This time next month I will be in Beijing...

and I am super excited about that. That is all.

The difference between what you're selling and what they're buying

The first week of camp I had very few takers for (serious) kayak lessons. I wanted to teach campers how to "roll" a kayak, but very few were genuinely interested. Generally one camper in each group. Then we rotated groups after three days and I had less than one interested camper per period.

However, there was no shortage of campers asking about what they had to do to get their "bronze", "silver", "gold" or "platinum" award. I thought it was kind of silly that they were so focused on these awards that didn't teach important kayaking skills, so I kind of brushed off these questions by saying that I was in the process of re-writing the requirements for all of the awards.

After about a week I finally realized that I was going about it the wrong way. These campers were not "buying" kayak lessons or kayak skills. They weren't working towards a river trip like those at the Queen's University White Water kayaking club. They were "buying" self worth, a sense of accomplishment, and maybe something they could write home about. Getting your "bronze" is less about learning the basics of kayaking than it is about building confidence in one's own abilities and establishing self worth.

I should have realized this from day one, having worked with the fellows at http://blueprintstrategicplanning.com/ back when I was doing Darfur advocacy with Stand Canada. One thing they often talked about was the important distinction between what you are selling and what the customer is buying (it is not always the same thing, as evidenced by the above).

Once I made this realization I quickly re-wrote the requirements for each award, and was virtually swamped with campers that wanted to vie for their bronze or silver depending on their skill level in the coming days. The younger campers in particular seem to have a certain sense of satisfaction on achieving  a kayaking award. Also, the great part of this is that I have worked in practical kayaking skills into the higher award levels, and will soon have many more pupils working on advanced skills that will equip them for white water than I did the first week. So things are busier for me at the canoe/kayak beach, but mostly in a good way.

While there will not be the opportunity for me to take campers on a white water kayaking trip, hopefully this new approach will increase the number of people I inspire to take up the sport when they get home from camp.

The Greatest Canoe Trip Ever!!!

***Since I don't have much free time I am not editing my posts from camp like I have been doing with other posts. I am leaving out full names of campers, only using first names, if any***

Today, when we had one of the younger groups at the canoe beach there was a particularly eager kid. He kept yelling his name at my co-staff in hopes it would lead to them checking him in sooner so that he could go get a desirable boat. Unfortunately for him ran to the boats before getting checked in, and by the time we brought him back to check in all the "banana boats" (i.e. sit-on-top kayaks) were gone. He was devastated. I actually thought he might even begin to cry. He said he never got to paddle around in the fun kayaks.

To try and make him feel special I asked if he wanted to come in a canoe with me. He said yes, and I let him pick his canoe. He picked a small canoe that is really just for two people. One of his friends wanted to join us, but my fellow boat-mate really liked the dark blue canoe we were in. He didn't mind if his friend joined us, but he really didn't want to change boats.

We squeezed the second camper in front of me on the ground of the canoe and we were off. I thought they might find it interesting if I gave us a mission, so I decided we would make sure that the rudders of everyone in a kayak were properly afixed. They took to our mission with zest and we paddled to and fro putting on people's rudders for them, and twisting/tightening them when they were loose.

Both the campers co-operated with me fairly well, so near the end of the period I thought we should do something fun. I asked them if they wanted to go REALLY fast, and they said yes. Starting from the shore we paddled to the end of the swim dock and back as fast as I could make us go. On the way back we went so fast the boat started rocking and we tipped. Apparently the campers thought this was even more fun than going super fast.

The first camper came up to me repeatedly to say how it was "the best canoe trip ever" and asking if we could do it again the next day. The second camper also enjoyed it, although seemingly not as much as his friend (although in fairness I think the first camper may have just simply been more expressive).

This series of events was a nice reminder for me of two things:

1: Not getting what we want isn't always so bad. Sometimes it can lead to something even better
2: It's amazing how something so simple such as going really fast in a canoe can make a child's day. Spending time around kids is helping to serve as a reminder to enjoy some of the simple things in life that   we adults often take for granted.

Renewing my spirit at camp!

Last week I arrived at Camp Ramah, on the shores of Skeleton Lake in beautiful Muskoka. I am here for the summer as a kayak (and canoe) instructor, but as those of you who have been to overnight camp before know, there is so much more to it than that.

In order to make sure the memories I am creating for myself and others are not lost, I've decided to document them here. I already have four blogs including this one, and thought that a fifth would simply be too many. Since it is out of the ordinary for me to spend the summer in Muskoka I'm considering this to be enough of a travel experience to go here.

Do you speak Australian?

