Distractions, reflections

David Ing, at large … Sometimes, my mind wanders

2007/03/22 Eddie Bauer Outlet, SaiGon Palace on Spadina, Darin Barney Hart House Lecture

Four days after I returned to Toronto from Finland, Taina was scheduled to take almost the same route for an organization science meeting in downtown Chicago. Since she hadn’t been in Toronto before, I suggested that she make fuller use of the 16-hour travel time over the ocean, and stop by Toronto for a few days.

Taina had probably woken up around 4 a.m. in Eastern European Time, which is 7 hours earlier than Eastern Time in Toronto. Her plane was a bit delayed when I picked her up at Pearson airport mid-afternoon. Since I knew that she was doing a bit of shopping for her kids, and the Eddie Bauer Outlet is up in that northwest corner of Metro Toronto, we stopped by there first. There wasn’t too much selection of kids’ clothes there, but in March Break deals, Taina got a skirt for $2, and a red trench coat for $20. I commented that this probably wasn’t the best way to give her an impression of the true cost of shopping in Canada.

We got caught up in rush hour traffic, so instead of going home, I targeted Spadina Chinatown (near the university), and asked Diana to intercept us for dinner, and to pick up the car so that we wouldn’t have to bother with parking around the university. Taina and I got to Spadina early, so we walked around Kensington market. SaiGon Palace is one of my favourite Vietnamese restaurants, and just down the street from the palm tree sign of the El Mocambo (famous for Margaret Trudeau dancing with the Stones, in the 1970s).

Spadina Avenue, south of the El Mocambo

I don’t think that there is a Vietnamese restaurant in the Helsinki area, so we ordered a lot of dishes so that Taina could get a taste. Since I’ve been cooking in her home in Espoo, she’s not likely to be intimidated by chopsticks and a bowl of noodles anymore.

A bowl of noodles at SaiGon Palace

Diana took the leftovers and the car home, and Taina and I walked over to Hart House, on the University of Toronto campus. This happened to be the evening of the 2007 Hart House lecture, where Darin Barney gave a talk on “One Nation Under Google: Citizenship in the Technological Republic”.

Hart House lecture, Darin Barney

I haven’t been to occasions in the Great Hall at Hart House for some time, but remember being impressed by the room when I first visited the university as a high school student in 1975. With the great jet lag, it wasn’t surprising that Taina nodded off in the warm, dark room. While I enjoyed the talk, we both agreed that we spend a lot of time in corporate communications, in contrast to the academic style of speaking for more than 90 minutes — without additional visual aids!

Although I travel a lot out of town for business, I have chosen to live in Toronto for a reason. These types of events happen all of the time in Toronto, but are less frequent in the Helsinki area. Toronto is larger than Helsinki, but our proximity to major cities in North America makes it easy for us to enjoy the benefits of urbanization.

Saigon Palace in Toronto

  • Recent Posts

  • Archives

  • RSS on Coevolving

    • Systems Changes Learning: Recasting and reifying rhythmic shifts for doing, alongside thinking and making | JSCI
      A special issue on “Sustainable, Smart and Systemic Design Post-Anthropocene: Through a Transdisciplinary Lens” in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics edited by Marie Davidová, Susu Nousala, and Thomas J. Marlowe has been released. In that issue, the journey of the Systems Changes Learning Circle from 2019 through 2022 is reviewed. The editorial team, […]
    • Appreciating Systems Changes via Multiparadigm Inquiry | ISSS 2022 Proceedings
      In the ISSS 2022 Plenary talk, the first 25 minutes were a blast through (a) the rising interest in system(s) change(s); (b) appreciative systems (Vickers); (c1) the philosophy of architectural design; (c2) the philosophy of ecological anthropology; (c3) the philosophy of Classical Chinese Medicine; (c4) the philosophy of rhythms; and (d) methods of multiparadigm inquiry, […]
    • Sensemaking and Theory-Building | Gary S. Metcalf | ST-ON 2023-02-13
      The theme for the February online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario was sparked from the discussion from the January session on Root Metaphor and World Hypotheses.  What does it mean to have a theory?  How does sensemaking contribute to this? Gary Metcalf volunteered to guide a conversation on these topics.  Two prereadings were to serve […]
    • World Theories as Analytic-Deductive, Dispersive-Integrative
      Philosophy underlies the distinction in the three volumes of the Tavistock Anthology:  founded on the World Hypotheses of Stephen C. Pepper, the Socio-Psychological Systems Perspective and the Socio-Technical Systems Perspectives are based on Organicism, while the Socio-Ecological Systems Perspective is based on Contextualism. This thread on contextualism can be traced from the association between E.C. […]
    • Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses | ST-ON 2023-01-09
      Researching the philosophical foundations of systems theory to understand the meanings of “causal texture, contextualism, contextural” from the Tavistock legacy led to philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. The philosophical lineage and contributions of Pepper were the focus for the January online meeting of Systems Thinking Ontario.  A deep reading of Pepper’s work (over a month!) was […]
    • World Hypotheses, Contextualism, Systems Methods
      The first Systems Thinking Ontario session for 2023 is scheduled for January 9, on “Root Metaphors and World Hypotheses”.  This is philosophical content, for which a guided tour and discussion will be better than attempting a solo reading of the World Hypotheses wiki on the Open Learning Commons.  Upon announcing the session on social media, […]
  • RSS on Media Queue

  • RSS on Ing Brief

  • Meta

  • Translate

  • Creative Commons License
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
    Theme modified from DevDmBootstrap4 by Danny Machal