Cheryl's Life: August 2006

Monday, August 28, 2006

Party Saturday Night

we had a great time as usual. John's wearing his new shirt with Mauricio doing an Irish jig

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Wonder how Fox news is spinning this story

I don't take pleasure in anyone's suffering, but I found this article interesting
**********************************************************************************

Captors of Fox journalists set 72-hour deadline
'Try to help us get out of here,' reporter says on video

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- The captors of two Fox News journalists have demanded freedom within 72 hours for Muslims held in U.S. jails, according to a leaflet distributed Wednesday with a video.

The previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades claimed responsibility in the leaflet for the August 14 kidnapping in Gaza of reporter Steve Centanni, 60, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36. They appeared on the video, which was aired by Ramattan News Agency, and said they were being treated well and were in good health.

In a CNN translation of the leaflet, the group said "we will release your prisoners" if male and female Muslim prisoners "in the jails of America" are released. It said "we will give you 72 hours starting today, midday ... to discuss and to agree." ( Watch the captives plead and the new security risks -- 1:56 )

There is no specific mention in the leaflet of the two journalists or their names, and there is no statement about what would be done if the conditions aren't met.

The U.S. State Department condemned the kidnappings and demanded that the men be released.

The group is unknown, and its leaflet lacks a logo and a date.

Holy Jihad Brigades "might be a fake" militant group, said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

"We are following this issue, and what is important for us is the release of the journalists and to safely return them to their families," he said.

The statement includes quotes from the Quran and mentions American actions against Arabs and Muslims.

Centanni is an American and Wiig is from New Zealand.

'I'm here and alive'
Centanni speaks first on the video.

"We have been taken captive in Gaza and are being held prisoner here," he says, sitting cross-legged next to Wiig.

"We're in fairly good condition, we're alive and well and in fairly good health. We get lots of clean water, food every day, access to the bathroom, shower, clean clothes and our captors are treating us well.

"Just want to let you know I'm here and alive and give my love to my family and friends and ask you to do anything you can to try to help us get out of here."

Wiig then speaks: "If you could apply any political pressure on the local government here in Gaza and the West Bank that would be much appreciated by Steve and myself."

"To my family: I love you all. Please don't worry, I'll do all the worrying for us."

The video then shows what appear to be the journalists' ID cards, including one indicating that Wiig has worked for CNN as a freelancer.

Main groups deny involvement
Gaza's main Palestinian militant groups have denied any involvement in the abductions. Palestinian security forces have helped in the search, a priority for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday.

Centanni's family has appealed for any information about his condition in a videotaped statement that aired Sunday on the Arabic-language station Al-Jazeera.

"I would like his captors to know that Steve is an honorable man who always tries to do what is right," said Steve's brother Ken Centanni, who was flanked by their two sisters.

"Steve has strong respect for the Palestinian people and their culture," he said. "Steve was in Gaza with Olaf Wiig to report the truth. He is far more valuable to the Palestinian people free as a journalist than as a captive.

Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught, recently issued an emotional statement.

"If somebody knows any information can they please tell us, because I want him home so much," she said. "He and his colleague Steve don't deserve this. They are good men. They are good men and should be allowed to come home."

Witnesses to the abduction said two vehicles blocked the journalists' television van in central Gaza. A masked man pulled a gun on the journalists' bodyguard and forced him to the ground before the kidnappers grabbed the men and sped away, the witnesses said.

Washington is working with Palestinian security services, Palestinian leaders and the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to "ensure their safe release," said State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper. The United States also is working with representatives of New Zealand and Fox News.

However, the United States will not negotiate with terrorists, Cooper said.

"As we've maintained publicly, we do not make concessions to terrorists, and we continue to call for the release of these journalists immediately and without condition," he said.

In the past two years, Palestinian militants in Gaza have seized at least 26 foreigners, including nine members of the media. Hostages usually are released within hours.

CNN's Paula Hancocks contributed to this report.

Lately

So, I know it's been a while since I've posted. Not much going on. We got out of work early today and went to Bahama Breeze for appetizer and cocktails. It was okay.

