Is “Not the Right Time” A Valid Argument?

June 26th, 2009 • Comments 2009 Write-off, Personal

Just wanted to toss a quick thought out there that’s been on my mind of late. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned about life, it’s that a successful life is dependent largely on being at the right place at the right time. That really leaves a lot of things out of your control – or at least, what you perceive to be out of your control.

Let me share a personal anecdote. Recently, I was presented with an offer to relocate to a city that I am planning on living in at some point in my life. 3 or 4 months ago, had I seen this offer, I would’ve accepted it in a heartbeat, and dealt with the minor issues that it would’ve brought up at the point. Now, however, the responsibilities didn’t seem in line with what I’m looking for, I recently got involved in a new venture that I wanted to put some time into, and it just didn’t seem right to leave the community here, and the social capital (or “social capital”) that I’ve built up. It took some thinking about, but in the end, I feel I made the right decision – at least, for now.

However, I had the decision to make. While I made the “it’s not the right time” argument, it was completely under my control, and I could’ve chosen to do it if I wanted to. It’s important to recognize that timing won’t always be ideal, but that alone shouldn’t rule out making a decision one way or the other. Whether it’s with your business or with your personal life, it’s important that you make what you perceive to be the best decision in your life. I suppose it’s all part of the “live in the moment” philosophy that I like to preach.

Sometimes that means making decisions that hurt those around you. Sometimes that means being selfish. Those questions, though, are what you need to answer, not “is it the right time?” – if you wait around for the right time, it’ll never come. It’s such a subjective concept that I think you can always come up with reasons why it’s not the right time – or why it is.

Food for thought, anyway. What are your thoughts on timing, and how it works in life?

So What Does Cutting Bread and Pasta From Your Diet Do?

June 24th, 2009 • Comments 2009 Write-off, Personal

Yesterday, Emma detailed her day in pictures as part of the Great Write-off of 2009. We’re more than halfway done now!

This week, I’m trying an experiment. Due to long hours and a general sense of apathy, probably 95% of my meals consist of some sort of pasta or bread-based products. Subway is a mainstay of my diet, and I don’t do a lot of cooking past pasta (hah, wordplay) in my place. Eating out while trying not to break the bank for every meal does present itself with limiting options. In addition, I snack a ton on top of that – I have an insatiable sweet tooth that probably corresponds to the fact that my elementary school in Grade 7 and 8 was directly beside a then-Becker’s, and it corresponded with my first source of income from a paper route. The snacking is bad enough for my diet without all the heavy carbs on top of it.

In addition, this is my least active summer thus far. That may change without much effort due to some sports leagues I have coming up, but being stuck at my desk for 10+ hours a day has caused my ordinarily skinny body to start to round out. (At this point, I realize that I’m seriously impacting my dating prospects, but hey, work’s doing that well enough as is by taking up most of my time. I swear it’s not me.) So, I wanted to try something. Not only was I going to make an effort to eat healthier this week and exercise more, I also wanted to cut out all bread and pasta from my diet this week. I started this Sunday afternoon, and have had 4 days of it under my belt.

So, what’s the result? While there aren’t likely any noticeable physical results yet (let’s face it, I am still fairly skinny), I’m feeling a LOT better. Salads and parfaits are surprisingly more satisfying than I remember, and I have more energy than I should, given that I’ve been up at 5:45 every day this week. I’ve also avoided the mid-afternoon lull, where I normally have to resort to heavily caffeinated drinks to avoid QWERTY-face. (Commonly caused by falling asleep at my desk.) I’ve rediscovered my love for the formerly-named Lettuce Eatery (now Freshii), discovered an awesome salad as Fusaro’s, and rekindled my enjoyment of chicken and fish. Although I haven’t quite stayed away from all snacks (thanks, Satish), I’m doing a ton better, and it’s made a noticeable difference in my demeanor, at least.

If you’re feeling a little slow in the afternoon, or in general, examine the heavy carbs that you’re eating. I do find that it makes a big difference in these warm months.

