Ideeahs

Bring Back Small

2011-08-29T22:03:00.001-04:00

Small is slowly disappearing. In our rich world small realy does get a bad wrap. Oh, to be small. Tall, grande, large, even medium is better than small. Anything but small.

Today this was proven yet again. I read this morning that Tim Horton's, a doughnut chain in Canada, had decided to eliminate the small-sized drinks serving and replace them with the medium-sized. So I guess that in theory small still exists.....it just got bigger.

It's been sometime since I wrote in my blog but this story has given me the itch again.

Consumption is king in our society and "more for less" is seemingly the law that guides consumer spending and thus the actions of corporations who seem to just blindly accept this law.

I believe I have already written about the pizza ordering episode I once had to endure. I simply wanted to order a medium pizza for delivery. I was told by the nice girl on the other end that I should rather get the special which not only gave me a second pizza for an extra buck or two but also a free two litre bottle of pop and an entire chocolate cake. All I wanted was a medium pizza and it seemed that I was really breaking one of the basic laws of physics. That law was one that the clerk definitely remembered from their physics 101 class because she simply could not understand how a customer could refuse - I did. She succeeded in making me doubt my decision by the way.

This change in Tim Horton's drink sizes also reminds me of how the small drinks at McDonald's are now the same size as the large drinks I used to buy there as a child. It reminds me that you have to know that Starbucks had something called a "short" to now order a short. They'll still serve it...it just is no longer on the menu.

Then we wonder why North Americans waste so much food. I go to most restaurants and feel sick at the end of a meal having pigged out so as not to leave any food on my plate (good boy always finishes his plate). Many people would gladly pay as much for a portion they could actually finish (ie. a smaller one) than leave half of the food on their plate. I know I would. Wouldn't you?

It is time for us to think small is beautiful again. Timmy should not fall for such a brainless law and grow up.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

North American Trains

2011-03-07T22:20:00.001-05:00

I have really tried hard to avoid writing about this. If I look at the draft articles I have written for this blog and kept in draft, no less than three in the last eight months, touch on the subject I am going to breech today. I wanted to avoid the subject, as I tell two of the guys I regular commute with, because I really wanted to believe in the train system and support it. I did not want to whine about it. Today, unfortunately, I just can't hold back and I will be hitting publish on this article - an amalgam of the drafts.

Let me sum it up very simply....trains in North America are terrible. Unreliable and aging they trudge along their lines achingly. Some recent examples from the last ten days...yes only in the last ten days:

A week or so ago I went to Toronto. Rather than drive or fly, I thought I'd try the VIA Rail train that runs between Montreal and Toronto. I arrived at the station thirty minutes prior to boarding, as recommended. At the designated time of departure we got notice that the train was delayed by twenty minutes. Twenty minutes later we were told that it would be another twenty minutes. This was repeated a third time so that we were now one hour late. Finally we were advised that the train had mechanical problems and that it was being pulled out of the yards and would be at the station in twenty or so minutes. Finally we left, approximately two hours late. Mechanical problems.

The same day my wife and children were leaving, via the Amtrak service, for New York City. It is bad enough that this trip normally takes eleven hours (driving takes seven - you really have to want to take the train from Montreal to New York). This particular trip took sixteen. Twice shortly after departure the train had to reverse to, first, go around another broken down train, second, for some unspecified reason. They were one hour late leaving. Then about ten hours into their journey they were advised that the train had hit a fallen tree and that it would have to be towed back to Albany, New York where all passengers were to transfer to another New York City bound train. Mecahnical problems and track maintenance.

Example three. On my ride home from the above mentioned weekend in Toronto I was seated in car 9. This car was the first behind the locomotive. From there the numbers dropped off to one which was, presumably, the last car of the train. (I would have reversed the numbering scheme....but that's just me!) One lady boarded the train with her mother, an elderly woman, and asked where car 10, the car indicated on her ticket, was. Good question! She was informed that car 10 was - get this - a bus!!! Yessir. She was justifiably flabbergasted by this response and told the attendant that she was not leaving the train as her mother was seated in car 9 and, having booked two train tickets for her mother and herself, she did not intend to leave her mother alone while she took a bus to Montreal. Terrible logistics and customer service.

Example four. Today it snowed in Montreal. Yes, it snowed a fair bit (about 15 cm or so) but this is not unusual given the location of the city in Canada. It snows here OK? Let's just say that trains have been running in these conditions, in this country, for well over a century - they have had time to perfect the system. My twenty kilometre commute took two hours. Another mechanical problem was to blame - this time a switch. This switch problem seems to be a recurring issue on these commuter lines as I have had numerous delays caused by frozen, defective switches.

So listen to me. I have really tried to avoid bitching about the reliability of train service in Canada but I simply could not anymore - not after today's marathon commute. For you doubters, those who are thinking that I am complaining for no good reason, I may just hit publish on one or two more of my drafts. Just to drive the point home.

