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Real Estate Agent April Williams

3 Jun

Lunch with Mary 019

Date of lunch:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009

The company:
April Williams is a real estate agent in Toronto. She works with a partner and has a regular newsletter that was forwarded on to me. I had looked through her newsletters a few times and checked out places online so I figured she would be a good agent to ask for lunch to gain insight about buying a first home. April has been an agent just over a year, after working in advertising and the film industry. She has always been interested in real estate and finally decided to make a career out of it. She was hooked after selling her first property after only three days on the job. Also, it turns out she is friends with my sister and they used to work together – fun! Small world.

The food:
April and I ate at the new(ish) Jack Astor’s at Yonge and Bloor. Believe it or not, I have never been to Jack Astor’s. First impressions – it’s a pretty nice lunch spot if not a bit cookie cutter. I had the Mediterranean Chicken Focaccia sandwich with a side Caesar salad and April had the Opa half pizza and we both drank Diet Coke. My sandwich was delish. The staff at Jack Astor’s actually brought everyone in my office a free boxed lunch a couple of weeks ago to drum up business for their new location. I didn’t even realize until after I was half done my sandwich that this was the same one I had at work – goat cheese and chicken – can’t go wrong. April seemed to enjoy her pizza. And best of all – free re-fills! Total bill was $30 with tax.

The lunch lesson:
Where do I start? This lunch was all about practical knowledge that I am almost embarrassed I don’t yet possess. But I would say my big lesson was the first few steps I need to do to start the buying process. First, I need to go to my bank (or mortgage broker) and see what I amount I can get pre-approved. Second, I should look at some neighbourhoods and choose where I might want to live. Next, just start playing on MLS and seeing what’s out there (I already do this) in my pre-approved price range. And once I have an idea of what I want – call April and start checking out some places! I guess I already knew this stuff, but it’s always helpful to have it spelled out by a professional, so I know I am on the right track.

The lunch:
April is super friendly and was very easy to talk to. She was actually quite helpful and made me feel re-assured about moving into the world of ownership. Considering that when I bought my car in October, I almost had a panic attack at the dealership – I was near tears and needed fresh air and thought I was going to be sick – I can’t even imagine buying a house. But April made some great points that I already know but sometimes need to hear… such as paying rent is just giving money away and real estate is a pretty safe investment.

April pointed out that even if you only stay in a place for a year or two, you get to take the equity from that property and apply it to your next one.

April also spoke about the very favourable mortgage rates happening right now. She told me about her monthly mortgage payment that has gone down almost $500 due to the reduced interest rate. When this happens, she has the choice to pay the lower amount or continue paying the same amount and pay her mortgage off faster. So fixed or variable rate – another thing I have to think about… Because is it really going to go lower than it is now and what if it goes up? I am confused. I guess I need to take a mortgage broker out for lunch next.

There is also a lot of talk about the state of the real estate market. Is it crashing? Will the prices go lower? April thinks the Toronto market is pretty hot. The past few deals she has worked on have had multiple offers. She says that the King West area is really popular right now with a lot of young professionals. I do like that area but can’t imagine taking the King streetcar every day. I guess these are the types of things I need to think about.

So anyone who knows me knows that I am bad at making major decisions, I always over-analyze and over-stress about EVERYTHING! I think that is why I have been avoiding getting into the market. This lunch was just what I needed to push me. I feel like I have an ally in April and I might just be ready to take the plunge. I just hope she keeps paper bags handy for when I start hyperventilating at an open house.

