Photo credit : David Cooper photography

I am not sure if you knew this about me, but I have two sons, aged 13 and 3.  So I’ve been doing this mom thing for 13 years, but never considered myself as a “good mom”. I let them watch TV, feed them fast food…once I fed them popcorn for lunch. What kind of mother am I?!

Although I occasionally write/talk about my kids, my belief is that I am a woman before I am a mom, and being a mother does not define me. I don’t always want to talk about dipers, breastfeeding and schools, OK?

Tonight, I saw Mom’s the Word – Remixed, -and one of the moms on the show, Beverly Elliot confessed that she hated being pregnant and she enjoyed hanging out with guys more, I immediately resonated with her. I hated being pregnant too.

Beverly mocks all the other moms who wanted to tell “their stories” and touch her belly when she was pregnant -”as if we’re in this giant club“….I felt the same way! …And yet, two kids later I do catch myself smiling at young mothers with newborns….because in fact, we are in this giant club called motherhood.

Event though it does not define me, motherhood is a pretty big part of me.

These mothers will share their true stories about raising the kids, struggles with their confidence as parents, and as women, dealing with teenagers, and much much more.

Amazing thing about this play is, it’s been 18 years since the first Mom’s the Word was created. 6 Vancouver actresses got together and talked about being moms, and making it into a play…and it’s still played mostly by the original cast. It’s incredible. I wasn’t aware of this fact until my friend pointed it out to me. How awesome is this?

It’s a story of motherhood, and I can promise you that you will laugh. I laughed so hard I cried. I also clapped and raised my hand in agreement.

You will find at least one story you can say “I’ve been there!” For me, it’s the LEGO…and the Mayo…and many many more.

I also loved that the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves on the stage. This was obviously my fitst time seeing the show, but I suspect some unscripted thing happened in tonight’s show too. Especially when she did it for the second time! (Sorry, but don’t wanna spoil it for you) The ever changing set is pretty amazing too.

It’s a “trucking” (You need to see it to get this) riot and at the same time very poignant. It’s about the toughest job in the world.

If you are a mom, this is a Must-see. Even if you are not, you still should go see it. You will love it!

The show is now held over until August 28th. Go get your ticket fast.

Note: Thank you Belfry Theatre for the invite to the show. Loved every minute of it!

Few days ago, on my drive home, I saw my friend M on the street. I am not sure if I can call her a friend…we used to take a class together, so she is more of an acquaintance I guess.

As lovely as she is, I don’t think about her too often. But when I drove by her the other day, a memory flooded back to me.
A mutual friend of ours has passed away few years ago. I went to the memorial service, which was held at M’s house. She is a nun.
M is very funny and friendly and I have always liked her. When I entered her house she welcomed me with her usual smile.
Soon, the house was full of people and filled with air of solemnness and respect.
The room was very quiet when the ceremony started. Then M stood in front of everybody and before she said the prayer, she started talking about the friend. Soon, she broke down in tears. “I miss her so much…”
I remember being shocked by her tears. Because she is a nun. I always thought nuns are supposed to be over all the sufferings in the real world.

Few weeks ago, I saw my friend Eshu at Social Media Camp. He is a Zen monk, and he was speaking at the Spirituality panel.
I have been to Zen sitting he hosts at Uvic’s Interfaith chapel few times before and he has a big influence on me. I was happy to see him, and as I escorted him into the speaker’s room I asked how he was.
He said “Oh, I’m OK… I’m tired, and my family has not been well. I’m kind of stressed out.”
I remember saying this jokingly; “What! You’re not supposed to be stressed out! You’re a monk!”

Seeing M the other day reminded me of my comment to Eshu, and that got me thinking how much expectation we place on those who are in religious practice. Eshu and I have talked about this before – I find it very interesting that just because they are monks, we assume they are free from stress and suffering.
But is that true?
I don’t think so. They are regular people, just like me and you.

Then it got me thinking how these two incidents actually made me like them both more. Well, I have always liked them, but them showing their vulnerability made them seem more human and I resonated with them. I have written about embracing vulnerability and here I am again, faced by the fact that embracing vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of honesty and authenticity.

I recently had lunch with a friend who had a lot of stress in a very short period of time. She was telling me how she tweeted that she needed a hug, and many encouraging messages had poured in for her. She said they actually did make her feel much better.

Being honest about how you are feeling and asking for help is so important – it’s vital if you wanted to live a wholehearted life.
I already knew this in my head by reading Brené’s book, but I’m so happy when I have this kind of my own AHA moment.

