“Home sweet home is an installation show in which each audience member has the opportunity to personalize a house of their choosing and become part of a perfectly formed, miniature, cardboard community. The development boasts a number of services to help individuals settle in…”

www.subjecttochange.org.uk

S and I arrived an hour before the town was closing for the day so we decided to take our stores home to create.  I decided to cut mine in half and reconstruct it. So I had two stores instead of one.

My first store I created is a Sari Sari Store. We thought there should be some ethnicity in this community.

“A sari-sari store is a convenience store found in the Philippines. The word sari-sari is Tagalog meaning “variety”. Such stores form an important economic and social location in a Filipino community. It is present in almost all neighborhoods, sometimes even in every street. Most sari-sari stores are privately” Wikipedia

My next store I created was the BOT shop and Electronic Eatery.

Apparently, we weren’t suppose to take our stores home as someone put up a crime scene around our spots with a note asking for the buildings 61 and 62.

We returned our buildings back. S suggested we leave the crime scene tape up.
S made her store into a Dragon Restaurant (Vietnamese) and a Taco Shack

Overview shot

We thought about becoming the trouble makers in the community and putting inappropriate buildings in the community but we thought otherwise.

More articles on Home Sweet Home
- Toxic spills and street parties: Cultch’s wild cardboard world feels like Home Sweet Home – Georgia Straight
- Home Sweet Home is a different kind of home show – Georgia Straight

When I was in India this movie was big. I judged the movie by it’s cover and thought  it was going to be some stupid gross out college movie like American pie. However, all the people I asked in India said it was a really good movie and I should see it, so I did.

This was a nice treat to watch it with english subtitles as the first time I watched it the majority was in hindi. I could figure out the gist of the storyline but the subtitles added so much more depth and laughter. I finally realized ‘Aal Izz Well’ is actually ‘All is well’ This reflects Rancho’s belief that we should focus on the present and not be overly concerned about the future.

This is a charming movie about 3 engineering students who discover a path of self discovery. I’m a sucker for feel good movies especially ones that aren’t on the side of overly cheezy.

The movie covers several social issues. One is suicide. India has the highest suicide rate within student communities. It explores the pressures put on children by parents, teachers and peers. How free thinking is no longer encouraged in school. This movie examines the flaws in the education system where individuals who memorize textbooks are rewarded while those who try to be visionary are punished.

One of the best lines in the movie is ‘Choose excellence and success will follow’ and it’s true.

What the f*&@ was I doing with my life? I finally got myself out of my jaded world and quit my job. Packed my bags for a 9 month backpacking journey that took me on a whole bunch of twists and turns. After my travels, I planned to hit the ground running instead I was lost for another year of wandering through life. I was feeling sorry for myself.

I decided to go back to school.  The first year was great then I declared my major and it wasn’t so great. Then I went on exchange and it was great and then my last year wasn’t so great.  It wasn’t until I had a nervous breakdown in my last year of school that life got better. I’m surprised one of my teacher actually passed me.  At first, I was really embarrassed having a mental breakdown in school but connecting the dots backwards it was one of the best things to happen to me. It freed me from fear. I had a nervous breakdown but I picked myself up from it and I look at where I am now. I’m happy (okay not always but for the most part I am).

Recently, I came across Steve Job’s Standford commencement speech. Love him or hate him. His drive and passion are inspiring.

Two main points I will take away from this speech.

“…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“They are the stories you’ve never heard from the people you thought you knew best. Handpicked by Oprah for their unique impact on the world, eight true modern masters sit down to share the untold stories that have shaped their lives and the greatest life lessons they’ve learned along the way. In an intimate setting, they open up about their successes, failures, triumphs, disappointments and heartbreaks.” Click here to the link of Master Class

The episode I watched was with Diane Sawyer. She lives quite an insightful life.

Two of my favourite quotes from the Diane Sawyer are

“I read once, which I loved so much, that this great physicist who won a Nobel Prize said that every day when he got home, his dad asked him not what he learned in school but his dad said, ‘Did you ask any great questions today?’ And I always thought, what a beautiful way to educate kids that we’re excited by their questions, not by our answers and whether they can repeat our answers.”

We need to be encouraged in life to ask quality, deep questions and not just repeat what we were taught. We need to be more curious and not just take things as is. I love hanging out with people who explore and make up worlds that do not exist yet.

“My dad, I still think, had the most beautiful, simple checklist for what you should do in life: Do something you really love that you would do it anyway. Do it in the most adventurous place you can do it. And make sure that it helps other people. And if you feel there’s a genuine need for it, and that through that need you can help other people, you’re home.”

Ah…more on the checklist theme. This is a beautiful one. I love the last part of the checklist “make sure it helps other people.” I need to get back to  volunteering again. I miss it. I miss meeting new people.

171, The Checklist Manifesto – How to get things right – Atul Gawande

I’m very lucky to be working for two such people.

Sometimes life seems to speeding past me and I want to hit a speed bump – just to temporarily slow myself down and catch small mistakes before they become big mistakes.

I love the David Lee Roth (Van Halen) example of a perfectly placed speed bump. I remember hearing this story when I was a kid except it was played out that Van Halen were over the top rock stars full of themselves. You see Van Halen demanded a bowl of M&M’s backstage, with no brown M & M’s in the bowl:  “with every single brown candy removed, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation to the band.” One time they followed through.

The contract is full of very important issues – the strength of the stage, the quality of the wiring, and much more.  People could get hurt if the contract wasn’t fully read and checks weren’t  followed through. Roth noticed that some contractors weren’t taking the contract seriously so he placed the demand of the M & M’s in the middle of the contract.

Said Roth: “When I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl, well, we’d line check the entire production.  Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error…Guaranteed you’d run into a problem.” The mistakes could be life threatening.

I’m creating checklists right now and I realized that good checklist are hard to make. I read the book called “The Checklist Manifesto – how to get things right” by Atul Gawande”

It’s a fascinating read with a lot of examples of different kinds of checklists into so many different worlds – like construction building, flying planes, surgery, running a successful restaurant, etc… This book will change the way you see checklists.

Did you know that you have to decide if your checklist is a DO-CONFIRM or a READ-DO?

“With a DO-CONFIRM checklist, team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, often separately. But then they stop. They pause and run the checklist to confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done.

With a READ-DO checklist, people carry out the tasks as they check them off – it’s more like a recipe. So for any new checklist created from scratch, you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation.” (120)

I’m trying to find a balance so that my checklists aren’t  treating the people using it “as dumb and try to spell out every single step” (120). I don’t want the checklist to turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on. Right now, my checklist sound long winded.

I need a checklist to write a checklist. OY! I can hum and ha over these checklist but the real test will be when it’s “operational proof” as Julia Childs says. It’s all theory until you put it out into the real world. Checklists are not necessary static either. There is always room for improvement plus the world is always changing.