Saw this on the cork board at the (excellent) Planet Traveler Hostel on College Street in Toronto. I wonder if they are also looking for people who speak Mexican and Brazilian ;)

Why I will never be able to live in Ireland

I met a group of Irish guys at the hostel I am staying at here in Toronto, and heard them talking to each other in a language I didn't understand. I asked if they were speaking Gaelic, to which one of them responded that they were actually talking in English the entire time. They then proceeded to have a laugh at my expense.

Not sure if I was just "that tired", or if they just happen to have the worlds thickest Irish accent. Either way it's pretty funny.

A few reflections on my Asian Adventure - Part I

Eighteen months since my return from Southeast Asia I have decided to write a series of posts reflecting on my time there. My first post will look at the lighter side of my trip - the custom made clothes I procured in Hong Kong and Hoi An (in Vietnam).

1. Fitted clothes are awesome. I have particularly enjoyed wearing the clothes I had made in Hong Kong. I consistently get compliments when I wear the three piece suit I had made there. I would order more clothes from Bobby's Fashions in a heart beat. I'm very glad I ran into my friend Josh in the Ottawa airport on my way to Hong Kong (he had been there on exchange and recommended it to me). The only problem is that I've put on an inch or two in the past few months in the waist. While Bobby's will adjust your pants for free, the catch is that you have to actually be in Hong Kong and go to their store in person (or ship your pants there, which is prohibitively expensive).
2. The clothes I had made at Thien Than Cloth Shop in Hoi An (Vietnam) are a mixed bag. The buttons from my trenchcoat came off almost overnight upon my return home. The dress shirts have held up well, as have the dress pants and vests. However, someone with a trained eye for good clothes has told me that while everything from Hong Kong was excellent, my Vietnamese blazers have women's shoulder pads. I thought the jackets looks fine enough, but to be truthful knowing that tidbit doesn't lead me to be as supremely confident in the Vietnamese Blazers as I am in the ones from Hong Kong. I still wear the rest of my ensemble quite often though. The japanese silk pyjama pants and the ties have held up quite well too. I would definitely order more of everything I bought in Vietnam except for any kind of coat (i.e. suit jacket, trench coat, winter coat, etc.).
3. Colourful clothes are also awesome. I am very happy I decided to get Purple and Pink dress shirts for the first time. I have gotten more comments/compliments regarding my two purple and two pink dress shirts than all the other dress shirts I have ever owned. In fact the only other dress shirt I ever remember getting a compliment on was a vibrant light blue dress shirt that I wore so much the sleeves have worn to the point I can no longer wear it in formal settings.
4. Three piece suits rock. When I show up at a formal event as one of the few men wearing a vest and/or three piece suit I really stand out.
5. The shoes I had made in Hoi An are not completely awful as I initially thought, but I'm still not thrilled with them given the price I paid. I have only consistently worn one out of three pairs. You can get good shoes for slightly more money if you get lucky at Winners (or Marshalls or Nordstrom's Rack if you're American). I would skip getting shoes made, unless you meet someone who went to a better shop than I did (and they happen to rave about the place).

The Haimish Line

This article is similar to the post I wrote about why I love hostels. It's by David Brooks of the New York Times.

http://nyti.ms/p9wak8

I wonder if there is a market for hotels that have nice amenities, yet are "south of the Haimish line". I for one know I would pay for that. Would you? Please leave a comment and let me know!

TLV --> YYZ --> YOW

Tomorrow I fly home to Ottawa... hopefully I'll have time in the airport to update everyone on the past few days of my trip. As much as I've enjoyed Israel, I am looking forward to returning home and getting back to my life in Ottawa!

Built to Last

In the best selling business book "Built to Last" Jim Collins and Jerry Porras profile 18 "visionary" companies that have had sustained success relative to the market. They looked at companies at least 50 years old. It's just one example of how in North America our conception of time is so different than here in Israel and the Middle East, where history is measured in centuries and millennia, and not years and decades.

Two things in particular have stood out to me as being "built to last". Many of the ruins I have seen are two thousand years or older, yet they are still standing. I am talking about walls, structures, even columns. It just makes me laugh when I think about all the condo's in Toronto that were thrown up overnight in the past ten years. A friend of mine once commented to me that his condo was "old" when I asked it's exact age he said about ten years. I won't be surprised if some of these buildings don't even last fifty years before being knocked down due to poor building standards or materials.

The other thing that stuck with me was my visit to the Israel Museum earlier today. Some of the books and scrolls on display are over one thousand years old. In contrast I bought a brand new copy of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" in Cambodia last summer and pages started falling out within days. Today we no longer "build to last". We build for cheap and now.

