When a man decides to marry, it may be the last decision he’ll ever make.
Marriage brings music to a man’s life. He learns to play second fiddle.
Courtship, unlike proper punctuation, is a period before a sentence.
The argument you just won with your wife isn’t over yet.
Before criticizing your wife’s faults, you must remember it may have been these very defects which prevented her from getting a better husband than the one she married!
KEN SEGALL, THE MAN BEHIND APPLE’S LEGENDARY “THINK DIFFERENT” CAMPAIGN, RECALLS HOW HE WRANGLED ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT CLIENTS OF ALL TIME.
The following is an excerpt from Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success by Ken Segall (Penguin Portfolio).
The lump on the table was truly mysterious and held everyone’s rapt attention. Hidden under a gray sheet it was impossible to discern any detail from it. We were going to have to wait for the big reveal when the meeting was called to order. This would definitely not be our typical product briefing. Beneath that sheet was the home computer that was going to save Apple.
Not to get overly dramatic about it, but that’s exactly how it was billed by Steve himself. This was the product that Steve had alluded to back when we had first started on the Think Different campaign. He had told us that the first product out the door was going to be a rethinking of the home computer. He had given his engineers and designers the challenge to do something great, and now at long last we were going to see it.
There would be no saving Apple by churning out more beige boxes that failed to distinguish themselves, by looks or function, from the hundreds of PC models out there. Steve wanted this first product to open people’s eyes and serve notice that Apple was back.
IF STEVE REALLY WAS BETTING THE COMPANY ON THIS COMPUTER, IT HAD TO BE BRILLIANT.It was the spring of 1998, and we’d been summoned up to Cupertino for our first viewing of this new computer, code-named C1. The “C” stood for “consumer.” Apple didn’t use a lot of creative firepower on code names back then. By this time we felt like we were already well along a journey, having developed the Think Different campaign and placed it strategically on TV, billboards, and magazine back covers around the world. That was the brand-building part, and this was the real thing—a product that would prove that our brand campaign wasn’t just a lot of advertising fluff.
Now we were sitting just a few feet from C1, anxious to see the results of all this reimagining. If Steve really was betting the company on this computer, it had to be brilliant. Apple was out of time, and this was the one shot it had to turn things around. The agency delegation numbered five or six, consisting of creative people and account managers. There were two Apple product managers there to guide us. After some introductions and opening remarks, it was time to get down to business.
One product manager reached for the sheet and revealed C1.
There it was—the computer you’d come to know as iMac—looking like it came right out of The Jetsons. The group let out a collective “holy cow” and simply tried to absorb and appreciate what we were seeing—because it shattered every idea of what computers were supposed to look like. It was a colorful one-piece computer that showed off its inner circuitry through a semitransparent shell.
I’d like to believe we were all so smart that within seconds we were convinced that we were witnessing the start of a miracle resurgence. But it wasn’t quite like that. Later, when the agency team was alone and able to share the thoughts we felt at that moment of reveal, we found that we all had pretty much the same feeling. It was part shock, part excitement, and part hope that Steve Jobs really knew what he was doing—because there was a real chance that this revolutionary computer might just be too shocking for its own good.
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Voluteer doctors from Eye from Zion organization bring Ethiopian girl to Israel to remove rare tumor from her eye
A delegation of Israeli doctors and volunteers from the Eye from Zion organization traveled to Ethiopia recently to perform 160 cataract surgeries in a portable operation room donated by Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer. During their visit, they met Kavda Imsak, a 10-year-old girl who suffered from a large tumor in her eye.
Since Ethiopian hospitals are not equipped for such operations, Imsak had to live with the large growth until the Israeli delegation arrived.
At first the team, headed by Dr. Nachum Rosen, preformed a preliminary surgery to discern whether the tumor was cancerous or benign. Later on, they decided to bring her to Israel to remove it.
“The chances of recovery are very slim,” said Eye from Zion founder Nati Marcus, who insisted on bringing the girl to Israel. “As soon as I saw her I decided to take a chance,” he explained.
Imsak reovering from surgery (photo: Vardi Kahana)
Once it was decided to bring her to Israel for surgery, arrangements were coordinated with MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, the Foreign Ministry, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the surgeons who agreed to operate pro bono.
According to Marcus, many offered to help, including the best doctors in the country who asked to take part in the complex operation, and hospitals that offered to donate surgery and recovery rooms.
A complex team work
Imsak arrived in Israel with her older sister, and was admitted to Sheba Medical Center. After extensive examinations, she was successfully operated on by two eye plastic surgery specialists, Dr. Guy Ben-Simon and Dr. Nahum Rozen. In a few days she is expected be taken to Haifa, where Dr. Yoav Vardizer will fit her for a prosthetic eye. She is then to return home to Ethiopia.
“This is not a routine surgery and it can’t be done by a single person” said Dr. Ben-Simon. “I have consulted with many colleagues around the world before entering the OR.” According to Ben-Simon, a large team participated in the complex surgery, including an imaging team.
The Doctors after surgery (Photo: Vardi Kahana)
Ben-Simon said that although the tumor was benign it had life threatening implications for the girl, in addition to blindness and obvious aesthetic harm. Its size made it impossible to completely remove without harming important blood vessels, but the team removed as much as they could.
“The hospital performs orbit surgeries on patients from all over the world, and there aren’t many cases of tumors like this,” Ben-Simon said. Now that the surgery was successful everybody feels relieved, he added. Imsak is facing a long recovery, but the doctor said he hopes to participate in next year’s delegation to Ethiopia, and follow up on his patient there.