It is time that some investments be made in decent passenger train service in North America. Let's join the modern age folks.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

BBs from Chile

2011-03-06T09:05:00.001-05:00

At 2:30 pm this afternoon I cracked open the plastic container that contained some plump blueberries I had bought a few hours before at the local supermarket. My mouth was watering thinking of the tasty sweet blue fruit that I was planning on combining with some strawberries, granola and some vanilla yogurt. It was going to be great.

As I started rinsing these BBs I started getting annoyed. Many of them - too many! - were mouldy and soft. I was literally throwing money away and I was annoyed with these fruit and with their seller. How could they sell me such garbage? Such low quality produce?

After about one minute of these thoughts, as I started rinsing off the strawberries, I realized that the annoyance should be directed at a different target - myself. How foolish of me, really, to expect fresh, high quality BBs in Canada during the winter season. How could I expect fruits that were picked who knows how long ago, some 8000 kilometres away, to be fresh when they reached the store shelf in this suburb. After being picked, packed, driven, flown, driven (and who knows what else?) how foolish I was.

More frustrating was that this person, me, had debated - for a few seconds while standing in front of the fruit stand - whether or not to spend the coin. Clearly part of me did think it was a pretty foolish purchase.

So my lesson is this, and it should be an obvious one to all....do not buy fruits when they are out of season in your area of the world. At the very least do not buy fruits that are out of season in your hemisphere!

I should have stuck to the local apples that keep well.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

The Most Optimistic Day?

2011-01-01T22:32:00.002-05:00

The first day of the year is, arguably, the most optimistic day of the year.

With determination we, as individuals, decide at this moment of time to affect some positive change into our lives or those of others. As a result of this clean sheet of paper offered to us by the New Year we feel that all the possibilities of the world are in front of us awaiting the reach of our hands. We can write the script. With all of the previous years baggage thrown out on December 31st there is nothing left to weigh us down and prevent us from attaining our objectives and resolutions. It is an optimistic day and we are hopeful that this sense of optimism will last for the remainder of the year's days. A new beginning.

It would seem to me that this would, therefore, also be a day when world leaders might be feeling slightly more optimistic than normally. They may be entering 2011 with some real beliefs that this just might be the year that they can, as individuals, affect positive change.

I would therefore suggest that conferences meant to discuss the most important of issues facing us be scheduled on January 1st. Just maybe the collective optimism of the gathered leaders might lead to something positive happening for a change.

To top it off, if you believe that collective consciousness is real then, just maybe, all the hope that the world's citizens feel on this day might influence those gathered leaders to act positively even if, by chance, they happen to still be in the dumps.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Time to Bin the Past

2010-12-31T08:17:00.000-05:00

During the last two days of the year I, like many millions, grab onto that most amazing human construct called Time, specifically the unit we call Year, and look forward in the space of time.

I have always been someone who enjoys throwing stuff out. Decluttering brings me joy. Simplification removes weight from my shoulders. At this time of year I like to take the piece of paper that has all of the past's stories written on it, crumble and pitch it across the room straight into the bin.

This human construct called Year allows me to bin the past and start afresh. The past has passed and the future awaits.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

What's the Rush?

2010-12-12T17:23:00.000-05:00

A recurring thought recently found its way into my consciousness. The subject of this familiar thought is how the measurement of time has impacted society. Those of you who have read my book, "Avoiding the Blues", know some of my thoughts on this subject and how time has had an impact on my life.

Time management has become an ever more important skill for human beings. The slice of time we use to measure it has diminished from from years and months, through days and hours, on to minutes and seconds and, finally today, to nano and pico seconds. As a result we now have potentially more and more items that need to be managed in a day. More and more bits of data compete for these ever smaller slices and, because we are now able to measure and schedule time in smaller units, we allow more of these disparate items to enter our days. We feel a need to manage more and more into the finite number of twenty-four hours.

To do this, successfully, we need to all become good managers of time and of schedule - of OUR schedule. Of all the tasks that we time managers must perfect, the most important is to determine which items to allow into our days. The Catch-22 is that we seem to allocate less and less time to this task as other, less important, tasks run us over in a consistent and automated - robotic - fashion. So we wake up and let the day take us over. We let externalities take over and run the day.

And so.....to how the thought came to me once again.

Last week I watched, and heard, the reaction of commuters to the inability of trains to keep to a schedule in Montreal. You see winter hit Montreal during this first week of December. A storm made a surprise appearance and dumped 25 cm of snow on the city. For the weeks leading up to this inevitable yearly event I had been warned by long-time commuters that the result would be delays, cancellations and chaos.

I will surely write a blog entry about the subject of how an annual event somehow always results in the same behaviour and results from the participants of the charade (the operator and its customers). I can easily let myself get taken into the trap and criticize the operator - I most certainly do - but today's entry is not about this. Rather it is about coping with the ensuing chaos.

