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Archive for the ‘life philosophy’ Category

let them eat cake! :)

I am typing this from the land of Marie Antoinette!  Sometimes one’s life really exceeds one’s expectations.  I am back in Paris – for the SECOND time in a single year.  The stuff of dreams in my childhood.

Back when I was climbing trees and hiding in wheat fields I ferociously hoped my adult life would be more dramatic and interesting.  But none of those prairie girl dreams could have ever prepared me for the astonishing reality it would become.

I will have to finish this after my late night Thursday shopping romp at Galeries Lafayette… but I am drinking free champagne as I type… apparently joining I Prefer is a great idea.  I highly recommend it!  And thus far, the Hotel Original Paris has exceeded my expectations.  I definitely recommend it.  Especially if you are traveling by train, as I was.  A few steps from the métro at Bastille.  From Gare L’Est or Gare du Nord, a piece of cake 🙂

http://www.hoteloriginalparis.com/

And, since we did reference cake, I guess I should provide the explanation…

It is one of those stories that did not have the happy ending I anticipated… but, maybe more importantly, really taught me about the complexities of life and how to embrace it and enjoy it.  As I think Joni Mitchell said, very poignantly, I’ve looked at love from both sides now.”

I think she said “life” but this story is about “love”… in all its complexity and messiness…

How we all take our weaknesses – and our strengths – and combine them with others into a mischung that is at all junctures part success and part failure but always human and engaging.

Yes, a bit philosophical… blame the free champagne the hotel supplied.  You gotta love it when someone knocks after check-in and you hesitantly open the door and he has an ice bucket and a small bottle of Lanson Rosé.  This is serious champagne!  Absolutely delicious 🙂

But the champagne is only a small part of the equation.  It is mostly fueled

my days in Deutschland

by the days I recently spent in Stuttgart.

Unless you are into Mercedes or Porsche, Stuttgart is likely not at the top of your list for a tourist destination.  But it is an industrial metropolis and part of the great Deutsch economic machinery.  Most people come to Stuttgart for work… but I was there for something more complicated.

The entire story is a bit too long and complicated for a blog post so we will cut to the chase and just say that the Germans are wonderfully hospitable and some German guy named Wolfgang wanted to repay my hospitality in Vancouver so I ended up on the Ammersee in Bavaria where I was reacquainted with the cute guy I had admired from afar at a company event earlier in the week… and – unlike normal people – I ended up marrying him and moving to Germany.

It’s a long and complicated story that may find its way into the blog at a later date.  But the purpose of my recent trip to Germany was to finalize our divorce.

There are not a lot of great divorce stories out there.  But not that many

it all started on a beach in Antigua…

people marry German engineers 😉

So very few people are trying to follow a conversation in a foreign language while joking with the lawyer just prior to going into a court room to get divorced.  It was ridiculously bureaucratic and very German.  Some lady named Doris is going to officially receive my divorce decree so it can be mailed to Canada without going through some complicated, expensive process.  The system isn’t designed for you to have it sent to your ex so he can pass it on to you…

The lawyer was highly entertaining.  Once we had finished in the court, he shook each of our hands and said, “you are free!”  And then we had to decide what to do.  We had already wandered the streets as I took photos of some of the cute German buildings before our court hearing.  So we had our plan set.

We went for cake!  If you have never been to Germany (or Austria) for cake, you should really put it on your bucket list.  It was one of my favourite parts of living in Germany.  Hot chocolate (a wonderful bitter version completely different to its North American cousin) and Eierlikor cream cake.  Like egg nog in a solid form.  Delicious.

It wasn’t really a celebration.  Just us hanging out and doing things that we knew worked.  Later that evening I took him for dinner at Olivo.  I am pretty sure the chef has at least one Michelin star.  It was one of those meals that will definitely make my top ten list.  Technically six courses… but with two pre-courses (the first with six separate little bites) and then a petit four course AND a truffle course.  We emerged feeling like the foie gras duck that had been part of our meal.

http://www.steigenberger.com/Stuttgart/restaurants/

And now I am in Paris.  With no regrets.  We both agreed a few months ago as we were working through the details that we would both do it all again – even knowing how it would turn out.

I’m not sure I’m made for marriage.  But getting married – and moving to a foreign country where I spoke possibly five words of the local language – added many wonderful dimensions to my life.  And completely changed its direction in countless ways.

