New word from BBC – keep your English up to date.

If you want to be successful in business, I’m told that it is very important to make a lot of effort to meet new people, to socialise and create a network of useful contacts which you can then exploit to advance your career. You meet and make friends with people who might be able to help you later on your professional career. This is called social networking, and it is one of the buzzwords in business in 1980s and 90s.

Well, with new technology come new words. After social networking, we now have social notworking. Increasingly, people are meeting people online using websites that intended to make social networking easier. These sites, things like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, … have become incredibly popular. Most people use them as a way of chatting with their friends, and sharing photographs and information about social events – parties, birthday etc. Some people are even using them to provide regular updates about what they are doing, often many time each hour.  Well, when you do this at work, instead of many things you should be doing, it is not social networking, it is social notworking.

If you are one of those people that use these sites a lot, it can be tempting to check what your friends are doing tonight while nobody else in the office, or to see if your friends have put those photos from the last trip you took together on the site yet. It might only take a second … and no-one will ever know. My advice is to check your company’s internet policy and to think about your boss’s attitude before you log in to your favorite sites. Some employers take a very dim view about social notworking.

A series of my writing practice. I did rewrite the content from o website. However it is quite interesting.

A long time ago, there was a young man who wanted to find the meaning of life. He traveled from the sea to the mountain to do that.

One day, he saw a butterfly trying to move with its new wings. The new wing is weak, so it is very hard for the butterfly to move. Nearby, another butterfly was trying to get out of its cocoon. Wanted to help, he broke the cocoon and the new butterfly easily got out. The new butterfly tried to open its wings but could not, and then became quite, silent in death. The young man felt so sad. The butterfly could have got out of its cocoon, opened its wings and flied high on the sky if he had not helped it. It should not have died in that way!

What can we learn from the young man’s story? Let others do their work by themselves. No one should do for another what that person can do alone. Sometimes, our help is not necessary and even it may destroy everything. That is the rule of life.

Continue …

Today we will continue with the young man’s story who wanted to find the meaning of life. After the experience he gained from the story of butterfly, what lessons will he get?

When he was on his journey, it began to rain. As the rain was heavier and heavier, he had to find a cave for shelter. In the small cave, he watched the harsh, cold wind blowing outside and the lightening lit the hillside with its brightness. Nearby there have been a great, solid oak tree and also a small willow tree fighting with the violent wind. The oak spoke proudly: “I’m strong, and brave. I have never been afraid of anything, anyone”. Suddenly, the violent wind blew, and the oak tree was broken in a few minutes. The young man heard the fallen oak say: “I’m strong, rigid, solid and now broken.” Said the willow, “I’m flexible. I’m a toy to the wind. I bend.” As the willow tree bend and sway, bowing low to the ground, it can survive.

When the storm became quite, the young man got out of the cave. He has just got his second lesson on his trip: “Learn to bend and move like the willow in the current; for then you can watch great things and learn from them without breaking.”

Continue … the Bear and the Deer

This time the young man walked into a long and narrow valley. He saw a bear and a deer at a spring. They were drinking water from a small pool, and the young man was thirsty. He was about to shout at the bear and the deer and ask for water when something stopped him. “It’s strange – a bear and a deer drinking together!” he thought.

After a while, he decided to speak. “May I take a drink” he asked. The bear and the deer lookup and said: “There is plenty of water and there is no scarcity. The water belongs to us all.” After having drunk, the young man sat down to rest and the bear and the deer came to rest with him. The young man if they were friends. “No, we are not friends but we learn from each other”, said the bear. And the deer continued:  “One day I and the bear came to the spring at the same time. We were both thirsty. Here we had a violent fight. After the fight both of us were hurting and bloody. No one was happy.” Bear continued: “We realized that it seemed better not to fight; and to share the water of the spring.”

The young man smiled and laid on the grass for rest. And the wind whispered into his ears: “It is wrong to fight when both want the same thing and there is enough for both.” The man rested for a while and then left the bear and the deer sleeping in the warm sunlight. He had got his meaningful lesson of life.

Continue …

Let’s come back to the young man and his journey. He was trying his best to reach the mountain top where he thought the wisdom was. After climbing for hours he was so tired. He sat down in the shadow of a cliff, and the wind whipped around the rocks as warning “no giving up!” it whispered “Get up, and fulfill your promise. Get up!”

The young man stood up and got on his way. Suddenly the young man was looking into a lovely meadow. The smell of flowers and sweet music seemed to fill the air, and the young man was drawn in. There were people laughing and dancing, and eating good food. And the young man wanted to join their fun. He picked some flowers near there and was going to join with them. Then a large sunflower spoke gently to him “Don’t let your head be turned by the beauty of this moment. Do not let the laughter of the party change your vision. Do not allow this temptation to change your path.” The young man listened to the sunflower. He looked longingly to the people who were playing, and he turned to follow the path to the top of the mountain.

From the sunflower he learned not to give into temptation, for it would destroy all our efforts. He learned to recognize the things that would tempt him from the purpose of his work. Although there are time for fun, one must complete one’s work first.