So why do we care about a late train? What is the rush? Why the stress, the arguments, the yelling, the worry? Simple....we have a schedule to keep to. If I don't make it to work for 8 a.m. I will be late for a call that I have with peers in Asia or Europe. They'll either be waiting for me, cancel the call or they'll proceed and I will miss out on the exchange of information and ideas that occurs. The stress that I feel is that I am going to be late. Late for a scheduled event. Late for the doctor, the bus connection, the drink after work, the appointment at lunch, the next meeting, the deadline. The this. The that.

How much more calm it might all be if we were not told the train would arrive at precisely 7:04 a.m.? What if we did not have a meeting that started at 8:00 a.m.

When I was a child I was an airplane fanatic. I'd pick up airline schedules and dream of flying planes to the different destinations listed. It used to be that the flights arrived in increments of five minutes. Schedules did not state that a plane landed at 8:09 a.m. It landed at 8:10 a.m. Today it lands at 8:08 or 8:11 a.m. I remember my mother and I thinking how ridiculous it was that airlines had decided to make this scheduling change. Were they attempting to show us the level of precision they operated under? A perception that the airline had orchestrated its flight schedules perfectly and with clock-work precision and repetition? What caused us to need to save that minute? We mocked the airlines then for trying to be so precise. Today we bitch when the flights are minutes late pushing back from the departure gate.

Have we in fact saved a few precious minutes? Or are we living in some sort of time machine induced state of high-expectations that can only be met rarely. Slow down, care less about your schedule, schedule more free time into your days.

Live your life.

All your friends, colleagues and fellow commuters will breath a sigh of relief as your complaining diminishes.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

It Blows to be Doe

2010-12-10T20:49:00.000-05:00

Why is it that it is always John Doe that gets shot dead and murdered, beat up or harassed, or just goes missing?

Why can't it be Joe Blow - that unknown, generic man that makes no difference in anyone's life - that goes missing sometimes?

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Magic Dust

2010-12-05T20:36:00.000-05:00

I spent the afternoon constructing high-rise buildings, driving various cars and piloting planes with my son. It could have been the 1970s.....even the dust from that decade was with us.

One of my most memorable Christmas gifts as a child was the Girder and Panel building set that I received one year sometime in the mid-70s. It was a building set that allowed me to construct skyscrapers by using plastic posts and girders. These girders allowed me to build towers that extended well into the sky - well at least three feet into it (measured from the wooden parquet floor of the living room of that apartment in Saint-Laurent).

Part of my collection of toys were also cars and airplanes. The cars are long gone but the planes are toys that my son now plays with...along with that Girder and Panel set.

So today we constructed, we drove and we flew. As we unboxed the building set my eyes noticed the dust that was sitting on some of the roof panels that make up part of the toy. The corners of those pieces had some dust in their corners...dust that had been there for decades.

For a moment the dust was magical.

If it were to be put under a microscope what would it have revealed? Flakes of my eight year old skin? Maybe bits of the varnish of that parquet floor? Microscopic flakes of my white and blue North Star running shoes? Fur of my black and white stuffed panda bear?

For a brief moment, this afternoon, I was taken back. Not just by the fact that I was playing with my son, thirty years later, with those same toys but also by some magic dust. Dust that was carelessly left on a some now demolished building, boxed and kept with loving care by my parents so that one day, another generation could play. Dust that today was blown off some pieces by a boy and which unknowingly mixed not only memories of the 70s with the realities of the 10s but also physical particles of those distant decades.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Nothing Here?

2010-09-17T21:17:00.000-04:00

The idea for this entry came during my walk to the train station this morning.

Near the railroad tracks there are two single-family homes surrounded by apartment buildings and town homes. These houses just don't fit in and look very much misplaced.

I started imagining that they must have been built when the area looked a little different. Rather than apartment building or town homes there might have been fields. I caught myself saying that they must have been built when there was "nothing here".

I immediately realized that I might have made a mistake. Not in saying that the houses might have been built when there were only fields around them but in saying there was "nothing here". The statement implies that today there is something here. That somehow there is more today than there was back then - whenever "then" happened to be.

I indeed made an error.

Yes there may be more human beings living in this place today than there were in the past but is there really "more"? Is there less of nothing today? Sure there are more human inventions visible than might have been visible back then - cars, paved roads, bricks and mortar, garbage cans. What you see less of is a variety. Fewer plants and animals. Less colours, fewer spaces. Interestingly you also see little of that most familiar of animals - humans.

Was there really less back then? Was it the middle of nowhere?

Of course I can't say what the place might have looked like a hundred years ago but I imagine a field with a larger variety of plants and insects, birds and maybe small mammals. I imagine an eco-system of some sort. Maybe less humans lived here but those that did likely shared the place with a greater variety of other life forms. It likely was quite a vibrant place if only we happened to take a closer look.