It may even be enough to keep me away from Subway – a bold statement, given that I once ate at Subway 14 days in a row, and 25 days out of 30. (yes, I kept track.)

CityChase 2009 – My Toronto #1 Experience. In a Word, Amazing

June 20th, 2009 • Comments 2009 Write-off, Personal

Today I participated in the CityChase Toronto #1 event with Jason, a long-time friend. Some background: CityChase is based on the Amazing Race concept, where teams of two compete to complete 10 goals (out of a list of 40) in the fastest time possible. The goals are located all over the city, and you don’t know where they’ll be beforehand; you have to figure that out by a clue sheet which you receive at the start of the event. Contestants are allowed to run, walk, or take public transit, but no wheels or private transit are allowed.

I’ll be honest, before Jason messaged me last week asking if I wanted to participate in the event, I hadn’t ever heard of it. However, I had nothing planned for today, and said “sure, why not.” As the week unfolded and I got more details, I was both intimidated and excited for today. So how did it go?

Holy awesome.

It strongly exceeded anything I had ever thought of the event, and we bettered what our personal goal was, it being our first CityChase and all. I think it also helped us bond a little more; perhaps for better or worse. Figured I’d share what our personal experience was and how the day unfolded.

The day kicked off when I rolled into Metro Hall (the event start/finish line) shortly after 8:00 to meet Jason, operating on 1 Red Bull (sugar-free, natch) and about 4 hours of sleep, due to the decision I made last night to watch the first Transformers movie. Jay was already energetic and ready to go; I’m not sure that I was quite at the same level yet. After a quick Tim Horton’s breakfast and some strategizing, we gathered with the rest of the racers for the kickoff meeting. We were team 2312, Awesome Sauce, thanks to Jason’s creativity. At the kickoff, we ran into my buddy Andrew and his friend Geoff, who were a team, and their friends Diane and Michela (whose name I’m sure I’ve butchered), and got a little friendly competition going. After a speech from the event founder, we were told how to get our clue sheets – it was a scavenger hunt, to the chagrin of a few in the crowd. (The groans could be easily heard.) After pairing up with another team, as per the rules of the hunt, we managed to gather 6 of the 9 required items within about 15 minutes. We got: 1 penny from each of the 70s, 80s and 90s, the time of the next Air Canada flight to Quebec City (the location of national finals this year), a picture of two team members with their clothes completely backwards, a Molson bottle label, a page of news from a newspaper from Thursday, and the bible chapter and verse that the founder quoted during his opening speech. (Things we didn’t do? Recite the first verse and chorus of Nickelback’s “If Today Was Your Last Day,” take a picture with at least two people mooning, one of whom must be a non-participant, and apply a red Mitsubishi mark somewhere on a participant’s body.)

Clue sheet in hand, we headed off to the Rees Street Slip for our first challenge. Jason and I had raised $50 in donations beforehand for Right to Play, the event charity, so we already got our first ChasePoint credited to us without having to do anything. Awesome! The first task we had to do was to get into a pair of kayaks tied together, and maneuver our way through a short slalom course in the water. Other than getting soaked when I first got into my kayak – I thought it was going to tip – and Jason’s occasional overexuberant paddling, we managed to get through it with pretty much no problem. ChasePoint #2 in the bag!

Following this, we returned back to Metro Hall to do an event called Eight Legs or None, but they weren’t ready for us – even though we were there right when that station was supposed to open. After arguing to try to get the free ChasePoint, we settled for a 10 minute time deduction instead. From there it was to the Boxing Loft, for what was easily our most strenuous physical activity of the day: 5 two-minute workouts based around boxing. We paddled imaginary bicycles and did pushups; skipped rope and did burpees, bobbed and weaved under a suspended rope, shadow-boxed with dumbbells (where I’m sure Jason got tired of hearing me say “Keep those hands up,” due to the fact that if either dropped our hands, we both had to do 10 pushups. I was already about 45 or 50 pushups in at that point, I had no desire to do any more), and finally, spent our last 2 minutes taking our frustrations out on punching bags. Exhausted, we collected our stamp, and had ChasePoint #3 in the bag. I was worn out enough that I was struggling to drink from my water bottle, but we persevered on to our next task.

