a real story, depicts the life of young high school basketball players and how the new coach, Ken Carter, changes their lives by applying unusual coaching techniques and making use of his own life principles. This movie is poignant, full of humour and contains some valuable lessons.

The reason why we were showed this movie in class, dudettes and dudes, is simple; we are currently studying coaching at work and this concept is very much inspired by sports coaching techniques. This movie is in this sense a case study for us and I guess it's the first time that I really and entirely enjoyed a case study.