When we walk in a forest, on a mountain top or on a beach are we really in the middle of nowhere? Or is the middle of nowhere someplace more like the cities we live in?

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Not a Zen Moment

2010-08-16T08:30:00.001-04:00

I am writing part of this entry while riding the train home. In my lap is the book "Ryoju - The Hunting Gun" by Yasushi Inoue. I am unable to zone in and concentrate on my reading. There are too many distractions which are disturbing my peace. Clearly I am unable to meditate and ignore the happenings around me. I have work to do with my self.

There are many times in my daily life that I think back to my trip to Japan in the autumn of 2008. This is one of them. Specifically I am remembering how lovely it was to ride the train in Tokyo. I was struck by the silence.

Standing on the platform looking in at the car one could have imagined that it would be a painful ride. People were packed into a sardine can only able to stay standing during the ebb and flow of the ride due to the fact that they were supported by their fellow commuter standing centimetres away. One might also imagine that so many people would create a cacophony of various noises in addition to a stinky, maybe damp, smell of human masses.

Rather, it was silent. People whispered to each other when engaged in conversation. Phones were on silent mode as instructed by the regulations of train riding in Japan. There were no earbuds leaking out myriad, tinny, sounds of music. Absent were the loud and abnoxious mobile phone conversations.

On the train I am riding now the contrast could not be more stark. First of all the train is nearly empty. It could easily be half the length. The emptiness however does not bring with it silence. Instead I get to hear the loud conversation of some punk with his girl on the other end of the phone connection - what to eat and how to make rice. Next to me a woman is listening to music on an iPod - it is so loud that I get to listen to it as well. At the very front of the car a seven year-old is playing a video game and Mario-style background music is permeating the car.

Yes, for the most part, the commuters are sitting silently - thank goodness! Large masses don't create noise. Individuals do. Individuals who lack respect. And that, in a nutshell, is one of the items I most admired during the autumn of 2008.

I will need to find a way to filter out this noise. There are two ways I can think of. Find a way to filter out the noise mentally - meditation, intense concentration on my reading - or by adding my own noise to the mix.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Time Management

2010-08-14T21:44:00.001-04:00

In "Avoiding the Blues" I touch upon the importance of time management. It is a skill that is becoming more and more important to master as more and more items become so readily able to take a slice of our fixed twenty-four hour day. It is too easy to let our days slip by without much of a thought to what the real important things, to ourselves, are.

I am now back in the ranks of the employed. So far it has been great. I am enjoying learning new products, new businesses, new processes, new organizations and working with new people. It is all very exciting.

I can, however, see how my time is being eaten away. An example is this blog. Writing continues to be something I like doing yet, unfortunately, it is something that I am finding I am not doing much of. The last time I posted this blog was July 18 - close to one month ago.

Time management is important. One needs to keep his priorities straight and ensure that the day-to-day does not rearrange them.

As with everything else in life learning continues until we die. I continue to learn how to manage my time.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Boaters and Bikers

2010-07-18T21:06:00.000-04:00

This is going to be one of those posts that people think is negative. Oh well.

We spent sometime in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue this afternoon. This is a town on the southwestern tip of the Island of Montreal. It is a place where, on sunny summer days, people congregate to watch the time go by. I can only wonder why.

I had been to Ste-Anne a few times in the past and always came home disappointed. No different on this summer day. I guess the reason I go back is because my brain continues to play tricks on me when it recreates the past using part memory and part imagination. I have to say thanks to Daniel Gilbert and his book Stumbling on Happiness for making me realize that I was once again duped by my grey matter.

Anyhow. Back to Ste-Anne. Let us start with the food. There are no decent restaurants. At least not facing the waterfront. Being that the waterfront is the main attraction of the town it is an unfortunate reality. They are all restaurants made from the same boring cookie cutter. Whether they call themselves an English pub, an Italian ristorante or a Greek estiatoria is irrelevant. The grub is the same: greasy fish and chips, oil laden fish, club sandwiches with fries, bland chowder. They all have a seafood theme to them trying to create the illusion that we are in fact sitting on the shore of a productive fishing ground. Given all the beastly jet boats that are moored on the docks it is no wonder the fish are long gone - well the edible ones anyway.

Sitting on the restaurant patios are a bunch of what I'll call easy-riders. Women and men, with their guts and lard pouring out over their skimpy, unappealing clothing - tank tops, short shorts, tight jeans and bikini tops. Tattoos burned into their skin twenty years prior - when they might have been attractive human specimens - now stretched into ghastly shapes no longer recognizable.

Parked outside are Harley-style motorbikes and motorboats. People lounge on their boats on display, zoo-like, as pedestrians on the boardwalk gawk down at those imagined lucky folks that get to spend a couple of hundred bucks in fuel just to get to Ste-Anne's, park their boat for a few hours and then power back home.

