Fire and Ice

During my stint as a Paralympic Gamesmaker (more on that soon, I promise) I learned that Fiji had only sent one athlete to the games. This apparently random bit of information stuck in my mind (mainly because I do know someone from Fiji!) but a few days into the games I learned that this athlete – a one-legged high-jumper – had achieved a gold medal.  Amazing. In  my commercial mind, this means that Fiji achieved a 100% success rate in terms of ROI: they invested in one athlete at the Games and came back with one gold. Job done. This led me to wonder if other countries had done the same. I mean, it was only by chance that I knew that Fiji had one athlete AND that this guy had won gold. Let’s face it: the TV coverage was very GB-centric so stuff like this just seems to have gone by unnoticed.  So I decided to do a bit of research into the datasets I needed and worked on some simple analysis with these numbers. I defined 'success' as the ratio between number of a...

I spend a lot of time thinking about my hair, taking care of my hair, styling my hair and generally doing hair-related things. I really just love my hair. It makes me seem a bit shallow. That could be a fair-enough statement - with all that is going on with the world, why spend so much time fussing about my hair? After all, it wasn't that long ago that my hair was nothing more than a source of frustration because I didn't know what to do with it. In case you don't know what I look like, I have long, thick, brown, curly hair. Well, I say curly but in reality it is wavy and it takes a bit of effort to make it curl. And that was my biggest frustration: because I have "in-between hair" I could be either straight or curly and for many years I chose straight. You can hardly blame me: it was the 90s and everyone wanted Rachel hair. I had just emerged from the 80s after numerous perms and quite frankly, I was ready to embrace my inner Rachel. So out came the strai...

 A few months ago a very popular meme was making the rounds on Twitter, where people were telling us a few interesting things about themselves and everything had the hashtag #100thingsaboutme . I liked the idea but thought that actually, Twitter was not the right place for me to publish a list like that, so I decided to write a blog post instead. This way I could elaborate on some of the more interesting items, while keeping the 100 things all together. So I started writing a list. I got to 50 pretty quickly but then things slowed down. Turns out, it is actually quite hard to write 100 interesting things about me! But I persevered and whenever I would think of something for the list, I'd add it so that gradually my list grew. It did take a few months though and that is my excuse reason for not having updated the blog in a while! Here is the list. You will notice that I haven't actually included 100 things about me, but am a few short. This is because I know that someone w...

There is a definite chill in the air: a change of season is upon us and fall is on its way to be followed by dreary winter and months of cold, dark and rain. I rarely welcome the coming of fall because it means that the weather gets colder and colder, something that I definitely don’t enjoy. But instead of whining about how I hate the cold, how I miss the sun and how I can’t bear to have to dress like an eskimo, I am going to try a different approach. I need to focus on the positive side of this colder weather, so for example things like these: October moons Admittedly, this one is short lived but it is an awesome and spectacular sight: there are fewer sights as beautiful as the sight of the full moon in October. I’m sure there is a perfectly sound reason for this amazing sight but it doesn’t make it any less spectacular. Harvest vegetables The fall is also the time of year when one can find the tastiest, yummiest vegetables which also happen to be my favorites: sweet potatos, buttern...

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in London. (No, this isn’t my excuse for not updating my blog in a while. Well… maybe it is) Although I don’t live in London, I’m close enough to go there frequently. I do find myself there very often because of work, but I also like to go there to play. The more time I spend there the more I realize that perhaps I should be an honorary Londoner. One thing that really fascinates me about London is about how it appears to have a Brand. Somehow the brand revolves around buses and the Tube, both forms of transport. Well, there are also red telephone boxes and the Queen’s Guard but for now let’s focus on the Tube . Not only is the signage for the tube almost universally recognized as a London icon, but so is the famous tube map by Harry Beck . Not to mention the gorgeous underground posters and the phrase: “ Mind the Gap ”. I can’t think of many other cities in the world that are defined by their transport, and defined so well, following the prin...

In case you need to find someone in Japan or have information about someone: My thoughts are with the gentle people of Japan and all other Pacific Rim countries in these scary times...

