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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Making the best of it

Even though the course is less than stellar, and I will not walk away with great inspirations about being a better leader to a remote team (like I'd hoped), I am still thankful for:
- a lovely conversation over pork chops and steak with a kindred spirit and fairly new friend
- an evening walk in the drizzly rain
- the B&B host who brings me tea while I'm sitting at the computer
- the two people I share breakfast with - the business man with a heart of gold, and the Spanish girl studying English as a second language
- the realization that I am a better leader than I thought because I already know most of the stuff I'm here to learn
- a wander in Kensington Market complete with a bowl of veg curry at the funky Urban Herbivore
- dim sum with one of my oldest (by that I mean "longest") friends in the world
- the a-ha moment when I realized that I could do a better job of facilitating this workshop than the person who's getting paid big bucks to do it
- an hour to waste time in Timbuktu, one of my favourite stores EVER
- an evening with a bottle of wine, two blue wine glasses, Wallace and Gromit, some cheap snacks, and my friend Laurel
- some funky doodle art - the only thing I seem to be accomplishing at the workshop
- thankfulness that I don't have to make decisions like "whether to do off-shore outsourcing", like one section of the workshop is teaching and like so many in the course have to do
- wandering into a Chinese bakery for a pastry and cup of tea, and realizing I've stumbled on the Chinese version of Cheers in the heart of Chinatown
- an hour in a comfy chair in front of a big window on the second floor of a bookstore
- wandering through the conservatory and breathing deeply of the many smells of green
- subways, cable cars, people watching, hustling, bustling downtown urban life
- birds on a wire, and other photo-worthy moments
- time to write, time to zone out in front of a television, time to wander
- watching a great movie all by myself in a cheap theatre
- looking forward to going home to my family

2 comments:

Pamela said...

makes me wish I'd been invited along. But then of course -- you wouldn't have been alone. ha.

Wallace & Gromit, I love them.

Anvilcloud said...

You certainly did make the best of it. Too bad about the course though. It happens.