Blog Marco

Ella Fitzgerald's music is awesome. When I discovered her music a long time ago while browsing the selection of CDs at the local public library, I was lucky enough to pick her CD. Below are the two songs that are really memorable to me: Mack The Knife and Let's Call the Whole thing off (duet with Louis Armstrong).

Ella Fitzgerald - Mack The Knife

Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Lady Ella," was an American jazz vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves, she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. She is widely considered one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Over a recording career that lasted 59 years, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Art by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.

According to this report, having a siesta, or an afternoon nap not only refreshes you, but it can make you smarter by "improve the brain's ability to learn by clearing out cluttered memory space". I love taking afternoon naps, especially on a Sunday afternoon... maybe I should schedule it as a daily task? I tend to nod off towards the afternoon anyway, so if having a siesta in the afternoon could improve my performance - why not? (I work for myself anyway so I can do this easily!).

People who nodded off for an hour after lunch performed better in learning tests than those who stayed awake all afternoon, the scientists found.

A study of students revealed that their brains were refreshed by napping only if they entered what is called stage 2 non-REM sleep, which takes place between deep sleep and the dream state known as REM, or rapid-eye-movement, sleep.

Health | add new comment | read more »

Submitted by Marco on Tue, 23/02/2010 - 5:58pm.

Being an entrepreneur and starting your own business leads you down a path to being unemployable. There are two types of being unemployable: either that you are a bum and don't have any skills, or you own a business which provides you an income stream and you are the master of your own domain.

Entrepreneurs are unemployable because they love what they do. They have a passion for their work, they are dedicated to their cause and their goals and don't count the hours of their work. We think in terms of how much work we can do in one day and wish that there were more hours in the day to work.

Entrepreneurial individuals also are massive control freaks. We like to get our own way and we want control over what we've worked hard to build. We are also super independent but have a can-do attitude, We tend to jump into things, not really knowing what we are getting ourselves into, but we are determined enough to find out what needs to be done to get to where we want to get to.

I checked my online Credit Card statement this morning and I found that Sydney City Council double charged my parking in Sydney last week. (unfortunately there were no free parking spots available). So I went on the hunt on how to contact the parking meter department for Sydney City Council. I found their email address as: parkingmeters@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au and contact number: 02 9265 9333. In my email I included as much information as I could as well as all the details of the ticket that the machine gave me on that day.

To my pleasant surprise, Sydney City Council is very efficient, and I got a call an hour later asking about more details about my double charge parking and credit card details. So good work to the City of Sydney for having great Customer Service.