Ok, so some people love to stand up in front of a hundred people and do a presentation. They show no sign of fear, laugh naturally throughout, and think of reading from a script in the same way as they would walking outside with no trousers on. In other words, they are annoyingly good at what they do and you wish they would just fall down a man-hole cover. While they confront enormous challenges and do so with disturbing ease, you cower at the prospect of standing up in front of colleagues you work with every single day. Sometimes life is just not fair. Need to know more about how to do a dynamic presentation? Then you should have a read of this and fast: http://www.eniginsales.com/2010/07/02/the-power-of-dynamic-presentations/ Clearly, not everyone is born with the skills necessary to do a great presentation, but after reading the article I am confident that even quiet Malcolm – who has been terrified of presentations ever since 1998 when he actually vomited on someone half way through – could manage it. It would appear that the key to this is knowing what to do and how to do it, rather than just fumbling blindly along in the hope of a power-cut that will never come (but will come later, while you are trying to exorcise the presentation-demons from earlier in the day). Fortunately the aforementioned article advice comes from someone with a wealth of knowledge on this subject, so you could do a lot worse than to give it a read and take it on board. Failing that, you could always try a presentation training course. Good luck!

For the leisure travellers, this is especially a treat. You do not have to have stop-overs in airports and travel freely till your heart’s content. You can travel to the north and south end and explore all possibilities of adventure and fun without thinking about the high cost of travelling. Travellers can now be at any part of the world they chose and can be part of the country they love at anytime they want without thinking about tourist visas and missing their flight schedule.

But then again, borders were there as a standard measure to divide countries for a reason. Maybe the human population is not yet ready for a world without borders as we are still at the presence of war, racial discrimination and economical and political imbalance. Perhaps this is a wishful thought for the avid travellers, but looking at it in a different perspective, there are disadvantages that we are yet to explore. We are not at this stage yet, but we are still free to travel the world with a passport and a fortune as pocket money.

Enigin says according to the British Met office there is only ten years to curb the effect of climate change! Scary thought. But wait a minute aren’t those the guys that get the weather wrong half the time? It’s now (apparently) such a science they give the weather in percentages. There’s a 15% chance of rain or a 80% chance of (especially if the suns already shining everywhere) sun. So as long as they don’t say 100% they’ve got an out. I want to know what is the percentage of there realistically being anything to worry about in ten years time.

So will the CO2 thing mean hotter Summers in the UK? Thats excellent news if you live in Yorksire! Instead of it being rainy and wet 95% of the year, Yorkshire lasses might actually have a chance to get a sun tan and the lads too! So lets all get the aerosol cans out and start spraying I say! We want climate change! We want some more sun!

Thats not so PC (Politically Correct - not to be mistaken with a computer) now is it?

Maybe we should try and save the world after all … even if we don’t get a sun tan out of it. Just because we don’t want to keep sitting on the beach in our coats - determined to be at the beach even if it cold and windy just ’cause its summer and we want to get some sea air. At least we should still be bothered about all those floods in south east asia which are the result pollution and climate change.

Looks like its time to stop using regualr petrol and get an electric car. Problem with those though is people can’t hear you coming with no engine sound so now they want to add musical sounds. Now thats a fun trend. Choosing the next “ringtone"for your electric reversing car. See theres more perks than you think to saving the world…

There are times in your life that you never forget: the first time you have liposculpture surgery (so says a friend of mine…) ; your first wedding (well, assuming it doesn’t end in a horrible divorce–), your first child (so they say) and your first kiss. There are also many times you know a lot of other people will never forget, and you wish you could get inside their mind and erase that particular memory, so that it would end there, instead of said person talking about it to many other people–

One of those times, for me, is the time I tried to go down an escalator that was going up. It was highly embarrassing, and it was also very scary–

I was wearing a big dress to go to a summer party, and only did I realize as I tried to get out of the way of a very obnoxious business man type, that my dress had got trapped in the steps below my feet. A wild few seconds ensued, with some people laughing and one teenager shouting “wait until she gets to the bottom! She’s going to get ripped to shreds, you’ll see!”

That didn’t help much–

By this point I was crying my eyes out and, this being London, people were taking photos of the seconds before my imminent grisly death. Fortunately somebody hit the emergency button and I am alive to write this. I say fortunately–I still die from embarrassment whenever my friends bring this up–

It was only years later that I discovered the importance of History. Unfortunately the teacher was retired by then, and I wasn’t sure how he’d react to me turning up at his door (with a beard, no less: something he had never been able to achieve) all those years later.

Energy saving gurus Enigin had more luck at school I think. Click the link and you’ll get to see how the company has progressed over the years with detailed explanations along the way.