It is impossible to know what would have happened had I not said “yes.”  But I know my life would have been a lot less inspired… and I would not have learned about kaffee und kuchen.  I didn’t get married for the cake… but there was a lot of sugar and cream in the whole adventure… literal and figurative…

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life philosophy, travel stories

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apparently misery DOES love company

This all started when I was browsing in the shops seeing if Swedish fashion would entice me to part with some more kroner.  But the palette made me feel kind of depressed.  It seemed to resemble the weather outside.  I wondered what came first…  and if, between the challenging weather patterns and all this black and grey clothing, the Swedes were depressed.

But I just thought it was more of my silly black humour.  I didn’t buy anything though.  It was all too shapeless and dark.  I guess Swedish women are so gorgeous they can wear a potato sack and look good.  Most of the clothing seemed to be working on that model.  Along with an awful lot of parkas!  If you need a black parka, this is your paradise 😉

I tried to like Acne – but it just looked mostly weird and I didn’t think it would look terribly flattering on me.  I am more a Dolce and Gabbana kind of girl.  I like it when French guys young enough to be my son come up to me and shyly tell me in broken English that they like my dress.  I didn’t think Acne was gonna get me that kind of attention…  I realize I don’t look very hip.  But it seems that looking sexy means I meet a lot more strangers – and my travel stories are better 😉

After my Swedish shopping experience I was reading a novel on the plane home called Delicacy by David Foenkinos.  It’s definitely worth reading.  But he’s French and I thought he was really picking on the Swedes with the Markus character.  And there was this big emphasis on the Swedes being suicidal.

I am a woman who enjoy facts more than chocolate so I had to get some info before I wrote about the depressing clothing in my blog.  Apparently, the Swedes ARE famous for being suicidal.  But the average Swede… pretty happy.  It would appear that really cool happy places make the unhappy people more unhappy.  Not enough other people around to commiserate with apparently.

So it would appear Sweden is a kind of Disneyland.  So, if you are more a Sartre Nothingness kind of person, you should likely hole up somewhere like the Democratic Republic  of Congo.  Lots of miserable people there to make you feel better about your lot.

Or you might just try not caring so much what other people think…

Personally I would be really happy in Sweden 🙂  But then I am pretty happy everywhere.  You make your own happiness – and a lot of your luck.

I was definitely happy when I was observing – or learning about – Swedish design.  They may dress like shapeless goths – but they like their interiors full of colour, shape and function.

I won’t bore you with all the details of everything I learned about Swedish design.  One of the coolest things I saw was the dollhouses at the Nordiska Museet.  What was especially fascinating is that they weren’t all for kids… and normally children were not allowed to play with them, just to observe.  But some of the early ones were to show people how to apply interior design in their homes.  An early version of the Home and Garden cable channel 😉

Another highlight for me was tacking on the Architecture Museum to my Moderna Museet tour.  Not only an entire history of Swedish architecture but some of the key architectural wonders happening all over the world at the same time.

One of the most interesting things I learned about was the One Million Dwellings Programme, an ambitious housing project implemented in Sweden between 1965 and 1974 by the governing Swedish Social Democratic Party to make sure everyone could have a home at a reasonable price. The aim was to build a million new dwellings in a 10-year period.  At the same time, a large proportion of the older housing stock was demolished.

In the end, about 1,006,000 new dwellings were built, which accounts for 25% of Sweden’s housing. There was criticism that the new apartments were ugly but they were modern and well-designed and generally the people who got to live in them were thrilled.  Yet another example of rational thought by the Swedes as to how to make the general society a better place.

The other interesting fact that I learned – both in Stockholm and in London – was the impact of the first World’s Fair at the Crystal Palace (London) in 1851.  I’ve been to the Crystal Palace – and to the shells of a few other World’s Fairs over my travels.  There were some interesting aspects to most visits but the importance of the concept was lost in the abandoned look of the sites.

