2024 Posts
Beach blanket bingo
In my continuing attempt to provide simultaneous translation to those of you outside the gilded circle of professional services professionals, here is a supplementary explanation of terminology you should know. On the beach. This is actually an expression from the ...
Watch, look and listen
For some reason I missed the memo on the anniversary of the wrist watch last year. These days, we simply call it a watch and don’t add any information about its location on a particular body part. But back in ...
Just like a waving flag
In general, Canadians wave our flag much less frequently than Americans. In a typical American city or town you can see at least 5 flags from any given vantage point, while here the only place you are guaranteed to see ...
Video killed the radio star
The Yellow Pages arrived on my porch a couple of weeks ago. At first I wasn’t sure what brick of paper was blocking the top of my stairs as I thought the Yellow Pages had gone the way of the ...
The writing is on the wall
Apparently hand writing is on its last legs (or more correctly, its last arms). Specifically, cursive writing is currently in the academic cross hairs, although block printing is probably not too far behind. Much like we no longer teach long ...
School’s out for the summer – Part 2
The second time I voluntarily went to school in the summer was to attend a 6 week French immersion course. With all of the logic the Federal government (who funded the course) could muster, the location chosen to transform us ...
School’s out for the summer
When you are a kid, there is nothing better than the day you are let out of school for the summer with two whole months to do pretty much nothing. And there is nothing worse than being sentenced to go ...
Kodachrome – you give us the nice bright colours
As you may know, I was recently away on vacation in Russia. What you don’t know is how many photos I took. Want to hazard a guess? Whatever you guessed I’m guessing you are wrong. I took none. Zero. Zippo. ...
It wasn’t a rock – it was a rock lobster!
My new favourite magazine is Bon Appetite. This is from someone who has about 7 magazines delivered to her door each month. Anyhow, the rest will have to live with the fact that Bon Appetite is my current golden child ...
Nyet nyet Soviet jewellery
I was hanging out in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel (rooms from 7450 Rubles) in downtown Moscow yesterday. This is a fairly grand hotel, located right next to Red Square. It was built in 1901 at the very beginning ...