Accountants vs Engineers

 Three engineers and three accountants are traveling by train to a conference. At the station, the three accountants each buy tickets and watch as the three engineers buy only a single ticket. "How are three people going to travel on only one ticket?” asks an accountant. "Watch and you’ll see,” answers an engineer.

All of them board the train. The accountants take their respective seats but all three engineers cram into a restroom and close the door behind them. Shortly after the train has departed, the conductor comes around collecting tickets. He knocks on the restroom door and says, “Ticket, please. "The door opens just a crack and a single arm emerges with a ticket in hand. The conductor takes it and moves on.

The accountants saw this and agreed it was a clever idea. So after the conference, the accountants decide to copy the engineers on the return trip and save some money. When they get to the station they buy a single ticket for the return trip. To their astonishment, the engineers don’t buy a ticket at all.

”How are you going to travel without a ticket?” says one perplexed accountant. ”Watch and you’ll see,” answers an engineer.

When they board the train the three accountants cram into a restroom and the three engineers cram into another one nearby. The train departs.

Shortly afterward, one of the engineers leaves his restroom and walks over to the restroom where the accountants are hiding. He knocks on the door and says, “Ticket, please.”

Who Creates Jobs?

The following was posted on Northern Reflections: Who Creates Jobs: Yesterday, my son sent me a copy of this TED lecture. It features Nick Hanauer, an American venture capitalist, and is less than six minutes long.

It certainly is an interesting perspective and one that I believe to be true

List of dream ideas

I have not been able to walk or do much physical activity because of my knee and hip. The time I know have to think and read is wonderful, but I am looking forward to having my knee replaced in Feb and my hip done next Sept or Oct. In the meantime, I have been searching for ideas to do while I am not able to get around as much as I did before and I came across this list. 

So think of each point below as a prompt to help you consider what to do if you choose to retire full  time. If you don't like the list create  your own version. See what emerges and send me your ideas as I want to keep busy.

1.            Write your life story to better understand your values

2.            Work towards making peace with family members

3.            Time to deal with your fears

4.            Examine your soul or a piece of it at least

5.            Finish your novel or begin it and then finish it

6.            Study Romanian as part of a process of getting to know your ancestors

7.            Become aware of the need for open space and work to get open space preserved in your town

8.            Organize a family reunion

9.            Develop a poetry writing program

10.         Get people talking about domestic violence by using movies as conversation starters

11.         Use the design and painting of public murals as a community building process

12.         Make peace with your siblings

13.         Become more of an expert on film history and see where it takes you

14.         Run for city council/school trustee or some other public office

15.         Awaken your town to the need for clean energy

16.         Teach new parents parenting skills

17.         Study web design and blogging and teach others how to get their voices heard

18.         Learn video techniques and create a video blog about the good things happening in town

19.         Build community cohesion by sponsoring community gardens

20.         Spread your love of good writing into the souls of others

21.         Joining others to open an organic fast food restaurant

22.         Join a movement to promote light rail transportation

23.         Make an ongoing study of socially responsible projects and post them online for others to consider pursuing

24.         Make a study of Ulysses aiming to understand at least 40% of it

25.         Work on your life lists (birds, movies, books, songs, etc.) and teach from them

26.         Teach life story and political theatre techniques to others.

27.         To travel to more places--and to be prepared as much as possible\

28.         Hold organizational meetings on co-housing and other models for cooperative living and working

29.         Work further afield:

30.         Study folk healing and write about it

31.         Mobilize support for better treatment of veterans

32.         Produce a movie on cross-cultural attitudes towards death, dying and grieving

33.         Work to develop measures for evaluating corporate responsibility

34.         Join a health team to reduce the spread of preventable illness.

35.         To look beyond the obvious

36.         Teach conflict resolution techniques

37.         Question all paradigms

38.         Document your walking of  an ancient pilgrimage route

39.         Be on-call for emergency relief work for the Red Cross

40.         Work to restore a historically significant building in your region

41.         Let your photography tell the story of children that are important to you

42.         Stay curious--stay open

43.         Hike the peaks and valleys of your country

44.         Help search for intelligent life in the universe

45.         Focus attention on the effects of big oil pipelines on Northern BC, and the North Coast.

46.         Interview contemporary artists for their views on art and social change and ways to save the planet

47.         Go behind history: examine an historical event that has shaped your life and see where it takes you

48.         Join a local charity or other organization to have your mind and imagination reshaped

49.         Take up the heroes in your life and move their agenda forward

50.         Trace the route of a famous explorer with a friend of yours

51.         Lead trips to countries of specific interest of yours  for Elderhostel

52.         Spend time in the another country and see what that does to shape your personal mission

Shifting sands of retirement and women

Retirement planning is all the more important for women since they live longer than men. And for partnered women, “The average age of widowhood is 56 in Canada,” says Marlena Paspiech, senior manager with the BMO Retirement Institute. And with 40% of marriages not lasting more than 30 years, women must be financially prepared.

