CISV and the Olympic Games

A while back, I friend of mine posted on Facebook that the Olympic Village in Vancouver looks like a CISV camp: Full of flags! The more I thought about it, the more I liked her analogy. Last year, I was an adult leader at a Village Camp for CISV. I was responsible for 4 children who were 11 years old, and we traveled across Canada to meet another 56 children and 20 adults. We spent a month playing, learning about each others cultures, teaching others about our countries, correcting stereotypes, and Building Global Friendship. It was a wonderful summer, a wonderful experience, and one that I can't wait to repeat (although I won't be able to go this summer for lack of vacation time). The children at camp were chosen to represent their countries, their culture and their beliefs. 

At camp, there were people representing 4 of the 5 continents, and although not every child spoke fluent English, everyone was able to communicate and to have a great experience. There wasn't any competition, and there wasn't anyone trying to prove they were the best in something, but I think I can relate to some of its aspects to the Olympic Games here in Vancouver. First, the games gather together people from over 80 countries in the world. These countries, from  all 5 continents) might or not have a history with winter sports, but somehow, these athletes fell in love with the art of the North Pole, and here they are.

Some people will be watching them carefully, wishing they were in the athletes place. Over 5000 of them made their way to the Olympics. Some of these will go back home with with a medal. Some will have realized the experience of merely participating in the games. I can already see (and hear) lots of children that are seeing these magic moments, and will grow up with a dream. A dream to participate in the games in a distance, or not so much, future. It's common to watch interview with winners and they'll comment on their heroes and the inspirational moment that started the dream. 

If you ask me, I'd love to be participating in the events outside the competition. I see the Olympic Villages as a big Village Camp with people from all over. They're here to compete, and I doubt there is one who will come thinking they're here just for "being," but besides the games, when their competition is over, I bet they socialize, talk, enjoy and meet people from all over the world. I have many friends volunteering for the Olympics ( and I'm sad I didn't apply sooner, but I wasn't sure I'd have time between classes and work) and I can see all that goes on behind the scenes, with the lounge room where athletes can relax in the Village, or the place where they eat, live and sleep during the games. It's normal to see the athletes hanging out downtown, watching their friends competitions, and even in the skytrain. After all, they're just normal people (with special talents of course!).
 

As we approach the end of the games, I saw only one sore loser who didn't accept the silver. All other times, people were congratulating each other, and some athletes even train together although they compete for different countries. There are athletes who changed countries to be able to compete, those who are competing for their parents citizenship. It doesn't make a difference. In the end, they're here, and they're participating in the magic. As I said before, just as a CISV camp has a peace education program, the games serve the purpose of healthy competition, instead of irrational rivalry. I hope everyone taking part in the games enjoy them as much as possible. It is a magical event that happens only so often, and for the 5000 athletes, 25000 volunteers, thousands of workers and spectators, will forever leave a mark. Just like my summer Camp. 

Twitter

A friend of mine told me about Twitter and  about signing up to read John Mayer's tweets. That's how my love for twitter started, and for John (but that's another story). In the beginning I was skeptical to add another social networking website to my daily dose of online time, but on the other hand twitter has proven to me that it is time well spent. I saw this video explaining what Twitter is, and I thought I should share:

Twitter in Plain English

In a fast paced world, where people have no time or desire to read a full article before they realize it wasn't worth it, Twitter comes with a new design: You have 140 characters to express a thought, idea, feeling, share some news or reply to people's tweets. (I've written about it before when I said that it was funny how celebrities that always kept a distance from their fans, were now direct connected to them). If people didn't understand or believe in what it could accomplish, I don't think anyone that uses it thinks like that now. It is better than instant messaging for exchanging information, or better than spam email to sell offers.

The New York Times has several interesting articles about Twitter:

-Twitter is what you make of it - It can be used for anything.. From telling jokes, communicating sales or advertising your blog - anything applies.

- All you need to know on Twitter self-explanatory ;)

- Technology Doesn't Dumb Us Down. It Frees Our Mind

- Putting Twitter's World to Use  - It can be used for advertising, spreading the word for non-profits, keeping in touch with fans/followers, or anything you can think of.

I can say that after I gave it a real try, I've abandoned Orkut, Facebook (logging once every couple of days) and I log on Twitter daily, several times a day. Sometimes the information seems overwhelming to keep up with. But some tweets are exactly what you need to read at that time.

