WorldWideWaterCooler

We spent the first part of our trip in Chiang Mai, only because it seemed the easiest place to start in terms of available transport options. In hindsight, it was an excellent way to acclimate ourselves to the temperature and customs of Thailand in a slightly cooler and fairly low-pressure environment.

Highlights (because if I don’t reduce this to bullet-esque blips, I’ll never write it):

Chiang Mai Sausage! Regional Delicacy!

Dr. Fish Fish Spa! Tiny fish eat the dead skin off your feet! (Ticklish Neil’s verdict? “I would make a TERRIBLE hippo!” So true my love, so true.)

Street Meat!

Cooking School! Two days, ten dishes, countless chillies, VERY full bellies. A foodie’s dream, we LOVED this part of the trip.

I ate an ant larvae. They have no flavour, but do go “pop” when they burst in your mouth!

Elephants!

Bamboo Rafting. Unremarkable, except to note that shortly after this shot was taken, I had to duck quickly around a large tree branch (or land in the river) and the Canon G9 paid the price. I knocked something loose inside the lens mechanism, and now it doesn’t like to cooperate when retracting.

Next up, things we learned in Chiang Mai and a couple of stories.

When we left on our trip, we were armed with only a bunch of ideas, a guide book, our airline tickets, 1 small backpack each. No checked luggage, no advance bookings.

It was awesome.

Starting the trip, we were expecting the typical mediocre flight, and began to expect the worst when we arrived at the airport to find our airline didn’t have any of the automated check-in kiosks we’ve become so used to. We stood in line for about an hour to finally check in, and our hearts sank a little further when we received boarding passes with row 82 on them. EIGHTY TWO! Do they even make planes that long? Were we sitting on the tailwing?

Turns out 82 is a very good row when you’re in a 747 with EVA Air! They have their airplanes configured so the upper deck of the 747 is still economy class. There are only about 10 rows up there of 3 & 3. There’s plenty of storage, including a bonus space of side-stowage next to the windows, and with so few people it’s really quiet. Score.

If you’re flying from here to Asia, I’ll heartily recommend EVA (hub in Taiwan). The plane was clean and comfortable. The food was highly edible. The service was lovely (especially the attendant who brought us earplugs when there was a screaming child for a few hours) and the price was certainly right.

After an uneventful flight, we landed in Bangkok and found our way to the taxi stand. Our plan was to head to the train station and catch the night train to Chiang Mai to spend the first week of our trip in the North.

We’d done a lot of reading about transport in Thailand, and were ready when the Taxi driver (as expected) didn’t turn on his meter, and tried to take us out of the way to his “friend’s business” to sell us train tickets, instead of to the train station.

We didn’t manage to insist on the meter, and paid about 550 THB for a 300 THB ride (about $7 too much), but we did persevere and insisted on buying our tickets at the train station. Not too bad for our first attempted hosing. And we weren’t taken in again by anyone else.

The train station is very near to the Chinatown area of town, and we had about 5 hours to kill before our train boarded, so we ditched our bags at the luggage holding area and wandered off to explore.

Bangkok, especially Chinatown, is… not for the newbie or the faint of heart. It is busy and loud and chaotic. The sidewalks are covered in food stalls and sidewalk vendors. But don’t walk in the streets, that’s just suicide with the array of trucks, cars, scooters & tuktuks whizzing by in a crazed ballet where lines on the road are just suggestions.

We lasted a few hours in the heat and mayhem, and headed back to the train station to wait the last couple hours before our train left.

The train ride was one of my favourite parts of the trip. The State Railway of Thailand is the longest metre-gauge rail system in the world, and a very efficient and economic way of getting around the country. We booked a 1st-class sleeper car for about $70 for the two of us to make the overnight journey.

We had our own car with a couch that folded up into bunk beds. We had dinner & breakfast service, sheets and pillows delivered to us and collected in the morning. It further solidified my love of rail travel. Don’t worry, that all gets torn apart in a future story.

Next though, our week in Chiang Mai.

My dog ate my door.

No, that is not a type-o or a euphemism or a metaphor.

MY DOG ATE MY DOOR!

We came home from our trip, picked the dog up from the usual dog-sitters, brought her home and carried on with life as usual.

