Book Review: New Rules of the Game – Susan Packard

If you’ve read any of my previous blogs you know that I often write about how books pick me to be read and not the other way around. Well a couple of months ago, I was perusing a local Indigo bookstore with my daughter and after she picked out a book, we went to the adult section as Mommy wanted a treat too!  With no particular topic in mind, I came across Susan Packard’s book, ‘New Rules of the Game’. The elegant and bold Queen Chess piece was staring at me, daring me to pick it up. And so I did. 

As a career-driven person, I’m always on the lookout for successful women and men, who are willing to share their stories because each one I read or listen to, irrespective of the field, helps me to understand myself better, my terrain, and the interaction of all these relationships.

The parallel of sports and business and how to transfer skill sets from the former to the latter is the crux of this book. There are so many overlays with sports and business that there are often water-cooler conversations about them. But to see the parallels succinctly laid out with examples, stories and an action plan tailored to a working woman, is what sets this book apart. 

The book eloquently articulates and reassures women that we don’t need to give up our femininity in order to rise up the ranks. If we strip out the emotion, think, train, and treat our workplace like a playing field where each day is game day, we can better navigate our career paths and move into leadership positions.

Ms. Packard is extremely candid.  She discusses a lot of the hypocrisies that exist, addresses them head on and offers strategies and tactics on how to stickhandle these issues. The book is filled with examples by numerous leaders, some of the sticky situations they were in and how they utilized their knowledge and gamesmanship to come out on top. 

I highly recommend this book to virtually anyone who cares about self-improvement and/or raising strong and mentally healthy children. There are so many take-aways, that you will need post-it notes and a highlighter!

I suppose in some small way my blog tries to achieve the same thing. My kittenheels are my go-to shoes because they are the perfect balance of femininity and pragmatism. It gives me the freedom to go in the direction of my dreams without having to go about it like one of the guys. We are different and we must be proud. We add a unique perspective that is rich and valuable. Let’s figure out the rules of the game, excel in it and then raise the bar!

A Lucky Girl

A lucky girl

It has been a rather turbulent few weeks. You know of Ro’s allergy diagnosis but hand in hand with that, my father went in for a double bypass (open heart surgery) which was totally unexpected and all at the same time! Not to worry, as the surgery went well but rehabilitation takes months and my Mum has been the primary caregiver to Dad post surgery; which is exacting a toll on her. They don’t want us to hire a nurse or caregiver so it’s been my mother who has been doing virtually everything since Dad’s surgery. Enter, Ste. Anne’s Spa.

Mum and I went for a couple of days, which was totally worth it! For her and also for me. I didn’t realize how badly I needed a break until we got to Grafton and I changed into my robe to wait for my massage.  

In all of this, two things I have learned. Well, I learned one new thing and been reminded of another. The reminder being that ‘when it rains it pours’.  When things go nuts, they really go nuts and when you’re on a good roll, it just keeps on going. 

Life experiences tend to trend. When work is stressful, you are sick, or your kids are sick or your parents are sick…or everyone is sick! And then the car breaks down and there is a crazy thunderstorm and your basement gets flooded.  Did I mention you also lost power in the house and everything in your fridge is rotting? Yes, that kind of nuts. It’s happened to us all right?! So the one thing I remind myself of in times like this is a quote I read on the cover of a card (the ones from Indigo/Chapters)…”if you’re going through hell, keep going…” because the flurry of nonsense will pass and hopefully at some point you will be far enough removed from it, to see the beauty in it and how it has changed you for the better.  I’m not there yet but have confidence I will be at some point.

The one thing I learned is that as we go through life, we can’t manage these things ourselves. We need help. My rock in all of this has been Raj. No word of a lie. I’m not one to brag about these things and put people on pedestals but man oh man, has he been an unsung hero in all of this mess. A quiet but firm support nudging me forward, holding me up and sometimes pulling me kicking and screaming. 

There have been others too: good friends, my brothers, my mother... all without whom I'd be utterly useless. But Raj has to deal with me ALL of the time, so he gets an entire paragraph :)

I am a lucky girl.

My New Life: Damn you Allergens

As some of you may know we have been having some trouble with my little one who has been chronically throwing up for the past 6 – 8 months. At first we were told to ignore it but we got a second opinion and was quickly referred to a GI specialist at Sick Kids Hospital. They did a bunch of blood tests, which didn’t really give us any answers so an endoscopy was done earlier this month.