But this is why it’s good to keep travelling… and learning stuff.  In Sweden, design is life it seems and the very first World’s Fair had a huge impact on Swedish society.  And the world in general.  Back in those days when google wasn’t a verb and the internet had not yet been invented – by either Al Gore or Tim Berners-Lee – information didn’t travel very far so the World’s Fair was a revelation… and all those interior designers selling themselves on reality TV should be eternally grateful to the Brits for kick-starting their careers generations before they were even born 🙂

In 1930, Sweden hosted the Stockholm Exhibition and introduced the world to Swedish functionalism.  Ingvar Kamprad was only 4 so I doubt he attended but the rest of the world who didn’t attend would learn about Swedish functionalism via the little company he started in 1943.  He called it IKEA…

So… it would appear the Swedes are mostly really happy, they like to dress in dark colours and they have a sense of style that is world-famous.  All the Swedes I met seemed pretty sunny… and the sun does pop out from time to time and – thanks to that Nordic light – when it does, it’s spectacular.

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artsy stuff, life philosophy, social commentary, travel stories

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the original swedish metrosexual?

Both my dad and my grandmother are dead now.  They were the reticent type unwilling to part with morsels of personal information easily.  So, even if I had spent more time attempting to extract the facts, it’s highly uncertain I would have learned anything more about my Swedish grandfather.

I didn’t even know what he looked like until I was in my teens.  My grandmother considered family the most important thing in the entire world so her tiny house was crammed with collages of photos of miscellaneous people only some of whom I’d actually met.  Martha Stewart would have been horrified 🙂

Normally the collages were updated for new grandchildren or more recent school pics of the ones already featured.  But one day when I was inspecting the walls for new updates (my grandmother kind of invented the concept of facebook photos before Mark Zuckerberg was even born 🙂 I was intrigued by one of the new photos.

As they would say on Sesame Street, this one was not like the others.  The photo had been taken in an entirely different era.  When having your photo taken was a ceremonial occasion, not a drunken iphone click.  The gentleman in the photo looked like a gentleman!

He is dressed to the nines.  He is holding a cigar and about to take a sip of some manly intoxicant.  He looks like a movie star.  Or some dude promoting a celebrity fragrance.

In small town Canada this was the most fascinating photo I had ever seen.  I asked my grandmother “who is that?”  To which she casually replied, “oh, that’s your grandfather.”  Hot damn!  That is NOT what grandfathers looked like where I lived…

I now regret I didn’t ask more.  But my grandmother didn’t drink and back in those days people actually thought it was polite to not blab personal details – even to family, let alone post them on facebook.

So I came to Sweden to at least see where he came from.  And maybe get some essence of what he might have been like.  And looking around at the gorgeous, perfectly groomed, fashionably dressed men in Stockholm, I did feel I was channeling him.

I think style normally flows through the maternal lineage.  But in my family, it’s the dudes who seem to have those genes in spades.  I like to think I have a little bit of style.  And a long time ago I became my mother’s stylist because apparently my father really liked everything I made her buy 🙂

My dad spent his entire life in small towns.  But he had real style.  He understood fabric.  He cared about cut.  He had expensive taste.  Maybe it’s in the genes… He looked a lot like his dad.

And his dad…  Check him out 😉  He doesn’t look much like a grandfather.  But the original metrosexual?  Your call…

It looks to me that Swedish men have been pretty boys for over a century now.  If the sketchy facts I have been told are correct, my grandfather was born in 1886…

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life philosophy, social commentary, travel stories

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fifty shades of boring…

We are going to get back to interesting things like world culture, I promise 🙂   But I am really jet-lagged so I am taking a bit of latitude…

And cause, honestly people, I am BORED!  I have been doing my best to ignore “Fifty Shades of Grey.”  Cause it sounds dumb.

Women should be aspiring to be CEOs.  To be rich.  To dominate men.  Not the bullshit that supposedly this book is promoting.  I will never know because I am the crazy woman of principle raised by a number of generations of kick-ass women – who would just kick the ass of the idiot dude in this book as soon as he brought out the handcuffs – if I have the sort of plot correct…

Girls, seriously, WHAT THE HELL???  What is wrong with you?  I only know the commentary I have read on what I gather is a blight on the literary landscape of the 21st century… and a step backward for womankind.  I am never gonna buy  it… but I have been in a lot of airports since it got famous… and I can’t ignore it.

And having had a couple of experiences with the douche bags of the male genetic line, all I can say is, ladies, get real.  Get confident.  Find a cool, geeky, cute guy.  Or someone like my father – James Dean raised by a strong woman who would have broken his kneecaps if he didn’t treat women right.

