Category: Life

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Geek Life Work

Sacha Chua’s “The Shy Connector”

My friend Sacha Chua is not someone who you’d think of as an introvert, but she is. Hang out in Toronto’s tech scene and sooner or later, you’ll catch one of her presentations, which she does with all with the energetic bounce that is her stock in trade. She considers technology evangelism and outreach not just part of her job, but part of her life. She has hundreds of blog subscribers, Facebook followers and LinkedIn contacts, and her Twitter followers number in the thousands. Despite all her public appearances, blog entries, and vast social network, she’s still an introvert.

There’s a reason the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has endured: it’s true (so true, in fact, that Malcolm Gladwell has done quite well for himself telling stories based on this particular nugget of wisdom). Wonderful things arise from opportunities, opportunities often come from connections and the some of the best connections are “weak ties”: those casual acquaintances who exist slightly outside our regular circles and who thus have information that we might otherwise never acquire. For a madly-grinning accordion-playing extrovert like Yours Truly, gathering weak ties is quite easy, and I’ve parleyed many a weak tie into an opportunity.

But what if you’re not an extrovert? Can introverts make the connections that can make the difference between getting by and getting ahead? The answer is yes, by playing to introversion’s strengths, taking advantage of some tools and following the steps in Sacha’s presentation, The Shy Connector, which I’ve included below:

 

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Categories
It Happened to Me Life Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

A Bad Experience at Wasabi

 Wasabi Restaurant, 1730 Bloor Street West. The Verdict: Decent food, scatterbrained "service"

All I wanted was my dinner. After an early morning flight back to Accordion City from Calgary and enough work to keep me from getting a decent lunch, I was looking forward to a nice dinner with The Missus at Wasabi (1730 Bloor Street West, at Keele), the all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant that had opened a few blocks away from our home.

Wasabi’s menu is not unlike those at other local all-you-can-eat sushi places like Aji Sai. It comprises a selection of sushi, sashimi, tempura, donburi and other things that can be made quickly and cheaply and can provide a lot of bang for your twenty bucks.

It’s the busiest restaurant that’s ever opened at that corner. When we walked in on Friday night, we saw a full restaurant bustling with all sorts of people: groups of young friends having dinner before a night out, many young families with strollers in tow, solo diners who brought some reading material with them, couples out for an end-of-week meal and so on. At first glance, the place appeared to be the next neighbourhood hit.

It took a little while for someone to take our order. We chalked it up to the place’s newness; it often takes a restaurant a little while to work the kinks out of its system during its “shakedown phase” and get a sense of how busy they’ll be. They appeared understaffed, and the the staff they had clearly weren’t used to working in a busy restaurant.

The orders we did manage to get were, for the most part, decent. The seafood tempura was done right, the dynamite roll was tasty and the edamame was well, edamame. After that, no food came to our table for a good while.

After asking around, we discovered that our order had been sent to the wrong table. We were still willing to forgive this mistake and place another order, and the waitress apologized and told us she’d be right back with a notepad. Hey, it’s an all-you-can-eat place, and most of the stuff was the kind that other places can make quickly.

She never came back. A good quarter-hour, complete with a lot of waves to the waitress, has passed without any service. It was clearly time for plan B.

“Enough already. Pizza slice?” I asked Wendy, gesturing to the Pizza Pizza across the street.

“Sure."

We walked up to the front, told the staff that our order had been served to the wrong table and no one had attempted to correct the mistake. Another customer who was standing at the counter said “Yeah, they screwed up my order, too.”

We also told them that we weren’t paying, and walked out. They gave no reply other than confused looks, tilted heads and stunned silence – not even an “I’m sorry". This sort of reaction is the hallmark of complete incompetence and the front-of-house staff treat the place as many similar people do: the restaurant’s just a place that provides a paycheque in exchange for you just showing up.

As we walked towards the pizza place, we ran into our neighbours Chris and Wanda, who were heading to Wasabi to try them out, and warned them away from the place. Consider this blog entry the same warning to the rest of the world: Wasabi is run by scatterbrains, and if you’d actually like some service, go elsewhere.

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Life

Kraft Dinner’s Horrific New Flavours

kraft dinner extreme pizza 1

Here in Canada, “Kraft Dinner” is the brand under which Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is sold. Macaroni and cheese is one of those tastes of childhood, and being cheap and easy to prepare, “KD” is a staple of university student life. Back in university, a number of us enhanced the dish by adding all sorts of things: ketchup, mustard, hot dog slices, tuna and so on. I liked putting a couple of strips of bacon on mine, because there’s little that bacon can’t enhance.

