Monday, November 27, 2006

Beaver tails (tales?????)

 

Friends, can you help please? I am looking for a native or near-native from the Colorado Rockies...I want to explore family holiday options around Beaver Creek and Vail for Easter (5-10 April 07) next year. Have booked airfares for moi and kiddiewinx to go snow-ball fighting, but internet research is no good if you don't know the "lie of the land". I am initially attending a conference in Aspen (its part of me investing in my own loooooooooong-term future as a independent consultant/ speaker/ author) and then want to travel by car to Beaver Creek or Vail or Arapahoe Basin where the snowboarding facilities are better.

All advice gratefully and gracefully accepted! Posted by Picasa

Friday, November 24, 2006

Skippy goes Froggy

Some piccies on tabblo...click heading or this link and cross fingers it works
http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/134465/
Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

SURVIVOR a la Parisienne

I have invented a new "game" ...its called SURVIVOR! the location? Paris!!!

So...the clue above would suggest that I am NOT in Hong Kong now as I should have been....instead, I am stranded penniless and identityless but at least not humourless in the world's most beautiful and expensive city...also home to the most sophisticated pickpockets! In this case, they work the Paris 5 star hotels...everything from the George V to the Meridien Etoile where I am at (much lower on the food chain at 195 Euros a night vs George V at 865 Euros a night!)

Yes, if I was in the little Jean Paul Gaultier boutique hotel that I wanted to book into for its superior charm and style instead of this characterless chain that the corporate travel agency insisted was company policy, I would not have been a target!

c'est la vie! Suffice to say....after I packed all my gear, left my luggage with concierge, bought a ticket for the airport transfer bus, I went to have breakfast. It happened between the concierge desk and the breakfast room- for which access is controlled by a maitre'd- or in the 15 mins while I was having breakfast. My wallet and passport wallet was lifted out of my handbag! I discovered it as I exited the breakfast room to retrieve my just-purchased ticket to head for Charles de Gaulle airport to fly to Hong Kong for my speaking engagement at the university!

Well....you know that sinking feeling..................?

I instinctively KNEW I had been robbed. Funny thing is...the same thing happened to me 25 years ago in the American Bar in Paris....luckily that time my passport was not taken and I was a poor backpacker so a string of credit cards was not a headache.

I wont bore you with the tedium of what ensued....but I still have a throbbing headache almost 24 hours later as a consequence of the stress!

Luckily my company has insured me but dealing with global organisations like Visa and AMEX aint as global or 24x7 as the advertisements say. There is NO EXPRESS in American Express!I would love to place their Marketing Manager in this position and strip him of all his contact numbers and see how he or she manages! It has been a diabolical experience, but Visa is way ahead of Amex in the efficiency stakes I am hoping that by tomorrow I can get emergency cash and a replacement credit card, and then I will be camped out at Australian Embassy who says they no longer provide temporary travel documents, I have to wait for a full passport replacement- 48-72 hours.

So...what is a hungry and penniless nameless vagrant to do today but enjoy the free fresh air and scenic beauty of the nearby Bois de Bologne Park and indulge in my favourite past-time....a picnic on the grass among the lillies and swans, dressed in a fur coat, feasting on the exquisite handcrafted Belgian chocolates I had purchased as gifts in Ghent and a bottle of vintage Bollinger that I bought as a gift for my host-to-be in Hong Kong! Ah...the torture!

Yes, some music would be nice...maybe I will hear some if I am open to it...maybe even enjoy a slow waltz?

Last night, wandering a bit aimlessly trying to find a taxi in the non-tourist part of the city after going to the Police Station which is MILES from my hotel, I stumbled upon a tiny pedestrian lane in a non-descript residential area of Paris teeming with locals shopping at delicatessens, Boucheries full of local delicacies like dressed and feathered pheasants, ducks, and other feathery flesh, rabbits (lapin) in various stages of "undress", and even wild boar hams still covered in the hairy black skin, and...to top it all, the release of the 2006 Beaujolais with wine tastings everywhere, a fromagerie or 6, several exquisite patisseries and boulangeries selling pastries and bread too picture perfect to eat....and a juggler and Little Sparrow-like waif playing the accordion and singing the melancholy Jacques Brel songs made so famous by Edith Piaf.

Yes, I fell into a picture, plonked myself down by a little table, splashed out 6 Euros on a glass of new season Beaujolais, a baguette, some fromage and foie gras (with some emergency cash the hotel manager advanced me to pay the taxi fare to go to the police station!)....and then walked the 4 kms back to the hotel instead!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

La Belle Epoque-click on photo to go to online album



Posted by Picasa I've fallen in love!

I have landed in a little spot of preserved old-style unglobalised pure Europe like a long-lost story!

My hotel is a candle-light and Christmas-junkie fairytale....romantic and cosy beyond my wildest expectations.

Roaring fires everywhere, fat white candles emitting a soft golden glow over rich plush upholstered furnishings, lit Christmas trees and tasteful decorations framing corners of the bar and fireplace. Tealights dancing around brilliant red pointsettias on the gleaming black grand piano.

