One Question

Answering Those Everyday Questions

Jan 27

More Charm!

by kelvin

We were delighted by the responses we received to our little charm article, so we thought we’d extend the topic a little further and see where we get.

Thanks also to Chairman Peter who brought us a copy of a fabulous, if somewhat high brow, magazine called Monocle which has an article on charm this month. It seems like they travel the world rather more than us poor folk stuck here in Manchester, but nonetheless just because their examples span the globe, the basic principle matches ours.

Let’s say that it’s something very human that is broken down by every mechanical or computerised stage that comes between one human and another.

And that’s not to say that human to human interaction is necessarily charming. Far from it. It involves a deliberate or conscious consideration of what the other person’s needs or wants may be, and what might simply improve their day.

We will practice charm at One Question Towers in the hope that it will become our natural demeanour putting us in a stronger position for the human interactions we make today, next week, through life.

There’s a spiritual feel to the One Question office today and we like it. It’s banishing the grim cold and hail that’s threatening our chipper mood. Threatening, but it’ll not penetrate.

We all felt the beauty of charm last night at an Indian in town. While most of the staff there did their usual super polite thing, only one had charm. How she managed a degree of sincerity with her smile and well wishes remains a mystery, but its impact was so different to that of her colleagues. East 2 East. Try it if you’re in town.

I feel a charm page is needed to sit alongside this one. Shame I don’t know how to create it!

Drink Driving Food Health Holidays Home

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Jan 26

What’s the point of pets?

by kelvin

Sean has no pets (thank god, he can’t look after himself too well, sorry Sean).

Bobby has a cat, sort of, in that it hardly ever comes into the house, and yet somehow manages to devour all its food every day.

Tracey has her rabbit (and that’s where this conversation started).

And KC has his dog that comes to the office most days now.

But why?

Well, as far as Sean is concerned, he has no pets as we’d all go around and rescue any poor creature unfortunate enough to be taken home by him (except girls).

But looking at it sensibly. Pets are a pain in the bum. You have to go home to them, take them out, feed them, insure them, pray they don’t ruin every other possession in your house, and in the case of dogs, pray they don’t eat other people’s children. You have to groom them, clean up after them and entertain them.

Madness.

In the office we agreed that a dog was the hardest pet, but also the most rewarding as they’re pretty much domesticated and do like to please. The independence of a cat has its advantages and they’re unlikely to cause too many problems beyond wrecking the sofa and depleting the local bird population.

But the rabbit? Tracey doesn’t even have kids! Sorry girl. We don’t understand. Yes it’s cute, but it poos all over your flat! I know you try to tell us it’s house trained, but we’ve been to yours and found its little “presents” around the place.

The pluses of course is that if the damn thing stays still long enough to be stroked it’s a pleasant thing to do, and you always have an excuse for leaving to go home when you’re bored. Still. A rabbit?

Having sort of agreed that they’re all more trouble than they’re worth, we then confounded common sense by also agreeing that none of us would give ours back!

Why? Well, just go get yourself one and see.

Pets

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Jan 25

What is charm?

by kelvin

What a lovely question. We have been debating charm for some weeks and its importance in life.

Debating its importance and our view that its disappearing, being forced out.

We like to think of ourselves as modern folk in the One Question world, but folk with an eye on what can be learned from other times. I guess that’s demonstrated to a degree by our love of the term “folk”. And charm is up there with things we don’t want to loose.

We consider charm to be a very human thing, never necessary, but perfect when offered.

It’s challenged by the sleek, the efficient, the mass produced that looks great, but just lacks something, by the bean counters who demand standardised everything.

It’s offered up by the genuine smile, the crooked street, the craftsman.

Much of London has charm, little of Milton Keynes.

Internet banking destroys it, a face to face meeting with someone who cares may help to restore it.

We say bring on the charm, and walk that bit further to the independent coffee shop, and tell them why, lest they should forget their survival depends on something the big boys can’t offer.

Britain Cornwall Love The big wide world Wellbeing

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Jan 24

Where is it hardest to smoke?

by kelvin

Well I guess the obvious answer is under water, but I was thinking more of a wider location type thing, at a country level. This was prompted by Bobby’s fling with a Finnish guy recently. Sean and I snarled at that, we didn’t like the idea of one of our girls being whisked off by Johhny Foreigner, especially not a cool dude like Frid, bloody good looking and annoyingly likeable too.

Anyway, we poked around the subject of smoking with Frid while standing outside the Met on Burton Road enjoying a puff and decided that Finland could well be the hardest place to enjoy a light bit of carcinogenic inhalation. And it works, there are only 18% smokers in the country against a European average of 23%.

The government intend to ban smoking totally by 2040. But I wonder why they don’t just do it quicker?

Britain Health

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Jan 23

Online Gaming Anyone?

by kelvin

I complained that choosing the Irishman to write about online gaming was racial stereotyping, and guess what the boss said?

“Exactly. Now get on with it!”

All in good taste I promise, we’re a happy gang in the One Question suite I promise.