On Twitter, you don't keep in touch with your regular group of people. While you can follow them too, somehow your connections self assemble and you have the opportunity to connect with random people who have interesting things to share.

I'm tweeting. Are you?

Celebrating the internet and the WWW. *

After studying for my midterm with my university's online tools, I had nothing to do so I started checking my Twitter and Facebook account, specially since it's Friday night nobody would be up to chat on MSN or Skype. Wow. Just wow. Who would have thought that just 10 years ago I didn't even have an email? Or most of us didn't. Or that you'd be able to check every single website from your phone? Technology sometimes amazes me. And sometimes it makes me scared.

It's funny to think that I know very little about something that impacts my life so much. I just found out that the internet is turning 40 (but still in great shape) and that The Guardian has a lot of information about history, curiosities and personal testimonials of how the internet changed the world. I just read 40 years of the internet: how the world changed fore ver and it is a very interesting article to read. It talks about the first time people tried to communicate online, and also the motif for starting the idea in the first place. According to the article, it was a project to allow the government to access computers remotely (a.k.a. spy on other governments). Isn't it ironic that the internet was created for something which we're trying to combat nowadays?

Another interesting point is made by asking why it took so long to spread. However, now it's estimated that about 1.7 billion people are connected to the WWW.

"Unless you are 15 years old or younger, you have lived through the dotcom bubble and bust, the birth of Friends Reunited and Craigslist and eBay and Facebook and Twitter, blogging, the browser wars, Google Earth, filesharing controversies, the transformation of the record industry, political campaigning, activism and campaigning, the media, publishing, consumer banking, the pornography industry, travel agencies, dating and retail; and unless you're a specialist, you've probably only been following the most attention-grabbing developments. Here's one of countless statistics that are liable to induce feelings akin to vertigo: on New Year's Day 1994 – only yesterday, in other words – there were an estimated 623 websites. In total. On the whole internet. "This isn't a matter of ego or crowing," says Steve Crocker, who was present that day at UCLA in 1969, "but there has not been, in the entire history of mankind, anything that has changed so dramatically as computer communications, in terms of the rate of change."

The internet has changed human relationships and dynamics. It has changed the way we communicate. Oracle or not they already knew that "men would communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. And here we are. It is impossible to think of the world without the internet, and it's hard to imagine that from 6 billion people, only 1.7 billion use the web. Of course that some people have more important things to worry about (like what to eat for example, or how to survive). Yet, it is nice to see that everyday more people are using the internet to break barriers, build bridges, fill in the gaps and undermine authoritarian governments.

With this new social dynamic, regulations had to be created to protect people's property rights and a new "social contract" had to be drawn to establish the etiquette for the internet. Being it so new, we're still creating profiles of what to combat, what to abolish and what should be allowed. There is massive exchange of information and opinions going on, and with that the right for freedom of speech is always called upon.

Except that, my freedom ends where your starts.

And, if everything is relative, then no pain, no gain. The internet is turning 40, but we just started walking through its wires.

Twittering

Can we say anything meaningful in 140 characters?

A few days ago I decided that I was either going to use my twitter, or I better delete it, since it was just one more "place" where I leave "footprints." Anyway, I like the concept and depending on who you follow you get a lot of good information that you wouldn't otherwise. Like following newspapers for example, I get the headlines with links, and if they're interesting I decide to read the article. I do try to read the paper anyways, but I might miss something.

Besides the newspaper, there's lots of good people, or institutions sharing a whole lot of information with everyone. There's also an exchange of messages in real time, or not, but with people that you'd never have in your msn or other online messenger.

I don't know how I ended up with a Brazilian famous person so I started looking for people I'd never think about following, but it'd be fun to see if they're there and what they talk about. I ended up finding Xuxa, Sandy, Luciano Huck, among others.

Do you know the irony of that? Most famous people complain so much that they lack privacy, and that people should give them some space. Well.. now what seems to be happening is that the artists themselves are twittering and sometimes even answer simple commoners. Raise your hand if you've never sent a letter to someone famous ( be it an artist, singer, politician..) I probably sent one to Xuxa when I was little. You'd always get those standard messages back right? Sometimes we would wonder if the person even cared to read the letters. How could they, if they get tons a day?

