Merry Christmas!!

I know, I'm a day late, but yesterday was the only day in a long time where I did not look at a computer screen. Felt quite nice to be disconnected :-)

I'm in Montreal until January 1, to celebrate the holidays with my family and catch up with some friends. The weather is pretty tame, no snow has fallen since I landed on the 24 and it hasn't been cold. Apparently, from the status of several friends in Facebook, it snowed in Vancouver. I guess everyone gets to celebrate a white Christmas.

I'm heading to the cabin tomorrow for some showshoeing, then to the Eastern Townships on Friday to see my dad's side of the family. I think Annie planned a day of shopping on the 29, I'll try to visit friends on the 30, have New Years Eve celebrations (dinner and then later on, meeting Lara and Gerri downtown for some drinks) on the 31, then fly back to the West Coast next Tuesday. The holidays always seem to fly by, but that's because we keep ourselves busy with all kinds of fun activities.

One of my gifts was Planet Earth and The Blue Planet, a 10-DVD documentary series from the BBC on our planet and oceans. Each DVD holds three episodes covering different environments: caves, deserts, shallow seas, etc. Each episode is beautifully narrated and the images are spectacular. I have no difficulty finding someone to watch an episode or two with me :-)

Christmas spirit

Over the past few days, many events and outings have been stirring the Christmas spirit and made it feel like the holidays are upon us. The office Christmas party was obviously a good way to start the celebrations. Pictures were posted in Flickr over the week:

• With my colleagues Nehul, Ben and Brian here.
• With my colleague Brian here.
• Candid shot here.
• Late evening silliness here.

So much fun!

Then, there are the many opportunities to catch up with friends for lunch or dinner, like today when I met Stephen for a bite. Stephen brought a gift, "not a Christmas gift" he said, but something to congratulate me on completing my applied project. It's a book I am looking forward to reading, The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World we Need, by Chris Turner.

Last night, I went out to see the Festival of Lights at VanDusen Botanical Garden. The entire garden is decorated with Christmas lights, it's simply unbelievable and mesmerizing, almost magical. We almost didn't make it, because the weather was nasty all day, but it stopped raining in the afternoon, how lucky is that?

Now, all that's missing is some time well spent with the family. Soon, soon.

Another year, another Christmas party...

and yes... another winner.

Last night was our office's Christmas party, held again at Canvas Lounge in Vancouver. The venue is pretty cool, the food was fantastic, and everyone was dressed to impress. Seeing colleagues in suits and dresses is a big deal when you work in a software company. We never dress up for work. This year, we had once again very cool prizes up for grabs, two iPod Touch, Canucks tickets, certificates for restaurants, hotels and spas, gift baskets, and a few other electronic gadgets.

If you remember a few years back, I was the lucky winner of two big prizes and then again, last year, the winner of lovely wine glasses. Well, this year wasn't going to be an exception. I won two $50 gift certificates for Spa Utopia. Mmmmm... spa!

This is my first free weekend in a while. I didn't make any plans, as I wanted to clean the condo, do a bit of shopping and relax. I finished school on Monday but haven't stopped since. Tuesday night I had two conference calls, Wednesday night I went to the new Cliffhanger location with Sarah and then for a few drinks, Thursday night was dinner at my colleague Brian's place in West Van and last night, well... the big party.

It's pretty cool to finish the semester early. I have two weekends before I leave for Montreal on the 24. I can catch up with a few friends and take some time for myself.

Sometimes I read books unrelated to sustainability

... hard to believe, isn't it?

I cannot remember how I came across this book, I think I read about the author in one of the blogs in my RSS feed and looked him up on Amazon. His name is Jiddu Krishnamurti and he is a philosopher from India. The book I read was called Think on These Things. It's a collection of questions from his students about everything from happiness, to meditation, from freedom to companionship, and each question is followed by Krishnamurti's answer.

