Women inspiration...

This week, I was twice inspired by successful women. One evening, I attended social event for professional women organized by Microsoft subsidiary in Czech Republic, it´s called "Opening Windows". 

The speakers were two women at different stage of their lives, both very successful in their career, yet also happy with  their personal lives. One of them said, that it was natural, that a woman would need to count with time, which she would devote to her family, however children would not be small forever and one day every mother would realize, that she would also need to work on something else than on a family. This woman had her two children in fairly young age and then started up a business of her own, which grew into an internationally successful company. She admitted that there is lots of sacrifice you need to give for your success or wellfare, but she managed to handle this all. I felt filled with energy when I was leaving this women discussion forum organized in beautiful premises of Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Prague.

The next day, I met couple of my friends from university for dinner at the Lemon Leaf restaurant. We have all been working during our studies, but now it has been between one and half and two years since we graduated and we focus solely on our work and personal lives.We have all studied an international management program, worked and studied abroad, we are young and ambitious. Therefore, it would not be surprising, that each and every of us has a challenging, international job, where we managed to be promoted in a quite hort time frame. What is the thing that really pleased and inspired me during that evening, is also the fact that we have fulfilled and satisfying personal lives. Great boyfriends, friends, a lot of fun and events, which we attend and enjoy. Each and everyone of us has travelled somewhere nice for holiday...I guess that the generation of our parents can be very happy for us...one can only hope that plentiful times would continue for young professional women :-). Three weeks back, I spent wonderful weekend in Paris with Lukas. And in the meantime, yes, there is lots of work...but one can always enjoy nice rewards for it.

Olinka has just turned twenty six...

And with that, I officially broke the tradition of our family. My mother gave me birth at the age of twenty-five. My grandmother gave birth to my mother at the age of twenty-five. Looks like I missed it. But never mind because although getting more serious, I am still a cheerful youngster inside. And babies still have some time to wait.
Olinka 26 vs. Olinka 25....

Five days off and International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary 2011

I am sitting on a terasse of my flat, sipping cold Cinzano and enjoying wonderful warm evening of July 6th. I´ve just had five days free of work and so this makes this very moment the ideal opportunity for blogging. Tomorrow, I´ll be flooded with new insights, emails and calls. Today is still for me :-).

We spent two days with my boyfriend Lukas in Karlovy Vary, the occasion was clear, the 46th International Film Festival took place there. We have had a very smart system of ticket reservation this year and that earned us tickets for 7 long movies and 6 short ones, of which we managed to see 11 in total. KV is a beautiful spa resort, that has many sights and hot springs :-) to offer and in addition to normal state of things, the festival turns the city into a living place where you can see people of all generations enjoying their time. Some come for movies, some for fun, some to see celebrities on the red carpet. Despite the awful weather, we managed to enjoy our time very much. And I also got a beautiful present from Lukas, as a surprise...

From all movies we have seen, I would definitely recommend some: Holidays by the sea (French comedy), Cracks in the Shell (German drama), Submarine (UK, directed by Moss - the character from I.T.Crowd series), Asleep in the sun (Argentinian kind-of-scifi)...

The next few days flew very fast and were filled with various family visits...the weather was very suitable for such social program, I must say. End of June and beginning of July in Czech lands was quite cold and rainy, now the weather seems to be coming back to summer temperatures. Of course, that must mean, holiday is over :-).

Never mind, looking forward to see some exciting news in Cisco tomorrow....

CEMS Weekend in Jizerky

Fourth year in a row, this great event has been organized by our friend and dedicated CEMSie Judita.

We have always enjoyed barbecue, drinking, dancing, having fun, stay in fresh nature...and this year...there was even singing.

http://www.vimeo.com/25478130

How to have the best possible bed table???

People always think that there is something missing in their flat, house...wherever they live.
I know that in my case, it was not only a feeling but there were some crucial things, which I really wanted to have. Today, I would like to share a story how my boyfriend and I came to a great pair of bed tables.

Our bedroom has a bed, some lamps, bookcases, work desk and a functionalist clothes hanger, which my boyfriend admires (I appreciate its usefulness as long as it stands in a hidden corner where no one looks). Anyway, back to bed tables. These were missing until recently and we decided to buy one to each side of our bed. I found it quite annoying to put everything on the floor next to the bed (my phone, laptop, books, camera, glass of wine :-)).

