Tag Archives: Golf

My Mother-In-Law’s Eulogy

I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet (by my standards anyways). Because as we know, Carmencita was short….. and of course very sweet.

I first met Carmencita Catli in 2002 when I started dating her eldest daughter. I remember how easy she made it to feel comfortable in their home. I remember how welcoming and accommodating she always was. I remember being totally and completely fascinated with the concept of a rice cooker, and how you could have warm rice available to you 24 hours a day. I had heard that culturally it was typical to walk into a Filipino home and immediately be offered food. I’d also heard that the polite response was to sit down and eat. Carmen loved to cook, and when I would come over, there always seemed to be multiple meat options available which is right up my alley. We had an interesting dynamic right away, because if you love to cook, it’s always nice to have someone around who loves to eat. If you love to eat, it’s always preferable to have someone around who loves to cook. She spoiled me ROTTEN. She took note of all my favourite dishes, and just about every time I went over there, we were having one of my favourites. The beefsteak, the Adobo chicken wings, the barbecued Kalbi, She set the standard for how I feel all Filipino cuisine should taste. I think the reason there aren’t that many Filipino restaurants out there is because everybody thinks that their mom makes everything best. Well she became my Filipino mom, and she finally had a white son who had a stomach like a bottomless pit. Nothing was getting thrown out. I tried to help with the dishes a few times, but she wouldn’t let me. She’d say ‘Leave it… You go relax’…… Then I would insist. ‘Hey, you cooked, let me just help’, and then she’d say ‘LEAVE IT!!!!’ ‘Ok, I’ll go relax’.

Soon I found out that she was an avid golfer. It wasn’t long before we were golf buddies, and opportunities to play with her kept cropping up whether it was a little par 3 course, a top-notch course, or even a tournament that she was able to get me into. She was a tiny woman, so she didn’t have prodigious power on her golf swing, but I NEVER saw her hit the ball anywhere but straight down the middle of the fairway. I could hit the ball a lot harder, but not straight. So while I was in the forest having tantrums and looking for my balls, she would methodically work her way to the green 100 yards at a time. Golfing with her wasn’t so much about her golf game as it was about her snacks. She always had enough food with her, so that if Zombies attacked, our four-some could survive for at least three days. She made sure everyone was hydrated, using sunscreen, and had the proper equipment to play with. If you made a great shot, she was the perfect cheerleader, and made probably an inappropriate amount of noise while dancing around the green after a good putt. It was the type of excitement, that I’m sure only the pros have seen. We had great fun on the golf course.

In 2008, Carmen was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer. When I do the math, it was like half the time I knew her. I remember being told at the time that she would be limited to approximately 2 to 4 years. We all felt an incredible sadness upon hearing this news. The only reason I’m bringing this up is because I feel like what followed was nothing short of incredible. Carmen didn’t slow down at all. She seemed to react well to chemotherapy, which I’m told is one of the worst things in the world, but you wouldn’t know she was going through that based on her attitude and her demeanor. She had her bad days, but when she had good days, she got up and did something, whether it was golf, shop or travel. She lived 6 more years and saw both of her daughters get married, and not only witnessed the birth of 3 grandchildren, but became a huge part of their every day lives. We were fortunate enough to be able to travel with her on 4 separate occasions during this time, from Maui to Orlando to Vegas. She didn’t slow anybody down. Now in a celebration of life, I didn’t want to bring up cancer necessarily, but during her epic battle in which she defied all odds, the positivity, the grace, the strength and perseverance, the positive attitude, the way she never let it get her down, or if she did, she wouldn’t let it show, and refused to let it bring others down…. to me this is a big part of her story.

Last year we had an opportunity to take her golfing at Taboo up in Bracebridge which she had indicated was her favourite golf course. I sort of felt like it would be the last time we would end up doing something like that together, so I wanted to go there specifically. I’ll be honest now and say that there were a few times when I thought we’d be doing something for the last time, and it wasn’t the case. I don’t want to cheapen her memory by comparing her to the Energizer Bunny, but she did keep going and going and going…….So we were somewhere on the back 9, and Dave and Mayur were off somewhere looking for a ball or something….. not one of mine this time. Carmen said something to me which I’ll never forget. She didn’t always open up with this kind of stuff, but maybe it was the sunshine or the beauty of the golf course that led to the moment, but she said ‘Ryan, you know what?? I’m so happy. I really love my life. I love having grandchildren and spending time with them.’ In light of all that has happened, it made me feel really good to hear her say that. She was loving life right up until the point where she was physically unable to anymore.

