Opening Day at Sunshine Village!

This Wednesday was a public holiday in Canada for Remembrance Day, so we had the day off work. The very clever marketing people at Sunshine Village (a ski hill about an hour and a half from Calgary) decided that they should open for the season on this very day....

I made a call out to my ThoughtWorking friends to see who would take up this mid week escape to the mountains, and the four of us embarked on our first ski trip of the year.

Since the first blast of snow in September we've had pretty much no snow in Calgary, yet in the Rockies, an hour up the road it has been a very different story. Tonnes of the stuff. More than I have ever seen for so early in the season. So we were all VERY excited. I've never been a normal visitor on opening day of a ski hill, wasn't sure what to expect but we figured that we weren't going to be the only ones who thought that heading up there yesterday was a good idea. One good run was all going to make it worthwhile we decided.

With our expectations set (thank goodness), we left Calgary at 7.30am ish. As we got further into the mountains it started to snow lightly, and by the time we were 5kms from the turn off to Sunshine they were big fat flakes. And then we hit our first of many line ups of the day. Sunshine has had a very respectable 40 cms in the last 3 days alone. They had to re-sand the road so we all queued up to get up the access road, then crawled on up the access road. One good run and it'll all be worthwhile....

Good job that I had the company I did in the car. Never a dull (or quiet) moment with that lot. As we were nudging up the road a whole herd of mountain goats decided that they wanted to hang out on the road, causing at least some entertainment for us all. About half way along the road, we noticed that people were starting to come back down in the opposite direction, and grinning a lot. Odd. After another 20 mins we reached some parking attendants who told to go back down and park on the road, all the car parks were already full. Honestly have never seen it as busy.

By the time we had kitted up and walked all the way up to road, driven by our need for that one good run, it was 11am. All was forgotten as we headed up the gondola and got some runs in. Such good conditions for so early, gorgeous powder, and a great atmosphere with everyone just ecstatic about being back on the snow.

Our two last runs mad the whole day. The most fun I have had skiing in a long time. Not a care in the world. Now who do I h ave to talk to to get every Wednesday off to go skiing?!

JJ's Last Week in Canada

My good friend JJ headed back to the UK last week. So lot's of what I got up to in October were leaving events!

We headed out to the mountains with another couple of ThoughtWorkers and went out past Lake Lousie to the Bow Valley Lookout. Another of those 'awesome views for no effort' places. Quick walk up from the car park and you get to a ledge that looks out over this gorgeous view:

Even though it was a rainy miserable day it somehow made the mountains all mystical and awesome.

We then went a bit further on up the road towards Jasper to Mistaya Canyon. A really cool little place, where the river has cut down deep into the rock and left a sliver of a canyon. We hung out there for quite a while, just nice watch the water roaring through the rocks.

Another brilliant thing we did was go skiing at Canada Olympic Park after work one day. The season hasn't quite started yet but COP is open. It's a outdoor little slope on the outskirts of Calgary. They have mostly man made snow but its still snow, and they do night skiing too. It was brilliant to get back on skis for the first time this year. JJ had packed his ski stuff already so was skiing in jeans. HA.

It's pretty surreal skiing on the only peice of snow that you can see and practically in a housing estate.But it's brilliant having somewhere to ski so close. Might keep trying to head up there before the slopes open this weekend.

Last up was the Last Night of the Poms. JJ had a house cooling party for us all, a brilliant night and this is us at the end.

ThoughtWorks Canada Away Day 2009

So bear with me while I post lots of things that I got up to in October...

A lot of October revolved around giving my friend JJ a good send off as he heads back to the UK with ThoughtWorks. Sorely missed.

First up...... ThoughtWorks Canada Away Day 2009

My first Away Day. Was brilliant fun!

The idea of an away day is that, as a company we are all pretty disparate. All on different client sites its often hard to "regroup", catch up with everyone and share ideas. So there is a day when we all go off site, give presentations to each other, get company updates, and generally catch up :-)

We went out to a ranch in Kananaskis Country out towards Banff. As predicted when we started planning the away day back in July, the first snow of the winter arrived just in time for the away day. It was actually really good fun to be surrounded in the snow, for a lot of people traveling this was the first time they had really seen that much snow, and it's always fun to watch their reactions. It wouldn't be the Canada away day if there wasn't ten tonne of snow!

