Photo: Carlos Gardel in Plaza San Martin - Buenos Aires taken by Jorge Dobbi
Yesterday, author and workplace columnist, Anita Bruzzese, tagged me for this blog meme.
So here it goes... 7 random and weird things about me.
Between the ages of 5-11, I couldn't wear clothes that had seams in them. Since finding seamless clothing was impossible, my mother had to buy only the softest sweatshirts and pants. I loved to chew holes in them too, especially in the sleeves and around the neck. My poor sister got the hand-me-downs. She's still bitter.
I didn't go to college straight from high school. I moved around a lot - Richmond, VA to New Orleans, LA to San Luis Obispo, CA to New York to Buenos Aires. Between moving, working, and starting a business, I finished my college education 10 years later. I paid my own way and left school with no debt. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made.
I moved to Buenos Aires after a two week trip. A month later, I sold everything I owned and have been here ever since. My family thought I was crazy, but we have managed to see each other frequently. I even convinced my sister to move here for six months. And I see clients and candidates just as much as I did while living in the U.S. because these days Argentina seems to be the new vacationing hot spot.
I was in the military once. I joined in tandem with my friend because we made a deal we'd do it together. He never showed up to Basic Training. I was an Army Reservist with a Human Resources specialty. When I got the offer to become a medium wheel vehicle mechanic, I didn't re-enlist.
I always wanted to be an FBI agent (like Jodi Foster in Silence of the Lambs). I never tried to get in, but it probably has something to do with why I like recruiting and research so much.
I was a competitive gymnast and practiced for over 10 years. I've managed to maintain most of my flexibility and can still slide myself across the room in pretzel form.
When I was traveling through Spain, I coincidentally shared a room with a fellow traveler who I soon realized was a candidate I had cold-called and almost placed with a San Francisco software company. Random encounters like this always seem to happen to me in the strangest of places.
His project, We Feel Fine, scans new blog entries for "I feel" or "I am feeling" statements and records the sentence. It then categorizes its findings by feeling and notes the geographic location, the gender of the writer, the age, etc.
"The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on."
This project is a very interesting idea, but I think it's a bit narrow-minded to say this is how the world is feeling. There are so many people in the world who still don't use the computers and not all of us self-publish. The data for this project is pulled from English
language blogs and it excludes how bloggers are feeling who write in Mandarin, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, or any of the 6,700 living languages in the world.
The idea though is fascinating and I'm excited to see what else Jonathan has up his sleeve.
In Argentina, I don't have the luxury of paying by debit card for everything. More often than not, I need cash for a majority of my daily transactions. For the financially organized, tracking cash spending is a chore. It implies I'll waste a lot of precious time waiting for the vendor to write out a receipt and then trying to read the illegible handwriting to manually enter it into my personal finance tracking system when I discover it again. Forget trying to get my husband to do this too!
On my quest to improve productivity (and sanity), I stumbled upon this recent post on Lifehacker about a Tweet What You Spend. Rescued!
You can register a new Twitter account (make it private) and then you follow Tweet What You Spend, it follows you back and you complete the registration process. After registration, you track your spending through Tweets. With your mobile phone at the point of purchase, you use your Twitter account to sent the details of your purchase and the service uploads it to your cash journal to be categorized and later imported into whatever personal finance software you use.
Here is the quick tutorial video to get you set up.
book The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. It's hard to describe how much I loved this book - if you haven't read it yet, it's a real treat.
It's an immigrant family saga filled with torture, tragic accidents and ill-starred loved.The main character, Oscar, is a sci-fi, comic book loving, overweight geek obsessed with girls. This excerpt from the book describes him well: "Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his lightsaber or a Lensman her lens."
The book is mostly narrated by Oscar's sister's ex-boyfriend. It shifts back and forth in time and between the family's life in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. We learn about Oscar and his quests for love, his mother, Beli, and her brutal childhood and his sister, Lola. It's a hilarious and tragic story laced with the Dominican Republic's fascinating and brutal history under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.
The book mixes Spanish with English freely and doesn't offer translations, but if you don't understand, don't let it discourage you. It's a gem of a book.
For more info on Junot Diaz and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, watch this:
I've been waiting for my absentee ballot. When I was in military basic training during the 1996 election, I got my ballot two days after the election. I hope this isn't the case again!
Date: October 2nd, 2008 / Author: Lindsay / No Comments »
I love Buenos Aires. I made the move here in 2005 and haven't looked back since. I can count hundreds of reasons why I love my life here, but one of the highlights is the access to all of the excellent Argentine wines. It's good stuff and I think most who have had the opportunity to travel through the region would agree.
I know this has nothing to do with recruiting, but I wanted to share one of my pleasures since I know it might interest some of you who enjoy wine.
Private Wine Tastings in New York, Los Angeles, and Portland by Anuva Vinos.
My friend, Daniel Karlin, recently started an exclusive wine club called Anuva that sources micro-production wines from Argentina for its members. They will be doing private wine tastings to introduce the club in select US cities on the following dates:
New York, NY: October 27-November 9 Los Angeles, CA: November 9-November 27 Portland, OR: November 27-January 6, 2009
Tasting groups for 6-10 people (12 max) will be led by Daniel and Lourdes. Each group tasting costs $175 total (not per person) and includes:
6 different wines guaranteed to please. All limited production and exclusive.
Glassware
Set-up/clean-up
Witty banter (he is very charismatic and gives a great presentation)
A host would need to invite and ensure guest attendance, provide the space, and contribute optional food items.
It's taken me two years of talking about this blog to actually get here. Now I'm here!
I'll be mainly talking about my professional life - the day-to-day craziness in the recruiting industry, public relations, and industry trends. And probably ever so often my personal interests and life in general.
This blog is to share my recruiting experiences and discuss thoughts on the job market, PR industry and technology. I'm an entrepreneur, business developer and recruiter.
His project, 
This blog is to share my recruiting experiences and discuss thoughts on the job market, PR industry and technology.
Alison Kenney is an independent PR practitioner with more than 15 years of PR consulting experience.
