Wisdom from a Billionnaire

The entire Cabrelli family loved this wisdom from Bill Gates...




Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.


Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helpin g you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one

Sunday

Maybe you get tired of pictures of the pool but Mark and Emily never get tired of swimming in it - or should I say messin'. Here they are practicing for the "Double Belly Flop" category in the Beijing Olympics.

Back to the Garden

Sundie is doing a fabulous job in the garden. Apart from all the masses of pruning and general cleaning up we have a few new garden members. Nan and Farver - if you were here you would love it and you could really make it beautiful.

Our new Cherry tree.

Emily's Beans!

Our fig tree - see the figs?

Check out my lemon grass. I will be harvesting some soon. Lemon grass curry - here we come.

Our new pepper bush.

And check out our sea grapes - we can't wait to taste them...

We're Ready For Our Close Up Mr. Gilroy

First things first - answers to the FAQS:

Did you get to see Julia Roberts? Yes, very close up as we were in a scene with her. In fact Mark pointed out that he was "close enough to bite her bum." this caused a very serious lecture by Lisa with the theme that we were enjoying the movie experience and did not want to get thrown off of the set by Julia's very scary body guard and spend the day in a Bahamas jail. I think the lecture worked although Mark did make a couple of scary moves in that direction.

What does she look like in person? Lisa thought she was gorgeous. Smaller than expected - she always imagined her as kind of an Amazon women - but she doesn't look that tall and is actually teeny skinny. Lisa also though she was blooming in what is obviously a pregnant body - this may explain the serious PDA exhibited with her hubby. They were making out and obviously madly in love. Mark thought she wasn't that attractive, but then again she isn't his type.

Did you get to see Clive Owen? Yes, very close up, see above. One of the New York extras (a really nice guy named Scott) turned to Lisa right before the scene was shooting and said, "Wow Lisa, Clive Owen is checking you out!" Lisa had noticed and had already done what any married women standing with her husband would do in the same situation... flirted shamelessly. When Clive smiled at her, she smiled right back. Subsequent conversation between Mark and Lisa...

Lisa: "Hey Babe you know those lists that some married people have where you can write down three famous people that you could break your marriage vows for if ever given the opportunity?"

Mark: "Yeah"

Lisa: "Can we have one of those?"

Mark: "No"

Only joking about all of the above of course. Clive is a happily married man and was probably staring at the gorgeous view of the Cloisters behind us and thinking, "why is that crazy extra smiling at me - I'd better keep my eye on her in case she comes any closer."

Were you in the scene? We hope so! At first we were placed way back on the lawn as distant figures but then they needed folks to cross much closer up and we were moved in to the scene. It was the scene where Clive and Julia meet at a party in Dubai. Watch - it'll end up getting cut!

All in all it was a really great experience. The cast and crew were all very, very nice and treated the extras very well. The owner of the Ocean Club was in the scene as an extra and even opened up the Ocean Club bar for free for everyone after the last day of shooting was over. Very nice. The Director Tony Gilroy was amazingly nice. He came and spoke with all the extras prior to the movie starting to thank us for coming and then hung around at the end to chat with people. He definitely did not need to spend time with the "little people", so it showed he had true character and he most certainly earned a great deal of respect from a lot of people over those few days.

Enough talk - here are the pics...

Lisa, in costume, on set.

Mark, in costume, on set. In the background is the Julia Robert's stand-in, a very nice girl who had a chat with Mark when she heard him talk and realized he was Scottish. Turns out her Dad is from Coatbridge. We all had a laugh about how her Scottish relatives react to her job.

Julia - sorry it's the best we could do. Once Julia's body guard saw Mark with a camera he came storming (and we mean storming) over and said, "please don't do that!", he was a pretty scary guy so Mark put the camera away.

Lisa and Tony Gilroy the Director. See - we told you he was a nice guy!!!

