Day 29: See Mythbusters Live!

Posted on March 29, 2012 by LaLa

Today was indeed a treat.  While rooting around for interesting new things to do the other day, I was delighted to find tickets still available for Jamie and Adam’s Behind the Myths Tour.  These are the pseudo-scientist hosts of Discovery Channel’s hit show Mythbusters.  If you’ve ever seen it, you realize that these are just a couple of boys with their toys, having a helluva good time, mainly blowing things up in the name of science.  See, Adam explained that the subtle difference between them and what ‘real scientists’ do is that scientists write things down. He then went on to describe his dream job, which would be working in a testing lab for the likes of UL (or CSA), to help set safety ratings for all kinds of objects, by first determining their point of failure.  I think he’s come pretty darned close to finding his calling, as the show was genuinely entertaining.  After 10 years, these two definitely know how to work, okay, play, well together in their own sandbox.

This show would be a dream job for most guys I know, as I recall many a lunch conversation that started with, ‘I wonder what would happen if we…’ followed by a verb (e.g., launched/set fire to/exploded), suffixed with a random object or insect.  It is nice to see the program rekindling an interest in science with kids today (did I just say that?!!?  Mom, get out of my head!), as the audience contained a lot of them, completely enthralled by these real-life action heroes.

The performance contained a few odes to some of their biggest 3000 or so explosions in video montages, along with a couple of question and answer sessions; however, it mostly consisted of a series of stunts with the help of volunteers from the audience, each of whom had to bring a waiver with them on stage.  When some of the participants presented the paper unsigned, the hosts just chuckled and said, ‘that’s fine, you can autograph it afterwards’.  It was like being asked to help light things on fire by that cool science/gym teacher that you really wanted to trust, but in the back of your head, there was that niggling doubt that just maybe they were forgetting some critical tidbit of information.  Like wearing fire-retardant clothes or goggles or something.  Anywho…

Look Ma, no hands!

One memorable stunt on the TV show involved interlacing the pages of two telephone books together like you would shuffle a deck of cards.  The friction caused by the pages makes the books nearly impossible to pull apart.  In fact, it took two tanks to finally do so in that experiment.  For the stage version, a father and son team from the audience prepared the books that Adam then used to suspend himself from in a harness hoisted about twenty or so feet above the stage by Jamie.  Now that’s impressive!

Another stunt had two volunteers racing against each other to fill two long tubes of water using the energy emitted while they bicycled.  Of course, the twist was that a giant water balloon was also being filled over the head of the other person, so that whoever lost got drenched.  Always a crowd pleaser!

A girl later volunteered to wear the suit of armour that Adam had worn when trying to agitate sharks as he wielded a broad sword on the ocean floor in the Bahamas.  Only this time, they took the opportunity to pelt her with a massive paintball gun reminiscent of some kind of major war artillery, setting up a splatter board behind her, protecting the audience.  Brave woman!  And the stunts continued, much to the delight of all in attendance.

Now, given the premise of the show, their safety record is really quite impeccable.  Nary but a few broken fingers from holding safety equipment, of all things.  Of course, there was that little cannonball incident a few months back that forever changed their focus on safety… but hey, these things happen to the best of us when we build our own cannonballs and shoot them down a ravine and the ground’s too dry so they bounce through someone’s house, ricochet off a roof and finally come to rest on a minivan.  Who can blame them?  (Besides the insurance companies).

The greatest explosion they ever made, they both agreed, was the water heater, where they removed every possible safety device from the tank, placed it in the basement of a two-story skeleton of a house, and waited to see how long the pressure build-up would take for it to explode.  The answer?  Just over 40 minutes.  It broke the cinder block footings as it shot up through the floorboards, ceiling, and roof like a rocket.  The resulting thud was extremely satisfying for everyone involved.  In a word?  Awesome!

You really have to hand it to them, they’ve come a long way.  I mean, Adam was a set designer, and Jamie had a degree in Russian linguistics.  Yup, you read that right.  Jamie also built his own kick-ass robot, and became a special effects expert, which is where he met Adam.  The rest, as they say, is history.  But that’s an entirely different channel.