Trust me… a lot of men out there love a strong woman.  And strong women are our future.  I have no idea the gender of god.  But on the whole women make better decisions for the planet.  And smart men get that.  Do you want to be part of some regressive past where women were the play objects of men?  Or do you want to play with all the history imposed on women and dress up in great lingerie, a pencil skirt and some great heels and sip a glass of champagne you bought with your own cash – so you can just sit there and play with all the dudes who come up wondering who the hell you are… and try to get your attention…

It really works… and girls, it is Fifty Shades of Awesome.  Please don’t sell yourselves short.  Men want to make us happy.  A little confidence.  A lot of charm.  I know my father was a man of his generation and it disturbed him that men liked me enough I didn’t have to just go for the very first one… but he was the dude who gave me the confidence and the understanding that there would be good guys out there.  Compromise was not necessary.  But good judgment would be key.  And, personally, I think that means the first dude who tries to handcuff you, cuff him first and get the hell out of there 😉

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life philosophy, shining examples, 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 🙂

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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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money makes the world go round

Money gets a really bad rap.  The root of all evil?  I thought that was overly religious Republicans… or the crazy Muslims who thinks Jihad is a good idea.  There is no shortage of crazy, evil ideas – and people with access to guns or explosives – in the 21st century.  So money – be it in the form of cold, hard paper currency or even colder and harder gold – seems benign by comparison.

And money has done at least as much good for the world as modern medicine or the enlightenment.  So says Niall Ferguson in “The Ascent of Money”.  Nothing makes my heart beat faster than a smart guy who combines great articulation with a reverence for facts.  Both sadly too easily fluffed over in the 21st century where anything over 200 characters is deemed too hard.  What happened to the idea that we have BIG brains, not small ones?

And those who exercise their brains in the same way Olympic athletes with great abs do will appreciate that money is not inherently evil.  It really is the stuff that makes the world go round and is a greater force for potential good than almost anything else.

But it is also the currency of the Antichrist… so you gotta think about how you are accumulating and spending those dollars, whatever their format.

I am a big proponent of the concept of money as a force for good.  And even more important than money is markets.  And jobs.  But none of them exist without money.

Money.  Risk.  Markets.  They drive our daily life.  But most people yawn when they hear any of those words.  People in the developed world yawn.  But people in the developing  world may not be able to articulate the words, especially in English, but they have a much more personal feeling about what they mean.

One of the travel experiences I know I will never forget happened last year in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.  It is one of the most spectacular geological formations on earth and chock-a-block with the closest thing to tame wild animals.  You still shouldn’t pet the lions – but the animals will mostly not run away.

Just being there would have been enough but since I was travelling alone I had spent the previous evening having dinner with our ranger Alex so we were chatting when we stopped for lunch amid all the other tourist vehicles.  He had been reconnecting with friends and it was a familiar scene in an unusual setting.  Because we had become more friends than ranger/tourist by that point, he introduced me to his friends and noted how happy everyone was and how fun it was to catch up… because they had jobs.

There has been lots of talk about unemployment in the developed world over the past few years – and I have been there so I know how it feels.  But unemployment when you have been born into the privileged part of the world and unemployment when you have been born into a part of the world where having a good job is like winning the lottery are totally different things.

When I was in Tanzania, I travelled with &Beyond and I would encourage everyone to do a trip with them.  I have never encountered an organization that gave capitalism such a great name.  They make a profit.  They are well organized.  Their employees love them.  They give back to the community via a foundation that does everything right.

http://www.andbeyond.com/

Money is not evil.  Only people are.  So use your money to make the world a better place.  Think when you spend.  Help to create markets that make the world a better place.  Read Niall’s book.  He is a fantastic writer.  The book is subtitled “A Financial History of the World.” 

A bit ambitious?  Without question.  The message that I took away was how important finance has been to human development.  Just ask a gorilla to break a twenty dollar bill 🙂   But what I think we all need to embrace is how we as individuals can create jobs, markets and world prosperity every time we leave the house – or go on-line to buy something.

Money can make the world a better place.  Finance matters.  Money can be evil.  Money can buy guns, slaves and votes.  But money can be used for microfinance loans, for medicine and for education.  In the developed world we are all rich people by world standards – what kind of rich person do you want to be?  Let your spending reflect your conscience.

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life philosophy, social commentary

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