(Continued from Japan – Part 1 of 2)

Contrary to the first week, my second week in Japan was all about fun, fun, fun.
I stayed 6 nights in a hotel in Ikebukuro and went almost everywhere in Tokyo. As you know, I never grew up in Tokyo and never spent more than a few days at a time there, so this was quite a new experience. It’s almost as if I crossed off my bucket list I never knew I had ; “Spend a week in Tokyo”. Done.

I cannot list everybody I met, but these are some of the awesome people I met that week:

-Tasukeai Japan team. They are a group of volunteers who are supporting Japan’s disaster relief effort under Chief Cabinet Secretary. I’m volunteering remotely from Canada on their English Twitter account. They happened to be having a farewell party for one of the members and I happened to be in Tokyo at the same time, and they warmly invited me along.
These are the people I have never met before. I just happened to see one tweet and volunteered to join the team, but it was so wonderful to meet everybody there in person. I was almost star-struck as I was just one Japanese girl from Canada, but everyone in the team had quite impressive background. Many were working for big companies like NTT(Biggest phone company in Japan), Dentsu(Biggest Ad agency in Japan), Softbank, Wieden+Kennedy, Muji, etc, etc…these are all young and energetic people passionate about shaping the new society using social media. I had a great time with them and made lots of new friends. The next day, I got to join them again at a Thank You party hosted by Chief Cabinet Secretary himself! There I met many many amazing people too.

-Social Leaders members and Japanese influencers.When I was at Blogworld in Vegas last October, I met two Japanese men. One of them was the founder of Social Rewards, Mike Uesugi. We kept in touch after that and finally our schedule worked out that we both were in Tokyo at the same time! I also got to meet his business partner Mr. Takagawa, who is in charge of Social Leaders (They use Klout score to identify Japanese influencers and plan many events around it). I met Mr. Saisiki, Mr. Suzuki and Ms. Hoshino, all of them have at least 70,000 followers on Twitter. I KNOW the number of Twitter followers doesn’t matter, but 70,000 is pretty impressive… We had a party at this cool place where one house is used as part office, healing space, and bar&restaurant. Soon lots of strangers became friends, and we all had a great time. Mr. “Will” Tachiiri, who I also met at BlogWorld, joined us too, which was great. He has written 2 books since we met (I’m mentioned in both books ). He, Mike and I have “Japanese who live in North America and loving Social Media” in common, and we had some great discussion. I have suggested having a social media conference in Tokyo and everybody is interested in the idea…so let’s see what we can do about that.

Ever since the earthquake and Tsunami, the power of social media(especially Twitter, as the phone line was completely useless) was widely recognized, but I’d say they are still a year or so behind North America, awareness wise. Many English Social Media/Marketing/PR/Business books are translated into Japanese, and I think it would be interesting to have those leaders in Japan and provide Japanese social media enthusiasts opportunities to listen to the thought-leaders first hand.

However, Japan is also known for Galapagos Syndrome.
Their cell phones are so amazingly advanced(the wallet feature has been around for few years now), that it’s not compatible with anything overseas.

They might be few years behind North America in social media, but I have a feeling they will very quickly figure out their own way to adopt social media, and eventually exceed what we have right now. My question is, do Japanese people really interested in what is happening in North America? I did see/hear many people discuss the power of social media passionately during my stay in Japan. However, I do have a feeling if we(us living in N. America) didn’t offer anything to Japan, they will start doing their own thing. That is not nessesaryly a bad thing, but again, just like they did with cell phones and other technologies, Japan will miss the opportunity to cooperate, collaborate and create something compatible with the rest of the world.

Again, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I’m very interested to know where Japan is going.

As the year 2010 comes to a close, I wanted to write about people who made a difference for me this year. Thanks Jamie Gale for inspiring me to post this.

I did many things I have never done before in 2010. In that sense, it was truly an extraordinary year. I might even call it the best year yet.
I have written about those experiences throughout this blog and I will not repeat them here, but all those connections came from Twitter and I am extremely grateful for the opportunities it brought to me.

Few people who influenced me this year;

Erica Ehm
I had no idea who she was ( I grew up in Japan, so never watched her on MuchMusic) when I first found her on Twitter, but she has introduced me to so many amazing women on YummyMummyClub. I know everybody says this about her, but it’s true, she is so down to earth, not pretentious, and as Scott Stratten described in his book, she is the one who “walks the talk”. There are several things she said to me that still bring tears to my eyes. We share a same belief that we are women before we are moms. It was great to welcome her in Victoria in on her book tour, and I cannot wait to see her again.

