One Red Hot Country Mama!

We have all been there. It is New Years Eve at a party or club and everyone is counting down in those loud drunk voices. The anticipation builds and kissing partners draw tighter together as we get closer and closer to "one". Then someone calls out "no – it’s the wrong time". The person’s watch that we were counting down to is not the exact time – so we start the countdown again a few minutes later. But wait a second… we were ready to celebrate two minutes ago – but now you are telling us that it is not the exciting minute yet? It makes me think that this whole New Years thing is not what it purports to be – it is a sham.

There are a number of people in my life, both friends and family, who are quite happy to kiss 2006 goodbye. New Years will be like cleaning the slate and preparing for something fresh, different, and hopefully better. For them, 2006 has played out like a season of Desperate Housewives: deaths, marriage issues, career problems etc. One friend is burning his day timer from 2006. Another friend and I are going to a spa tonight, to relax away the worries of the year with a massage and a manicure. Then there are the resolutions… to lose weight, to get in shape, to start a book and to go in a new career direction..,..

But – these numbered celebrations don’t really make sense. Why does it matter that we are no longer typing a "6" after the "200" and when we float over our computer calendars on our toolbar it says "2007"? Why are we so excited about it? We could declare New Years at any midnight of the year that if we wanted – and clear the slate for something new. Instead of waiting for the "New Year’s Number" to come up, we could do it after actual events in our lives, happy ones and sad ones, and declare a personal New Years to start fresh. In fact, we don’t even have to wait until midnight… we could create a personal New Years every hour or minute or even every second.

Yes, I know… there is some momentum created around millions of people celebrating the New Year at the same time. Even then, it is all in our respective time zones anyway. I guess the momentum for me is only in the EST including fellow Torontonians, New Yorkers, Miami residents. By the time we get the momentum from the San Franciscans and Vancouverites – we have already gone home and the hangovers have begun – sorry guys. Like in the elections, we have lost interest by the time the West Coast is ready to contribute.

The idea is that all of these number celebrations are arbitrary – including birthdays. We assign certain meaning to certain ages, but what does it matter? We are only celebrating those years in the calendar that is generally accepted in our culture anyway. We are also attributing roles and responsibilities for those ages based on our personal scripts.

So happy December 31, 11:59:59… if that matters to you. If not – I hope you have many great personal New Years in 2007.

I was inspired to volunteer after going to the Framework Foundation  event where one of my classmates from  my MBA class was a Director. The idea? The organizers auctioned off beautiful modern art with a twist – instead of bidding money we bid volunteer hours. I could not commit to a regularly scheduled time (I am already over-committed with my business, dating and social life) so I decided to find events during less busy times that I could dedicate a block of time to instead of worrying about a regular weekly commitment. I could not believe how varied the experiences were… I have ordered them from most fulfilling to least. 

Santa Clause Parade for Sick Kids

How Discovered: Found out about this while cruising the Sick Kids Foundation Website.
What it was: Job was selling Sick Kids pendants, hats and DVDs to people attending the Santa Clause parade in downtown Toronto.
With whom: Volunteered with my friend Sylvia who is an incredible sales person.
Experience: In just two hours we raised over $600, far more than any other of the volunteers. It felt great because we could have slept in and done nothing but instead we used our sales and marketing expertise to help raise money to help sick children. The event was well-organized and the organizers sent a nice card at the end.
Do it Again?:  Definitely!

International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront

How Discovered: My friend heard about it on the radio.
What it Was: Selling books at the International Festival of Authors.
With Whom: I did this one on my own.
Experience: Since I was on my own, I got to know the other volunteers and we shared our love of reading between book-buying crowds. It felt good to support the authors and to meet people who are passionate about reading – but I wasn’t helping the world as directly as I was when I was raising money for sick children. The organizers seemed a bit stressed and there was a lack of information-flow, which resulted in some egg on our faces, but in general it was pretty smooth. As a bonus I got to meet Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham.
Do it Again?: Probably.

