Recently I read a book by Jeff Colbin, who is one of the editors of Fortune magazine, and the book which is titled, “Talent is Overrated”, basically that we need to practice hard. Practice of course is not as simple as that, and it is practice in specific ways to achieve specific goals that really counts. He gives examples of people like Mozart and Tiger Woods, both of whom essentially began practicing the fields in which they would sell, at extremely early ages and in both cases were coached by their fathers who had experience in that regard.

It seems that if pushed in the right direction, and trained properly, all of us can achieve essentially anything – naturally, if we have a desire and the capability to work hard. Of course, any book selling an inspiring message like that is going to do well!

NewsWeek chooses best countries in the world to live in (Pinny this week obviously)

The latest edition of NewsWeek will no doubt create some controversy with its list of the 100 best countries in the world to live in. Finland comes in first and South Africa is at 82 – long behind countries such as – well, even Poland, which is in the mid-20’s. We also lag considerably behind all of the former Soviet countries as well as Russia, etc. The survey takes into consideration, amongst other things, the opportunities for a child growing up in the country, the health sector, the education sector, etc and South Africa was clearly found to be lagging behind these countries in all of these aspects.