a unique perspective on this crazy world

Archive for March, 2012

un carnet, s’il vous plait

Some of you may have noticed my radio silence the past few days.  It’s because the first draft of this post was composed at the airport in Toronto, waiting for my flight to Paris!!!

The year end financial reporting deadline was yesterday so it’s been a dramatic race to the finish and a big push to finish work in Vancouver rather than in Paris.  So, you poor people, I will have plenty of time over the next two weeks to harangue you with tales of my travel adventures, whether you want to hear them or not 🙂

For those of you who haven’t taken the Métro, the header refers to the very first words I uttered en français on my very first trip to Paris, way back in 1989.

We were travelling on $50/day and, like all the other backpackers, had a Eurorail Pass, so my first stop in Paris was Gare du Nord.  Back then, you could watch a drug deal go down practically inside the station and you had to be on high alert.  The main thing you wanted to do when you arrived in Gare du Nord was get the hell outta there as fast as possible!

Paris has – hands down – the best public transit system in the world.  So, if you had read your guidebook in advance like a smart girl, you just followed the signs to the Métro and asked for “un carnet, síl vous plait.”

If you got the accent right, the grumpy dude in the Métro ticket booth mumbled some price in French, you handed over some francs and walked away with 10 tickets for the Métro and whatever change you were due.

Now you can buy your carnet from a machine using your credit card.  It’s a lot easier but much less romantic.  And Parisians have become a lot nicer to tourists.  Some even speak a few words of English!

This was only the third time I arrived in Paris by airplane.  Normally I arrive on the train.  The train is far superior.  I love being able to sneak up on an iconic city.  Stretch out the pleasure.  When you arrive by train, you first see the banlieue.  You could be anywhere.  But as you get into the proper arrondissements, the movie Paris starts to emerge.

And, because you will arrive in the center of the city, you can afford to take a taxi to your final destination.  Depending on your route, you might catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre or one of the many iconic bridges that divide the Seine into the Left and Right Banks.  You will know you couldn’t be anywhere but Paris and it will be as magnificent as you have imagined.  Paris is what all North Americans imagine Europe to be – but only Paris really is…

Knowing what a carnet is – and that you take the RER from Charles de Gaulle, not the Métro – makes you feel like a local, not a tourist.  It’s like the Oyster card I keep at home in its blue pouch and reload at Heathrow every time I arrive in London.  It was Gavin and Justin who supervised me through the purchase of my first Oyster card after they explained to me it was a far cheaper way to navigate the Underground – and having one would secure my status as a “non-tourist”.  They just checked in again as part of my birthday celebrations.  I’ll have to catch up with them in person the next time I am in London.

How we met a great story.  My team around the world is slowly expanding.  Knowing people in the cities that I visit really enhances the experience. But every time I fall in love with a city, I start trying to understand it like I would a new lover.  Figure out what makes it tick.  Unearth its quirky charms.  Revel in the special qualities that seduce me.  It’s how you end up feeling like a local.

And get the best travel stories… you have been warned… only I would go out for a quiet, jet-lagged dinner my first night in Paris and end up running down Boulevard Montparnasse at 2am…

 

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travel stories

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money for mouse shoes

Money gets a bad rap.  Being poor is honourable – especially if you aren’t poor 🙂  Being rich is vulgar.  But being sort of financially secure is just boring.  The lot of accountants and financial planners.  But some of those boring people know how to use money as a bullet to happiness rather than despair.

That is my goal in life.  Yesterday I used my ability to buy a pair of designer shoes to great effect.  While there is certainly virtue to knowing how to save money, the real hidden secrets of life are in learning how to spend it!

We’ve done a lot of talking about my dad lately but I learned some good stuff from my mom as well.  My mom is likely a little too generous.  But it’s one of those faults that is tough to find fault with.  There are certainly worse negative traits 🙂

No matter how many times I tell her ONE present is enough, I know it will never happen.  Something else will catch her eye that you just have to have.  Long ago she gave up trying to cram all the goodies into conventional Christmas stockings so we all know the plastic bag with our name on it sitting under the tree IS a Christmas stocking – you just need to use your imagination 😉

But the most memorable gift I ever saw her purchase was on a Christmas Eve many years ago.  The store was almost closing down around us but we had to get some more toys.  She was quite insistent about it.  I thought, “oh my god, she has gone bonkers.  There is NO way we don’t already have so many gifts you can barely see the tree!”  But this was not part of the usual Christmas bounty.  Instead we pulled up at some mysterious address and left the toys on the doorstep like some anonymous Santa a little off his schedule.  As we drove away, she explained.  The family was going through tough times and the kids might not have any toys for Christmas.  But it was a small town where everybody knows everybody’s business and people have a lot of pride so we had to make it look like Santa was just a wee bit early.