Lisa and Mark's all time favorite person of the entire experience the costume director, Albert Wolsky. Great fun to talk to and obviously a really hard-working and talented man. Six Oscar nominations and two Oscars (All That Jazz and Bugsy) and still way to humble to realize that he has his very own Wikipedia entry. In fact Lisa had to explain what Wikipedia was to him when he asked how one could find out so much information on the internet. Albert rules!

Gettings Things Done

Lisa here - feeling overwhelmed. Since returning from the good old US of A, I have been feeling the pressure of a million things to do and not enough time in which to do them. I have been reading a book called, "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. The basic premise is "get everything out of your head and on to a list somewhere" - but not just random lists and pieces of paper all over your desk (like I tend to do) but context based, project linked, organized lists that focus solely on documenting "next actions". The technique (is that what it is?) also gives you permission to ignore priorities with the assumption that as long as you have followed the gathering, processing and organizing steps, things will get done at exactly the right time to do them. For me this took away the pressure of feeling as though I should be doing the most important things, constantly, until all the most important things are done. This, of course, is a self-defeating concept.

Sundie brought with her a huge a difficult jigsaw puzzle. When I first arrived home there it was in all its overwhelming confusion, lying on the table in a bazillion pieces. In my "coming home" state of mind just looking at that puzzle almost gave me an anxiety attack. Yesterday I sat down at the table, and instead of focusing on the sections that were already started and looked as though they needed to be finished (my usual approach) I looked for the piece of the puzzle that appealed to me most and just focused on getting one single piece in place. After a few minutes I found one and what occurred to me in that moment was how many opportunities had been opened up by fitting in that one piece. Look, I could finish that flower part on the left side of the piece. I could finish the butterfly who just touched the bottom of the piece with the tip of a feathery wing. I could concentrate on the fern patch growing out of the right side of the piece.

With a clear mind once you get stuck in and simply do the "next action" so many creative and exciting ideas and opportunities are revealed to you. Here's to "Getting Things Done."

Friday...

No sleep last night due to "no-seeums".

Both cats throwing up.

Emily had an assembly - Ancient Civilizations skits and music (video to come).

Wind is high, so no morning swim for Lisa.

Walkie Talkie's from USA claiming to have 18 mile range have a range of 500 feet.

Car overheated and stopped running (thank goodness it waited until the driveway).

Terrible, depressing, humbling news playing about China.

Emily has speed tests at 10:00am tomorrow morning to see if she makes the swim team.

She really wants to.

Sundie displayed her talents in gutting and filleting fish from "stinky market" today. The fish was absolutely fabulous but Lisa and Emily both felt very sick watching the preparations.

Mark would like a job. Anyone? Anyone?

Oscars Here We Come

We got cast!

Mark and I went for our fitting today for the movie we will be filming on Monday. It's called Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen and all we know is that it is about spies. We play foreign diplomats at a cocktail party..ooooo! We think it is a small scene so, as long as the whole scene doesn't get cut, we should be getting some screen time. Our fabulous neighbours got cast in the larger casino scene - less chance of screen time but Mark didn't care. He was peeved that they get paid for two days and we only get one. Still - it's $300 between us. Luciano's here we come!

The costumer Albert Wolsky has won two Oscars and been nominated for five. He was there today choosing our costumes and he was lovely. Very, very sweet and obviously good at his job. Lisa must have tried on 8 different outfit combinations for him and she is only one of hundreds and hundreds of extras. He is meticulous to say the least.

Mark was incredibly disappointed that they didn't drop Clive Owen at the sight of him and cast him as Julia Robert's love interest. He planned on it being a story of his career launch like Harvey Keitel replacing Martin Sheen in "Apocalypse Now". Alas - although told by Albert that he had an interesting face (compliment? hmmmmm) - he did not get cast on sight.

Still, as Mark always tells Lisa he does win in the extras category. Although Lisa has been in many films as an extra and Mark has only been in one, he was the only one in an Oscar winner... Chariots of Fire.

Lisa doesn't think that proves he's better, she just thinks that proves he's old.

Bonzaii!

For more Wordless Wednesday visit 5 Minutes for Mom.

Robin Hood Rules!

