sona khosla

Tumblr is what I call my “pre-blog.” It allowed me to start writing without being overwhelmed with the thought of having to get all techy and start a site. So I’m very grateful for their simple technology and interface.

But …I’ve graduated. With the help of my friend and colleague, Tara Scott of Versus Boredom, I got a real Wordpress blog.

Where to find me now
I would love for you to drop by and visit me at my new blog, www.sonakhosla.com, ‘cause that’s where I’ll be from now on. Hope to see you soon!

One of my close friends just had her second son. She named him Will. This got me thinking about names.

What’s in a name?
Does the name make us who we are or do we make the name? The likely answer is that it’s a little of both. But, one thing I know for sure is that names have strong emotional associations. Back to the name Will: It’s a name that means a lot to me. While I had a good and quirky artist friend in high school named Will, in more recent years I had a watershed moment with a colleague named Will.

The story of Will
It was late in the work day and I made an executive decision that wasn’t necessarily mine to make. Honestly, it was a combination of having to act quickly under pressure, not thinking thoroughly through the situation and feeling too tired to walk over to consult with the people who needed to be consulted.

This decision caused an almost instantaneous rush of two senior-level directors and an irate executive towards my desk. They put me in my proverbial place. I was caught off guard. I got defensive. I justified my decision. I raised my voice. I got mad. I backed down. I reluctantly apologized. An innocent by-standing colleague watched wide-eyed.

I went home a complete stress case, tense in the shoulders, a raging fire within and re-playing the drama over and over again justifying my actions to myself. I slept like shit. And then I woke up in the morning and went to work again hoping not to run into any of these guys.

The real Will
I walked into work and was met with a voicemail, an email and a note from a co-worker that Will, one of the three storming guys, wanted to speak with me. I was terrified. I figured I was gonna get it again.

And then something totally unexpected happened. Will spoke. He had a sleepless night. He spent the night talking to his wife about what went down. He apologized for “bullying and crucifying” me. He made no excuses. He took full responsibility. He apologized with heart and sincerity. He asked for my forgiveness. He promised to not treat anyone disrespectfully again. Then as if that wasn’t stunning enough, he said he cared more about being who he truly is than having a job and doing what the boss wants.

The courage of Will
Will’s courageous words triggered a deep and important realization that I, too, had strayed far from my values. I, too, had become someone I wasn’t proud of. I, too, got swept up in organizational bullshit and sacrificed what’s important to me. I, too, lost myself without ever realizing it.

The gift of Will
They say that maximum growth occurs at the border of order and chaos. Amidst all of the stress, fear and adrenaline, Will helped me re-connect with the person I really am and want to be. Will’s conscious decision to take responsibility for his actions and his choice to be true to who he is despite any organizational and personal consequence triggered the same desire in me. Will gave me the will to take the risk of being myself.

I believe Will lived up to his name and by doing so reinforced its powerful meaning. My friend’s newest baby is blessed to share such a powerful name with an individual who has stand-out integrity, so this blog is written in Will’s honour — both of them.

Definition of “will” excerpted from www.dictionary.com.

Prague, Czech Republic, May 2010. Some photos courtesy Jennifer Ming.

A few weekends ago, my husband asked me on a date. After months of renovating, I was keen to spend some quality time together. But since there was still much to do on the house, he decided it would be fun if I helped him do a dump run. Okay, that’s kind of bizarrely romantic.

A dump virgin
In all my years in Calgary, I’ve never been to the dump. I was in awe the entire time. My husband had to keep reminding me to close my mouth. I was like a kid in the car with her cheek pressed up against the window trying to see this strange new place from every angle.

The thing that struck me the most was the birds. Everyone says this. The sound of birds cawing and wings flapping in an almost cloudless, bright sky makes for a heightened sensory experience. And then there’s this strange juxtaposition between the lovely earthy hills and these perfect rows of garbage waiting to be hidden under them. The dump is beautiful and hideous.

The politics of garbage
I’m not always brave enough to break rules, but this one I didn’t know I was breaking. I asked my husband to take a picture of me at the dump. I wanted to remember this. After a few model shots, one of the landfill supervisors came over and let us know that it was against the rules to take pictures at the dump. My husband, being the freedom fighter that he is, did not take well to:

a) being told what to do;
b) being asked not to take pictures on public property;
c) the city trying to hide what goes in the “landfill.” 

It became clear that there’s a line between personally disposing of your garbage and the politics of commercial dump trucks coming in and not separating the recyclables from the real garbage. Just how much doesn’t need to be thrown away, but is? You don’t want to know, trust me.

