Monthly Archives: October 2023

Refining an art

I may not be a freestyle rap fan, but I am amazed and in awe of what Harry Mack can do. He has people give him 3 or more words that he embeds in his freestyle, and then he raps about them. The thing that makes him so magical is that he doesn’t just drop the word in his rap, he makes the word provided a theme and then he drops entire bars about it. Meanwhile he also throws in things he sees like what the person is wearing or things in the environment.

It’s truly amazing what he can do. It’s quite literally poetry in motion. It’s rhyming improv that’s creative, lyrical, and spontaneous at a level that seems super human. Harry Mack has refined his art to the point that he raps masterpieces.

I’ll let his words speak for themselves. Here are 3 videos that showcase his skills:

The first one is on Omegle. This is a site where you connect with random strangers and there isn’t a way to know who is coming up next.

The second one is on the street. He just lights up the crowd and impresses everybody!

This final one is on a YouTube Live. One of his fans requests, “Dissect your own bars as you spit them.” This is incredible to listen to!

Harry Mack is in a league of his own!

Teamwork makes the dream work

It’s so much easier to enjoy work when you have a good team. When you have the opportunity to work with people who not only get stuff done, but also step up and implement ideas that move everyone towards a common vision, then you know you are in a good place. When others have strengths that complement yours, that fill in the gaps where you aren’t as strong, great things can happen.

Momentum is gained when there are more people who step up than don’t… When you have enough people interested not just in doing what needs to be done, but also doing things that make work better. They develop ideas and follow them up. They share in, and take the lead towards, building positive outcomes, and their interests align with the vision of the team.

Not everyone has to step up this way. It’s unlikely that you’ll be on a team where everyone is willing to step up and do extra. But when there is a critical mass of the ones who do step up, who find their niche where they are giving the team a little extra, who get excited about adding value, then teamwork really makes the dream work.

And to top it all off, this excites you to want to do more.

Eight days a week

I can’t believe it’s Thursday morning. It feels like I’ve already worked a full week. I know it’s because I’m getting over a cold and I’m not 100%, and I’m just exhausted. This will sometimes happen when I’m super busy and I come home from work and I just keep working. Yet that’s not what I’ve been doing these last three days. I’ve been coming home and just flaking out.

I’m glad tomorrow is a Professional Development Day, and I’m excited about my plans… because I know I can get through today, but I don’t know if I could run on all cylinders tomorrow like I need to today, with 3 meetings that need my full attention and participation. If I had to continue my pattern and pace of today and the last 3 days again tomorrow, I think I’d crash.

So, head down, chin up, and muscle through the day today, and hopefully remain positive about my plans tomorrow. Tonight I’m turning work off and maybe the TV on. I’ll have some nice homemade soup my wife made for dinner, and have an early bed time. Because this has been a loooong week and it isn’t nearly over yet. Some weeks feel a lot longer than others and this one was, and is, a doozy.

The supernatural cinema

I find it fascinating how much entertainment is based on the supernatural. Movies and television shows are filled with superpowers, ghosts, magical powers, and talking animals. It’s not good enough for someone just to be evil, they need to be possessed. The wardrobe leads to an alternate world, so does the rabbit hole. A radio active spider, an unusual electrical storm, or even prophecy propel an otherwise normal person into a realm of heroism and chaos that are beyond the norms of every day life.

Even when there are no extra or supernatural powers, there are feats of incredible athleticism and often pure luck that get a protagonist out of dire trouble. Secret agents or regular unsuspecting people faced with impossibly complicated scenarios, saving the country or the world from eminent destruction.

I love when a story feels new. When the formula is a little broken and it’s not just a hero’s journey story being retold with the same, usually happy ending. I hate when the Americanized storytelling ends with a group of people applauding the protagonist, as he or she finds love, or receives a medal, or defeats the alien invasion.

Do we really need a cast audience to tell the movie going audience to clap or to be happy?

I love escaping into a good movie or TV show, but my definition of good has changed a lot. Get rid of the cliche endings, or the hero who finds the perfect solution to every scenario. It’s fine to have supernatural experiences, just don’t rehash old storylines with better effects. Share something I really haven’t seen before… that’s what appeals to me now.

Suggestions for movies and shows that do this would be greatly appreciated.

Good game

I love when sportsmanship shines through. I walked up to a student during lunch and he was playing chess on Chess.com. My daughter gifted me a paid account for my birthday and so I told the student my username and said he could challenge me if he wanted. He said he would. I told him that I wouldn’t be making moves during the school day so the game might go fairly slow.

The game was quite even with him being up a minor piece for a bit, then I made a lucky move that put me a piece ahead. I say it was lucky because when I made the move before it, I didn’t realize how good the move was… so it wasn’t like I was seeing ahead and planning it to work as well as it did. He never recovered and I won the game.