The whole scene just makes my skin crawl.

To settle the issue, as we headed back to our car we passed another site that Ste-Anne's is famous for - its locks. We happened to walk by just as the doors were opening up to let ten or so powerboats into Lac des Deux-Montagnes. It sounded like the start of car race. Engines sprang to life and a loud cacophony erupted.

At least they were escaping Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Different Worlds

2010-07-12T21:33:00.000-04:00

And now for the second ideeah spawned from going back to work. This time the worlds are different - unlike in the previous entry.

Before going back to work I spent my days with my family. We would go through our days together and each would contribute to the ebb and flow of any particular day's events. The mood of the day would be influenced by all and, because we all shaped it on a minute by minute basis, we might not necessarily see how it had evolved. Just as one does not see trees grow in a forest without the distance of a few years, being too close to a changing event hides its evolution from our consciousness.

Now the dynamics have changed. Distance has permitted differences to emerge and be seen.

One quarter of the family is away for the day. As such distance is created - albeit only for ten or so hours. The result has required some adjustments. Three quarters live their day together unaware of the changing skeleton upon which the remaining quarter's day's emotions are hitched. Likewise, the quarter is unaware of the shape the day of the three other quarters is taking.

At dinner time the two days unite and need to melt into a common pool. The different events, feelings, thoughts and emotions unite.

This is the first time that I have looked at the impact on families and society caused by the separation due to school, work and other commitments in such a fashion - as separately evolving worlds. Children have their days at school. Parents have their days at work or elsewhere. Families unite for dinner and for vacations. Extended families gather two or three times a year. Meanwhile we each live our lives, in our own worlds....waiting for them to unite as they surely will at a later point in time.

A lesson in the assimilation of different worlds.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

No Different

2010-07-10T17:36:00.000-04:00

I have not been as active writing as this was my first week back in the workforce. It has given me many ideeahs. Here is the first.

I am working for a global corporation that is active in 100+ countries. My manager has employees in three countries. I deal with people in at least seven on a near-daily basis. The office I work in has Spaniards, Arabs, Finns, English and French Canadians, Americans, Chinese, Africans and Vietnamese. We speak English and French - interchangeably. I have heard Chinese and Arabic as well. On phone calls we speak English, each with our unique accents and native-tongue sentence structure. Our emails are all in English. In the office I can see my colleagues. On the phone I don't - unless we use videoconference. Some dress in suits, some business casual, some in shorts and sandals. It all doesn't matter.

It is a dynamic, modern-thinking place - exciting and full of people that don't seem to have the slightest care for where you come from, what language you speak, how you speak or what you look like. Let's just get on with the job of building solutions that will only continue to shrink the distances between the worlds diverse cultures.

To all those people who continue to think that that language, politics, sex, religion, race, location or opinion are reasons to divide I urge you to get out of your comfort zone and talk to people that are different from you. If you are homophobic make an effort to speak to a gay man. If you are an ardent Catholic read the Quran. If you are on the left read a newspaper that leans right. Read a book, magazine, newspaper or website that challenges your thinking. Watch a movie on a topic which makes you cringe. Speak to people that are not of your generation and social background.

You'll wake up to a new reality. An exciting reality that does indeed bode well for the future.

...my actions make me beautiful
and dignify the flesh.
I am free
-R.E.M.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Individuality

2010-07-03T14:05:00.000-04:00

OK...was THAT art?
"I could do that!", said my eight year old son.

My family and I just got back from an amazing five days in New York City. If there is one place in the world that speaks to the strengths of pride in one's individuality it is this (major understatement) bustling city.

As one walks quickly down the narrow street-valleys you are bombarded by sounds, advertising, people, cars, street vendors, restaurant owners and corporations all trying to get your attention, some of your time and your cash. If one walks those streets with little to no confidence in oneself the magnetism of the attention grabbers will be too strong. One needs to be headstrong to survive unscathed.

This point, the importance of individuality, was finally struck home as I walked the expansive spaces of the MoMA.

A wire pegged in place on a wall with five or six pins. A simple chair. A can of soup. A canvass painted purple - only purple. A Picasso. A Matisse. A Pollock.

I hate it!
I love it!
Why did she paint it that way?
What was he thinking??

Does it matter? Be yourself. Be true to your emotions. Be real, be authentic. Be YOU. All these artists were and look at where they ended up. Not bad.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Join Us in the 21st FIFA

2010-06-27T12:22:00.001-04:00

I just finished watching Germany trounce England 4-1. A well deserved win by the Germans whose passing and ball control was precise and carried much originality. England failed to impress with the one exception of Lampard who was the only player that showed up for the English.

Could it all have ended differently? Those two second-half German goals in four minutes certainly helped to silence the doubters of the result.