I've been following the primary debates. I heard Jim Davis speak yesterday on a talk show and was really disappointed. He had few innovative ideas. He didn't stand up to Republicans while in congress, why would he stand up to them now? It reminds me of John Kerry all over again. I think he will win the primary but I don't think he has the back-bone to win the gubernatorial election. Well, I've yet to see it. The debates on tonight. Maybe I'll see some hope.

John's all excited about his new watch band. He's about to make himself a pastis....

I went out Saturday night with Vivian and the crew. In all, there were about 20 of us. We had such a great time. Here are a couple of picture-me in the first one and Vivian in the second one. We all had a blast.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

My dear mom

My mom loves to watch TV. She has all of the cable channels and watches TV in most of her spare time. She often times will wake up in the middle of the night and watch TV until she can fall back asleep. I would prefer for her to have an active social life but I do like knowing she's safe at home in front of the tube. My mom will occasionally call to inform me of a show coming on that I should watch or check to see if I've seen a show. Sometimes, I'll call her to advise of an upcoming program that I think she will enjoy. There is really no specific type of programming she likes. My mom will watch just about anything.

So, yesterday I called her to chat and catch up. We do not always talk about TV but yesterday we did (unfortunately). She proceeded to tell me about some documentaries she recently saw on The Learning Channel. One was called "God Sleeps in Rwanda" or something like that. The other was a documentary on the Holocaust. She was going on and on about how people are so cruel and how she can't believe the suffering and how she could not understand how people can treat others that way...

Then she told me about this one scene. Our conversation went like this:

mom, "there was this one scene where this tiny toddler was starving to death and curled up on the ground in a fetal position. She was so small and she could barely move. Guess what was behind her?"

I was hesitant because I knew it was going to be something awful and I was not enjoying this conversation. I answered, "what?"

Mom, "a huge buzzard waiting to eat her...."

Me, "mom, why did you watch that show? It's awful!

Mom, "because it's educational"

Me, "well, were you even able to sleep that night?"

Mom, "no! I have not been able to sleep all week!"

me, "see!!!!"

So, that was pretty much the end of our chat. I now cannot get the scene out of my head and I never even saw the documentary.

Monday, August 14, 2006

This made me smile: New CEO of Pepsico

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/biography/M-R/Nooyi-Indra-K-1955.html

President, chief financial officer, and director, PepsiCo

Nationality: Indian.

Born: October 28, 1955, in Madras, India.

Education: Madras Christian College, BS, 1976; Indian Institute of Management, MBA, 1978; Yale University, master of public and private management, 1980.

Family: Married Raj K. Nooyi (management consultant); children: two.

Career: Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell, product manager; Boston Consulting Group, 1980–1986, director of international corporate strategy projects; Motorola, 1986–1988, member of automotive division development team; 1988–1990, vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning; Asea Brown Boveri, 1990–1994, senior vice president of corporate strategy and strategic marketing; PepsiCo, 1994–2001, senior vice president of corporate strategy and development; 2001–, president.

Awards: Named one of the "most powerful women in business" by Fortune magazine.

Address: PepsiCo, Inc., 700 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase, New York 10577; http://www.pepsico.com.

■ As of 2004 Indra Nooyi was the number two executive at the world's number two soft drink maker—a multinational firm that generated nearly $27 billion in sales in 2003. As the highest-ranked Indian American woman in corporate America, Nooyi led some of PepsiCo's most significant strategic moves. The crowning glory in her career was serving as lead negotiator of PepsiCo's $13.8 billion acquisition of the Quaker Oats Company, which led to her being named one of the top five officers at her company. Intensely competitive, the always unique Nooyi helped to position PepsiCo one day to overtake the longtime market leader and PepsiCo's bitter rival, the Coca-Cola Company.

Indra K. Nooyi. © Najlah Feanny/Corbis SABA.

