The Wrong Game

Kiwi Friendships: Loving People in a 'Stink' Way

Corrections, rectified statements, re-assertions. These are all hallmarks of the modern meeting, ways of marking down the opposition to maintain a professional superiority. Yet why does negativity have such a large part to play in the schoolyard of selected client relationships? Surely if you were after a great client-supplier relationship, as most claim they are, business emails would be filled with pleases, thank-you's, and best regard's. Yet beginning some business relationships appears to be the opposite of starting  personal ones. For some, the best way to yield a return is to 'frenemize': to keep the words pleasant but the tone derogatory, jumping at the chance for ways to prove their superior knowledge and quick wittedness (and yes, this does mean for many Kiwis a great friendship is made of derogatory words with a pleasant tone). Really, it is about being on the right side of the (who is more) wrong game.

Professional attire and sombre colours, I think, reflect this mentality too. It is hard to be wrong if you are dressed in grey, but easy to be a bimbo if wearing hot pink. Being safe goes a long way in these kinds of relationships, as does tampering with those recessive OCD genes your Aunt Nelly had by checking, re-checking, oh-wait-rechecking again, checking just-in-case, one last time. Which, of course, is all part and parcel of being professional, and doing a great job in whatever you put out to the world. Of course we all want to achieve perfection, and are especially paranoid about that contact report after a few too many Mocconas. This is not the problem. The problem is the jump to attack on the slightest of mistakes, the type where you can visualize the respondent's Cheshire-cat face licking its lips as if you were a Christian thrown to the lions. It is all very evil, and it is all very ouch.

Your Email Had A Spelling Mistake

The question for today is: do business relationships really have to be this way? Do snarling sent emails really inspire perfection and competition, or do they ignite low self-confidence and second-guessing in the recipient? You could say that depends on the type of person; but are there really people in the business world as there are in our personal lives, in that sense of the client-supplier relationship? Aren't many personalities dulled down, squeezed to fit, custom-suited for the boardroom, a bunch of humans with logo-esque faces? If so, depersonalization could have a lot to answer for in the catty client meeting. 

Perhaps, at the close of day, it all comes down to frantic funding. Monsters are made of money, which complicates any relationship. Throw a tight budget into an already tense relationship, the antithesis to your beautiful and friendly ones, and you have a certain word beginning with a b. But isn't that just life? When it comes to cash concerns, haters gon' hate.

Word of the Day: Roundelay

Power ballads might have cheesy connotations, but we all know it's the only music we'd be embarrassed in the shower for. Pick who you like; a bit of Adele, Gaga or Aretha will earn you no respect in the karaoke booth - but it's only yourself you're trying to impress anyway, right? Today's word of the day is a tribute to what ballads are not: roundelays, or short, simple songs with refrain.

There is something to be said for the short, simple song that packs a lot of punch. Not all songs have to be sung a la Christina or Mariah (for the good of the general population, it is indeed imperative that the majority of us try not to sing them this way). Indeed, simplicity is such a memorable and beautiful tactic in so many disciplines that is hard to see why anyone would try so hard to complicate things. Yet if there weren't awful complicated songs, there would be no respite for them, and perhaps no American Idol. The world would suffer.

Or would they?

Word of the Day: Dimidiate

Guilty/not guilty. In love/not in love. Employed/not employed. Why does the answer have to always be one or the other? The world is split in half by those who think in white or black, or 50 Shades of Grey; just like our Word of the Day, dimidiate, or split in two.

The idea as to whether there is an absolute truth in any situation is always a complex one. Ask it: emotions get riled up all over the show, especially if you ask it in relation to personal truths. Does the fact that a philosopher was a Nazi unquestionably affect the merit of his ideas? Is cheating acceptable or not? Is it socially acceptable to politically segregate people based on their sexuality? General answers will be complex and subjective; but the fire behind the answers is not.

Why, when we finally agree on something, do we not have the fire inside us to fight against it?

You can't run a country like a business.

Word of the Day: Cinquecento

Sundays are the days that roll around like its sleepers in the morning, stretching out feelers for things to do. A lazy day, Sundays sometimes demand that you add a little spice in your life - being the only day that most people truly have free. The question is: what can add value? For those feeling the fat fastening to their middle regions, a trip to the park might be in order. For the foodies, a trip to the latest-reviewed restaurant. For the rest of us feeling a lapse in the cultural side of things, a museum or gallery fits the bill. Musing along the hallowed hallways of many a tormented soul, we can bring home sights and words that delight our dinner guests and give us an elegant edge. Words like our word of the day: cinquecento: an Italian style of art or artist of the 16th Century.

For those readers who believe they are above visiting a place to add to their image, I would love to believe you. Do you tag yourself in eateries or clubs, become lured by labels or price tags, or have the use the exact cutlery for the cuisine you are crunching? Yes, most people are unknowing casualties of consumer culture. Yet, I'm sure most of us would still agree on wishing we were in the 16th Century in the face of what some channels perceive as Italian art, these days.

Jerseycento just doesn't have quite the same ring.

Word of The Day: Galvanic

As science fiction turns reality with the advent of the first artificial minds, our thoughts naturally turn towards the robotic. These clean, mean, steely machines could be the future of the human race. They know how to use a search engine, can already do much administrative work, and share our unexplained penchant for lolcats. Perhaps our days of boring admin are over. Or, we could just roboticize parts of ourselves, voluntarily. Today's word of the day is galvanic: of, or produced by, electricity.

Living our lives in a galvanized way is already true in many ways; the internet, phones, payment processors and other comfort-inducers are already doing the leg-work. Robots are gaining a cool factor that they've always maintained, but which, like a flattering and tacky fashion trend, reaches consumer peaks every ten years. Making robot-esque human dance music, inducing robot sweat-shops and printing out your own 3D objects are just some of what is in store. It all seems innovative, but a little geeky. Then again, who said the robotic can't be sexy?

Gives you something long and hard to think about.

Word of the Day: Cucullated

You are walking down a shadowy alleyway; you know you shouldn't be there at this time. Your bag clenches, like your fist does, at the thought of someone taking it away. News stories of murder and theft flash across your mind. Could you be today's victim?

The soles of your shoes sidle along the path when you hear the steps behind you. Quick steps. An unclean smell washes across your senses and you realize something is amiss. A shadow of a hood is following you. The steps quicken and snatch! he's away. You shudder in disgust, fear, pity of yourself. Who, what, how did this type of person come to be? He is at least one thing: today's word. Cucullated: shaped like, or covered with, a hood.

To me, a cucullate sounds more like a type of shellfish you might eat at a popular deli. I imagine it pink with a popping shell, something someone might bring up in a conversation or home menu without really knowing what it is. Here is a photo of a cucullated Justin Bieber. Do you think the word could have a double meaning?

Happy fishing, possible cucullates.

Word of the Day: Clangour

Your colleague types loud and fast, mimicking a machine gun. A careless driver swerves in front of you, causing a ding and profanities to be hurled outside your car window. As you take a detested saucer out underneath a pile of detested saucers belonging to your mother in law, they crash to the ground. Whoops. Today's word is clangour: a succession or prevalence of clanging noises.

The great thing about clangour is that it can be used metaphorically with great passion. Nagging, bad singing or an annoying, talkative companion are all clangour-esque. To the educated viewer, the picture below epitomizes societal clangour, but is masked as Hollywood celebrity.

I wish you a day free of clangour and the clangour-esque. Especially if you are hungover.