The Penalty Box

Last year, I lamented that there was a distinct lack of people handing out poppies.  No stores I visited had poppy cans or trays.  This year I noticed quite a few stores with those familiar Legion cans, as well as a couple people handing out poppies.  Perhaps because it was the 90th anniversary of the First World War armistice, but it was good to see stuff like that coming back.
Watching a news story on the Highway of Heroes made me marvel at the human spirit.  The fact that it started without any fanfare or political push represents the best of this country when it’s the worst time for the family of the fallen.  It’s strange who we call heroes these days.  David Beckham was called a hero for scoring on a penalty kick.  So too was Jason Arnott, when he scored in overtime to win the Stanley Cup.  But when I gazed upon the only remaining Canadian soldier from World War I placing a rose at Victory Square, well, I think you know what I’m getting at.  We should all acknowledge the real heroes today.

My co-worker and I had a discussion today about how certain people are really good at discretely paying a cheque without anyone noticing until it’s too late. I commented that this was fairly prevalent in Chinese culture (the term “cage match” adequately describes some family dinners, particularly if the family is from out of town). He mentioned that he has seen it amongst Koreans as well, leading me to wonder if this is just a Southeast Asian thing. He said it’s something “whiteys” do as well (for note, he’s white, so I assume he knows what he’s talking about), but generally they fall into three general categories:

1. Split evenly among X, where X is the number of people attending the meal.
2. Everyone chips in what they owe.
3. Everyone takes turns paying for the meal, rotating on some pre-determined basis.

Most of my experience with my western friends falls into category 2. A corollary to this method is what my friends call “The Beer Economy.” The way it works is if you owe Jack some form of monetary compensation, whether it be a meal or a small loan to buy something, you can pay Jack back by buying him beer, where beer is generally beer but can also take the form of some other thing when going out somewhere (movie ticket, shots, dinner, et al). A new method introduced by my co-worker is the “Credit Card Lottery,” which is an offshoot of category 3. This is where everyone puts their credit card into the bill folder and asks the waiter/waitress to randomly select a card to pay for the meal. A novel idea, but it takes a fairly long time for it to even out amongst the group should it grow beyond a small party. Still, it’s a safer form of gambling that provides entertainment and food.

Chinese bill payments are nowhere near as civil. Arguments never turn maliciously violent, but there have been occasions of wrestling. I have also seen moves that would put the Harlem Globetrotters to shame. Reasons used in arguments include (but are not limited to):

• “I’m older than you.”
• “Your kids are out of the house.”
• “I’m staying at your place.”
• “You’re staying at my place, so I’m hosting you.”
• “You have kids.”
• “It’s my birthday.”
• “It’s your birthday.”
• “You’re a growing boy/girl.” (This happens as long as there’s someone older than you)
• “I know the manager.”
• “You’re a student.”

A couple happen with my western friends (namely “it’s your birthday” and “you’re a student”). Honestly though, I’m pretty sure most of the arguments are a competition on who can be the best cheque ninja. After all, it just makes for a good story to tell how you ninja’d the cheque from your family/friends. Some of the better ones I’ve seen are “distract your target with a cute baby while you go pay” and “prepay with cash before the meal so when the bill comes, it’s just change.” Paying on the way to the bathroom? That’s child’s play compared to some of the stuff I’ve seen my relatives do.

If you’ve got a good cheque ninja story, do tell.

1) Microwaving your old cookies can make them taste like you just pulled them out of the oven.  Be careful to not nuke ‘em too long though, or you get goo and/or a burnt mouth.

2) John Williams fans with too much time on their hands can produce some pretty cool stuff.

Recently at work I’ve been whittling down the “To Do” list that has been building up.  You know, the one that has items in a perpetual state of “I’ll do it when I have time,” and then you seemingly never have time.  Priorities shift depending on the circumstances; some items move up and some move down.  Having a “To Do” list isn’t a bad thing; it helps keep us organize and provides a sense of order.