We all had a great day, with all sorts of interesting topics for the presentations from sales skills, to cucumber testing to social responsibility and of course not without a hour long Roy Rant from our fearless leader Roy.

We also got some great TW swagger, in the shape of nice hoodies seen below.

On the move again...

I have a whole heap of blogging to do but firstly I thought I would officially announce...

....That I'm moving to Chicago in December!

32,000 miles of long distance relationship later, it's about time that Tim and I are in the same country at least, so I'm leaving the lovely Canada and heading to join Tim in Chicago.

I'm staying with ThoughtWorks (yay!), which is great, will hopefully make this leap of faith a bit easier. I've met a bunch of people from the Chicago office in different parts of the world, so that will be good. Work wise I'm looking forward to some new challenges, no idea where the next project will take me, I've been told that I should be prepared for traveling so who knows! I've been on my current (and first ever) gig since February, it's been a crazy journey since I started there and I can only thank everyone for their positive encouragement and patience! I can honestly say that I'm petrified about starting on a new project, but must be brave!

I've loved loved my time in Canada, yay for the skiing, yay for the hiking, yay for the lovely people. I didn't think that my ThoughtWorks career would start in Canada but I'm glad that it did, and I'm forever grateful for the opportunity that I had to come over here. The Canada TW office is an awesome place, friendly and cosy, everytime I walk in, I am greeted with hugs, that's my kind of office! I'm sure the experience will be different in the big bad world of the TW headquarters in Chicago...

And finally.... can't believe that I'm all growd up and going to be living with a boyyyy! I'm really looking forward to it, there's now two people to worry about in all my country hoping, but I reckon Chicago for a year or so will be wicked fun. Everyone's welcome to come and visit us!

The plan so far is to roll off my current project in mid December, fly from Calgary to Chicago to move all my things and then had straight off back to the UK for Christmas and a catch up with the faaaaamimly. Tim's coming too god help him ;-) Then back to Chicago on Jan 1st.

The Photo was taken by the Lovely Suzi Edwards at the TW Canada Away Day 2009

My first IPM facilitation!

Today I had the daunting task of facilitating our team's bi-weekly IPM on my client site.

The team had decided that our IPM's were getting a bit stale and it was time to mix it up bit and rotate the facilitation through the team members. (also our poor PM has three IPM's in one day and no one wants to facilitate that many in one day!)

I have had the opportunity to see some of my ThoughtWorks colleagues in facilitating action. A great facilitator is like gold dust. Hopefully one day I can aspire to be up there with them.

I was a little bit nervous about standing up there in front of my co-sourced client and TW team, but once I got going I actually quite enjoyed it. I Made sure that I had all the little things organised like projectors and stickies and pens, and had prepped the night before, so was feeling reasonably ok about the whole thing.

It was really rewarding to look around the room and see engaged and smiling faces. People were having fun! Yay! It was also really great that some of the poeple who don't normally have the confidence to speak up, do so and to give some really on the money comments too.

Some great actionable ideas came out of our retrospective. Which stayed brilliant positive and forward thinking (we've been known as a team to be swallowed by a hole of complaining...). We had some great ideas ranging from Talk like a Pirate at Standup Day, to creating a daily updated dedicated space on our Wall for the QA's to shout about their progress.

I was on a total high afterward, and so pleased at the positive feedback. I can think of many areas to improve in, but chuffed with achieving quite a milestone at my time in TW.

Here are two of my favourite slides from today:

This week I have mostly been reading..... The Last Lecture.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

Tim leant me this book to read and I'd also heard about it from quite a few friends. Perfectly justified in their recommendation.

I absolutly loved this book.

Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. He specialised in virtual reality. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and died in July of this year. After hearing his diagnosis he decided to give a 'last lecture' at the university, which he both attended and was a professor at, called "Really achieving your childhood dreams". The book accompanies his lecture (which you can find on youtube here). Both the lecture and the book, instead of focusing on his impending health diagnosis, are more about how he lived his life, what inspired him and how he inspired others. He seemed to genuinely be an all round 'nice bloke'. He had 3 small children and his lecture and book were also aimed at showing this children what kind of person their father was and contains advice that he wished he would be able to of given in person.

Some of my favourite bits:

• When there's an elephant in the room introduce him.
• Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something.Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people.
• If there’s anything I want to do so badly, I should have already done it.
• We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I’m not as depressed as you think I should be, I’m sorry to disappoint you. 
• Work and play well together.
• Tell The Truth. All The Time. No one is pure evil.
•  Be willing to apologize. Proper apologies have three parts: 1) What I did was wrong. 2) I’m sorry that I hurt you. 3) How do I make it better? It’s the third part that people tend to forget…. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.
•  Show gratitude. Gratitude is a simple but powerful thing.
• Find the best in everybody…. Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting.
•  If you want to achieve your dreams, you better learn to work and play well with others…[you have] to live with integrity.
• Collaboration, treating others with respect.
•  Never found anger a way to make things better.
• Loyalty is a two-way street.
•  Get a feedback loop and listen to it. Your feedback loop can be this dorky spreadsheet thing I did, or it can just be one great man who tells you what you need to hear. The hard part is the listening to it.
• Persistence and hard work.
• When you are doing something badly and no one’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are the ones still telling you they love you and care.
•  Don’t bail: the best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap
• Don’t complain, Just work harder.  The latter is likely to be more effective.
•  Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted…. I probably got more from that dream [of playing professional football] and not accomplishing it than I got from any of the ones that I did accomplish.
• Fun, wonder, living your dream.
• Decide if you’re a Tigger or an Eyeore. I’m a Tigger.
•  It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.
•  Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I’m dying and I’m having fun. And I’m going to keep having fun every day, because there’s no other way to play it….Having fun for me is like a fish talking about the importance of water. I don’t know how it is like not to have fun…
•  Never lose the child-like wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us. Help others.
• Risk-taking.
  - Better to fail spectacularly than do something mediocre. (Randy Pausch gave out a First Penguin award each year when he was teaching to the biggest failure in trying something big and new because he thought this should be celebrated. First Penguins are the ones that risk that the water might be too cold.)
• Living.
  
• Be good at something; it makes you valuable…. Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome.
• I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.
• To be cliché, death is a part of life and it’s going to happen to all of us. I have the blessing of getting a little bit of advance notice and I am able to optimize my use of time down the home stretch.

Continuing along the Lighthouse Route in Nova Scotia

Continued from here

We left Lunenburg the next morning and continued along the Lighthouse Route. This is the road that winds along the coast as opposed to the highway, all along the south shore of Nova Scotia. We joined the route at Lunenburg that day and followed it to Halifax, stopping at Mahone Bay, Chester, Queensland Beach and Peggy's Cove.

The route is a great one to drive, winding coastal roads, almost always with the sea within view to one side. As the route takes you though lots of little towns and villages it's really easy to just stop and get out whenever there’s something that takes your fancy.

Not far from Lunenburg is Mahone Bay, a pretty little town set at the end of a small inlet. Lots of yachts were all moored up in the bay. We carried on to Chester. The guy that ran the B&B that we were staying in had suggested we stopped there, so thought it might be a good stop for a late morning pit stop. He was of course right. I really liked Chester. It’s a very picturesque, clean, idyllic little town. (almost stepford wives but not quite!) The houses were all perfectly painted and the place just seemed super relaxed. There’s a yacht club which I can imagine gets pretty busy in the high summer season, and a nice headland which you can walk around. We came across the Kiwi Cafe, and boy am I glad that we did. I immediately felt at home, from my days in New Zealand. The cafe is bright and cheery, with super friendly staff and a great atmosphere. I sampled a Nanaimo bar and a fresh lemonade and Tim had an espresso, apparently so good it was in his top three best espresso's ever, so that’s saying something! They had some yummy looking things on the menu too, all beautifully fresh and organic. Highly recommend stopping there.