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Member of Parliament Olivia Chow

21 May

Date of lunch:
Thursday, May 21, 2009

The company:
Olivia Chow is the New Democrat MP for Trinity-Spadina, which makes her my MP. Olivia has a diverse and fascinating career in public service. Beginning as an advocate for Vietnamese Boat People seeking asylum in Canada, Olivia worked with many others to successfully push the Canadian government to help these people. In the end, Canada took in 200,000 refugees. She then worked as the constituency assistant in the office of Dan Heap, who held the position Olivia holds now. This taste of seeing how she could make a difference led her to run. Olivia became a school trustee in 1985, a Toronto Metro city councilor in 1991 and continuing to be a councilor in the amalgamated city hall in 1997 and finally a federal MP in 2006. I never have had the opportunity to talk with one of my representatives so I emailed Olivia and asked her to lunch. She wrote me back (which was exciting for me and my blog) and the rest (of the lunch) is history.

 

The food:
We ate at Supermarket in Kensington Market, right near Olivia’s constituency office and smack in the middle of her riding. I have hung out at the Supermarket at night but had never enjoyed food on the patio in the sunshine. I had Thai Green Curry Chicken and Olivia had mango salad with grilled shrimp and we both shared edamame. We both drank water (it was 30 degrees out!!!). The food was great but the food came out at all different times, including getting my rice five minutes before my curry. Total bill was $27 with tax which we split, which she insisted.

The lunch lesson:
Olivia told me about a big lesson she had learned at the beginning of her career which she shared with me. Working in Dan Heap’s office, constituents would often come into the office looking for help for a number of things. She noticed quickly that you can help people one at a time, but if you can change laws and policy, you can help a lot more people. This is what encouraged her to get into politics and something that has got me thinking…

The lunch:
Secretly, but I guess not so secretly now that I am writing this online, I have often thought that one day I want to be on city council. I thought it would be great to hear from Olivia about her experience on city council and beyond.

For anyone who dreams (or thinks or ponders) of political office one day, no matter your leanings, hanging out with Olivia Chow will inspire you to get involved. She is so passionate about what she does and the people she helps. It seems what drives her is being able to change things for the better.

Olivia asked me what organizations or causes I feel strongly about. I told her how I have always supported international aid organizations but most recently, I have focused my attention on the issues facing women in many of these countries. We talked at length about this, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma and Canada’s pledge in international aid.

I think this was the point when I fully realized that Olivia is actually in a position to make a difference. I watch the news about women being stoned for protesting the “rape law” in Afghanistan and I want to do SOMETHING but I don’t know what. I started to imagine myself in a position when I can truly enact change. I do realize that you don’t have to be in office to make a difference, of course, but the idea that Olivia can give a cause (for many local and national issues as well) a voice on a national stage is pretty amazing.

I really enjoyed spending my lunch hour with Olivia. I was REALLY nervous about this lunch. Once Olivia showed up on her bicycle, adorned with flowers, I felt a little bit better and by the end the nerves were gone. Olivia is wonderful company and ensures a fascinating conversation. She may have just pushed me a little closer to running one day…

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Globe and Mail Communities Editor Mathew Ingram

22 Apr

Lunch with Mary 016

Date of lunch:
Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The company:
Mathew Ingram is the communities editor at The Globe and Mail. Likely a lot of people reading this blog know who Mathew Ingram is because they found their way here from his Twitter, as Mathew is far more popular on Twitter than I am. Mathew has been at the Globe and Mail since the early-nineties, starting off as a business writer then moving into covering technology, blogged for the Globe and Mail and eventually moved into his current role where he engages and connects with Globe’s readers online and also covers the state of media in the online age.

 

The food:
We ate at Thai Princess, a great Thai (obviously) place at King and Spadina. I made a reservation and when we got there it was empty so I thought maybe I had been overly cautious – but about 10 minutes later, the place was packed. And for good reason, the food was delish! I had my go-to Thai meal, Green Curry Chicken and Mathew had the grilled combo lunch special. We both drank water. Total bill was $23 with tax.

