The story of the night

Yeah, so the Raptors were pounded last night in Charlotte. How does that happen, even on the road and in the second of a back-to-back? Well, here’s how: The team just ain’t that good. And what’s this breakout year everyone is talking about Chris Bosh having? The team is 7-9! Not sure if you recall, but last November Bosh had even better numbers than these, then got tired at the end of the month and limped the rest of the way home. If you’re a superstar, CB, then let’s see it. Win some games.

Anyway, that’s my opening rant. I’m probably overreacting, because realistically this is a slightly-better-than .500 team and that’s probably where it’ll end up at the end of the year. Still, last night’s effort in Charlotte was embarrassing. After making an apparent first quarter defensive stand, the Raps let their guard down, allowing the Bobcats — a team that had scored 100-plus three times in 14 games and never more than 104 this season — to score 116 and set franchise-record with a 35-point win. Toronto shot a season-low 34.5% from the field and was out-boarded 49-42.

There isn’t much use going around pointing fingers, since this was just an all-around ugly effort. Jose Calderon had six turnovers, Chris Bosh was held without a field goal until right before halftime, big-time free agent signing Hedo Turkoglu had five points and no rebounds and the bench, aside from Amir Johnson, combined to shoot 4-of-27. Johnson was the only real bright spot, finishing with 13 points, eight boards and three blocks in 23 minutes.

As bad as that was, it may get worse — the Raps are off today but are in Boston to face the Celtics tomorrow. How about this is where you prove you’re a star in this league, CB4?

Who wouldn't love a guy that gets a standing ovation?

Alex Gonzalez is coming back to Toronto. Okay, okay not that Alex Gonzalez. A day after signing Johnny Mac to a two-year, $3 million deal, ESPN.com is reporting the Jays have also agreed to a one-year, $2.75 million contract with the other Alex Gonzalez, who hit .238 with eight homers in 112 games with Cincinnati and Boston last year.

Like his namesake, Gonzalez is also a shortstop, so his signing all but ends the Marco Scutaro era in Toronto, which, as I implied yesterday, is fine by me. Don’t get me wrong — Scutaro is cool and all, but at age 34 and coming off a career-year, he’s due to get waaaay overpaid. I’ll gladly let someone else do that.

Gonzalez will be 33 on Opening Day, having kicked around the majors since breaking in with Florida in 1998. He hit 23 homers in 2003 and added a walk-off in the World Series, which the Marlins won that year, and hit 16 and .272 as recently as 2007 before missing all of the following year with a broken kneecap. Since leaving Florida in 2006, he’s had a pair of stints in Boston and spent two seasons in Cincinnati.

Also of note (and kind of sadly), Gonzalez has a three-year-old son in Miami that’s been in a coma for two years. That really, really sucks. Anyway, all the best to the new man in town, both on and especially off the field.

Yet another from my Glen Manor Ravine outing. This bridge spans from Pine Cres. to Williamson Rd. Back when I was a child I walked this way to Glen Ames Jr. High every day. I can’t begin to express what a miserable experience I had in school for pretty much my entire childhood. Oh well, life goes on, right? Back to the bridge. When I was a boy the span was an old wooden one. A few years back they updated it with a surprisingly attractive steel structure. I’ll post a couple more photos at another time that will give you a better sense of the thing. With this photo I thought it looked best in black & white.

HEADS UP: For those who get the Bravo TV channel, PhotoXplorers is on tonight at 7:30 PM. It’s a half hour program that follows four photographers as they explore abandoned buildings and other derelict sites throughout Europe. What I really like about it is you see the buildings through the eye of the videographer, getting a “regular” perspective of the space, but then they show you a few of the photos each photographer has taken. Through these photos you can see the hidden art within the walls of the structure. It’ll make you think about what you look at a little differently, at least it does for me. It also makes me realize just how much I’ve got to learn.

Group photo: YES 2009 Culture Night. Photo by Dana Guzman.

It’s been two weeks, two days since I left Braunwald, the kitschy little hotel, and of course, my fellow YES mates. I think there were 38 students representing 25 countries, and it was such a treat to learn about other places and spaces directly from the people who live there. There are 24 countries at the top of my “to visit” list; I just have to find a way to get to every one!