Technology has helped the officiating of events for decades. Whether it be hundredths of seconds in 100 metre sprints, millimetres on tennis serves or reviews of the trajectory of a puck in hockey, it has helped human beings correct their errors. This technology has allowed competitors rather than officials decide games. In this case we are talking about a ball that convincingly crossed a goal line by close to a metre. One can't blame the line judge as he was too far to see. In addition it was a blistering fast pinball-type bounce that had many people wondering. But regardless, it was a goal.

Would the psychology of the game had changed? Maybe. Would England have come out for the second-half on fire with Germany wimpering? Possibly. In the end I am happy that Germany scored those two extra goals to quiet the fans down.

But it is time for FIFA to get on with it, get rid of the old bags that run the show, add some youth to the governing board and join us all in the 21st Century.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Is Fame Addicting?

2010-06-24T16:14:00.002-04:00

I have asked myself that question a few times over the last two weeks. It has been just about that long since my first book -- "Avoiding the Blues" -- was published. Now I am by no means famous and I have no expectation that this book will bring me any fame whatsoever. But in a minute way I am feeling the elixir of fame.

Writing this book was very therapeutic for me. It had resided in my head, in words on this blog and in notebooks for at least two or three years. Writing it was at times emotional and never boring. I relived the moments detailed within the book as I typed the words. I hope that those who read it feel this as they turn the pages of my book.

Now that it is published the hard work is done. My job now is to market it and spread the word and to, more importantly, have people read it and hopefully recommend it to friends and colleagues.

So what is the elixir, this drug, that I am becoming addicted to? Sitting back and watching this amazing story unfold. Avoiding the Blues is out there and available for the world to read and critique. The amazing tools of the internet and e-commerce have made my book available on amazon and barnesandnoble as well as a download. Every time someone buys a copy I am notified and every time I feel another hit of this drug. It is an amazing rush.

I have received great feedback from individuals who found it an interesting read. Strangers have reached out to exchange ideas on the topics I expand upon. Others have tried to help me with sales. I have sold copies to people half-way around the world.

While I have no expectations of fame and fortune the drug is playing tricks on my brains and making me imagine crazy scenarios. Hallucinations of interviews, of book signings and of fat royalty cheques flowing in.

I am having an amazing time. I hope my next "hit" comes soon.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Attention Deficit - Again

2010-06-21T08:51:00.004-04:00

This is one of the better articles I have read on the issue of technology and how it might be affecting our brains. The irony is that while I was reading it I was interrupted by the New York Times itself. Between pages 2 and 3 a request for feedback popped up and distracted me from the article on....what was it? Here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html

The bottom-line is that we have now learnt that our brains do not stop developing at a young age. Our grey matter continues to adapt to the stimulus it faces on a daily basis. With the ever increasing bombardment of information -- and the resulting interruptions -- a growing number seem to be concluding that our brains are indeed adapting to the influx. How? By limiting our creativity, our empathy, our memory, our concentration.

As I have said before, while I was working at IBM we often had discussions about Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. We were constantly bombarded by emails, chat messages, phone calls, pages, voice mails and each other. It was a fairly regular topic of lunch conversation as we saw the consequences in our own behaviour. The impatience at knowing what secrets those messages held. The desire to be aware of EVERYTHING that was going on.

The good news is that since our brains continue to adapt as we get older there is hope. If we slow down (thanks Carl Honore) then maybe we can start turning back this physiological change that is ongoing.

We adults are so worried about ADD in our children. Maybe it is time we set the example ourselves. I have lots to learn though. I happen to be typing this as I watch Portugal play North Korea in the World Cup. Those Portuguese goals keep interrupting me! :-)

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

A McDramatization

2010-06-19T16:24:00.001-04:00

I have often commented on my blog about how worried society has become. Our creativity often needs to be explained or, even worse, stunted by a society that seems to fear people that stand out or the wrath of someone's legal team. These thoughts have again popped into my head as I watched an advert for McDonald's restaurants.

The ad is one that I've seen quite a few times over the last nine days or so. You see, McDonald's is advertising heavily during World Cup broadcasts.

The viewer sees a bunch of twenty-somethings sitting around a campground munching on their burgers, shakes and fries. A massive bear comes strolling into the middle of their site and the campers all remain cool as cucumbers. Still biting down on their food they turn their heads and calmly look at the bear doing its thing. Not worried for a second that their lives are in danger they continue to enjoy the junk.

How is this all related to worries and lawyers? Well, if you look closely at the bottom left of the screen while the ad is running you'll see minute white letters pop up. They state that the scene is a "dramatization".

Well thank goodness they told me that! I guess I will not try this at home and, the next time a bear walks through my campground while I am eating some junk food, I'll make sure to take evasive action of some sort.

Maybe the more relevant dramatization is not so much that the bear is walking through a campground but that, rather, people are actually eating McDonald's while camping. Now THAT is a stretch for sure and nobody should be caught doing it.