Our little boy was put under and an upper endoscopy was done with multiple biopsies. We just found out that the results that came from the biopsies were useful. Turns out, he has very high levels of eosinophil in his upper, mid and lower esophagus and has been diagnosed with something called EOE (eosinophilic esophagitis).

To a layman, it’s an allergy that is not anaphylactic (as is the case with Ellil and peanuts) but an allergy nonetheless. Apparently, a reaction to the allergy can happen up to 10 days post ingestion, which is why it felt like his vomiting was completely random! We couldn’t link it back to any particular food as such, except milk so we stopped giving him milk thinking that maybe it was a lactose intolerance issue.  But clearly the issue isn’t lactose.

We met with the GI Doctor, the nurse who we’ve been in touch with for the appointments and then we were put through to their Dietician who came in to see us last.

The Doctor talked to us about EOE. Explained the history and symptoms in different age groups and also the two routes we could take with treatment. Option 1 was give him a steroid, which is temporary and his condition could be chronic so nobody was keen to go this route. The second route was to withhold the allergen it seemed most likely to be causing the issue.  In his case, milk or dairy of any sort.

There are 6 allergens. Milk, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts/treenuts and shellfish. In 7 out of 10 cases for children in Ro’s age group the culprit is milk. So it seems like the obvious type of food to withhold and see if he gets better and starts putting on weight and stops vomiting.

The dietician explained the issue and in more detail what the treatment entailed.  No milk, cheese, butter, foods with dairy or milk solids or milk powder. But we have to substitute with other high caloric foods and give calcium and vitamin D.

Okay. Take a breath. Here we go.

Feels like we are entering a new world order.  A world where milk comes from nuts, cheese comes from rice and banana bread is made with avocadoes.  What is going on here?!

I was so careful when I was pregnant with both of them. No pop. No caffeine. No alcohol. No sushi. Walked everyday. Ate lots of vegetables and fruit. Took my multivitamin religiously. Maybe not as religiously as I think? I know I missed a few days here and there…who knows?

I also couldn’t breastfeed him the first 10 days because of my PDPH for which I am still incensed at the anesthesiologist at St. Mike’s about. And I wonder if I had been able to breastfeed him from the start, that maybe all this wouldn’t have happened. But I will never know that.

On the bright side, we know what the issue is and in this day and age, thanks to stores like Whole Foods that keep these alternative products on their shelves (dairy free frozen cheese pizza as an example) it makes it a lot easier to feed our kids.

If you have any dairy free recipes for birthday cakes, please send it my way!

From 'How To Be a Woman' to '50 Shades'. A lesson in empowerment.

Monday, February 16, 2015

My first official entry of 2015. I did write some earlier but they were incomplete thoughts and my mind was a bit of a mess so the entries were all over the place. Combine that with frigid weather, children catching colds and fevers (and throwing up all over me) and a volatile market and we had all the makings of a perfect storm that had me reacting and defending as opposed to being proactive and planning anything at all! 

So, on a quiet family day I finally have made some time for an entry. Agree or Disagree. I do hope you have an opinion either way.

From ‘How To Be a Woman’ to ’50 Shades of Grey’, I have read and seen either ends of the spectrum when it comes to empowered women or the lack thereof. Given my day job, I have been witness to real-life battles and outcomes of the gender issue and am actively involved in moving, sometimes dragging (kicking and screaming) women and men from the ’50 Shades mentality’ to ‘How to Be a Woman’. 

First things first. I never read ’50 Shades’ but I did read ‘How to be a Woman’. I highly recommend the latter, irrespective of your gender.  I’ll be honest.  My life has unfolded not at all like Caitlin Moran (the author) and our life choices have been extremely dissimilar in more ways than I can count.  This is very refreshing because it illustrates beautifully how two very different people growing up in different parts of the world, exposed to different stimuli have accumulated a varied database of life lessons and introspection. And through all these differences, we have outlooks that are very similar when it comes to the topic of…us. So clearly, there are more women (and men) out there who feel the same way! We are not alone!

Go read ‘How To Be a Woman’ by Caitlin Moran. The book is hilarious and serious all at the same time.  It isn’t a literal book but it does get you to think about things and most importantly laugh at the silliness of some of the more backward thinking of modern day society.

There isn’t much to say about the movie ’50 Shades’. I saw it. It’s boring. There’s no plot. No hero. No heroine. No mystery. No romance. No love. No redemption. if you think otherwise, I'm more than happy to debate it. 