In a funny kind of way this relates to my interest in family business. Since most family businesses are private, they are not pressured to make long-term sacrifices to hit short-term profit targets like many public firms often are. It's easier for them to take the long view, which is something that appeals to me.

Why I love hostels

Once the group trip I was on arrived in Tel Aviv for our final two nights, I turned my attention towards finding accommodation for the next few nights. For me it was a no-brainer - I was going to find a hostel to stay in. This was even before I found out one extra night at The Carlton would set me back about $245 USD. Even splitting a room would be pricey.

48 Hayarkon, the hostel I am currently staying at had consistently good reviews across hostel booking websites. It also seemed to have good amenities, so I booked it. Aside from a couple small issues my stay here has been overwhelmingly positive. Yes, this is a nicer hostel than most, but the real reason I have so thoroughly enjoyed my stay here is because of the people I have met.

I have met a medical resident in radiology from New York, a recent journalism grad from Australia who has spent the last eighteen months traveling the world, a wide-eyed & bright-eyed Northern Californian who is fresh off her birthright experience, and a fellow Canadian who seems to be an aspiring polymath much like myself (we also have no less than six friends in common according the all-knowing Facebook). I really want to expand on this right now, but I need to get ready so I can go out with some of these very same people!

More to come on this soon...

Short rant about The Carlton Tel Aviv.

The group I was with earlier in my trip spent two nights at the Carlton in Tel Aviv. It is supposedly a five star hotel. Despite the high cost of a room wireless internet is quite costly (at roughly $20 USD), and the computers in their so called "business centre" are quite expensive by metred internet standards, despite being so old they may date back to the 1990's. There is also a sign giving directions about how to print from their computers even though you can't actually print from them.

Anyway, this is my way of saying if you can't do something well then don't do it. The Carlton would be better off not offering their own computers. I just hope their uber expensive wireless internet is faster than the connection on the computers sitting in their lobby. I actually had to go to another hotel (The Sheraton) to find fast & reliable internet.

More pictures...

You can find them here

More to come when I have some free time!

Pictures

You can find a few pictures here

My camera is giving me problems so I've had to use my blackberry to take pictures... so unfortunately they aren't coming out quite as well and are not as plentiful as in Asia. I have a few more I'll be posting soon though!

Day at the beach

Today I spent the day at the beach in Herziliya with a couple other people from my trip that are also staying for a few days extra. We cabbed to the beach at the Daniel hotel, and were immediately blown away upon arrival. It's a much nicer and quieter beach than anywhere in Tel Aviv!

I went for a nice walk down the beach to a point where the beach is maybe 40 feet of sand deep before abruptly becoming a cliff. The homes on top of that cliff must be some of the nicest in the country. I'm back at the hostel nice and relaxed (and free of sand). I'm about to go meet my friends for fancy desserts at Max Brenner. I made some friends in the hostel that might join us.

Re-connecting with family in Israel

Tonight I am going to my cousin Raanan's for dinner. I haven't seen him in many years and am very much looking forward to it. He has three young children - I don't think I've met any of them yet, so I am grateful for the chance to meet them. His oldest speaks only a few words of English, and his two younger children don't speak any (sidenote: obviously the baby who is only a few months old doesn't speak any language). It will be interesting to see if my Hebrew is good enough to communicate with my young cousins!

I am also hoping to see my cousin Michael (Raanan's brother) over the next couple days while I stay here in Tel Aviv.

***Update (I just made plans to see Michael tomorrow night, and thank you to my sister Shayna for pointing out that Raanan in fact has three children. Clearly it's been too long since I've seen his family!)***

Reflections on the organized portion of my trip #1

After thinking more about the posts I wrote about Yad Vashem, I think it's important to give a little more depth to my earlier comments.

At dinner last night my group's guide said that first and foremost, he believe's a good guide is a good educator. I think it's a great insight, and after experiencing him for a week, I agree. This is especially the case when you have someone that hasn't visited the sites you are visiting, which was the case for several people on my trip.

I just want to make the distinction between the importance of teaching people about historical sites, and facilitating a experience so as to have historical sites/museums leave as deep and lasting an impression as possible.

What was particularly impressive about the guide I had on this trip was that his knowledge spanned the three main monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). He did a great job of weaving the stories of the three groups together. Building off of this, it is not surprising that he was an excellent educator - several people on the trip repeatedly commented on his encyclopedic knowledge of the sites we visited. I also admired him for admitting when he didn't know the answer to a question.

While I think it's possible to both educate and facilitate an experience leading to a lasting impression, they are not the same thing. The former relates to knowledge, the latter to a feeling. On this trip I think my guide was excellent at the first, and good at the second. It's going back eight years since I was on a guided trip in Israel (we also went to Poland). I remember only a few facts, but still remember the feelings my guide's story-telling stirred within me.

