Extending a Compliment

Compliments can change someone’s view of the world. By simply telling someone that they are beautiful can brighten their vision and make their day a lot easier to get through.

You can very easily put a smile on someone’s face by simply telling them what it is that makes them so beautiful to you. By doing this you can spread the worth of an easy compliment further, as for each compliment sent Nivea will donate 50 cents to Look Good…Feel Better. This is a charity to help women who are undergoing treatment for cancer.

Just by sending an “I think you’re beautiful” message you can help others as well.

World Breastfeeding Week

It starts tomorrow!

World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) runs for the first week of August and is purely for the purpose of encouraging awareness and the use of breastfeeding. WBW brings forth the reasons why breast feeding is better and simply more natural for the development of both baby and mother.

Breastfeeding is the natural way to provide your child with optimal nutrition and immunological and emotional nurturing. Each year WBW has a theme to focus on. This year the theme is “Mother Support: Go for Gold”. Mothers often need support and perseverance when breastfeeding and this year the theme focuses on assisting mothers and their need for help and patience while they provide their child with the best support that they can offer.

Breastfeeding helps protect your baby against ear infections, chest infections, childhood diabetes, asthma, urine infections and many more potentially life threatening illnesses.The nutritional value of breast milk makes it reliable to sustain the immunity and health of your child. However, breastfeeding is not only beneficial for the child. Women who breastfeed are more likely to return to their pre-pregnancy figure faster as well as less likely to develop ovarian and breast cancers.

Raising awareness of the benefits of breastfeeding is important as it improves the lives of the women taking care of the child as well as the health of our future generations.

Forwarding emails

One of the features of email is that they are so easy to share with other people – forwarding emails allows us to share ideas and information, simply and without having to rewrite it ourselves. And we can forward to lots of people at once if we want to.

If you are forwarding emails, here are a couple of tips to make the process better for everyone:

if sending to a group of people, use the bcc field instead of the to field to protect people’s privacy and make it harder for spammers to get hold of addresses (your friends may not abuse an email address, but if they forward it to someone who forwards it…)
when forwarding a newsletter you are subscribed to, delete the information at the end of the email (this can be login details, unsubscribe links and subscription management details) first so that no one else can access your subscription
double check what is in the email – the final part of an email may be great to send to Fred, but check that earlier parts of an email trail are suitable for Fred to read
consider who you are forwarding to – don’t send it just because you can. Send emails that are likely (or at least possibly) of value to the recipient. You may not be selling anything or trying to distribute a virus, but your friends still don’t want piles of irrelevant emails

letter writing competition to grow understanding

Here is a competition that could help international relations to some small extent. So if you or someone you know is a keen letter writer, check out this competition today.

“Letter Writing Competition
Encourage students to write for a purpose and simultaneously learn about life in another country by entering a letter writing competition launched by International Penfriends.

Entries close on 31 October 2008.

Simultaneous Storytime

Today (Wednesday 21 May) is a great day to read – and encoruage reading in everyone around us – because today is National Simultaneous Storytime.

You can get further details from NSS Homepage.

How did you participate in today’s celebrations? Did you make an extra effort to read something, or to read with/to someone special?

Celebrating your Mum

For most of us, Mum is just there and not always appreciated for it – we assume she will always be there. And we often forget the number of nappies she changed, meals she cooked, clothes she washed, school lunches she made and school concerts/plays she endured for us – not to mention the squabbles she heard and refereed!

Sometimes, it is good to reflect on the important people in our lives and remember what a contribution they have made to who we are today.

Mothers Day can be seen as an over commercialised token, or you can choose to make it a day when you genuinely think about your Mum (and Grandmothers and other women who have filled mothering roles in your life) and let her know you care.

With a week to go to Mothers Day, we’d love to hear some stories about Mothers Days you remember and how they were special.

Want a $1000 goodie bag for Mothers Day?

Well, apparently it is just after Mothers Day but close enough!

The people who bring you Real Mums are running Mums Night Out in Melbourne on Friday 16 May, along with the Real Mums Awards. Everyone who goes to Mums Night Out gets a goodie bag to take home – and each one has stuff valued at over $1,000 in it!

Hope you get to go along and have a great night of eating, drinking, laughing and talking! And maybe some dancing, who knows?! And then enjoy the weekend exploring your goodie bag!

Business Cards in different cultures…

Like many things, how you give out (or even receive) business cards in different cultuers can be different to how you would do things in your own culture. What works in one place may not work, or even be offensive, in another place.

If you deal with people from a variety of cultures, or are attending an event where you may well met diverse peoples, you may want to read up on how to offer/accept business cards.

The following sites all explain different cultures’ attitudes to business cards…

How to exchange busines cards in Japan

Chinese business etiquette and culture

links to a number of specific countries’ business etiquette (including Argentina, Norway, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Singapore and South Korea)

International Business Etiquete and Manners resource

Mexperience – doing business in Mexico - have you thought of cards in another language?

Business etiquyte in Asia

Business card etiquette (internationally)

Give rice to the starving

This is the sort of thing that makes the internet so wonderful – you can help others quickly and easily, and it doesn’t even have to cost money.

Visit the free rice site, test and improve your vocabulary, and 20 grains of rice goes to the UN to defeat world hunger. Work on more words, donate more rice.

It is very clever, too – with each correct answer, you earn points towards a harder level so you can improve your vocab; if you find the words tough, it moves you to easier words. The aim is everyone can learn without getting discouraged. What a win win!

However, we must warn you – some people find these site addictive! But at least it is in a good cause!

** If you run a business website, you may be interested in joining the free rice campaign as a donator, too. It is like paying per view of your banner on other sites – each time your banner shows under the vocab test, you pay for it. Unlike other advertising options, you know your money is helping the truly needy.

World Maths Day – celebrate online!

Today is world maths day!

It is celebrated on the first Wednesday every March as a means of celebrating education and helping people develop their numeracy skills. A full explanation of the day is available at Wikipedia.

More than a million students have registered online to be part of the celebrations at mathletics. During the day, students can log in and be paired with a student somewhere in the world for fun competitions in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

So why not celebrate maths day today, too? It’s doesn’t just have to be for the kids – play a game of sokudo or monopoly, relearn a times table, improve your skills online, do some mental arithmetic (maybe total the shopping before you reach the registers), play games online or think about maths in our daily lives.

And if your child needs a little help with their maths, today is a great day to check out options such as Maths Power.