Month: December 2007

anthropology, creativity, experience, history, innovation, language, New York, society, technology, trend

Words on the street

Christa Avampato

I am fascinated by language. My dad spoke six of them. While I didn’t inherit his ability to learn language, as is evidenced by my sad attempts at French, I did inherit a love of hearing different languages and dialects. I particularly enjoy studying how a language truly shapes a culture and national behavior patterns. And the dynamism of language allows it to reflect societal trends.

It’s no wonder that my recent discovery of Urban Dictionary, http://www.urbandictionary.com/ , brought a smile to my face. The more tech-saavy readers of this blog will think that I just now have emerged from the dark ages. I fear that this is proof that my long, slow slide from hip, urban chick to crusty old broad may have finally begun. Nevertheless, I think this may also be a new find for some of you, or a refresher of knowledge gained long ago, so it is worthwhile to post the link.

Those out of the know may be asking, “So what is this urban dictionary all about?” It is a slang dictionary that is based on user-generated definitions. Literally, it is helping to define this quickly evolving world around us. And then there is a feature that allows the community members to vote on the definitions added. For example, “wOOt” is top of mind on Urban Dictionary today. It means “an expression of joy”. 3106 people give this definition a thumbs up. 565 shot it down.

The other cool feature that I love is that community members are recording the history of these words. From many definitions, we can learn where words come from, their original use, and how they’ve been adapted to become more main stream. So not only is this a dictionary, it is an anthropological history book. I’m so excited about this, it’s hard for me to sit still!

“WOOt” was recently voted word of the year for 2007 by the dictionary gurus at Merriam-Webster. Facebook was the runner up. In years past words like “google” and “blog” have received the top word honor – not a bad track record as these words are now commonplace in daily conversations. Is “wOOt” destined for this type of fame and recognition? Unclear. But it’s found its place in the American lexicon and I’m all for anything, or any word for that matter, that spreads joy.

business, career, files, Gmail, Google, technology, work

Can a mega-company like Google rewire our brains?

Christa Avampato

A few years ago I switched over to Gmail from AOL and have never looked back. I love the friendly interface, the nearly-infinite storage, the ever-expanding address book, and on and on it goes. It took some getting used to after I had been with AOL for so long. In particular I had to adjust to the lack of buckets and folders in which I was used to grouping my emails.

I am a file fanatic. I like being able to pull a folder on a topic and seeing everything I have on the subject. Doesn’t happen with Google. Instead, it has a robust search function that will pull up every email I have that contains a keyword I type in. It’s forced me to be very deliberate in how I select email titles so that I can easily recall them later on. The trouble with this is I have had to become a synonym expert. For example, if I want to pull up all of my emails relating to “being green”, I may need to search “sustainability”, “eco-friendly”, “environment”, etc. If I had a folder entitled “green”, I could drop them all in there and pull them in one swoop!
Gmail’s search function has forced into a few work-arounds. I am considering starting a business, so I’ve created a new Gmail account of emails that just relate to the business idea. I’ve also become more addicted to blog posting so I’ve started emailing to a new account about everything I need to post on my blog. For the truly important topics like these, I’m still finding that my buckets are necessary.
While I love the idea of a way to simplify and reduce the amount of filing, bookmarking, and flagging I need to do, a certain amount of it may be so deeply entrenched in my behavior patterns that it will be tough to shake! More food for thought for the talented folks at Google to consider in their quest for continuous improvement.
experience, Mark Hurt, Phil Terry

Have a Good Experience

Christa Avampato

I recently attended the book launch of “The Landmark Herodotus”, a new edition of the ancient text edited by Robert Strassler. The event was put on by Good Experience, the dynamic duo of Mark Hurst and Phil Terry. I joined the reading group to get through this text, which begins in March, and was recently poking around on Mark’s blog: www.goodexperience.com/blog.

I’m recommending the blog to all my friend for good reason: it provides concise, well-written information that helps you become more aware of your own experience and the experiences you create for others. In this effort, Mark is incredibly generous in providing kudos to companies and people who are entrenched in the pursuit of good experience and delivering results.

One such find is his post “Three websites to be thankful for” which includes links to http://www.freerice.com/ and http://www.dailygood.org/. One is a trivia game that helps in world anti-hunger efforts and the other is a daily post of good news happening in the world. Both are home runs. I hope you’ll check them out, and log into Mark’s blog!
music

A Fine Frenzy

Christa Avampato

At first the title above sounds to me like a perfect subtitle to my life. Instead, it is a really terrific singer / songwriter, Alison Sudol, who has written music that I cannot stop playing on my ipod. The album, One Cell in the Sea, has a five-star rating on Amazon and is flying off the shelves, for good reason.

