So Misguided

There is something about a list that I am attracted to. I make a lot of lists, grocery lists, to do lists, books I want to read lists, movies I want to watch lists. Those are the banal lists that keep me going through the day, but the truly beautiful lists are the ones that draw me in, make me want to copy them down, make me laugh. Dave Letterman’s lists are an example but any top 10 list would do.

I’m not alone. There are all sorts of books of lists published: lists of quotations, trivia lists. Dictionaries are the ultimate lists.

Here’s the list I was drawn to yesterday:

Code blue: cardiac arrest
Code white: aggressive violent act
Code red: fire/smoke
Code yellow: missing patient
Code brown: hazardous spill
Code black: bomb threat
Code green: evacuation
Code orange: disaster/mass casuality
... code “can you guess where I was yesterday?”

Any other great lists out there?

Posted by Monique at 06:04 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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I’m off the grid. No laptop, no cellphone, at large and unreachable. It is kind of fun, yet forces me to mooch laptop time and find quarters for the telephone. Totally old school.

This is the second time I’ve typed this post. I’m using a laptop that randomly hits the enter key, which means it randomly lost my first attempt at this post. Like the iPod Shuffle, life is random.

So the first time I typed this I wrote about Hanif, the friendly neighbourhood convenience store owner who is an endless source of information about the transit system. I also wrote about how every time I’m in Toronto someone is on strike. It’s the taxis this time. And it is rumoured the electric company might strike. All entertaining in an inconvenient way.

That’s all you get, I’m less enthusiastic the second time around, but damn it was a good original post.

Posted by Monique at 07:32 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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I was having a poke and stroll through the Google listings for my name the other day. I’m trying to figure out what keywords I want to use to optimize my site. And yes, that turned into a bit of vanity searching. What I discovered was a story I’d written for the Manitoban, the University of Manitoba Student Newspaper. Published in the literary supplement, January 21, 1998 was the following story:

“These perogies. These are the best perogies. Not like those store bought perogies. Those perogies look like they’ve been chewed on. Chewed on by rats. Look at how nice the corners of my perogies look. Smooth, fold edges - no rat edges here.”

I had mentioned that I had perogies for dinner last night. “My perogies,” she’d said. “Boughten,” I’d replied. Now her huge flower-printed frame was lumbering around the kitchen gathering and mashing, blending and mixing the perfect ingredients for her perogies. In Ukrainian, she reminded me that, “these perogies, these are the best perogies.”

Her glasses kept slipping off her nose from the sweat caused by sudden activity. Imagine, my grandmother, who sits for hours engulfed by the lazy boy, enraptured in her soap operas, had abandoned Young and the Restless, which she calls Young and the Rest of Us, not at a commercial break, but in the middle of an affair, where at any moment a secret could be told. All of this, just to make me perogies. To remind me that, these perogies, these are the best perogies. Not store bought, not my mother’s, who had to learn from her, and not mine who weren’t learned from anyone but made in a machine, sealed in plastic and microwaved for convenience sake - not to mention chewed on by rats.

Posted by Monique at 05:00 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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Patricia at BookLust was flyin’ hi a couple of days ago and posted a cartoon and commentary about her most recent fear-inspired, drug-induced flying experience. Fear-inspired is modifying drug-induced. [Patricia, if you’re reading this skip the next paragraph.]

I like flying, in fact I used to skydive, but last year on a Russian airplane from Havana to Cayo Largo del Sur, I truly thought I was going to meet my end. I should have known when the booking agent asked if I was British. Apparently Brits are not allowed to fly on rusty Russian aircraft. Canadians? We’re cool with that. The 2 stewards sat on a metal folding chair at the back of the plane during take off. Well, one sat on the chair, the other sat on the lap of the chair-sitter. Twenty minutes into the flight the entire cabin filled with smoke. The stewards passed around candies. As one of 3 English-speakers on the flight, I tried to ascertain whether we were going to die. I speak ok Spanish, but the only answer I could get was don’t worry. The Italians looked worried, and the Germans were looking for the Emergency Exits. I practiced the crash position and my Hail Mary—I figured we were in a Catholic country, it couldn’t be bad to send a memo up to Himself. Turns out it was a malfunctioning air conditioner and I had to get back on for the return flight 8 hours later.

I had an English professor once who hated flying. His theory was that the human body was not meant to fly, and that airports use clever devices so that the body doesn’t know it’s going in the air. For example, you walk down a corridor, sit in a lounge, walk down another corridor and sit in the plane. You don’t really see the plane unless you purposely look out the window. There’s a baggie around the end of the corridor and the door of the plane—look, you’re not going anywhere, just down a different corridor.

“But,” he’d say. “The body knows.”

Posted by Monique at 08:15 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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I was scoping out the neighbourhood last night and I realize that there is an new crop of baby stores on 4th Ave. I haven’t noticed an increase in pregnant women or small children lately, but then was I really paying attention?

Anyway, it strikes me that Vancouver has a habit of creating neighbourhood pockets, or more descriptively pockets of commerce in certain neighbourhoods. For example, along Broadway, just past Cambie, you’ll find sporting stores appropriate for any outdoor need, along 4th it used to be kitchen supply stores, now they’ve added babies.

Where do all the bookstores congrugate? What’s in your ’hood?