At some level the these two concepts are mutually supporting, but I wonder if it's possible to be "the best in the world" at both. Either way I am lucky to have benefitted from truly excellent guides on both of my organized trips to Israel.

Now for the solo portion of the trip!

Psychic Numbing Explained

The purpose of this post is to give the proper context of my musings on Yad Vashem. If you are already familiar with the concept of psychic numbing than please skip this post.

This is a re-posting of a blog post I wrote four years ago during my time at Stand. The original post sadly no longer exists, although it was reproduced on the Sudan: The Passion of the Present blog. Unfortunately the text there is incomplete, so I have taken that re-posting and am re-writing the end to the best of my ability.

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Often times, when I see my fellow advocates trying to convince others about how serious the humanitarian crisis in Darfur is, they focus on the numbers - 400,000 dead, 2.5 million displaced, 4 million relying on aid to survive, etc., but to their bewilderment, the people that they speak to just don't care. I recently read an article about this, and I believe that it has important implications for the work we, as Darfur advocates, carry out.

In the journal Judgement and Decision Making, author Paul Slovic examines this phenomenon in an article entitled "Psychic Numbing and Genocide." It's about how numbers are ineffective at conveying the mass atrocities being committed in Darfur. While we know the value of one human life, we can't comprehend what that value would be multiplied by 400,000. We are, therefore, overwhelmed by the statistics. Studies that Slovic cites show that feelings become less intensive when the victim group goes from being even just one person to two.

This suggests that instead of discussing the enormity of the crisis, we must come up with ways to personalize it. We need to provide something more tangible than numbers alone. As advocates, we must realize that Darfur is not about numbers - it is about people.

For me, the story that captures the essence of Darfur is about a decision that most families have to make on an almost-daily basis: who to send to get supplies. Often, the eldest woman in the family is sent. This seems counter-intuitive, but actually makes sense upon closer examination. If the family sends a man, young or old, he is liable to be murdered. If a young woman is sent, she is liable to be raped. Thus, the oldest woman in the family is sent, as she is least likely to be killed, and least likely to be raped - but keep in mind that she is not immune to either. The comparison is merely relative. No family should ever have to make such a decision. Ever.

Next time you meet someone who doesn't know anything about Darfur, don't bombard them with statistics. Instead, I encourage you to share the above story with them. As well, below are links to two other fantastic tools that will help you tell the stories behind the statistics.

Children's drawings from Human Rights Watch

If you are to send one link to the uninformed, this is it. Nothing does a better job of putting a face on the genocide in Darfur.

Google Earth Images of destroyed villages

Each one of those little round and square dots represents a burnt/destroyed home. Each dot represents a family forced to flee their home with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and whatever they could carry.

*** As an addendum to this, I think it's important to mention the "Stand for the Dead" campaign which was launched in my final year with Stand and led by Aneil Jaswal. The campaign was generously created for us by the global advertising firm J. Walter Thompson. The campaign video, which they created for us can be found below:

How to get past psychic numbing to have a meaningful Yad Vashem experience

While my guide at Yad Vashem was extremely knowledgeable, I sometimes found myself taking off my headset and staying behind or going ahead of the group so that I could have a moment of personal reflection.

The downside of having such a knowledgeable guide is that they sometimes feel obligated to share as much of their knowledge as humanly possible. In my case, this meant that my guide spoke throughout the tour. The result was little time for personal reflection. As someone who has spent innumerable hours grasping with the issue of how to communicate messages related to genocide and mass atrocities, I think there are only two ways to properly experience a place such as Yad Vashem. Ideally, one would have an entire day so that they could really take the time to soak everything in that the museum has to offer. Some might say you need more than a day, and I wouldn't disagree with them. However, in reality most people and tour groups have a precious few hours to go through Yad Vashem. In our case we had about two and a half hours.

In a situation where you have limited time, I am an advocate of the "less is more" approach. The truth of the matter is that when you have such a high volume of information thrown at you in such a short time period, only so much, if any, is going to stick. At the end of the day, I don't think it's important that people know that in Germany Jews had to wear yellow stars to distinguish them because they looked like ordinary Germans, whereas in Poland there was no need for the yellow star because Jewish men had long beards and all dressed the same.

I think it's important for people to realize that being marked for death just because of who you are is one of the worst things in the world. People should come away understanding the sheer magnitude and evil of The Final Solution, and why it is the Holocaust left such a mark on it's survivors and their children. People should also have a grasp for how brutal and dehumanizing the methods of murder often were. In a sentence, people need to come out of Yad Vashem with a burning desire to "Never Forget" and that the words "Never Again" must not become a hollow saying (although you could argue "Never Again" has already lost it's meaning).