Nuit Blanche for the French Consulate 

How Discovered: Found it through an ad in Craig’s List.
What it Was: Greeting people who sponsored the event at the Mars center and giving people information.
With Whom: My friend Nadia who has family from France.
Experience: From the beginning, the night did not feel right. My friend and I got some great shirts from Lacoste since they wanted us to work at the door (this honor was bestowed partly because we are fashionable and partly because we speak French.) We did not know the price we would pay for those shirts – we were not allowed to move away from the door for one minute, or else the Lacoste sponsors would get aggravated. Also, the organizers did not trust us with the money or the giveaways, so each of us always had to be with these awful, socially-inept women who treated us as if we were janitors. Although I thought the event was supporting art, my function was so sponsor-driven, it felt much more like work than like play. Plus we were not treated with respect. The only redeeming thing about the night is that I got the shirt and I got to stand next to Mayor David Miller.
Do it Again?: Never! Not if they paid me!

There are over 100,000 blogs created every day according to Technocrati. Wow… that is a lot of new voices instantly communicating to the world – one thing they could be communicating is corporate secrets. A consultancy called "The Attention Company" discussed what that means from a business perspective in their presentation Out There.

In their survey, 8% of people thought it was appropriate to share trade secrets through a blog and 39% thought it was appropriate to share opinions about the performance of the company. It is obvious that this information could affect both competitive positioning and share price.

Blogs are a modern-day medium for secrets – bringing the water-cooler gossip to the world, instantly. The internet allows people to share their stories openly, without the permission of an authority. The conservative PR department, which in my experience sits right next to the legal department, no longer controls the way that employees represent the company to the world.

According to The Attention Company, people who are “Out There”, meaning those who consider it okay to criticize their organization online, have very unique opinions about competition and their organizational lives. They think that knowledge resides at the bottom of the organization, endorse transparency and are not trusting of those that keep secrets.

These people sound a lot like the traditional non-conformists who want to have a voice and don’t want to be tied down by rules. We have all heard stories of employees who were fired for having a blog but with 100,000 being created a day, it seems impossible to keep the “out there” people at bay. Like any “vice squad” trying to rid an area of crime knows, once you bust one criminal, another appears to pick up where he left off.  The presentation concludes that companies should accept the new reality and use the “Out There” people to drive internal innovation and communication. In other words, you are being watched so you better behave!

Outside the business realm, what does it mean to have no more secrets?  We all have family or personal secrets that could get us in trouble. This makes me think of the Girl with a One Track Mind. A British woman, who once worked on the set of Harry Potter, published her sex life online to later have her identity revealed by mistake. Her blog discussed having multiple partners with intimate details.

Because of the social stigma associated with women enjoying the sexuality, she was afraid that she would be treated like an outcast. But she wasn’t – in fact many of her friends and family members supported her. So, it is possible that revealed secrets about who you really are can lead to greater acceptance and more connection with the people that you care about. It will be interesting to see how a world with fewer secrets will look. But as an “Out There” person myself who “doesn’t trust those who keep secrets”, I am looking forward to it.

  Life is a series of beginnings and endings and rituals are, for the most part, a way to symbolically mark these moments. They have been a part of human culture for tens of thousands of years – the earliest known evidence of burial rituals dates back 20,000 years. Historically they have been associated with organized religion but since many of us North Americans have turned away from that, there is a void when it comes to marking important events in our lives. 

Some of the void has been filled by the educational ritual. It makes sense because education plays a more important role in today’s because of the information economy. Look at the educational coming of age surrounding the graduation from high school and the departure to University and College. Also,  look at the graduation ceremony itself with the traditional gowns and the convocation speeches launching the graduating class into the future. Secular people also venture into ceremonies when it comes to weddings and funerals.

But there are still many things that are left unmarked by ceremony and ritual. The academic and the traditional ones capture the relationships that are official, but most of us have a network of unofficial relationships and events as well. Most of our lives DO NOT only involve our partners, our families, our teachers and our classmates. What about our best friends and our colleagues? What about all of the significant events in our lives that go unmarked such as coming of age or the beginning and end of important relationships other than marriage?

For example, for me and everyone I know, High School or University/College was the place where they transitioned from being kid to being an adult. During that time, we chose our profession, lost our virginity, formed our "tribe" of friends etc. But, in the secular world, other than the "sweet 16" party, we have no ritual connoting the time when we go off into the world and become an adult. In other words, there is no secular bar mitzvah.

