Scribbles

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what oredr the ltteers in a word are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the first and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? (Moer)

Thanks to Temmy -eh I mean David Lee- for the tip!

Updates from The Road’s Twitter:

08:30 – At Copenhagen airport… 8:30 and the sun just came up… Ready to fly back to Rome.

09:45 – “This is your captain speaking. Unfortunately, we have been hit by a ladder of the ground crew. Repairs will take an hour.”

10:30 – “This is your captain speaking… We are still looking for the spare part.” – anyone got a spare wing light for an MD82?

In the end, we took off with a little more than one hour delay. But the adventure was still to come. Approaching Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the clouds got thicker and thicker. It looked like we were landing for 45 minutes. Turbulence got heavier, having people “Ohhh” and “Oosh”. Plane swing up, down, left, right. Funny to see how much flex an MD82 has.

We got a direct hit by lightning (which was a bit of an anti-climax, as there was not that much of a bang, just a lot of light and a bump as if the plane hit a speed bump).

The final approach showed the strength of the wind as we were crab-crawling sideways towards the landing strip.

The applause for the pilot was well deserved…

More on The Road about travel, airports and flying.

The school I graduated from, had one PC at the time: An Apple II. It stood in the library, and was almost inaccessible for any student. If they could, they would have put it under a glass bulb to make sure nothing happened to it.
I wrote string loads of programs in BASIC, but it remained a paper exercise as was never allowed to key it in.

After I graduated in 1983, I worked for an IT research company. We worked mainly on high tech graphic stuff. Such as digital imaging. Such as the stuff you can now do 1,000 times faster and 1,000,000 more accurate on any laptop. With freeware software. But we, we needed a 15 by 10 metres room full of PDP and VAX minicomputers. The number-crunching power of this room was roughly 1/10th of my laptop. My laptop also stores 1,000x more information.

In 1985, I bought my very first home computer, this Apple IIe:

It costed around US$5,000. Had a whopping 64 Kbyte of memory. No hard disk, but storage in two 128 kbyte mini floppies. The screen featured 40 characters per line. I sneaked in another 64 Kbyte of memory and upgraded to 80 characters per screen, but that is how far I could go.

Just last week, we bought this little thing for my youngest:

This iPod Nano has 18 Gbyte of memory, roughly 100,000x more than my Apple IIe but at 1/20th of the price. Hard disks are no longer used. The screen has a better resolution than anything we could dream of in the 80′s.

And still, with all of this technology, we can not get half of the flights in the air due to 10 cm of snow. Proof of the matter: I am looking at it, here at Brussels airport.

There are days where I, as an aid worker, think: “Am I really making a difference?”. There are other days where I reflect: “Maybe in the grand scheme of things, I don’t, but I surely have the power invested in me, my position, to change the lives of those around me.”

And that is important. Even before I became a manager, I took “the influence I could have on those around me” seriously. But in a more senior position as I am in now, this became even more apparent.

Today, I was reminded of that. I participated in job interviews. There were five candidates. Several of them were jewels of people. People with potential, with a drive, with a will to make a difference both in their job, and in the world.

We asked them “Why do you want to work with us?”. Several answered: “Because you are not a company, you are an aid organisation. You make a difference. That difference is important in my choice of employer.”

I might not have many things I am good in, but one of the qualities I have is to spot the diamonds in a crowd. I can spot those people with potential. And with the power invested in me as a manager, I have the opportunity to change the lives of these people in a way. I can give them a job, which I know will be a good match with them. A job in which they will grow and bloom. But it is not only that. I know for several of those we interviewed today, this day will be remembered as “the day I joined the organisation”. And they will remember it with a smile.

That is the difference I made today. And that also makes me smile. I made a difference today.

Remember my post After the global financial crisis comes the global humanitarian crisis?

Well today both the optimists and the pessimists hit the news. Or maybe they are both pessimists.

On one hand the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (said to be the largest humanitarian organisation in the world) is considering cutting staff and shelving projects as it braces for recession-hit donors to slash aid contributions.
It warned of greater social unrest in poor countries as high food prices were compounded by slowing economic growth, job losses and falling income.

They added “It is ‘revolting’ that the US could find $700bn to bail out its financial sector while rich countries continued to fall short of their pledges to raise aid spending to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product.”

During the 1990-1993 downturn, global aid spending fell by a quarter and did not recover to 1992 levels until 2003, the UN added. (Full

On the very same day, the UN asked for $7 billion to fund its humanitarian work around the world in 2009. That is almost double of last year’s appeal. (Full)

The need is greater, but the funding outlook for humanitarian aid is worse than before. The poorest will fall between the cracks of this dilemma.

Picture courtesy PSDTUTS