Carmencita left us with many great gifts. She was probably the most thoughtful person I’d ever known. Her selflessness, and giving nature made everyone around her feel like a million dollars, in some cases falling all over ourselves to try to make it up to her or do something nice for her. She was a giver, and when it came time to reciprocate, she just wanted us to ‘Leave it’, because it made her happy to be of service to all of us. When she came over to babysit her grandson, he’d already be asleep, and all she had to do was sit on the couch and watch TV. The minute we walked out, she would run into the kitchen and start doing the dishes or whatever. I was kind of embarrassed, I’d tell her to please leave everything, but she wouldn’t listen. Every time. To the point where I felt like if she was going to babysit, I had to go clean up the kitchen first.

While this is still short and sweet. I just wanted to leave you with the following thoughts. While I’m happy that she’s no longer in the pain that she’d been recently experiencing, her absence has left a void in our lives that we will feel for the rest of our lives. To have known her is to have experienced love, fun, strength, positivity, generosity, and a great sense of belonging that can only happen when you are welcomed into friendship by someone like her. She is a bright light that continues to shine in the lives of all who have been fortunate enough to be a part of her life. Carmencita Catli, I’m glad I knew you.

The Book – Cool Requires Discipline


Nobody said this would be easy, least of all me. Most people never fully achieve their cool potential because there is always something that could be improved upon. It’s very much like Golf in the way that no matter how hard you work at it, or how much success you have with it, you will never be perfect. It’s also like golf in the sense that a Golf swing has so many moving parts, and sometimes you can do a lot of things right, but one flaw can mess up your whole swing. In fact, almost everything I’ll say about cool in the next paragraph can relate to Golf as well, but it would be totally un-cool for me to continue on with these Golf analogies while your Cool Factor is hanging in the balance.

There will be people out there who are just cool without having any idea how they got there. It’s like any skill that you can be ‘a natural’ at. They just instinctively move toward the cool without even knowing that they’re doing it. Good for them! I would say that most people spend at least a bit of their life feeling unsure of themselves, and wondering how they could walk among the seemingly chosen few that were blessed with the cool gene. The first thing you need to know is that trying a new thing, getting a tattoo, or wearing a name brand shirt isn’t going to get you there. You need to walk cool and talk cool all day every day, but before you can even do that, you need to find out what cool is, and understand it. I’ll try to help you with that throughout, but at the end of the day, only you will know what cool is at your age, in your town, among your people, and most importantly in your heart.

Where should you start? Figure out what you think is cool. Most people instinctively would try to find out what other people think is cool, and start moving towards that ideal. This is the wrong approach. You can’t be someone else’s cool. It doesn’t work. You need to find your own cool. You can certainly get ideas from other people though. You just can’t let anyone know you’re getting ideas from them. Be a watcher, but don’t make it obvious that you’re watching. You need to have some Coolfluences, which are people who you perceive to have a good supply of all around cool. Find out why they’re cool in your eyes. What do they look like, smell like, talk like? How do they react to things? What do they believe in? What do they stand for? How do they treat people? What are they into? How do they dress? Ask yourself these questions. Come up with a hundred more questions. Then ask these same questions about yourself. Are there any similarities? Differences?

Now if you think I’m going to suggest that you start acting, dressing, talking like the above person on your way to being cool, you’ve got another thing coming. If you think someone at your school, office, gym or pet cemetery is cool, you can’t just copy their haircut and think that’s gonna cut it. It doesn’t work like that. That would be copying, or biting which is unoriginal, therefore uncool. Don’t ever try to be like someone. Be yourself. Just tweaked. Think like a Rock Star. Everybody that makes music has influences. It’s usually quite alright to pay homage to some of these artists, by allowing them to influence your sound. However, if you spend your whole music career trying to sound like a certain artist, then you can’t be a cool Rock Star, you can only be a Cover Band. I’m not suggesting Cover Bands can’t be cool. As long as they own it, and don’t try to act like Rock Stars, they’re alright in my book.

So allow yourself to be coolfluenced, but don’t be a biter. How do you do that? By diversifying your coolfluences!! It’s very likely that you find more than one person to be cool. There are probably dozens, if not hundreds of people who you find cool. So to diversify your coolfluences, you are taking an aggregate of possibly hundreds of cool people, and utilizing the relevant information from each of them to form a cool consensus. If you are borrowing cool ideas from 600 people, it’s very difficult for anybody to notice that you aren’t in fact coming up with all of these ideas on your own. If you have only 2 coolfluences, then you are likely acting exactly like them, and people will easily be able to tell where you got your style from, and that’s not a good look. By that rationale, why am I recommending that you borrow inspiration from anyone at all, when you could just use 100% original ideas of your own? Let’s be honest with ourselves, if you were 100% happy with your original ideas, you wouldn’t be reading this book right now. Don’t re-invent the wheel. Cool has long been established. Just look around you, and take the ideas that work for you, without letting anyone know you’re taking them.

