Category: Life

bookmark_borderjust looking…

Posted on by Christine Elias

Not that I’m looking for a new job but the Chicken Farmers of Canada are looking for a Bilingual Jr. Communications Officer. I know this because my professional association sends me email alerts about openings. Quite often I check out the employer websites just to see what’s going on in the PR world outside my area. This particular job is too junior for me and I don’t speak French but I checked them out online anyway.

Guess what? The CFC has a lot of excellent recipes on their site. For example, the Chicken Dhansack (Indian-style chicken with spinach and eggplant) sounds really tasty. I also would love to try the Chicken and Asparagus Lasagna.

Of course, now I’m wondering if they’ve ever produced a cookbook — and if so, how did they promote it. A PR mind is never still.

The Ontario Stone, Sand & Gravel Association (OSSGA) is also looking for a Communications Specialist. Readers won’t believe this but I’m actually quite fascinated by aggregate yards, cement factories and rebar fabrication. I’m not sure why but I’ve always been drawn to construction and construction materials.

On road trips I’m always on the lookout for big aggregate yards and I’m always in awe of the sheet amount of raw material piled up — stuff just waiting to become highways, airports, hospital, houses and condos. Aggregate is at the start of everything. And it’s big business.

I’m also interested in the behind the scenes aspects of the TTC and airports…and factories…and water filtration plants…and…

Sometimes I wish I were a kid again just so I could go on class trips!

bookmark_borderAnother question from from “How Far Will You Go”

Posted on by Christine Elias

Q: What’s the worst thing you have to do each morning?

I’m not a morning person. The hardest part of any morning is getting out of bed. I’m fine after I get me feet on the floor. But getting there is hard. The snooze button is my friend and my enemy. A few pushes and I feel like I got away with something … but a few more and I’m late for work which throws my whole schedule off.

Q: What turned out to be the most useful course you ever took in school?

Not typing. I can’t type well at all. I never learned how to type properly and I doubt I ever will. I use only about half of my fingers and — except for the most common keys — I have to glance at the keyboard. This is not too much of a problem since when I type (at work and home) I’m thinking about what to write as I go, so I don’t need to speed type as I can’t speed think about what I’m writing anyway. I type about as fast as I write so it’s okay.

It is bad news, however, if I need to retype something. I avoid this as much as possible and use my scanner and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software as work around. A good typist could probably input a page a lot faster than it takes me to scan and read a page but this works for me.

Since I write things for a living (and do meet my deadlines) my lack of typing finesse is sometimes surprising to others. When I was diagnosed with RSI, my friend K. (who has seen me type) suggested I take in my computer keyboard to show the doctor my “crazy typing”!

How fast can I type? I was tested about fifteen years ago and I managed 32 words a minute.

Getting back to the question… 

I’m not sure what course was the most useful. I can think of many that I really enjoyed or were very interesting but not one that really stands out as the most useful.

Not family studies, since I can’t cook or sew very well. Not math since I dropped it as soon as I could. Probably it was the first writing course I took in university or maybe it was economics — which I almost failed — because it was enlightening to understand concepts like supply and demand and opportunity cost.