P.S.  If you want to see what other crazy antics these guys are getting up to, you can follow them on Twitter @donttrythis and @Jamienotweet.

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Day 28: Cake Decorating Class.

Posted on March 28, 2012 by LaLa

There are only a few months during the year that seem to be jam-packed full of birthdays, and March is one of them.  So, to all of my Pisces and Aries friends, this one’s for you.  I took another one for the team by attending a Basic Introduction to Cake Decorating class this evening at Sugar Tiers in Markham.  Oh yes, all of those hours dutifully spent watching confectionary masterpieces being carefully constructed while the clock was ticking away on Food Network Challenges was finally going to pay off!  Assuming watching and actually doing are the same thing…?

The workshop was led by award-winning pastry chef and instructor extraordinaire, Rosalind Chan.  My fingers are slipping a little on the keys as I type this, from playing with all the buttercream and fondant tonight.  They also still smell of delicious sugary goodness, despite having been licked and washed numerous times.  Problems to have, I know!  The best part, though?  The event was 75% off due to another incredible deal purchase!  It’s truly astounding how much money I’m saving here, although I suppose there is a trade-off with all of the calories being consumed… wait, what I am saying?  I got cake, so I’m clearly way ahead!  But I digress.  As I do, where vouchers are concerned.

The class started with about a 10-second introduction by Rosalind (“You can read about me on the web – the clock is ticking!!”) – lady, I like your style.  Our stations were well-equipped, and after briefly introducing ourselves, and being shown a few important tips and techniques, we were let loose to embellish our soon-to-be works of art.

The first lesson involved trimming the basic cake itself to make it level, and slicing it in the middle, in case we wanted to fill it with a layer of buttercream.  Apparently, this was optional, and, much to my amazement, there were actually a few nut jobs in the class who didn’t do this bit!  That’s like taking the caramel out of the Caramilk bar.  Without it, you have nothing but a hollow shell of mediocrity.  Where’s the love, people? I shake my head.

Next, we were shown how to carefully fill a piping bag with buttercream, and were able to practice making rosettes, stars, and seashells in case we wanted to decorate our cake the ‘old-fashioned’ way, like they do in a lot of mass-producing bakeries.  I actually seemed to do pretty well at this part for whatever reason.  Maybe because it was essentially a useless skill in the grand scheme of things.  Hard to say.

Then we had to coat our cake with a thin layer of buttercream to act as the ‘edible glue’ for the fondant.  This is called crumbing.  Huh.  I always thought that was when you emptied the bottom tray from the toaster.  The things you learn.

This is not a turd.

Now came the really fun part – playing with fondant.  That’s the thick pasty stuff you often see covering wedding cakes, which has substantially widened its appeal in the last decade or so.  But first, a couple of disturbing facts about fondant:  it’s a bit of a PITA to make, and it can keep for up to two years in a sealed plastic container.  Which means that almost no one makes their own fondant anymore; instead, fondant is bought in bulk in a variety of colours and flavours, then shelved, from where it is used only as needed.

…Sorry, forget that last bit.  Focus on the positive!  Fondant is curiously fun to work with.  You have to beat the heck out of it, sort of like kneading bread dough, or slapping around a suspect, to get it to cooperate.  Then you roll it.  Now, if you are making fondant for a round cake, you would roll your fondant out into a circle.  If you are making fondant for a square cake, you would roll your fondant’s corners out to keep it rectangular.  If you are me, however, you roll your supposedly round fondant into an ink blot.  The good news is that you are given a pizza cutter to trim away the excess, so nobody ever has to know about your special, uh, talents.

We are shown several other uses for fondant, including ribbons, ropes, cutout shapes, bows, and the all-important rose.  These last two involved more focus and patience than I could muster, so I improvised, and am extremely pleased with the result.  The real piece de resistance, though, came when Rosalind pulled out the airbrush gun – for real!  The spray of fairy dust indubitably took our cakes to the next level.  Even Tinker Bell would be proud.  Can you spot the difference?

