Occasional musings from a Left-coast Canadian ExPat in Oxford.
As a marketing professional, I try to be responsible and pay attention to other people’s marketing efforts. And I’m often stymied by what passes as good marketing these days. I just have to vent about a couple examples of prime marketing stupidity from two companies that I really thought knew better: Example One: Lululemon I … Continue reading Two Birds, One Stone
To the women in the office across the hall who use the bathroom on this floor. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a fairly respectable office space in downtown Vancouver. This is not the squatter in a lean-to behind some Thai Cat-House. So please adhere to the following so we can all have a … Continue reading Open Letter
In the past couple months, I’ve reached critical mass of “things” in my life. There are a lot of balls in the air (without sign of lessening that load any time soon – more likely increasing it), and I am at serious risk of dropping even more of them. Since we came back from the … Continue reading Getting Things Done
So, my co-workers are totally better than your co-workers. They’ve been scheming for a week now, completely behind my back, to put together a surprise wedding shower. They even got Neil involved, and had him come to the office for the festivities. I’d been having a completely insane day, between the regular insanity of getting … Continue reading Best Co-workers Ever
For the past 30 minutes, there have been flashes going off pretty much non-stop outside my office windows. From 6 floors up, it could really be a number of things: tourists taking photos, one of the bajillion international students in the area taking photos, welding… who knows. Then the music started. Christmas carols blaring. So … Continue reading Agent Provocateur
Here’s one for my colleagues in the marketing industry: I know with Web 2.0 everyone’s drinking the dynamic web kool-aid. (Frankly, the success of the business I work for depends on it.) We all want fancy sites with live demos and streaming this and interactive that. But for the love of pete, please don’t kill … Continue reading Give me back my Static
How awesome is my boss? So awesome that after the whirlwind of work travel, she gave me (in addition to a nice cash bonus) new running gloves and socks, as some incentive to get back into my running routine, since it was interrupted and had basically died. I test-drove the gloves and socks on Monday … Continue reading Speedy
Oh, hi there. I kindof disappeared for a bit didn’t I? Rest assured, I was not mugged, nor did I get lost. I was, however, hassled by the mob. It’s fairly well known ’round these parts that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Centre labor department is pretty much run by the mafia. And I’m not … Continue reading Who’s the Boss
So I’m in New York City! The big apple! The city that never sleeps! I’m bored. I’m sitting in a conference centre (Javits) in a dirty, industrial part of town, supervising our trade show booth setup and catching up on some work. Thank god for free wifi. But it hasn’t been all bad. Even though … Continue reading Bright Lights, Big City
I’m leaving for New York City tomorrow morning at ass o’clock – so I’m finishing up some last-minute laundry and packing. I have the sneaking suspicion I’m forgetting something. Of course I have no idea what. My list seems complete, and I have all the items on it ready to go. Perhaps you can think … Continue reading Up Up and Away
So, work. I forgot how much I missed it. Seriously. Stop laughing. Really though, I work with a really great group of people and get to deal with a product that I’m actually interested in and care about. Strangely enough, I’m also socially connected by 1 degree to a few people in the company – … Continue reading Back in the Saddle
It seems my readers are a fairly risk-averse crowd, with a surprising (at least to me) number saying go for the larger company (Job 1). I honestly thought for a very long while that’s what I wanted. After some serious navel-gazing and some counsel from close friends and family, it seems that, well, not so … Continue reading Bucking the Trend
The past week has been an absolute whirlwind – and a complete 180 from the 13 weeks beforehand. I’ve been interviewing like mad (5 work-days, 5 companies, 7 interviews) and find myself presented with two offers (well, 3, but one is totally unsuitable, and the other two companies just haven’t replied yet). In any case, … Continue reading A Nice Problem to Have
Further Proof that HR people (or whoever’s doing the job posting these days) don’t have a damn clue: I’m checking out what I missed on various job sites in the past few days, and discovered something pretty odd. There’s one site that lists jobs under “Internship,” “Entry-Level,” “Mid to Senior-Level,” and “Executive.” I like checking … Continue reading Effed Up
Sooo yah. About that job thing… I rescinded my acceptance of their offer after the first day. It’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve made in the not-so-distant past, but it was ultimately the right thing to do. I’ve often heard that the right thing and the easy thing are very rarely the same – … Continue reading Cold Feet