DEFYING EXPECTATIONS
Raised in a middle-class family in India, Nooyi seldom did what people expected of her. Most young girls in India spent their time learning household chores; Nooyi played in an all-girl rock band and on a women's cricket team. She completed the MBA program at one of only two business schools in India and worked at Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell in India. Around the same time, a magazine advertisement for Yale School of Management caught her eye, and she impulsively applied. Much to her surprise, she was accepted. Even more surprising was the fact that her parents let her immigrate to the United States. Said Nooyi, "It was unheard of for a good, conservative, south Indian Brahmin girl to do this. It would make her an absolutely unmarriageable commodity after that" (Financial Times, January 26, 2004). After working in planning strategy at Boston Consulting Company, Motorola and Asea Brown Boveri, she joined PepsiCo as senior vice president of corporate strategy and development in 1994.

BRINGING FOCUS TO A CONGLOMERATE
Nooyi worked directly with PepsiCo's then CEO Roger Enrico and was involved in every major strategic decision that Enrico made as CEO. One of the key executives behind the company's transformation into a focused food and beverage entity, Nooyi persistently argued for the spin-off of the company's struggling restaurant division, which included Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. Enrico was skeptical, but he finally relented. Enrico said that "Indra is like a dog with a bone" (Forbes Global, January 20, 2003).

A rabid sports fan, Nooyi spent hours studying videotapes of the final championship games that the basketball great Michael Jordan played with the Chicago Bulls; she reviewed the tapes for lessons on teamwork. Because of her desire to win, Nooyi fought hard for PepsiCo's successful $3.3 billion acquisition of Tropicana in 1998, eyeing the transaction as a vehicle to increase PepsiCo's earnings and enhance its image as a premium brand for convenient foods and drinks. A devotee of the company's orange juice, Nooyi understood before others Tropicana's brand potential, both to increase PepsiCo's earnings and to enhance the company's developing portfolio of convenience and "functional" foods and drinks. Nooyi said, "When other PepsiCo executives continued to question the $3.3 billion acquisition at a final meeting, Roger and I just told them, 'We are going to do it'" (Contra Costa Times, December 10, 2000).

In 2000 Nooyi was promoted to CFO and finished the year with four continuous quarters of uninterrupted growth—in revenues, profits, and return on capital. In December of that year, the company's stock price was up 40 percent from the year before. Nooyi described her job—and her commitment to leaving behind a lasting corporate legacy—as an "obsession." Said Nooyi, "I love my family, but PepsiCo's also my child. So really I don't look upon it as a chore. In fact, I find work very therapeutic" (Business India, January 8, 2001).

WINNERS HAVE FUN AND TAKE STOCK OF LIFE
Two of Indra Nooyi's bosses at PepsiCo had significant health issues, both of which impacted Nooyi. PepsiCo CEO Wayne Calloway was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1996. Nooyi's own mentor and boss, Roger Enrico, had a history of heart trouble, which led to his retiring at age 57. Though a self-professed workaholic, Nooyi preferred to keep the mood light. "You must have fun in whatever you do. Your work takes up so much of your life that if you're not having fun, what's the point in it?" (Business India, January 8, 2001). She was known to sing around the corporate offices and keep a karaoke machine at home. Highlighting the on-the-go lifestyle that fuels demand for her company's products, she once commented that she had not realized how precious time was until she noticed a driver on the highway flossing his teeth. A devout Hindu, Nooyi went to temple and prayed regularly.

A CAREER-SHAPING MERGER
In August 2001 PepsiCo purchased the Quaker Oats Company. On the morning that the acquisition was announced, Nooyi went to temple and prayed. During the arduous negotiations, she demanded a limit on the stock price of no more than $105 a share for Quaker shareholders. According to Steven Baronoff, cohead of mergers at Merrill Lynch, which represented PepsiCo, "Throughout the whole process, she was disciplined and held very firm" (Contra Costra Times, December 10, 2000).

Adversaries underestimated Nooyi at their peril. Financial professionals greatly admired her strengths and focus. Andrew Conway, a beverage analyst with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, noted that "Indra is extraordinarily financially detailed…. With Tropicana, she was willing to take a lower-return-on-asset business because she saw a way to improve it to get strong margin growth. Her ability to find value in an acquisition is very high" (Contra Costra Times, December 10, 2000).

Integrating the two companies was an even tougher challenge—one that would be crucial to determining Nooyi's prized legacy. The integration did not go smoothly at first. The merger of the Gatorade and Tropicana sales forces resulted in a botched sales promotion, and a key Quaker Oats executive left the company. Supermarket sales of Gatorade, Quaker's crown jewel, were up only 7 percent in the last quarter of 2001 compared to the 15 percent pace set by its market peers.