But you know those things you wish you could do, but you never think you have the time for? It turns out, you probably do, but you just don’t realize it.  There are many things in our daily lives that we do that, little by little, consume far too much of our time than is good for us.  Therefore, in conjunction with your “To Do” list, you should also come up with a “Not To Do” list.  This list should consist of small things that you do too often that you can cut down on, and the world will not end.  Here are a few of mine:

1. Check e-mail at scheduled points of the day, or to a maximum amount: I used to periodically check my e-mail, up to several times an hour.  This led me to get distracted far too many times from the task I really ought to be doing, which would then delay other tasks on my “To Do” list.  The problem is that by checking my e-mail so often, once an e-mail came in, I felt compelled to answer it or deal with it in some way (file it, tag it, etc).  Was everything urgent enough to need that much attention? Not even close.  But little by little, e-mail began to consume more and more of my time.   Deal with your e-mail in batches; it’s much more efficient, and you don’t needlessly distract yourself.  Once you get distracted, it takes time to re-focus, time that could’ve been spent being productive on your task at hand.
2. As a caveat to the first one, don’t check your e-mail first thing in the morning or just before you go to bed: Wait until you’ve woken up (or at least exited that zombie state) for the former.  Dealing with e-mail first thing in the morning breaks up your routine, shifts priorities and throws a monkey wrench into the plans you have.  This is all part of the distractions that make you lose focus and cause you to spend time re-focusing.  Take care of at least one critical thing first (aside from morning coffee/tea) and then move onto your e-mail.  As for the latter, you’ll just cause yourself to think too much about whatever comes in.  Having your brain churn that much just before you’re going to sleep isn’t going to give you a decent night’s rest.  Deal with it in the morning; you’ll exit zombie state faster and you’ll sleep better.
3. Learn the difference between rambling and productive small talk: If you’re like me, you’re not a fan of ramblers.  Idle chit chat ends up in a conversation about nothing and prevents you from doing anything useful/fun.  Starting every conversation with “How’s it going?” seems to be a reflex among a lot of people I know, especially co-workers.  I know they don’t actually want to know, because that question inevitably leads to what I’m working on, and it’s generally not remotely interesting to them.  The annoying times are when the question is asked in passing; if you’re not willing to stop to have a conversation, don’t ask.  However, corporate ladder climbing and networking for jobs involves small talk, so it’s good to learn the difference between productive small talk that will land you opportunities and unproductive rambling that goes nowhere.  One greases social gears for life in general, the other is just a waste of time.
4. Pick your battles: In a perfect world, you could fight for everything you believe to be right and win, even down to the smallest thing.  Dealing fellow humans changes that.  Messy complicated issues like politics weigh down what is right, where “right” can be subjective (ex. how often you clean, do pens have to be 90 degrees to pads of paper, should corporal punishment be allowed in parenting).  Learning how to let some of the smaller things slide can remove a lot of stress from your life, and consequently you can be a little happier not getting mad over them.  Other times, it just isn’t appropriate to fight battles because even if you win that battle, you lose the war.  Anyone who has worked in any place, whether it be an office or lab, for a nontrivial amount of time knows what I’m talking about.  Don’t get me wrong, venting to a confidant always helps to release some pent up frustrations, but fighting every battle leaves you weary, unhappy and worse off overall.  Pick the ones really worth fighting for, take back the time spent on the ones that aren’t.
5. Stop checking your feed reader so much: I have gone from obsessively checking my e-mail to obsessively checking my feed reader.  Google Reader has made it much easier to group all of my RSS feeds together.  It also piles up much quicker because many of my feeds update frequently, particularly the news feeds.  There’s something about seeing more than 50 unread items that bugs me, but this is something I’m working on.  In a lot of cases, looking at your feed reader so much is worse than checking your e-mail; it can be like Wikipedia surfing…one good article leads to another, and then another, and then another.  All of a sudden, 2 hours have slipped by and you think to yourself, “Oh crap…there was stuff I needed to do in those two hours.  Eh, maybe just one more.”

The best part of a “Not To Do” list? You can keep doing the stuff on it and accomplish something all the time.