Cohesion

Cohesion is said to be the act of uniting or sticking together. In the context of a team, work unit, in relationships or even a family, cohesion refers to a couple or a group that's united in working towards a common goal or purpose.

Cohesion takes time to form because it requires that the development of a certain degree of trust and support among a group's members. It requires that such trust and support be elevated to a certain degree of sophistication that it becomes second nature for all the individuals involved.

Various factors influence the degree of cohesion a team has or would have. Shared experiences, the quality and amount of time a team has been together, and the dynamics within a team are some of those factors.

A team starts losing its cohesiveness once distractions surface. A sports team that finds itself embroiled in controversy or scandal often loses its will and focus to win. Morale among the players eventually break down and before everyone realizes it, the desire to win is no longer there.

Same is true in a work environment. Once a scandal flares up or once an individual pursues an agenda separate and counter to the team's, the spirit of camaraderie within a department or group soon deteriorates and unravels.

In relationships or in a family, cohesion is impacted when a member becomes withdrawn from the normal activities, begins to spend less time with a significant other or from the spouse and kids. Withdrawal leads to indifference and eventually leads to an unraveling of a relationship.

Cohesion is a delicate quality that needs a lot of work to sustain. Teams, couples, families, and even nations that have successfully attained it have reaped many rewards from it. Those who have failed to achieve it or those who simply don't have it are destined to wallow in mediocrity or are doomed to failure.

A Shortage of Engineers (and Nurses too)

This article ("High-tech Japanese, Running Out of Engineers") was from Saturday's (May 17) issue of the New York Times. It seems that after decades of sustained economic success that has catapulted it to the position of the world's second largest economy, Japan now finds itself facing the same problems that a lot of industrialized nations are facing: a lack of engineering and technology graduates.

At first glance, such shortage may present a much needed opportunity for engineering and technology graduates from poor nations. One of the world's largest economies, one that boasts of the highest standards of living in the world is experiencing a rather severe skill shortage. Thus, graduates from poorer nations ought to be flocking to it in droves, right?

Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Japan, unlike other industrialized nations, will probably have a harder time attracting foreign talent to its shores. This is due to the fact that unlike its first world peers, Japan unfortunately has gained a reputation for being a closed society where language and culture have proven to be strong barriers to any outsider.

English is not widely spoken and there are still a considerable number of companies that are against the idea of bringing in foreign workers into their fold. There are glass ceilings in a lot of companies and discrimination against foreign workers is still quite common. There may be some bright spots here and there but as a whole, the country presents quite a number of barriers that a foreigner could find difficult to deal with.

Such attitudes against foreigners is also reflected on its immigration policies for Japan has one of the lowest, if not the lowest immigration rate among industrialized nations. Aside from engineers, Japan is also experiencing a shortage of nurses. However, unlike the US and a number of European countries, it has steadfastly refused to increase its recruitment of foreign workers.

Japan's population is slowly but surely aging due to a negative population growth rate. Unlike China and India with their huge talent pools, Japan does not have that benefit. As per the article, Japanese companies can either increase their hiring of foreign workers or put up factories outside of Japan just to stay relevant and competitive in the global economy.

If it fails to hire the engineering and technology graduates it desperately needs, Japan's competitiveness could slide into irrelevance within the next 100 years. If it fails to bring in more nurses, the quality of health care in that country would also deteriorate. The country urgently needs to step out of its comfort zone to stay a step or two ahead of its rivals. If it fails to do so, then it might as well consider ceding its title as Asia's richest economy to China soon.

Some Awful Truths

Just wanted to share with you a couple of articles that were published on this Sunday's (May 18) issue of the New York Times. Both articles are rather long reads and thus, I will keep my commentary brief. In light of the food crisis that's going on all over the world, both articles serve to remind us of the challenges ahead and what steps we as global citizens can do to alleviate the problem.

This first article ("One Country's Table Scraps, Another Country's Meal") discusses the amount of food an average American family throws away each month. It says that Americans, on the average, throw away 27% of the amount of food available for consumption. The report cited figures from way back in 1997 where statistics showed that a staggering 96.4 billion pounds out of 356 billion pounds of edible food was never eaten.

The food numbers mentioned represent figures from just a single year. It is probably safe to assume that given that the US population has increased by millions more since 1997 that the numbers of food wasted today are billions of pounds higher.

The article does not surprise me one bit. Having lived in the United States for more than a decade, I've always been struck by the amount of food that gets tossed away on a daily basis. It's a common sight in restaurants to see busboys pick plates up with significant amounts of food left and see such food tossed. And yet, the insanity in the restaurant business is that in spite of the amount of food that gets wasted, restaurant executives still keep pushing for bigger serving sizes.

There's a lot of blame to go around. Not only are the industrialized nations guilty of this but poor countries are as well. In a lot of third world countries, our beloved Philippines included, food get wasted even before they get distributed to the consumers due to lack of technology and inefficient distribution methods. When will we in the Philippines ever start developing and constructing an efficient railway system to distribute food products and other goods all across our country's biggest islands such as Luzon and Mindanao?

Although, the article talked about food wastage, it also discussed some steps being taken by responsible restaurant owners and some organizations to put the leftover food to better use.

This second article ("World's Poor Pay Price as Crop Research Is Cut") was reported from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. The article talks about the challenges of battling the global food crisis in the face of reduced funding from the US and other foreign governments.

