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Showing posts from October, 2008

Sunday Childhood Memory - The First Note

Playing chess in his basement room.  The weighted wooden pieces all jammed into their wooden box.  LPs spinning on the turntable.  Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Gentle Giant, The Rolling Stones, Emerson Lake and Palmer in the background.  The cramped room, the records (everywhere!), posters, books, the order within the disorder.  John Lennon.  His eyeglasses.  Number 9. Guessing "Let it Be" correctly after the first note of the first measure of that song. The thinking, the philosophy, the dreaming, the playing, the challenges.  The honest fun we had together.  Countless days of it. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9....the difference in our ages.  He was my cousin and my older brother. Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Off to Japan Today

I am off to Japan today for three weeks.  For that reason Ideeahs will not be as active.  Having said that, you can follow me on my Autumn in Japan blog.  I imagine that certain things I see, smell, hear and feel in Japan will spawn ideeahs not specific to Japan.  If so, I'll write them here. For some background on why I wanted to go to Japan read this entry, entitled My Japan .

The Chair

I sit down and am encouraged to lie down by the back rest that slowly drops away below me.  Looking up the overhead lamp inherits a yellow hue as its light passes through the protective glasses I have been given.  Beyond the yellow light hangs the cold fluorescent ones from the dropped ceiling, made up of asbestos like rectangles, dimpled with odd shaped birth marks.  The masked face suddenly appears and blocks the light.  Latex touches my lips.  My jaw is held in place by the pressure of fingers on my chin.  A thin metal instrument feels cool against my warm mouth.  It feels slightly rough - textured to allow for a better grip.  The sound of metal on enamel becomes dominant.  The sound comes from within my body, not via the exterior ears.  My head is being jarred slightly by the delicate movement of the instruments.  Scrape.  Scrape.  Clunk.  The plaque has lost its grip and fallen into my mouth.  On to the next surface.  Chip, chip, chip.   The chunks accumulate. My saliva builds up

Measures of Value

Certain things are hard to value from a monetary perspective.  Feelings, emotions, attachment for example.  How do you price them?  I'd argue you can't....not monetarily anyway. Our world is definitely one that is money driven.  It makes sense that we have evolved that way as money is a tool understood by almost all the people on this planet.  Money is a simple way for us to compare the value of different goods and services.  We'll put a lock on our house and cars but not on that rusted tricycle.  Money makes it easy for us to evaluate what is worth protecting. So long as we go through the exercise of pricing properly. --- A parent picks up their child at school.  They are of an age where booster seats are the law.  The parent ignores this, allows the child to sit on the back bench, without a seat belt.  They can even sit on the front seat.  Doesn't matter.  Off they go, driving along quiet residential streets.  What can happen on such a short trip anyway?  They have ar

Sunday Childhood Memory - Anthem & Fire

The sun is setting.  The American national anthem starts playing.  The Polynesians come running out into the gardens.  They have torches and are lighting lanterns along the paths.  I am amazed by the colours, the sound, the mystic, the tradition, the beauty of the fire. The sounds diminish.  Darkness falls and the paths of the garden are now transformed.  Eerie.  Mysterious.  Long, flickering shadows against a yellow glow.  I can hear the distant waves crashing on Waikiki Beach. Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Pubs in a Fairy Tale World

What an amazing few days in Vancouver.  Sunny, warm.  My family and I went for a nice walk through some local woods and down to a beach in our neighbourhood.  We worked up a pretty good appetite.  On our way back we wanted to grab some food so we considered our options.  Fast food junk places and coffee shops.  More appealing was a new pub which opened up a while back.  I have been there once.  The food is OK, the decor is nice, the drinks are better.  It may not be perfect but it is a nice place to hang out on a sunny day and would have been a nice option.  Unfortunately we could not go there.  Why?  Our children were with us.  You see, they are six and nine years old.  Our lawmakers believe that my two children would get corrupted by what they saw happening in this neighbourhood pub.  A glass filled with wine or beer would be raised, the liquid drunk.  Food would be eaten.  Sports would be playing on the televisions.  Pop/rock music would be playing on the sound system.  Boy.....soun

Nature's Subdivisions

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Sitting on our front steps a leaf's pattern caught my attention.  It reminded me of a time I was flying in to Las Vegas and looked down at all the housing developments being built on Vegas' outskirts.   The difference was that the pattern I saw out of the airplane window was laid in greyish brown, a beige - the colour of the surrounding desert.  It was also vast.  The one pictured below is woven in red on yellow and is miniscule. Lots has been said about how man often mimics the patterns found in nature when creating and building - so I will not say more. Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Show Me Your Nuts

