Lose some...win some

I’m writing this entry while onboard a Via train heading back to London. Geeta and I took a last minute trip to Ottawa this weekend to welcome our new niece into the world. We left late Friday (around 7:30PM) and hit Ottawa by 12:30AM on Saturday. My niece (who still remains nameless) is so cute. Mom and baby are doing great, and my brother is as happy as can be. I’m an uncle for the 7th time over and yes I’m the only one in my family (2 brothers and a sister) who doesn’t have kids yet ;)…hopefully soon! I think the coolest part of the whole experience was seeing the reaction of my nephew (Rohan; aged 6), and niece (Rhea; aged 5) when they saw their baby sister for first time. They were so happy and gentle with her…truly a Kodak moment….a great day for the Gera family.

This weekend started off horribly. Everything that could go wrong was. Geeta and I left to Ottawa under the assumption that my sister-in-law was in labour and that she would deliver 100% this weekend. Failure to do so would mean another trip to Ottawa next weekend, which is hugely unproductive for me from a schooling perspective. By Saturday night it seemed like we were out of luck; my sister-in-law showed no signs of going into real labour….I got pretty much nothing done in terms of homework and I was getting a bit stressed. In addition to this, our car (2003 Acura RSX) dropped dead on Saturday while Geeta was at Wal-Mart in Orleans (Eastern suburb in Ottawa). While Geeta was backing out of a parking spot, a ton of transmission fluid leaked out onto the asphalt below and the car abruptly jerked and shut off. A couple of mechanics at Wal-Mart told us that it was likely that our transmission was shot! How could this be? The car is less then 5 years old and has 101 000 km on it. It’s still practically new! We had to tow the car to our mechanic’s which was a pain in the ass. What’s worse is that our warranty on the car’s transmission is for 5 years/100 000km (whichever comes first). The car is less then 5 years old, but is over the mileage criteria. I think it’s going to be a fight with Acura Canada over whether they’ll honour the warranty despite us being 1000 km over. As a result of this car mess, Geeta is unexpectedly staying in Ottawa this week to get it fixed (hence I’m on a train heading home to London solo). I’m a bit stressed about the warranty not coming through. A new transmission on our cute sports car could run us $6k by some accounts…ouch! Not what we need right now. Perhaps we lost a car this weekend, and perhaps I’m coming home without my wife, but I am delighted and incredibly lucky to be an uncle to a beautiful girl…I guess not everything went wrong this weekend!

A couple of knick-knacks regarding school. You know what’s awesome about the people in this program?... They are so friendly and inviting. My sister-in-law was down this week visiting, and we took her over to a classmate’s house (there were a few others there). Immediately, people were asking my sister-in-law to stay until Friday so that she could meet everyone and have some fun with the class. Unfortunately, she couldn’t stay…but it speaks volumes to the type of people in this program…very warm and inviting indeed. Another interesting knick-knack from school; I’ve noticed that a few people in the class keep their hand up even after they’ve been selected to answer the question. It’s like they forget to put their hand down….very humorous to me. By my count, I think there are about 3 people doing this. It makes me laugh every time. What’s interesting is that all three are from the same cultural background (which is the same as mine)… makes me wonder if it’s a cultural thing or not. Anyhow..I can always use a good smile to start off my day in class ;)

In my last entry, I forgot to write about Outward Bound day. Outward Bound day was a team building exercise that pushed each one of us in the class to our limits both mentally and physically. It involved outdoor rope climbing activities, tight rope walking, and team competitions etc. At the risk of being overly-descriptive I’ll keep the details to a minimum….let’s just say that it involved 70 odd Type A leader personalities being forced to trust each other and depend on one another for safety and goal- achievement purposes. Ever heard of the phrase, “ A lion won’t believe in anyone else”? If you’re a U2 fan you’ll know that line from the 1991 song, “The Fly.” In essence it refers to the fact that leaders (i.e. ‘lions’) have a hard time believing in others….i.e. they only trust themselves to get the job done. Well…in Outward Bound day, this wasn’t a possibility….You had to trust your mate or you could get hurt, or fail to accomplish the task at hand. There’s one activity that really pushed me to my limits, and unbelievably it wasn’t the rope climbing activity where we had to climb up a pole with 2 other team mates roughly 30 feet high and use each other’s weigh to counter-balance while perched on top of a 2x2 pedestal. The activity that pushed me to my limits was in fact a much simpler activity: essentially you had to fall back onto your partner without allowing your arms to break your fall (i.e. kind of like tipping a domino over). If your partner failed to catch you, it would certainly mean injury…likely a head injury. Ok I might be exaggerating a bit…but really it was scary! I must admit that I wasn’t trusting of my partner, who happened to be a petit female and likely weighs 40% less then I do. Logically, the physics of the activity surely couldn’t allow her to break my fall without one of us getting hurt. Learning to let go and just go with the flow is hard to do…but I did it (i.e. let myself fall back in free fall) and unbelievably my partner caught me safely. Its weird how a simple activity like that can teach you a lot about yourself, and how trust is a tough issue for leaders. I think I really need to start trusting people more easily!

This week, I started the process of engaging Mike Zafirovski, CEO of Nortel, to visit Ivey and bring some visibility to the company on campus. It’s greatly disturbing to me on how little of a presence Nortel has on campus. As Canada’s top R&D spender, and as one of Canada’s largest companies, one would surely expect them to be recruiting this top talent, but there not there. I am going to do my part to change this. I did send the CEO and his EA (Exec. Assistant) a letter expressing my invitation proposal, and I did get a read receipt from both him and his EA but I have yet to hear back. I had the opportunity to dine with Mr. Zafirovski last March at the Nortel Leadership conference in Ottawa. I had the opportunity to host that conference last year and introduce him, and I hope he’ll remember me from our brief encounter.

Lastly, I thought I’d mention that I’ve been sick for over 5 weeks now. It’s getting really annoying. It started off with bronchitis and a round of antibiotics that failed to clear my lungs. My recent exercise obsession and life-long love of dairy products (i.e. cereal) haven’t been helping. They’ve been aggravating my cough and lung congestion and I’m not getting better. I’ve cut out the dairy and the exercise temporarily in an effort to recuperate. I’ve also been drinking ginger tea, which seems to be working. Did I mention that I’ve been chewing my way through a pack of halls every day since I’ve been sick? My next door neighbour in class (who happens to be part of my MBA learning team) says I’m addicted to them. At first I laughed at the comment, but now I’m wondering if there is any truth to it? Can you get addicted to Halls and the medicine that in it? I do find myself with a craving for Halls on an hourly basis ;) Maybe it’s time to put them away.

Until next time…


Sacha