Women tend to accumulate smaller retirement funds due to two main factors, adds Paspiech. Studies show women earn 83 cents for every dollar a man earns. Also, “women tend to interrupt their employment to accommodate roles as family caregivers.” This means, on average, women work fewer hours, reducing potential pension benefits.

Another issue is that, “Women have said their opinions on financial matters aren’t taken as seriously as those of men and the industry isn’t doing a good job of serving their investment needs,” says Paspiech

Plan providers have been broadening the scope of the educational tools available to in hopes of encouraging them to be more mindful of the state of their pensions. Those tools range from literature about the funds available to assessment of risk aversion via call centre representatives to one-on-one meetings with licensed advisors.

Sara Hakim, associate partner at human capital consulting and outsourcing company Aon Hewitt, says that while advice services are being made available by plan providers for a set fee, few plan sponsors are opting to make it available to plan members.

Current pension regulations only loosely define the fiduciary responsibilities of plan sponsors with respect to the resources they must provide plan members to help them manage their pension investments.

Non-binding guidelines set out by the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) say employers have to offer plan members investment choices with varying degrees of risk and return so that a reasonable person could create a portfolio that meets their needs. However, employers who offer information that borders on specific investment advice could later be liable if that advice turns out to be poor.

Terra Klinck, partner at law firm Hicks Morley, says some plan sponsors are choosing to offer plan members a stipend to use toward third-party, fee-based advisors to indemnify themselves against potential litigation in the future, but more needs to be done.

Stormy Weather

I have been watching with interest the impact of the storm on the American East Coast and my heart goes out to all my American friends who are in harms way.

This round of Stormy Weather shows that most people have some common sense but I am alarmed at the news coverage. The TV news reporters who go out into the storm to get the best live shot, should have their heads examined. The story can be told, I think, without putting oneself in harms way. 

I have also been impressed by the American governments (all levels) who have spoken honestly to the people about the danger and about how to keep themselves safe. I hope is that all of you on the East Coast are kept out of harms way in the aftermath of the storm, and that you and your loved ones are safe.

For my Canadian friends in Ontario and the Maritime's, I hope that you are also kept out of harms way and that the storm does not wreck as much havoc it might.

In the aftermath of the storm, my hope is that friends, families and loved ones are safe and that life will begin to slowly return to a routine that is safer for all of you. The storm highlights I think, how much we are dependent on each other and how isolated we feel when we are cut off. The storm also shows us how much we need the infrastructure and why we need to  work to keep it up to date. I was also impressed with how prepared  the first responders in both countries  were when faced with dangerous situations.

Mike Law shared the following  description of the storm, which I thought was worth sharing:

The eye of the hurricane passed directly over us, when the eye passes all becomes calm. On the horizon in all directions one can see the eyewall of the Hurricane illuminated by flashes of lightning shimmering flashes of heat lightning as if this was a hot summer night with each flash of light, all is soft and distant and never strikes a blow of destruction.

The eyewall appears to be a steel curtain, dull gray as is steel, momentarily the wall appears and by its reflections of silver light from a flash lamp cosmic and high. In the calm you think maybe you woke up in a dream, but do not dream too long, because soon there will be a taste of new rage.

With a million people without electricity it is dark and it is cold, but mercifully it could have been much worse for us. In the mountains of Virginia, West Virginia and central Pennsylvania, some were nearly a meter of snow from thunder snowstorms in collision of a mass of hot tropical and humid air becomes shipwrecked in south of the arctic winter storm born in northern Canada. We had the chance ... a chance to be lucky.Winter is not yet on us, but in parts of the US and Canada, Sandy brought not only rain and high winds, but snow, sleet, and hail. For those of us who love winter--but not the storms of winter, here is a beautiful poem by Mike Law with a stunning image by Lisa Tyson Ennis  (taken in 2005) to remind us that there is hope and life even in the face of personal or community disaster.

In winter, A Solitary Place

On ghosting leafless trees upright their feet bare
covered with snow, each arm is sheathed solemnly in ice.
Freezing cold ...
Not a bird, not a squirrel, no movement,
Everything is frozen and silent.
This is not the brittle crunch of snow.
No footprints show my way when taken.
I stop, I'm paralyzed ... I can not
see my breath.
Momentarily confused I paused to reflect.
Of course, I understand, it's the fog.
Am I the fog? It seems so ...
enveloping all,
It steals my breath as in death.
The fog surrounds me...
a kiss ...
relax ...
I tremble, I tremble.
A lonely place on a dark
winter day.
I move in silence as if invisible as
the fog closes the door behind me.

March 2012 - mike law