I'm lovin' it.
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Accepting a Hippo

2010-06-17T09:21:00.001-04:00

My family and I watched the first episode of the BBC Earth series entitled "Life" a few days back. If the first episode is any guide of those that follow it will be a truly amazing and inspiring series. We have enjoyed the "Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth" series by BBC Earth as well and have often gone back to view them a second and, in the case of some episodes, a fifth or sixth time.

This is the kind of educational television that I do not mind my children watching. They get a glimpse of the beauty, power, indifference, struggle, delicacy and variety of nature. I imagine that from the amazing video footage and narrative they get a sense of the balance that is so important and that they may also grow to appreciate that, while humans may currently be the dominant animal, we are part of a larger system that could not care less about this dominance.

Tonight we saw an introduction to some of the amazing and creative ways that animals have adapted to their world in the struggle for survival, food and procreation. The amazing tongues of lizards, the fight between male hippos, the courtship of birds, the use of tools by monkeys.

The idea for this entry came from two comments that my daughter uttered while we were watching. They were "Men like fighting" and "Can't they just accept another hippo?".

The words came at a point where the viewer sees a lone male hippo walking in an arid landscape towards the last pools of a river where many female hippos are lounging along with the dominant male. The lone male arrives and has a decision to make. Submit to the dominant male or fight him. He chooses to fight, does not succeed, and saunters away towards another patch of land - alone.

A lesson for my daughter in human nature. Yes, many male animals fight. We may find it a despicable behaviour in humans yet it is a simple fact that we accept in all other animals. Humans are likely one of the only animals that try and suppress instincts that lie just below our social surface. Luckily humans also partake in courtship and not just the raw power of a male struggle to determine who gets to procreate. Having said that we continue to solve to many of our disputes by fighting.

We are an animal that happens to have evolved differently. It can all change.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Voulez-vous les vuvuzelas?

2010-06-14T13:25:00.001-04:00

The world is whining. By whining I am not referring to the b-flat that the now famous (and previously unheard of) vuvuzelas are making at the 2010 World Cup. I am referring to the racket that sport commentators, journalists and fans are making around the world. Let us put some things in perspective.

Start by comparing the vuvuzelas to the various horns used at games in Latin America. Then compare vuvuzelas to the toilet paper rolls and paper bits that cover fields in Argentina delaying game starts. Compare vuvuzelas to the flares, firecrackers and smoke producing gimmicks of Spanish and Portuguese fans which put fans at risk. Compare vuvuzelas to the hooliganism of northern European teams (I am thinking England and Denmark here).

Now compare a stadium filled with cheering fans blowing into vuvuzelas to playing a match to an empty stadium as has happened in the Italian league due to the behaviour of fans. Think about the most recent event, on May 29th, and compare vuvuzelas to the pathetic behaviour of Serbian fans as they began throwing bottles and flares onto the pitch in Austria when their team lost 1-0 to New Zealand. The Serbian captain, Vidic, was given a megaphone to try and calm the crowd down.

Quit your whining so that I can enjoy soccer as it was meant to be played. A spectacle of sport. A competition between two teams in front of adoring masses of fans that spill their hearts, paint their faces, travel thousands of kilometres and express themselves for their team and country by yelling, chanting, using bells, whistles, horns and their voices to scream in delight of the win or the agony of defeat.

Oui! Je préfère les vuvuzelas.

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S**t!

2010-06-13T10:07:00.001-04:00

No....I mean salt!!

It is essential to our body's proper functioning. While not essential to eating, it does bring out tastes and, for certain recipes, is a requirement to the chemical reaction that occurs in cooking.

Salt can also be detrimental to our health. Various cancers are associated with it as is high-blood pressure. So we can't live without it but we need to watch our intake - just like all other food stuffs and ingredients.

I tend to watch what I eat. I watch ingredients, ensure that I eat balanced (well, fairly balanced) meals. I have to admit though that eating the recommended amount of fruits and veggies proves hard on many days. But, no matter how careful you are the fact is that if you eat processed foods you will eat too much salt and sugar. What I ate for lunch yesterday is an example. It was seemingly a fairly healthy meal.

One can of salmon with one tablespoon of mayonnaise mixed in.
Four pitted, red pepper-stuffed green olives.
About eighteen pita chips.
One banana.
One biscotti.
Water.

On the surface this was healthy. But the key is that most was actually processed. So what was the salt content?

One can of salmon = 697 mg (27% of daily recommended intake)
One tablespoon of mayo = 90 mg (4%)
Four olives = 400 mg (16%)
Eighteen pita chips = 480 mg (20%)
One biscotti = 40 mg (2%)
One banana = 1 mg (negligible)
Water = ? not sure what the sodium content of Montreal tap water is...

If you add it up, this lunch gave me 69% of the recommended daily allowance of sodium! Yowza. Had I bought my salmon and cooked it I could have dramatically dropped this. They mayo could have been avoided but was not a major contributor. The olives...could have looked at the labels and tried to find some that had a lower content. The chips...could have bought pita bread and baked my own. Biscotti...not a major contributor. The banana and water were the only items that were not processed in some factory.