When you have no time for personal reflection, and when you focus too much on the macro at the expense of the micro, people won't come away with a deep understanding of these broad themes and ideas. People can't comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust when the focus is on large numbers, general discussions on the inner working of concentration camps, and other macro level concepts. Instead, people should be given a compelling individual story, and time to quietly reflect on that story.

Eight years later I still remember that braid of hair I saw at Auschwitz. In a display of thousands of pounds of human hair that was shaved off of Jewish inmates upon their arrival, I noticed a long braid of hair. I must have sat there looking at it for five minutes. What was her name? Her age? Did she have brothers and sisters? Did she ever have a first kiss? A first love? Did she get the chance to tell her parents she loved them? What was the last time she saw her best friend like? Was she sent straight to her death, or did she toil away labouring for months on end before meeting her fate? Maybe she was one of the lucky few who survived. If so, did she ever see any of her family or friends again, or were they all killed by the Nazi's?

I could go on but you get the point. When you go this deep on a person, and take the time to think about them as an individual, it becomes something entirely different. Once you understand the Holocaust or other genocides on a personal level, you can begin to understand it on the larger scale.

Now back to the topic of how to have the most meaningful Yad Vashem experience possible. In hindsight I kind of wish I went through on my own, or at least spent more time without my headphones on so I could reflect on what I was seeing. I think it is better to only see some of the exhibits and take time for quiet personal reflection than to go through every exhibit but have little or no time to reflect. Since I am already knowledgeable about the Holocaust I may have not benefitted as much from the colour commentary our guide was adding to the exhibits in front of us, but even for the uninitiated I encourage you to create your own time/space for personal reflection if your guide doesn't give it. When something strikes you, take off your headphones and spend a few minutes to really think about it. You can catch up with your group once you're done. Years later you will most likely remember those five minutes you sat reflecting on the courage of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising more than anything else.

My first visit to the new yad vashem - what I learned

On Tuesday I went to the new Yad Vashem, which is Israel's national Holocaust memorial museum. I've been there before, but it was eight years ago and the museum has since been completely re-done. Having been a student of genocide studies for 3-4 years during my time at Stand Canada, I was particularly interested in seeing the new methods Yad Vashem chose to teach about the Holocaust.

Most tour groups use a Yad Vashem guide when they tour the museum, but in our case our regular gave us the tour, as he has studied the Holocaust extensively, even teaching at Yad Vashem for a number of years. His knowledge shined through and I certainly developed a better understanding of certain aspects of the Holocaust as a result. One thing in particular that he talked to us about how the Nazi's engineered their killing machine to make it easier for their rank-and-file to carry out the mass murder. Early on the primary method of the mass murders was lining people up and shooting them. However, not surprisingly German soldiers could not stomach this, and did not like having to do so.

In order to make their atrocious acts more palatable, the Nazi regime removed the human element from the killing as much as possible. For example, they enlisted Jews to help round up people from the ghetto's to send them off to the camp's, and then upon their arrival, another group of Jews shepherded those who weren't fit to work to the gas chambers. Even the use of gas chambers was a way of creating a disconnect between killer and victim. By not actually seeing their victims die in front of them, the Nazi's were better equipped to mentally deal with the horrid acts they carried out. This is also why they had Jews remove the bodies from the gas chambers and bring them out to be burned, or dealt with in whatever way the camp in question disposed of the piles of dead bodies.

Putting people into prison like uniforms and then stripping them naked upon their death was another way of dehumanizing the victims of the Nazi genocide, as Hitler's inner circle discovered that when they were naked the Jews and other victimes were seen as less human by the rank and file German soldiers. Apparently even Himler himself almost threw up at the site of some of the atrocities the Germans carried out.

Another thing I think our guide did an excellent job of was getting us to stop and think about the implications of Wannsee conference. It was a meeting where relatively high ranking Nazi officials planned the logistics of stepping up "The Final Solution" so that they could see Hitler's plan of exterminating the Jews taken to it's fruition. Just like there is probably a group of people in a room somewhere in Bentonville Arkansas discussing how to more efficiently get men's pants from coastal China to their stores in North America, there was a group of Nazi officials discussing how to most efficiently get Jews from even the smallest towns scattered across Eastern Europe into the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The level of planning and coordination that went into the Holocaust is almost unthinkable - the only comparison I can think of to better comprehend the scale is the logistics challenges facing global retail stores.