The lunch lesson:
Mathew said the easiest way to get others to understand the importance of Twitter, and I believe social media in general, is replace the word Twitter (or Facebook or the next thing) with “talking to people”. I’m against Twitter – changed to – I’m against talking to people. Not everyone needs to embrace these new technologies but it’s important that before they take a stand, they truly understand what they’re against. These are tools for engaging and interacting with each other – they’re not replacing in person contact, it’s a different forum, but a valuable one. Can’t we all just get along J

The lunch:
We had some great conversations over the course of lunch. One of my favourite parts was talking about Hunter S. Thompson, Mathew began reading his stuff in high school and I read pretty much all of his work during university. Mathew said what he really liked about Thompson was how powerful a writer he was… and I agree. There is something about his stuff that you can’t explain. It got me thinking of Hunter’s career as a journalist and I thought it was really interesting that Mathew was so into his writing as he was working to become a journalist himself. It made me wonder what other historic journalists are looked to by the reporters that I read every day.

We talked a lot about community engagement on Globe and Mail’s site. As a long time commenter on the articles, I was interested to hear Mathew’s plans. He hopes to create a meritocracy (I newly love this word and what it stands for). He wants to develop some sort of system that rewards good commenters in order to encourage good comments by all and also make the conversation more valuable.

Mathew pointed to the Guardian in the UK and the New York Times as publications that are doing very interesting stuff online. He told me about the Guardian giving their best online commenters their own blog on the site. I know if I could get my own blog on a newspaper’s site, I would comment a lot and well AND not use my awesome pseudonym. The New York Times, which I am obviously a fan of if you look at my Top 5 Dream Lunch List, now includes external links on their homepage – directing people away from the site sounds almost unheard of but it is a very interesting experiment.

Working in the media space and as a news junkie, I found this lunch extremely interesting as the way we receive (and engage with) news is changing day by day and Mathew is on the front line and offered up some great insight.

Going back to Hunter S. Thompson for a minute, Mathew also mentioned Christie Blatchford as another journalist who is a powerful writer. I agree and enjoy her writing. Mathew mentioned that Christie isn’t really down with blogging and Twitter so Mathew’s goal for his new role at The Globe and Mail is to get Christie Blatchord on Twitter! A noble goal indeed – good luck, if anyone can do it, you can!

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Photographer Eamon MacMahon

20 Apr

Lunch with Mary 014

Date of lunch:
Monday, April 20, 2009

The company:
Eamon is a very amazing photographer. You may have seen his work in The Walrus, at Pearson in Terminal 1, New York magazine, National Geographic, Toronto Life and more and he was even featured on the Bravo television series Snapshot. I first met Eamon two years ago when working with the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival. Since then I find myself often reading articles in a variety of magazines and then noticing that the beautiful photographs that accompany the story are by Eamon. I email him periodically to update him on where I see his work, I hope it doesn’t annoy him. Eamon often goes on “adventures” to get his photographs and I wanted to take him for lunch to hear about where he’s been and what he’s seen.

The food:
We ate at Ciros in the Bloor-Lansdowne area. It’s a bit of a strange place, like an oxymoron of itself – seemed like many opposites blended together. However the service was quick and very friendly and the food was fresh and good with enormous portions. I had chicken fingers and fries and Eamon had pad Thai with tofu. I drank diet Coke and Eamon had a cranberry juice. I have also learned after I returned from lunch that it has one of the city’s best beer selections – neither of us drank beer but I might return now that I know this. Total bill was $28 with tax.

The lunch lesson:
I don’t know if this is a lesson exactly, but I always find it refreshing to meet and talk with someone who knows what their passion is and have found a way to do it for a living. It’s something I wish that everyone is able to do with their lives. It’s actually something that is becoming a theme with the people I take out to lunch.

The lunch:
As mentioned above, Eamon always seems to be on an adventure. I had originally asked Eamon for lunch back in early March but got an auto-reply that he would not have access to email until the end of the month. So first things first, I had to ask him what he was up to. Nonchalantly, Eamon tells me that he was helping a friend deliver a sailboat… from the Galapagos to HAWAII! Who does that? So awesome. For anyone who knows me well, knows that I love animals and would be in HEAVAN in the Galapagos and I love beaches A LOT, so Hawaii would also be a dream. The 31 days of open-sea sailing without seeing land, those who know me would also know, I would not love that at all.