My mom has always taken great pleasure in doing nice things for other people.  She doesn’t do it for the thanks or the adoration but just because it gives her pleasure.  It’s one of my greatest life lessons.  And it’s really heart-warming to see my niece taking up the torch.

Ask not what the world can do for you but, rather, what you can do for the world.  Give it a whirl.  You may be surprised how great it feels to do something nice for someone else.  And the best news.  You can spend less than $5!  The price is totally NOT the point.  It’s how much thought you put into finding just the right thing to do.

What really turns people on is being noticed.  I used to send my friend Yvonne chocolate covered peanut butter eggs every Easter – cause it was our thing and you could only get them at Easter.

So… the mouse shoes.  I have already mentioned Morgan earlier – she is the teenage daughter of one of my best friends.  She (and her mom) share my obsession for shoes so we spent a lot of time over my birthday weekend+ talking shoes… and anyone who cares about shoes knows about Marc Jacobs mouse shoes.  I think I saw the first version in Paris (the best city in the world to shop for shoes!) back when there was only one.  Over the course of the weekend, we talked mouse shoes a number of times and I learned her shoe size.  As I noted in the previous post, she has emerged into this wonderful young woman doing all the right things despite the fact that she is a teenager.  So I decided she deserved some mouse shoes…

Through the beauty of the internet I confirmed her mailing address, send the invoice to her mom in case she needed to do an exchange and organized for Fedex to deliver a pair of size 8 1/2 gold glitter Marc Jacobs mouse shoes to her front door in Toronto via the Brown’s Shoes website.  I could track the whole process via my computer in Vancouver so sent her a note yesterday afternoon to look for a package when she got home.  And then I got the email.  The shoes had been safely delivered…  Some of the best money I have ever spent!

So, Morgan, I was wowed by your effusive thanks.  But you should also thank my mom.  Without her wonderful example, there would have been no mouse shoes for you 🙂  Given her obsession with everything Disney and the concept that Mickey is more or less one of her children, what could be a more perfect tribute than mouse shoes…

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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the advantages of extra parents ;)

Long before my friend Sarah actually had children of her own, she explained to me the concept of children being raised by the village, rather than individual nuclear parents.  She used to work for WHO so spent a lot of time in villages in Africa, rural Asia, places most of us never set foot in.

It’s a concept that doesn’t necessarily sit so well with many North American parents, the most insular people on the planet.  But there are a lot of virtues to the concept.  It takes a lot of pressure off the actual birth parents.  It exposes children to lots of different viewpoints and ideas, which will come in helpful in life as your tiny North American nuclear family is highly unlikely to provide all the material you are going to need to successfully navigate our increasingly global, pluralistic world.

While there is much that can be said about this concept in theory, this post is an homage to the two people in my life who played a gigantic role in my youth and supplemented the skills of my parents in a way that was so masterful it took me years to fully appreciate it.

They are about a decade older than my parents and Elaine is currently in hospital.  I am going to write a personal note to her as well but I decided it would be cooler – and more grandiose – to celebrate our relationship on a public scale via the world wide web.  There is no doubt she deserves to be famous – and maybe this can be part of her legacy.

It all began when my mother re-enrolled me in figure skating at age 11.  She had decided the teacher wasn’t good enough so it had been a few years and catching up was a bit awkward.  But awkward things can be worthwhile 🙂  Elaine had a daughter a year younger and she and my mom struck up a friendship sitting in the ice rink waiting for us.

I am not sure how it all evolved.  Her husband, Glen, was a very successful farmer and my dad had just ditched his real career to go farming (one of his dreams) at age 30 and there were lots of people predicting his demise (they obviously didn’t know my dad :)) so Glen was a marvelous mentor.

I didn’t really care about the specifics.  I had spent most of my life being a gypsy child (my first six birthdays all happened in different places with different people).  Here was a Scottish clan.  They had roots and family reunions.

