re-reading the inauguration speech

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny."

i love inspired words.

5 reasons to love 30 rock

EU's art faux pas

EU recently commissioned david cerny, a czech artist, to do a sculpture piece to symbolise the glory of a unified europe, by reflecting something special about each EU country.

well, the man's been known to make a mockery of establishments, so of course, he couldn't pass up such a fabulous opportunity -http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5526676.ece

oh so funny. i particularly like his impressions of bulgaria, romania and france.

revolutionary road

i'm only at chapter 2, but its already proving to be a good read. poignant at this point.

person of the year 2008

no prizes for guessing who time magazine's person of the year for 2008 is.

when i read his interview with time, his responses to certain questions stirred admiration from me. they demonstrated a clear but driven mind, strong convictions/principles, yet balanced with a good sense of reality, much the person i aspire towards. and i wanted to post it, as a reminder to myself as well, as i trudge through life with my own set of challenges.

and i unashamedly quote from the magazine here:

was there ever a point in the election when you thought you were going to lose? when was it?

well, let me say it this way: there were multiple points throughout the election when i thought i could lose. including the day i announced. and honestly, you know we had a bunch of ups and downs in the campaign. i'll tell you what, though: the way michelle and i talked about it before we made the decision to get in this race was, if we run the kind of race that i wanted to run, if we were engaging people and exciting people and bringing new people into the process, if i was speaking honestly and truthfully about what i thought my priorities were, then i always thought we had a good chance of winning. and if we lost, that wouldn't be such a terrible thing. and that's why i think i stayed pretty steady throughout the race, despite the ups and downs.

there weren't that many occasions during this campaign - there were a few but not that many - where i wasn't proud of what we were doing or felt somehow that i was making compromises of my core principles. michelle and i pledged that whatever happened, we'd come out of this thing whole. and there wasn't any point in this campaign where i thought we were in danger of losing who we were.

what is it about your executive style that makes you good at standing up to big organizations to meet unprecedented challenges - whether it's the way you ran your campaign or now - so quickly?

i don't think there's some magic trick here. i think i've got a good nose for talent, so i hire really good people. and i've got a pretty healthy ego, so i'm not scared of hiring the smartest people, even when they're smarter than me. and i have a low tolerance of nonsense and turf battles and game-playing, and i send that message very clearly. and so over time, i think, people start trusting each other, and they stay focussed on mission as opposed to personal ambition or grievance. if you've got really smart people who are all focussed on the same mission, then usually you can get some things done.