What I’m Blogging

Start with a cage containing five monkeys.

…all of the other monkeys attack him…

Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string, and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, put away the cold water.

Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, and then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

And that, my dear friends, is how company policy begins.

Oldie but a goodie - Author unknown.

At twenty thousand feet in the air you have limited options of how you are going to spend your time. You can watch the incredibly sappy and full of crap film they’ve selected for the flight, you can sleep (but the likelihood of that is slim - warm air rising, cold air descending… a bumpy ride for all), or you can reflect.

…will succeed through sheer force of will to do so…

The film was crap, turbulence killed sleep, so thinking seemed the better option. Specifically thinking about what the hell I’m doing and were the hell I’m going. These thoughts had been plaguing me for some weeks, but were brought to a head during my Calgary sojourn. In the morning at a boardroom on the 12^th floor of the Gigantic Concrete regional office I had to listen in on a conference call. A Conference call where our Vice President was letting us know what was in store for us in the immediate future. To summarize I present the following; “A lot more workload was expected on the horizon, Not much more help in the form of additional bodies could be expected, We will succeed through sheer force of will to do so.”

To say I was shocked would be conservative. I was dumbfounded. I felt as though I was a trooper in the Light Brigade charging headlong into a battery of Russian guns.We’re already stretched thin and to the breaking point and now we have to stretch even more? I don’t think we can be that flexible.

Where am I going indeed…

…people err who think my art comes easily to me…

It is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born in Salzburg, Austria (1756). He was a child prodigy. He toured Germany at the age of six, and at seven his father Leopold, a music teacher, took young Wolfgang and his older sister on a three-year tour of Europe’s royal courts. He said, “People err who think my art comes easily to me …” In his 35 years, he composed forty-nine symphonies, forty concertos, and a wide range of other works, including operas such as The Marriage of Figaro (1784) and The Magic Flute (1791). Mozart wrote: “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together make genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”

I‘m in the back of the bus, or more accurately, the back of an Airbus 319. Seat 29F. The last seat in the last row of a flight into oblivion. It’s not that the plane is in any danger of crashing or other mechanical mishap. No, the danger is much more insidious and diabolical.

…the modern passenger jet is a breeding ground …

Modern air travel has unwittingly created a biological WMD (Weapons of Moderate Discomfort). Essentially, you take about one hundred people or so, stick them in a completely sealed environment for three and a half hours and let incubate. The modern passenger jet is a breeding ground for all kinds of household plagues; runny noses, coughs, sneezes. The self contained air circulation of the jet ensures that at twenty-five thousand feet, all will get exposed, all will be contaminated, and all will become MIRVs (Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles) for illness and suffering… I can already feel two or three days of sniffles and sneezes on the sofa coming on.

…his village thought he was odd because he always carried a book…

It’s the birthday of poet Robert Burns, born in Alloway, Scotland (1759). The son of a poor farmer, he followed his father’s example and spent the first half of his life engaged in the backbreaking labor of premodern farming. People in his village thought he was odd because he always carried a book, and they disapproved when they saw him reading as he drove his wagon slowly along the road. He got into trouble with the family of a girl named Jean Armour, who had become pregnant. He’d left another woman after she had become pregnant, but he loved Armour and didn’t want her to suffer the indignities of being an unwed mother. He eventually married her, against her father’s wishes.

Burns pursued a career as a poet and became known for his conversational poems about Scottish life in books like Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786). He and his wife had nine children, the last one born on the day of Burns’s funeral.

When I’m at home, I never eat breakfast. At home the day is already too hectic; let the dogs out, take out the trash, collect all my crap for the office. Who has time to eat?

…could get used to the aristocracy of it all…

When you’re living out of a hotel, on the other hand, there seems to be nothing but time. All my crap is already packed together and ready to go, there are no dogs to speak of, and there is an entire professional cadre of people who will take the trash out without being nagged reminded.

Side by side with these commandos of cleanliness is an entire kitchen staff dedicated to the proposition that a stomach deprived of breakfast will not stand. Well it will at the very least grumble all morning. Starting the day right with a good breakfast is their mantra, and you can forget about that “continental” crap. No Muffin and juice will suffice. Such a deployment of resources requires, nay demands, a breakfast equal to the sheer commitment of culinary expertise! Besides the company is paying for it so caution to the wind - lay on the Eggs Benedict and don’t skimp on the holandaise sauce…

You know, a guy could get used to the aristocracy of it all…

It’s the birthday of actor Humphrey Bogart, born in New York City (1899). He was expelled from Massachusetts’ Phillips Academy and immediately joined the Navy to fight in World War I serving as a ship’s gunner. One day, while roughhousing on the ship’s wooden stairway, he tripped and fell, and a splinter became lodged in his upper lip; the result was a scar as well as partial paralysis of the lip, resulting in the tight-set mouth and lisp that became one of his most distinctive onscreen qualities.

Hotel beds are never as comfortable as your bed at home. Sure they’re often bigger, and at the more fashionable establishments, there are usually not a compliment of canines attempting to crawl in with you, but something is missing.

…still awake and blogging…

It’s like the hotel room is too perfect in a way your own home would never be. Too clean, too pressed, too “spit and polish” minus the spit of course. Home is warm, fitted and comfortable. Home is where I can fall asleep peacefully on the sofa or curl up into my warm comfortable bed and find rest, even though the three canine amigos will no doubt be hogging the covers.

Guess that explains why I’m still awake and blogging… Hotels are a lot of things, but they’re not a place where I sleep well.