The IRRI, and other similar food research institutes, became victims of their own success. IRRI successfully introduced varieties of rice that were both high-yielding and pest-resistant that by the late 1980s and early 1990s, the world enjoyed a food surplus. Except in some countries in Africa where drought and corrupt governments conspired to starve millions of people, the rest of the world enjoyed relative stability and security in its food supply.

The problem was that such success bred complacency in a lot of governments. Since the threat of global hunger faded from the front pages of newspapers around the world, the need and urgency to fund the food research institutes faded too.

The good news is that IRRI's researches are still confident that they still have the technical capability to develop rice varieties that could resist future plant diseases and pests. The challenge, however, is to make foreign governments realize about the urgency of the problem and that if no action is taken soon, the threat of world hunger may come back to the front pages of our dailies, if it hasn't done so already.

A Little Lesson 2

Since the weather has turned warmer in my part of the world, I decided this morning to pull the car out of the garage so I could do some serious cleaning and washing. I must say that it took me a good two hours to clear the clutter off my garage and to bring back some sort of shine on my garage floor.

As I was wrapping up, one of the neighborhood kids stopped by for a quick chat. The kid thanked me for helping him out a few weeks ago. You see, the school year is coming to an end here in the United States and a lot of high schools are either currently having or have recently completed their junior and senior proms. So two weeks before his school prom, this particular kid had stopped by my place to ask me if I can show him a few moves on the dance floor. Since he was a very good kid, I happily obliged.

I showed him a few moves and within an hour or so, he was able to master both the moves and the steps. He happily told me this morning that he was such a hit on the dance floor, that he was able to impress this girl so much with his dance moves that they're now dating, and that as a result, he has become quite a popular kid in school. He was so happy that when I asked him if I could take a video of the dance moves I taught him, he was more than happy to grant my request. The only thing I asked was that he be careful because my garage floor was still a bit slippery after the washing I did.

Good kid, isn't he? The kind that will make any dance mentor proud. :D

Which brings me to this other kid I tried to help out a month or so ago. Although a bit chatty, this kid shows quite a bit of promise as a dancer. I strongly believe that he has the talent. He has the fundamentals. I showed him a different set of moves this time. As you will see in the following video, I think he has the moves too.

Unfortunately, the video also showed the problem I have with his parents. I have not found them to be that cooperative and supportive of their son's talent. His father even interrupted his son's dance to ask the kid to make a quick run to the neighborhood store to get a pack of cigarettes.

Were it not for that one interruption, both the dance and the video could have certainly turned out a lot better, right? I think so too. :D

Anyway, and seriously now, the dance tune you heard in both videos was called "Let It Whip" by the American funk music group called The Dazz Band. The song came out in 1982 and was hugely popular in a lot of dance parties I went to at the time. The song was a very big hit and it won the group a Grammy in 1983. I remember that every time this song was played, teens, myself included, immediately got up to dance to it.

Now if you will excuse me, I'll just get my car back into my garage. Thanks.

Video credits: Lejone Ehran (First video), Theqdective (Second video)

Replying to A (Supposed) Kid's Question

I was tagged by Monaco for this meme. It is fairly easy because all one needs to do is respond to a kid's question. (I need to be introduced to this rather perceptive kid. Who knows? He might end up becoming a Pope or the Dalai Lama someday. Hehe) Anyway.....

Copy here:
1. Answer the Kid’s Question by Gregory Stock, PH.D. (Remember: Don’t respond as you think others want you to. Respond the way you actually feel!)
2. Add your name (linked to your blog)
3. Tag everybody else!

Kid’s Question #1
If you were the ruler of the world and you could have anything you wanted as well as have people do anything you wanted, do you think you would get greedy and mean or would you be a good and fair ruler?

My Answer:
If I were the ruler of the world, I would work on establishing a fair and free trading system between all nations. I firmly believe that the world has enough resources to sustain and feed everybody. It is just a matter of coming up with a system to make sure that the world's resources are distributed equitably and fairly. No nation will be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction, including the ones that first developed them.

On the personal side of things, the authors of the blogs I link to will be guaranteed Cabinet positions in my administration. :D

However, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I can be a big head and say to everyone that absolute power will never corrupt me. And if I do say that I will most certainly be lying. I just hope and pray that I will remain wise enough to carefully select the people I will surround myself with. I hope that some, if not all, of them would be courageous enough to remind me of the moral responsibility that comes with such power. Should they fail to stop me from my corrupt ways, I hope that some, if not all, of them would have the courage to shoot me dead before I end up bringing the world back to the problems it faced when I first took power.

Participants:

Jhong, Alpha, Women Xplore, Em, Something Purple, Our Journey to Life, My Planet Purple, Princess Bela, Princess Vien, cookie jar of entertainment, allinkorea, kim, idealpinkrose, korean food, Jackie’s Everyday Life, Jackie Simply Pinay, A Whole New World, Tasteful Voyage, A Mom’s note, There’s no place like home, The Girlicious side of a woman, Discoveries, My Online Journal, Thoughts Of Me, Precious Words, In My Kitchen, Em, Something Purple, Bigeyedgal, Chronic Shopper, A Simple Life, Hailey’s Beats and Bits, ,Hailey’s Domain, PinayWAHM, Teacher’s Corner, ZangCaesar, Read my Mind, A Man of My Town, You're NEXT!

I decided not to tag anybody else for this exercise. Feel free to do so in case you want to respond to the question.