The Espresso: Edition 154

At the end of a speech I recently gave, a member of the audience came up to ask me a question, and half way through my reply, he began talking over the top of me. His conversation had nothing to do with the question he had asked nor the answer I was giving, instead it was a rant about him, his business, his background and how much he knew. Although when this happens in conversations most people won't make a comment, let me tell you, it's terribly annoying. This guy had no intention of listening to my answer, he just wanted the chance to talk at me. My dad always taught me if you're not interested in someone's answer, then don't ask the question. Sadly this was not a one off occurrence. 

Communication is shared process. It comes from curiosity, the courtesy of listening, actually looking at the other person when they are talking or you are addressing a question to them, and being genuinely interested in having a two way conversation. Conversation is not two people exchanging statements one after the other. True conversation is not asking a question and whilst the other person is answering it, you're thinking out your next point. One of my favourite movies was The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. There was a scene in the movie where the highest ranked samurai has a chance to sit and talk with Tom's character, Captain Algren. He feathers Cruise with questions, shows genuine interest, curiosity, passion and after each answer, takes time to think and ponder. At the end of the scene he says, "That was a very good conversation." I hope you have a very good conversation today with someone close to you.

There's no doubt that our country is facing a labour shortage, yet we have prisons full of people with not a lot to do. However, the Santa Rita do Spaucia prison in Brazil is using it's prisoners to generate power. Two exercise bikes have been placed in the courtyard of the penitentiary and are hooked up to batteries. The prisoners then ride the bikes and their kinetic energy is used to generate electricity which in turn charges the batteries. When their time is up an alarm sounds on the handle bars to signal it's time to get off. The fully charged batteries are taken into the city and used to power street lamps and the like. Imagine how much power could be generated if there were enough bikes for every prisoner? The scheme obviously keeps the prisoners fit and alleviates boredom but also gives them something constructive to do. It will be interesting to see if this idea catches on.

Uber is your on demand private driver. It's run from an app on your iPhone or android phone. You ring up the app and type in the address of where you'd like to be picked up from by a hire car. Uber will then despatch the nearest driver who'll come to pick you up. You'll get a text telling you their estimated arrival time and hopefully soon after that a sleek black hire car and driver will turn up and you'll be on your way. You don't even need to have cash, as you can charge the credit card that Uber will already have on file. All details are carried on your phone and one would think that pretty soon you'll be able to pay via your phone too. It's a pretty cool idea, though currently only available in the San Francisco area. It will be interesting to see the results.

'El libro que no puede esperar' is translated as The Book That Cannot Wait. Argentinian based publisher and bookshop, Etnerna Cadencia, have released a book that is written in ink that literally starts to disappear once you open the book. It has been developed using a special ink and comes in a special air tight sealed package. Once the package is opened and the book is exposed to light and air, you have 2 months to read it before the text vanishes. It's interesting how many people have 1, 2 or even 3 books half started sitting on their bedside table. The creators of The Book That Cannot Wait hope that this idea will give readers more of a sense of urgency when it comes to finishing books. The actual motivation behind the book was to help new authors to get read. Their belief being that if people didn't read the first book from an author, they wouldn't make it to a second book. We all have books on our shelf that we've bought and never read. Someone obviously saw this, thought about it and asked what if?