So I’ve asked you to find 600 cool people and ask yourself 100 questions about why each of them are cool. Sound like a lot of work? Of course it is. Cool requires discipline. This process will take longer than a week. Like anything in life, you get out what you put in. Cool is no different, although you will find that it comes easier to some than others. It’s no different from school, really. The more you study, the better chance you have of getting good grades. The unfair reality is that some people will be able to get good grades without studying. Just like some people are inherently cool. If you aren’t inherently cool, but aspire to be, then you need to do the homework. In cool, like in school, don’t be hating the people who come by it easily. Hating in general is detrimental to your cause. Jealousy is negative a million points on the Cool Factor scale.

When you’ve found your 600 cool people and asked yourself 100 questions about what makes them cool, it probably makes sense to write down the answers (IN A PLACE WHERE NOBODY WOULD EVER FIND THEM, BECAUSE IT WOULD BE SO INCREDIBLY UNCOOL AND WEIRD IF ANYBODY EVER DID………SCRATCH THAT, DO NOT WRITE ANY OF THIS DOWN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES). Then you need to analyze the answers to these questions. Were there similar answers that came up over and over again from multiple subjects? If you found that most of your 600 cool people smelled good, were kind to children, and had awesome hobbies, then maybe YOU need to smell good, be kind to children, and have awesome hobbies.

Remember that these are 600 people who YOU selected (I’m totally exaggerating about that number, but do as many as you can), and 100 questions that YOU came up with, to get 100 answers that YOU analyzed. How you interpret that data can be the foundation for what YOU think is cool. Even though you pulled that data from a lot of different people (unbeknownst to any of them), the final pool of information should be 100% unique to you, and therefore totally authentic. How, and what you decide to implement into your own character or lifestyle will determine how cool you become in your own eyes. The cooler you become in your own eyes, surprisingly, the cooler you will seem to other people.

This is a lifelong pursuit. You must be always focused on the cool. Never stop watching, listening and learning. If you’re older and you feel like you’ve attained your cool, but then you give up learning about it and pursuing it, the cool will elude you. In the worst case scenario (and I see this ALL the time) you can become stuck in a time-warp of cool. 1985 cool is cool in 1985, but not cool at the time that I’m writing this book, but I’ve seen a lot of people who are 1985 cool, and completely oblivious to time marching on. They walk around with a ridiculously outdated hairstyle, and questionable fashion choices, and have no idea how ridiculous they look. To be clear, if you look like 1985, and you’re not doing it on purpose for some sort of weird Hipster irony thing, then you cannot be cool in whatever year it is right now. You must never stop evolving. The cool will always evolve. You either evolve with it, or get stuck. I would argue that it’s almost better to be completely ‘un-cool’ than stuck in a cool that no longer exists, but that’s just me. Not to beat the crap out of this point, but you should be cool no matter how old you are. There are different standards for cool to accommodate different age groups, so I’m not saying that 60 year olds should dress or act like teenagers, but there are too many people who think it’s okay to just mentally check out of your cool after they’ve had a kid or two. It’s not OK. You can tone down your Coolspectations, but you cannot get stuck in some freaky pop culture and fashion time warp. You are not serving anybody’s best interests when you do this.

Here are a couple of examples of basic cool concepts that most people need to address on their journey to cool.

Example #1
I mentioned this earlier, but it’s a big one for me. This may sound basic, but if you like the way everyone on your list smells, how do you smell? Maybe there are some hygiene products that would help you smell good if you don’t already. By the way, if you aren’t sure if you smell good, then you probably could upgrade. Maybe cough up a few bucks for a nice bottle of cologne. My recommendation is to not to pick the one that Johnny from the gym has. Go to the fragrance counter at your local department store. Try a few on. Different fragrances work well with different skin. There will be a perfect fragrance for you. I always favour a unique scent instead of the wildly popular one that everyone wears. That’s just me though. I always like to imagine that some girl I used to know will smell a cologne I used to wear somewhere years later, and then starts feeling nostalgic about me. This is only made possible by a unique cologne choice, because if you’re rocking some Calvin Klein scent that 8000 people at your high school had, then nobody will remember it was you that wore it. That probably doesn’t happen for me in real life, but in my head I believe it does, and if I don’t believe something like that in my own head, then nobody else will, but we’ll touch on those things later in the Confidence chapter. To summarize, finding the fragrance that suits you best is WAY cooler than buying a popular fragrance because you heard a lot of cool people had it. That’s lame. Not as lame as not smelling good, or worse….. smelling bad.