Connecting with my garbage
I think it’s normal not to think much about your garbage. Instead, we spend a lot more time thinking about our recycling. But on this day, I became so much more aware of the things I throw away and where they go. I could see the bloat I was creating in the earth’s belly and I felt bad. I had this overwhelming sense of the Earth as a beautiful woman who is unwillingly being fed our crap. I felt like I was betraying a mother, someone who has literally given me life.

Strangely enough, I’ve had a lasting connection to my garbage since this fateful date. I can no longer just throw unwanted stuff away without feeling for a moment where it’s really going. It’s no longer “out of sight, out of mind.” Remember about a month ago, I broke my SLR. Well, instead of throwing it out and replacing it, I got it fixed. And instead of throwing out my gimpy suitcase with a broken foot, I got it fixed. And instead of replacing my laptop that doesn’t have a battery anymore and requires a 24/7 connection to the wall, I’m inclined to use it until it drives me to the edge of madness.

A date to remember
I’m transformed. For this, I guess I owe thanks to my husband’s unorthodox idea of love. 

On Monday morning’s daily commute, I tuned into my favourite CBC morning radio show, the Current. The topic was abortion in Canada and the show addressed recent speculation that the abortion debate may be re-opening since Harper recently excluded abortion from Canada’s International Maternal Health Plan.

A history of un-debate
I’ll keep this short because not everyone loves history or politics, but during this program I learned that Canada doesn’t have any explicit laws on abortion. The program goes on to talk about Canada’s lack of political will to debate this issue because it’s so divisive and so un-Canadian to confront this difficult issue. The truce that’s be in place for the last 22 years since the Supreme Court had a free vote seems to have appeased most Canadians because there’s no legislation against it, nor is there legislation for it. Ironically, it’s “an accident of history” that abortion is not illegal in Canada.

Canadian women’s voices
A short clip from May 1970 was played (14:05 to 15:24). It replays an emotionally intense dialogue between 2 women during a 2-day demonstration in which 35 women chained themselves to the Parliamentary Gallery to demand the right to choose. The emotion and intensity is palpable in this precious archive.

A legacy to be grateful for
I was completely struck by the brave women who put themselves on the line to fight for a woman’s right to choose—for my right to choose. In that moment, for the first time, I connected to the courageous Canadian women who lived before me. I actually heard their voices fighting for my rights and my future. And I wished I could thank them for it. Writing this blog in their honour is the closest I could come.

Being German is at the core of the VW brand. Besides massive mugs of beer, lederhosen and perfectly browned schnitzel, when you think about what it means to be German, you can’t help but think of German engineering. Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, and perhaps the most accessible of all of the German auto brands, Volkswagen which translates into “the people’s car” (Volks = people, Wagen = car).

My new 2010 VW Golf Wagon TDI is an almost perfect example of being German. So many things are right: value, ride, comfort, convenience, fuel mileage, being green. 

The 2010 VW Golf Wagon TDI anticipates my needs
My new car correctly anticipates most of my needs. It’s got a number of smart solutions that make my driving experience more fun and comfortable. For example:

• All the conveniences at the right price. Bluetooth, iPod jack, touch screen, satellite radio, panoramic moonroof, 240 lbs-ft of torque and fuel mileage all for well under 35K CAD. VW is a brand that knows its drivers well: their discerning buyers want German engineering and European styling at a Japanese price.
• The fuel mileage is killer. I went on a road trip and then drove around the city for 2 weeks before I filled up. That amounted to 950 km on a 45 CAD tank of fuel. I’m spending more time on the road and less time at the pumps.
• The iPod hook-up is neatly tucked in the front console. It’s hidden unlike most iPod jacks which is perfect for keeping thieves at bay. It also charges the battery which keeps the tunes playing as long as I need ‘em. 
• The moonroof is massive and makes the car feel a lot bigger than it is. Trust me, driving in the backseat on a long road trip is not something I’m going to complain about. The views are incredible from the double-panel panoramic moonroof.
• The heated seats are the hottest I’ve had. I’m the girl who uses heated seats year-round. These ones get so hot I actually feel like I’m being grilled a little bit.