Now, despite being Irish and liking the occasional flutter on the horses I have to confess to knowing nothing about online gaming. But my bad boy brother does! He’s just so into the tables at the casino that he just wants to carry on his addiction into whatever else he’s doing. Good job he’s a well paid trader in something or other.

On his i-pad he plays slots and various blackjack games at 888. In fact even on his i-phone he plays some kind of solitaire.

So there boss. Nothing from my mind, but a story for the big bro who knows his stuff in this topic.

Gaming

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Jan 20

Tea or coffee?

by kelvin

We love our random questions at the One Question offices and we were delighted this morning when one of you lovely readers sent a simple text asking just this.

Tea or coffee?

So we brewed up. Tea and coffee, and had a little debate.

There was no consensus.

KC likes tea first thing, then at least one coffee, but never more than two, then tea again later in the day. So traditional – morning coffee, afternoon tea.

Tracey just drinks tea.

Sean drinks whatever anyone’s making – that’s the student in him!

And me? I confuse the whole thing by drinking herbal teas, or lesbian teas as the oh so politically correct boss calls them.

We did agree though that coffee is for kicks and tea is more thirst quenching, but as both are diuretic I guess neither actually quench your thirst.

Drink water folks. It’s easy.

What about you?

Drink

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Jan 19

How do you prepare for a telephone interview?

by kelvin

It’s a great place here at One Question to the extent that I have been able to be quite open about it being a stop gap job for me as I find the thing that will help me pay my way in the world and get me started properly in life.

Today I had a telephone interview for the first time and KC asked me to write up my experience as a One Question post.

There are good and challenging bits about telephone interviews I’ve discovered.

The good things are:

  • you can have a summary of your thoughts in from of you
  • you can have the company web site in front of you
  • you can walk around
  • and you can have a copy of your CV – it’s amazing how a question about something you know you’ve written can throw you
The challenges are:
  • you can’t see their reactions
  • you have to smile like a looney to be sure your enthusiasm is coming over
  • they could be in their underpants!
My preparation consisted of:
  • notes on the company
  • notes on what i thought they should do
  • crafted strengths and weaknesses statements
  • summaries (in 50 words) of what I knew about the guys I spoke to
  • getting dressed as if I was in front of them!
The last bit was vital. I am pretty casual most of the time, but i had to break my mind away from that. A suit and an ironed shirt helped enormously. I even polished my shoes this morning!
And I even quite enjoyed it!

Sean.

The big wide world Work

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Jan 18

How do I set up a blog?

by onequestion

OK, there is no way that this is the definitive way of going about the joyous task.

This is just how we went about it to set up One Question’s gateway to all you lovely people out there.

We’re simple souls and we were looking for something simple. If there was someone who’d do the hard work for us we were happy to pay a little for them to do so. And we found them. And love them. So we’re happy to share them with you all.

We were recommended to talk to the web hosting company 34sp, and this happy gang of geeks got us right on track. One Question is based on WordPress, but once you’ve got that bit sorted you still need a wordpress hosting company, and that’s where 34sp come in. We told them what we wanted, we chose how the background of the site looks, and we paid up, but only a little bit a month.

Go for it. If you like the idea of keeping some sort of blog whether for business or just for life, it’s easy. really easy. We don’t understand this world, but we love being part of it all.

Intelligent life

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Jan 12

What difference can a word make?

by kelvin

We love words at One Question Towers.

We don’t pretend that we’re good at them or anything daft like that, what we like is coming across other people who are great, who take a sentence and turn something turgid into what appear to be words of wisdom.

Last night Sean and I were at a lecture by one of the great old men of advertising in this country. A guy who was part of the Madison Avenue scene characterised by Mad Men. He was telling us tales of times gone by, and talking about the importance of seeing copywriting as a craft. He was telling us about a soap powder he used to write ads for, one that increased its sales by 50% after our man Jeremy changed just one word in the headline. That’s powerful!

We’re going to come back to this topic after we’ve bought a book we say advertised about the fun and catastrophes of learning English and how a subtle change can dramatically alter the meaning of what’s said.

We’d love to hear your examples of English at its best, and most confusing. We’ll be revisiting the topic soon.

Art Books

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Jan 11

How much do we drink?

by kelvin

There has been coverage in the news over the last couple of days about recommended daily allowances for alcohol, reinforcing that a male should stay within 20 units a week, and a female just 14 units.

This has been expended recently to also recommend that we drink on no more than 5 days a week to give our bodies a chance to recover from the ravages of the demon booze.

We have never really stopped to think about what these suggestions actually mean until now. We’ve been looking on a few of the bottles that tell you what the contents equate to in alcohol units and it’s a bit scary.

A small beer – 330ml is about a unit and a half. That means that just three a night for five nights is too much for a man. Oh blimey!

A small wine at 12% alcohol is a unit and a half, so a large glass of wine at 250 ml would be 3 units, meaning that you girls could have one a day, provided you take two days off a week.

We quickly found that most of the drinks in our fridge don’t even tell us what their alcohol content is, which doesn’t help either.

This may sound OK to some, but at this office this whole topic has come as a bit of a surprise.

The unit itself is defined as 10ml of pure alcohol by volume.

Drink Health

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