Except suddenly, life “as usual” is not good enough for our dog. She has developed a staggering case of separation anxiety, and on Friday night while we were out she ate a big piece of molding off our front door! (Along with making a huge mess of the room where her food is.) We made sure she wasn’t left for long over the rest of the weekend, and gave her lots of exercise.

It hasn’t helped.

Her anxiety’s been getting steadily worse over the past couple days, and this morning I couldn’t even shower alone. She clawed and whined at the bathroom door until I opened it.

We have no idea what triggered the anxiety. She’s 6.5 years old and has never had a problem before. She’s had plenty of upheaval in her life and has always settled immediately back into a routine without being destructive. She always goes to the same dog-sitters, and she’s been with them for a 3 week vacation before.

The only thing new, is that our dog-sitters now have a dog of their own, and she became quite good friends with that dog while we were away. Does she miss having a buddy SO badly that she can no longer handle being alone? That would be terrible, considering we are not going to get another dog.

Anyone out there had experience with a sudden onset of separation anxiety in their dog? Any suggestions for what to do about it?

I would prefer she stick to eating ice cream.

We are home, mostly recovered from the jetlag, and almost done sorting through the pictures. I shall have vacation tales for you soon!

In the meantime, it looks like an amazing music video was released right around the time we got back. OK GO produced a 2nd video for their single This Too Shall Pass, featuring an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that runs for the duration of the song and was built to sync up to the music with its blerks and borks and crashes and movements.

It’s amazing.

There is a very special place in my heart for Rube Goldberg machines.

When I was in elementary school I was part of a team in a district-wide Rube Goldberg competition. The machine had to start a certain way (activated with one finger I believe), contain at least X steps (I forget how many now – somewhere around 13), and finish by launching a beanbag into the center of a circular target on the floor.

I don’t remember much about the specifics of our machine, except that it finished by launching the beanbag off an old metal-frame foot-pump for blowing up bike tires and soccer balls and the like.

We were a pre-pubescent team of perfectionists, and rigorously tested our machine in my driveway, running it multiple times to confirm the distance it would launch the sample beanbag we were given, and used that distance to measure exactly how far from the edge of the circle we needed to set up the final step of the machine to hit the center target.

Competition day.

We are nervous but confident. We have our beanbag launching precision down to the centimeter.

We confirm the distance and set up our machine. Nervously, one of us hits the “go” button.

Tick. Tock. Smash. Ping. Crash. Swivel. Ping. Pop…. LAUNCH!

Our soft fabric beanbag sails through the air in a graceful arc! We hold our breath as it goes… up, up, up, down, down, down…. BINGO!

The beanbag landed EXACTLY in the center of the target.

The target on the smooth (completely un-like my driveway) polished concrete floor of the de-iced community rink we were in. And slid. Nearly to the other side of the circle.

The highly unqualified (in my oh-so-expert opinion) panel of judges awarded the prize to the much less prepared rinky-dink team from another school whose beanbag haphazardly slid nearest to the target. We got the launching aspect of the competition nailed. Too bad they hadn’t informed us of the curling part. We lost.

And thus I experienced my first lesson in how not to test, and that sometimes those in charge of RFPs don’t know to supply all the required parameters to build something that works, and that sometimes you fail and go away in tears, and if you’re lucky you get to adjust your work and try again another day, but sometimes it means you just lose.

But enough about me. Back to OK GO!

Their machine goes off without a hitch, including the payoff at the end. Please watch, and think of an 8-year-old me and my machine when you do!

post from Neil, because *I* would never be so smug…

But hey, it’s good that your snow will finally stop melting so fast!

dear internets,

thank you for calling! we are off galavanting through Thailand, and can’t take your call.

while we’re away, eat your vegetables, scrub behind your ears, don’t give the housesitter any trouble, and don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!

see you in march!

much love, chez watercooler

This whole formspring thing has generated far more interest than I thought it would.

Questions I’ve answered in the past few weeks include:

What’s on your life to-do list after Thailand?

Is it true that since you moved down to the Coast you have taken up smoking a lot of dope? Why? Do you not worry about the longer term affects?

