Category: Life & Times
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Houston Floods – We Have a Problem!
As I watched on TV the devastation caused by Category 4 Hurricane, Harvey, I felt compelled to write this post. I have a personal connection to Houston. My daughter lived there for a few years and I enjoyed visiting the city. It is inconceivable to me that with all the financial, technological, and people resources…
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Memoirs of an Only Child
Recently I caught up with a few of my mates and the conversation turned to siblings. Interestingly, the group had a mix of sibling hierarchies. Some were firstborns, a few in the middle, and others the youngest. True to the law of sibling hierarchy, the firstborns were more assertive – the ‘enforcer’ type, the middle…
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Charlie Gard, an epilogue
I waited a couple of weeks to gather my thoughts before I wrote this post. When Charlie Gard passed away, I felt numb relief. Living with uncertainty, constantly balancing on the precipice of life and death, is exhausting. Charlie’s parents fought so hard for him — living off the fumes of hope. It sickens me…
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Won’t You Be My Neighbour?
The first evening it happened I dismissed it as a one-off. My neighbours with whom I shared an adjacent wall in our townhome complex obviously had some company over and were enjoying what sounded like a Wii-type interactive physical game that made a lot of noise. Live and let live, I initially thought. I knew…
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Old habits die hard
“Do you eat it raw?” The question came from the portly gentleman who was sitting across from me at the table. It was directed at Olson, the attendee from Minnesota. There were eight of us gathered in a hotel bar in Atlanta, GA. Each of us represented a different company and had flown in from…
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A Story About My Expensive Watch
A few months ago, my wife decided to get me an expensive watch. Until then, I had not owned a watch of any significant value. I had been considering buying a new watch since the two I had were looking tired. Minimalism was far from my mind at that time. As for watches, I have…
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Of breathalyzers and false positives…
At first, I thought that there had been an accident. As I inched my way up the line to the police officer with the flashlight, I realized that I was caught in a RIDE spot check – an Ontario sobriety testing program designed to catch drivers driving under the influence of alcohol. There were flashing…
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Why Charlie Gard’s life matters
Charlie Gard passed away on July 28, 2017. Click here to read Charlie Gard, an epilogue. My original post is shown below. By the time you read this post, Charlie Gard may have been taken off life-support. Pope Francis and Donald Trump actually agree on something – Charlie Gard’s right to live. Strange are the…
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Canada 150 – Things I love about Canada.
From the perspective of a Torontonian… I am not sure when it happened. I first realized it while I was sitting in a restaurant in Kerala, India. “I am ready to go home,” I told my wife as we were waiting for our dessert. We had been vacationing for nearly a month. “You mean…” her…
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Work-life balance – No longer one or the other, it’s both
My mobile phone buzzes, cajoling me to pick it up. I look up at the clock on the cable set-top box, the time is 11:32 PM. I ignore the phone and go back to the TV. It’s Friday night, I am binge-watching the new version of Lincoln Lawyer with my wife. The phone vibrates again.…