Arriving back at Eight Legs or None, we were pleasantly surprised to see no line-up – and less pleasantly surprised to learn that we were dealing with a tarantula and a snake – hence the name. A flip of the coin determined which we had to put on our bodies. Jason flipped first and got tails – which meant that he had to have the tarantula on his bare stomach for 30 seconds. I wanted nothing to do with that tarantula, so I was pleased when I flipped heads, and had to put an 8-foot snake on my shoulders for 30 seconds. I’ve had a 30-foot boa constrictor on my shoulders before, so this badboy was nothing. Completing our tasks concurrently, we successfully reached ChasePoint #4, after about an hour and a half involved in the contest thus far.

At this point, our lovely operators Becky and Dave, who were helping us scout out locations, e-mailed us with our remaining route, so we went right to it. ChasePoint #5 was located at Canyon Creek on Front Street. We discovered that one of us – me – would be blindfolded and have to smell 6 items and taste 6 items and correctly identify all 12 of them. For each one I got wrong, Jason had to eat a live cricket. After joking that I’d get them all wrong, much to Jason’s dismay, I set to work. I got 5 out of 6 on the taste test – nailing the balsamic vinaigrette but missing garlic, of all things, but only ended up with 3 of 6 on the smell test. I identified all of the alcoholic scents – red wine, white wine and tequila – but totally whiffed on the other three. Not a huge surprise, but it meant Jason would have to eat 4 crickets. I felt a little sheepish until I saw that the two groups that went in front of me had to eat 7 and 8 respectively. After a quick ingenious thought – to drop the crickets in a glass of water and chug the mixture – we successfully completed our challenge and got our 5th ChasePoint. Jason complained of feeling a little queasy for the remainder of the day; I suppose I can’t blame him. We were just under 2 hours in, and we had 5 ChasePoints, including a bonus. Not bad, but little did we know our best was yet to come.

ChasePoint #6 found us taking the subway up to Trinity Square, which is connected to the Eaton Centre. Hat-tip to the lovely Aussie lady on the subway who confirmed the location of it for us. There, we had to construct a wearable balloon piece of clothing using 3 different balloons. Jason’s old summer camp days came right back to him and I pumped the balloons up while he fashioned a hat in about 30 seconds. He then had to wear it for the rest of the day, which was amazing. 6 ChasePoints down, and we did this one in record time!

ChasePoint #7 was just up the Yonge line at Church and Wellesley, where we had to do a quick photo/video scavenger hunt within a 30 minute timeframe. We checked in at 12:15, got our Blackberry Curve to take pictures/video with, and were off to work. This was honestly one of my favourite moments of the day. I’m not sure whether it was the hot dog vendor we convinced to do the actions to “I’m a Little Teapot” while Jason sang it – she was more into it than he was! – the picture of a temporary tattoo underneath a garbage can, because there was a typo on our clue sheet of taking a picture of a tattoo “below the waste,” or the man that we had Jason share a powerbar with, Lady and the Tramp style, and he ate more than his fair share of the bar. We checked back in at 12:22, a mere 7 minutes after we left; 2 of which were taken up by the SickKids canvasser we did a random act of kindness for. We were one of the quickest groups to finish, and by the fact that we had a lot of amazement over the 7 ChasePoints we had, we knew we were doing well.

ChasePoint #8 found us at the Rogers store on Yorkville Ave, where we found ourselves signing out another Blackberry – a Bold this time – to take shots of pieces of QR code posted in the area. After a bit of struggling with the BeeTagg program – which wasn’t very intuitive – we got our 6 snapshots in and collected ChasePoint #8 – only two to go!