Posted by Monique at 07:00 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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BUSY Busy goes back to an Old English bisig, which also meant “occupied.” Apart from Dutch bezig, it has no apparent relatives in any Indo-European language, and it is not known where it came from. The sense “inquisitive,” from which we get busybody, developed in the late 14th century. Business was originally simply a derivative formed from busy by adding the suffix -ness. In Old English it meant “anxiety, uneasiness,” reflecting a sense not recorded for the adjective itself until the 14th century. The modern commercial sense seems to have originated in the 15th century. (The modern formation busyness, reflecting the fact that business can no longer be used simply for “state of being busy,” is 19th-century.)—Bloomsbury Dictionary of Word Origins

When I’m busy, I feel like a less interesting person.

The cogs of witty conversation
are churning away in the background
but only
now
and
then
do I catch the tune.

When I have a min. let me tell you about occultism (“I know just enough about astrology to be dangerous”). Also, I noticed CBC is talking about the free daily newspapers in Vancouver and the enormous amount of trash they create.

Check out my April 04 post/rant about this on UpInOntario.com.

Here’s my question for all three papers. Are you using 100% post-consumer recycled paper? Because if you’re not, I have no interest in supporting you.

What’s the print run and circulation of your paper? How many get thrown out each day? Are the leftovers recycled to make the paper for tomorrow’s rag or are they sitting in land fills.

The environment and the corporation can coexist. I’m sure of it, but, boy, the creativity required to deviate from the status quo seems beyond a lot of businesses.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’ve forgotten my house keys 3 or 4 times in the last 2 days, I’ve lost papers, my mind, forgotten to pick up carpool buddies. Busyness is upon me. I shall try to shake it off.

Posted by Monique at 06:49 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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Yesterday I went to “Eh”-merica to participate in one of that nation’s favourite favorite pastimes—Baseball. There was even a Grand Slam! Sport events are definitely a window to the past. The painted faces, the random yet choreographed dancing, the emotional rollercoaster of success and defeat. The street meat. Urban tribal rituals.

It was beyond entertaining. I was back in Chris Pirillo’s city (spent some time there in January at a blog conference). Seattle Mariners played the Boston Red Sox. Love Boston. I used to watch the games with a friend of mine who has the same number of game superstitions as Wade Boggs. Boggs and Clemens were my favourite players of all time. I hardly watch baseball now, but I do have an unwrapped box of baseball cards from the ‘90s, which according to the box’s advertising includes a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

That was yesterday. Today was Czech vs. Canada—World Hockey Championship. Canada’s game, we lost. But there was beer drinking before noon, and who doesn’t love that?

Posted by Monique at 01:54 PM. Filed under: Personal •

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Last night I celebrated Bob Hunter. There was a group of friends and family and Greenpeace supporters carrying on at Bimini’s yesterday. It was a celebration of Bob Hunter, one of the founders of Greenpeace (and quite a character). Bob passed away last week and although you could feel the sorrow in the room, you could also feel the joy and love.

Many legends of Vancouver and the Greenpeace movement told stories about Bob, and almost everyone mentioned his laugh. I was most moved by family friends who talked about losing a parent and how the best thing you can do for a family member, especially a child, is to tell them stories about their parents. As I get older, I’m more and more interested in family stories, in recording them and remembering them. One of the speakers mentioned that when you reach the age your parents were when they had you, you really start to think about their life.

I remember as a little girl how I couldn’t imagine my mom being a little girl. And maybe that’s it, you have to reach their age when they met you, and suddenly things make sense, you can now imagine that age.

My friend’s kids keep teasing her about writing down some crazy sayings she has. For my friend, these aren’t crazy sayings, these are her mother’s sayings that she’s suddenly rediscovered. Her retort to her kids has been, don’t worry about writing them down, they’ll come flooding back to you when you have kids.

My heart goes out to Bob’s kids and his wife. I still think about the family members that I’ve lost and it doesn’t necessarily get easier, but the painful moments seem softer.

Posted by Monique at 06:55 AM. Filed under: Personal •

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A couple of months ago I started talking about The Long Tail and the Cluetrain Manifesto. Both interesting things. I particularly like the point in the Cluetrain Manifesto about markets as conversations and engaging in conversations with your customer. The end of the corporate press release, or marketing speak ... these I see as things that do need moderating.

Well, this week I observed a “conversation” that if it had been a true face to face, undoubtably someone would have said shut up, no you shut up.

Conversations are interesting things. I certainly change my tone of voice when a survey person calls. Blah blah blah, calling on behalf of ____ marketing, are you the woman of the house? The greater the sense of intrusion, the sharper my voice. But I do remember that I’m speaking to a person, not to a feeling-less building, not to a corporation.

It strikes me that email is always the worst form of communication, you can misinterpret tone. It’s so many steps removed from the face to face conversation that people will often say or phrase things in an email that they wouldn’t in person. So in the Cluetrain Manifesto when it talks about markets as conversation, and paying attention to what is being said about you or your company in print, on the web, by bloggers. It seems the “corporate” person is disadvantaged. There is an expectation about what a “corporate” person will say, or what they’ll do with your information, or how they will talk and talk forever keeping you on the phone until you eventually give in and take the damn survey. But what if you contact the company—don’t you expect a response?

Here’s my related thought. When buying something there is the anonymous research stage, then the ok here’s my details buying stage. There isn’t a nice way to figure out what stage a person is in when they contact your company. Some things are easy. Hey you, your product sucks and I want a refund. Personalized contact and an exchange of details is pretty clear. Hey I want your newsletter. Maybe less clear.

How do you approach companies? What types of interaction are you looking for? Are there best practices listed somewhere? Every email marketing newsletter I’ve read, for example, suggests personalizing and segmenting the subscriber list. Do people find this helpful or intrusive? I wonder ...

Posted by Monique at 02:09 PM. Filed under: Personal •

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