that canadian girl

As a total foodie, I find that challenging your tastebuds and trying new flavours regularly is one of the joys of life. I always feel a bit sorry for people afflicted with allergies, pregnant women (who can’t eat soft cheese or sushi!) and diabetics.

While we all need to watch what we eat to avoid ballooning in weight or croaking too young from clogged up arteries, the people above need to be doubly careful since there are serious immediate implications to giving in to food they shouldn’t have - I should know, lovely Lynsey at work nearly sneezes her brains out if she eats anything containing gluten!

When I cook for friends, I love to introduce them to new food, without serving anything TOO weird… But when someone mentions allergies, it stops me right in my tracks. Uh oh, must really watch what I put in this dish! I would feel awful to cause a friend the kind of physical discomfort that comes from a bad reaction to nuts, for example.

However, there is a nuance. There’s real allergies, and then there’s what food sissies call “allergies”. When I hear “Oh, I’m allergic to red peppers, I once had a bad experience with red peppers”, whereby they mean they don’t particularly like the taste of them, or they ate a dish which contained bad prawns which gave them the runs, and to which they associate red peppers.

That. Is. Not. An. Allergy.

Comprendes? That’s a food dislike. It’s no more serious than my sister Julie disliking mashed potatoes and spending many childhood evenings alone at the table after dinner, left there to finish her potatoes if she wanted dessert. The only thing that could have killed her there was boredom.

A one-off bad experience with fish shouldn’t be a reason to stop eating seafood altogether. It makes my blood boil that people cover their picky taste with a medical condition such as food allergies.

If you’re one of these people, do yourself a favour. Next time you go out to a good restaurant, somewhere that serves quality food, try something out of your comfort zone. Maybe give salmon a go again? I’m not saying jump straight into the raw oysters, but don’t cut out an entire range of food from your life simply because you’re too weenie to try it again.

Now, how about a chilli fried scorpion to top off that burrito?

Today, I’m getting out of the way and giving the blog limelight to my old work colleague and fantastic friend Tom Crinson. He’s the nicest guy I could have ever worked with, but he’s also completely bonkers and going on a life-changing trek up the Kilimanjaro in a few days. Here’s his interesting customer care story…

I am going on a walk. A very big frickin’ walk, up a very big frickin’ hill (Kilimanjaro). I am scared. However, I am about as well prepared as I can possibly be, I have decent kit which has cost a small fortune, I have been training a lot, which has hurt. However the biggest shock of it all so far has come from a customer services experience. This is what happened:

The trek is only a few days away and I am getting my kit together to run through final checklists etc. and I suddenly remember that after the trek I am going on a safari as well! As girly as it sounds, I have nothing to wear! I have been so focussed on the trek I had forgotten about it. Literally nothing I have would be good enough for the African savannah, and I start to panic. Mainly as I don’t have a day free to go shopping on to get kit, and it’s the middle of winter here, no shops are going to be pimping their summer wares just yet!

So panic sets in, I reach for the magical box which contains the internet (it is shiny and silver and has an apple on the front) and type in “Safari clothing”, up pop lots of results. Clicking about I find some shirts that look like they are up to scratch for 40 or so of your english pounds. £40! For a frickin beige shirt?? Holy jesus mary mother of poo no way am I paying that. Remembering that some of my walking trousers are from a company called CragHoppers I thought I would give them a go. Perfect. Good quality shirts with UV(blah) protection and stuff. £15. Now were talking. Ordered two of those and two pairs of walking trousers that zip off to form shorts for a measly £70. A-mazing. Value and quality I know I can trust.

Confirmation email time. Oh yes, this gem: “Please note: We are currently experiencing some delay in the dispatch of orders. Therefore your order may take slightly longer to arrive. Please be patient and bear with us at this busy time.” Appears in it! Not a single mention of this on the site, only after my money has been taken do they mention this. So I call them up….“Err.. WTF?” to hear an amazingly friendly voice which belongs to a nice lady called Dawn at the other end of CragHoppers’ customer services line.