The day before I made a lasagna for dinner. I had salt on my mind again that evening. So I looked at the salt content of the ingredients I was adding. The canned tomatoes had some, the cheese had some as did the mushroom soup and the lasagna noodles themselves. So, I did not add any salt to my sauce, nor to the water to boil the noodles. It made no difference to the taste.

Let's be aware of what is in the foods we eat and eat as little processed foods as possible. At the very least make it a habit to read labels on food.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Avoiding the Blues on Amazon.com

2010-06-11T12:21:00.000-04:00

My book first book, Avoiding the Blues, is now available on Amazon.com. Other Amazon sites around the world to follow soon.

Here is the link to my book on the Amazon.com site.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Living in the Long Tail

2010-06-10T10:06:00.002-04:00

In "The Long Tail" Chris Anderson describes how, in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, markets for many goods were turned on their heads. What I have been experiencing for the last seven days supports his premise. If this continues for months (or rather, and hopefully, years!) I will have proved the theory. My gut tells me I will.

My readers know by now that I have published my first book - "Avoiding the Blues". I did not know what to expect. Yes, I imagined that mostly I'd be selling to people I know. But what started happening in the last two days has suddenly awakened me to the amazing possibility of the world we live in. Strangers have started buying.

In his book Chris talks about how, with the cost of inventory having dropped to zero for most media (music, video, written word), online retailers can now offer immense catalogues of media to consumers around the world. No longer are we limited to choosing from the narrow selection available in Main Street stores.

The old meant that Main Street was average. We bought what our friends and colleagues spoke about. We consumed what the big studios and record labels dished out. Since the number of different ideas, words and notes we were exposed to was limited, we all picked from the same narrow selection and ended up with similar libraries in our homes. By looking at a neighbour's bookshelf, or listening to their records, you would unlikely be exposed to something new and different. It just was not available.

The new is a world where diversity rules - in all of its meanings. Cultures mix, individuals express themselves, we watch amateur videos on YouTube and download music from numerous indie record labels. This is all possible because the cost of making this diversity available has dropped to zero.

Just as importantly to the low costs of inventory comes the ability for the six billion people on Earth to find others that share their opinions, their musical preferences and their love of a particular, niche or genre of video. We can all find media that we can enjoy without forgoing a bit of who we are. We can be authentic with our tastes because someone else on this planet shares them and, in the new world, you can now find them easily.

So this is a world where someone (me) can publish a book for zero dollars. OK I lie. It cost me $47. A world where someone can express themselves and create media and sell it to strangers. Where an individual's perspective can be made public and available to others. A world where some of those others will find an interest in what the individual has to say.

This is not Main Street and sure as heck is not average. This is worldly and powerful...and exciting.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Expressed As Only Children Can

2010-06-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

You gotta love children. You gotta love them for their honesty, their inability to keep a secret and their obliviousness to political correctness. As a result of these pure character traits they sometimes come up with very poignant comments and make the listening adults most uncomfortable.

This particular entry got its inspiration from an article I read on Yahoo News last week. Michelle Obama was visiting an elementary school. One of the children asked the First Lady why her husband was taking away people who did not have the correct papers (ie. immigration papers). Mrs. Obama responded by saying that it was important that people had the correct papers. The little girl then went on to state that her mum did not have the correct papers.

Oops!

Clearly this little girl's mother would never have posed this question to the First Lady of the country that requires the papers being discussed. There are many adults who express themselves on the issue but few who would do it in such a personal and direct fashion. The result is that the emotion of the situation, the real human side of the situation, is watered down.

Children will, if not guided by an adult, speak from the heart and use their emotions. We adults still all know the feelings, the raw emotions, of childhood. We regularly feel them. We just do not express them. There is no need to remember as they still run through our veins. Joy, anger, sadness and love all spur us to want to express ourselves - regularly. But we generally hold back, don't we? If we say this, they'll think that and we don't want to deal with the result. So we apply logic and hold back.

However, if we did not hold back and, rather, acted like our children sometimes do we might resolve issues quickly. The emotion that spurs the comment is real and needs to be expressed. By addressing the issue immediately, rather than by waiting, the tormenting brew of thoughts in our brains would end and maybe, just maybe, the new set of emotions that arise from this brew - ones that are often more damaging and more extreme than the original ones - would not arise. The problem would already be solved. The question quickly answered. Not necessarily to our satisfaction but at least answered so that we could move on.

Rather we adults sit, think, remain silent and brew. Problems don't get resolved and we bicker about why that is. Maybe we should just have the confidence that children have and blurt out our thoughts and live with the consequences. Be true to ourselves rather than to some image of what we think society finds acceptable.

So, next time you feel an emotion, express it.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!