Journeyman Stories

Please ask me how I spent my Christmas this year. I am serious. If you do not ask me, I won't tell you. My bad! Let me rephrase my question. Please do ask me with WHOM I spent my Christmas. You are so right. She is finally here. I did not want to tell you that before she comes just to avoid the paparazzi at the airport. I am talking about my wife of course (I know you were thinking that I was speaking about Angelina Jolie). Yes, this Sunday December 25, 2011, my wife finally landed to Pearson Airport at exactly 12.49 PM local time (I was so mad the plane was 4 minutes late lol). Do you remember our small wedding ceremony last year? It was on December 27. If you can count, you can realize that she just came to Canada two days before our one year anniversary. What a timing!!! It is simply a divine blessing to finally see her here. I am so happy about that, but I know someone who is so mad about this news. I am talking about the guy who owns a convenient store where I used to buy my ...

As my friend Jim is driving me to my speaking engagement in Newmarket, he just says: I think your next blog should be “My Journey to Newmarket”. And here it is Jim. I kept my promise. I like to be around Jim, who has now become my speaking buddy. Whenever he is asked to speak he often invites me to go with him, and I have learned to do the same. Boy are we having fun together. So, on our way to Newmarket, he asks me: “What are you going to speak about?” , to which I responded “I don't know!”. He laughed so hard at my response, but it was the honest truth. I have been speaking a lot the last few weeks that sometimes I find myself in front of the same people who are attending the same events I am attending, so I don't want to repeat the same speech they have heard many times. Good thing that I have so many stories to tell, all I have to do is remember one of them. And it happened. By the time we got to Newmarket, I saw a number of familiar faces that had seen me speak before, so ...

I must confess. It is really hard to write this blog while watching “The Big Bang Theory” at the same time. This show is hilarious. Add to that my texting back and forth with my friend Tamsir who is learning my native language and wants to impress me with the few words that he now knows... Talk about a missed opportunity. For weeks I have been waiting for this special day for my friends Nicolas Peks and “Summertime” (that's how I call Nicolas now wife). I don't want to mention her other nickname that I gave to her... Where was I? Oh yes. Missed opportunity. I went to their wedding this Saturday, got there 45 minutes before the ceremony (I told you there was NO way I could miss this one). It was just a civil wedding (a small ceremony). The big wedding ceremony is going to happen next year. Anyways, after the ceremony, I headed to the Italian restaurant where the reception was going to take place. As it was mentioned in the invitation, the restaurant was not going to take debit ...

Just few weeks ago at one of our Goal Achievers meeting, we were talking about doing an event before Christmas at which each one of us would get a chance to speak. While debating if we should do it or not, our own Jim stood straight and looked in our eyes and said : I am going to make it happen. I have known Jim for a while, but that was the first time I saw him with such confidence. Right then I knew he would do it. He in fact did, and in a big way. He managed to find a few partners to help him promote it, he even secured a venue five minutes away from where I live with great food on the menu (how could I resist this?), and the event just happened two days ago. We had amazing guest speakers and the audience did respond greatly to our presentations I remember few months ago when I met Phil Taylor the founder of Goal Achievers International. I told him before I joined the group that my goal was to become a professional speaker and coach. At that time I knew what I wanted but it was not ...