2006年5月24日 星期三
再次流浪去
從 5/27 開始我又要和朋友去流浪了。猜猜這次地點是哪裡？
我們要去 Las Vegas、New York 和 Quebec City。Las Vegas 因為去了不少次，所以不用買書了。紐約在 15 年前去過，而且是跟團去的，所以沒有什麼印象了。Las Vegas 和 New York 是朋友的 idea，因為她是「CSI」和「CSI: New York」的劇迷。其實我最主要是想去 Quebec City，因為...
音樂劇！加拿大歌手 Bruno Pelletier 的音樂劇「Dracula: Entre L'amour et la Mort」剛好會巡演到 Quebec City 去，為了追星我也飛到 Quebec City 去。不過因為紐約百老匯也是音樂劇的大本營，所以會去朝聖「The Phantom of the Opera」﹝第四次﹞及「Beauty and the Beast」。原本想看有帥哥主演的「Lestat」，是 Elton John 的最新音樂劇，不過在百老匯上演過的吸血鬼好像劇評都非常糟糕，包括「Dance of the Vampires 」、「Dracula, the Musical」，所以這一齣劇也被批評的一文不值，所以只好忍痛放棄帥哥。不過加拿大的吸血鬼音樂劇評論都相當不錯，所以我非常期待！
想到兩隻貓要自己看家兩個禮拜，雖然其中朋友會天天來看，但是還是不放心。Kiki，記得起來動一動啊！
我還沒裝東西，行李袋上已經都是 Gugu 的毛了。
2006年5月20日 星期六
戴珍珠耳環的少女
這部電影是由同名小說而改編而成，我是看了電影之後再回去看小說的。當初我為什麼會去租這部電影回來看呢？完全是因為 Colin Firth 的緣故。自從看了電視版的「傲慢與偏見」之後我就喜歡上這位內斂的演員，偏偏他演的多是內斂、沉默寡言、害羞、但是卻又可以用眼神訴說許多台詞的角色。這部小說是根據荷蘭畫家 Vermeer 的一幅同名油畫。有關這幅畫的少女世人知道得很少，但是傳言她是 Vermeer 家的女傭，但是並沒有實際的證據。小說家 Tracy Chevalier 就根據這一點資料將其延伸成整個故事。故事大綱如下： |
 Griet 因為父親無法繼續工作，而到畫家 Vermeer 家幫傭。雖然 Griet 沒有受過多少教育，但是因為她對畫及顏色的敏感度，使她逐漸變成 Vermeer 的幫手，而 Griet 和 Vermeer 兩人之間產生若有似無的感情。Vermeer 的贊助人 Van Ruijven 有天提議要 Vermeer 畫一幅 Griet 的畫像，Vermeer 雖知道 Van Ruijven 對 Griet 有非份之想，可是他無法對贊助人說不，這一切的一切都對 Vermeer 天生多疑的妻子隱瞞，因為如果她知道的話，將會有不可預知的後果。但是有一天 Vermeer 妻子的一對珍珠耳環不見了，所有事情就在這一夕之間爆發。 我第一次看這部電影的時候，只覺得每一個場景的光線、顏色、取景都像一幅畫。電影的節奏很慢，所以可能不合每個人的口味。不過電影張力十足，Griet 和 Vermeer 之間的感情一觸即發，但是兩人卻又很理性的克制。電影裡有三個場面暗示十足，卻又不露骨。一幕是當 Vermeer 看見 Griet 頭髮的時候，另一幕是 Vermeer 畫 Griet 時，叫 Griet 舔自己的嘴唇；最後是 Vermeer 幫 Griet 戴上耳環的時候。噯，用說的說不出電影裡細膩的感情描寫，還是建議大家去看這部電影吧！ 不過這部電影也有點瑕疵之處。電影開頭看不出為什麼 Griet 要到 Vermeer 家幫傭，結尾又有點讓人摸不清頭腦。小說裡有更完整的解釋，所以為了更能了解這部電影，還是先看小說吧！另外，Colin Firth 的戲份真是有點太少啦，而且扮相真是有一點點帥不起來... |
2006年5月12日 星期五
USS Midway
去年十一月的時候去 San Diego Downtown 逛了一艘退役的航空母艦「USS Midway」，中途島號。雖然十一月，可是太陽可大著呢！航空母艦的甲板寬廣，但是軍官們的「寢室」真是窄。船上除了一些現役軍官﹝應該是﹞在幫忙操縱飛行模擬器之外，還有不少之前服役在中途島號的退伍老爺爺們做嚮導，為遊客們解說及回答問題。 那些老爺爺不知道有沒有支薪，但是看他們津津有味地講著他們以前在船上的事情還真的滿有趣的！
2006年5月1日 星期一
大胖貓
上個禮拜扛了兩隻貓去看醫生。原本是帶 Kiki 去看她的肚子的，結果醫生看一看說也許是跳蚤的關係，叫我回家滴藥看看，三個月之後如果還是沒有毛的話再帶回去看看。然後就扎了 Kiki 一針疫苗。原本我是沒有打算把 Gugu 帶來看醫生的，但是既然 Kiki 都扎一針了，為了公平起見，Gugu 在兩天後也來打一針，順便讓醫生做體檢。結果沒想到， Kiki 是非常容易把她推進去提籃的，但是 Gugu 就會反抗了。而且還向醫生低吼，真是...雖然低吼，但是我看見 Gugu 的腳底猛冒汗，真是虛有其表啊！檢查結果，Gugu 有一支牙齒斷掉了，醫生建議把它取出，否則以後 Gugu 痛起來就糟糕了。拔牙加洗牙大約要美金四百多塊錢左右！！天哪，我的銀兩啊~然後兩隻都被醫生建議要減肥。Gugu 有 14 磅 3 盎司，Kiki 有 16 磅 8 盎司！真的要減肥了！
2006年4月23日 星期日
Kiki 的肚肚沒有毛
嗚...前幾天發現 Kiki 翻肚肚的時候，有兩處紅紅的。仔細一看，不得了，毛都被舔沒了！
不知道為什麼，其中兩個乳頭周圍的毛被 Kiki 自己舔掉了！到底是過敏呢，還是其他原因？唉，明天要打電話給獸醫約時間了。想到要帶這個超級膽小的小姐出門實在有頭痛！
插花一下，兩個禮拜前去買東西，結果在停車場看到一隻英國古代牧羊犬乖乖地趴在貴貴的 BMW 敞篷跑車上等主人，好可愛喔！
2006年4月18日 星期二
從對待餐廳侍者看一個人的人格
前天在 Yahoo 看到這一篇文章，覺得很有道理，所以貼出來讓大家看看：
原文章出處：這裡
CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character
By Del Jones, USA TODAY Fri Apr 14, 7:57 AM ET
Office Depot CEO Steve Odland remembers like it was yesterday working in an upscale French restaurant in Denver.
The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."
Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.
