Category: Anecdotes
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Luxury Brands and Services Are Targeting the HENRYs
As the Uber driver dropped us off, I wondered if we had the address wrong. We were looking for the entrance to a cocktail bar that my daughter had categorized as “secret.” My wife and I were back in San Francisco for the long weekend. The plan was to have a couple of pre-dinner drinks…
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Don’t Walk Left – A Perspective on Homelessness
I could see her from a distance. For that matter, I wasn’t sure that it was a woman until she briefly lifted her head to tuck her straggly hair back behind her ear. She didn’t look a lot older than my daughter. She was bent over the garbage bin by the roadside. Looking for food,…
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Scotland: Beyond Single Malts, Shortbread, and Scarves
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” Robert Louis Stevenson. My Scotland experience started the minute I hopped onto a taxi outside Edinburgh airport. “The Glasshouse Hotel please,” I told the driver as I settled into the backseat of the cab. “Ach aye,” came the reply. As he started…
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San Francisco – A City of Parties, Parks, and Protests
The vestiges of the hippie movement are everywhere as I walk down Haight Street in San Francisco. It’s the 41st Haight-Ashbury Street Fair — the annual fair where people come together to remember and celebrate the “Summer of Love.” Pop-up stores peddle psychedelic wear and trinkets to middle-aged tourists who are here to relive the…
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When a Blast Rocks Your Neighbourhood
When I tweeted out to 680 News that there was an unusual level of police activity at the nearby plaza, I didn’t expect it to be anything serious. It was around 11:00 PM when all the commotion caught my attention. For a few minutes, I wondered whether there had been an accident at the Bombay…
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Budapest – A Fascinating Tale of Two Towns
Budapest is a tale of two towns, Buda and Pest. Looking down at Pest from the Buda side is like old money looking down on the nouveau riche. To its residents, Buda is the classier side of the city. After all, the Buda Castle and many of the city’s attractions such as Fisherman’s Bastion and…
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Walking Prague – A Food Tour Worth the Money
Prague is a bit like Toronto. Everyone loves hockey and beer. But, the resemblance sort of ends there. Toronto is newish and modern. Everything in Prague is ancient. For instance, the “Old Town” in Prague dates back to the 9th century, and, the “New Town,” in case you are wondering, was established in the year…
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Bye-Bye Byron – A Matter of Life and Death
It turned out to be a matter of life and death… “You should have won that match,” I said, as Byron came off the squash court. He had just wrapped up a closely-contested house-league match in which he lost 2–3 to an opponent who I felt was less skilled than him. I was early for…
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A computer scam and my momentary lapse of reason
The instant I clicked on the attachment, I realized that I should not have. I was researching for my next blog post when the popup notification in the corner of my computer screen showed that I had a message on Facebook Messenger. It was from a friend that I regularly played squash with. It read:…
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Falling off a ladder – When adversity strikes
Last week my sister-in-law fell off a ladder. It wasn’t a “ha! ha! you fell down,” kind of fall. As the stabilizing bar on the aluminium step ladder gave way, she fell one way while her limbs, pinned under the ladder, went the other. She ended up in a hospital “Emergency” where she remained in…