The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China

I’d like to visit all these places some time in the future!

(info from news.com.au)

The 71m high Leshan Giant Buddha

The Great Wall
Like the Eiffel Tower in Paris and New York’s Empire State Building, you can’t go to China without setting foot on this man-made wonder – a series of interconnecting walls stretching almost 9000km from east to west. One of the closest access points to the Great Wall is at Badaling, about 50km from Beijing.

Qufu
The birthplace of Confucius, in Shandong Province, has historic palaces, temples and cemeteries – many of them linked to the Chinese philosopher. They include the Cemetery of Confucius, the Temple of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion, where the direct descendants of Confucius lived.

Hanging Temple
The temple was built 1500 years ago into the side of a cliff near Mt Heng, 65km from the city of Datong. It contains Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian elements.

Leshan Giant Buddha
This 71m high statue carved out of the cliff face is the largest stone Buddha in the world. It is at the confluence of the Minjiang, Dadu and Qingyi rivers.

Jiuzhaigou Valley
Known for its lakes and waterfalls, the valley is a World Heritage Site and home to the endangered giant panda.

Mogao Caves
Also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, they are located in the Gansu Province at a religious and cultural crossroads on the Silk Road. Originally places of meditation, they contain examples of Buddhist art spanning 1000 years and form a system of 492 temples.

Song Mountain
The 1500m peak on the Yellow River is one of the Five Sacred Mountains of Taoism and home to the Shaolin Temple, which is considered the birthplace of Zen Buddhism.

Genghis Khan’s Mausoleum
The real burial site of the Mongolian hero has never been found. Built in the traditional Mongol style in the mid-1950s, the mausoleum is located 115km north of Yulin, in Inner Mongolia, and houses a collection of relics.

Wolong National Nature Reserve
This 200,000ha protected area in the Qionglai Mountains in Sichuan Province was established in the early 1960s and it is home to more than 150 endangered giant pandas and more than 4000 other species, including red pandas and golden monkeys.

The Forbidden City
Sitting in the middle of Beijing, it was the Chinese imperial palace and the home of emperors for almost 500 years from the Ming Dynasty.

Opera duo Charlotte & Jonathan – Britain’s Got Talent 2012 audition – UK version

As the Information Age turns the nature and type of work we do on its head, our traditional views of work, professions and specialist skills are continually challenged and reshaped. Here’s one consultant’s take on what a modern manager needs to know in a world of change and competition.

Let’s look for a moment at how our traditional view of the world is being assaulted. The prospect of a life long career in one organisation is now a pipe dream. The prospect of full-time employment without some periods of unemployment is unrealistic. Permanent full-time employment continues to disappear. Part-time and casual employment continues to grow.

New and different forms of work practice are continuing to develop. Manual work has already been largely displaced by technology. Decision making work is increasingly being displaced by technology.

The effects of globalisation are already apparent. A sneeze by a trading partner on the other side of the world can see us catch a cold. A global view of any market is an absolute necessity. The speed of information transfer reduces business advantage from innovation to weeks or months rather than years.

A single degree is no longer a career end point — it’s the starting point. Moving between jobs is the norm not the exception. Technology will continue to force more and more people to compete for fewer and fewer jobs. The new displaced people will be managers, not blue collar employees.

Organisational size doesn’t matter in terms of business profitability. Protected intellectual property has a reduced lifespan and value. Speed of action may be more critical than quality of action. Organisations will reshape and restructure five times more often than 20 years ago.

The impact of this age is only starting.

Do better than cope

In this environment, the speed of change is probably the only constant. How do we develop strategies, not simply to cope, but to take advantage of this world in which we live?

We can hope that it goes away. We can demand that the government makes it go away. We can think about it until our brain hurts.

We often make the mistake of thinking that business, or government for that matter, has some monopoly on crystal ball gazing. In reality, they are trying as hard as the rest of us to make some sense of future directions.

The Information Age influences employers’ thinking about what skills their employees need. Employers are not always terribly sure themselves. This may be part of the reason that some organisations shed one group of employees, and over time build staffing levels back up, with a different group of employees.

My guess is, the change is not going to go away. Change will become more rapid. Business and government will continue to be uncertain.

Business will lead

It is my view that once again the lead will come from “sharp-edge” businesses, which will develop a future strategy, take a gamble, build the skills they need, and gain market advantage from their courage.

I am prepared to take such a gamble. I think that there is a set of core skills that will provide a major impact on business growth over the next 10 years, and employees who have effectively developed these skills will be in demand. These skills will generally be additional to either a single or double degree in a particular discipline.

Having these skills will still mean the same level of change for people. But having these core skills may mean that you are able to move fluidly from one job, or project to another, without the level of dislocation faced by others who don’t have these skills.

Give us thinkers

The blurring of the edges of specialisation and singular professional focus is one of the interesting aspects of this change process. Increasingly, professionals are moving out of their specialisation to use their skills in other areas. Accountants move into general management roles. Teachers leave to run small businesses, work as counsellors or as human resource managers. Lawyers give up the strict practice of law to become rock band managers, entrepreneurs and business owners. Of 20 professionals in my day-to-day network, 16 now work outside the profession in which they initially qualified.

Employers in Australia have clearly stated that they prize flexibility, ability to adapt, people who can “think outside the square”, people who can solve problems and challenge the status quo in finding new and better ways to do things.

Employers have also stated that they are not all that fussed about what a graduate employee’s first degree is. Their view is that university has taught a young person how to research, present and argue a case. In the United States, the pressure is on for people to stay longer at university — to get a second degree and develop a broader based education. There is also a trend for one of those degrees to be in liberal arts.

As the process of future confusion continues to be a reality for business, then I believe that this trend will continue. Employers will seek people who can think, who can research, who love confusion and change, who are flexible and who will be happy — because employers are not that sure where we’re all headed either.

Top 20 skills’ checklist

Here’s my pick of what I see as the top 20 core skills for a modern economy.

career planning;
change management;
coaching;
continuous improvement;
customer service;
finance;
interpersonal skills;
computer literacy;
marketing;
mathematics;
negotiation;
networking;
performance management;
presentation;
problem solving;
research;
self-management;
strategic planning;
team leadership;
writing.

This information is provided by SEEK. For small business products and services, visit http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/small-business/

New Roman Missal for Parents and Adults – Word for Word by Life Teen
from Life Teen on Vimeo.

• IsMassChanging.org
• LifeTeen.com
• CatholicYouthMinistry.com

Why are the words of the Catholic Mass changing? Fr. John Muir confronts the misconceptions about the changes with truth and clarity. Fr. John helps parents understand the recent history behind the newest 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal and how it grows from the 1st and 2nd editions. Fr. John compares the “dynamic equivalent” and the “formal equivalent” of how we translate words from Latin to English, and then explains the elaborate process used to create the new Roman Missal. Finally, Fr. John encourages us to rediscover the meaning behind the words and we use at Mass and how we can help our children through this transition.