Yearly Archives: 2013

If all of my lectures in Schulich’s MBA program are going to be as engaging and insightful as this one, then this blog may soon transform into a series of learnings and golden nuggets of wisdom derived from these lectures (coupled with photography, of course, whether relevant or irrelevant). Top school, top professors. I was at Schulich’s Smart Start orientation event yesterday and I am as excited as I am nervous to embark on this journey. I’ll be spreading myself quite thin across all of my commitments so we’ll see what this girl is made of.

I learned about the “Yes and…” tool in yesterday’s mini lecture with Stephen Friedman and would like to make a conscious effort to incorporate this tool into my daily conversations with people going forward. Instead of saying, “That’s a good idea but…” or “That makes sense but…”, you should form a habit to say,

“Yes, that’s a good idea and…”
“Yes, that makes sense and…”

“But” is a Buzz Killington and “However” is “But” in a tuxedo (I can’t take credit for the tuxedo bit – that was Friedman’s). Both words essentially suck when it comes to encouraging a thought / idea because they are actually a “No” and “I don’t like your idea” in disguise. You’ll notice that when we use the word “but”, the receiver of the message goes into defence mode. It’s just not the right word.

“I dare you” to use the “Yes and…” tool, he says. “And see how your conversations change; see how it changes the way you think; how you argue with people; how you relate to other people; how you resolve things.”

I second what this man has to say. I just love those who can articulate emotion so eloquently – this man did just that. I love the description of ‘human insects and poisonous mass of broken sociopaths’ as the cause of this mayhem – just simply lost and disturbed souls. I also love the last line, “The good outnumber you, and we always will”, because it reminds me of one of my favourite biblical scriptures, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” I don’t have anything useful to say about the explosions other than the fact that my heart is sinking for the victims and I genuinely hope that they find the strength they need to get through this.

I also caught the New York Times carelessly fondling with the number of casualties in their article yesterday as if getting a thrill out of making matters sound worse than it already is and purposely exaggerating the terror. I refreshed the page every minute or so and the number of deaths and injuries reported went back and forth from this to that, not with the intention of reporting accurate and correct numbers but rather to cause as much alarm and panic as possible. I could be wrong but knowing the nature of the media and their tendencies to exaggerate and be largely insensitive, I’m probably closer to right than wrong. It went from “23 killed”, to “dozens killed”, to “many killed”, all of which were completely false claims. The choice of words just kill me. I wish I had taken screen captures. They eventually got it right but the bottom line is that this isn’t a joke so get your facts straight before publishing them. The media annoys the hell out of me sometimes.

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Back to photography. I know this isn’t the most appropriate photo for this post but it’s a good one from Vegas anyways. Enjoy.

I’ve finally gotten around to photographing this pink rotary phone that I got for Christmas from Chris’ mom. Available at my Etsy Shop. By the way, I love my Apple keyboard. I just want to keep typing and typing and typing.

I was at the The Vintage Marketplace at Hamilton today. It was cute but there wasn’t enough to see to keep you around for more than an hour. I did pocket a few business cards from vendors that were of interest, though not necessarily relevant to me right at this moment. These were mostly vendors that can support the decor of a vintage-inspired wedding. :) Here’s a quick list:

Donna’s Vintage Emporium – antique rental boutique. Handy for photoshoots and themed weddings. By far my favourite vendor at the marketplace.
All That’s Lovely – wedding invitations
She’s So Beautiful – wedding dresses
The Ruby Rose Wedding Company – couture floral work and wedding cakes
Sweet Avenue Cakery – cakes and cupcakes
Cake & Loaf Bakery – breads, pastry, and cakes

After an insane week of rain, I’m hoping for some love from the sun this week.

You make your desk pretty. There is something about pretty things that inspire me to work. It can be anything from a pretty notebook and pen to pretty paper and post-its to a pretty computer monitor and keyboard to a pretty vintage bulletin board. Think of it as creating the right atmosphere / environment conducive to productivity – whatever that environment is to you. To me, it’s prettiness (coupled with functionality of course).

My Macbook Pro is fairly new from November 2012 and I had intended on getting the Mac Thunberbolt monitor to go with it because the last thing I want is to be working on complicated school projects in a teeny-tiny laptop screen. I couldn’t justify the cost of the Thunderbolt though, so I searched high and low for a pretty white monitor. Here I am with this beautiful cheap and cheerful 21.5″ BenQ monitor that they call the “Macbook Companion”. I’d have to agree because she is quite perfect for the job. I couldn’t be more satisfied.

Long story short: I purchased a set of books (for a birthday gift) two weeks ago from Amazon and it was never delivered by the estimated delivery date. Naturally, I called DHL, the shipping company responsible, to track my package. On this call, I learned that my package had to be sent back to Amazon due to ‘incomplete delivery information’. This happened despite the fact that I’ve absolutely and positively entered my shipping address correctly with no mistakes at Amazon’s check-out. I had Amazon contact DHL directly to find out exactly what had happened only to learn that the characters in Amazon’s address field did not translate properly to DHL’s system, resulting in ‘incomplete delivery information’ that led to my package having to be sent back to Amazon.

The million dollar question: How is this my problem?

It isn’t my problem and yet I’ve fallen victim to the situation and Amazon did absolutely nothing to remedy it. The only two options provided were:

(1) To refund the order and be out of a birthday gift that I needed by Saturday

(2) To refund the order and re-purchase a new set of books at a higher price because we could not locate the same set of books for the same price as my initial purchase. They could not price match, could not offer to incur shipping costs, could not offer expedited shipping to meet my deadline, and basically could not offer a single accommodating ‘We’re-really-sorry-for-this-and-here’s-what-we’ll-do’ solution to help improve the customer experience. A straight replacement of my original order was not feasible for reasons I really don’t understand and can’t even begin to explain even if I tried.

And that’s the last time I’ll ever shop at Amazon. And of course, I’ve taken the time to share my negative experience on my little platform on the web. I ended up purchasing the books from Barnes & Noble and paid $20 less than my initial purchase at Amazon.

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Moving on – these are the colourful hippie houses and shops at Kensington Market in Toronto.

This was shot at Kensington Market last weekend. I should group all my Toronto photos together and start an I love Toronto series, because surely, Toronto rocks. If Toronto didn’t snow and had weather like Los Angeles, it would rock even harder.

Until freedom departs. Until the first day of full time work, part time school status. Stress management is key. No stress. I think you get better at this as you get older. I used to be a serious stress case and sometimes I still am.

Caught this article on my Facebook newsfeed, shared by Schulich.

But nonetheless, I’m a good sport and am here to share another shot of night lights in my humble and quiet neighbourhood (although it is evident that these types of shots would be infinitely more exciting at the corner of Yonge and Dundas in Toronto or at Time Square in Manhattan or by the Big Ben on Bridge Street in London).