After feeling refueled we headed back onto the road and came across Queensland Beach, in Hubbard’s Cove. Gorgeous white sandy long stretch of beach grabbed our attention and made us stop for a walk.  We had a lovely time playing in the sea and wandering along the beach. Some crazy souls were even brave enough to get out into the water!

Our penultimate stop of the day was Peggy's Cove. We had made sure we had the whole afternoon there to check this infamous place out. Peggy's Cove is a tiny settlement of about 50 people, a small fishing community and its main attraction is the lighthouse set on top of the rocky outcrop sticking out into the Atlantic Sea. It s a pretty busy little place, there were a couple of tourist buses there whilst we were, but it wasn't too bad, I wouldn't imagine it’s that fun during the main summer season. There are a few houses, most of which are gift shops or art galleries. There’s the main gift shop, post office and restaurant up next to the lighthouse. Tim and I got a hearty feast to take out from there of actually reasonable fish and chips, and a lobster roll (the main staple of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick it would seem!) sat ourselves down on the rocks and had ourselves a lovely afternoon chilling out. There was a pesky giant seagull that seemed intent on stealing my chips but I was having none of it. It is quite a special place, I really felt happy there. We had been blessed by beautiful sunshine for our whole trip, but just as we sat there on the rocks some clouds came rolling in off the sea which made from some quite cool photos.

We ended our trip to the Maritimes with a night in Halifax and then Moncton. Which was pretty odd for me as my younger brother had done his initial pilot training in Moncton a couple of years back. Small world. And possibly one of the only airports that I know where you can buy live lobsters to take home with you….

Cupcake Challenge - Crave vs. Buttercream

I love a good cupcake as much as the next girl.
So when I moved to Calgary I was overjoyed to discover Crave , the ultimate cupcake shop on 17th Ave SW. (They also have a shop in Kensington)
They sell normal sized cupcakes, mini cupcakes (my fave!) and also cookies too. You have a choice of a chocolate or vanilla base and then a multitude of toppings, my favorites being Va Va Vanilla and The Princess on vanilla cake. I prefer the mini ones, the large ones seem just too indulgent, but the mini ones seem to have just the rate ratio of topping to cake, in a handy two bites. The mini ones also handily fit into my cupcake holder that Crave also sell.
Recently a rival cupcake shop has opened on 17th Ave, Buttercream. I thought I would take it upon myself to find out which was better and would I be converted.

On Saturday I hit up Crave first, getting my two favorite minis, they had been freshly baked not long before, and they put them in a box for me (which irritatingly was too big for them so they fell over in my bag and go squished, hence the less than elegant photos below!). I then went on down to Buttercream, They had lots of the big ones left but not many minis. When I asked the lady for just one vanilla one she went hunting out the back and found me one.

I must of looked like a lunatic carrying my precious cupcakes in my hands down 17th Ave, but I found a park to sit down in to conduct my experiment. First I had to put my squashed ones back together. I tried the Buttercream one first, the sponge was nice and light, the topping was also quite light, still tasty though. The crave one again had a light sponge, slightly crisp too, the topping is pretty rich and you can definitely taste the butter cream. Both pretty damn nice.

In conclusion, although the Buttercream cupcake was a bit lighter, if like me, you treat yourself to a single cupcake every now and again, if you're gonna do it, do it properly, and go for the most indulgent taste of the two and that would my old friend Crave! Yay!

So Crave still holds me for now, and next time I must remember not to try my cupcake challenge for breakfast....

Ferry to Digby and lovely Lunenburg

Next stop - Nova Scotia!

On Monday we left our lovely luxurious room in the Rossmount, jumped into our hire car (which I discovered had xm satellite radio, so that I could listen to my favorite BBC Radio One. Hurrah!), and drove back up the coast to St John where we caught the ferry that crosses the Bay of Fundy and goes to Nova Scotia, stopping in Digby.The ferry took just over 3 hours to do the crossing. Tim and I found a nice spot at the back of the ferry shielded from the wind outside and settled there, apart from the hour where I whopped his ass at Uno and he whopped mine at Mastermind. Grr.
Dibgy was holding a motorbike festival just before we arrived so as we went onto the ferry its seemed like a never ending line of bikes came off.