Glen and Elaine had been to university and listened to me in a way I had never experienced before with an adult.  And they had so much knowledge to share.  And they gave me confidence in my opinions.  They were so interested in me!

It took me a couple of decades to really understand and appreciate the tremendous impact they had had on my life.  They were so much more than my parents’ best friends in my teens.  They were part of my extended family.

Everyone should have an Elaine in their life.  She is so gracious and affectionate you almost think she is acting.  Who could be that truly wonderful?  But it’s just who she is.  And she never disappoints you.  When you arrive at her house, she will greet you with a hug.  She will pull frozen goodies out of her giant freezer and put on the coffee pot.  She will ask what you have been up to and really listen and ask questions.  If you get lucky, she might even play the piano and sing show tunes.  I think about her a lot more than she probably realizes.  And the guidance she provided when I was an impressionable teenager has served me well all over the world and definitely contributed to my success and general happiness.

It’s already obvious if you’ve been reading my blog the tremendous affection I have for my proper birth family 🙂  but I have weaseled my way into a few other wonderful families over the years – and it has provided so many amazing memories I can’t imagine not being part of each one.  Not too many people split with their husband – and still get his mother’s mind-blowing German Christmas cookies – a dozen different variations all carefully protected in bubble wrap and shipped air mail by my ex – every December.  I still love them all – and they know…

And, just in case Glen and Elaine aren’t sure – I have now loved you both for 38 years and counting… thanks for all the incredible memories – and so much more…

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remember to be part of your own species…

I am one of those Type A people far too willing to work who takes way too much pride in being organized, efficient and getting stuff accomplished.  We are very useful to the planet 🙂  But we are a sub-species and can go astray and forget the rules of our tribe.

I am trying to learn to slow down sometimes and make sure I smell a few flowers…  and, more importantly, that I don’t turn into one of those crazy people who has regrets on their deathbed.  A long time ago I heard a phrase that is likely a clique, “no one ever complained on his deathbed that he hadn’t worked enough!”

At the time, I was working almost every moment so it gave me pause for thought.  I was still pretty young and my deathbed was likely a long way off but just in case I got hit by a bus, I started to try and remember to make my life about more than just work.

It’s still a struggle at periods like the present when my clients are gunning for regulatory deadlines and I am trying to think how I can feed myself (including groceries and clean up) in less than half an hour without resorting to TV dinners.

But next week is the drop-dead date so closure is starting to happen and I can potentially chill for a couple of hours each day.  I seized that opportunity yesterday.  It was one of those moments of serendipity.  I had mentioned working from anywhere in the world, including while watching the hippos play in the Grumeti River in Tanzania while I ate lunch and beat off the monkeys trying to steal my bread.  I have photos from that trip as the background on my laptop so on my way out I asked the executive assistant if she wanted to see the hippos…

I had no idea she had had dreams of being a zoologist, was involved with rescue animals and had always wanted to go on safari…  Not only did I once again experience the extra spark from connecting to another human being, we had this fantastic conversation about animal behaviours and how so many of them are not so different to human animal behaviours.

I was going to work a night shift and it was already close to dinner hour so I decided to stop by one of my favourite restaurants to get fed before the night shift started.  One of the owners, Erik, came over to say “hi” and I told him I had been there with friends on my birthday but it was a Monday so neither of the owners had been there – but I had told my friends about them.

And he told me he hadn’t been there because he had had a kid!  Unfortunately the kid didn’t know it should hang on until Mar 12th to have the best possible birth date – but, as I told Erik, Mar 11th is still pretty good 🙂

And the encounter with Erik completed the day’s experience.  As he pointed out, his is a “relationship business”.  I need to keep reminding myself to make contact with my own species.  To be part of its social norms.  To not just run past in a hurry but instead to connect and share.  To hear people’s stories.  To learn about their secret dreams.  To find out they had a first child.

Being involved in the world and paying attention is what kept my grandmother young and vibrant I think.  It’s how you get to be the 90 year old talking about taking care of the old people – who are all younger than you.  But haven’t spent their life keeping track of details for 200 different people – and being annoyed if you get anything wrong…  We are supposed to be the zenith of the animals –she was just using that brain we have all been given 😉

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lessons in consumption

Today is the anniversary of my father’s death.  It’s the fourth now so it doesn’t come with the same shock and trauma that the first did.  I was born prior to birth control being a common phenomenon (why are you trying to send us back there, American Republicans???!) so my parents weren’t even legal to drink in the USA when I was born.  I figured that would work in my favour in that I would be REALLY old before I had to experience the death of a parent.

