Ideeahs

I can see the danger in taking that picture...eight days ago in Beijing. Here is a simple message to The Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China:  "You have a long way to go.  888??" Photo: Mark Ralston/AFP

Back in March, when I decided to take a break from work, there was one person in particular that encouraged me to do it, unwittingly - Sir Richard Branson.  Yep!  My wife bought me his autobiography entitled Losing My Virginity. What most impressed me about this book, and what makes him someone I would love to meet and have as a mentor, are the character traits that are described.  His risk tolerance.  His persistence.  His philanthropic side.  His human side. They are described via various passages.  The most memorable to me now, four months after I have finished reading the book, are: 1) the way he treated the families of the people who were riding a Virgin train that crashed 2) his desire to help solve world problems by wielding his influence and network of people to gather a group of elders. 3) his first business, growing Christmas trees, and the total failure (well the rabbits who ate them did make him some money) 4) his desire to lead in a given market, whether it was Student whe

Living in Vancouver I have been exposed to Chinese numerology in the form of addresses and floor numbering.  It is serious business.  A building in downtown Vancouver requested and was given the address 888 Beach Avenue so that it could attract more Chinese buyers.  For a brief moment the owners of the building we lived in, with the official address of 907 Beach Avenue, tried to change the address to 909.  They even changed the sign outside of the building by making the seven a nine.   For that period of time (a week at most) Canada Post would not deliver mail to 907 as it did not exist! The whole reason behind these superstitions is that the pronunciation of the numbers in Chinese sounds like that of certain other words in Chinese.  These things depend on dialects however.  The pronunciation of the number 8 is similar to the word for fortune or propser.  The number 7 is associated with ghosts (nothing to do with pronunciation actually).  The number 9's pronunciation is similar to

Today I visited one of my favourite places in Vancouver - The Nitobe Memorial Garden on the University of British Columbia's campus. I've always had an attraction to Japan.  It started as a kid when I flew Japan Air Lines a few times to Hawaii with my parents.  The attendants would give me cars to play with and I also was given playing cards.  To boot we flew on Boeing 747s between Los Angeles and Honolulu.  At that time, in the early 70s, the 747s were still newish planes.  I loved it.  In Hawaii we would sometimes eat at a Japanese restaurant near our hotel on Waikiki.  I remember the taste of the terikyaki beef I would eat.  Again, I loved it and, as a child, it impressed me. Many years, in High School,  I read the novel Shōgun, by James Clavell .  It exposed me to a world that I found mysterious, orderly, aesthetic , clean, traditional, organized.  I agreed with the descriptions of those dirty Europeans and agreed with the Japanese disgust at those hairy bastards on their

During the last three months I have had more time to myself as I am on leave from my employer for one year.  This has given me more time and resulting ideas and thoughts.  The main difference is that I am a lot less scheduled and consequently am feeling freer to do what I want on my terms.   Work was extremely scheduled.  Up at 6:45.  Off to work at 7:20.  First meeting at 8:30.  Meetings scheduled through the day, sometimes double or triple booked.  A lot of context switching (from human resources, to finances, to customer management, to interviewing, etc.).  Home by 19:00.  Play with the kids, eat.  Catchup on 100+ work emails (since I had no time to deal with them due to the meetings).  Bed at 23:00.  Sleep.  Repeat. Of course I am still somewhat scheduled, especially when the kids are in school.  But most of my day is free.  The result is that there is a side of me that is coming out that I have not felt or seen in decades.  A creative side, a more emotional side.  I am slowly comi

I spent the last two weeks in Montreal at my mother-in-law's house.  It was built in 1955.  Still today it looks modern- ish and so, I imagine that when it was built, it was way ahead of its time.  One of the features it has, common today, is a separate shower from the bathtub.  For the last two weeks, therefore, I had been showering in it.  Every day I was amazed at the dimensions of the shower and it made me think how much human beings have changed - in physical size. The shower is, using my feet as a measure, roughly 2.75 by 2.5 "Olivier" feet.  Let's just say it is tight.  I can, however, clean my entire body.  Toes, back of the knees, my back.  All those places that can be hard to reach are washable.  I can bend over comfortably.  So it is ok though I admit to a feeling of closeness - those black tiles are too close to my nose. During those showers my thoughts often wandered to whether a shower of these dimensions would (or could) be built today.  My answer to

I love seeing how the communication tools we have today can impact change quickly on what are otherwise slow moving organizations.  Yesterday the latest example of this hit the press. July 11th marks the availability of the new 3G iPhone from Apple.  Here in Canada we often get royally screwed by Canadian corporations who bask in the protection that the 49th parallel offers them.  Whether it be airlines, energy firms, car manufacturers or telcom companies. The introduction of the 3G iPhone has focused attention on mobile data rates in Canada and made consumers compare pricing between Canada and those lucky residents south of the 49th parallel.  AT&T in the U.S. offers a plan for $69 that offers 450 minutes of calling and unlimited data with no term contract.  The best Rogers was offering Canadians was a $115 a month with a 2GB data cap.  Well, all it took was a week or so of public pressure, blogs, radio, TV, etc for Rogers to reduce their pricing to $30 for 6GB.  The annoying part

I am currently in Montreal visiting family.  Once or twice a year I visit this city, my hometown.  Every time I am amazed by how different it is from any other city in Canada and for that matter the world.  Even when I lived here I felt like it was a different place and it was never for any good reasons....bar one - the bars were open late and, as a teenager and young adult, it was a great place to have fun.  But other than that I feel like, for the most part, the differences are negative. "Les Québecois sont une gang de gnochons ".  Those words were uttered by a Quebecker , sitting in front of my wife on the plane.  The cause for the words was a screw up by Air Canada, Dorval Airport (oops, I mean Pierre Elliott Trudeau or PET Airport) staff and Transport Canada resulting in us sitting on the plane for close to an hour waiting for a gate to free up.  While this entire event is not the fault of Quebeckers or Montrealers it was nevertheless emblematic for me of what I h

A few days ago I once again experienced the feeling.   Four of my high school buddies and I got together for drinks and dinner at Le Méchant Boeuf in Old Montreal.  After a few minutes of catching up and feeling each other out we quickly realized that nothing much had really changed in our personalities and it was like we were back in the eighties again. The last time I experienced that was  a couple of years ago when I met up with another old friend who I had not seen for eighteen or so years.  We had made plans to meet at the Rugby Club in Vancouver.  I saw him reading The Economist at the bar, and after five minutes, we were teenagers again. True, lasting friendships.  While most of us do not chat on a regular basis, somehow we are still connected.  Friendships formed in those formative years, while your neurons are still somehow being shaped and connected certainly seem to last a long time.  The connection goes beyond words and seems to be almost biological. Nice.