We had to charge across the middle of Nova Scotia to reach Lunenburg where we were staying for the night. I always entertained me on our trip just how many places have the same name as places I know in the UK. I'm guessing given where Nova Scotia is, people from the UK sailed across the Atlantic, landed in Nova Scotia and thought "hmmm why name it something different lets just name this place after my town". As a result I drop past Bridgewater, Truro, Alderney, Londonderry, Chester, Bedford and Dartmouth just to name a few.

It was nice to be driving on roads that have curves and corners again, although not sure Tim was as impressed as I was. Next time I shall take a wee sports car.
We arrived in Lunenburg in the late afternoon. We stayed in a lovely B&B, The Alcion, a large white house on a corner in the more residential part of Lunenburg. We found it a bit weird staying in a B&B, chatting to a bunch of people over breakfast isn't always my idea of fun when I've just woken up, but the breakfast was lovely. The room was gorgeous too, we were in the Dragonfly room, light and airy, and with a lovely bathroom with a hydrotherapy bathtub.

Once we'd dropped off our stuff at the B&B we walked into the main part of the town just in time for sunset over the dock. It's definitely a fishing and boat making town, so I felt right at home! There's an idyllic seafront, there's the harbour level and the rest of the main part of the town is set on a steep hill over looking the harbour. The houses are all painted different colours and seafood is definitely the main item on the menus. It was labour day so we were a bit worried no where would be open, but fear not we found a couple of places. Tim had his first lobster of the trip, and I had some tasty fishcakes. The lobster eating kept me pretty entertained throughout the meal anyways.I really like Lunenburg, it seemed so relaxed and chilled out. The town was really pretty, lots of tree lined avenues in the residential areas. Next time will spend at least two days there.

St Andrews and the Lau/Sallis Wedding

Last week I used the event of Andree and Jason's wedding in New Brunswick as a damn good excuse for a week off and a chance to visit the east coast of Canada. Tim and I visited New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and then to Chicago for the weekend where we caught up with my friend from Uni, Danielle, who was travelling round the states for the summer.

I was super excited to be on the coast again and couldn't wait to see how different the opposite side of Canada is. I'll break up our trip over a few posts.

Tim and I flew to Toronto to meet each other and then caught a flight out to Moncton, NB. We drove the 3 hours or so in the dark down to St Andrews ready for the wedding the next day. Was weird driving all the way without being able to see much of the landscape around us, especially seeing as we know that the sea was just there... It was a beautiful night, a full moon and clear skies. Was great being able to see all those stars again.

The wedding venue that they chose was the Rossmount Inn in St Andrews-by-the-sea. A beauftiful house turned hotel set up on a hillside looking out over the bay. Most of the guests from the wedding were staying at the Rossmount too. The food there on a normal day is supposed to be sublime, although we didn't get a chance to sample it this time. Next time!

St Andrews in a little town on the Bay of Fundy. It's pretty touristy, thankfully we were there towards the end of the season so it wasn't too busy. The town is made up of wodden houses of all different colours and shapes. Theres a nice little pier with fishing boats tied up to it too.

Saturday brought Andree and Jason's wedding. It was honestly the most beautiful wedding I have been too. The day was relaxed and laid back and seriously seriously enjoyable. We were blessed with a beautiful cloudless blue sky, and it was lovely warm day. Andree and Jason had obviously planned the day so well that it seemed effortless. The ceremony was out on the pool deck of the hotel, a record 8 mins of some beautiful vows and my two friends were declared husband and wife. Swiftly followed was champagne and lots of lovely canapes out on the pool deck, Oysters, Goats cheese tarts, salmon, raspberry refreshers and more...

The programming language themed table plan was also a lovely touch. Definitly an 'in' joke. Andree had picked out some lovely options for the dinner, Tim had a pretty damn tasty Lamb dish and I went for the yummy fish. On our tables Andree had left us some really thoughtful party favours. Some how she had managed to find a picture of each of us and Andree or Jason, and put them into photo frames. Such a lovely idea. I was honoured to be part of their day, and they both looked radiant and so meant for each other. Yay.