    

I think it’s fairy-ly safe to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop.  This was extremely good value for the money, and something that I feel confident I could replicate again on my own.  Hmm… Maybe Duff and the rest of the crew at Charm City Cakes could use a helping hand?

And with that, I leave you with these words of wisdom from another good Aries friend of mine:  Dessert is not for sharing.  Bon Appetit!

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Day 27: Ayurvedic Head Massage.

Posted on March 27, 2012 by LaLa

What goes around, comes around, sometimes sooner than you think.  Last October, I had purchased what I felt was a very thoughtful gift for a dear friend of mine who is a self-proclaimed massage-aholic, namely 3 Ayurvedic Hair Therapy Head Massage sessions.  …Why yes, it was a voucher, why do you ask?  We both own those spiky head massagers that give us goose bumps all over, which we love, and, in his case, makes his leg drum like a dog’s when its ears are being scratched.  Not surprisingly, his Chinese zodiac sign is also shared with all the Fidos of the world, especially Snowy.  But I digress.

The deal was only good for 6 months, and we were both living abroad at the time, making it difficult to squeeze in the treatments during our brief visits home.  He has since moved even further away to Thailand (land of the cheap massage, lucky mutt), basically ensuring that he would not be able to use the voucher prior to its expiry in April.  So, when the deal came back to its mama, all I could think was that most Indian women I know have gorgeous, healthy-looking, shiny black hair that could soon be mine, all mine!  Well, at least a blonde version.

Now, it is entirely possible that I have had an ‘Indian’ head massage as part of a spa package sometime in the past (ah, more of life’s little details that now elude me); however, I can guarantee you that I have never stepped inside the doors of Ayurvedic LifeStyles Inc. before today, and have certainly never had an ‘Ayurvedic Hair Therapy Head Massage session’ done by Rakesh Ramesh Modi, Ayurveda Guru, and President of the International Council of of Ayurvedic Physicians Inc. (ICAP – not to be confused with either the polar ice cap, or the Iced Capp at your local Timmy’s.  Those are different).  

Rakesh is the proud owner of the most crowded business card I have ever seen, with plenty of info on both sides, and no fewer than 6 sets of initials after his name.  Okay, I get it.  He’s qualified.  In several different areas that I can’t even pronounce!  I must be in the right place, then, which happens to be about 3 miles from Little India, just before Scarberia.

My first impression of Rakesh is that he’s all business, as he is wearing one of those wireless headsets tucked behind one ear, and is deeply engrossed in some kind of a deal.  I’m no longer in a rush, so I patiently browse the, uh, ‘store’.  I immediately wonder if I was somehow teleported to another country, as there is quite an unusual variety of shiny objects on the shelves behind glass doors, including a scale on the floor with a rod across it that could only possibly be a chin-up bar for Smurfs.

After a quick introduction, and the completion of the requisite medical history and consent form, Rakesh shows his altogether practical nature, and offers me 2 x 22.5 minute sessions instead of the 3 x 15 minutes as touted in the voucher.  One less trip outside the hood?  Sold!

I am then led into a treatment room, where I sit in a chair, and Rakesh sits on the treatment table directly behind and above me.  During the intermittent drumming and kneading on my head with some kind of a cooling oil, I continue to pepper him with questions about his life and practice, secretly hoping to distract him from the clock on the wall, and elongate this blissful encounter of his fingertips dancing on my scalp.  He has been doing these kinds of treatments since he was a young boy, learning and eventually taking over the practice from his father.  He also routinely gets involved in charity work in the community, and is currently helping to organize a Global Ayurveda Congress in Toronto in June, to promote adequate training and certification with the newer practitioners of these increasingly popular alternative therapies.

