Bona Fide Confidence » Women: What is it?

Pedro’s Diary: The Perfect Date Spot (NYC Style)

Shawn — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:16:48 +0000

Rekindle the Romance Despite the Economy

JL — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:59:26 +0000

Rekindle the romance despite the economy

Low on cash because of the economy? Don’t let your skinny wallet put a damper on your romance.

You may not have it like Obama– to take your significant other (SO) on a helicopter ride to the theatre in NYC. However, you still have some low cost and stress-free options.

10 Tips to rekindle the romance during the current economy:

1- Cook a special date night dinner at home

This doesn’t have to be a crazy production if you don’t know how to cook. Go online find a quick and easy recipe. Put your heart and soul into it. Your SO will appreciate the effort. If you were smarter than the rest of us and learned how to cook, this is the time to make your partner’s favorite meal.

2- Make it a movie night at home

Go to your local public library and rent your partner’s favorite movie for FREE. Stay away from the films that make them angry or sad. We want them to remain positive and think happy thoughts.

3- Take a bike ride or a long walk

Spend time each other outside of the house and far away from the stack of overdue bills on the kitchen table. Spend some time enjoying each other’s company.

4- Surprise your SO with a card just because

Your partner will appreciate the gesture even if you purchased the card from the dollar store. Don’t simply rely on the author of the card to express how you feel. Add your own special note. Be confident that your partner loves your chicken scratch–and will be able to read it!

5- Take a stroll to your nearest coffee or ice cream shop

Avoid taking the family car for this one. The goal is to spend as much time as possible with each other, and you will save on gas. You can buy one refreshing treat that you can both share.

6- Cut down on time spent with the boys

Man, you might want to cut down on some of the extracurricular activities with your buddies. Show your partner that you are actually focusing on improving the family’s current financial situation. Show your partner that you are constantly looking for work or business opportunities. If you hang with the boys 7 days/week, you might want to only do it 5 days/week. I’m just saying!

7- Pick up the slack

Do some extra work around the house. Help out with the household chores. This is not the time to do things your way. For example, if your SO likes the towels folded a certain way, do it their way– even if your way may be better. Your expertise is not required at the moment.

8- Make it a game night

C’mon you got this. Wii Fit, card games, board games, hide and go seek…Need I say more?

9- Take it back to the ol’ school

Play the songs from high school or college. The ol’ school joints seem to always bring on happy memories. Make your SO a special CD with all their favorites. They can play it around the house, in the car, or at work. They will be thinking and be appreciative of you.

10- Dance with each other at home

There is a reason why slow dancing was invented. On your Date Night, add slow dancing on the agenda at home. If you have kids, don’t hesitate to show them that you are enjoying each other’s company. Please keep it rated G.

BONUS

Tonight, while your partner is winding down after a long day, do the following:

- Sit them down in front of the TV or with a book

- Light up a couple aromatherapy candles in the area

- Get a 12” x 8”x 4” plastic container and two towels

- Fill the container with warm water, about half-way

- Add a few squirts of a scented liquid hand soap or shower gel

- Place one towel under the container, then soak your partner’s feet into the container for about 5-10 minutes

- Rub each foot with a foot scrub–a facial scrub will work also (check out her vanity for these items)

- Soak the feet again for about 5 more minutes

- Wash off the feet to get rid of any remaining scrub, then dry the feet with a towel

- Apply lotion to each foot and gently massage as your rub the lotion into the feet

Keep it simple, be creative, and show them that you care about the relationship. Your partner will appreciate the effort.

Getting back on your feet is certainly a priority. However, strengthening and nurturing your union should also be at the top on the list.

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Beauty Affects Men’s and Women’s Brains Differently

Shawn — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:25:43 +0000

Beauty is famously in the eye of the beholder; but it’s also in the beholder’s brain, and may work differently in the brains of men and women.

In men, images they consider to be beautiful appear to activate brain regions responsible for locating objects in absolute terms — x- and y-coordinates on a grid. Images considered beautiful by women do the same, but they also activate regions associated with relative location: above and behind, over and under. The difference could be the result of evolutionary pressures on our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

The findings, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are preliminary and based on a small number of people, but intriguing nonetheless.

“This the first study about neural activation in aesthetic tasks to include sex as a variable,” said study co-author Camilo Cela-Conde, an evolutionary anthropologist at Spain’s Universitat de les Illes Balears.

Earlier studies on sex-based cognitive differences have found that men seem to have a heightened sense of absolute location. Women, by contrast, are quicker to process relative values.

How these brain systems became tied to the perception of beauty, widely considered a defining human trait, is an evolutionary mystery. According to Cela-Conde, aesthetics may simply be a byproduct of other cognitive tasks.

Differences in cognitive tasks, however, may be less mysterious: For much of human history, men and women had different jobs. Their brains may thus have developed in subtly different ways.