My mother is cooperating!  And my father did wait long enough that I had a number of friends who had already been through it so I had some reference points.  As one of my friends said when I saw him shortly after the funeral, “welcome to the club no one wants to belong to.”  But we discovered we were both wearing our father’s watches and it added one of those bizarre additional chunks of cement to our friendship.

From him – and others – I had learned that the toughest days were usually anniversaries – the anniversary of the day the person died, the parent’s birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, whatever family holidays where you expected the person to show up and wondered what was keeping them.  The first year the Christmas presents were unwrapped and my dad wasn’t sitting in his chair was tough for everyone in the room.  I think if we’d been a little smarter – and had better arts & crafts skills – we would have made a life size cardboard cut-out of one of his photos and propped it in the chair.

People will tell you consumerism is bad and objects are meaningless.  Consumerism IS bad.  And too many objects distract you and make you forget how important objects can be when purchased in the right way.  The right way, people, is to think poor.  Only a half century ago, even in the developed world, we didn’t have cheap labour in China (and Vietnam, Turkey, etc, etc).  Goods cost a lot more – and local people made them.  So people didn’t have a lot of objects.  And when they chose them, they often saved up for years and bought something that would last for a long time.

My father came from that time – and taught me how to buy things.  And the chair to which I am referring was one of those things.  I don’t know if my father had a leather recliner when I was a very small child.  I think he didn’t because he couldn’t afford it.  My father spent his life doing jobs that required a lot of physical labour so when he came home, he wanted to sit in a comfy chair and read, watch some carefully chosen television, or talk to the rest of us.  At some age that I was too young to recall clearly, that chair became a leather recliner.

In the fall of 2007, my mother noticed that my father’s recliner was on its last legs so she decided she wanted to get him a new one as a Christmas present. We wanted to get him something of the proper quality and it was going to be expensive so I said I would go together with her on the present.  I wasn’t there to witness its arrival or see my dad sitting in his new chair but when he died, I immediately thought of it and said, “at least he had a few months to sit in his new chair.”  I know he would have loved that new chair.  A well-crafted leather recliner was one of his things…

When he died, I collected two of the expensive watches I gave him when I got old enough to afford such luxuries (he and I shared an obsession for quality when it came to watches and pens), a wool sweater I had bought him in Scotland on my first trip to Europe (still going strong 20 years later) and my favourite of the many caps I had given him.  It was from my trip to Botswana – I put it on after I made my speech at his funeral introducing My Way – “if Ray was here today, this is what he would tell you”.  The cap was one of my dad’s signatures – standing there wearing it while Frank sang as though he had known the inner workings of my dad’s mind was as close as I could come to reincarnating him for his adoring crowd.

So don’t believe it when people say objects have no value.  Just don’t do all your shopping at Walmart or H&M.  Find your objects.  Develop a point of view.  My father had caps, watches, a leather recliner.  I have cashmere cardigans, show-stopping shoes and enormous leopard print throw pillows.  My father taught me well… and I hope there will be purple balloons at my funeral… one for every year I made it through… a mix of helium and air… to distract people and cheer them up… that’s what we did for the hundreds who attended my dad’s funeral… but that’s a whole ‘nother story 🙂

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life philosophy

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being a slut has its perks ;)

Sorry to disappoint – the headline was meant to be titillating – but a bit misleading…  I am only polyamorous  when it comes to professional food 🙂

It all started a couple of decades ago, in a strange twist because I was still friends with an ex-boyfriend so was taking him for a birthday dinner.  But he was an ex and I wasn’t terribly rich so took the advice of my roommate at the time and took him for dinner at Allegro, a restaurant in an obscure location only open for about four months.

It was the first restaurant Michael had owned instead of working at and the effort was obvious.  I enjoyed the meal so much I was back again a week later… and he asked my opinion on my entrée, on the general prices, etc.  AND he remembered where I had been sitting a week earlier, what I had ordered and that I had been with the guy with the backpack.  I was impressed!