The people at Kraft must have noticed these enhancements since they’ve release a series of microwaveable Kraft Dinner meals with different flavours such as Alfredo, “Extreme Pizza” and SPicy Szechuan. Being the kinesthetic sort when it comes to food, the Ginger Ninja and I decided to buy a couple of flavours and give them a taste.

The verdict: avoid at all costs. These Kraft Dinner variants aren’t junky-good in the way that original Kraft Dinner is. They just taste awful and have looks that match. Here’s what “Extreme Pizza” looks like:

kraft dinner extreme pizza 2

“Extreme Pizza” is a very bad blend of that Velveeta-esque Kraft Dinner cheese with a low-grade tomato sauce reminiscent of the gunk they put on Chuck E. Cheese pizzas (I know that taste; I have young nephews).

Spicy Szechuan is even worse:

kraft dinner spicy szechuan 1

It tastes like an attempt to blend Kraft Dinner cheese with the flavours of soy sauce, Chinese five-spice and peppers. If the Long March had a taste, it would be this.

kraft dinner spicy szechuan 2

Note that they use different noodles for different flavours; it’s the one bit of culinary artistry that went into them. Different sauces call for different noodles – for example, you don’t serve capellini with a thick meat sauce – and each noodle in this series of Kraft Dinners seems chosen to convey the culinary horror perfectly.

If you must eat these, I would suggest Listerine as a pairing: Listerine Original for the Extreme Pizza, and Listerine Mint for the Spicy Szechuan.

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Life

Remembrance Day

remembrance-day-poppy

November 11th is Remembrance Day in Canada, the day we commemorate the sacrifices made by our armed forces during war.

In the days leading up to and including Remembrance Day (the official period starts on the last Friday of October), you may see people wearing poppy pins like the ones pictured above on their left lapels. Poppies became associated with the war dead during the time of Napoleon when it was noted that they bloomed in fields where battles had taken place. This association was cemented when Canadian soldier and doctor John McCrae wrote the poem In Flanders Fields:

'In Flanders Fields', in John McCrae's own handwriting.

Here’s the text of In Flanders Fields:

poppy_lest_we_forget In Flanders Fields the poppies blow,
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Categories
Life Work

Headline of the Day: “Blockbuster Worker Stabbed Himself in the Leg in a Ploy to Miss Work”

combat knifeThe amount of work people do in order to avoid work never ceases to amaze me. If there’s a prize for this sort of thing, we might have to award it to Aaron Siebers, 27, of Denver, Colorado, a Blockbuster employee who didn’t think that simply calling in sick was enough. Here’s the report from the UK paper The Telegraph:

Facing a night shift at a Blockbuster video store, Aaron Siebers, 27, took a serrated knife and stabbed himself in the leg. For good measure he then slashed his own face and stomach.

Mr Siebers then told the video store in Denver, Colorado, that he had been attacked by three men dressed in black on his way to work.

After stabbing himself, he was hospitalised with a deep puncture wound to his lower leg.

But his ploy sparked a large police manhunt with officers and sniffer dogs combing the streets for his attacker.

CCTV near where the incident was supposed to have taken place showed no attack and, after repeated questioning, Mr Siebers eventually admitted that he had made it up to get out of work.

He has been charged with false reporting and obstructing police.

Categories
Life The Current Situation

I Do Not Think That Word Means What Fox News Thinks It Means

Clipping from Fox News site: "GOP SWEEP: McDonnell cruises to victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race as Christie upsets incumbent Gov. Corzine in New Jersey; Democrat Owens takes closely watched NY congressional seat."

Two out of three races is pretty good, but it’s not a sweep.

Categories
Life

Algoma University’s Unusual Ads

I saw these posters for Algoma University yesterday:

algoma posters

There’s always been an implicit promise of freedom in going away to university, but this is the first time I can recall where it’s been used as an actual selling point.

I don’t think that this campaign is a good idea. Algoma’s got some things going for it – as a techie, I’m aware of their $6 million technology wing and game development courses. I think that any good qualities that Algoma may have are tarnished by these ads’ “Live the dream — No curfews! Dress like a skank!” message. In trying to hit 18 or 19 year-olds yearning to break free from their parents where they live, they’re cheapening the school’s image and the value of an Algoma degree.

What do you think?