This is not the first pro bono operation for Ben-Simon. Together with friends and colleagues he volunteers in various places with Eye from Zion and independently. The delegations consist of volunteers who fund their own travel.
Eye from Zion operates in various places including Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Micronesia, Myanmar and Ethiopia, sending advanced equipment, specialists, operating room nurses and experts to remote locales.
According to Marcus, the volunteers are the best ambassadors Israel can ask for. “This is the pretty face of Israel,” he said
YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed that she will run for a seat in parliament, her party said Tuesday, a move that will infuse April by-elections with legitimacy, star power and historic significance.
Suu Kyi said last year that she would run for parliament but had appeared to backtrack since then. A victory would give the Nobel Peace Prize winner and longtime political prisoner a voice in parliament for the first time in her decades-long role as the country’s opposition leader.
She was under house arrest during November 2010 elections, which were boycotted by her National League for Democracy Party in part because she was barred from participating. The elections, Myanmar’s first in 20 years, replaced a ruling military junta with a government that remains strongly linked to the military but has taken steps toward easing decades of repression.
Suu Kyi’s decision to personally contest the April polls is the latest vote of confidence for government reforms that include the legalization of labor unions, increasing press freedom and opening a dialogue with Suu Kyi herself.
Party spokesman Nyan Win said Tuesday that Suu Kyi announced during a party meeting on Monday that she would seek a parliamentary seat in the Yangon suburb of Kawhmu. Yangon is Myanmar’s largest city and Suu Kyi’s hometown.
As recently as last week, Suu Kyi declined to confirm whether she would personally contest a seat, telling The Associated Press in an interview that her decision would be announced later this month. She also expressed cautious optimism about the government’s reforms.
“I think there are obstacles, and there are some dangers that we have to look out for,” Suu Kyi said. “I am concerned about how much support there is in the military for changes.”
Even if Suu Kyi’s party wins all 48 seats to be contested April 1, it will have minimal power. Most of the seats were vacated by lawmakers who became Cabinet ministers after the first parliamentary session last January.
The military is guaranteed 110 seats in the 440-seat lower house and 56 seats in the 224-seat upper house, and the main pro-military party holds 80 percent of the remaining 498 elected seats.
Suu Kyi’s party won a sweeping victory in the 1990 general election but the junta refused to honor the results. The military regime kept Suu Kyi under house arrest on-and-off for 15 years, hoping to snuff out her popularity. Despite never having held elected office, she became Myanmar’s most recognizable face and an icon for the country’s pro-democracy movement.
Countries that imposed sanctions on Myanmar under the previous military government have taken at least tentative steps to improve relations. In November, Hillary Rodham Clinton because the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country in more than 50 years, and on Monday, Australia became the first country to ease sanctions against Myanmar’s ruling elite.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Nobel laureate was freed from seven years of detention in November; United Nations human rights envoy to begin five-day visit.
By DPA
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi met Friday with Burma President Thein Sein for the first time since the country’s new government came to power, officials said.
The head of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party travelled the 350 kilometers north from the former capital Rangon to meet Thein Sein late Friday, sources confirmed.
Aung San Suu Kyi addressing supporters from her Rangon home Nov. 13, 2010
Photo by: AP
It was not immediately known why the president had agreed to see Suu Kyi, who was released after a seven-year term of house arrest November 13.
Suu Kyi met on August 12 with the government’s chief liaison officer, Labor Minister Aung Kyi, who had apparently informed her about the possibility of meeting Thein Sein. “In their meeting, Aung Kyi had hinted about the meeting,” NLD spokesman Nyan Win said.
Thein Sein, a former general, said in his inaugural address as president on April 1 that he was willing to talk to everyone to develop the country.
Western democracies, the United Nations and Burma’s Asian allies have long urged the new pro-military government, which came to power after November 7 polls, to open a political dialogue with Suu Kyi to help ease the country’s deep divisions.
On Sunday, the UN human rights envoy for Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, was scheduled to arrive for a five-day visit. Quintana was to see Suu Kyi Wednesday or Thursday after first meeting with government ministers, sources said.
His visit marks the first time Quintana has been allowed into the country since he angered authorities in March 2010 by urging a UN inquiry into Burma’s human rights record.
This year, the UN envoy accused the new government of continued rights abuses, including land confiscations, forced labor, internal displacements, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence.
Burma was under military rule from 1962 to 2010, and the current government consists of former and serving military men.
Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s movement for democracy in Burma is hanging in the balance this week, with the regime threatening a brutal response to her call to free political prisoners.
Activists have appealed to the world for help, saying international pressure is crucial to tipping the balance.
Let’s stand with Suu Kyi and the brave Burmese:
The future of Aung San Suu Kyi and her amazing movement for democracy in Burma is hanging in the balance this week, and we could make the difference.
Suu Kyi has bravely called on the military regime to free the thousands of monks and peaceful activists still held in horrific prisons, some in cramped dog cages. Unprecedentedly, thousands of Burmese have risked their own safety to join her call for freedom through an online petition! Yesterday, the regime issued an ominous warning to Suu Kyi – and the Generals may be deciding right now between dialogue or another brutal crackdown.
This could come down to us. Activists in Burma have appealed to the world for help, saying that pressure from the international community is crucial to preventing violence and freeing political prisoners. Let’s stand with Suu Kyi and the brave Burmese, sign on to their petition, and send it to the EU, India and other key governments who can press the regime. Sign below and forward this email to build our outcry:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_aung_san_suu_kyi/?vl