Her arrangements, lyrics, and voice have an enchantment to them. There are few albums that I can listen to from beginning to end and love every single song. This is one. Stop reading this blog post and get your hands on a copy.
home, New York

Speaking of Home

Christa Avampato

“When I speak of home, I speak of the place where — in default of a better — those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy’s tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding.” ~Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby

I was thinking about this quote over the weekend when my friend, Trevin, and I were at our favorite cheapie lunch spot – the cafe at the Edison Hotel. Trevin and I moved to the city (Trevin for the first time, me for the third time) around the same time and I have no doubt in about 50 years we will become two of those crusty old folks that you hear in the streets of New York saying things like “I remember back when I first moved here….” We will be relics of a time gone by after living out our lives in this fabulous city of ours with tall tales to tell anyone who may be interested in listening.

After wolfing down cheeseburgers and fries, we went over to the Gershwin Theatre for the laying of the wreath at Noël Coward’s statue inside the theatre hall of fame. Trevin was invited as he is a member of the Noël Coward Society – http://www.noelcoward.net/home.html. I had never been there before though Trevin has. Actually, he is a walking theatre archive himself. (Finally he is going to create his own blog to record all the inane pieces of theatre trivia he knows. I will be publicizing it hardily once it is up and running.)

Trevin and I were the youngest people in the ceremony group by about 3+ decades. Mr. Coward was an English playwright and actor who wrote a litany of fantastic works including Private Lives, Present Laughter, and Waiting in the Wings. He thought he was a man who would be forgotten, but to this small society and to the theatre community at-large, he is very well-remembered and loved.

I was giving Trevin a hard time about his membership, mostly because Trevin and I give one another a hard time about everything the same way siblings do. We do laugh at one another though we do this at the same time so it all evens out. Though as I looked around at this collection of people in the Gershwin, I could see myself in them. They, at one time, were all young and fabulous in New York City, and were all too happy to tell us about it. I listened with interest, hoping that someday people may do the same for me, too.

At that moment, I realized what I love best about New York. Among its many wonderful attributes, its greatest may be that this city is a home for everyone, with a group for everyone. All you really have to do is find what it is you love, and you will undoubtedly find people who love the same thing. And they all have a story; they all arrived to this same spot by very different routes and we have much to learn from their journeys. New York is a gypsy tent and a barn that Dickens would be proud of.

Life

Make me a Diamond

Christa Avampato

I love collecting odd ball facts. I heard one today that knocked my socks off. There is a company in Chicago called Life Gem. Anyone can send them a lock of hair or a few grains of cremated remains of a loved one (even a pet!) and in about 18 weeks, they will produce a diamond from it. Makes sense as diamonds are made from carbon, and a large portion of us is carbon. I have always been slightly creeped out by the prospect of ending up in a box six feet under or having my remains scattered about in some designated place. Now I have the chance to be a sparkling diamond!? I had to find out more.
So, I googled Life Gem, and the website, http://www. Lifegem.com, popped right up. You can order a variety of sizes and colors, choose an inscription if you’d like, and have the stone set into a one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry. They even have a family plan if you’d like a set of four! And teh stones, from the photos are beautiful.
The truly touching part of the website houses the testimonials. So many people attest to the fact that having this diamond created was a way to manage the grieving process, a truly beautiful way to pay tribute to a loved one so they would never be forgotten.
And then something really remarkable hit me. Perhaps it’s because during dinner last night I was discussing marriage with a few friends of mine: what if a couple decided to have diamond rings made from each other’s locks of hair rather than trekking down to Tiffany’s or Diamond Row? If I could ever find a guy that would go for something like this, I’d know he was the right one for me!

Just goes to show you that there really is a market for just about anything these days…

happiness, relationships, work

What remains

Christa Avampato

“Oh, my friend, it’s not what they take away from you that counts. It’s what you do with what you have left.

— Hubert Humphrey”

This quote seems especially poignant this month as my student loans have now entered repayment. “My days of living the high life are over,” I thought as I plugged in my payment to my on-line bill pay system. And then my wonderful friend, Steve, said, “Ah, you just get used to it.” I thought he may be saying this to me just to make me feel better. Steve’s not like that. He wants me to feel better, yes. Though he’s a straight shooter. If I’m doing something that’s leading me down the wrong path, he’ll tell me. No holes barred.

I had dinner with my friends Elizabeth and Kerry tonight and we were discussing relationships. Elizabeth is going to a number of weddings this year, and so we got on the topic of marriage which naturally lead to the topic of divorce and how high the rate is in the U.S. I said that I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever be able to handle a divorce as ending dating relationships is hard enough for me. “You surprise yourself with what you can handle,” they both said. And in the past few years I have found that to be true. Even when I thought I was down and out, it always turned out that I was down temporarily and that being out was never in the picture.

