Stubbornella - Nicole Sullivan

Eight techniques for thriving in a big Indian family.

The meaningless ack. You mean that you care about their opinion; you say that you agree with what they are saying. If it ever comes up again, you use one of the following techniques.

Distract. Add more or less unrelated information to the discussion, the more the better.

Delay. Decide to decide after some given point, which may or may not ever arrive. Insist that it is now too late to decide.

Seek additional advice. Everyone’s opinion counts equally. If the currently included opinions are not in your favor, invite an auntie or cousin to give their opinion. If you are really losing a battle invite so many opinions that it is impossible to sort out who thinks what. Ideally, this will include the entire family.

Claim supporters, whether or not they have actually expressed an opinion is mostly irrelevant. For example, “Auntie thinks I should get to eat nothing but cake.”

Reevaluation. Decisions are never final. You might think a decision has been made and you are on your way to get a bite to eat, when in fact things have magically evolved and you are going to visit an obscure neighbor on the other side of the city. Turn the tide of the discussion at the last moment before the decision needs to be acted upon to allow reevaluation to work in your favor.

Disagree respectfully and with a smile and you can get away with being quite forceful. The downside, everyone else will be doing the same, and they have a lot more practice than you do. You are hopelessly outmatched and you will eat five times as much as you meant to. A bit of Zen will go a long way. Remember, letting go is just a gesture.

Give up. Some arguments are not winnable. For example, your friends mother is completely incapable of understanding why you might want to go to the ATM, know the address or phone number where you are staying, buy a map, or have your own cell phone. She can’t imagine you going off on your own or even getting lost because the idea of doing things independently has no place in her worldview. Why would you ever want to be alone if you could be with others? She may treat you like a small child, but she will also make you chai ten times a day and generally spoil you rotten. Revel in it, mother love is a beautiful thing.

Yahoo! Developer Network has released a video of my Object Oriented CSS talk at Web Directions North just in time for Ada Lovelace day. I’ve also been included in a feature on Women in Technology. I’m absolutely flattered to be included among these fantastic technical women. Wow.

Object Oriented CSS: for high performance websites and web applications.

Find out more about object oriented css

1. Open source project on github (GIT is having some DNS issues, be patient)
2. Follow along with the slides on slideshare
3. Join the OOCSS google group

Anyone that has lived abroad for more than a few years, understands fundamentally not fitting. When I moved to Paris, I expected it to be a culture shock, to really change my ideas. It’s natural, I had to learn the language, and more than that, figure out how to make my way in a culture with vastly different values and customs than my own. To my surprise then, the biggest not-fitting had nothing to do with my adopted culture, but rather the first time I returned home after truly becoming French somewhere deep in my core. It’s only then that you realize your instincts are off, you find odd those who share the culture you once considered as natural as water to a fish.

Around five in the afternoon we met at the Ryokan Yuhara. We took our time settling in, and then went to explore. We walked along the Takase Canal and Kamo River. The canal is bordered by tiny streets and traditional architecture. The river by restaurants with decks which offer al fresco dining. We made it to the more Tokyo-like section of kyoto at nightfall and Hugo took a photo (password required, email me if you’d like one) that I’m very jealous of.