Then out to dine on the famous Moules mit friten (mussels steamed in aromatic broth with hand-cut chips and lots of beer) at Chez Leon in the Grand Place-its picture-perfect row upon row of traditional cafes on cobbled streets.

One can only say thank God that Belgium is not the rockstar of Europe...it has escaped with its soul intact! I shall return to Brussels for sure-long may this city remain au naturale!

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Boston: The brightest city?

Click on the title and it should...hopefully...take you to my Boston pics....ghhhrrr.....getting annoyed with technology here...Google has changed its software and what was easy before to publish directly on the blog aint so no more!

http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/view/134014/

Thursday, November 09, 2006

lost in a great big Christmas cake!

That's just what northern Canada looks like-a giant Christmas cake, thick icing sugar dripping off cutesie log homes with little chimneys puffing real smoke, row upon row sugar- dusted pine trees, wild elk grazing on bits of green not yet frosted to a crisp and the frozen lakes a bit like the mirror on the cake-you expect to hear a Ho-ho-ho from a jolly old fat guy and the jingling of bells any minute!

As a kid, I loved the figurines on the Christmas cake even though it seems de rigeur for all kids to say-Yuk! I don't eat "brown cake full of dead flies" and only ever ate the thick white "snow" though insisted on having a Christmas cake every year and now I even bake and ice it myself in an exercise that brings me great joy! .
Yet, history repeats itself with my kids having the exact same relationship with both the decor and the guts of a Christmas cake! Cub2's first sighting of snow in France at age 6 was accompanied by a tasting test to see it was sweet like icing!

I digress-yes, I missed the turn-off to Lake Louise after finishing my business in Banff and ended up on an amazing little adventure that gave me a deeper appreciation of the vast Canadian wilderness than I had anticipated. Don't you just love life's little surprises?

Having driven along the main Trans Canada highway for miles without sighting any signposts, signs of human activity or the elusive Lake Louise (it was snowing so be gentle!), and finding myself agog at the size and magnificence of the mountains (baked Alaska's I'll call them!) I took a turn down a little dirt road to Lake Emerald. 6kms in, there it was. Quiet as the dawn of Earth, no humans or cars, just the soft swish of snowflakes falling and my totally inappropriate boots squish-squashing from being soaked in a puddle of icy water, I had my first face-to-face encounter with a real live wild beaver!

Unfortunately, the little devil refused to surface again by the time I squish-squashed back through the same icy puddle to retrieve the camera from the car, but I did get a photo of its log nest. (Perhaps there is a lost Beaver in Scotland which would account for the strange goings on at Loch Ness? Same deal, different accent?)

I did find Lake Louise in the end, had a glass of Moet Chandon and a wee lunch at the Chateau, but saw none of the brilliant blue for which its known due to cloud and snow. But a magical day nonetheless!

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Creatures of Habit

Posted by Picasa Quote spotted in advertisement carried by The Star-Telegram, a major Texas newspaper which I read as we took off from Dallas to Boston: "We are what we repeatedly do."-Socrates. (The newspaper was just AWFUL-not a shred of international news and coverage of US election results mostly in terms of Texas-the home of GeorgeW, so not a mention of voter backlash and Democrat gains!)

But let me not judge an entire nation on the lack of depth and perspective of one newspaper because we know the likes of The Washington Post, NY Times and Wall St Journal are not in the same category.

Back to how our actions, repeated many times, become habits, then become hard-wired in our muscle memory and even at cellular level through neural pictates (spelling????) in the cell structure.

I admit, as an analytical thinker, I was a bit dubious about all this cellular intelligence stuff, but at a non-rational level I chose to keep an open mind about it, especially in taking an Eastern philosophical approach to life.

But.....I have now had a powerful Eureka! moment and have become a true believer in the powerful way our habits are hard-wired into our bodies. It came through a simple and common pattern-breaker: having to drive on the"wrong" side of the road.

Absolutely everything is reversed, and there are so many actions in driving that are simply repetitive habit that dictate to your body and all of a sudden, your muscles are on auto-pilot and if your brain doesn't take control back and actively "think" and problem-solve, you are going to be indeep doodoo up the wrong side of Santa Monica Boulevard in peak traffic!

But sure, those are the big issues and your brain is on alert for them, so surprise surprise!-you hire a car and discover an entire city/region you have no prior knowledge of in the course of a day, without calling 911 or waking up in a hospital emergency room!

3 factorso are at play here:
1. Courage (otherwise known as chutzpah or stupidity, based on where your own comfort zone sits, and
2.Intuition-listening to the inner compass, and
3. Acute observationskills-taking in clues that you don't even know are clues until your intuition deliberately accesses them in your brain's random access memory in a moment of panic!