What are your guilty pleasures, food, TV etc?

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

And about a dozen more.

Click, check out the answers, and ask some more questions!

Was having a conversation with a friend the other day about street food (specifically kebab/donair/shwarma), which eventually lead to discussing how to pronounce “gyro” – is it hero or jai-row?

Of course it’s hero, but most North Americans start out calling it a jai-row until corrected.

By that time of course the word gyro is stuck in my head, and I’m doing this thing where I roll a word around in my mouth until it sounds ridiculous (gyro…. gyroooooo…. gyyyyyyrooooowwwwww…. gyRO!). And the inevitable happens. I start singing the song Holding Out for a Hero in my head.

Except, it’s “Holding Out for a Gyro” – and now it’s Weird Al (because OF COURSE it is), and while I’m not actually composing alternate lyrics to the song, I am directing the music video on my head:

Drunken Weird Al is careening about a busy New York City street on a drunken Saturday night, upsetting food carts of all sorts, looking for the perfect thing to soak up alcohol – nothing else will do, he’s Holding out For a Gyro.

Does anyone else do this?

And by “this” I mean direct music videos in your head, although I’d also be interested if you have drunken Gyro-hunting stories…

Blog posts I started to write and (thankfully) didn’t publish today:

• Why I think you might be an idiot
• Here, let me beat you down with logic
• I don’t care that humans are inherently illogical, I WILL DROWN YOU IN REASON ANYHOW

What can I say, I have a wickedly sore shoulder and a hearty case of didn’t sleep well last night.

But! What I also have is an incredibly tasty lunch. Let me share the recipe with you!

This is my new favorite burger recipe. It sounds like it will please no one, since it has too little meat for the carnivores and too much meat for the vegetarians, but I’m pleasantly surprised with how much I love it every time I make it. Perhaps you will be too.

Meat-and-Grain loaf, burgers, balls
adapted from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters

• 1 lb lean ground beef
• 1 lb raw spinach leaves (blanched, drained, water squeezed out and roughly chopped – feel free to skip this by just buying a packet of frozen spinach and thawing)
• 1 onion chopped fine
• 2-3 cloves garlic pressed, grated or chopped fine
• 2 cups cooked grains (I like it with Millet best, but barley or brown rice also work well)
• Cumin (to taste)
• Cayenne (to taste)
• Salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)
• 1 egg

Put everything in a bowl. Squish about gently with fingers until evenly mixed.

Form into a loaf (in a loaf pan), burger patties (I make 8 large patties with this recipe) or balls of any size.

Bake at 400 F until done (about 30 minutes for burgers)

I love this, because it’s got some extra veggies in it, but still tastes really meaty. The grains soak up the meat-juice as it bakes, so the patties stay moist and the flavour permeates everything.

Try it out! And tell me if you like it. I will probably be much less grumpy by then.

Neil and I are planning on spending about a week of our 20-day vacation soaking up the sun on a Thai beach. Obviously we can’t see and do everything with the time we’ve got, so we’d like to head for one major beach area and stick with it for ultimate relaxation, rather than trying to cover multiple coasts and islands.

Problem is, we can’t decide which of the 3 major beach areas to go to!

So, for all of you who’ve been to the fine Kingdom of Thailand, would like to go, or have heard stories from others who’ve gone, please vote in the poll below: which beach should we aim for?

Our ultimate goal is relaxation. We don’t need cable or internet, though running water and a private, en suite bathroom are mandatory. It would also be great if there were diving and/or snorkeling available, and some areas or trails for nature walks.

We don’t want to be in a tourist trap, but we do demand good food is around, preferably with a few different dining options. They can all be Thai of course; tasting different chef’s interpretations of the local food is what keeps things interesting.

So, let ‘er rip! Where would you go? And even if you don’t have any Thailand-specific advice, what do you look for in a vacation destination?

I saw quite a few people recently tweeting about a bullying article.

If you don’t care to click through, the reader’s digest version is: a cadre of bullies picked on a girl (Phoebe), using the usual teenaged-girl-bully tactics of social pressure, name calling and other psychological barbs. These bullies have apparently not been curtailed, and they occasionally get physical with their abuse. Eventually, in the face of the bullying, 15-year-old Phoebe went home and hanged herself.

