English for Urban Planning, a Venezuelan student blog

Veronica is blogging about our recent collaborative Bridge project; she is a student in Dafne's English for Urban Planinng class. She reported her own thoughts and some supplementary research, and added some photos. This blog demonstrates how students can use blogging for their portfolio.

English for Urban Planning

OK - from mess to systematic order

Inspired by Rosa Say and David Allen's Getting Things Done, I've been clearing up some shelves and binders with messy papers that I may or may not need. Only those that seem really relevant in the actual context are now placed orderly in a box with 8 "pending folders".

This processing task helped me decide for the chapters of my paper, as well as getting rid of useless and irrelevant stuff.





This is how the situation looked like before:

Reading Management With Aloha

Rosa Say, a former resort hotel manager from Hawai'i has written an amazingly wise and thought provoking book about how to "manage with Aloha" - bringing Hawai'i's universal values to the world of business. This is the book I've been waiting for from Amazon for weeks. Although I've only read parts of it yet, this will be a must study project. The way Rosa describes the everyday life world of hotel management using traditional Hawai'ian life values has many principles and values in common with the Covey Seven Habits approach, but somehow the Aloha management is easier for me to comprehend and accept. I think there are three main reasons. First, hotel care for costumers may have many similarities with the preschool and pedagogy field where I come from. The examples sometimes make me think of situations I've experienced where the parents of small children also need to become part of our community and share our values.
The other reason is her language, the linguist approach where all these values are derived and motivated by using Hawai'ian names and the hidden meaning of each term is explained in details. I'm so fond of learning another language and the related philosophy that it will take me some time to put this book away. A third reason for my strong attraction is how Rosa Say has developed a strong internet presence and community. Even before reading this book, I've been receiving newsletters and involved myself in discussions, posted comments in her blog, etc. This really matches my own future dream of writing a book-with-a-blog and becoming an online mentor & coach. But first and foremost, I must see to get finished with my final exam paper writing.

I've been talking about Rosa Say and her book Management With Aloha earlier in this blog, and will contibue to do so as I read. And my only reason for not spening more time yet on all this, is that paper, I've made a promise to my mentor that I will devote maximum attention to the writing project which means I've only been online for a very short period every day.