Example #2
I’m guessing that every person who goes through the exercise of finding 600 cool people, and asking themselves 100 questions about why that person is cool will come to the conclusion that they like the way cool people dress. This is one of the most paramount things with being cool is looking cool. Again, some people just look cool, and hardly have to work at it. Others won’t be able to achieve this with such ease, but it’s a learnable skill to be sure. Be aware of fashion! You don’t have to follow it too closely unless you want to. You just have to make sure that you aren’t completely out to lunch with your wardrobe choices. I can’t sit here and explain to you what I think you should be wearing. What I think is irrelevant to your cool. Besides, any fashion tips I could give would be outdated by the time you read this book anyways. The most important tip I will give you is the following. Wear clothes that look good on YOU. You can spend money but you don’t have to. You can buy great fashion brand names, but you don’t have to. Get clothes that look good on YOU. I capitalize that because so many people see clothes that look good on other people and think ‘I wanna buy that’. I can’t emphasize this enough. Just because something looks good on someone else, doesn’t mean it will look good on you. Find what looks good on you. Also, don’t feel like you can’t look good because you don’t have a lot of money. Some of the most stylish people I’ve met are thrift shoppers. If you’re willing to spend the time to understand fashion and style, or at least have a minimal working knowledge of it, you should be able to find clothes that work for you under any budget. If you look good, there’s a good chance that you’ll feel good. Looking good and feeling good leads to confidence, and confidence leads to cool.

There are people who you will identify as cool. You can’t take the same path to cool as they did, but it is good for you to know what their path was, and if there was anything to be learned. At the end of the day, whoever you think is cool will have achieved that through their own unique self-expression. While it’s important to know why you think other people are cool, it is only through your own unique self-expression, that others will find you cool. It sounds easy, but for most people it’s a bit of a process. With a little research, some implementation of some cool tools, and a better understanding of your own personal cool, you’ll be well on your way.

My Father’s Eulogy
















Thank you.


Things a bird would rather do

I was on the golf course today.  I didn’t play well.  In fact, a better way to describe it would be to say that the course kicked my ass today!  During a bad round of golf you have lots of time to think.  If you’re on a nice golf course (which I was today courtesy of a friend who had won free foursome at a previous tournament he played in), you are bound to think once or twice about how beautiful nature can be (provided it’s not raining).

I saw a bird today just soaring in the wind.  I’ll call him a hawk because he was black with a huge wingspan, but to be honest I don’t differentiate birds well.  This hawk was cruisin’ man…..  he was just swayin’ in the breeze.  Not flapping his wings at all, just going whichever way the wind took him.  Just relaxing.  Just being free.  For about 10 minutes (like any normal person) I thought ‘wow man’……..imagine being that free.  Up in the sky without a care in the world just soaring.  Beautiful!  Then for the rest of the day I thought about this……

I’ll bet birds fuckin hate flying around all the time.  It seems great to us because we can’t do it.  I’ll bet a bird would give anything to walk as briskly as a human can walk or operate a motorized vehicle.  Or go inside when it’s raining.  All birds can do is fly around.  They eat worms.  I feel like they would absolutely love to sit at a table and enjoy a nice steak dinner with a bottle of Cabernet.  They build nests, but if they could purchase a 2000 square foot home pre-construction and have the thing built for them, I think they would.  They communicate with each other with their bird-calls, but do you know how hard it is to hear someone when the wind is blowing in your little bird ears and you’re flying around?  I’m sure they would love to own cell phones to talk or text.

It’s funny how we think our lives suck so badly, and we’re always so sure that the grass is greener on the other side.  Yes it would be nice to fly away from an awkward conversation.  Yes it would be amazing to shit on somebody’s car if you didn’t like them.  My favourite bird activity would be to sit on an electrical wire and say ‘haha fuckers…. you can’t do this!!!!’

