a unique perspective on this crazy world

Archive for March, 2012

middle age has its benefits :)

I did intend to have my own children but somehow that plan just didn’t quite get executed – so one of the great pleasures of middle age has been watching some of the children I have known via friends and family grow up around me.  It’s the catnip aunt role – you just get to be cool without the responsibility of being an actual parent 🙂

One of these kids became part of my 50th birthday celebration.  I have known her since she was a baby.  When she complains she has never been to Paris, I get to tease her about the time I spent with her and her mom in Paris when we would take her to restaurants and just pick her up on the way out.  Taking a cute kid into a restaurant in the Latin countries is like bringing a cute puppy 🙂

She is now a teenager – but not the usual variety.  Instead she is the kind of teenager who can fit easily into a sea of adults.  She was the youngest person at my party, yet fit in seamlessly – and may well have been more witty and erudite than some of the adults 😉

One of the unexpected highlights of the birthday was reintroducing her to another friend of mine who babysat her one night when she was a child.  They were the right pair to team up.  As Yvonne’s boyfriend said, “how do you play Christmas?” When you ask a little Jewish girl what she wants to do and she says, “play Christmas”, not everyone would have a game plan.  But her mother and I came home from dinner to a house fully decked out in Christmas magic in the middle of July – and Morgan went home with Christmas presents.  It was a classic story for them to bond over during the weekend – although there was some suspicion it might not have been the concept of Christmas that was so appealing as the idea that you might get presents 🙂

This was the first time in many years that I got to spend more than a few hours with her and it was a total delight.  It is already obvious this is one of those girls who could help to change the world.  She gives me faith in the next generation.

I have found one of the great rewards of getting to this ripe old age is that I can mentor young kids.  It is especially fascinating to see what young women are thinking – and to try and encourage and inspire them.

And I have had a rather unusual life.  So, fingers crossed, I will be able to connect her with the husband of another lifelong friend who is a theoretical physicist because apparently she is far more interested in meeting an actual physicist than in
meeting Justin Bieber – a girl after my own heart 😉

The first time I saw NYC I was 17.  I took my niece to Paris when she was 16.  I am definitely hoping to see Morgan’s reaction to one of those cities and share in her discovery.  The best way to relive your youth is through an actual youth.  I don’t need a Ferrari.  I just need a teenage girl, a camera and a world- class city she has never seen before…

 

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life philosophy

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dead at 66…

This is likely not the headline you may have been anticipating for the birthday post but the general concept has been floating around in my head for over a week and thinking about my birthday provided the final link.

The headline refers to the death of Davy Jones.   When I was 6, I had a Monkees lunch kit and would argue they were better than the Beatles (I know… I know… but I was 6 and they had a TV show – and we had a colour TV!)  I heard Brian Williams say these words as I was passing the TV that night and it caught my attention – because my dad had died at 66.  It is definitely very young in the developed world and it’s an age that catches people’s attention.

Of course my father’s death didn’t make the national news.  He lived in a small prairie town.   But in that locale he was as famous as Davy Jones and his funeral was huge.  There was almost an overflow crowd outside the town hall.  It really showed me how we can all be celebrities within our own social groups.

Certainly more people know who Davy Jones is.  But, was he genuinely loved by more people than my dad?  Did he have a more fulfilling life?  My guess would be that the answer is no.  It discourages me how crazy the cult of “celebrity” has become – and what pathetic role models so many of these so-called “celebrities” are.  It’s a crazy world, people 🙂

But anyone can choose their values and their path and decide what their impact and legacy will be on the greater world.  I definitely learned a few things from my father – and saw the impact he had on other people and the legacy that he left in the world.

Today’s date was the last time I talked to him four years ago.  It was my birthday but I was in a board meeting.  When I got out, I checked my phone and my parents had both sung “happy birthday”.  Especially since my dad couldn’t really sing, it was a huge treat after having to work so hard on my birthday.  So I called them back to thank them.  My mom was off at one of her many extracurricular activities so my dad and I chatted for over an hour.  Normally he would just hand the phone to my mom.  We have had an incredible, extremely complex relationship that involved some significant conflict so it was really cool to have that call where our wonderful old relationship seemed to have been restored.  Nine days later he was dead of an unexpected heart attack that shocked everyone.