While waiting for the day-ending bell to ring in my children's school yard the relative of one of my daughter's friends showed us a toy pail full of chestnuts.  Quite a few of Vancouver's residential streets are lined with chestnut trees.  At this time of year they drop both their leaves and their seed onto the sidewalks, lawns, streets and cars that happen to be below their majestic branches. Walking I notice a few things.  My path is littered with chestnuts.  Some have cracked open on their fall to the road or sidewalk - husk separated from nut.  The husks look like some strange parasite.  Spiny and full of needles.  Green, brown, yellow.  The nuts are a beautiful, deep, reddish brown, the look of a grand mahogany.  Smooth and shiny.  I kick the nuts as I walk, ad hoc soccer balls.  I crush the husks under my feet with almost every step. Looking up I notice how busy the squirrels are these days.  Hoping from branch to branch.  Scurrying up the trunks, ahead of a pedestria

Needless Election

So we are back where we started on September 7.  That was the day that our Prime Minister requested that parliament be dissolved.  His request was listened to and for the past thirty-seven days the various political parties of Canada have done their best they to make a difference.  To persuade the electorate to vote for them.  To believe their platform.  That they were better than the others.  We heard a lot of bickering and saw fingers pointed.  But I honestly heard very few, if any, messages that did not include a punch in the face of an opponent. My family received numerous (at least six) telephone calls from political parties, many during that important dinner time, asking us to support their platform and party.  The Conservatives called at least twice.  The Greens did once.  The Liberals three times - twice on election day reminding us to vote.  I don't remember whether the New Democrats called.  The Libertarian Party didn't telephone us but its candidate did approach us w

Potsie Webber and the Right Brain

During my elementary school years I would take a school bus to and from work.  We thought we were very cool as we didn't ride in a yellow "cheese-wagon" bus but a city bus that had been hired by the school board for the purpose.  We felt like teenagers riding a city bus.  After school I'd bus it and then spend a few hours at home alone waiting for my parents to come back from work and school.  I think about those days and my own children now and wonder how they would cope with being alone at home for a few hours every day. During these afternoons waiting at home I'd prepare myself a snack (Ritz crackers with mozzarella cheese, sandwich rolls with Miracle Whip are two snacks that I am recalling).  I then would move to the living room and flick on the television and watch the following shows, one after another - The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family and Happy Days.  I don't remember very many specific episodes.  There is one, however, that pops up into my mind e

Navel and Boob Gazing

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I noticed a billboard today advertising a new Royal Bank of Canada VISA card that is affiliated with Starbucks.  Seeing the ubiquitous Starbucks logo was the trigger for this entry. I remember reading something, somewhere, sometime ago about how the Starbucks logo had changed over the years.  The merger or acquisition of another company caused one of the changes.  Other changes were to make the logo more acceptable to a wider audience.  Anyhow have a look at how the Starbucks logo has evolved over the years, paying attention to the siren (that's the woman in the centre of the logo). What you may notice is that the siren's body parts are slowly being covered up.  First her boobs were by having her hair flow over them.  Then her navel was banished by having the siren moved more into the forefront of the logo.  Some people would find boobs and navels offensive I am sure.  Having said that, while boobs tend to be (generally) well hidden from the public's eyes navels are all ov

The Dumbing Down of America

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Photo: Brett Beanan (Wikimedia Commons)

Words of Wisdom

I have just started reading another book.  Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl.  I picked it up based on Daniel Pink's recommendation.  He is the author of the book I just finished reading - A Whole New Mind.  I've only read the first few pages of this, the 1984 edition.  It contains an updated preface, written by Frankl.  In it he states: "I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.  Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it." Yes!  I think this is the best summary of this journey called "life" that I have read in any book so far. I need to heed those words.  Some words I have started to act upon a bit more as I have progressed through life.  Specifically I am much more honest with my conscience than I was.  However, I do not always "carry it out to the best