One of my favourite series of photos that Eamon does is his Aerials – taking photos from planes and helicopters over forests, Alberta’s tar sands, glaciers, oceans, communities and more. You can check them out under the aerial section of his site. With a pilot friend that he works with, Eamon also often flies into landlocked communities where he meets the people and photographs their lives. Again, check out his site under the Landlocked project.

For a New York magazine story, Eamon went to Wasilla, Alaska during the height of last year’s presidential campaign, two weeks after Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. At the time, Palin was being made out to be a bit of a caricature and I think Wasilla and Alaska were getting a bad rep as a bit of a backwards, backwoods kind of place. Eamon said he was taken aback by the friendliness and openness of the people of Alaska and how it was quite the opposite of any stereotype that was being portrayed by the media. Seems like a place that I would like to visit.

The next adventure that Eamon is heading out on is back to the Alberta Tar Sands for a magazine story. He also plans to go to Europe this summer. Due to his success, Eamon goes from project to project and is also able to fund his own work – it’s great to see someone succeeding at something that they love so much. Like me and my lunch blog ;)

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Law Enforcement Educator Gary Ellis

14 Mar

Lunch with Mary 012

Date of lunch:
Friday, March 13, 2009 (and technically it was breakfast)

The company:
It will be difficult to summarize Gary Ellis’s bio in this small space. It was tough just to come up with a title for this post. But a lot can be garnered from the nicknames those around him have assigned. His students at Georgian call him Chuck – as in “Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.” And his colleagues in the police force call him Forrest Gump – as in he always seems to fall into incredible situations and opportunities. Situations and opportunities such as superintendent at the Toronto Police, FBI National Academy Associate, RCMP National Executive Development Program facilitator, Professor, published author and it goes on and gets COOLER!

The food:
We had breakfast (but we’ll count it as lunch) at Flo’s Diner in Yorkville. Gary had Flo’s Omelet and I had Waffle with Fruit. We also both had coffee. Gary’s omelet looked pretty delish and the waffle was good and so was the fruit but it definitely needed something else like syrup or whipped cream. Total bill was $25 with tax.

The lunch lesson:
There are so many! I learned so much. But I think Gary’s best lesson is something he tells his students all the time and he passed on to me. “If you look at another and you cannot see yourself, you haven’t looked deep enough… but for the want of that could be me.” Gary says this is an important lesson for any police officer as they often deal with people having difficult times, be it mental health issues or addiction, and it is easier to help if you are able to see that they are human as well. But this is a lesson that applies to life – not just policing – and if everyone could see the human side of those they deal with, we’d all be better off.

The lunch:
Gary works as an associate at my work (another one of his many jobs) but I have never really had the chance to talk to him. I remember when Gary started, a brief announcement with bio was sent around the company. I read it and instantly decided that I wanted to sit next to Gary at the holiday party. I pretty much just had to read “FBI” and I was instantly intrigued.

Some of Gary’s proudest accomplishments with the police, work that he continues today, is around saving children from abuse. When he was on the force, Gary led the change of perception of child pornography from a morality issue to a victim issue – because the real issue is saving these kids that are involved. He worked to get funding from the government and helped to set-up a force committed to saving these children.

Given the lack of borders online, saving these kids is often an international endeavour. Gary has now taken many of the best practices he helped to develop in Toronto, and in working with the RCMP, helps train forces from other countries to do the same work to save these children.

Due to the remote chance that I will ever meet anyone again who has been to the FBI headquarters in Quantico, I had to ask a few questions. There really are fake streets and fake buildings where dummies pop up and trainees enact mock situations. For real! It’s not just in the movies. He did say the school part of it doesn’t look that exciting, mostly just like a campus. But can you imagine the stuff you would learn there? Gary knows some really interesting stuff, but he obviously can’t tell me all of it. Gary has also been a keynote speaker at The Institute of World Politics in Washington. Again, Gary isn’t able to tell me the contents of that presentation, but I can imagine it was fascinating.