Odland isn't the only CEO to have made this discovery. Rather, it seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It's hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule.
They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.
And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, "I could buy this place and fire you," or "I know the owner and I could have you fired." Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.
Whoever came up with the waiter observation "is bang spot on," says BMW North America President Tom Purves, a native of Scotland, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, who lives in New York City with his Norwegian wife, Hilde, and works for a German company. That makes him qualified to speak on different cultures, and he says the waiter theory is true everywhere.
The CEO who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. Raytheon has given away 250,000 of the books.
Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person."
Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became "absolutely obnoxious" to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.
"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with," Swanson writes. "Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."
The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was "sweet" to Shaich but turned "amazingly rude" to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn't get the job.
Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are "pushy, self-absorbed and rude" to her before she transfers the call to him.
Just about every CEO has a waiter story to tell. Dave Gould, CEO of Witness Systems, experienced the rule firsthand when a waitress dumped a full glass of red wine on the expensive suit of another CEO during a contract negotiation. The victim CEO put her at ease with a joke about not having had time to shower that morning. A few days later, when there was an apparent impasse during negotiations, Gould trusted that CEO to have the character to work out any differences.
CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. "They're saying, 'I'm better. I'm smarter.' Those people tend not to be collaborative."
"To some people, speaking in a condescending manner makes them feel important, which to me is a total turnoff," says Seymour Holtzman, chairman of Casual Male Retail Group, which operates big-and-tall men's clothing stores including Casual Male XL.
How people were raised
Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn't easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks to how people were raised, says Siki Giunta, CEO of U.S. technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.
More recently, she had a boss who would not speak directly to the waiter but would tell his assistant what he wanted to eat, and the assistant would tell the waiter in a comical three-way display of pomposity. What did Giunta learn about his character? "That he was demanding and could not function well without a lot of hand-holding from his support system," she said.
