Hula Hoop!

Shortly after starting a series of yoga classes at Studios Vert Prana back in November,  I wanted to try a hula hoop class.  How could I not be tempted?  Seeing the colorful hoops on the walls around the studio, I figured it would be a fun sport to try.  As soon as the Introduction to Hula Hoop class was announced, I signed up for what became my big Adventure in Montreal for February 2012.

First, this is not the hula hooping you remember as a kid.  It's more like what you would see a gymnast or an acrobat do... once we learn how to do those moves.  The hoops are weighted -- the heavier ones being better for beginners because the hoop turns slower.  Also, we aren't just hooping around our waists.  Already in the first class, we were hooping around our necks and hands!

I must confess - I loved to hula hoop when I was a little kid.  I remember participating in a "rodeo" event in gym class in Grade 1 or 2.  One of the events was hula hooping, but it had some "rodeo" name instead.  I practiced for weeks in advance of the big event and, if I remember correctly, it paid off.  I won a ribbon!  Still, I was a bit nervous at the start of the first class.  It's been over 30 years, would I still remember how to hula hoop?  My body is quite a bit curvier than when I was six or seven and it certainly doesn't move the same way. 

With the first spin of the hoop, it all came back.  I was happily hooping at my first attempt.  The weight on the hoop does help... and work the abs.  After a couple of minutes, I understood why it's a great workout for the mid-section.  In less than five minutes, our instructor started to challenge us:  do a 360 turn in the same direction as the hoop, do a 360 turn in the opposite direction, walk across the room while hooping, walk backwards across the room while hooping.  Fortunately, it's hard not to have fun, so everyone was smiling and laughing as we were trying to figure it all out.  We then progressed to spinning the hoop around our necks (that takes getting used to!), vertically around our hand, horizontally around our hand above our heads, and switching hands in both situations.  Finally, we wrapped up with a move I still haven't figured out completely: moving the hoop from spinning around my hand above my head to spinning around my neck (all while the hoop keeps spinning). 

Unfortunately, I missed the 2nd class due to a 24-hour bug and I certainly felt the missing week on my 3rd class.  By the end of the 4th class, I can spin the hoop around my knees, switch hands behind my back and raise the hoop from my waist to above my head and back to my waist all while keeping it spinning.  The last move is called the Corkscrew.  Didn't quite get good enough to do the Vortex, though.  We even learned how to step through a hoop vertically spinning on our hands, but I definitely need more practice with that move.

Oh, yeah, and all the instruction was in French :)

Some friends have been bugging me for a video of my hula hooping adventure.  Yeah, right.  Instead, I'll share this video I found on YouTube that shows what the Corkscrew is.  She makes it look easy.  It took me two classes to really figure it out.

Renewing My Love Affair With Montreal

Back in September, I finally got around to doing one of the items on my Montreal bucket list:  cycle along the Lachine canal from Old Montreal to Dorval.  I hadn't ridden my bike in years, so I was a bit shaky at the start, but as my confidence increased I remembered how much fun it was to feel the wind in my face as I passed through the Old Port to Griffintown and so on.  It was also the day I decided to renew my love affair with Montreal.

For most of 2011 I wasn't sure I would be staying in Montreal.  While I like living in Montreal, the work culture does not always align with my values.  At the end of September, though, it looked like I would be getting a new job in Montreal, so I knew I would be staying for while.  Plus,  a couple of friends were moving to the city and their excitement was already starting to rub off on me.  I remember how much fun I had when I first moved to Montreal.  There is so much to see, do and experience here and it's all easily accessible.  With respect to my social and personal life, this is the best city in which I have ever lived.  It's the only major city where I've lived where I can randomly run into someone I know (and don't work with) while walking down the street or riding the metro.

