Tagged by Luis Suarez, reminded by Stuart Henshall’s response to Luis.
UPDATE: Dave Snowden tagged me as well. I had already created the responses outline below. There are some perhaps additional interesting things about me almost all people do not know, but they will have to wait for a more meaningful game or be divulged in private or semi-private settings (though I will add one here because it is an area in which Dave and I share (I think) an intense interest: Just as I was quitting my job with a major global organizational consulting firm, I was asked to head up a new practice for the firm, leading a small team of senior consultants in providing innovative work design methods and processes for some of the firm’s largest and most productive (revenue-wise) clients because said clients were pretty much fed up with the inability of the firm’s standard methodologies to deliver the flexibility and leverage needed for high-level non-routine knowledge-and-expertise based work). Alas, I was already too fed up, though my ego appreciated the gambit to try to get me to stay on.
For the eight-things-you-don’t-know game, you’re supposed to follow these rules:
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1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself.
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.
OK.
1. I was born in the USA (Syracuse, NY) and almost immediately was registered by my parents as a Canadian Born Abroad (thanks, folks). My parents were both peripatetic academics at the time (though of course in those days almost all women moved when the man / the husband decided to. My mother was no exception, though she got much more assertive as the years went on.
2. I have lived in cities most of my adult life, but spent almost all of my life up to the age of 17 in bucolic semi-rural areas, often with woods and fields and nothing-but-country for miles and miles behind our backyards.
3. I learned how to read just shortly after my 3rd birthday, and was the proverbial flashlight-under-the-covers kind of kid.
4. My first job after graduating from university was as a prison guard (7 whole months .. why I did that more than one day is a mystery to me). My second job was as a bank management trainee. seven years later I was a young middle manager in a very large national and international bank.
5. I am fluent in the French language, both spoken and written, though writing well in French is quite a different challenge than speaking French well. My spoken French is better than my written French, but I can write an intelligible letter or brief report if I have to.
6. Like Stuart Henshall, swimming is my keep-fit sport. I swam in the 1972 Olympic Trials, once even in the same pool as Mark Spitz. Needless to say, I couldn’t see his heels. I still swim quite regularly, but have gotten spoiled by the fantabulous outdoor swimming pool we have in Vancouver (137.5 metres long, 12 lengths to a mile), so I tend to get lazy once that pool closes in mid-September. My New Years’ resolution for 2008 is to get up and go for an early morning swim workout 5 out of 7 days per week.
7. I have never been married and do not have children. I always thought I would marry reasonably young, and well. I have been privileged to have great female partners in my life, but the first and second long-term partners I lived with, it just didn’t work out. Much pain, much sadness, many regrets, long stories that you do not want to know anything about (nothing sordid or nasty, more just sad).
I recognize that I miss deeply the experience of being a parent. I was a step-father to one young woman, and she remains very close to me and me to her. I have often been told I would be a good father, and I believe I would be so. I work at listening to and respecting kids, whilst also being playful and light-hearted. Many of the kids I know find me to be funny (in a good way).
8. I have wanted a dog for a very long time. It would be uncomfortable, if not cruel, for me and Raman to have a dog in the (very) small space we currently inhabit.
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I don’t yet know who I am going to tag with respect to this "game". Hopefully I won’t over-annoy those whom I choose to tag.
They may elect not to play, which is fine by me.
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