Now, not only do they read your comments, but they also "choose" some to reply, or comment on. After all this time, it took a social network to bring people "closer." Long live the world wide web!

You gotta love cell phone companies

Sigh. I worked for a call center in Brazil. After a month with the prepaid group (and very good rating from my supervisor) I got "promoted" to the account service group. Then trouble begun. I know everyone hates working in call centers, or calling call centers, but I had fun. At Vivo most of the prepaid calls were for checking account balance, or other easy issues, and they were usually teenagers just having fun. With the big account costumers I lost it. My favorite dislike (for calls) were cloned cell phones and their monthly bills of over 30,00o thousand reais. Try telling your client he has to pay the bill, and then dispute it.. not fun.

So, every time I call Fido's call center I usually know how to get what I want. I'm a good costumer of almost 3 years, spend well, pay on time, ( if I were at Vivo I'd be gold member :) Let's say I didn't have good news today. I called the call center because I want to update my phone to an iphone, but I was told I can't do it until august 31st because that's 6 months to the end of my contract. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.. The thing that amuzes me is that I can't even opt to pay more. No. Either I cancel my account and get a new one (not worth it), or I buy a unblocked phone somewhere else. You've got to be kidding me! Usually the price of the phones depend on how long your contract is. But for the iphone, you need to be close to the end of your contract to get one. Price is the same and you have no option. Niiiiiiiice.

I'd go for a blackberry, since I already have an ipod (which I'll continue to use), but Fido only has 2 models that I don't like. If I'm writing emails, I want a bigger screen right? And I do think iphone internet is better anyway. So, now I can try a scheme of getting someone to get a new account with an iphone and switching phones ( I also want to keep my number), or I wait till August.

Waiting would be no problem, except that I'll be away for the month of July, with no laptop close by, and I'm taking an online summer class! I'll have 2 assignments due while I'm away. My plan is to do it before I leave and post it later. Thus, an iphone would be a big help. So now I just have to figure out how to get one. I was giving it to myself as my birthday present, but I might have to choose something else.

Throw the first rock who has never had problems with cell phone companies...

Social (online) networking

I remember the first computer I ever used, a long time ago. I think I was 8, and we were at school learning some basic commands. It was interesting, but if someone had told me that people would be using a computer for 6, 8 hours a day I'd think they were crazy. I'm from the time when we learned how to type in a type writer(!!), and I can remember how exciting it was when my dad bought an eletric one!By the time I was 12, I already had an ICQ account, and later came MIRC. I remember spending all day with my friends, going home and logging on to continue the conversation.( I believe human beings are natural communicators, some more than others, and that a big part of the problems with humankind is miscommunication).

Nowadays, I don't think I could name all the social networking websites available. I've been in touch with Friendster, Hi5, Orkut, MySpace, Facebook, TalkSFU(my recent acquisition is twitter.. it's interesting. Not sure if it contributes to my life in anything though).

What I see with Orkut or Facebook, at least,(the only ones I've kept) is that most people at first want to show popularity, so they'll add people they don't even know. Nothing wrong in making new friends, I however, choose to be friends with my real friends and people I like, admire, or want to keep in touch, even if it's not on a regular basis. I try to clean up my msn, facebook and orkut on a regular basis. When I said it at a social gathering the other day, some people said it was rude to delete people, some people said they don't care so much as to who sees their information. I do. I'm sure people deleted me too at some point, or blocked me. If it's someone important to me I'll ask why. If it isn't, I just ignore it.

I guess we now have to learn the rules for "online social interaction." Something everyone says is that using UPPERCASE LETTERS seems like you're screaming and it's rude. Writing in WeiRd WaYs is also annoying.

Funny is that you can have empathy, or despise the person, just by message exchanges. Whether it'd be the same feeling in person who knows? ( I usually have a very good feeling for people by what they say, or how they say things. Otherwise, I’d never meet strangers I’ve only chatted with). Just as an example, I used to read this blog, and I always thought I’d like to be this girl’s friend. That was 4 years ago, and now she’s one of my closest friends.

That’s a whole story of online dating, (and online falling in love too). That’s something I wouldn’t try in Brazil. I tried it in Canada and it was fun for a while. (After you meet in person, and start to hang out, it doesn’t really matter how you met). But it’s fun just in the beginning. After a while you either meet “the one,” or you run out of compatible choices..