Gary has also worked on many of the high profile major crime cases that occurred in Toronto that I followed on the news – Gary was often the spokesperson on behalf of the police on TV. Gary is now retired from the police force (currently still working at least 2 full time jobs and one part time) and is taking his time now to pass along a lot of the knowledge that he has learned through his career. One of his lines from his PhD thesis that he continues to use to this day is “Conflict handled responsibly leads to positive change.” This seems to be how Gary works – responsibly handling conflict – be it as a police officer, teacher, stakeholder, communicator – and doing so with the end goal of positive change.

A very awesome lunch/breakfast indeed! And I definitely still want to sit next to Gary at the next staff party.

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Youth Pastor Matt Adams

15 Feb

lunch-with-mary-0091

Date of lunch:

Thursday, February 12, 2009

 

The company:

Matt Adams is the Pastor of Youth, Mission and Outreach at St. Paul’s Bloor Street Anglican Church. I have never really been to church, minus the few times I slept at my grandparents’ house when I was a kid. I thought I would learn a few things from this lunch. First of all, Matt is around the same age as me and I was just curious as to when and how he chose this path and secondly, I wanted to learn a bit about the church community and what it’s all about. I am not a religious person but am totally open-minded about other’s beliefs and was just interested in hearing from someone who obviously had strong convictions. This was also my first lunch with someone I didn’t know before – a mutual friend helped to put us in contact. So I guess the third thing I would learn was getting over my shyness about meeting someone new and not having a backup person to help me to get the conversation started.

 

The food:

We went to the Bishop and the Belcher at Bloor and Church for lunch. I had the Sante Fe Chicken sandwich with salad and Matt had the Buffalo Chicken Fingers with fries. I have eaten at the Bishop maybe 50 times because it’s so close to my work and the Sante Fe sandwich is my go-to meal so I thought it was great as usual. Matt seemed to enjoy his chicken fingers as well. Total bill was $25 with tax.

 

The lunch:

I met Matt at the church where he gave me a tour before we went for lunch. What an incredible building – it does look large from the outside but I was still surprised about how big it was once I got inside. There’s a full gymnasium in the basement, a small chapel, meeting rooms, the youth hang out room and tons more – a really great facility. After the tour we walked over to the pub and had a great conversation.

 

The first thing I wanted to ask Matt was whether he was “called” – how does someone at such a young age decide that they want to be a pastor? Matt explained to me how people are called to do this in many different ways. But for Matt he explained it’s a lot like any other job, you have to determine “Where’s your passion? Where’s your heart?” and to follow that. That really resonated with me as we do spend the majority of our adult waking hours working so it’s important to find a career that you are passionate about – whether in the church or in public relations. Matt said he started being more involved with the church and going on this path when he was 17 – I thought back to when I was 17, I think at the time I still wanted to be a pediatrician and be famous. I definitely didn’t know where I wanted to be or really where I wanted to go at that point.

 

Matt is also new in his role at St. Paul’s. He started in August and is beginning to apply to be ordained. Once that happens he will be able to perform wedding and funeral services, along with many other things. Matt is pretty excited to be able to be part of these important moments in people’s lives and be able to build relationships with people during these times. It seems that this is a big part of Matt’s job and what he enjoys most – especially building relationships with the kids at the church and helping people in a meaningful way.

 

With the youth ministry, Matt told me that they often discuss big questions and have great interactive conversations. Questions like “If there is a God, why is there evil in the world?”. No matter one’s beliefs, it is always great to have these conversations, question what you’re learning, discuss your questions and fears and come to your own conclusions and develop your own convictions.

 

All in all, it was a pretty deep lunch – lots of talks that really got me thinking. It was pretty weird to go back to work after and try to get my head into work mode and not this deep philosophical mode I had gotten into.

 

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