She explains to me how their system went down over Christmas and that they are going mental trying to get the back orders through. “But I’m off on friday!” I say, “Fear not” says she, and about an hour and a half later, the wonderful wonderful woman has somehow managed to get their warehouse to dispatch my order that day. Literally ordered Sunday night, panicked Monday, goods arrived Tuesday. Brilliant.

I don’t think I have been so amazed by a customer services department before. She could have just told me to go away there was nothing she could do, but she went out of her way to help me and for that I am unbelievably grateful.

Thank you thank you thank you! I am now a teeny bit less stressed!

In the past few days, I’ve read some genuinely interesting articles which I’ve been meaning to blog, but to avoid stale blog entries in my drafts, I’ll just share the links and let you read on.

Want more? Why not subscribe to my Shared Items in Google Reader?

With the beginning of a new year comes a brand new look for our Pepsmedia website.

We’ve been so privileged to have the opportunity to work with interesting, open (and sometimes challenging) clients in recent months, and they have kept us so busy that we’d neglected to update our own portfolio.

I’m looking forward to seeing what 2008 will bring!

This week, it is my honour to be hosting the second Travel Blog Carnival, launched last week by Darren at Travel-Rants. Last week, Europe a la Carte’s Karen hosted the first carnival. Without further ado, here are my favourite submissions this week.

First, brand new blog J Top Ten publishes the Top 5 biggest comparisons between South California and North California. Having never been, I was surprised by the seemingly significant differences in culture between what’s known to a geek like me as Silicon Valley in the North and the much-caricatured Hollywood further South.

Next, the Travel Advice and Guides in the Nordic Region blog confirms my suspicion that the Swedes are a bit mad. “Local officials have now given permission for construction of the worlds largest Elk.” Yes, you’ve read this right. An elk, towering 45 meters tall, containing conference rooms, exhibition halls, a restaurant, with an outdoor cafe on top of the antlers, to top it all off. Please, please tell me the exit isn’t at the rear…

Hole in the Donut’s Barbara Weibel writes this week about her experiences in street crossing across the world. From the madness of Indian streets where there simply are no rules to the unbelievably organised Singaporean roads. I’ll certainly be following her advice when I find myself on a new street corner; “When traveling in unfamiliar places is to watch the locals and do as they do, because they’ve definitely figured out the order of things.”

And finally, Foxnomad makes his predictions on what 2008 will hold for travellers. Rising airline prices, the advent of greener travel and third-world trips becoming more attractive are only some of his predictions. Only time will tell how close Foxnomad will be! All I hope is that he is wrong about his prediction on the likely increase in terrorist activity on tourist destinations.

Want to take part in the next Travel Blog Carnival? You can submit any travel related posts which you’ve written in the last 7 days to blog.carnival(at)gmail.com.

Jane Dallaway suggested that I write about apps that help me get things done. As a Mac user, I love to try out new applications written by smaller developers, so I thought I’d share the list of everything I use regularly, so go have a look at my profile on IUseThis.

I’ll go in more details on best GTD tools in the near future, for tonight, I’m just checking in and sharing this with you!

While we’re on the topic, I thought I’d flag up a GREAT deal on MacHeist. Ten apps for $49 is simply fantastic, especially since 25% goes directly to charity. If you’re a Mac user, I highly recommend having a look at this offer before it runs out!

Today, a certain friend of mine spotted a three year old entry on my blog named “International Boredom Day” and suggested I should write an update about it. While it’s not a written suggestion, it’s good enough for me today

Indeed, tomorrow, we shall be celebrating 3 years since I pronounced January 9th International Boredom Day. I suppose that on the day I wrote the entry in question, I could’ve done all sorts of productive things but instead had a nap, read a book, lazed around a little. That’s a luxury I hardly even dream of these days! What I’d give for one day where I have time to be bored.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my fast-paced exciting life and don’t want to give up any of my projects, but there’s a part of me that envies my boss for his two weeks in Sri Lanka spent meditating and doing yoga over Christmas. Sounds like bliss! (Not the yoga part, I would probably break in two if I tried doing yoga, but the meditation, relaxation bit.)