This means that when we go off into adulthood, it feels lonely and it is unclear what it means. An idea that my sister and I came up with to resolve this problem is having a party in the summer before each of her three kids go off to high school – marking the change in role that is coming, and supporting them throughout. This is much more broad than just the educational graduation ceremony; it is about the next big life step that they are going to take and the new role that they are going to embark on. 

Weddings are becoming and exaggeratedly important ritual. The wedding industry is booming (the average bride spends $800 on her dress alone) despite the changing role of wives in society. But, with the divorce rate being what it is, why isn’t there any ritual for divorce? I heard of a divorced women shredding all of the documents from her messy proceedings while drinking champagne with her friends – what a way to mark an end!

My friend and I have both recently gone through break-ups in relationships that were very important to us. To get closure, we burned their pictures and threw away their gifts – in fact I threw one of mine off of my apartment balcony, took a digital pic of the demolished item and distributed it to my friends and family. We also "christened"  them with new names (for example "Cheater") so it would be a constant reminder about what ended the relationship. There were also electronic rituals such as blocking them from e-mail, erasing all correspondence and removing them from MSN Instant Messenger.

So – it seems like in the absence of rituals for us secular, individualist folk, some of us are creating our own. As our world keeps changing and evolving, so can the things we put rituals around and how we mark them.

A programmer at work is leaving our team and taking the break between jobs to go back to Taiwan. He moved here originally when he was seven. Now in his late-twenties, he is going back for the first time to visit his relatives.

"Tell the truth," said one of my colleagues originally from Vietnam. "You are going back to Taiwan to find a wife! Look at him, tall, good looking, a great job… and a Canadian passport! He will be a hit!!!!"

The 19-year-old co-op student of Chinese background giggled at the passport comment.

"It is funny because it was true," she said. According to her, Canadian men are bringing back Asian wives "all of the time".

She knows a 20-year-old guy who went to China and brought back an 18 year-old wife. He quit school and started a small business to support her. He is average looking,where she is gorgeous – from what the co-op student told us, her looks were clearly her "assets" in that relationship. During the conversation, it was if we were in a Jane Austin novel where the only chance at success for women was through marriage. We were just joking, but it felt like the joke was on these International women, and Canadian men were just taking advantage of them.

Further, according to my colleagues, many of the women who choose this route simply go into having babies right away – since they don’t have job skills or English skills. Getting married to improve social status is one of the oldest stories in the book for women, but somehow the difference in power (1st world vs. 3rd world, English speaking vs. non-English speaking, working vs. non-working) is disheartening to me.

Then we started talking about Filipino nannies. I brought up a story of a co-worker’s brother who made his nanny work six days a week and only paid her only $60/week plus room and board. Meanwhile descent daycare in Toronto costs $60 + dollars a day. This is an example of International women using nurturing "assets" to get ahead but getting taken advantage of in the process. It doesn’t exactly seem like the "Canadian Dream" replete with hope and potential.

That being said, my best friend’s mother started as a Filipino nanny and is now a nurse and a pillar of her community with two very successful daughters. One of whom is a writer and has her third-level black-belt in Jiu Jitsu (and just happens to be very beautiful as well). This is an example of someone who got her foot in the door based on her nurturing "assets", giving her a chance to make a better life for herself and her family.

As a business women, I too use all of my "assets" to get ahead. In my mid-twenties, I got into meetings that my male colleagues would never have a chance to go to since some of the PhDs we were pitching to liked to "look at me". Also, look at the female singers from Madonna to Diana Krall who use their sexuality to sell hits. So… why would it make me uncomfortable to hear of these international women doing the same?

So during that lunch-time conversation I proposed a new option for these international wives and nannies. After the programmer’s new Taiwanese bride used her marriage status to come to Canada, she could come to my apartment where I would empower her.

"Yes…" I would coach her,  "you can make your own life here. No… you don’t have to listen to everything your husband says. Yes… you can use your mind, your passion and your strength as well as your attractiveness and nurturing to get ahead."

I could give her lessons on English since that is the greatest predictor of success as an immigrant. I could teach her how to go to school or to become an entrepreneur. Then the joke is not on her, it is on the people who do not see her potential.