So of course the call to action in the article, and the subsequent agreements in comments and the tweets that were circulating the article, is to do something about bullying. Stop the bullies.

Which is all fine and well, and bullies are a pox on society for sure. But if one thing has become obvious in the last few years, it’s that there are increased venues and formats for intimidation, and bullies are exceedingly well-versed in how to use them. In fact, bullies can be more effective than ever, because what else to teenagers have to do besides figure out new and exciting ways to do things their parents haven’t caught on to yet?

So while I’m absolutely in favor of anti-bullying campaigns, I think there’s a huge issue that’s not being addressed enough, especially when it comes to girls: why are we not teaching kids how to cope with bullies?

Teaching coping mechanisms and self-worth is far from an endorsement of bullying. But it’s never too early to teach kids a bit of Emotional Intelligence. They may as well learn early that the only person someone can control is him or herself. Sadly, bullies may never stop, no matter what “anti-bullying” programs are put in place. But teaching kids some self-worth, self-awareness and an innate knowledge that there will always be people who don’t like you and are incredibly mean – but it has to do more with them than you – might help kids like Phoebe start to recognize that death isn’t the only alternative to dealing with a bully.

And I say this is extra important for girls, because girls are much more ruthless with psychological abuse when it comes to bullying. All the more reason to equip girls with the mental tools to cope with it.

So to the commenters and criers out for anti-bullying and teaching kids to act with compassion; I’d implore you not to forget to add teaching some coping skills onto that. I’m awfully skeptical about anyone’s ability to stop bullies. But I think we can instill the tools in our daughters to stop another suicide like Phoebe’s.

This is the latest in a long line of ways I try to manipulate my body into staying in a shape & size that fits into my pants.

The target right now is a pair of Tilley travel pants, purchased just before heading to Morocco 2 years ago.

Two years ago I was in a frenzy, prepping for our imminent wedding, seeing a personal trainer twice weekly and shrinking due partly to stress. Let me advise you, this is NOT when you want to invest in clothing you expect to ever fit into again.

My brother’s fiancee has been recommending clean eating to me for a while now, and out of desperation in terms of fitting into these pants again, I picked up an issue of Clean Eating Magazine, then the book The Eat Clean Diet, Recharged. (For what it’s worth, this post is entirely unsolicited.)

The basics of clean eating are to have 5-6 small meals a day, each one including a serving of lean protein and a serving of complex carbohydrates from fruit/veggies. And 2-4 of those meals should also include some sort of whole-grain starch.

There are of course other elements – natural sweeteners only, including fermented foods (yogurt, keffir, soy) for digestive balance, drinking lots of water/herbal tea, eliminating refined flours, increasing exercise. But the aforementioned 6 meals and their components are at the core of the plan.

I have tried countless other diets and “weight loss/get healthy” plans; weight watchers, body for life, wild rose herbal d-tox. They all fell terribly short. I couldn’t stick to them. Or if I did, I didn’t see results (WW, I’m lookin’ at you!).

Inevitably, the biggest frustration I have with any sort of “diet plan” is that they don’t focus on REAL food. They encourage a whole pantry full of edible food-like substances. Ultimately I get frustrated a) spending money on those, b) feeling uneasy eating them and c) NOT COOKING!

Clean Eating is the exact opposite of that. In fact, were I not quite comfortable around the kitchen, clean eating might be much trickier.

There are recipes to follow, but there is also lots of room for improvisation. It means I can use up what’s in my fridge & pantry pretty easily – reducing waste, sticking with seasonal products. The way I try to cook on a day-to-day basis.

It does take quite a lot of time planning out and prepping 6 meals every evening. The example meal plans are called “cooler” plans, since the only way to ensure you’re eating clean on a day-to-day basis is to pack up a cooler of meals for the day.

I’ve been on this for 3 weeks now and those pants I couldn’t even do up before Christmas, fit again. Along with a whole other section of my wardrobe that didn’t.

I haven’t even been exercising more than normal (weekly yoga, a few other walks during the week – shamefully I have yet to go for a run in 2010), though I have declared it to be “Sober January” – a dry month after the excesses of the holiday season.