Birds can fly which is pretty cool, granted.  Can they breakdance?  Can they tell jokes?  Can they go to the movies?  Can they write in Calligraphy?  Can they go out for ice cream?  (Trick question, they absolutely can, but they cannot purchase it… they must wait for it to be spilled.)  Can they play Twister?  Can they take a business class?  Can they wear basketball shoes?  Can they do laundry?  (No, but score a point for them) Can they use the internet?  Can they make smoothies?  The answer is no!

To tie this all together beautifully, I’d like to suggest that maybe being human isn’t so bad after all.  Particularly in the first world.  Is there a strong allure to making a lot of noise with no repercussion, and hanging out with your friends anywhere at anytime?  Yes they both interest me, but I think most of you would have to admit that being a bird, while cool for a few minutes, would generally be undesirable in comparison to being human.  That’s all I’m saying.  I know this isn’t a huge burning debate or anything, but I thought I’d weigh in.

On a sidenote, I can’t eat salmon without thinking I’m going to puncture my throat with little fish bones and choke to death.  However salmon is delicious so I brave through the anxiety.  Now you know something about me 🙂

That is all.

The popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth

I had to go to the dentist this morning, and before you read too far, this is not about popcorn kernels being stuck in my teeth only to be found and removed professionally.  It’s more a metaphor for minor annoyances that have been accumulating in my brain (plaguing my existence).  Probably not worth logging on to Facebook or Twitter to update my status (no, I don’t have those apps for my phone…… I don’t have any apps for my phone…… I keep thinking if I ignore technology long enough, it will go back to the way it was……. no??…… not happening??…….it’s just gonna get worse???…..damn..).  I was hoping if I had enough random thoughts, that the whole could be greater than the sum of its parts since I really didn’t think of a humdinger of a topic to stick with for the entire blog.

So I awoke this morning and decided it was time to reach back in the closet and pull out my funniest tee-shirt.  It’s a picture of a gingerbread man with a broken leg.  The caption says “Oh Snap!”  I giggled like a 12-year-old girl when I bought it.  The punchline is funny enough but you have to see the look of concern on his little face.  He knows there’s no surgery that’s bringing that leg back, but while enduring the most horrible physical pain he’s ever gone through, he has the levity to deliver a quality tee-shirt punchline.  How could my day be anything short of amazing now.  I did some background research for this paragraph (to make sure it wasn’t from a movie or something) and apparently the “Oh Snap” Gingerbread man makes an appearance on coffee mugs.  One of the sites I googled referred to this as ‘Cookie Humor’, a concept I was unaware of, but now find myself curious about.  Just off the top of my head, if I had to come up with ‘Cookie Humor’ tee-shirts I would start with a picture of Chewbacca with a bunch of brown spots all over him and call it ‘Chocolate Chip Wookies’.  (Shazzzammmmm….. I know I shouldn’t celebrate my jokes, but c’mon, that shit was gold)

Moving along to the rants…….

I hate it when the chick at the drive thru takes your order, and is waiting for you when you arrive at the window, and then acts annoyed that you don’t have your money ready yet.  “Bitch, I was driving!!”………

I got this one from a buddy.  Union Station in Toronto was flooded the other day due to heavy rains, and my friend saw a guy berating a transit employee because ‘This is Toronto, and it’s unacceptable!!’, as if the guy made it rain and is now really happy about standing knee-deep in it trying to clean up.  Lighten up jerk off!………

Body odor on the bus is my next thing.  I talk about this all the time.  I’m ok with the old man who pissed himself.  It smells, but he’s old, and sometimes when your old, you have to piss yourself, and it’s terrible, but I don’t judge.  I’m ok with the homeless people who smell.  I hate being around it, but I understand that when you’re homeless, B.O. is the least of your worries, so I tolerate it.  However, when I see a guy who I know has a job and a home, and he smells because he doesn’t shower often enough or wear deodorant, and I’m stuck with him on the bus???  It drives me nuts.  deodorant $5.  Axe Spray $5, FANCY Soap $5, Regular Soap way less, not ruining my friggin bus ride to work????  Priceless……….

Even though I’m so quick to complain about people, I don’t come from a family of malcontents, so when I hear my father make fun of someone I LOVE it because he’s such a nice guy, and it’s just not in his nature.  This is for all you golfers out there with more money than brains.  We love waiting behind you at the first tee watching you brag about all your golf equipment, decked out in the finest golf apparel, opening the new package of balls which promises more distance on your drives.  Then given a choice of 4 tees, you pick the championship tournament tees at the back to hit from because your such a hero, then we watch you duff your first shot a pissy 30 yards into the bushes.  Satisfying!  Get lessons dummy!