a unique perspective on this crazy world

Archive for September, 2012

grizzly bears, geox and her majesty’s secret service…

OK, this is a little stale-dated now… but too much has been happening… so pretend it’s Thu, Sep 13th…  I am mostly over jet-lag so will see if I can start catching up with the storyline…

I have arrived in London!  Because I was travelling on airline points I had to arrive at Heathrow via Frankfurt.  Marcel suggested had I prepared better I could have just jumped out of the plane when we flew over London and saved a lot of time.  I suppose I could have even skipped the gigantic customs and immigration line 🙂

But sadly I am not on the same terms with 007 as the Queen and I told Marcel I would only feel comfortable in a parachute if we were doing a tandem jump (James Bond et moi :))

I’m not sure if Marcel has jumped from a plane.  But I doubt it would phase him.  It’s the first time I’ve even seen someone’s scar from a personal encounter with a grizzly bear (and it has claw marks so pretty authentic!)

I grew up with the bears so heard myriad advice in my childhood about what to do if you get too close to a bear.  Apparently you are supposed to “play dead” because grizzly bears are the connoisseurs of the bush and they won’t eat road kill.  If it’s not organic free-roaming prey they know is as fresh as sushi, they will go in search of alternative fresh meat.  If it’s running away, they know it will be fresh 🙂

You may not have had a children’s game where you pretend to “play dead” just in case you need to steel yourself for that tete-tete with the bear but, no matter how convincing we could be in an empty field, we all secretly knew we would likely just run if we actually SAW a bear.

So I had to ask… apparently Marcel passed out.  And the bear didn’t devour him.  So perhaps your body will just “play dead” without your consent.  Likely the best possible outcome.

I am a big fan of the “pod” and most of my recent business class treats on airline points have provided me with my private cocoon to drink champagne and catch up on movies.

But I love to travel.  And there is a higher probability you will meet an interesting person who likes to travel on an airplane.

We bonded when they took our champagne away before take-off because we weren’t drinking fast enough.  Conversations with strangers on airplanes are always mysterious encounters.  You can’t escape for ten hours.  But you aren’t required to converse at all.  So there is always this mutual dance between being friendly and making sure you aren’t crowding the other person’s space.

Marcel is Swiss.  He has travelled a lot.  He has lots of opinions.  And he wrestles grizzly bears for sport.  I didn’t catch up on any movies but we seemed to arrive in Frankfurt in no time.

Frankfurt airport is kind of like a second home for me but those stories are for another time.  The next few days will be all about London 2012.  I have this strange habit of arriving in cities just after the Olympics have ended.  The same thing happened in Beijing in 2008.  It’s a little like arriving at a party after all the guests have gone home.  But maybe I’ll hear some stories about the party while they are fresh.  It won’t really matter.

Beijing needed the Olympics to get the world’s attention.  London did not.  As I write this I am sitting in a Mediterranean restaurant being filled to bursting with Persian food.  It was just a random pick near the hotel but it is bringing back fond memories of Istanbul and Egypt from earlier this year.

I’m pretty thrifty so I took the Tube from Heathrow.  I’m staying in a new neighbourhood for me – at the cool CitizenM Bankside.

www.citizenm.com

Because I don’t know my way around yet, I went the wrong way out of Southwark station so I got to tour the streets of London with my suitcase.  This isn’t a tourist neighbourhood so it was more striking.  And made me think of the commentary during the Olympics about how many different cultures and languages there are in the city of London.  That will happen when you  decide to create an Empire to rule the entire world…

Paris is more romantic.  Amsterdam is more freewheeling.  Istanbul is more entertaining.  But London feels like a city of the future – where the past and the future fuse.  Where, imperfectly, but with a very low level of violence by world standards, almost the entire world lives together.  I think they said 250 different countries are represented in the city of London.  It certainly looks that way is you walk in the non-tourist zones or ride the Tube all the way from Heathrow to the center of London.

I’ve been to London so many times I had an Oyster card when not all locals had one yet!  (My London friends explained it was the way to travel the Tube for those of us with thrifty Scottish genes).

In a couple of years it will be 25 years since my very first trip to London.  Many of my visits to London have been lost in the shuffle of memories and the exact details are blurry but I still have many memories of that very first trip.

At the time I had an Australian boyfriend and he was returning to Sydney and I was going with him.  But – in the interim – he was travelling through Europe as Australians are prone to do.  But I had just received my professional designation so had been living hand-to-mouth and had no funds to gallivant around Europe.