Everyone’s got to do what works for them. And I know there are bunches of programs that work for all sorts of people. And I have FINALLY found one that works for me!

If you don’t mind cooking, or eating regularly (I’m pretty happy to stuff my face every 3 hours, I know others see that as a hassle), I can recommend this one. It may work for you too.

The company I work for is in the HR/Recruiting industry, so I find myself floating around a number of online HR forums.

I found this absolute gem this afternoon (via The Business Insider) – if you have any interest in HR or workplace cultures, give it a look:

The company I used to work for was well on its way to fostering a culture like that. Focus on results. Foster innovation. Hire superstars. As far as I know, they are still walking that path. They didn’t always succeed and there were bumps in the road for sure – it’s not easy to maintain that culture of trust and innovation when there is a failing economy raining crap down on everyone’s heads everyday. But they tried. They try.

And I can speak firsthand to what an incredible experience it is working for a company like that. I had trust and freedom from my manager. I was encouraged to innovate. We all worked incredibly hard to get things done, but it never felt (at least to me) like a chore. If the joy in accomplishment and excitement for future projects was any indication, I don’t think anyone felt like it was much of a chore. Of course there were also bad days – it’s not a job if they don’t need to pay you to show up – but the culture as a whole was designed to foster success. I learned more and accomplished more in a little under 2 years there than in the 5 years previous.

The company I work for now is one of the procedure-driven risk-averse companies mentioned in the slide-deck. It’s not bad, but it’s certainly not incredible. Innovation and excellence are more difficult. I manage. And I’m incredibly glad to have had the experience I did. Knowing the importance of not settling into mediocrity keeps me going.

And I hope that these examples of success are what keep driving corporate culture into the future. Every employee should have an experience like that.

I often note that, from a business trends perspective, HR (specifically recruiting) is today where marketing and marketing automation were three years ago.

In marketing & PR the message these days is to not be so afraid of giving up the “command and control” style of push marketing. Because you don’t actually have control anyhow. Giving up control and instead building trust and engagement will be the keys to excellence and success gaining customers.

I hope HR departments and executive boardrooms get the message soon that the same tactics will work for winning excellence & success from employees.

There’s this thing, formspring.

It lets you ask anything you’d like, completely anonymously.

So if there’s anything you ever wanted to know about me and were afraid to ask, it’s now your time to go ahead and get it out!

If you were paying attention in December, you’ll remember that I alluded to some mysterious “thing” that I was tip-toeing around doing.

First things first: I didn’t do it.

“It” was applying to grad school. But not just any grad program, I was going to apply to the Masters of Science in the Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. Yes, that Oxford. I really fell in love with the place after visiting a couple years ago, and I’ve been casually perusing their graduate degree options ever since.

It also doesn’t help that while I have a good job that I enjoy 90% of the time, I used to have an amazing job that I enjoyed 93% of the time (before I was unceremoniously punted from the organization in a round of layoffs). It makes the few less-than-good days at the current job sting that much more. Yes I’m still bitter. I’m trying to let go.

My pattern of disillusionment with the rat race usually winds a course of 1) think back to the heady days of university when life was full of possibility and I could be anything I wanted 2) start investigating grad school 3) take a few steps toward applying before realizing that I am not actually as committed to school as I thought, and it’s really just me working through an escape plan. (See: LSAT test-taking days of 2006.)

I heard a great quote once by the current CEO of Yahoo! that goes something like “Don’t be afraid of risk and change, just make sure you’re running toward something rather than away from something else.

The MSc at OII still sounds like an amazing program that actually follows the work I did for my undergrad communications degree quite well, and absolutely scratches every curious academic itch I’ve ever had. But right now applying is more about running away than running toward.

I could still get a graduate degree some day. But right now it doesn’t line up with any of the goals I’ve got for my life. Every time I go back to the application, I feel a bit of pause – what will this do to financial plans? family plans? and what on earth would I do after I finish? I certainly do not want a life in academia or policy – so where does this take me?

Right now it takes me back to a reality check. Life, as it is, is good. And full of opportunities. I just need to remind myself to run toward them because they’re great all on their own, and not because I’m running away from something else.