I personally love his story about how he gets orders for products from customers back in India and Pakistan, for goods that he sources from India.  He tries to tell them, but they do not trust their local suppliers, only him.  It makes me laugh.  The importance of face-to-face meetings in building trust is a lesson we have learned repeatedly in software implementations, particularly when dealing with off-shore Indian resources.  Who would have thought it would be so applicable to other businesses as well?

Back in the room, Rakesh’s answer to one of my questions startles me.  All that I can recall about Ayurvedic medicine, I learned from a yoga weekend retreat several years back; namely, there are 3 basic constitutions (Vata, Pitta and Kapha), and typing you involves answering a myriad of questions, also taking into account your physical stature, diet and metabolism.  What does Rakesh do, though?  He checks the pulse of his patients to diagnose them.  Um, what?  Really?  Okay, along with a few other things, but this completely intrigues me.  Sadly, we are out of time,  but I will be back, with a long list of questions at the ready, and possibly an appointment for a brand new thing.  Stay tuned!

…And now, some random captions.  Enjoy!

Spot the Skeleton…creepy! / Do you got what I need? / Walk This Way – with jazz hands!

    

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Day 26: Join LinkedIn.

Posted on March 26, 2012 by LaLa

Well, the internet business sharks that hunt in packs have been circling for some time, and today, they finally got a small chunk of my flesh.  I had successfully avoided joining LinkedIn until now, as I truly felt it was just another unnecessary form of work, like Twitter.  I mean, if LinkedIn had anything to do with a Slinky, or the Missing Link, I could easily justify whiling away the hours, but spending time purely for managing business connections?  On my own dime?  Bah, humbug!

   

However, in the interest of both trying something new, and of completing the only bit of mandatory homework given in my Internet Marketing Seminar last week, I figured I could just nibble on some cheese, interspersed with a little appropriately paired tea, wine and chocolate, while I bit the proverbial bullet.  Well, it did help to make it somewhat more of an appetizing experience, at least.

It is pretty amazing when you think about how simple they really make it for you nowadays, especially when you are somewhat of a late adopter of a particular platform.  I mean, in just a few clicks, LinkedIn was able to dig through my personal email contacts and connect me with pretty much everyone I (already) know and (already) keep in contact with.  And that, my friends, was the end of the easy peasy part.

The next step brought with it the tedium of creating my own personal profile that I will hereinafter be required to keep quasi-current for the rest of my working days.  It is clearly much more important than any other profile I have anywhere else, as we learned last week that an entire group of around 500 engineers were hired strictly from LinkedIn on relatively short notice, and that the recruiter got a big time promotion based on the success of the project, and the quality of the candidates… blah blah blah.  For someone with a less than stellar recall ability, such as myself, dredging up pertinent bits of my resume from memory is paramount to winning a gold medal in the 100 meter dash at the summer Olympics.  In short, it just ain’t gonna happen.  So, I dug up a recent-ish version of my CV from 2009, and pulled out some highlights from that.  Some people are just so finicky about dates and company names and things… best to at least give the impression of a concerted effort in this area.

Next, I trawled through some of my eager beaver friends’ profiles who had already connected with me to find Groups that I should probably also join, only to be surprised that LinkedIn caps you from adding any more than about 10 at a time, until my membership in these initial Groups has been approved.  That’s so much more shi-shi-foo-foo than Facebook, who lets you Like and join just about everything.  I mean, I don’t really want to join those Groups that badly, if at all, but it seemed like the thing to do somehow… Argh!!  I had really had just about enough at this point, so I drew the line at requesting any Recommendations.  That is something that I can do over the next little while, but it seemed like overkill on my first day.  Because I’m sure I’ll remember to ask for those later… right?  Maybe?  Possibly?  Sigh.

Finally, the ultimate time waster came from scrolling through countless inappropriate photos of myself to find one that was halfway decent (i.e., both of my eyes were open) as long as I could crop the wine out of my hand to make the image look respectable and business worthy enough to upload.  Then again, the people who do really know me might not recognize me… But I suppose they can always contact me by email or on Facebook.