This same quote also speaks to how much energy or time we have left in our lives after work and other commitments. It’s important to consider what we do in those free moments, with the energy that remains. And can we find activities that replace the energy we have lost while engaged in other tasks? It’s worth the time and effort to consider “when we are stripped of extra funds, time, energy, relationships, etc., what is it that sustains us?” And how will be make the most of it? Inevitably, at some point, it will be all we’ve got.

dating, New York

The Fast Track

Christa Avampato

I took my second shot at speed dating last night. This time, I had 40 mini-dates over the course of 3 hours. And here comes the shocker: out of 40 available men, I found 1 that I’d be interested in seeing again. And that’s only because he’s very good-looking. Now his lack of interestingness could have something to do with him being date #38 for me. He was clearly exhausted from talking about himself so much.

The trouble with speed dating is that the only way you’re really inclined to want to see someone again is if you happen upon an interesting nugget of information about them in the 3 minutes you actually talk to one another (unlikely, though possible) or you have some physical attraction to the person (as was the case with #38.) Now, don’t get me wrong. I did enjoy learning about some of these guys – places they’ve traveled to, where they work, what places they like to go to for happy hour or dinner. There just wasn’t any spark of interest with 39 of them.

My romantic sensibilities make me inclined toward nerds and guys who have a goofy sense of humor who don’t take themselves too seriously. These guys aren’t going to be found in speed dating circles. They’re out in the world, doing things, making things, and having a load of fun doing it. By design, speed dating is really primed for “slicksters” and people who put on aires. When you only have three minutes, there isn’t much time to get real. You’re under a lot of pressure to make a good impression right out of the gate, and you know the person on the other side of the table is watching you very intently.

I didn’t realize all of this until giving it a second go. And so, this concludes the end of my speed-dating days. All two of them. Though, I keep reminding myself, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I just need a new venue, and I need to slow down.

cooking, holiday, New York

I understand Rachel Ray and Hillary Clinton

Christa Avampato

A number of years ago, Hillary Clinton was criticized in the press because she said she was not a woman who was going to stay home and bake cookies. On her cooking shows, Rachel Ray continually talks about her inability and lack of interest in baking. I totally get it – I’m not the kind of woman who will stay home and bake cookies either. Quite frankly, I can’t do it. Truly – I am not capable of baking without burning, under cooking, or just plain screwing it up.

So what? I can’t bake – big deal! Actually, it is a big deal. I am 100% Italian, people known for their remarkable culinary abilities, particularly their delicious desserts! Every once in a while after enough time has passed since my last baking disaster, I will get bold enough to give it a try again. People outgrow things all the time – maybe the time has finally arrived for my baking ability to emerge.

I made a few pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving that went over quite well and I think this grew my head a bit too big. I was reading through Real Simple magazine’s holiday issue and there were so many beautiful cookies on the glossy pages that I just couldn’t resist. To up the ante, I decided to make cookies for several people in my office to be wrapped up as holiday gifts.

It’s was a mixed experience. 1/3 of the cookies were wonderful, 1/3 were passable but not something I’d give to others as a gift, and the other 1/3, well, let’s just say I was grateful to have some extra trash bags in the apartment. So here is the secret to my future baking: I need to make three times as many baked goods as I actually need to ensure that I get a good amount of acceptable product.

The other option is that I just concede defeat to the baking gods, hang up my cookie sheets, and focus on things I do well. There are a myriad of bakeries in New York City that sell incredibly delicious, albeit expensive, sweets. One of my favorites is Rose and Joe’s Italian Bakery in Astoria, Queens. http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7327721/ And that one is rather affordable and has one of the best traditional dessert selections I’ve ever seen. Who says money can’t buy happiness and keep my kitchen clean and smoke free?

The above picture is from Rose and Joe’s bakery and can be found at https://christaavampato.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/roseandjoe27sbakery1.jpg
Uncategorized

Bank fees

Christa Avampato

Just a short rant on the ATM system in this country. I recently went to dinner with my friend, Brooke. The restaurant only takes cash so Brooke paid as I had only plastic and then we stopped at an ATM so I could pay her back. The ATM itself charged me $2.50 and then my own bank charged me another $2. (There aren’t any branches of my bank in the neighborhood where we were eating.)

I found this extremely annoying. This is my money and I’m being charged to withdraw it by my own bank. (I’m fine with the ATM at a bank I don’t bank at charging me a fee – I’m using a service they’re providing and they get no benefit otherwise because they don’t house my money.) Worse than that, my minimum balance is very high so a good chunk of my money is always tied up to keep from paying a monthly fee. I wonder when a bank will finally get that customers deserve to be treated with a higher level of concern.