There’s not really a lot I can say that would do ChasePoint #9 justice. After finishing up in Yorkville, we hopped the Bloor subway line to Bathurst, and took the streetcar down to Queen to do our last mandatory ChasePoint, simply entitled Pole Position. That’s right, our team of guys needed to do pole dancing. My back still being a little tender from the poor weather and the boxing workouts, Jason stepped up to learn a quick routine from the pole dance instructor, while I coached. She demonstrated it to him once, and then did so a second time while I filmed her – in the interest of getting the routine so we could review it, of course – while he mimicked his way along. He then said he’d try to get through it right then, without any video review. We only had three chances to get this right, but we didn’t need them; Jason got the dance bang-on the first time. Seeing him do the squat and spread, the Fireman’s Spin, or smack his ass at the end of the routine… well, it was almost too much to handle. Regardless, we had ChasePoint #9 in the books, and only had one left to go – and it was only 1:15 or so, meaning that we had only been out there for 3:15! We were excited, since we had seen past winning scores near 3:30, and we knew that we’d likely exceed our expectations.

ChasePoint #10 was just around the corner – and directly across the street from my office – at the Toronto School of Art. Prior to arriving at this challenge, we had to collect 3 recyclable items, so we arrived with 3 bottles. Perfect choice, as it turned out that we had to create a replica of a famous tower in the world. We randomly drew a model – the name of which I honestly forget; it was P-something Twin Towers – and went to work with our bottles and the supplies that they provided us. After a mash of bottles, glue-dispensers, tape, popsicle sticks and my trusty knife later, we managed to create a reasonable replica of this tower. While I’m not sure our judge totally approved – she kept calling it the “black towers of death” due to the black masking tape we’d used – we were permitted to go through, and collected our 10th ChasePoint. Now, just a quick 2 block sprint to the finish!

… Or not quite a sprint. We were pretty worn out, and half-jogged, half-walked until we arrived back at Metro Hall. A final push – including Jason running through the fountain out front – and we crossed the finish line as the 76th team to finish the race. However, because of our delay earlier in the day at the Eight Legs or None challenge, we had our 10 minute time deduction, leaving us officially at 54th place, with an overall adjusted time of 3:35:45. We were ecstatic to place in the top 10% of all entrants, especially looking around at those who finished near us; a sea of fit, toned bodies, something which Jason and I are not. We travelled roughly 20km today, based on my GPS Tracker – a pretty good jaunt.

We hung around the finish line and recouped, waiting from Andrew and Geoff to come in (they finished a very respectable 137th, without collecting the donation ChasePoint), and then headed over to Montana for a much needed complimentary beverage and some chow. Diane and Michela joined us later; I’m not sure where they finished, but they completed the course in roughly 5 hours. It was a great way to wrap up the event, and what was a very fun day.

So what tips do I have?

• Train for the event! Jason and I both struggled with long-distance cardio, costing ourselves precious minutes. If we were in better shape, we would’ve been in the top 50 easily.
• Get great support. Our two operators, Becky and Dave, helped us whittle down our clue sheet of 40 into a solid route of 10. This definitely saved us time, and we had backup plans in place just in case anything went wrong.
• Get past your fears. Jason had to do a few nasty things today – mostly the luck of the draw – but he fought past them and helped get us ahead of a lot of other groups. Don’t let your fears stop you once you’re at a challenge; just get past it and you’ll be more successful. Competitiveness hides fear, after all.
• Have fun! Regardless of the mediocre weather, or the physical exertion, Jason and I both had an absolute blast today, and would do it again in a heartbeat. It’s a great bonding experience – although Jason suggested it as a first date opportunity for people; something my competitive nature would never let me do if I wanted to see the girl again.

The second Toronto CityChase qualifier is on August 15th – I encourage you to check it out and give it a shot! I know I’m thinking about it, although Jason’s already in it with his sister, so I may be looking for a partner…