Of all the students, I was one of four representing a developed nation (we had one other Canadian, and one participant each from Denmark and Japan), and boy, did I feel like a schmuck during the presentations. It’s not that anyone was pointing a figure at me or smacking my wrist, but it’s plain that Western lifestyles have altered and continue to abuse our global environment, creating hardships for those who contribute the least to climate change. As Canadians, we enjoy a positive stereotype worldwide on most counts, if only for the fact that we are not American. It’s easy to brush the blame onto our neighbours to the south who are so obviously at the centre of the cause of the climate change crisis. But numbers don’t lie, and Canada is listed seventh in terms of carbon dioxide emissions by country (data from 2007; click here to view the spreadsheet). That makes us worse than the United Kingdom, and they have two times the number of people. Not only that, but our per capita emission rate is 18.81 metric tons, just behind the USA at 19.78 metric tons (2006 data; click here to view the spreadsheet). In comparison, Switzerland’s per capita figure is 6.06 metric tons. I find the difference embarrassing.

It’s not all bad, though (just mostly): in that same spreadsheet, you can see that Canada reduced its carbon emissions by 1.6% from 2006-2007. On a more local level, my hometown of Toronto received the Pollution Prevention Award this year, and has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050. Within the province, the Ontario government supports local farmers, and as a nation, Canada is the birthplace of David Suzuki. There is no reason for us not to be a world leader in the sustainability race, fostering change for not only ourselves, but for the global community. As for our international esteem, I think we can and should bank on action, rather than reputation alone.

Speaking of international, lets switch back to Braunwald while going global. On November 2, we had our YES Cultural Night, which consisted of photos, music, and of course, food! Here is my amalgamation of favourite shots from the night.

Team Canada: Maple cookies and maple syrup. Missing: Bacon, beer.

Mexico's "Day of the Dead" display. Photo by Dana Guzman.

Beautiful textiles. From L to R: Nepal, Egypt, Bangladesh. Photo by Dana Guzman.

More maple! Vivek (Nepal), Ashley (Canada), and myself. Photo by Anna Gawlikowska.

Enjoying some Amarula with the South Africans: Katherine, Anri, and Pieter. Photo by Anna Gawlikowska.

Nicola, Filipina and Roomie Extraordinaire; Sandrita my Hermanita; Anubha! Photo by Nicola Berbano.

Kenyan Twist: grooving with Joshua. Photo by Nicola Berbano.

Air guitar. Bryan Adams. Summer of '69. Sweet. From L to R: Vivek, Kath, Aditya (India), myself, and Anubhav (India). Photo by Ahu Alayna.

A note about the photographers: Dana Guzman is the co-founder of Dédalo, a company that represents and promotes high-end, handmade materials from Latin America. Anna Gawlikowska is the founder of Being World, a foundation that seeks to unite the global community in an effort to confront sustainability issues. Please visit their sites to learn more about their efforts!

Went out to the west end on a Tuesday night with my dudes Nicholas Boss, Vince The Barber and DJ Seven to Fogo Lounge, featuring DJ Seven on the 1’s and 2’s along side DJ Starting From Scratch. 7th letter was in the building puttin’ in some work, shout outs to DJ Wrispect for showin up. Seven and Scratched went off and for a min there I coulda swore it was a Friday night..That’s what y’all wanna do on a Tuesday in the west west end? Good Look.

Some of the photos I took .. more at vincethebarber.wordpress.com

Eric Chueng and Sean Martindale are the implementers of the project Poster Pocket Planting. They fill the city streets of Toronto with more green scenery. What they do is they create “pots” in existing poster walls, they then fill these up with soil and place a plant within it. The poster pocket planters hope that this form of creating green wall systems will encourage other activists to start this method in other cities. It has already been picked up in Brooklyn. Due to the cold weather Eric and Sean have stopped planting new plants into poster pockets. Instead they actually saved some greens that they had put out on Harbord to save them from the frost. These little plants have been carefully brought inside. We love what they do and who knows maybe the streets of Berlin, New York and Amsterdam will look much greener soon. Lets hope so.

BB

Here’s another photo from my Glen Manor Ravine outing on the weekend. As you can see, autumn’s finally wrapping up its season, with only the most stubborn leaves putting up a valiant final fight. Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Santa Parade have all past us by and Christmas is but a month away. Soon the cold dark depths of winter will sweep in low and grip the land in an icy, unrelenting bond. Unbelievable, really. The older I get the faster the seasons seem to slip by. On a sad note, I will be attending the funeral of a close friend’s mother this weekend. She passed away from cancer on Tuesday. I hate funerals, but he’s like family to me so I have to go.