I had never had a restaurant of my own before.  Michael added a layer to my life that I hadn’t even been aware I needed 🙂 It all started with Allegro.  I brought everyone I knew.  I became such a regular no one blinked an eye when I was behind the bar.  Once I got invited to the Christmas party in January and everyone was trying to figure out if I was staff.  And I learned the most important lesson: talk to the staff!  Bond!  Create a relationship.

It’s why my friends love to go for dinner with me.  Many of those bonds were revisited during my birthday celebrations.  And meals were extra special.  Morgan, the teenager previously mentioned, declared that Neil at boneta was the coolest person she had ever met!  Neil is pretty cool.  I would have to agree 🙂

And one of the really special rewards that I get these days, having spent many years following people I like from restaurant to restaurant… is that sometimes they pop up again in an unexpected places.  That’s what happened last night.

I went to the restaurant at the Opus just before all the birthday festivities started so that I wouldn’t have to cook – and more importantly – deal with dirty dishes, since I had cleaned the apartment for the entire day.  The meal was great so I went back last night.  It was just a break between work shifts and I hadn’t eaten all day so I was there really early.  Which is when you might get to meet the chef roaming around outside the kitchen!

And it was Paul, whom I’ve known from a couple of other restaurants.  He is a great chef.  And a super charming great guy.  He wanted to buy me dessert.  But sugar isn’t really my thing (I didn’t even eat my own birthday cake – and it was incredible cake!) so we negotiated for cheese… I got this stellar plate of Italian cheese and cause I was now a friend of the chef, a glass of incredible red wine not normally poured by the glass.

And what is the takeaway?  Proper flirting is one of the tenets of a great civilization.  Learn how to do it.  Tip well.  Talk to the staff.  Take a night out and make it memorable.  And then you, too, may have a photo of yourself in the kitchen at Gordon Ramsay… it all started with a conversation about the menu…

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eating & drinking - well

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who’s sexier – Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert

Apparently some of the recent posts have been inciting tears so I thought we should try something a bit less sappy 🙂  Still much to be said about friendships, family, relationships but we will talk about silly stuff tonight.

It’s shocking to me but until the last US election I was only vaguely aware of Jon Stewart and had never heard of Stephen Colbert.  Thank god I am a political junkie and thought I had to watch what indeed proved to be a historical US presidential race.  Watching political conventions and election results was one of the many activities I shared with my father while the other two members of the household looked at us as though we had two heads.

There is no doubt politics will find its way into this blog but most days I think a great sense of humour has more potential to effect positive change for individual citizens than the messy versions of democracy that get enacted on the global stage.

But that’s the kind of lesson you would learn from watching Jon Stewart 😉  He was my first love.  And while he and Stephen may not be quite in the same league as Brad Pitt or George Clooney, they each have considerable physical appeal.  But, of course, that is not what makes them sexy…

Most days I feel I am in a fairly small elite of the double X chromosome gang, but I think brains are sexier than muscles.  And a really smart guy with a deadly sense of humour… well – see above 🙂

I know most women think foreplay is the key.  But wordplay is even more enticing – when done well.  And the best guys know how to combine the two 😉

Both of them make me laugh out loud – a great honour.  I can’t decide who is sexier.  Jon is the modern, socially acceptable equivalent of a lion in the coliseum tearing apart some unsuspecting not so smart dude with crazy political views – but instead of being torn apart limb from limb, he is crushed by a superior intellect while the crowd smirks because the guy is too dense to realize exactly what is going down.  My heart pounds every time 😉

And then there is Stephen.  At first, like the Emmys, I figured he was not a real contender.  But then he made his strange – but funny – trip to Iraq.  And indulged in hilarious skits while he tried to find his way into the Vancouver Olympics while trashing my adopted city.  Unfortunately I was far too busy during the Olympics to stalk him while he was in my town but how can you not have a crush on a guy who reads Joyce in an Irish pub – and gets away with it…

But then there was Stephen Colbert interviewing Harry Belafonte.  The ultimate bromance 🙂  Be still, my beating heart!  There will be more about Harry in future posts.  I had no idea his life story until I saw a documentary at the Vancouver Film Festival this past October.  Sorry, Jon, Stephen – hands down, Harry is the sexiest!  If only I will be that charming and gracious when I am 85 🙂  At least I have the smile.  It’s my dad’s smile.  And his laugh.  I don’t laugh at dumb stuff – but when I do, you will know.  I like to think it’s infectious – the perfect type of virus 🙂

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social commentary

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