So we made a deal.  He would start on his own and I would save money like mad and join him for the last three months.

I know it’s likely hard to believe, kids, but back then there was no internet, no Skype, no mobile phones even, let alone smart phones.  So every week he would go to a European post office to make a short, wildly expensive transatlantic call.  I would wait by the land line and jump when it rang.  Not so functional but far more romantic 🙂

And I think that was part of it.   He wanted me to come for a quick, interim visit before I joined him later.  He was staying with friends in Earl’s Court so I just needed the plane fare – and a passport.  My first!

Having no experience with international travel, I thought it would be impossible.  But Toronto-London was a popular route and there was lots of competition.  So I quickly found myself on a Wardair flight to London with a tiny backpack, some travellers’cheques and a spirit of adventure.

In those days they didn’t mark the streets and it took some time to always look the wrong way for traffic – because everyone was driving on the left – but I didn’t sustain any injury.  The food was absolute crap.  But the people were lovely (yet again today some stranger helped me with my suitcase on the stairs and another gave me detailed directions without me even asking – I was just standing with my suitcase and a map looking confused :))

And then you start seeing the stuff.  St Paul’s.  The Tower of London.  The British Museum.  That is only the tip of the iceberg.  I still haven’t done everything there is to do in London as a tourist, let alone a local.  But that just gives you a reason to come back…

And so it begins!  We’ll do some tourist stuff.  And we’ll weave together pieces from my enormous memory bank of the City of London – one of the world’s most spectacular and important urban settings.  Just imagine you’ve pulled the ripcord on your parachute and you and James are about to head to the bar for a martini.  Claridges, maybe? 🙂

p.s. you may be wondering why Geox?  It’s in honour of my new travel shoes.  Because I am famous for my eye-catching collection of stilettos, it would come as a surprise to many that I am equally obsessed with loafers.  Some time ago, loafers fell out of fashion and finding a pair that were non-orthopedic was like searching for pork in Israel.  So when they opened a Geox store in Vancouver I bought four pairs!  I have discovered the ballerina flat is even more versatile, possibly the perfect travel shoe.  I road tested my new Geox leopard  print ballet flats for this trip – and they are winners!  I have now been wearing them for two days straight.  With pants on the plane.  With tights and a leather miniskirt as I type this.

http://www.geox.com/collection/catalogo.asp##p

leopard print ballerinas part of Piuma collection

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travel stories

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keeping up with the consumer…

This week I was walking through the flagship Sears store on Robson street and it was kind of depressing.  I had noticed a while ago the “going out of business” signs.  I thought it was just that location but I gather Sears is in trouble.

It does seem to have lost its way.  I guess it’s likely run by a bunch of old, white guys… let me check… no pics on the investors web page – but those names are not ethnic!  And nary a girl name among them.  So I bet they didn’t see H&M and Zara coming to eat their lunch… and they didn’t realize maybe they should take a page out of Target’s book and learn how to be a bit cooler…

My current shoe collection would suggest otherwise but almost my entire childhood wardrobe came from Sears – unless my mom sewed it herself.  The kids nowadays have no idea how much the world has changed in their favour.  And it has benefited a lot of people.

It is really cheap to be a fashionista in the 21st century.  And that is a wonderful thing.  I look back at pictures of me from the 70s and I just cringe.  But I didn’t know any better 🙂  There was no MTV, let alone fashion bloggers and websites posting photos of the latest designer collections a few hours after they hit the runway.

We may not have achieved as much political democracy as we might have hoped for but we have democratized fashion in a way that can only be a force for good for the human race.

Sure, fashion is silly.  And one shouldn’t get too caught up in it.  But fashion is also political.  Just ask a woman wearing a burqa in 40 degree Celsius heat.

Fashion is especially political for women.  And the politics take many forms.  My first job was on Bay Street (the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street).  It was a big deal.  I came from a small town on the Canadian prairie and Toronto was the big smoke.  And Bay Street.  It was the culmination of so many of the things my dad had taught me.

Including how to be a rebel 😉  Only recently I would go to clients and see the exposed thongs of the young female staff members (really a don’t, ladies! 🙂  But back in the 80s there were very few women in business and the tiny minority had decided that dressing like the boys would be the key to their ascent up the ladder.  The more conservative the profession, the tougher the rules.

At least we didn’t have to worry our costume would obscure our peripheral vision but it was pretty strict.  Only dull colours, no pants, hosiery non-optional, sensible pumps preferred and – the worst part – a floppy bow scarf thing around your neck in place of a necktie.