The quickest way to get a bed table should be to look for some in a big furniture shop. For the sake of our satisfaction, we went to all of them. Hours of deciding, which one could be good? Most bed tables were just ugly; the rest would not match colors in our bedroom. Some of them were huge, as if you would like to put all your stuff in your flat on (in) your bed table. Finally, we ended up with a compromise. We bought bed tables with corresponding shape and size and we decided to stain these tables with a matching color.

Of course, the principle of today´s world is independence, so all furniture comes in pieces and you need to come back to your childhood and put the puzzle together, maybe helping yourself in a grown-up way with some hammer and screw drivers. Our bed tables seemed to fit together, but screws had weird shapes and we did not feel confident to put these into differently shaped holes. I tried to look for some better screws in other big stores. Then at last, clueless, we went back to the shop where we bought these tables and went to the bedroom-section and found the bed table and investigated how it looked after "do-it-yourself" procedure. That gave us necessary insights and when we came home, Lukas successfully finished the "building" part and we put these new tables next to our place to sleep.

Few weeks later, I was in a drug store and I came to the shelf with paints. Looking on the color pallet, I estimated what could be the right color matching bed tables with bookcases in our bedroom. One tin ended up in my shopping cart and we were ready for next phase of our bed table story.

It was a beautiful sunny Saturday, we woke up late, had a nice breakfast and then I found some old plastic bags, put them on the floor on our terrace, brought the first bed table out and show was ready to begin.

Already after first few moves with the brush, we saw that the color was not exactly what we had expected, but...what the hack. I thought it was looking different because the paint was wet and once it would become dry, we would have seen a lighter tone. The next issue was the fact that these bed tables were already covered with some colorless varnish and our stain would not want to soak into the wood. It meant that no matter how much we tried to cover the wooden surface consistently, some parts would always be more painted than other would. The wet result was very questionable, but Lukas, who did the paintwork, was exhausted and we let our tables become dry and left them on the terrace.

In the evening, tables were dry and both had even more unmatching color than before and the stain was not properly soaked into the wood so it would peel down every time you would touch the table or put something on it (and that is kind of a desired function of a bed table - you put things on it, right? In addition, you do not want the color of this table to stay on these things, right.).

Anyhow, this was terrible situation and we knew that we would need to do something about these bloody bed tables. One week later, I bought tin of pure acetone...then I closed myself on the terrace with these tables and rubbed them hard for two hours, so that all the stain would come down and the tables had the original color again. Acetone worked very well and an interesting fact was that it managed to get some stain to soak into the wood, so the final color is nice. When working with acetone, one needs to be careful, so I used some protective means.

 
In the end, we really have a good pair of bed tables in our bedroom. Goodnight.

Berlin over Easter

Me and Lukas in Berlin on Easter weekend...compilation of short videos.

Click to watch: http://www.vimeo.com/24187124

Where do people really work?

Today, one guy who connected to me in linked-in sent me a TED talk and asked me: Hi Olga, I would be really glad if you could tell me what you think about this video:

This speech is to some extent very true...it also interrupted my work by the way :-), but you will understand this when you watch it.

Have you watched it? What do you think? I would say I face every day, what the American writer Jason Fried describes. The thing is that my job actually consists of listening to other people´s requirements. But I am also business architect who should design solutions for their problem and help to solve it, for which I need certain portion of uninterrupted time.

What is cool, that I can compensate the constant interruption in the office by having homeoffice from time to time. Today I did that and it felt nice to have some space to think about unfinished stuff and work in silence. So do you feel like your day is one big confusion and you cannot concentrate on one thing anymore? Try some of these advices. Do not respond to an IM, if you are in the middle of a thinking process. Do not check your emails every minute. Do not accept every meeting, which jumps into your calendar just because you should attend. I myself have this problem and I am learning how to streamline my working habits to be more consistent during the day. 

I also believe that our brain can accommodate to quick way of work and that one can get used to certain level of constant interruption. In any case, I really like this sentence from the TED talk: "You cannot get creative in fifteen minutes".

Have a great weekend!

The Best Cisco Business Architectures Team

 Our boss told us to be creative and prepare a nice presentation of our team for her boss. After some courageous ideas, Jeremie suggested an innovative photo shooting activity.

In this post, I can also introduce my colleagues from Business Architectures team sitting in Prague. First picture: from the right - Martin (Slovakia), Jeremie (France)  and next to me Jyoti (India).

It is great to work with these guys and also with our boss sitting in Zurich. Lots of work, but lots of fun and strong team spirit.