It's somewhat telling, Giunta says, that the more elegant the restaurant, the more distant and invisible the wait staff is. As if the more important the customer, the less the wait staff matters. People view waiters as their temporary personal employees. Therefore, how executives treat waiters probably demonstrates how they treat their actual employees, says Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes, a former waitress and postal clerk, who says she is a demanding boss but never shouts at or demeans an employee.
"Sitting in the chair of CEO makes me no better of a person than the forklift operator in our plant," she says. "If you treat the waiter, or a subordinate, like garbage, guess what? Are they going to give it their all? I don't think so."
CEOs aren't the only ones who have discovered the Waiter Rule. A November survey of 2,500 by It's Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette, at 52%, way ahead of blowing your nose at the table, at 35%.
Waiters say that early in a relationship, women will pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped, to get a read on their frugality and other tendencies. They are increasingly discussing boorish behavior by important customers at www.waiterrant.net and other blogs. They don't seem to mind the demanding customer, such as those who want meals prepared differently because of high blood pressure. But they have contempt for the arrogant customer.
Rule works with celebrities, too
The Waiter Rule also applies to celebrities, says Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of agency Czar Entertainment, who has brokered deals for Mike Tyson, Mario Winans and Guerilla Black. Rosemond declines to name names, but he remembers one dinner episode in Houston a few years back with a rude divisional president of a major music company.
When dinner was over, Rosemond felt compelled to apologize to the waiter on the way out. "I said, 'Please forgive my friend for acting like that.' It's embarrassing. They go into rages for simple mistakes like forgetting an order."
Rosemond says that particular music executive also treated his assistants and interns poorly - and was eventually fired.
Odland says he saw all types of people 30 years ago as a busboy. "People treated me wonderfully and others treated me like dirt. There were a lot of ugly people. I didn't have the money or the CEO title at the time, but I had the same intelligence and raw ability as I have today.
"Why would people treat me differently? Your value system and ethics need to be constant at all times regardless of who you are dealing with."
Holtzman grew up in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in the 1950s saw opportunity as a waiter 90 miles away in the Catskill Mountains, where customers did not tip until the end of the week. When they tipped poorly, he would say: "Sir, will you and your wife be tipping separately?"
"I saw a lot of character, or the lack thereof," says Holtzman, who says he can still carry three dishes in his right hand and two in his left.
"But for some twist of fate in life, they're the waiter and you're the one being waited on," Barnes says.
原文章出處：這裡
CEOs say how you treat a waiter can predict a lot about character
By Del Jones, USA TODAY Fri Apr 14, 7:57 AM ET
Office Depot CEO Steve Odland remembers like it was yesterday working in an upscale French restaurant in Denver.
The purple sorbet in cut glass he was serving tumbled onto the expensive white gown of an obviously rich and important woman. "I watched in slow motion ruining her dress for the evening," Odland says. "I thought I would be shot on sight."
Thirty years have passed, but Odland can't get the stain out of his mind, nor the woman's kind reaction. She was startled, regained composure and, in a reassuring voice, told the teenage Odland, "It's OK. It wasn't your fault." When she left the restaurant, she also left the future Fortune 500 CEO with a life lesson: You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she treats the waiter.
Odland isn't the only CEO to have made this discovery. Rather, it seems to be one of those rare laws of the land that every CEO learns on the way up. It's hard to get a dozen CEOs to agree about anything, but all interviewed agree with the Waiter Rule.
They acknowledge that CEOs live in a Lake Wobegon world where every dinner or lunch partner is above average in their deference. How others treat the CEO says nothing, they say. But how others treat the waiter is like a magical window into the soul.
And beware of anyone who pulls out the power card to say something like, "I could buy this place and fire you," or "I know the owner and I could have you fired." Those who say such things have revealed more about their character than about their wealth and power.
Whoever came up with the waiter observation "is bang spot on," says BMW North America President Tom Purves, a native of Scotland, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, who lives in New York City with his Norwegian wife, Hilde, and works for a German company. That makes him qualified to speak on different cultures, and he says the waiter theory is true everywhere.
The CEO who came up with it, or at least first wrote it down, is Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson. He wrote a booklet of 33 short leadership observations called Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management. Raytheon has given away 250,000 of the books.
Among those 33 rules is only one that Swanson says never fails: "A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person."
Swanson says he first noticed this in the 1970s when he was eating with a man who became "absolutely obnoxious" to a waiter because the restaurant did not stock a particular wine.
"Watch out for people who have a situational value system, who can turn the charm on and off depending on the status of the person they are interacting with," Swanson writes. "Be especially wary of those who are rude to people perceived to be in subordinate roles."