This is a long-winded self-congratulatory back-slapping story because I was astounded at how my "comfort zone" was threatened at the thought of walking out of the LA + Calgary Airports at 1 am in the morning, hopping into a car without any orientation of the city/province and only rudimentary tourist maps, no passenger to help navigate (maybe that was a good thing because Mars/Venus tells us that a man can't ask for directions) and armed with only a determination to see and do as much as I could in limited time and an attitude of allowing myself to fail, have an adventure and a giggle, smile brilliantly if I upset the locals and ....well, just doing it!

The more I succeeded, the more my confidence grew and the bolder I became.Driving sans map into the CBD of Calgary for a frantic one-hour shop yesterday at 5pm (and finding parking!) when all of Calgary was pouring onto its congested streets heading home, is a personal best. LA wasn't so bad because it was Saturday and Californians at the beach are meant to be a little laid back, and Rome to Venice by car 20 years ago doesn't count because my sister was navigating although central Rome through the Via Veneto is worth a black belt!

No, its not the big things that tripped my brain-its the little things. Where cerebral process is bypassed and hardwired into a habit, that sparked most of myEureka minute. How my body consistently walked to the wrong side of the car where the steering wheel was meant to be, and how even in walking on thestreets and in airport terminals crowded with purposeful walkers, my body automatically steered left, much to the consternation of the Americans who must have thought me a stubborn upstream salmon!
Vive la difference!
The purpose of this business trip is about deepening my knowledge base and expertise around Innovation in organisations- and my first profound insight comes from a bodily not a cerebral process. The lesson I take from this is that just like we navigate traffic with eyes wide shut when we are in familiar territory, we operate on auto-pilot at work when executing our routine day-to-day roles and our powers of observation and thinking devolve to a muscular and cellular level where we are unable to "see" what is clear as daylight to a fresh pair of eyes.

In order to get a "fresh" pair of eyes, we have to pattern-interrupt: Swop tasks, swop roles, or if too hard, invent a different way at least once a week of performing a routine task because we will bypass the brain AND the senses if we don't- and there's no way we will get fresh ideas for innovation that way!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

The Smell of Canada

Posted by Picasa Well, Ms Mav's mojo has bounced back and the bastard who smashed it is no longer a factor.

Now, where were we? Oh, let's just start with now and forget about chronological correctness. We are in Canada. The Oak Room of the Palliser Fairmont Hotel in Calgary to be precise and yes, unlike in the US, this Blackberry technology is working so I can update this blog in real time! Seeing the Blackberry is a Canadian innovation, its the very least one expects!

After a stupendous 44 hour day of travelling and exquisite experiences on a 14hour transit in LA yesterday (more about that in another Blog), I was finally able to lie horisontally in a bed ( a heavenly one too!) at about 2am Calgary time.

I woke 8 hours later, quite capable of sleeping another 8, but there are things to be achieved, experiences to be had and life to be lived. As I stumbled into the lift, it pierced my conscious awareness, my Epicurean being, into instant recognition: the smell of Canada!

Yes, right up to the 11th floor wafted the smell of freshly cooked waffles and maple syrup. Unmistakably! My descent was rewarded with confirmation. In the magnificent palatial reception rooms I found a stupendous set-up...a breakfast/brunch voted as best in Canada 5 years in a row.

Well folks, they sure know how to do brunch in GRANDE style....I have never seen anything like it! Everything from fresh fruit and yoghurt, anything you could imagine under the theme of an English breakfast, to pancakes, waffles, a complete Sunday roast lunch, an an entire three tables devoted to desserts!

Much as those waffles winked at me and nudged....I decided I couldnt possibly do that and the beef...but it looked soooooooooo good and was assured by the waiter that "if you've never tasted Alberta Beef, you ain't tasted beef"...so he promptly cut off this 1 inch slab and buried my plate under it.

That was it...I am now an advocate for Alberta Beef....never tasted ANYTHING like that....sorry South africa, sorry Australia, sorry Texas...in my book, Alberta is king...for now...until I go to Argentina and give their beef a whirl.

I couldn't eat that huge slab of meat, but what I ate left no room for anything else....and I wasn't about to tackle the long road to Banff feeling droopy and sleepy from an enormous meal!

Whilst driving to Banff, I stopped by the roadside for a leg stretch...and was joined by a Rocky Mountain cowboy who was very proud to hear of the impression his native land's beef had made, so he told me where to go in Banff for a good steak...the Salt Lick.

So, I ate like a bird next day whilst visiting at the Banff Centre for Leadership and Monday night I went to The Salt Lick...expecting a steakhouse but instead finding a fantastically sophisticated, very trendy restaurant and yip...the best darn steak EVER!

It was so nice to look at different menus and innovative items....I must admit its been a looong time since any Sydney menu wowed me with anything new....(I hope you are reading this Luke Mangan and Bill Granger)

Taste and smell, as well as visual appeal are such important senses....and particularly smell goes directly to the right brain...its highly associative and connected to memory....its so important when designing menus, restaurants and other experiences where we want positive mental connections, to involve the senses!

Thanks Canada...the smell of a freshly grilled piece of Alberta beef has been filed alongside the maple syrup and waffles....and will live in my memory till I die.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

One day in L.A



Click on the cover photo to open the album