I found it interesting, and I think a lot of company’s would do well to follow suit. Without history, a company on the web is just a faceless enterprise, but with a bit of it I feel like I can trust what they’re saying. That, along with all kinds of blogs about numerous different things (and not just energy saving stuff; I’m talking products that you can use in the home to save a bit of money) makes this blog a place where I think I’ll be heading quite often.

This post might upset a few people. It might be the written equivalent of varicose vein removal . Especially if you have a toned body which comes from hours pumping away down at the local space-age gym–This might annoy you quite a bit–

Here we go, then: I despise gyms. Not the people, or even the gym attitude, but just the idea of gyms. The very concept goes against everything I grew up to learn.

My theory is this: we have the great outdoors. OK, so some countries have a greater outdoors than others (for example, we, in the UK, will never be able to compete with the powerful force of nature that exists in Canada), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t all embrace what we have! Why go to the gym, I say, when you can run or do exercises outside where the Sun shines and the grass blows? I just can’t get my head around it. Everything you need to exercise yourself is on your front door. And that’s not even getting in to the money thing–

Gyms can be pricey, that’s the over-riding factor. And I know far too many people who have said that they would go twice a week, only to give up after a month and never go back. Now, if they’d have not bothered and just utilized the great outdoors, that would have been fine. The great outdoors wouldn’t have been offended in the least, no. That’s probably why it has Great as a first name.

I’m not really one for TV. Like Corporate Team Building events, the very concept annoys me. It’s not that there isn’t anything good on, it’s more that I dislike the way it sucks you in and you don’t even know it. Without even realizing it, people all over the world have become slaves to a flat screen. The worst thing? They see no reason to be anything else, because what is there to be? The TV, in some places, is the centre of the universe which everything else revolves around.

That said, TV is vital for the communication of ideas. Documentaries enable us insight in to worlds far out of our comfort-zones and soaps offer unlimited potential for entertainment and escape. Without it all of us would also probably know a lot less than we do. One thing I didn’t know until recently, for example, was how badly some Muslim’s are treated while just going about their daily lives. Something which sounds obvious, but in fact doesn’t really hit home until you see it for yourself. Until you get drawn in.

I won’t say I didn’t think about it before, because that’s not true. I thought about it often, but I suppose I only scratched the surface. What the show did, quite brutally, was immerse me deeper: quickly my friends and I started to wonder how we would react in a similar situation…A confrontation, or verbal / physical abuse. Thoughts which came hard and fast, like a cricket bat over the head.

So next time you see someone being hassled for no good reason, open your mouth and say something. You’d want someone to do the same for you, wouldn’t you?

We know how to eradicate lines and wrinkles using high-tech techniques. We know how to send a probe to another planet and crash it in to the surface (not that it does much good, of course, but you can’t say it isn’t an achievement). We also know how to build a machine that could potentially tell us the secrets of the galaxy, a machine that hurls particle beams in to one another so hard that some people are worried it might be the end of days, but we can’t make tins of fish that don’t flick fishy-liquid everywhere whenever we try and open them? Does that make any sense to you?! If they’d have pumped 1/1,000,000 of that money in to solving the canned-lid dilemma then I am certain that much more would have been achieved. Forget the galaxy and how it all began because to be honest, does that really matter? Come on scientists, think about all the fury you would save people from feeling if you helped us fish lovers out!

Imagine if you could walk over to a can of fish and know, without question, that the experience you were about to have would be a pleasant, even enjoyable one. Imagine what a difference it would make to your day! Instead of flying in to a rage when fish sauce went all over your brand-new white shirt, you could smile and say “that’s why I love my fish!” But alas that day is another 1,000 years off from becoming a reality. Until then we will be forced to blindly stumble through life, cursed with the dreaded thing that is opening a can with the assurance of certain annoyance.

I’m warning you right now: if you possess ovaries, hair-less legs and an ability to multi-task while simultaneously using a phone, this might rub you up the wrong way. But still, it needs to be said: Leave Men alone will you? Not all men are a waste of space; some do know what an abdominoplasty is. But recently I’ve come across numerous articles stating just that. So I thought I better set the record straight, for all those men out there who can’t defend themselves–

As a spokesperson for modern Man (an enormous responsibility upon which great pressure is mounted let me tell you…), I’d like to clarify a few things: 1) Not all men are incapable of multi-tasking; I have a good friend (who is straight) who can operate a phone while doing Sudoku and tying his shoelaces in one hand. Granted, the conversation you have on the phone with him makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but still, give us men a break. 2) Not all men forget birthdays and important things (just 99%). 3) Not all men talk and don’t listen. Indeed, I pride myself on listening as much as opening my big fat mouth. It’s not my fault that I don’t remember everything I am told–

OK, I am making fun of this now, but that’s the point. There are problems with men just like there are problems with women, but lets stop slinging mud, shall we? It’s enough to tell us and remind us. There’s no need to start a war.