Marketing Behind the Scenes #9

I was a good student in the education program at the University of British Columbia (UBC). I was enrolled in elementary education along with about 400 other students. We were further subdivided into groups: elementary or secondary (I was elementary), primary or intermediate, deaf education, blind education, French, Art, Music, special education (big problems), or special education for kids with mild impairments, still integrated in the regular classroom. That was my class, along with 7 or 8 other students. We were studying to be resource room teachers, or to be regular classroom teachers who helped kids do well in the regular classroom.

To be honest, I didn’t like the teacher education program very much…

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All best,

Shelley

Marketing Behind the Scenes #8

I wrote in a previous post about my “5 Keys to Self-Discipline.”

Key #1 was “Set deadlines for yourself that have consequences.”

I thought I’d tell you about Key #2 this time: “Set rewards for yourself that are meaningful.”

You see, there’s a difference between meaningful and non-meaningful.

Imagine you’ve got a 5-year-old little boy, cute in his own way, not necessarily disobedient, but he can’t ever for the life of him remember to turn off the lights.

Not ever. Not one time. And no amount of reminding or cajoling seems to help.

Now. Imagine you set up a reward system for him. Every time he remembers to turn off the light, he gets a reward that is meaningful for him.

For example …

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Paris Post: Photos from September 5th

September 5th was our 3-year wedding anniversary, and happily it fell on a Saturday, so we could spend the day out having adventures.

After a (bad) breakfast in a new café, we went walking on rue Cler, a little pedestrian street lined with cool shops:

 

And we found an amazing Italian boutique: I mean, can you count the different kinds of ham and sliced meats?

  the selection went on forever

 

I kept saying “wowie” over and over again, until it got tiring

 In the end, we bought some sliced rosemary ham and celeri remoulade to have for lunch

 

on this same street, we found the first Brussels sprouts of the year

 

For dinner, we went for rotisserie chicken and divine mashed potatoes. This restaurant has a house cat named Beaujolais that roams around the dining room. I’ve taken to calling this restaurant, affectionately, “charbroiled-cat”.
As in: “would you like to go to charbroiled-cat tonight for dinner?”

 

walking the streets after dinner

 

a giant full moon dead-centre in this photo

 

Then we ended up at the Guinness Tavern, where the drinks are expensive but the live rock band is free. Small place, packed tight with Parisians. The band sang a lot of English covers, like “Sweet Home Alabama,” and I was probably the only person in the room who could tell that they didn’t actually know the words in English. They sang the way a 3-year old sings “Twinkle Twinkle” … with made-up mashed-together words that sound approximately correct, but are hilarious in their incorrectness…

All best,
Shelley

Marketing Behind the Scenes #7

Upon arrival in Vancouver, my Uncle Don picked me up at the train station, whisked me over to Chinatown for a lunch of what looked like a bowl of swimming worms.

It was really tofu, mushrooms, seaweed and other stuff. I actually told him NOT to tell me what was in it, because I was afraid. 

It was hot-and-sour soup, my first time.  Yes, it was both amazing and frightening.

Please consider that before I left my home town of Halifax,
Nova Scotia (pop. 250,000), I’d never eaten an avocado before.

And I’d never heard of Tex-Mex.

Sushi? Raw fish? Are you kidding? 

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Couscous makes you fly …

OK, not really, but it does makes me feel super-human. I love eating Moroccan food, I’m not sure why. I mean, really, couscous has a weird texture and the tagine veggies are usually waaay overcooked …

But holy-wowie it’s SO yummy, all those chick peas and the little
dish of raisins they serve on the side. All the dipping and sharing.

Here are my pictures from tonight’s dinner:

 first the lovely man serves some couscous on your plate, then he delivers the eat plate (left), and the chick peas (right), with the pot of broth and veggies (back, right)

 

so i serve up my plate, once, twice, three times by the end of it

 

in the end, all that’s left is the lamb bone

 

resto has funky walls and clashing print chairs

 

i look funny in this picture, young with bad hair …

 

mister with the furry face, his shirt kinda clashes with the walls

 

So now I’ve got to ask: what are you having for dinner tonight?

All best, and happy Friday
Shelley

Marketing Behind the Scenes #6

How to Set Deadlines with Consequences

In a previous email I wrote about my “5 Keys to Self-Discipline.”

The good part about being self-employed is that you make your own rules.

The bad part about being self-employed is that YOU HAVE TO make your own rules, AND hold yourself accountable.

How do we do that?

I can share with you what works for me.

My first Key to Self-Discipline is: “Set deadlines for yourself that have consequences.”

OK, what does that mean?

For example, I might be having a conversation with myself that goes something like this: “I should figure out how to put my cooking classes on DVD, people ask me about that but I don’t have a Mac and I know Macs do a great job of video editing and DVD creation, and surely there’s a PC equivalent but I don’t know what it is.”