So, to renew my love affair with Montreal in 2012, I will do more of the following things I love to do here:

• Embrace winter (if it ever comes).  Go skating, tobogganing, maybe even snowshoeing - at least once a week.  Find and enjoy more tea or hot chocolate.
• Embrace summer (when it comes).  Find and enjoy new terrasses.  Eat outside on my own. Finally attend a show at the Just For Laughs festival.  Spend time at the Jazz Festival.  Have a picnic in a park.  Watch the fireworks from Jacques Cartier bridge.  Find and enjoy more shop-made ice cream.
• Walk or ride my bike just for the fun of it.  I got a bike bell in Amsterdam.  I should use it :)
• More solo street photography (outside of my monthly MEETin photo walks).
• Go to Jean Talon or Atwater market every week.
• Go to the Botanical Gardens (my favorite) or some other park once a month.
• Visit museums.  We have A LOT of museums in Montreal and admission is inexpensive.  Hmmm... I really should get an Access Montreal card.
• Explore more restaurants, especially in my own neighbourhood and around work.
• Wear fashionable clothes.  Yes, I like living in a city where I can dress nicely.  Now if I only worked in an industry that didn't think I had a job interview or a hot date every time I dressed up...

With all these plans for adventures in Montreal, I really should revive this blog and share my stories again.  My professional blog will get more attention, so I'll try to update this one once a month.

Happy 2012 everyone!

Power Memoire

Since starting my professional blog on WordPress, I have not been investing any effort on my personal blog.  It's also a good indication on what has been going on in my life the past year - mostly just work and home with some travel and a bit of a social life thrown in.  However, I couldn't resist yesterday's challenge on the Daily Post blog from the folks at WordPress.com:  Write a power sentence for every year of your life.  With a house full of guests snoring away while I write, Sunday morning is a good time to reflect.  So, here it goes:

1. Came into this world with copper red hair and moved to the town where I grew up.
2. Discovered a love of music and an irrational fear of showers and car washes.  (As I got older, the love grew and the fear thankfully disappeared.)
3. A series of very good things: parents divorced, moved back into the house where I would grow up, and learned to speak English at day care.
4. I had enough pennies because I saved them, thank you very much.
5. Had the best day care teacher ever, who taught and challenged me to read 100 books.
6. Helped my friends learn to read.
7. Started school and loved it.
8. Making and keeping friends was more complicated than I had thought.
9. Visited my grandmother in Germany for the first time and traveled to Majorca.
10. Got straight A's and was then challenged to maintain those marks.
11. Mom opened her own real estate office and introduced me to the world of business.
12. Got really good at shooting hoops.
13. Inspired by Gordon Korman, I wrote my first book! (My book is still in my filing cabinet, though.)
14. Started high school and was a little less bored.
15. 3-1/2 week tour of Europe with my mom.
16. If you like technology and you're good at math and science, you could get a full scholarship - hell, yeah, I'll become an Engineer!
17. Growing up in a small, rural town made getting my driver's license and first car a major step forward for my independence.
18. It was all about graduating high school and moving on.
19. Moved across the country and started University.
20. Decided that no matter how hard I studied, I wasn't going to have the same marks I had in high school, so I would try having a life instead.
21. Fell in love, or at least I thought so at the time.
22. Got work (school)/life balance right and succeeded at both... at least until graduation.
23. Moved to Toronto and started my first job, which is still influencing me today.
24. Discovered physical chemistry with a young man who treated me like his queen.
25. 154 hours of overtime in the snowiest January Toronto had ever seen - time to go find my fame and fortune elsewhere.
26. Moved to California, where I started my second job, and rediscovered work/life balance for awhile.
27. Went back to school and truly appreciated it.
28. Fatefully fell in love with the man who became my husband.
29. Learned to ignore the "shoulds" while planning the wedding.
30. Got married, changed jobs, moved back to Canada and was part of something that can be found in the Guinness Book of World records.
31. Traveled the world while trying to focus on buying and settling in our first home.
32. Joined the video game industry and rebuilt my professional confidence.
33. Really learned what being a manager is all about... the hard way.
34. Separation knocked me on my butt, but I still moved to Montreal for me.
35. Properly dated my husband for the entire year and learned to understand him a lot better.
36. A few months of being Mrs. Awesome, both professionally and personally.
37. Patiently trying to make the best out of difficult situations.

Not bad for only one sentence per year.  I'm only 3 months into my 38th year, so we'll have to see.  (For those of you paying attention, there is no year 0, so that means I'm only 37.)