I turned 39 this year. (don't worry - this isn't an 'OMG I'm nearly 40 post... that will come another time!) Shortly after my birthday I must have been bored or something because I realized that with that number I could neatly divide my life into thirds. What's more, the whole of the last third is my life in the UK, as I've been living here 13 years. So surely there is a blog post in there, right? I've been thinking about this for far longer than I care to admit so yes, I guess there is a blog post in this numerical curiosity... So what about the other two thirds of my life? Well, the first one is probably what is considered the formative years: birth to 13 year old. The stuff that happened then is the usual growing up stuff, you know... it is still fairly impressive that in a relatively short time one goes from a helpless infant into a somewhat opinionated pre-teen but I can hardly be the only one! So let's say that those first years happened and quickl...

Some of you may know that we moved recently. It’s been a busy couple of weeks but things are starting to settle down and we are winning the war with all those boxes. The new house is lovely and I’ll go into more detail on a future post, but I wanted to talk about the old house first… the one we left. Although it was starting to feel a little small for us, there is nothing absolutely wrong with that house and there are in fact bits about it that I will miss, like the enormous garage (with automatic doors!), the lovely windows and our gorgeous French Doors that lead to the garden. All of those things we can eventually incorporate into our new house and are indeed already looking into replacement windows, but there is one thing that I had to sacrifice and will not be able to replace. My walk-in closet. Yes, in my old house I had a walk-in closet and it was a proper one, with lots of space for all my clothes and shelves for shoes, sheets, bags, and lots and lots of other things tha...

As part of an activity for my Design Thinking course (U101) , we had to create a map with markers to indicate the countries of origin of various items of food, clothing and others. This is my map: It was so interesting to look through labels and find out where things come from! I knew we'd end up with a lot of stuff from China but clothes from Hungary? Trousers from Jordan? Books made in Dubai?? I did have a few non surprising items like maple syrup from Canada, a hawaiian print dress from (where else?) Hawaii and toys made in China but it is still very interesting and something to think about... (The full map with details is here.)

This is pretty cool... (view the animation here) A bit of fun but also part of my U101 Design Thinking course. Even though I am struggling to keep up, I am really enjoying the discovery process and also finding cool little toys like this one!

It is no secret (perhaps it should be!) that I really like Barry Manilow's music. So I was listening to Copacabana for the millionth time today and I remembered something I've pondered for a long time: why can't anyone figure it out? If you know the story - and you know you do - we have Lola and her boyfriend Tony who both work at the Copacabana. Rico turns up, starts flirting with Lola and the boys fight. Then "there was blood and a single gunshot, but just who shot who?" This is the part I don't get. I mean, it works out as a lovely rhyme but it really shouldn't be that difficult to work out who shot who! There was a single gunshot and we know from the song that Lola "lost her Tony" so surely Rico shot Tony. Another possibility could be that both guys ended up dead, in which case the body that has the GSW was shot by the other one (and in that case, how did the non-shot person die? Punched to death?) For some reason EVERY time I listen to this...

Millions of words have already been written and, no doubt, million more will be written about the sudden death of Michael Jackson . He touched so many lives (not always in a good way) and he was simply the most famous person on Earth. He was also a part of my life in many ways. When I was a teenager I idolized the man, like mostly everyone else did in the 80s. One of my first scrapbooks was all about Michael Jackson! My dream then was to see him in concert and I would have done except for my inability to get good grades in Math (long story...) When my family finally got satellite TV and I discovered MTV, the very first video I saw was Thriller and I was amazed. It set the bar very high for all other videos and I remember at the time being very disappointed that other videos weren't 15 minutes long and had movie-style credits at the end. And the dancing: WOW. I loved the whole thing and of course bought the Thriller album, like millions of people did. His connections to Disney are w...

It appears that the latest marketing trend is to look back nostalgically at the 'good old days'. For example, Sainsbury's latest TV ad is all about heritage and history. The theme is "Trying something new for 140 years" and takes the viewer on a visual journey across the company's main milestones in these years. Marks & Spencer, a competitor, have a very similar campaign out there also, celebrating 125 years. In this TV ad they have Twiggy going back in time on a visual journey across the company's milestones in these years... sound familiar? I wonder what the marketing teams in both companies think about these very, very similar campaigns!! I also note that both commercials include the mention of avocados and the claim of having 'introduced' them to the UK... The ads are so similar that I wonder what happened there - coincidence or something more sinister? Which one do you like best?