Duri Al Ajrami
Erica introduced Duri to me, and I liked him as soon as we met – it was a love at first sight, in the beautiful Hazelton hotel’s ONE restaurant.
He’s a customer service extraordinaire, devoted father and a husband, and a digital marketing genius at Ogilvy & Mather. He is the guy behind TASSIMO and ONE campaign. I first saw him in May for the (now legendary) ONE campaign, and again in October at Blissdom Canada, and here is my confession – I went to Blissdom, pretty much, just to see him.
Not only he is a good friend, he is very passionate and believes social media is for consumers, not for businesses. All the seriousness aside, one of my best Twitter moments of 2010 was with him, when he put his foot in his mouth on our friend turning 40….! Luv ya Duri.

Russel Lolacher
Most of you know who he is – he is my partner in crime on our show Getting Engaged – Online, In Life, and At Work. I am also “engaged” to him on Facebook. (Special thanks to his girlfriend for being so cool about this – he says “I only date cool girls”) I do remember our dinner at Bard and Banker back in May or June, when I initially shared the idea of an online show. We shot the first show in August, and we see each other at least once every week filming an episode. I have tweeted this before, but starting the show with Russel is one of the the best decisions I made this year. Every week we’d meet up and discuss the episode, but we also exchange information on social media and quite a bit of gossip, too! We both really enjoy social media, but our interests are slightly different and it is always refreshing to get his perspective on things. We love doing the show and we know we will continue filming in 2011.

Scott Stratten
Apparently he is the nicest guy on social media. And he is.
To me, it seems many of the special moments on Twitter happened in my DM inbox. As exciting as it was, 2010 was also a very challenging year for me. I remember his DMs when I was going though tough time. He has probably forgotten what he said to me, but it meant a lot to me. So, thanks, Scott.
I relate so much to his passion that you need to be human when you do business. That is why I am a huge fan of his.
I got to see him three times this year, which was great. First he came to Social Media Camp in Victoria, and then at BlogWorld, and then at BlissdomCanada. Hope to see him again next year.

Janice Mansfield
I first met Janice at Twestival in fall 2009. She is a personal chef and a blogger. Whenever I have questions about food I’d ask her and I have learned so much. When I bought junk food or processed food I’d think of her and feel guilty. I started cook more at home thanks to her. So yes, she had a big influence on me when it comes to food (and cocktails)! She is always calm and collected but she is a lot of fun to hang out with. I got to spend countless hours with her consuming cocktails this year which was awesome. He has also give me so much support through tweets and DMs. Thank you.

Shawn Soole
Shawn is one of the most talented barkeeps in North America, and he has been invited to many different cities for various cocktail competitions and events. I think us Victorians are extremely lucky to have him in our city, because he is from Australia. (Confession-I still have hard time understanding your accent Shawn. So when I do that blank stare, I’m not just drunk, OK?) I used to be a bartender in Japan(of course, my skill was not as sophisticated as his), and I always found the industry fascinating. When I was around 20 and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I used to dream about bartending in hotels overseas like Raffles or Algonquin. Although I am such a cheap date, I enjoyed and learned about many many cocktails at Clive’s. Also I found his stories as brand ambassador really interesting. Thanks for putting up with me Shawn.

Jamie Gale
I met Jamie only a few months ago. He was relatively new to Victoria, and since we had some fun conversations on Twitter, we’ve decided to meet in person. Upon deciding whether to have coffee or drinks, we unanimously agreed to go for drinks! I liked this guy immediately.
He is one of those people who is just full of life. I am always drawn to people who is passionate about something. And he is just that. We also share our love for reading, learning and to get inspired. He gave me lots of great book recommendations and we often talk about what we are reading. It is great to have a friend who we can motivate each other to improve ourselves. We met over an amazing dinner at Zambri’s with his better half few weeks ago, and had such a great time. Love to meet up again soon, Jamie.

Doug Brown
I met Doug this summer after having some good chats on Twitter. We met up for lunch one day at Canoe Club, at the perfect table on the perfect summer day. It was absolutely gorgeous. That was probably one of my best patio time this year.
Doug is quiet, soft spoken but also a deep thinker, maybe quite an opposite from myself. But somehow we hit it off and he has been a great friend and mentor to me. When I had a business problem, he gave me an very valuable advice and I am very thankful for it, as I was about to do exactly the opposite of what he had suggested.
He’s my frequent lunch date whether we devour Indian Curry buffet or Sushi and Sake at Nautical Nellies… speaking of which, is quite overdue. Sushi soon, Doug?

Wow, 2010, what an amazing year it was….
I want to thank every friend whom I got to meet and connect online and offline. I know 2011 will be another exciting year and I cannot wait to share it with you all here.

xoxo