The Sound of Om

I've been thinking about restarting my blog for awhile. Two friends recently started blogging (links on the right), giving me an extra push to get back to my own. It's a sunny Easter weekend, so there is no better time.

I returned to a regular yoga practice in late January and I'm slowly finding my way back to the zen, strength and flexibility that it provides.  I attend a Level 1/2 Ashtanga flow class every Sunday morning and I try to catch a class one evening a week after work.  Each class always starts and ends with the group "Om", followed by a short chant.  After a couple of weeks of this routine, I noticed that each class quickly reaches a natural harmony and each class chants "Om" in a different key.   It gives me goosebumps!  Since the instructor usually starts off the chant, I first thought the key was the key of their voice and the rest of us just naturally matched it.  However, after several Sunday morning classes with the same instructor, it's clear that's not the case.   Of course, if the class has more male baritones or female sopranos, it has an effect on the final harmony.

Om is believed to be the basic sound of the world, resonating throughout the body so that it penetrates to the centre of one's being.   If that's really the case, then the key reflects the unique sound of our unique collective world that day.   It's not just the unique combination of voices coming to class that day, it's also a unique reflection on the day.  In the dark, cold evenings of late January/early February, the harmonies were deeper, darker and likely on the flat side.   By listening to the chants of a yoga class, you can tell if the group has mostly had good days or bad days.  These observations aren't profound; it's the observation itself that I find fascinating.  It's the aural equivalent of stopping to smell the roses.  I am enjoying the fact that I am taking a moment in my day to observe and reflect on something as simple as the sound of Om.

It's also the act of these observations that is inspiring me to return to my blog.  Most of 2009 was documented in photos, which I shared with friends on Facebook and unconnected family members with a photo calendar.  After taking SO many photos in the past year, I find that my passion for it is waning as my photographs return to being snapshots.   Plus, photography is not an outlet for all my creativity.  A picture may be a thousand words, but some thoughts need words, not pictures, to express.   So, along with finding a new balance in my life with yoga in 2010, I will also work on finding a balance between my written and visual creativity.   For Christmas, I got a copy of Wreck This Journal.  So far it's been sitting on my nightstand, but I promise to completely wreck that journal with creativity before the end of the year.

It will be a fun journey :)

Driving Lessons

My vacation in Crete was the first time I've driven in a country outside of Canada/USA. Life on the island is slow and Cretans are very laid back... until they get behind the wheel of a car. Seriously, Montreal drivers are quite relaxed in comparison. As a result, learning the local driving customs was quite an adventure.

Lesson 1: Stop signs are at the end of highway on-ramps
In some North American cities, some highway on-ramps have lights at the end to control the flow of traffic during rush hour. Other than that, we generally use on-ramps to gradually increase speed so we can merge at the speed of traffic on the highway. That's not the case in Crete, as I learned coming out of the airport. There was a stop sign right where the ramp met the highway, resulting in a thorough test of my car's brakes. Why was there a stop sign? A perfect segue to Lesson 2...

Lesson 2: The wide paved shoulders are there for a reason
The major highway has paved shoulders wide enough for a small car to consider it a lane. That's because you are expected to drive on it. Whenever a car comes up behind you, you're expected to drive on the the shoulder and let the other car pass. If you don't, expect the car behind you to flash his lights to let you know that you should move over. Cretan drivers will pass, even on winding roads with blind corners, so you're better off using that paved shoulder.


Lesson 3: Drive behind a local to learn the customs
After figuring out the first two lessons, I decided to stay behind a local driver and do whatever they did. By doing that, I learned to stay close to or drive half on the shoulder, signaling turns is optional, and one lane can become three lanes. I also learned that the real speed limit is quite different than posted... and not always faster.


Lesson 4: Traffic lights are NOT on the other side of the intersection
Unfortunately, the local I was following turned off the road right before my first traffic light. I was the first car at the intersection and stopped where I normally would. Then I realized that the traffic light was over my head and slightly behind me. In North America the traffic lights are usually on the other side of the intersection. Not so in Crete. Luckily I was able to see the glow of the traffic light beside me and go at the appropriate time.