And no I am not talking about the BBC series that Emily loves. She has the Series 1 DVDs and could watch them over and over again and love them more each time. Mark and Lisa enjoy watching them with her, especially at she gets so much pleasure out of them. We all snuggle up and watch the new ones on Saturday night - Emily giggles and cheers all the way through :-) We personally wouldn't recommend the series for adults but if you have a child in the 9-12 age range this show is a winner. Emily loved them so much that she went and took the original Robin Hood novel out of the school library (it's written in Olde English). She wanted to read it desperately but after about 4 chapters came to us and said "it's too hard". You know it must be hard, since Emily finished the entire Harry Potter series, the first one at age 6.

Anyway... not that Robin Hood.

There is a huge store here in the middle of the island that sold home goods, clothing, a few groceries and some furniture. Last week they launched their new grocery store. The name of the store? Robin Hood. Why does it rule? We went today and found tons and tons of products that we have been craving that we haven't been able to find here all at reasonable prices. There are gourmet sauces, gluten free items, bread mixes for my bread maker ($1.99 whoo hoo!), and that's not all. Although not opened yet there is a huge space for fresh produce, a bakery!, a deli!, a fresh fish stand!, a sushi bar! a meat department! You must excuse all of the exclamation points but as Lisa told one of the Managers (much to his bemusement), "I am so EXCITED."

No pictures allowed I am afraid, otherwise they would be plastered all over this post. It's no Wegman's but considering it in context it sure as heck feels like it!

The Wrath of Mum

Happy Mother's Day to all of our Mummy readers. We have had a lovely one. We took Sundie to church this morning (2 hour service... eek!), had a really fun lunch at the Royal Sailing Club with friends, and then watched Mark's football team get clobbered in his last game of the season. Emily has no school tomorrow so her two friends are over to play. Right now they are swimming in the pool and we have a date with Indiana Jones later tonight.


Yesterday I promised to show you what happens to Mark when he messes around too much with his Mum around. Yesterday he emptied Emily's sweets on to the kitchen counter and then swept them all on to the floor. Sundie was mad and metered out her usual punishment.

Home Again, Home Again...

jiggety jig.

Lisa arrived home yesterday and is thrilled to be back at Water's Edge. Everything was well taken care of and thanks to Sundie Lisa arrived home to a nice clean house.

Last night we took Sunday out for dinner at the Green Parrot. I don't think we have blogged about the Green Parrot before. The Green Parrot is a lovely outdoor restaurant that overlooks the harbour and Paradis Island. Smaller boats moor out in the harbour and then the boat owners drive their little dinghies over to the dock and eat and drink at the Green Parrot. The food is simple but tasty and the prices are very reasonable in Bahama's terms. On Saturday nights the band from Johnny Canoe's plays in the cabana and there is a little beach there for the kids that Emily loves to play one while she is waiting for her Bahama Fruit Punch. If you were to go with kids you should go early as later at night it becomes a bit of drinking den. Last night we had a great meal and watched the sun set over the harbour - happy to be the 3 Musketeers (plus Dartanian (sic?)) again.

A preview for tomorrow's post... what happens when a grown man messes around just a little too much in front of his Mother and knocks all of Emily's sweets on the floor? Well let's just stay when you see the punishment Sundie can meter out you will understand why Mark only feels comfortable doing this behind her back...

24 To Go

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." Elizabeth Barrett Browning said that. I've no idea where this is going but let me tell you that we at Water' Edge really miss Lisa. We now have only 24 hours to go then normalcy will be restored in the Cabrelli household with her return. We do have Mark's Mum here and she does provide emotional comfort but she's actually more like a laborer for the time being. You see since she arrived she's been outside in the garden uprooting anything that looks suspicious or inside cleaning anything that doesn't pass the "white glove" test - so we don't see much of her. So that leaves Mark and Emily in an unsettled state. Everything seems fine. The sun is still shining in Nassau and the water is still crystal clear. But not all is right in paradise. As the Boss says: her brush is in the bathroom, her nightgown's over the chair, her computer's turned on and the gluten free pasta's in the fridge...but she's missing.