In those days in my private time I dressed like a pseudo-punk so, needless to say, the dress code (and many companies had written ones back then) made me crazy.  So I wore pants.  I was the only woman who did.  What was most amusing was that when I pointed that out to male colleagues they were surprised.  Only the women cared – and noticed.  I think the guys just looked at your ass – and if it was good, what you covered it with didn’t matter very much…  I also wore boy’s neckties in place of the cursed floppy bow… if we were supposed to dress  like boys, why not do it right?  I think it was sexier.  I got a lot of compliments from guys on my ties 🙂  And – a harbinger of my future identity – I wore shoes as funky as I thought I could get away with.

And – in my first performance review – the female partner I reported to (who dressed like a butch lesbian) called me out on my dress.  She told me I dressed “too mod”.  I think I wasn’t too cheeky but unfortunately she gave me a story for life… “too mod”… what is “too mod”???  I’m still not really sure.  I think she was just saying I had a personality and the style sense to express it.  And the firm did not approve. 

I always cheer a little when I see some cool shoes poking out under a burqua 😉  Maybe if Sears had some cross-dressers on its board, its business would be better.  Fashion may be frivolous but it has also always been political.  It has been a reflection of the times, of the social mores and of the religious state of all the nations that comprise the world.

And the world is changing, people.  It’s not all good.  It never is.  But there is definitely some good things happening out there.  And fashion is a mirror to what’s going on.  So what’s it telling us…

Fashion is being produced where the labour rates are lowest.  Bad for developed countries but great for developing ones.  It’s forcing people to acquire actual skills the marketplace wants in order to get a paycheque.  It’s supplying paycheques to lots of people (especially women) in lots of countries where that was not a possibility even twenty years ago.

It’s made clothes cheap.  So everyone can express themselves.  And look good.  And acquire the self-esteem that comes from that.

It’s opened up new markets and made it not such a big deal to have an Asian or African model sell clothes to white people.  And – more importantly – to be a mirror for their own people so that they can visualize themselves in the clothes.

I feel some nostalgia walking through the now almost empty Sears store.  It used to be the flagship Eatons store before they also forgot about the consumer.  I bought almost everything at that Eatons store.  And it was one of my first audits so I counted inventory there so many times I could direct people to departments better than almost any of the staff members 🙂

When I was a child my dad was always buying properties and we would be going through old abandoned houses cleaning up.  One of my strongest memories was the old catalogues from Eatons and Sears.  That was how people bought things on the Canadian prairie back in the early days of the twentieth century.

That’s the thing with consumers.  They always think they are moving forward and what they are doing has never been done before.  But the internet is the new Sears catalogue.  Nowadays people all over the world buy things in the same way a 20th century farmer without access to a shopping mall would.  Sears coulda been Amazon… if only they hadn’t been asleep at the wheel…

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artsy stuff, social commentary

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more jobs… fewer snakes…

I was too sleepy to write this post last night while I was watching Jon Stewart skewer politicians but this was one of his memorable quotes.

If the context seems a little hard to grasp, well, that is part of the message.  The reference was to the vague quality of the Republican candidates plans for the economy and the future of the country.

The statement above refers to Mitt Romney’s plea for more jobs.  Since he hasn’t the supplied the details as to how he plans to get those jobs, Jon quipped that the Republican platform reads like a letter to Santa Claus.  Most people would also ask Santa for fewer snakes…

While making fun of Republicans is a form of sport for Jon (like shooting guns at moving targets is for Republican NRA members), the digs at Mitt’s lack of details on how to create those jobs was juxtaposed with a Bill Clinton talkin’ about arithmetic.

Nothing warms my heart more than a man who says “do the math.”   I think that’s why I am always falling for brainiac engineers 🙂

I realize most people hate math.  I love math.  But I also love logic.  And facts.  And apparently I like Bill Clinton a lot more than I realized 🙂

I was working every minute or living overseas when Clinton was President so I really didn’t know enough about what he was doing to have an opinion.  But his moral compass seemed a bit questionable and I had just assumed he was swarmy and unimpressive.

But I gotta say I was impressed!  Bill’s charm is totally lost on me.  He’s the dude I would leave sitting at the bar after I had excused myself to the bathroom and then snuck out when he wasn’t looking…  But he is smart!  And one of the best politicians in modern history.