We spent the rest of the weekend in St Andrews too. The post wedding brunch the next day was pretty fun, more food than any of us could ever manage (even Andree's Dad!), and great wrap up from the day before. Tim and I then took a boat trip to go whale watching. It was brilliant to get out on the ocean again, miss being on a boat. (ironically my brother was sailing with my Dad and stepmum at the time too). We went with Quoddy Link Marine, it was refreshing to see that they were really concerned with letting the whales be whales, they didn't want to crowd the whales like all the other boats were so we went off in search of some more whales. And that we did, we saw quite a few of the massive Finback whales, and also a whole load of seals sat on a rock that gets covered by the massive tides in the Bay of Fundy.

That night saw us having a chilled out evening with those left around from the wedding party.

Lake O'Hara Hike 29th Aug '09

Yesterday the ThoughtWorks hike club set off for another adventure.... this time to Lake O'Hara, in British Columbia, Canada.

This was the most amazing hike I have been on so far. To steal JJ's phrase, "Maximum gain for minimum effort". This was certainly true. In a good way.

JJ and Sarah picked me up at 7am in the Kia Ronda partymobile. To my absolute delight I was greeted with a warm bacon sandwhich and a banana! Legend JJ. Went very well with my tea. Whoop.
The base of Lake O'Hara is just under 3 hours from Calgary, about 25 mins past Lake O'Hara. There we met fellow hikers Kim, Kunal and Mike. We all loaded up into a classic yellow school bus that was going to take us up to the lake. Lake O'Hara is in Yoho national park, and access is restricted to 40 or so people a day to preserve the park (see the national park site for more details). There is a private lodge up there and a campsite. Would be a lovely place for a relaxed long weekend.The bus takes you up the 15km to the Lake and drops you off in the area where the lodge and campsite are. Imediatly you are such a beautiful place. Lake O'Hara is a beautiful aqua marine colour and completly clear. We quite enjoyed throwing stones in and watching them go right to the bottom. The six of us trooped off along the edge of the lake and then took a right fork off the lake edge trail through a lovely forest up to Mary Lake. This lake was much greener in colour. The whole valley we were hiking we were surrounded by grey mountain sides and a view behind us out over the rest of Yoho National Park. Due to the restriction on the people allowed up the mountain we were blessed to hardly meet anyone on the trail. Felt very exclusive!

We then started climbing 200m or so up the side of the cliff onto to Opabin plateau. Amazing view on route of Mary Lake, Lake O'hara and the national park. This part was mainly scrambling up a rocky path. Wouldn't suggest going down that route, certainly not if you are scared of heights. Up is much better.
Once up onto the plateau you are greeted with a surreal world. Feels almost crater like, lush green and big boulders. There are a series of smaller lakes that lead up to Opabin lake at the top and the glacier that feeds them all.We were blessed with the most blue skies and lovely sunshine. Not too hot either. Meant that the lakes were super clear and reflecting the mountains in them. Absolutely beautiful. Feel almost spoilt to see that many lovely scenes in the one day!
To see more of the photos from the hike head to my Facebook page here.

While stopping for snacks in Lake Louise on the way home, I mentioned that I had actually been to Lake Louise or Moraine lake near by, so JJ and Sarah declared we were detouring to Lake Moraine and were going to take me there while we were so close. Moraine Lake is also just beautiful and an easy place to visit if you are in Banff. It's a bit of a tourist trap, but as were there in the evening most of the crowds had dispersed. The most striking thing about Moraine Lake is the colour. The photos don't do it justice. It looks as if it has been dyed.
The journey home of course contained the obligitory Anne and JJ roadshow. We sing out hearts out to some sort of cheesy song, accompanied by some awesome dance moves, amusing the hell out of whoever else is in the car. Sarah's tweet sums it up pretty well I feel

rerevisitedHighlight of the amazing hike to Lake O'Hara: couple of Brits singing their little Shania Twain hearts out. Thx @ateabutnoe & @annejsimmons!

The most amazing day had. Next weekend it's off to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia...