Ideeahs

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 borin...

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...

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 ...

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 h...

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 wond...

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 un...

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 me...