Summer to Fall - Running

Did a lot of running this past summer. I'm now slightly over 4,500 K in distance run this year, from January. I was hoping to break 5,000 K but I've got this injury in my right leg that's causing a bit of distress, mostly because I'm scheduled for a full marathon in a week!

Let's hope that I can rest it this week and it goes away.

The weather's changed and this is supposed to be perfect running weather. It's cold in the morning when I normally run, close to about 4 degrees Celsius and so the running toque, or hat, and the gloves are mandatory. Here are a few pictures of Eglinton, in the Summer and in the Fall.

Approaching Kipling Ave.

Approaching Kipling Ave. Bike Path.

The pictures above are close to the start of my run, barely 1 K, it's a nice wide bike path and I normally run on the path, not the side-walk.

Approaching Kipling Ave. October

Eglinton/Kipling - Bike Path

Eglinton/Kipling - Bike Path

You can see from the shots above, taken in October, that the leaves are turning beautiful shades of orange, brown and yellow. The sun was still shining and the temperatures were absolutely perfect.

Eglinton Ave - Before Kipling

This is the "tunnel" before slipping into the bike path. You can see the side-walk on the right side next to Eglinton. The shrubbery is still green.

Eglinton Ave - Before Kipling

This is the same spot as the one above, but you can see that the leaves are already falling off the trees. The bike path and side-walk is strewn with them. Made for a nice crunch, crunch, crunch as you're running.

Running in Etobicoke is nice, but not as nice as it was in Mississauga. At least, you have some stretches in Etobicoke where you can disappear from the traffic and get lost in your thoughts. I wonder if I'll take some Winter shots for comparison?

A tribute to Steve Jobs

I knew very little of Steve Jobs. What I'd heard mostly was anecdotal. His temper and expletives at management meetings. He was a no nonsense type of person and put off a lot of his senior staff. Most of this is culled from heresy, not fact.

But now that he's gone, I've learned of a different side of the man. A person who was very bright, almost a genius. A man who battled with death and beat it many times before it finally overcame him. Someone who defied all odds in life, in business and in his influence on popular culture.

I didn't know any of this till he was gone. So many questions still remain, but I now realise that the man, and I, shared a philosophy of life that he lived, and I dream about.

In a seminal commencement speech given to the 2005 graduating class of Stanford University, I learned that he was adopted. His birth parents, too young to take care of him, gave him away at birth. The couple that raised him, who he called his parents, didn't go to college. He himself dropped out after six months, but popped into the more interesting classes.

I learned that he had a love for calligraphy, something that I too love. I love handwriting, I love ink, I love fountain pens and nice paper. I love beautiful script. In that speech, he mentions that this inspired him when it came to designing typefaces for the Mac.

I learned that he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and given a few months to live and fought to continue loving and living. He lived for seven more years after that diagnosis, seven years some might argue that were his most creative. In those final years, he solidified the Mac platform and put entertainment and information devices in the hands of millions. Apple Inc. a company that was on the brink of demise at the turn of the century became the second largest company in the United States, second to Enron.

The man was remarkably smart. I have compiled some of his thoughts from that seminal speech. These are Steve Job's own words, his ideas on how to live, how to love and how to structure purpose in your life.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

So absolutely true. Some people say that they have no choice and that life chooses for them what they can and cannot do. They go to jobs that they don't like to work with people they despise. Instead, if you love what you're doing, then it isn't work.

"If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." [......], I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

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.

This is amazingly powerful stuff. Real and understood, yet we don't live as though today was the last day of our lives. That sense of urgency, to live, to be fulfilled, to reach out and surpass. Instead, we live as though we will get to the things that we want to do tomorrow. It's as if those things that we want to get done, aren't really all that important. They can wait. In fact, they can wait indefinitely.

When Steve Jobs said this it came from the heart. This was a man who a year earlier had been diagnosed with cancer and given only a few months to live. Imagine your doctor telling you to go home and take care of your affairs. Wouldn't you run into the nearest bar and have a few drinks? Wouldn't you want to first saturate your mind with alcohol, numb the pain? What kind of passion for the thing you love must you have to tell yourself that you must continue on because there's so much to do?

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

That says it all. Time is short, don't waste it not doing what you'd rather do. The photograph on the left shows Steve Jobs holding a MacBook Air. The same laptop that I have, the one in which I'm writing this blog entry. It's a wonderful piece of technology.

And so what are the lessons learned? In Steve Job's own words: Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!

The Last King of Scotland - Giles Foden

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, extremely well written. The movie, which I saw before reading the book, a few years ago, probably put me off reading the book. I find it difficult to imagine authenticity when black American actors pretend to be African. I respect Forest Whitaker's work, but I didn't buy his portrayal of Idi Amin. It's tough. For that matter, Denzel Washington's portrayal of Steve Biko was adequate, not earth shattering, so was Danny Glover in Bopha! and Whoppi Goldberg in Sarafina. All good, not anything special. On the other hand, South African Henry Cele did a fantastic job as Shaka in William C. Faure's mini series, Shaka Zulu. Henry did such a good job that his face is embedded in my memory when I think of Shaka! Yaphet Kotto, an American, would have done a good Idi Amin. James Earl Jones wouldn't.

But Giles Fodden's novel is a remarkable piece of writing. I read this book in a couple of days, stealing time from other things, because I couldn't put it down. It wasn't only because of the vivid scenes of constant danger that made the book exciting, but Giles Fodden really knows how to tell a story. This is a good story and told really well.

It's a book of fiction and we're introduced to the main character immediately, their reasons for leaving Scotland and going to Africa to work as a doctor. It isn't something I'd do, but having grown up in Kenya where there are so many expatriates, it's easy to relate to the British desire to come to Africa. Giles quickly moves into descriptions of life in Africa during Uganda's early post colonial days. Through the eyes and mind of Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, we observe how Ugandans think, what the country looks like, the language, the food they eat, the conditions of the roads, the soldiers that are ever present with their AK-47's, the congestion in the country buses, the poverty in the villages, the lack of medicine, the dangers lurking in the countryside. All of this we're told in amazing detail to get a sense of the primitive nature of medicine, the lack of resources and the resourcefulness of the people. Some of the diseases are quite nasty and seemingly hopeless, yet the doctors soldier on, one patient at a time.

What's amazing about this story is how quickly we're led into Idi Amin's world. The mind of the man and how he operates, no different from many leaders. He takes Garrigan into his confidence as his personal physician and though Garrigan has mixed feelings about being in the employ of Amin, he goes along. Even when he sees that it isn't in his best interest, he continues to work with Amin.

One wonders why he didn't escape. After all, as we read the book, we can see disaster waiting to happen. It's almost as though Nicholas Garrigan cannot read the writing on the wall, or fails to believe that there's any writing at all, there's no wall as far as he's concerned. At one point, some employees of foreign missions ask him to poison Amin. Of course, this is the one place where I think he did a good job in disagreeing to do so. If he were caught, it would have meant certain death.

Giles Fodden does an excellent job as a story teller. He kept me turning pages and didn't let me get bored. When it came time for Nick to have some romance, he quickly walked me through it. I would have loved a different ending to the failed romance between Nick and the American Ambassador's wife, but hey, you can't have it all. And Sara's disappearance left me feeling empty. I like Nick, I wanted him to have it all. A happy ending. In a way, finding a home back in Scotland, where he could sit back, reflect and write his story was a happy ending in itself. He escaped with his life, even though he didn't get to become something, or someone greater.