As some of you may know, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) recently announced fare hikes to ride the public transit system in Toronto. These fare hikes will come into effect at the end of January. What do you think the first thing people will do when they hear that there is a fare hike? That’s right, they will buy as many tokens or tickets as they can at the existing price. It is called hoarding by some. I call it being smart.

Do you think that this is something reasonable that the TTC should have expected? Of course it is. How could someone overlook this as a possibility? But they did. So as a temporary solution, the TTC has now enforced a rule that people can only buy 5 tokens at once to prevent hoarding. They also came out with new temporary tickets that can only be used until the end of January when the fare hike takes effect. So what is the problem? Retailers and collectors have a shortage of the temporary tickets, so people riding public transit on a regular basis cannot buy them. See this article.

The TTC developed the ticket strategy to avoid hoarding, which they estimate would have cost them $5m over two months. They call this what would have been lost revenue, but why couldn’t they have anticipated this? Why was the execution so poor? How could they not have discussed some of the scenarios that might take place when fares are raised? I have to imagine that the first thing that would come to most people’s minds is that people will try and buy a lot now at the current price to save in the future. That is not a stretch, so why is the TTC having to be so reactive?

Many organizations spend so much time reacting to what is going on around them, and focusing on head-down operational decisions, that they forget about execution. Think about how many great ideas and initiatives have failed because of poor execution. Organizations need to focus just as much on the execution as the development of the initial strategy. Execution is what gets you results. Execution is what provides a competitive advantage. Execution is what differentiates a good idea from delivered results. We need to spend more time on execution and less time reacting to every new situation that comes up.

And one

The Toronto Raptors? Never heard of ‘em. There are embarrassing performances, and then there are outright horrible ones that make me make me wanna deny my team’s existence. It happens far too often in Raptorland. I’m on my way to bed, but I’ll check in with more on the Raps’ ugly effort in Charlotte tomorrow.

On the positive, the Leafs came out with a 4-3 win in Tampa Bay, catapulting them to sole possession of 29th place in the league at 5-11-7 (or 5-18, if you don’t speak hockey). I might have more on them tomorrow too, or maybe I won’t. You’ll have to wait and see!

Sometimes the “Hockey Gods” show you good favour…other times they smite you. After a devastatingly undeserved loss in OT last game…The Leafs garnered HALF the shots…but the outcome was  (finally) a different story!

Result: Leafs 4 Islanders 3

The Good:

• Rookie Gunnerson got 3 assists, helped on 3 of the 4 goals
• Leafs NEVER got behind, they lead after the First period, second period and (obviously) the third.
• Leafs scored 2 goals BEFORE the other team scored.
• Hagman scored 2 (pretty, not ugly/lucky) goals, and had at least 3 good shots at a Hat-trick.
• Kessel is becoming a face-off guy…winning 9 of 10.
• Leafs have now had more than 30 shots in the last 6 straight games…

The Bad:

• After scoring 2 goals and looking to cruise through the first, Leafs cough up 2 quick goals in 30 seconds…ugly.
• Gustavsson needs to work on handling the puck better–If Tampa Bay had been a smarter and more observant team, they would have been able to capitalize on a few more bad rebounds.
• Kessel DIDNT score.

As you can see, there were FAR more positive elements in this game for the Leafs than bad, which usually spells a win for a half-lucky team, but the Leafs have had some BAD Karma lately. But with a Sens and Habs loss…if the Leafs could get on a roll and win tomorrow night and saturday…they could be right back in the hunt for a playoff birth in a badly unperforming Eastern conference.

Next try: Tomorrow night vs Florida, LEAFS TV (boooo…)

I know… not so much. This street eats truck is located out front of Toronto’s Silly Hall (some still call it City Hall). I can’t recall the last time I ate from a truck out front of City Hall. I do like the hot dogs you get from the carts outside of Canadian Tire stores. I try to stay away from that sort of food. It’s not easy. I was attracted to this scene by the lights and the fact I could get up on a raised platform (about 3 ft off the ground) to shoot this photo. I actually really like this photo in black & white, too. It was hard to decide which to post.

One of my Fav drake songs