And voilà, I am now officially part of a LinkedIn community of more than 1.5 million professionals, and I have to say, that it did feel a whole lot like work.  In other news, I also joined a bunch of fun groups on MeetUp in the Toronto area today, mainly because they seemed ever so much more relevant to my current lifestyle choice of un-work, and, after all, life is about balance.

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Day 25: Self-Defence Workshop.

Posted on March 25, 2012 by LaLa

Because I didn’t quite puddle enough during today’s hot yoga class, I thought I’d get my ass whooped a little more by going to a Wen-do Self-defence Workshop where everybody was kung-fu fighting…  Actually, Wen-do is a set of self-defence techniques designed for women based on karate.  The 2-hour workshop was held at U of T, where, once again, I startled myself by being the first participant to arrive.  Apparently, the secret to being early is to have a whole lot less going on in your life…  Or to perspire so profusely that your constant state of dehydration means you never have to pee anymore, which can be a substantial timesaver.  Anywho…

Denise, ready to whoop ass!

Our bubbly instructor’s name was Denise, whose friendliness immediately put the class at ease.  Her inspiring stories about a 6-year old girl who broke a potential kidnapper’s foot by crunching down hard on his instep, and a 73-year old woman who scared off a potential assailant with a whoop ass stance and hearty ‘Back off!’ yell boosted our confidence enormously.  We were ready to rumble!

But first, some sobering stats.  Despite being raised as the demure women that we are, we were surprised to learn that 70-80% of women who fight back in an attack get away, and that 97% of women in crisis centres had been strangled, usually by a partner.  In fact, most attacks happen in your own home, in your car, or in a public building, and typically by somebody that you know.  Seriously – it is not the low-cut top, skanky skirt, red lipstick and CFM boots that you’re wearing walking home from the bar at 3 am in a dark alley (not that that’s a good idea).  Take a minute to let this sink in – Mom was wrong!  Just on this one point.  Deep breaths – ready?  Okay, let’s move on.

There are two types of moves in Wen-do:  hard and soft.  Basically, this relates to whether you’re going to leave a permanent mark or not (i.e., most broken bones heal).  The first thing we learn is awareness, avoidance, and the power of yelling.  Coupling this with the mom finger-wag is as effective as you remember from childhood.  As well, never underestimate the element of surprise.  Most assailants simply do not want to deal with some screaming, crazy nutter who is ready to defend herself in a loud way.  The best thing you can do, though, in any situation is to get yourself out of it.  If that means losing the 6-inch heels, ladies, so be it.  Release your inner Forrest Gump, and run, baby, run!

In the remainder of the workshop, we learn to look at a potential assailant’s weak points, rather than at the dweeb as a whole, along with some crafty moves that we get to pseudo-practice on each other.  This includes how to break a nose, collar bone, knee and foot, along with some more temporarily demobilizing tactics, such as jamming our elbow into a stomach, using our hand to karate chop a carotid artery in the neck, and twisting out of an arm grip.  All moves are accompanied by audibly breathing a word similar to ‘Hut‘, as in Pizza.  I personally cringe at the idea of making my hand into a bear claw, reminiscent of Phoebe’s guitar lessons, to gauge an assailant’s eyes out… but hey, it’s good to know there are options.

Finally, we learn how to get out of a choke hold, by putting our hands together as if in prayer, gluing our forearms and elbows together, and diving up through the arms of the strangler.  If being choked from behind, we clasp our elbows overhead, with one foot back, and quickly pivot towards our back foot to face the bugger.  Having this info is strangely calming.  Not in a ‘Bring it on!’ kind of way, just in a comforting good to know sort of way.  All kids should be taught this stuff in school, if you ask me, and repeatedly!

But the biggest take away for me from today was to remember there are always options, including running into a crowded area, shop or restaurant, shouting at a specific stranger to call 911, or simply screaming, ‘Fire!’.  And most of all, when in doubt, go for the groin.  There’s a reason we learn just how debilitating it is at an early age.  Because it works.  Play safe!

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