But what I found interesting was that even when he was down to two pawns blocked by my pawns that were fully protected by my king, and I had two knights hunting his king down, he didn’t resign. He played the game out until he was checkmated. Then, the next time I visited his class, he came up to me and extended his hand for a handshake. “Good game,” he said shaking my hand and looking me in the eye.

I’m sure he wanted to beat his principal, and I think he might in a future game, we are pretty even in skill. And when he does, I’ll be sure to not resign and allow him the complete victory. And I’ll be sure to shake his hand, and congratulate him on a good game.

Staying consistent

There have been a lot of reasons why my fitness routine has been challenging this year. It seem that I haven’t had a full month where there has been anything routine about my daily routine. I was just back in Toronto for my dad’s memorial and in 8 days I slept in 5 different places. I also ended the trip with a cold and spent the weekend recovering. I’m still not 100%, but I’m not coughing and I’ll wear a mask and get back to work this morning.

That said, I slept in a bit and I’m writing this as I pedal on my stationary bike at about 80% of my normal speed. The way I feel, I don’t think I’d go any faster if I wasn’t tapping these words into my phone. Just 3 days ago I was using speech-to-text to do my writing on an elliptical… This is not a normal thing to try and simultaneously hit two of my daily goals at once, but I’m making it work at a time when doing otherwise would make things harder for me.

It would be easy to skip something. It would take no effort on a day like this to give myself a pass. But I already did that Saturday and Sunday when I felt like crap. I haven’t skipped 3 days of exercise in over 3 years, and I’m not going to start now. So I’m muscling through, sweating far more than usual, while my output is lower than usual. But here is the point I didn’t know this post would be about that I realize now: It’s the days you just show up and totally don’t want to that matter the most.

Consistency isn’t about your regular routine. Your regular routine is a habit, it’s hard to make but once you’ve made it the effort is actually quite low. Consistency is getting you butt in gear and active, doing what needs to be done, when you really don’t want to. When you really aren’t up to it or in the mood or think you have time for it. Or when your routine gets disrupted and you have to go out of your way to follow through. Like being on an elliptical at a hotel at 9:30pm when my alarm is set for 3am, or sweating buckets on my stationary bike at the tail end of a cold, and simultaneously writing these words. This is harder than my normal workout. This is the grunt work. This is what it takes to be consistent.

We aren’t demonstrating consistency when everything is going smoothly, we have to demonstrate it when there is a disruption and and we still follow through.

The hard work of being consistent comes from actively doing what needs to be done when there is nothing consistent happening around you.

I’m going to make that into a poster and put it on my home gym wall.

One world under God

Imagine a world where everyone who prayed believed that no matter what religion anyone practiced, that the higher being they prey to is The Creator. Can an all powerful God not manifest Him/Her/Itself in many ways to many peoples? Does this God need to share their understanding with every tribe, in every language, and in every culture identically? Would that even make sense?

If there is One God then could we not see the Good in all holy texts, and recognize our similarities? Recognize the kindness to strangers all these books profess? Recognize that living a spiritual life means spreading love and kindness rather than raising arms against our brothers, sisters, and other children of the same God?

If The Creator is the same creator, no matter the religion, then why would we be fighting? It can not be in God’s name. So it must be a weakness of our species that creates the hatred. It is the territorial animal in us that overpowers our humanity.

A spiritual, kind, and loving being does not attack fellow beings; does not send their children to war; does not treat children as pawns or collateral. Since religions can not bring our world together I have to wonder what can? What can bring our people, all of our tribes together?

I want to believe that we can see ourselves as a species that is kind. I want to believe that we can see ourselves as a species that is loving. I want to believe that we can see ourselves as a species that is peaceful. I want to believe that humanity is more powerful than our animal instincts and that we are wise enough to solve our problems without the need to kill our neighbours, here on this planet with so-called ‘intelligent’ life… that one God created.

Calculated Misery

I recently watched this TikTok, about ‘calculated misery’.

It starts off with the idea that social media platforms are going to work together to get us to pay or pay more for their services. It’s no longer enough that we have to watch ads to play along. I notice it when I watch YouTube on my phone and I’m regularly asked if I want to upgrade to avoid ads. Meanwhile I’m also watching more ads that I can’t skip after 5 seconds.

My Twitter feed is filled with ‘blue checkmark’ profiles where that check costs anyone $8 a month to have, regardless of if their content or expertise is valuable to me. And meanwhile, my checkmark-less profile is being viewed less often than those who pay.

Also discussed in the video is how airlines use calculated misery to upsell you. The carry-on suitcase I bought 15 years ago used to be good on any airline, now it needs to be checked on many of them. Leg room has been reduced, and while tickets used to include choice of seats, now that’s something you need to upgrade or pay more for to get. You want a meal or beverage on a 5 hour flight? Those used to be free, but many airlines charge for them now.