The Waiter Rule also applies to the way people treat hotel maids, mailroom clerks, bellmen and security guards. Au Bon Pain co-founder Ron Shaich, now CEO of Panera Bread, says he was interviewing a candidate for general counsel in St. Louis. She was "sweet" to Shaich but turned "amazingly rude" to someone cleaning the tables, Shaich says. She didn't get the job.
Shaich says any time candidates are being considered for executive positions at Panera Bread, he asks his assistant, Laura Parisi, how they treated her, because some applicants are "pushy, self-absorbed and rude" to her before she transfers the call to him.
Just about every CEO has a waiter story to tell. Dave Gould, CEO of Witness Systems, experienced the rule firsthand when a waitress dumped a full glass of red wine on the expensive suit of another CEO during a contract negotiation. The victim CEO put her at ease with a joke about not having had time to shower that morning. A few days later, when there was an apparent impasse during negotiations, Gould trusted that CEO to have the character to work out any differences.
CEOs who blow up at waiters have an ego out of control, Gould says. "They're saying, 'I'm better. I'm smarter.' Those people tend not to be collaborative."
"To some people, speaking in a condescending manner makes them feel important, which to me is a total turnoff," says Seymour Holtzman, chairman of Casual Male Retail Group, which operates big-and-tall men's clothing stores including Casual Male XL.
How people were raised
Such behavior is an accurate predictor of character because it isn't easily learned or unlearned but rather speaks to how people were raised, says Siki Giunta, CEO of U.S. technology company Managed Objects, a native of Rome who once worked as a London bartender.
More recently, she had a boss who would not speak directly to the waiter but would tell his assistant what he wanted to eat, and the assistant would tell the waiter in a comical three-way display of pomposity. What did Giunta learn about his character? "That he was demanding and could not function well without a lot of hand-holding from his support system," she said.
It's somewhat telling, Giunta says, that the more elegant the restaurant, the more distant and invisible the wait staff is. As if the more important the customer, the less the wait staff matters. People view waiters as their temporary personal employees. Therefore, how executives treat waiters probably demonstrates how they treat their actual employees, says Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes, a former waitress and postal clerk, who says she is a demanding boss but never shouts at or demeans an employee.
"Sitting in the chair of CEO makes me no better of a person than the forklift operator in our plant," she says. "If you treat the waiter, or a subordinate, like garbage, guess what? Are they going to give it their all? I don't think so."
CEOs aren't the only ones who have discovered the Waiter Rule. A November survey of 2,500 by It's Just Lunch, a dating service for professionals, found that being rude to waiters ranks No. 1 as the worst in dining etiquette, at 52%, way ahead of blowing your nose at the table, at 35%.
Waiters say that early in a relationship, women will pull them aside to see how much their dates tipped, to get a read on their frugality and other tendencies. They are increasingly discussing boorish behavior by important customers at www.waiterrant.net and other blogs. They don't seem to mind the demanding customer, such as those who want meals prepared differently because of high blood pressure. But they have contempt for the arrogant customer.
Rule works with celebrities, too
The Waiter Rule also applies to celebrities, says Jimmy Rosemond, CEO of agency Czar Entertainment, who has brokered deals for Mike Tyson, Mario Winans and Guerilla Black. Rosemond declines to name names, but he remembers one dinner episode in Houston a few years back with a rude divisional president of a major music company.
When dinner was over, Rosemond felt compelled to apologize to the waiter on the way out. "I said, 'Please forgive my friend for acting like that.' It's embarrassing. They go into rages for simple mistakes like forgetting an order."
Rosemond says that particular music executive also treated his assistants and interns poorly - and was eventually fired.
Odland says he saw all types of people 30 years ago as a busboy. "People treated me wonderfully and others treated me like dirt. There were a lot of ugly people. I didn't have the money or the CEO title at the time, but I had the same intelligence and raw ability as I have today.
"Why would people treat me differently? Your value system and ethics need to be constant at all times regardless of who you are dealing with."
Holtzman grew up in the coal-mining town of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and in the 1950s saw opportunity as a waiter 90 miles away in the Catskill Mountains, where customers did not tip until the end of the week. When they tipped poorly, he would say: "Sir, will you and your wife be tipping separately?"
"I saw a lot of character, or the lack thereof," says Holtzman, who says he can still carry three dishes in his right hand and two in his left.
"But for some twist of fate in life, they're the waiter and you're the one being waited on," Barnes says.
