Wings worth traveling for

Rosalynn is shooting a TV commercial in Buffalo next week and I’m trying (desperately) to convince her to same day courier me some Buffalo wings from the Anchor Bar.

If you live in Toronto and haven’t made the trip south yet for these wings… What are you waiting for!

While you’re in Buffalo make sure you visit the three Frank Lloyd Wright houses there, including the spectacular, recently renovated Darwin Martin House Complex.

Toronto gets a new building by Will Alsop

I’m late to this, but if you haven’t heard already Toronto is getting a new design by the British architect Will Alsop. The building will be the flagship for the mammoth new film studio development being installed in the portlands – Filmport.

Most people in Toronto will know Alsop by his incredible (and incredibly controversial) Sharp Centre for Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Although I’m by no means a raving Will Alsop fan I do really appreciate the amount of high profile commissioning going on in Toronto right now. Buildings like this pave the way for more innovative design in this city – something that benefits Toronto in many ways. There are the obvious pluses like increased tourism of course, but beyond that I think beautiful, challenging architecture creates a much more inspiring urban climate for citizens. When we are surrounded by buildings that challenge us I believe it becomes easier for us all to have thoughts and ideas beyond the ordinary and mediocre.

Back to Algonquin Park

Tomorrow morning Rosalynn, Duncan, Deiss and I are all heading into Algonquin park for the first time this summer, and I can’t wait.

Algonquin is an absolute gem in my opinion. Having it so close makes living in Toronto twice as enjoyable. For anyone who lives in Toronto and hasn’t made the trip north yet – Go For It!!

Blogging will (obviously) not be happening in the next few days, but if I can get cell coverage I’ll try to send some photos to flickr.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Good days and bad days

Everyone has good and bad days at work. What I’m learning is that good days feel better and bad days feel worse when it is your company.

When the business is your idea there is no distancing yourself from it when someone doesn’t like the concept. And when you get a compliment you can’t help but take it to heart.

You learn a lot about yourself when you start a business. I think, like any challenge, it provides you some good opportunities to become a genuinely better person. I hope I can take some of them :).

PS – I wonder if this is the first in a series of contemplative posts written late at night after a long day at GigPark?

Inspiration

I hope everyone has a few people in their lives like my friend Dre Labre. I can sit down in a cafe with Dre (like we do every few weeks) feeling uninspired and leave an hour later buzzing with ideas.

Inspiration comes from many places – but I enjoy it most when it comes from a good friend you can just *jam* with.

Happiness project

Earlier this year Adrian G. White of the University of Leicester attempted to plot happiness on a world map. I couldn’t help download the image and sift over it, comparing countries I’ve lived and countries I’ve visited.

This takes me back a few years to when my wife and I decided to leave London. We were trying to figure out where to live next and to help make the decision we plotted weather patterns, proximity to nice beaches/hiking/snowboarding, scores in the recent ‘quality of life’ surveys and a handful of others things. After all the research we settled on Vancouver – it pretty much has it all – and enjoyed a fantastic year living there.

It was a strange experience doing the analysis. It might have been the first time in my life I really, intently, thought about what makes me happy and what might make me even happier. How often do you think about what makes you happy?

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the link to the map.