It used to be that the basic price was good enough, and upgrades gave you perks, but now it seems anything less than premium is meant to suck a little bit, meant to be just enough misery to make you want to pay more. Even amusement parks are doing it, giving people privileged access in lineups if they pay more. And it’s hard to be in line and watch others get priority over you.

We’ve moved from an era of customer value and service being a priority to an era where profits matter more. It’s a world where customers are made less comfortable, unless they pay a premium, and the benefits are really to shareholders. Essentially, services are getting gradually worse, and misery is creeping in… unless you pay a little bit more.

Family, fun, and fitness

I am in a tiny hotel gym near the Toronto airport, dictating this while on an elliptical. It’s 9:30 PM and we head home to Vancouver tomorrow morning just after 6 AM. It has been a whirlwind week for us. Leaving our home 2:30 in the morning last week Friday to come here for a memorial celebration of the passing of my dad.

We spent a wonderful few days up at BlueMountain, near Collingwood, with my mom, her four kids, and seven of eight grandkids. Unfortunately, the eighth grandkid was hit with Covid and didn’t recover in time to join us. Still, it was so wonderful to have our family together for the first time in over a decade with all 4 kids and that many grandkids m being present. My dad would have loved it.

My wife, kids, and mom spent the last couple nights in downtown Toronto, went shoe shopping for my mom, visited the Aquarium, and saw a musical, ‘In Dreams’. The play features Roy Orbison music and my mom loved it. We all did. I was worried when it started with a side story of a woman losing her husband, but that wasn’t the focus of the show and didn’t ruin the mood despite the recency of my fathers passing.

Today we went back to my mom’s place, hung out and ordered Caribbean style Doubles from a roti shop. I really wish I could find some good West Indian takeout in Coquitlam, and since I can’t, I always make sure I get some when in Toronto.

I probably should be getting to bed right now with a 3:30 AM wake up call, but I hadn’t had any exercise other than walking at my moms pace for three days now, and I’m not sure what I’ll feel like doing tomorrow after a long day of travel. So, I am using speech to text and panting slightly, unsure of how much editing I will need to do when I get off this machine.

I remember hearing that by the time you’re 18 you have spent roughly 95% of the total time you’ll ever spend with your parents. Losing my dad has really made me put this statistic into perspective. I think about my daughters at 21 and 23, and I’m actually grateful that one still lives with us, and I already see how hard it is to plan to get together with the older one who lives an hours drive and an hour and a half ferry ride away from us.

I’m actually thankful for covid in that it was the reason my siblings and mom started a group chat and that has increased my communication with my mom and sisters. Seeing my sisters’ now grown up kids has been wonderful too, and I really question where the time has gone. It occurred to me that my oldest nephew is older than I was when I had my first kid. That seems so hard to grasp. I am now the generation that I think my parents should be. Looking at old photographs, I find pictures of my parents as adults when they were younger than I am now, and yet in my mind I’m still just a kid… Their kid.

Cardio is done, I’ve edited my voice-to-text writing above and it’s time to put on Enya and do my stretches. I’ll keep thinking and reflecting on my time with family, and then I’ll crank the music and get a little bit of strength exercise in. I like doing a variety of exercises at hotels, using machines I don’t get to use in my simple home gym.

Tomorrow, I travel home then start to worry about catching up at work. It’s going to be a bit painful, but I’m glad to have had this time, and it know how much it meant to my mom… and to me!

Traffic flow

We are staying in an AirBNB in downtown Toronto with my mom. It’s a small 3-bedroom apartment on the 6th floor, just above the Gardener Expressway. I needed earplugs to go to sleep last night. The flow of traffic is a little too uneven to be a constant background noise.

I remember a funny line from Robin Williams as Mork, playing an alien from another planet, on the sitcom Mork & Mindy. He comes in one day and asks Mindy, “Why do they call it ‘rush hour’ when nothing moves?”

Any city as big as Toronto has a buzz, and never sleeps. The highway below us has a constant, congested flow of traffic and as I write this at almost 5:30pm the traffic is crawling going both east and west. But even at 2am there will be a flow of traffic. I don’t think there is a time during the day when there would be no cars on the small strip of road outside this apartment’s window.

Sometimes when I’m on the road at 2am I wonder as I drive, “Where are all these other cars going?” And, “Where are they coming from?”

How are so many other people on the road right now? Is this a regular routine or an unusual anomaly in their travel patterns? Are they coming home from a long day? A fun night? Or are they just starting their day?

Tonight I’ll put my earplugs in and ignore the traffic flow, cars each heading to their own destinations… destinations I’ll never know.