“In current hunter-gatherer groups, men are in charge of hunting; meanwhile women collect,” said Cela-Conde. “If this is a scheme that can be extended to ancestors’ behavior, then we can think about a selective pressure to increase the capacity of spatial orientation in men, and the capacity to identify edible plants and tubers in women.”

In the study, 10 men and 10 women looked at images of modern and classic paintings, as well as photographs of landscapes, artifacts and urban scenes. The researchers recorded their reactions with a magnetoencephalograph, which monitors real-time neural activity by measuring magnetic fields generated by electrical currents in the brain.

(To avoid confounding by romantic regions of the brain, close-up images of people were not included.)

The subjects varied as to what they considered beautiful, but brain patterns were consistent: coordinate-processing activation in both men and women, and category-processing in only women.

These differences do not seem to translate into differences in the actual experience of beauty. In earlier research, said Cela-Conde, both men and women describe beauty as being “original, interesting and pleasant.”

However, as the differences were expressed only in response to images the subjects found to be beautiful, they do not seem to reflect a general sex-based difference in perception.

As the brain regions involved are far more developed in humans than chimpanzees — our closest living relative — Cela-Conde’s team suspects that the differences are rooted in early hominid divisions between men and women.

Another possible explanation is language-based: Coordinate-reading brain systems are less activated by linguistic communication than categorical systems.

The differences observed in the study would then originate in another sex-based difference, albeit an arguable one: Women are especially talkative.

Citation: “Sex-related similarities and differences in the neural correlates of beauty.” Camilo J. Cela-Conde, Francisco J. Ayala, Enric Munar, Fernando Maestu, Marcos Nadal, Miguel A. Capo, David del Río, Juan J. Lopez-Ibor, Tomas Ortiz, Claudio Mirasso, and Gisele Marty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No.8, Feb. 23, 2009.

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Does a Man’s Automobile Make Him More Attractive?

Shawn — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:21:20 +0000

You may read with interest today the survey in Top Gear Australia magazine that concludes that sports cars or luxury cars generally don’t add any attraction points to most men, interesting.

Unfortunately, I think something has been missing from the picture for a long while now. Society has brought it upon itself to believe that men buy expensive cars simply to impress others, what nonsense.

I’m here to make a case for all the men (and women) that buy expensive sports cars or luxury cars because they choose to. Not because they want to impress others, but because they want that car. I am also going to shamelessly fill this article with photos of me with expensive cars as an example of how gorgeous cars don’t really do that much when it comes to attraction.

In this job one of the benefits is seeing what it feels like to have a different car every week. One week you drive around in something James Bond would be happy with, the next week you’ve got a Kia Grand Carnival people mover. So not only do you see the difference in treatment but you also eventually realise how judgemental people can be. Let me give you a few examples.

Last year when the Jaguar XF first came out I had my hands on the very first one in Brisbane. Now remember, it’s just a Jag, sure it looks very modern and expensive, but it’s just a car.

I wasn’t expecting much of a reaction, but I was blown away. First day in the XF and a friend and I went to grab some lunch, we decided to head to St Lucia, near the University of Queensland campus, we parked the car directly next to a restaurant and sat down for lunch.

In the hour that we sat there eating we watched five or six people stop and examine the car, nothing out of the ordinary but still interesting, however once we paid the bill and got up to leave, two rather attractive girls approached the car – “hey guys, nice car, can you take us for a ride?” – were they serious? I mean, who does that?

It was one of those movie moments where the two guys stare at each other and wonder what they should say “Sure…” – “Don’t think so” both of us spoke at the same time. My friend was keen, I wasn’t.

“Sorry girls, we’re on a tight schedule (lie) we need to get out of here”. “Oh, come on, guys, just up the road, we live five minutes away”. Now I had a dilemma on my hands. At this point my friend was looking at me, wondering what the tight schedule was, with that “are you crazy” look on his face.

“Can’t do it, have a great day though”. We got inside the car and drove off, 30 seconds went past in silence but it finally came: “Dude, have you gone mad!” said one rather confused man.

I love cars. I really do, I love the way they look, I love the way they sound, I love everything about them. One thing I don’t love is the stereotypical attention they get.

A while ago I was in a gorgeous red Ferrari 360 convertible driving around the Gold Coast, at one stage while we were stuck at a red light two girls walked past us, stopped, one of them wrote her number on a piece of paper and threw it inside the car. “Call me!” she yelled as we looked at her in disbelief.

Would any self-respecting man really call her?

That same week in the XF, I went to the Brisbane Chocolate Festival at Portside and there were absolutely no car parks left, but as soon as the manager saw the Jag, he came out, directed me to a reserved park right at the very front, next to a Porsche. Deferential treatment? Not at all.

Now that I’ve driven most supercars worth driving, I can honestly tell you, if you’re looking at buying one to impress anyone, don’t bother. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, etc, they are all cars of beauty, power and finesse, but they are all, at the end of the day, just a car.