Poor Service - Telus

Today's entry is not particularly positive or interesting - it is a rant.  So you might want to stop reading now.  But I want the story out there so that the company involved can maybe read it and learn.  So that the public can read about my experience.   Public pressure , there is nothing better than that to get organizations to act and admit issues.  So here it goes... Over the last month or so I have been frustrated with my Internet Service Provider, Telus .  I have a very short fuse for poor service.  The reason for this, I believe, is that I have worked in customer service for one of the world's largest IT companies my entire working career - as a call agent in a call centre, in technical support, as team lead, as a manager.  I've dealt with customer issues, seen internal processes and measurements negatively impact performance.  I've seen process, and resulting IT system, changes not thought through completely, or tested completely, cause front-line problems.  The

Black and White

Some of you are aware that I am on a year-long leave of absence from work.  I am now into my sixth month.  One of my analogies to leaving work has to do with the laptop I left behind, at the office, on April 25th.  I've since extended it a bit as a result of the book I am currently reading (A Whole New Mind).  So here it is. I've closed a chapter in my life.  The black laptop was shutdown one last time and the cover dropped.  Leaving behind, or at least suppressing, the analytical, left-brain powered me. I've opened the door on a new chapter.  The white laptop opens, a new paradigm for me.  Trying to uncover the creative, right-brain powered I. That's it...simple.  But the reality is definitely not so black and white in my brain - not so simple.

More on China

In the weeks before the Olympic Summer Games in Beijing I highlighted an example of how China, in my view, is failing in the world.  Another issue is the ongoing melamine contamination problem and how melamine is popping up all over the place - the latest I have read about is in pretzels imported from China.  Now we are hearing about how China is spying on Skype users, making copies of messages containing such "nasty" words as Falun Gong or Taiwanese independence or Tibet or democracy or, or, or. When is this autocratic, controlling, paranoid, childish, egotistical government going to wake up?  When are they going to start having confidence in their citizens?  When are they going to start believing that these same citizens are the ones that will advance China culturally, economically, politically?  These citizens will be the ones that portray a positive image of China throughout the world.   The sooner the wave turns positive the better off China as a whole will be.  As i

Importance of Context on Interpretation

I have a very personal experience that highlights how context is very important when trying to understand how somebody interprets spoken words, written text, sounds and sights.  In my case it is the interpretation of the meaning of a particular song - "I'm With You" by Avril Lavigne .  There are many interpretations to the song.  See this link for some examples.  Apparently Avril wrote it one day when her boyfriend wasn't around and she was simply in a down mood. For me the story starts in the autumn of 2005 when an employee of mine, a friend of mine, died tragically in a kayaking accident on the Sea of Cortez .  She had been kayaking with friends, the winds picked up, they got separated.  She had the radio, called in for help.  Her friends were found, she wasn't.  This event affected me in many ways and I was much more emotional than I would have expected based on my personality - up to that point in my life anyway.  Here was a woman in the prime of her life, in

Why a Carbon Tax is the Best Option

Here are reasons why a carbon tax is, in my opinion, the best option to curb carbon dioxide emissions. 1) It puts a price on carbon.  In our world one of the only ways to get the masses to move in a specific direction is to create financial incentives.  Money is such a driver in our world.  People favour a particular packet of cookies over another due to a 25 cent difference.  Cost is easy for everyone to understand as it involves little thought and very basic mathematical skills (greater than or less than).  People don't need to think about what they are feeling, what their philosophical preferences are, their ethical standards.  They don't need to read the label - just look at the cost.  If we believe that there is a need to reduce the amount of pollution in the air we breath we need to make it simple for people to decide whether to buy the car that will cost them 25 cents less per litre.  Clearly pricing carbon does that. 2) Consumption taxes are fairer than income taxes. Th

Autumn - My Favourite Season

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Autumn is my favourite of our four seasons here in Canada.   My earliest fond memories of autumn were when I was a teenager.  I would hang out with my friends and we'd throw a football around on crisp, blue, dry, sunny Montreal autumn days.  You could smell the brown sugary sweetness of the brown leaves decomposing on the grass, moistened by the morning dew.  At the end of the day, newly fallen red and yellow leaves would scrunch underneath our footsteps as the sun lowered in the sky and brightened the already fiery reds. Now that I live in Vancouver autumn remains the season that I enjoy the most.  It happens to also be the one season on the west coast that is similar to its twin over in Quebec.  The other seasons are very dissimilar.  Winter is wet, humid and grey in Vancouver - the grass is green.  It is white, cold and dry in Montreal - the grass is dormant and covered.  Montreal has beautiful sunny days during that season though, with scrunchy snow at boot level. Spring in V