A little closer to home, I decided to become a member of Communauto. It's a car sharing service like Zip Car and Auto Share in Vancouver/Toronto. For a security deposit and a small annual fee, I can "rent" cars for as short as a couple of hours to run errands. There is a charge per hour and per kilometer that covers maintenance, gas and insurance. Considering I don't need to drive much in Montreal, I think this is a better option than buying a car.

Geek Confessions

Because I haven't blogged much this year, I'm going to depart from my more-or-less chronological updates. Clearly I'm not about to confess that I am a blogging geek. I would have to do much more writing, and reading, to be a blog geek. I am a photography geek, especially since I got the digital SLR camera, but that's hardly news.

My first confession is that I have recently discovered that I am a Metro geek. It took me by surprise, really. It started with organizing a MEETin photo "walk" through the Montreal Metro at the beginning of April. Each station is different and many of them also have major art installations. Because of that, I've wanted to take pictures in the Metro since I moved to Montreal. When I set up the event, I was expecting only a handful of my photography friends to come along. To my delight, eight people came out to the event and several more, who couldn't make it, are regularly hinting that I should set up another event soon. We only saw and photographed about a third of Montreal's network. I will be setting up a follow-on event or two. I do need to get permission from the STM (Metro authorities).



As I was researching my vacation, I read that Athens Metro, built for the 2004 Olympics, is also a museum of the antiquities found while digging the tunnels. So, I put the Metro on my must-see list. Here's the confession: I was positively excited when I went down into the Metro to ride one stop to the Acropolis. As advertised, there were all sorts of antiquities displayed and integrated into the very modern stations. In all, I saw three stations: Syntagma, Acropolis, and Monastiraki. All the stations were very clean, spacious, well laid-out with clear signage. I highly recommend the experience.



My next confession involves my Engineering education. I never thought it would come in useful while vacationing in Greece. All the Greek symbols I learned for various formulas and constants have come in very handy to decipher signs and other writings. Most road signs are both in English and Greek, but not ALL signs are bilingual. Being able to decipher Greek letters, though, doesn't mean I know what the words mean. Though I do have to remind myself when I see on road signs the letter "m" in Greek, which usually stands for "micro" in scientific symbols, that it means "metres" not "microns".

Where did my work/life balance go?

So, my December post didn't actually get done until the end of January. Now my January post is being written mid, er, late February... er, early March (the date of the post is when I started writing). Last year I would have lots of adventures in and around Montreal to share and explain the relative silence on my blog. This year, work has once again taken over too much of my life. Why do I keep winding up here?

Annual performance evaluations consumed a big portion of December and January. The process started late and everything was done in a rush. Considering I have over 35 employees and I take evaluations and compensation seriously, the rush was intense. We're also feeling the global economic backdrop, so the raise and bonus discussions were not exactly fun. Most of my team understood why the raises and bonuses were small, but there were a few who didn't. Fortunately, I have enough "it could be worse" stories from my days in the telecom downturn.

The final stretches of shipping a game are usually intense. Strategic planning and organizational changes at the same time don't help. I think my current role has changed two or three times over the past few weeks. Add in a meeting or two from hell and it's been a fun February.

Probably the most interesting work adventures were the customer visits. One visit prompted a lesson in Japanese business etiquette. The lessons were interesting, especially since the coach perfectly represented Japanese culture. The visitors wound up being a mix of traditional Japanese and the Japanese gaming culture. There was no way our coach could have covered the latter.

As much as my life has been absorbed by work, I have had some fun. Friends have entertained at home mainly, so there have been fewer restaurant outings. I was introduced to a good Indian restaurant downtown and a great Mexican restaurant around the corner from my place. The MEETin gang went ice skating in the Old Port and snowshoeing at night on Mont Royal. Just this past week, a few of us attended a play in an old church literally behind the building where I work. The German language group has been getting more active, with a movie night in January and a great e-meeting in February. Yes, resurrecting my German has been messing with relearning French. I do have a great French teacher right now and I'm starting to think my French is making some progress.

When things get stressful at work, I like to have something fun to look forward to, so I'm planning a vacation in May. I'll write more details as things firm up. Meanwhile, my mission in March is to get my life more in balance. Wish me luck!