Thank you present from Cisco - Flip HD video camera

I got a thank you present from my previous and first Cisco team this week, it is a small, personal, video-camera from company called Flip, which Cisco bought 1,5 ago. Nice gesture and I tried it out already:

 

However it is no secret anymore, that this product has not been very successful in consumer market full of HD video cameras in smart phones, usual cameras and other multifunctional devices. Cisco is actually stopping its productions Today, if you produce one-functional device, it is very hard to push through. And it is true that I can also shoot videos with my phone and photo camera, so having this device can be nice addition, but definitely not necessity. 

On the other hand, shooting videos always uses a lot of energy out of the device, you might rather use for different things. Flip is very easy to handle, connectible to your computer and it automatically opens a utility showing your videos and you can save them into your hard-drive with one click. I will use it for shooting some small speeches or videos, maybe it will be useful in the corporate world, a small HD camera can be sometimes handy. Let´s see.

I improved my tech skills over the time with Cisco and also by living with my IT oriented boyfriend. Few months back, I got myself an iPhone, started following some pod casts, playing Angry Birds and using different apps. Well, it´s high time to be in 21st century.

Today another topic...not very usual on this blog

I hear people talking about relationships in multiple ways, I see people having different kinds of relationships, I know people doing various things for their relationships…I could go on…but some people might stop reading at this point and would scream…what´s your point?

My point is, dear friends, that I just realized today, how fascinated I am by the variety of means how people can be satisfied in their relationships. There are a lot of bonds, which couples are creating since the time they are together. Some people want to have a heavy bond right away, and if they don´t have it, they feel they will never get it, and they lose interest. Some people do not want to create tight connections at all and they just want to enjoy indefinite company of the other person without any particular reason. Most people, I would guess, gather these bonds by experience. And sometimes it is true, that the more hassles, problems, crucial situations – the more bonds are created. The couple starts to rely on each other in difficult situations, which is usually stronger bond than the one coming from the pleasant times, but I am not saying that is not important :-).

One friend of mine told me, that she usually tests a guy by being very stubborn and making him do things for her or according to her in certain situations. What she then really wants is, that the guy himself tells her at specific point…now that has really been too much, you´ve got to let go on this. And that would prove to her, that he would not make a fool of himself and she finds it attractive. Well, do we really need to test guys like this? If you prefer…but why would I need to test something artificial when real tests are happening every day.

I think what most girls do in relationships is that they gradually like more and more the things their boyfriends like because we like to see our boys happy. And I think boys have it like this as well. Then we start doing things together and that creates a totally new dimension because we have a new experience, new bond.

To conclude, I am so thankful for the relationship I am having now, I have never experienced so many nice and new things before :-). And I am telling my man every day.

My first sickleave

Hey there, I happen to be on my first official sick leave in employee status, so apart from drinking a lot of tea, having rest and taking some some pill every 6 hours, I also thought of doing some blogging again.

My job has been really crazy in the last two months and I am still not entirely clear what my new position is going to look like because a lot seems to be changing all around. I thought I had a nice idea at the beginning, but Cisco is such a bloody complex creature. I like revealing its complexity, however, not everytime we like the things, we reveal. So… I rather write about something else. And let´s make it a new article.

Some news from start of 2011

The new year has started extremely well and I feel to be in a good shape for the upcoming challenges of 2011.

I really wanted to enjoy some nice skiing this winter which came true last week in Dolomiti with bunch of my friends. Great slopes of the Dolomiti Ski area, blue sky and sunny weather the whole week and good snow conditions, what more could we wish for a nice skiing experience. I tried the famous "Sella Ronda" skiing route, also learned to know some new drinks and drinking games :-), and enjoyed good company of nice people and fabulous mountain views (see example attached).

 The next thing, which is new to my professional live as of February is a promotion in Cisco. I am moving into a role where I can influence more the future of Cisco´s collaboration with its business partners in Emerging markets. I hope it would be a rewarding experience for me in months and years to come. Anyway, since I am in handover phase right know, and the company is also searching for replacement of my position, I would not disclose more at this moment and will cover this in some of my future posts.

Last but not least, we had a plan with my boyfriend Lukas, to introduce our parents to each other. Yesterday, we all met and went for decent lunch into the Brasilian restaurant in Prague. I believe, it was a good idea to do this and everyone enjoyed it. So we can only hope that everything else in our relationship will continue going so well.