I've been meaning to write about this for a little while, then I would change my mind because I am not an expert in this so have nothing really to add. But the topic occupied my thoughts so much to the point that I can't think of anything else to write about so in an act of desperation... here I go. I guess my only qualifier is that I'm from Mexico and have come back from there relatively recently (but long ago enough that I'm not really at any risk). I still have lots of friends and family back there and I get lots of information from them on what things are really like at ground level. So when I see the news here in the UK, I have those filters in my mind. At first I even thought the whole thing was relatively funny - the media taking a small story and blowing it up, causing other people/countries to panic. Why was the story picked up in the first place? I thought that it was perhaps a diversion from the economic situation, or maybe some political move from the Mexica...

A week ago today I landed back in Heathrow with my baby girl and we came back home after being away from the UK for more than two months (or, in her case, for her whole life!). It was of course incredibly nice to see my boys, to be back in my own house and to have the whole family on the same continent again. It was nice to get into a routine again and to take things more slowly. Being back made me realize that I don’t only miss things when I’m here but I also miss more than a few things in the UK. Obviously I miss my boys and being among my own things, but there are also some surprising things that I found myself almost pining after… First of all, I really missed the UK attitude towards the environment. I’ve posted before about the shocking amount of plastic shopping bags I was using in Mexico , but I also found myself having to throw away paper and carton because there is no easy way to recycle it over there. I guess I’ve been on this side of the Atlantic too long but I found attitud...

Aren't these two adorable?? Once life settles down I should be able to continue the usual service, in the meantime here's another baby photo!!

I've been back in Monterrey now two weeks and while time seems to have stood still at the same time I still feel so much like an outsider in my own home city! It really is a feeling of 'neither here nor there' as I have been living in the UK for nearly 12 years now and a lot of the more practical things I've done I've only ever done over there, like buy a house, pay my bills, manage a bank account, shop for groceries, etc. So things I've never really noticed over here and take for granted in the UK - like direct debits - are practically unheard of here and it makes me wonder how people cope. So being here isn't just about how much better things are here (like food and weather) and there are lots of things that I've now noticed here that I only notice because I live in the UK and have experienced a different way. The biggest thing that is bugging me all the time is in terms of environmental awareness. Here in Mexico, like in the USA, environmental concern...

I know it's been a bit slow around this blog lately but between the holidays, handovers, packing, shopping, and (mainly) not being in the office, I just haven't had a chance to update! So I haven't forgotten but I do know that from now on it will be a little harder to keep this up to date... so I apologize in advance. But know that I will be here as soon as I can to get all the latest rants up, to chat about any new Disney songs I stumble across, to document some of my runs and of course to update you on the new human that I'm working on right now. Until then, have a happy 2009 - may all your dreams come true! Catch you on the flipside...

Okay, another one of these 'games' that I generally ignore but this one was a little different. I'm not tagging anyone so if you fancy playing along, please do! 1. Put your iTunes on shuffle. 2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer. 3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS! 4. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the meme as well as the person you got the meme from. If someone says “is this okay” you say? Colors of the Wind – from Pocahontas Not a great start… this just doesn’t make sense! What would best describe your personality? Las chicas no tienen pilila – Los Inhumanos Not much sense here either (this means “girls don’t have…” you know!) but I guess it does describe me at least. What do you like in a guy/girl? El 7 de septiembre – Mecano While I do tend to like guys that have birthdays in September, I can’t make much sense out of this one either. How do you feel today? Cruela de Vil ...

I was sitting on this very beach yesterday, looking out at the sea, enjoying the breeze and feeling the sun on my skin... I'm back in the UK now and needless to say the view isn't as nice (or warm) as this. I'm very tired, very jetlagged, very depressed by the weather here but cheered up by the memories of a brilliant week in Miami. Even though I always hate to leave when I'm on holiday, it's not because I don't want to come home and this time I really missed my boys so in a way, I'm also happy to be back. I just wish it was at the very least sunny!