Two of the friends I invited to my birthday party recently lost parents.  We are all at the age where it is inevitable.  There is no right way to cope.  I gave my dad a theme song (“My Way”), have little conversations with him on significant dates and pass on his wisdom and his values to others as a way of maintaining his legacy.  Talking about him keeps him alive for me.  So, a toast to my dad on my birthday 🙂

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life philosophy, social commentary

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the art of parties

No Japan on the birthday soundtrack but definitely an important part of my musical youth.  You have been spared my opinions lately because the birthday party that inspired this blog was on Mar 10th.

I decided to obsess over the details and organize it like a Prussian.  I could have just chilled and people would have had a good time.  But I didn’t want it to just be a random birthday party; I wanted it to an event!

I appreciated lots of people would just have a good time and the details would be lost on them.  But some of the assembled who share my obsessions – music, photography, travel, classic cocktails, French patisseries, fine cuisine – and balloons – would take notice and appreciate the extra effort I had put into the party.  And it worked!  I think it will be a fond memory for most of the guests.  I have no voice today and shut down the Tiki Bar.  Obviously I got my money’s worth out of the event 🙂

As Okkervil River will tell you, “it was the flaws that made us have fun”.

The slide show didn’t play in the right order but the jumbled order captured the crowd’s attention and got them talking.

No one danced but we got a brilliant moment where a few people who heard that song at every party in their youth shook their booty to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me You All Night Long.”

I spent $200 on balloons, which might make you question my sanity.  There were 99 luftballoons – 50 filled with helium and 49 filled with air.  I had people helping me madly set up so the plan was to release the helium balloons so they would float to the ceiling but instead they got arranged around the room in bouquets.  The error became a better idea.  At the end of our private party at 10, I got scissors from the bartender and released 50 helium balloons.

As the bar flooded with all the people who had been waiting in line outside, the purple balloons rose to the starry dark blue ceiling like planets floating in place.  It looked fantastic.  I totally got my money’s worth watching everyone in the bar playing with the balloons.  Some girl named Johanna who was also celebrating a birthday got to wear a balloon her shoulder.  At the end of the night I gathered the few remaining balloons on the floor and floated them into the crowd on the dance floor.  And then I went over to the extraordinary bartenders Scott and Chris and had them make me a “purple balloons” (the party’s signature cocktail) and savoured the end of a party that would have made Japan proud – and that people should remember for the next decade…

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eating & drinking - well, life philosophy

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the satisfaction of manual labour

As I have been noting, my work life has been insane since sometime in November.  What that has meant is that regular every day life keeps getting postponed.  I think the most succinct way to describe the state of my life around 9am this morning was when I gave the building manager my soccer tickets for Saturday later today so I can deal with my birthday party and she said, “yeah, I didn’t think you were a hoarder!”  The comment was totally fair.  This morning they were testing the fire alarms and she came with the inspector and I yelled at them as I typed email to clients that they could come in but it looked like a natural disaster had hit.

Having realized a couple of days ago that I was letting some friends stay in my apartment this weekend as part of the birthday celebrations, I decided I had to take a day off from work and deal with the apartment!  Martha Stewart would not be impressed – and I have warned them proper dusting unlikely to happen before Saturday – but at least I don’t look like a hoarder!

As I was vacuuming with my amazing Dyson, cleaning bathtubs and scrubbing floors, I was reminded of the satisfaction of properly executing manual tasks.  Doing your own housework has gone out of fashion, I know, but I grew up in a simpler time and have always derived great satisfaction from making stuff clean.

Doing manual labour reminds me of my grandmother who was scrubbing floors at the post office when she was 66.  My mother tried to point out to her that earning income at that age was reducing her government retirement benefits.  But her response definitely has something to teach the 21st century generations: “it’s good exercise.  And they pay me for it.”

I think it’s great to know how to use the gym.  And someday I will figure that out.  But for now, I clean my own house.  I carry heavy items home on the metro.  I walk really fast all the time.  And I am a little thinner than I was at 20….

So, hey, cleaning toilets burns calories.  But for me, what really matters, is that I always do a great job.  I grew up with parents who were perfectionists.  My mom and I professionally cleaned the farm house we moved into when I was 11.  A year or two later I cleaned a seed drill within an inch of its life so I would pass my father’s inspection and get my cold, hard quarter.  But what my parents really taught me was the value and great rewards of doing a job well.  You will have a cleaner house, you might lose a couple of pounds and – for sure – you will gain the self-satisfaction that comes from doing a job really well.

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life philosophy

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drinking like a pro ;)

If I didn’t like boys so much, I would know nothing about wine 🙂  One of my mother’s favourite stories is her recounting of my first day at school.  She was hoping I was there to learn something but when asked about my first impressions, I just listed the cute boys – in order.  The analytical skills obviously kick in early…

It was an Australian boy who said he would teach me about wine if I would date him.  It seemed a pretty decent exchange since at the time I knew approximately two wines and neither was especially memorable.  The wine education went well and I ended up in Oz circa 1990.

For wine aficionados there are few better places to stumble upon.  In those days, Monty Python made fun of Australian wine (they were WRONG!), the wineries were not owned by corporations and they made one of each and people made fun of you when you spent more than $7 on a 750 ml bottle of wine.

There are a lot of negative aspects to getting old but one of the sweet spots is taunting young Aussie wine drinkers with my introductory experience.  I would rock up to a winery and they would just pour me one of each… we started with Riesling and ended with Cabernet Sauvignon – or sometimes even Port.  It took me years to not pronounce Gewurtstraminer like an Aussie (i.e. wrong :)) because that was how I first heard the word.

When I moved back to Canada in 1992 with my 100 bottles of incredibly cheap Aussie wine (including my favourite, which was actually from New Zealand – the most expensive, Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc for $11 a bottle because I found it before Wine Spectator did :), I couldn’t find any decent Australian wine in the market place so decided to explore Chile, starting at A…

This year Chile was the feature country at the Playhouse Wine Festival so it was a wonderful visit to my past.  Because I have been working so much in the past few months, I had no time to make a plan for my tasting so decided to just chill and revisit lots of old favourites, try a few new things and spend lots of time talking to the people pouring the wine.

It really helped me remember why we should all drink wine.  Long ago I went to this same event with a work colleague, back when I knew very little, and discovered he had worked in a wine shop to pay for university so I flitted around the room with him trying to absorb it all.

But the part I remember the most is his favourite wine – chosen for memories of those he had shared it with, not its terroir.  That is what I really love about wine.  Drinking it with friends.  The memories.  The stories.  Pros do not drink alone.  Wine geeks love my story about finishing a bottle of Catena Zapata Nicolas out of plastic cups in the Mendoza airport – but for me it’s really a story about travelling to Argentina with my friend Kerry shortly after my dad died.  There are so many bottles of wine that have been part of the narrative of my life.  Open a bottle and make a toast to someone important to you…

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eating & drinking - well, life philosophy, travel stories

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random encounters with strangers…

I know children are taught NOT to talk to strangers.  And talking to creepy strangers offering you candy when you are 7 not advisable… but eventually we all have to talk to strangers.  And learn how to figure out if they are creepy 🙂

At some point in this dialogue we will discuss how painfully shy I was as a child but at present we are just going to focus on how I overcame it – and became a pro at stranger talk… I talk to strangers all the time, more frequently when I travel.  I will provide my tips for hanging out in bars at some later point – and not in the way you might envision 😉

My three days at the wine festival offered countless opportunities to talk to strangers and we will continue to explore this theme for a little while.   But first I want to note a specific encounter, which really highlighted the delights of stranger talk…

On Friday night I was busy buying wine and got to the tasting lounge quite late so there was a gigantic line, which I joined.  I didn’t know anyone and am so exhausted from work right now not talking to strangers was OK too…

But I was surprised and impressed when the guy behind me reached for a plate and instead of just taking it, he handed it to me – and then handed me a fork.  Real manners.  Such a lost art in the age of twitter.  He got my attention so I checked him out.  He was also really well dressed.  It went with the manners.  I live in a city where manners and dressing up are pretty rare so I was intrigued.  I ended up sitting with his friends to eat my dinner and exchanging some interesting words.

But he was just a random stranger so I didn’t expect to see him again.  I was back on Saturday and he wasn’t there but shortly before I was due in the proper tasting room, he and one of his friends from the night before arrived.  And waved at me.  So I chatted with them a little.