Where German perfection ends with the 2010 VW Golf TDI Wagon
Here’s where smart gets stupid: Some of the smart solutions actually create more work and discomfort for the driver. Here are two examples:

• When I start driving, all of the doors automatically lock. This is a convenient safety feature. The problem is that when I stop the car, only the driver’s door unlocks. That means all of my stuff in the back is still locked in the car. What if I had a kid? My kid would be locked in my car. What’s worse is that I can’t change this setting (I’ve tried!). Small thing, but that’s the whole point. They decided that automatic door locking is convenient, but 50% of the time, it’s not.
• When I drive faster, the volume on the audio system also increases. This is a comfort feature that means I never have to adjust the volume while I’m driving. The problem is that my audio system gets louder and louder as I drive faster and faster. At the end of the day, when I get back in my car and turn the ignition on, the music literally screams at me. So I quickly crank the music down. Then as soon as I put my car in gear, the volume adjusts for speed again. So now the music is way too soft. I can just see what happened: VW decided that as soon as you drive, the volume adjusts. The problem is that the definition of driving probably wasn’t discussed. Feature guy thought it was when you start the car and spec or builder guy thought it was when you put the car in gear. And now my ears bleed when I start my car.

Despite these small imperfections, Das Auto is right. I have to agree with AJAC that the 2010 VW Golf Wagon TDI is “the car” to have.

AJAC announced that the 2010 VW Golf Wagon TDI is the winner for Family car under $30,000 for 2010. Read more here.

I loooove this book. Yes, loooove with 4 o’s.

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation is the third of Marty’s “whiteboard books” in which he takes a deep and complex topic on branding and simplifies it so that it just makes plain sense.

The powerful concept that Marty (I feel like we’re on a first name basis) presents here is that design is change. Wowzer. That’s so powerful. Mainly because it takes the power out of the hands of the few people who know how to use Photoshop and puts it in the hands of every individual in an organization. There are so many kinds of designers. People who re-engineer process. People who design ads. People who dream up new solutions for customers. People who champion the people in their company. People in Marketing. People in Product. People in Customer Service. People in HR. People everywhere.

What I love about this book is that it reminded me of a part of myself I sometimes lose. The creative, the designer, the one who cares so much about beauty, harmony and integrity. The one who fusses over typography and prides herself on guessing the typeface being used in the movie credits. It’s so easy to lose this part of myself. I get caught in typical left-brain ideals like the bottom line, rules, margins, KPIs, standards and start to lose touch with that part of myself that knows with something other than my logic. Then, even worse, I lose respect for my intuition, my instincts, my desire to make things better and different and I become part of the “system” that I myself don’t respect.

Anyways, this book reminded me that designers and creatives are to be respected, if not understood. And it reminded me to trade in the “or” for the “and” to find creative solutions to “wicked problems” that all organizations face like: balancing long-term goals with short-term demands; predicting the returns on innovative concepts; combining profitability and social responsibility. It’s true, these can be solved, albeit not easily.

Admist the simple aesthetic of the book lies some revolutionary ideas that have the power to transform people and corporations. Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just another little book on branding.

I broke our SLR camera during our trip to Nelson, so I’m constantly asking my husband if I can borrow his iPhone to capture stuff I see around me.

Here’s a shot taken at Stanley Park earlier today. We were throwing the ball for our dog and I looked up in the sky and caught site of this:

Courtesy of Bruce’s iPhone

A few weeks ago, my husband and I went on a short roadtrip. During our getaway we stopped in on my husband’s ex-wife’s parents whom he has remained close with since his divorce over 12 years ago. The 24 hours we spent together changed me.

They shared stories of travelling 1,000 miles across the Congo and doing an emergency tracheotomy to save a baby’s life. 

They shared the tragedy of losing a friend who escaped a train fire, only to die when she went back to gather some important papers. She was a gentle nun who they worked with in a burn unit at a charity hospital in Jalandhar, India.

They shared the joy of their son and his partner’s recent adoption of two older boys and their first trip on a plane to visit their new extended family.

My husband’s ex-father-in-law shared the “good fortune” he has had watching hundreds of people die and noticing it’s the ones who have loved—not the ones who believed in God—that have gone with the most grace.

He shared the experience of watching his father die 26 days short of turning 100 years old.

He told us tales of riding his daughter’s old mountain bike from Kelowna to Guatamala, riding a road bike solo from the Arctic Circle in Norway to the Southern edge of Malta, kayaking down the Danube and surviving unpredictable winds and waves in a kayak off the shore of Vancouver Island where at least one man has gone missing before. All of this done after his 60th birthday.

He looked us in the eye and told us he could die happy today.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I realized that this couple lives a life of meaning. I connected with an emptiness at the bottom of my stomach. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt like I was contributing to something meaningful.

Something woke up inside of me. A longing. A stirring. A deep-rooted desire. A memory and maybe a commitment I made somewhere, sometime to make my life count.