Bill actually talked facts!  He quoted numbers.  He made the Republicans look like ill-informed jerks.  And I am pretty neutral.  I don’t get to vote for the President.  And I think the United States of America would be a far better country if they knew how to count in Florida and Gore had put  Bush into the place in history he really deserved.

Being part of the nerdy minority who thinks intelligence, honour and compassion are the critical elements to a civilization and the tenets to which every citizen should strive, it is painful to watch the Fox News clips on The Daily Show.  I really should have brought that up with Rupert when we were in the same elevator… but he hadn’t created that atrocity yet…

What is more sexy than a smart guy with a big vocabulary – who actually knows how to use those words properly in a sentence? 😉  God bless Jon Stewart.  He gives me faith that there is still intelligent life in the USA.  I fall in love with him a little more all the time.  Don’t tell his wife 😉  But watch him!  Shockingly, you will actually learn stuff.  And he will make it fun.  That’s why he has all those Emmys 🙂

Category:

life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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when in doubt, play YMCA ;)

You may be hoping I have given up this silly venture to put my thoughts into cyberspace but, sadly for you, I keep having thoughts 🙂  My work life has just gone into overdrive so finding the time to commit them to bytes is in short supply.  The thoughts have been serious lately so I decided we would go more whimsical with a post that has been in my head for a while now.

My mom’s 70th birthday is now in the recent past.  As mentioned earlier, I am obsessed with music so spent many hours creating a soundtrack of my life for my recent milestone birthday.  During the process I told her I would do the same for her 70th.

A totally different soundtrack focused on the only period of her life when she was really into music, her teen years.  It’s the norm for most people.  People like me who can even impress a 20 year old with a new band recommendation s/he hasn’t heard of are the outliers.  But since music is one of my passions I can customize a soundtrack for almost anyone.  So to the 50’s and jive we went…

Contrary to my own musical taste, I even let her have Pat Boone and Ricky Nelson.  To her credit, also the Everly Brothers.  Neither of my parents was really into music so, when I was a child, my parents owned four albums – The Everly Brothers, Pat Boone, The Mills Brothers and Bing Crosby singing Christmas carols.  I know all the words to Mele Kalikimaka – Bing Crosby’s ode to a Hawaiian Christmas – look it up on the internet 😉

Luckily my maternal grandmother had a much broader range of musical interests – and even owned an electric organ!  So I got to hear a few other artists in my youth.  In general, though, my musical education didn’t begin until I hit university and the big city.

It is really thanks to Mike that I know how to design a soundtrack.  He showed me what the good stuff sounded like, added the colour of the stories of the performers and turned me on to lyrics and musical inspiration.

He was also the dude who refused to dance to WHAM – at the height of their glory.

Both viewpoints taught me a lot.  Mostly he taught me how to appreciate music, especially musical skills and genuine originality.  But his snobbery also taught me that it’s OK to get down with the masses sometimes.  And a crowd-pleasing soundtrack will likely include a few things that might make you cringe a little 😉

I always try to err on the side of the popular but not cringe inducing… how YMCA made it onto my mom’s birthday soundtrack.  It’s a song that will get people on the dance floor… and it even transcends nations as I discovered when the Egyptian guys knew the moves far better than me!

And my mom’s birthday helped introduce yet another generation to this “get the party started” classic…

I just assumed I would get a couple of people on the dance floor – if they weren’t already there 🙂  And a couple of adults would know at least some of the moves.  But it ended up being a big hit.  The ladies were almost as good as the Egyptian guys.  If I could have time-travelled and put them all together, it would have been outstanding.

But my mom’s birthday offered its own special entertainment courtesy of Kylie.

My mother’s birthday bash offered all sorts of entertainment, including a few live acts.  I was busy trying to take a few photos so she would have some mementos.  Someone pointed out to me what was happening on the dance floor since I had my camera focused on the stage.  There were two under 10s at the party.  Normally one would have expected them to be bored out of their mind.  But they both proved to be fascinating kids and they managed to sort of bond during the party and provide a complete floorshow in tandem with the musicians on stage.

Unfortunately Isaac had to go home but Kylie was able to stay.  And she LOVED YMCA!  So we had to play it at least three times while the older ladies taught her the moves.  So the torch has been passed to a new generation 😉

It was a fun night but what most resonated with me was the power of music.  To promote social interaction.  To inspire social change.  And to just help us celebrate being human – and define our own identity.  I may be tone deaf but I still love music and think it is one of those few human endeavors that is so often a medium for good.  You might wanna think about that, Republicans.  Ted Nugent?  Seriously???

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artsy stuff, life philosophy

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