Lisa, come home...we miss you.

Jack Jack Attack

Have Gran will travel...

New York, Washington, Hong Kong, Milan, London, Edinburgh, Marseille-Provence....no, they're not the latest Gucci outlets nor are they the locations of the G8 summits. There are the regular haunts for Mark's Mum - yes, the wee wifee from Bonnie Dundee. She’s 80+ (discretion being the best part of valour), in rigid good health and fortunate to have sons that live in different parts of the globe. So why not travel to see them once in a while. Well today is a first for Sundie (her real name is Domenica which is Sunday in Italian) as she wings her way across the Atlantic. This afternoon she’ll arrive in Nassau for the first time and she can cross another capital city off her list. It may not be as cosmopolitan as the other places but that is more than made up with sun, sea, sand and….son – her favorite one (at least her youngest one).

It is quite amazing that she is able to do all of this in the twilight of her life. But she does and she deserves it. After all, she had to bring up four sons while running the family café business. No mean feat when the business was Fish & Chips where the potatoes and fish had to be hand cleaned every day and the hours went from mid morning to the wee hours. So kick back Sundie.

And naturally as all good sons will tell you, she’s the best Mum in the world. Welcome to paradise Mum.

Baby Burglar

All is still busy in Pennyslyvania. Sister Michelle drops off Baby Tommy to Nanny (Mum) for babysitting and heads off to her last week of work at the hospital. Lisa grabs car keys and rushes out the door to go to Michelle's and ship. Baby Tommy promptly falls asleep in his car seat in the middle of the living room floor. Lisa arrives at Michelle's house... no keys! Back to Mum's.

Lisa walks in the door... no Mum. She walks in to the kitchen only to hear Mum pounding up the basement stairs at top speed. She bursts out of the basement door headed straight for the baby in the living room clutching the most incredible defensive weapon bound to deter any criminal. A plastic broom.

Lisa says, "Mum?" Mum jumps 5 feet in to the air and turns upon Lisa with that terrifying broom. What are you going to do - sweep that baby burglar away?

We All Miss You, Lisa

Don’t worry Lisa; your absence in person from Waters Edge is more than made up by the emotional and spiritual void you have left behind. Having said that, Mark and Emily are coping with life’s pressures just fine. Emmy still does her chores around the homestead like picking up the leaves and folding the laundry, Mark still cleans up and remembers to feed the cats and Emily – he even occasionally remembers to pick her up from school. But be assured that we still have a longing in our heart and "a tear in oor een" awaiting the return of the matriarch.

But the real tale (tail) of the hour is the changing behaviour of Ow the cat. Ow is one of our two cats – the other being the docile, rather weight conscious (fat-ish), black Colonel. Ow has always been somewhat of a curmudgeon and a little violent to boot – hence his name. Well, he has started to get more quirky – his mood is never right, he’s always quick to lash out….he just never seems happy (remember I’m talking about the cat not Mark – in case there was some confusion). This morning was a case in point. As usual while Emmy was in the shower, Mark started to feed the cats. Ow and the Colonel were eagerly circling the food bowls in usual anticipation when Ow suddenly got up on his hind legs (Animal Farm like) and pushed into Mark. There was spitting and gnashing of teeth. As the disciplinarian, Mark reprimanded Ow with a threat of being put out. At this point Ow turned to rub against the Colonel but had a benevolent look in his eye. The next instant he leapt and caught the Colonel in a half nelson pinning him to the floor. Needless to say there was black fur flying and a look on the Colonel’s face of surprise, befuddlement and, yes, disappointment at being treated so callously by his erstwhile brother.

Now Ow is getting up there in years – I guess he must be 14 now – so maybe that has something to do with it. Also he has lost both his fangs which must have given him grief. Whatever it is we don’t like it (particularly the Colonel) and hope that this does not progress as he gets older. Cat behavior does change over time but we’d be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced this or can suggest anything.

Of course it may just be that he is missing Lisa!