But Nooyi stayed the course, and no obstacle appeared to prevent the acquisition from ultimately succeeding. PepsiCo's total sales grew nearly 7 percent in 2002, boosting the company's annual revenue growth over its historical 6 percent growth rate. In 2003 the company announced that it was on track to realize its goal of achieving $400 million in synergies by the end of fiscal year 2004. Nooyi's next move was unclear as of early 2004. Some industry insiders predicted that she would be moved to another area of the company to gain experience running her own business division. Rather than a step down, the move could ultimately catapult her to a takeover at the top. Even as one of the few women in corporate America's highest echelons, and the only Hindu woman in 2004, Nooyi had an unbeatable attitude: "I'm sure a glass ceiling exists, but it's both transparent and fragile so you can break it" (Business India, January 8, 2001).

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Nice Day Today

I woke up this morning not feeling very well so decided to take the day off. It's been a long time since I had an entire day off alone with nothing to do. I thought I'd sleep in a bit but was not able to. I decided to go for a long drive. I like to take long drives to no where when I'm feeling kind of blah. It always cheers me up.

I grabbed two of my textbooks and decided to take them to my school's campus bookstore and sell them back. I knew that would take a good two hours of driving time as long as I took the long way there. I jumped in the car and decided to stop at Dunkin Doughnuts to pick up an iced coffee. Well actually, I went to Starbucks first. I had a $5 giftcard from work and decided to try the iced latte. It was awful. I dumped it into the trash right outside of Dunkin Doughnuts. I was glad it did not cost ME anything. I got my coffee, one toasted coconut cake doughnut and was a happy girl.

I put in my Gipsy Kings cd-which makes great driving music by the way- and was on my way. About an hour later I arrived at school and took my textbooks into the bookstore. I was given a total of $58 for both. UGGHHHHHH!!! Those books cost me a total of $250. Oh well, what can I say. I took my $58 and left satisfied. I have to admit though, I was vowing to not buy another textbook until I was sure it was absolutely necessary. Those books were in EXCELLENT condition! I should try selling them on eBay in the future.

I thought about making a surprise visit to my dear sister Kimberly but John called. He wanted us to have lunch together so I decided to pick something up and head home. I stopped at Pipo's latin cafe and got roasted pork, plaintains, beans and rice. The pork was delish but the beans and rice was just okay. La Terasita is much better. It's cheaper too. Too bad we get bad service when we go there.

The girl working at Pipo's remembered me from my frequent visits to Mr. Empanada http://www.mrempanada.com/. That made me laugh. I love Mr. Empanada and people know it. The only person that loves it more than me is John. His eyes just light up when I bring them home. I feel like he's my child.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Vocalists

Today at work, a group of us were debating who was the best female vocalist (in pop music) of our time. We came to an agreement pretty easily. for me, it came down to three factors for the judging: clarity, vocal range and consistency (consistency meaning they sound great every time we hear them sing).

So the winners were in this order:
Whitney Houston
Christina Aguillera
Celine Dion
Jewel (one of my personal favorites)
Maria Carey

For male vocalists, we did not discuss. It's kind of hard for me to determine who has the best male vocals. I love Luther Vandross, Sting and Seal but I would not say they have the best vocals in their genre. I have been listening to the Gipsy Kings quite a bit lately. I'm not sure who sings lead on the vocals but whoever it is sounds absolutely beautiful to me.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Bad mood

forgive me for just having two interests in my life. I don't believe in taking up random interests and hobbies for the sake of having stuff to chat with people about.

Words of wisdom

I came across this and I'm not sure who the author is:

"Be playful. Know that it's going to be alright no matter what.
Have as much fun as you can. Be as easy as you can. Don't take anything very seriously, because everything blows over, good and bad. You can't stand still. So nothing lasts very long. The best of experiences you must move beyond — and the worst of experiences you must move beyond. Don't make where you are too big of a deal. Let it be what it is: It's a moment in time where you have the choice to feel good or feel bad. That's all that it ever is."

Cheryl's Life