Here are a few quotes I liked from the book:

"The real student is studying, learning, inquiring,
exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout
life." (about the duties of a student)

"Don't carry over your worries from day to day, from
hour to hour, from moment to moment; let them all go, and you will see that out of this freedom there comes an extraordinary life that includes both living and
dying." (on fear of death)

"To love is to have that extraordinary feeling of
affection without asking anything in return." (about the simplicity of love)

It's not often we have the opportunity to think on such things, the basic values that shape our lives. Thinking about these things helps you realize what is important and what is not, and also ask yourself why some things are important. Krishnamurti challenges us to ask why more often.

Printed, and ready to be handed in

Who knew so much work could go into 82 pages...

The best four words

On Monday, I was told by my first reader that my project was approved by him and ready to be sent to the second reader. I immediately sent the file over, thinking this would be settled quickly. After all, wasn't this just a formality?

Ha! Nope. Not so much. On Tuesday, I received an e-mail that was probably two pages long with comments and questions. I was floored. I had less than a week to go before the deadline, and some comments were about "needing to interview more companies", "reinforcing the analysis", etc.

Most of the comments were relevant and the ones that were more or less applicable were probably hints that I hadn't addressed something clearly. After reading the e-mail over a few times, I replied to the second reader and asked her which areas I should focus on, given the state of the project. She kindly pointed me to two arguments that she thought were a bit thin, the rest being good candidates for an extension on this project by the firm itself or even another student.

Guess how I spent Tuesday and Wednesday night?

I ended up adding another five pages to the project and rewriting a few segments. I sent back the document on Wednesday night (around 1 a.m.) and nervously waited to hear back. Late Thursday night, the e-mail appeared in my Inbox:

"You're good to go."

Sweet, sweet words after so much hard work. So now, I'm wrapping up my work on the project, going through the self-review instructions for formatting and presentation, and on Monday morning, will drop off two copies to our administrator at school so she can finalize the paperwork and get the final signatures.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas :-)

Walking in a winter wonderslush

It was snowing for most of the weekend and I was looking forward to walking from home to the climbing gym, thinking of the fresh air, the crisp snow, the muffled sounds of the city. I was looking forward to taking my camera on the walk to take pictures of Vancouver under a blanket of snow.

Yeah, right.

It was snowing for most of the weekend, but it all stopped around 2 p.m. today and then it turned to rain. Which is obviously more likely around this part of the country than snow, but still... Eeewww. My lovely walk to the gym was a wet one, but I did get to fully test my rainproof shoes. They were also puddle proof and slush proof. Dry feet make for a happy girl. My pants however did take a bit of time to dry.

I finished addressing the last set of comments on my MBA project from my supervisor and am now waiting for his OK to move on to the second reader. This is a big step, and one that brings me closer to being done with this important milestone.

I stayed home last night, part of dealing with a bit of a cold, and watched Paris Je T'aime. If you haven't seen this movie, you definitely want to rent it. It's not one movie, but 16 short films, five minutes each, shot all over 16 arrondissements in Paris. It's really impressive what kinds of stories can be told in five minutes when you have great actors and directors. All the movies touch on the concept of love, in one form or another. Rent it, you won't regret it.

If you must start somewhere...

As I was reading about corporate social responsibility and sustainability, I came across references to a book by John Elkington in pretty much every article. The book is called Cannibals with Forks. When I was done reading journal articles, I decided to grab a copy of the book at the Vancouver Library (which finally opened after two months of strike).

John Elkington is the Founder and Chief Entrepreneur of SustainAbility, a renown consultancy firm and think tank in the UK. The book was published in 1997 and, although ten years have passed since, it is still very relevant today. In the book, Elkington introduces the concepts of triple bottom line (people, planet AND profit), sustainable development, and challenges faced by companies as the world's population grows and consumes beyond what our planet can sustain. If you are curious about the topic of corporate sustainability, this is a good book to start with.

I started building a collection of links to web sites that discuss sustainability and CSR. Most are sites I came across while researching my MBA project. I used a very neat little link-sharing site called del.icio.us. If you are like me and add quantities of sites to your favourites, only to not remember why you linked them in the first place, you'll like del.icio.us. Once you add their button bar and find a web page of interest, you can highlight text on the page, click the Tag button, add a few keywords to help categorize the content, and voilà! You can also see how many other del.icio.us users have tagged a web site and then visit their list of favourites to find other link of interest.

Very well done.