  

Why Anger is Good

Why Anger is Good

I know it isn’t the most festive entry but December for me has really been a stressful month. By the time you are 12 months into the year you are stretched from end to end and are teaching yourself meditation techniques to keep the shingles at bay.

Work demands, home demands, personal demands. And you naïvely believe that there is some reprieve with Christmas and the New Year but really there isn’t. In fact, everything gets even more magnified. All the things still left undone, un-organized, unrealised. And what about all the stuff that you did accomplish? Of course you should be recognized for that? And you feel you will be ‘thanked’ for the strong results, but even then, you get… a lump of coal wrapped up in a tiny recycled bow! I don’t know about you; but that makes me real mad.

At first, I was trying to fight the anger and think about things rationally but the truth is, nothing propels you to get out of your current situation and into a better one, quite like anger. If a dress is bulging in all the wrong places and that makes you angry, you sign up for a kickboxing class and kick the crap out of those bulges; or the dress.

In effect, if you are angry it just means that you have hope. Hope because you know that the source of ‘that’ anger is temporary since you won’t let ‘that’ happen to you again. You now know better. You deserve better. There IS a better. A better dress. A better gym. A better job. A better boyfriend. Whatever your case is.

Now you just have to harness that potential for a long enough time to keep you focused on getting yourself out of the current ‘angry’ place and onto a more deserving platform.

I am totally giving this a shot in 2015! Go hard or go home, right?!

A Bookworm's Version: Great Read while on holiday

Serendipity At Play

Remember how I mentioned in a previous post that quite often I don’t choose my books but they choose me? I know you think its nuts that I say that but it’s true. And I have found that whenever I let a book choose me, I am always pleasantly surprised by it. This time was no different.

My sister-in-law and I were at a craft shop in Colombo looking for gift items and the store had a little book section tucked away in one corner of their lowest floor. So naturally, I started looking and not much stuck out at first. But as I was walking away but looking back over my shoulder (because I really wanted to read a good book on my holiday), I caught the cover of a book on the ‘New Arrivals’ table.

‘The Gurkha’s Daughter’, by some author I had never heard of and in all honesty didn’t know if it was a girl’s name or guy’s. My mom is half Gurkha and half Rajput, which is said almost ‘tongue-in-cheek’ around our home because both Gurkha’s and Rajput’s are warriors and my mother can get passionate and a little confrontational from time to time!  So I immediately knew the book would have something to do with the Nepali experience and it did.

The Gurkha’s Daughter is a collection of short stories by Prajwal Parajuly (a man by the way) and is very reminiscent of Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection ‘The Interpreter of Maladies’ one of my very favourite books. I love short stories. If written well, they capture all the essential emotions and leave you longing for just a little bit more. This was one of those books.

The string throughout all the pieces was of course the lives of the Nepali people in India, Nepal and the U.S.A. The pieces were concise yet detailed and had the right combination of plot and character development. I didn’t just read the book, I devoured it. In one weekend I polished off almost 300 pages. Go Read it! You will thank me for it. I promise.

2 weeks, 2 kids, 2 oceans away

2 weeks with 2 kids 2 oceans away

 

 

I still remember planning for this trip 6 months ago and here I sit now in my mother-in-law’s flat on the last day of my holiday before heading back to Canada. Back to life. Back to reality. Aside from the typical south Asian vacation experience which included a lot of eating, shopping, sleeping and some time at the beach and pool as well as the extreme heat, mosquito bites and not drinking enough water on purpose to avoid using public washrooms, it was my first time being away with both kids, just Raj and I, so far from home.

To be honest, I was most anxious about this as I knew it would be a ‘test’ of some sort. My mom has always been around and both kids go to her as frequently (if not more often) as Raj and I. Here, it was just me. Don’t get me wrong, Raj’s family was more than happy to do whatever was necessary including feeding them and washing their clothes, but the kids’ natural inclination was to come to me if they wanted or needed something; anything.

The exhausting journey on the plane, explaining why the washrooms and life here is so different, ensuring they don’t drink the tap water, dealing with Ro’s illness. It wasn’t easy but it has brought us closer and left me feeling re-assured knowing that if push came to shove I can trust my instinct and deal with whatever is thrown at me; projectile vomit included.

I think testing yourself at various junctures in life is important if only to remind yourself that you aren’t totally worthless and that if 2 lives depend on you, you must deliver. This commitment itself to deliver expands your boundaries, pushes your limits and leaves you feeling quietly confident.