And ended up spending my evening in the tasting room with them and some of their friends.  What really impressed me was how gracious they all were.  They had made friends with the people at the Riedel booth so we wandered the tasting room with gigantic glasses, which we carefully returned at the end of the night.  The two guys I had met in the Gold Pass Lounge ran wine samples to the staff trapped in the booth demonstrating to people the difference a glass made to the taste of a wine.  And the most fantastic unexpected pleasure for me was that one of their friends has Japanese parents and an impressive knowledge of sake.  I had always thought I wasn’t sure about sake but you just need the right guide.

These are the wonderful unexpected adventures you embark on by talking to cute strangers 😉  Talking to strangers can change your life.  Try to do it at least every couple of months.  It will add a spark to your everyday life – and once you get good at it, some of these strangers will become friends…

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eating & drinking - well, life philosophy

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the wonderful world of vintage port

I have been busy drinking over the past few days so am behind on my public commentary.   It hasn’t been a “lost weekend” type of drinking adventure but rather a snotty wine connoisseur experience.  One of the local theatre companies decided decades ago to organize a wine festival as a fundraiser.  It has become possibly the best wine festival in the world for regular folk.

I started drinking wine at a relatively young age so have been attending for a few decades now.  The fact that I own a number of vintages of port attests to the fact that I am a pretty serious wine collector.  I was drinking a few wonderful ports at the festival and had some memorable conversations about port.

Lots of people will die never even knowing that vintage port exists.  It is definitely not the beverage of white trash.  In my twenties I vaguely heard that people bought vintage port when their children were born to drink on their 21st birthdays.

But the first time vintage port became real for me was in 1993 when my ‘born in 1963’ boyfriend started explaining to me what a great vintage 1963 was.  I still knew nothing but I really loved him so I went to Marquis Wine Cellars and spent an insane amount on a bottle of wine that might be corked.  It was 30 years old at the time and there was no guarantee on it.  We broke up before I even got to try it.  Buying great wine for men that I never get to drink a bit of a theme in my life 🙂

It did mean though that vintage port remained merely a concept for me.  I had never actually tasted any!  In more or less the same time frame one of my friends started dating this older Frenchman who was a wine expert.  So when she told me Francis said we should buy some 1994 vintage port I just did it!

It ended up being one of the best-uninformed decisions of my life.  I knew Francis knew wine.  It wasn’t very expensive.  I knew it wouldn’t be ready to drink for decades.  So I just stuck it under my bed waiting to figure out what I had done.

In 1998 I moved to Germany and acquired a European family, with a basement in which I could store my wine!  The new in-laws were very impressed with my vintage port but concerned it wouldn’t be ready to drink for 30 years!

I realized I better start buying more while I was young 🙂  So I started paying attention, which led me to salivate outside a wine shop in Lisbon in 2001 where I could see a Niepoort vintage port Wine Spectator had rated almost 100 points – but they were doing inventory and it was Europe so no one was willing to just sell it to me and reduce the inventory.  It was my last day in Lisbon so I just had to stare at it fondly.

A short time later I was at a wine dinner showcasing the young Turks of the Douro producing red table wine in addition to port.  Dirk van der Niepoort was at our table.  My friend said I should tell him my port story.  So I did… he told me the new vintage was even better!  And then he produced two glasses with a flourish and set them in front of us – “1863 – don’t tell anyone!”

I also made friends with the Portuguese trade ambassador by talking about my trip to Lisbon and my love of port… so he gave me his ticket and I got to attend a sold-out vintage port event that included a taste of the most expensive vintage port in the world.  It was delicious.

So it is only good karma that I did something nice of my own with a bottle of vintage port.  I saw this guy on Friday night in the Gold Pass tasting lounge – and wondered why he looked so familiar.  Luckily he remembered why he knew me.  His brother lives in northern BC so when he is in town he makes the most of it.  That was the year I was learning about Burgundy so I took them to meet some of the winemakers I had befriended in the afternoon.  We kept going after the festival ended and when the final bar closed I invited them to my house to drink a bottle of vintage port.  It’s so much more fun to share.  And you can end up with a story you can also share – and use to inspire others…


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eating & drinking - well

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