Thursday, February 19, 2009

Mr. President Barack Obama Thank You For Visiting Canada

Mr. President Barack Obama, you probably will never read this thank you letter, but I am sure you can see in people how thankful we Canadians are for your visit to Canada.

The fact that you chose to visit Canada first it means a lot, but the fact that you purchased maple leaf cookies cookies from the local baker it means even more. I actually got goose bumps hearing that on the news. Your risk, I am sure your secret service will get you in trouble later, made our Canadian baker very happy.

Mr. Obama, I watched your presidential race, but watching you being President of United States is even more impressive. Your leadership is beyond my expectations - you are definitely a people person. Your strong focus on the economic crisis and how you handling it so far is on the scale 1 to 10 - I am giving you 8. Sorry I cannot give you 10 just yet, just little too early, but I am sure you have great potential outperform.

It was also nice to watch you and our Prime Minister Mr. Harper getting along so well. You may not have the same views 100%, but I see that both of you have great respect for each other and willing to work together to get us out from the economic crisis.

Mr. Obama, thank you again. And before I conclude this thank you letter, I want to tell you that leadership as yours is needed especially during crisis. If you are good to the people, people will respond positively and will be motivated to work together on the same goal. Like they say, one person can do so much, but together we can do even more.

Enjoy your cookies and good night.


Regards,
Anna

Monday, February 16, 2009

Can I Schedule An Appointment To Have My Nails Done – Call to The Body Shop

I am sure we have done stupid things in life that are worth laughing at. I had many and this is one of them. Back in 1998 me and my husband were planning a wedding. We were very conservative trying to negotiate every item we needed as we just spend all our money on the house. We tried to prepay as much as possible – that was important item on our list of all. At that time I was working at the large corporation, had some flexibility to do some of my planning.

Needles to say, I am not very big on make up, pedicures, manicures – but looks like every bride was doing so was I. Bottom line is - I hated it. I remember I came home once from a trial makeover, oh God, I looked like a scare crow. May be it was nice, I just wasn’t too comfortable, so I guess my face was looking not very happy. But that is not the story, however, the make up was scrapped from my list – a lipstick and some powder did the job.

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If not make up, then may be I just will have my nails done. Where do I start I thought – yellow pages sounds good. I flipped through and I got to the section, body shop. Have you ever shopped at The Body Shop, I did. Got some creams once. To your surprise, they have cream for every part of your body – may be that is why it is called The Body Shop. I guess calling body shop was a good start. During a lunch time I took yellow pages and got the phone number of my first contender.
- ‘Hello’ – a man answered on the other side of the phone.
- ‘Aha’ – I thought, now man are in this business too, that must be one darn good business then.
With quiet voice, not to disturb co-workers I said:
- ‘I will be getting married in 2 weeks and I would like to have my nails done’. Sudden silence.
- ‘You would like to have your nails done Miss?’ – man repeated.
- ‘Yes, yes’ – thinking he understood me.
Suddenly there is honest laugh on the other side of the phone, and the man replied:
- ‘But Miss, we don’t do nails here, we are a body shop and we fix cars, but Miss if you would like you can drop by and see what we can do’.
He had to rubbed it in.
With embarrassment and trying not to start a further conversation, I apologized and hanged up the phone. For the rest of the day I sat in front of the computer laughing to myself and having trouble concentrating. Hopefully no body saw me laughing, they probably would think I was going insane. After all we had a very busy year at work and almost every one was going insane at the same time.

That night I told my husband-to-be this eventful story, and later in the week I broke the news at the office – we had one good chuckle.