This thought process isn’t a deadline or even a goal. It’s just an idea.

I have lots of ideas like this one. You probably do, too.

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Marketing Behind the Scenes #5

When I graduated from university in Halifax, I got on a train and moved to Vancouver. The train took five days, four nights, and I slept in a ‘roomette’. I ate dinner each night with a different retired couple, being passed around through the crowd.

I was 20 years old.

I’d never been to Vancouver before, but through my limited  research I had learned that …

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Marketing Behind the Scenes #4

After I graduated from high school, I stayed in Halifax and went to St. Mary’s University and completed a 3-year Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Creative Writing.

I lived in on-campus in residence. I had a student loan + 3 part-time jobs: I was still at McDonald’s, working the weekend overnight shift (11 pm to 7 am) as Drive-thru was open until 4 am, and breakfast started at 6 am. For job #2, I was a busboy and then waitress in a restaurant called 42nd Street. For job #3, I typed papers for students.

In high school, I took a typing class for 3 years which was completely unheard of in the academic stream (taking typing more than one year was something reserved for the non-academic or ‘business’ students). In fact, in Grade 12 academic typing, I was the only student. Which meant I got my work 6 weeks in advance, prepared it on my own time, and then had a spare period. I perfected my skills on a noisy IBM Selectric, complete with carbon paper, yellow file copies, and strips of white-out.

Once I arrived in the university residence, it didn’t take long for people to realize that “Shelley can type without looking” (imagine that!). I was soon hired to type essays, reports, and resumes. It was 1984, and I charged $1/page. I was completely excited by the idea of putting up a notice on the bulletin board and then having strangers call to hire me to type for them.

Part-way through that year, I switched from typing on the electric typewriter in my dorm room to typing in the computer lab at the university. Big florescent room, reliably empty at night, dot-matrix printer, 5 1/4″ inch disks. I tried to remember to either print or save every 10 minutes, but once I lost a large History essay at 2 am and had to stay up till 6 am to retype it.  Note to self: boring the first time = excruciating the second time. Save every 10 minutes. Better yet, set up your computer to autosave for you.* (Note: see how to do this, below)

I liked waitressing and typing papers for the almost the same reasons: they were both project-based work made up of a bunch of small tasks (short essays, new table for two), rather than working on one long thing forever. I liked the variety. I got to meet a lot of people and learn bits and pieces of fascinating things. One history paper I still remember was titled: “Does the Soviet Union Seek to Dominate the World.”

But there’s something else that waitressing teaches you in a BIG hurry:

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NOTES:

*Autosave in MS Word 2003 – Tools > Options > Save.  Choose “Save AutoRecover info every 10 minutes”

*Autosave in MS Word 2007 – Click once on the ‘Office’ button, top left corner. Click on ‘Word Options’ at bottom. Choose ‘Save’ on left.  Choose “Save AutoRecover information every 10 minutes”

Paris Post: The beach ‘Paris’ style (Aug 14)

In the summer, when all the Parisiennes have left town, there are still lots of cool things to do. For example, along the Seine river they take a big roadway and block off the cars, truck in some sand, and make a beach. Complete with cafés, a lending library, and events for the kids.

It’s all free, too. Chairs for lounging, umbrellas…

anybody & everybody was wearing a bikini…

they even bring in palm trees in planters to help with the “tropical” ambiance

it was burning hot, so the water station was enjoyed by kids and adults alike

here’s a part with sand, we found a place against the back wall still under the corner of an umbrella, and we hung out for hours

yet another picture of the cute man who keeps following me around

public library, where you can leave your ID and borrow a book for a day; a very genius idea with the books all donated by a local publisher …

this is a ‘mist’ station where you can walk through with your clothes on, just to cool off

another water station, this time for for drinking
(and a bit of naked-child playing)

can’t wait till it comes back next year, i hope we get to go again!

~ All best, Shelley

Marketing Behind the Scenes #3

#3 > Drivers, passengers, and the slightly nutty.

Extract:

I’m not a psychologist, but I think there are three kinds of people.

Drivers, passengers, and the slightly nutty.

Let me explain.

DRIVERS are people who like to lead. They get up in the morning with an idea of what they want to achieve. Sometimes the plan for the day is larger than the number of hours, but they’re going somewhere. They plan the vacations, they plan the move, they plan the job transitions.

Drivers fine-tune their day.  Was today as good as it could have been? Could it have been better? Tomorrow let’s try ‘this’ instead of ‘that’.  Run first, eat second. Get up earlier, get up later, see if that helps. Adjusting and tweaking to get the day just right. Of course there are obstacles and unknowns and vomiting children, but for the most part there’s some kind of plan.

PASSENGERS get up in the morning and there’s no particular plan. It’s all good.  Watch a movie or do some gardening? …

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