I have a theory that the older you grow, the faster time flies. I call it the Theory of Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff. (A beer to whoever can place this quote) So in the past 3 years, I’m convinced days have gotten shorter! It’s harder to find time to sleep, and almost impossible to get everything done at work and at home while keeping some sane Me-time every so often for reading an embarrassingly cheesy novel or watching a bad movie like… Robocop or Hackers…

So while I don’t have an answer on how to MAKE time, all I can say is that International Boredom Day is no longer in existence in my mind.

This Blog Topic Challenge is turning out to be harder than I thought - especially with the mad evenings we’ve recently had. But I’m still up for it! Entries still welcome to help me make up a whole month’s worth of suggestions!

As first entry for my infamous Blog Topic Challenge, I thought I’d begin with an elementary and logical first step.

James Whatley, SpinVox blogger and great friend of mine, suggested that I should “write about your job and everyone you have ever met in your niche industry…” Great suggestion, but there are just too many awesome people I’ve met so I’ll split this into two entries, concentrating on the “write about your job” part first.

From one day to the next, I wear many hats… and wigs… and tiaras. By daylight, I’m part of a great team at Taptu. It’s my first time taking part in the early days of a startup and I’m really enjoying it. There are new challenges every day, which is a refreshing change from previous jobs where tasks were repetitive to say the least (could YOU spend 52 weeks a year sending email newsletters that always say the same thing? I couldn’t.)

These days, there’s blogging, attending events, handling search engine optimisation (which I love), researching new ideas for the search engine, speaking to our mobile search users as well as our Facebook app users to get their feedback (which I love even more!) and planning future super-secret projects which I can’t tell you about yet… unless you ply me with shiny gadgets, at which point I might just crack. Or not. (But you can offer me shiny gadgets anyways!)

My job also entails making copious amounts of coffee every day and occasionally teasing Bob about his taste in movies and Lynsey about her Scrabulous choice of words.

All in all, it’s exciting and challenging. And no, you can’t have my job!

Blog Topic Challenge: Want to suggest the next topic for me to write about? Leave a comment here and I’ll tackle your topic soon!

If you’re going to South by Southwest in March, let it be known. Add yourself to the wiki list started by Colleen and Adele, two Twitterers I’m following.

It’ll be a first-time for me, so I’m open to any opportunity to plan to meet and hang out with other bloggers or Twitterers!

[Update: Durr, forgot the wiki link the first time around. Thanks Mark for pointing it out…]

This blog has always been fairly adhoc in terms of topics, with the only running threads being technology, marketing, customer service or personal family stuff.

As an experiment beginning on Monday, Jan 7th, I’ll write a post a day - every day including weekend - on a topic of my readers’ choice. Depending on the topic, I may write a short ten liner post, or go ahead and do some full-on research if it looks interesting (and, realistically, if I have the time), but my challenge will be to post on that given topic every day without fail.

It can range from topics I’ve already written about where you want to know more, topics you’d bet your hat I know nothing about, or questions about me. Serious, silly, techy, non-techy, it’s up to you.* I’m putting my blog in your hands for a month!

To some people, 31 posts in 31 days seems like nothing, but this will most likely include some research on bizarro topics if people I know read this blog are anything to go by.

Make your suggestions for my first few posts in the comments for this post and I’ll begin the Blog Topic Challenge on Monday.

[* Please don’t make me write about rugby or cricket though, I just can’t understand those sports…]

Ottawa New Year 2008, originally uploaded by Seamus @ Flickr.

Last night, we braved the crowds at the Museum of Civilizations in Hull so that we could see the beautiful fireworks.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to bring my camera along and my iPhone would have been pretty much useless in such a condition, so here is one shot taken by a Flickr user.

Wishing everyone a wonderful new year, filled with new experiences, exciting opportunities and lots of love.

Happy new year to you all!

Vero
xoxo