You should only buy them because YOU love them. This already holds true for the majority of owners.

My favourite story though is with the Aston Martin DBS, in Quantum Silver (James Bond’s car) in Brisbane. Those familiar with the Brisbane night life scene have probably been to West End and Lychee Lounge in particular.

I usually have a policy of not taking supercars out at night unless they are under consistent supervision, so with that in mind I planned to park the DBS right out the front of Lychee Lounge so I could see it at all times.

You can of course hear the car coming kilometres away and as we approached the venue, I could see the first parking spot was free, literally right out the front. Perfect position, as the place was packed.

As I pulled in, I could see and even feel the glances, conversations had stopped, heads were turned. James Bond had arrived.

There is something enormously empowering about getting out of a $600,000 supercar in front of a crowd of people. Somehow you’re now someone important, simply because you drive an ultra-expensive car. For the sake of my social study experiment, I was happy to play the part.

My friend and I sat down, I had a coffee and we stayed for a while. I realised I’d left my wallet in the car so I got up and walked outside towards the DBS, and there she was.

Between the DBS and I stood a girl no older than 25 in a red dress, stunning in every conceivable way possible. She looked so good, that the Aston was being humbled. I could once again feel that everyone in the lounge was starring, it was law of expectations in full force “Oh, of course, that’s definitely his girlfriend, it all makes sense…”. She wasn’t.

I didn’t really know why she was there, maybe she was admiring the car, maybe she was just standing there, but she was actually physically standing between me and the door so unless I intended to push her out of the way, I had to talk to her.

“Hi there, I need to open the door…” I said. “Oh, sorry (lie). Is this your car? Wow it’s beautiful… ” she looked me up and down “and you’re so young, you must be doing something right” she said in the most intoxicating voice.

“Aw, yeah… I guess”. I love my job.

“You know I’ve never been in a car like this, can you take me for a ride?” she said as she got one step closer to me.

It was the Jag situation all over again, only this time the car was six times the price and the girl, well, she looked like she was six times the price too.

“Umm… I’m here with a friend, maybe later?”

“I’m leaving now, give me a lift to my car? We’ll talk on the way”

Argh! Men are hard-wired to respond to a situation like this with a big clear massive “Yes”. Dammit, the whole point of my experiment was to see if this would happen, it wasn’t to fall for it!

There was a five second pause, it felt like a week. “Sorry, can’t do it at the moment” I said in the manliest voice I could muster. My internal organs were at this point rejecting me, they had gone into failure mode.

She smiled and walked away. I convinced my body I had made the right choice, walked back inside and sat down. I then realised I still didn’t have my wallet!

You can say what you want and pretend it doesn’t happen, but if you want to break it down to an evolutionary psychology level, mate selection can be influenced by the male’s ability to care for his offspring. So an expensive car is going to increase the male’s sex and reproductive value, but only to a degree.

In my experience of driving the world’s most expensive and prestigious cars, female attention is increased dramatically, but it’s hardly a good thing as most self respecting males would find it hard to be proud of that.

Now, what about the not so expensive cars.

Currently in my garage is a Suzuki Swift Sport, one of my favourite little cars to drive around town. I’ve had it for a week now and knowing I was going to write this article, I’ve been trying to subtly survey female opinion.

“Cool, I’ll pick you up around 8pm” I said to a female friend of mine last weekend. “I’ll bring the Swift.” – “Oh… why? Bring your own car, it’ll be more fun.” she replied back.

I have tested the theory by going out on dates with the same girl with different cars. I distinctively remember picking my date up and going to dinner in a Kia Grand Carnival. The week before I had picked her up in a BMW and given she had no idea what I do, it made for a really interesting observation of character.

One thing I can tell you with utmost certainty is that everyday cars that blend in with the traffic do little to inspire any attention – from anyone.

Of course the point here is, when the time comes and you’re buying your first Aston Martin or Lamborghini, make sure you’re buying it for you.

More importantly though, next time you see a guy getting out of his expensive car, please take a moment to appreciate that he loves his car, he bought it because he loves it and he chose to buy it. He didn’t buy it to impress you. He is not compensating for anything.

Many females I’ve questioned have told me that attractive cars make already attractive men more attractive (consistent with the Top Gear survey results) but little to no affect on average or not-so average looking men.

As for the flip side, do expensive, sport or luxury cars make women more attractive to men, the clear consistent answer from our side of the fence is a big massive YES.

We can’t help but to fall in love with a girl driving a Porsche 911 Turbo. We can’t help but to love a girl as she screams past in her BMW M3 convertible. We are visual creatures and are pre-programmed to admire things of beauty. For most men, the pre-existing attraction to cars is a massive bonus when it comes to increasing our interest!

If you’re female, I would really like to read your opinion so please leave a comment.

As for the men reading this, by all means let me know what you think and share any experiences you’ve had with cars and their social value.

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