The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coehlo introduces Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. And so he's off: leaving Spain to literally follow his dream.

Along the way he meets many spiritual messengers, who come in unassuming forms such as a camel driver and a well-read Englishman. In one of the Englishman's books, Santiago first learns about the alchemists--men who believed that if a metal were heated for many years, it would free itself of all its individual properties, and what was left would be the "Soul of the World." Of course he does eventually meet an alchemist, and the ensuing student-teacher relationship clarifies much of the boy's misguided agenda, while also emboldening him to stay true to his dreams.

My Personal Reflection:
The Alchemist is especially enjoyable and useful if you're at a confused point in your life as it provides a sense of hope. It is constructed as a combination of both an adventurous novel and a motivational tale made to inspire readers. The breath taking journey Santiago experiences, is not entirely to entertain but to reveal a concealed message.

The Alchemist is like a simple, motivational, yet exciting novel that bursts with optimism; it is the kind of novel that tells you that everything is possible as long as you really want it to happen. The main message I guess that is transmitted to readers is that "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true". This is the core of the novel's philosophy and a motif that echoes behind Coelho's writing all through The Alchemist.

Overall The Alchemist itself is written in a brilliant manner which through Paulo’s effective writing techniques, is able to capture readers and hurl them to another world where they experience Santiago’s journey as if it were their own.


As a short novel, I think the book is wonderful. The journey contains aspects of motivation and inspires readers to a certain level. However, if looking for a book that is more revolved about being encouraging and inspiring, then this might not be the one for you.

The Story of Stuff

Very good! Simple, clear and concise.

I liked watching this video

She couldn’t be more right. But that shift in paradigm applies to our thinking about all resource consumption, including the 40% of our materials that go to the construction industry every year. It’s a big, thorny, ugly problem, and we’ve got to deal with it.

A shift from a world that consumes endlessly and without regard to the environmental and human costs, to a world that is more grounded in the values of resource protection and creating communities that serve real human needs – not imagined ones.

After reading the article called "Snooping Bosses" ...

I read some time ago a similar article in The Wall Street Journal and it showed that a third part of the world’s largest companies, monitor employee e-mail .

The main reason is because of the fear that company owners have about workers spending work time on personal e-mails.


Otherwise, thanks to these practices it has been discovered that there are indeed employees that abuse of company email by using it for non-productive ends and therefore lead to them losing their job. But although people do have the right for privacy, these rights disappear once the people are situated in their work space.

But this shouldn’t be necessary if the employees didn’t misuse the internet on his work shift for personal reasons.

This is the most direct impact that non-monitored work conditions can have because then, the company would e paying him to do personal things instead of working. This causes a lot of costs to the company in time because workers are spending work time for other purposes and distracting their co-workers, and in money which is spent on bandwidth resources not used for work purposes. Additionally, studies show that workers do in fact misuse companies’ resources and therefore, it is necessary to take these measures even if some people say it is not quite morally correct.


One solution for this problem is to have a strict code of conduct on internet usage within the organization and make the employees conscious that this is happening.

This is because if it is found by these methods that there are still people that misuse the internet in their workplace, then there would be no choice than to sack those workers and continue monitoring everybody. But probably by making workers conscience that they are being monitored, they would not try to infringe the company’s code of conduct and therefore the company doesn’t risk loosing a good employee. But in fact, if it is shown that employees do abide the rules, then the company should consider lifting the monitoring activities and spending those resources in something more productive.


Another solution that would arise from this problem is to have somebody to personally monitor each worker of the company. The purpose of this is to give the feeling to employees that they are being watched over and therefore, avoid misusing the internet during work hours.