Baldo Minaudo’s Blog

This story was forwarded to me by a friend and I have no idea its original source:

Another case of truth being stranger than fiction… TORONTO, ONTARIO (CP)
A seven-year-old Toronto, Ontario boy was at the center of a Toronto city courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him.

The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents & the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law & regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents & he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy alleged they had also beat him.

After considering the remainder of the immediate family & learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.
 

After two recesses to check legal references & confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Toronto Maple Leafs, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.

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This is a good one and I wish I knew who came up with it.  By the way, I’m a Toronto Maple Leafs Fan and wait for the day they can win the Stanley Cup again.

Enjoy your day!

Baldo 

The setting is the Washington, DC Metro Station.  It is a cold morning in January of 2007.  A man with a violin plays six pieces of Bach for about 45 minutes.  During that time about 2,000 people walk through the station.  Most of them are on their way to work.

Las Vegas may be about business, but it isn’t for business.

This week I had the pleasure of attending the Hard Assets Conference in Las Vegas which took place on Sept. 9th and 10th.  The conference focused on investment in resources and metals.  There was lots of information about Gold, Silver, Uranium and Oil, as well as coverage of other metals.  The speakers were great and provided some excellent insight into the elements driving the commodities markets and economies and how they are connected.

After the long slump that gold had during the 1990’s I thought most of the gold bugs had morphed into other kinds of bugs.  But, having the uranium and gold bugs in the same room it became clear to me that a gold bug is a gold bug and a uranium bug is a uranium bug.  And that both are vibrant, thriving and enthused as ever with the prospects for both gold and uranium investments.

The conference facilities in Las Vegas are among the best in the world.  They are megalithic, modern, spacious and overly abundant in number.  Surrounded by a vibrant city of diversified activities and services, it’s very strength is what establishes the city’s greatest weakness. 

I’ve attended many conferences in my career in many cities and therefore am fortunate to have a good reference point.  Althought I’ve visited Las Vegas for pleasure twice before, this time it was for a conference and I got to see city from a different perspective.  Before I begin, just let me say that I was not impressed and here is why:

1. I stayed at the Luxor located next to where the conference was being held.  Coming out of my hotel room, I was overwhelmed by the ashtray odour which is prevalent throughout the hotel.  Coming off the elevators, I was already beginning to cough because of the cigarette smoke that filled the place.

2. After 15 minutes of walking through the connected casino’s to get to the conference centre I found myself lost.  The information board, though had over 20 events listed, didn’t list my particular conference and out of the dozen centre employees I asked, none knew where the conference was taking place.

3. Heading back to my hotel after a business dinner at the centre I decided to stop at a bar for a refreshing vegetable drink, the closest I came was tomato juice (apparently the bar tender considers a tomato to be a vegetable).  So, as I’m listening to the live band sipping my juice this absolutely stunning young lady approaches me and is quite direct in her intentions.  I should have suspected something was up right then and their.  Within 5 minutes she had given me her sales pitch, including menu and price.  I’ve been approached by professionals before, but never have I had to say ‘no thank you’ so many times.  I finally had to leave with my juice in hand in order to get away from her.  Not quite ready to go back to my room, I decided to sit at a slot machine and have a show down with the legendary one-armed bandit.  After all, I was in Vegas … should I not try the Vegas culture?  Before I could pull the arm the second time, I beautiful young lady sits next to me with drink in hand and eye-to-eye contact.  You guessed it…another pro.  This time I just stood up and said, “I need to get going, do you mind playing the rest of my coins for me”.  It was a small price to pay.

4. Staying connected is not possible in Las Vegas, but it certainly isn’t cheap.  Be prepared to spend at least twice as much if you want access to the internet.

My point is this - if you want to do business then go someplace that is safe, clean and makes it easy to do business.  Las Vegas is a great place to go if you’re looking for something specific like gambling or a night life.  But, if you’re a non-smoker be prepared to be surrounded by smokers everywhere.  Even on the streets.  You can not avoid second hand smoke in Las Vegas.  Someone pointed out to be that the same personality that is a gambler is also a smoker.  Usually they go hand in hand because of the compulsive-addictive qualities.  I can see what they mean.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to see a show while I was in Vegas and it was fantastic!  I can not begin to express how great this show was.  Sure, I can describe it is the feelings it invoked inside me which truly make it great.  Ironically, the show had nothing to do with Vegas or Vegas culture, it is a show created by Canadians.  What is the show?  … Cirque du Soleil’s “O”.  See it if you can.

Why can’t the investment community have a conference in Mont Erice, Sicily like the scientific community does?

Last week I spent a few days in Ocean City, Maryland.  I had heard about this place but didn’t realize that it was a resort type of town.  In retrospect the name should have been a clue.

Ocean city is very much a Florida style city based on the automobile and catering to a mix of young adults, young families and retirees.  The city is located on a peninsula with water on both sides.  At many points in the city you can see both bodies of water.  It is located just 3 hours from Atlantic City and 1.5 hours from Baltimore.

There are lots of restaurants to choose from.  However, don’t expect any bargains.  I found Ocean city to be surprisingly expensive.  I had a challenge finding an egg and toast breakfast for anything less than $15 U.S.  I expected sea food to be reasonable and it was a lot more expensive than what I would pay in Toronto, a large city. 

Nonetheless, the sun and beaches are beautiful.  The weather was warm, but not uncomfortably so.  I would consider buying a place in this resort town were it not for the fact that in the winter time it wouldn’t be warm enough for me to really consider it a warm climate.

Overall, a safe place to meet new people, enjoy the sun and beach during most of the year.

So, yesterday I looked into the eyes of a 16 foot shark.  It’s true what they say about the killer cold look of a shark.  They don’t acknowledge you other than food.  They’re fierce not even showing that they know you’re there.  But, they do, they do know you’re there.  They just don’t react until they have use for you.  And if I were in the water, they would be able to smell me and fell my vibrations.  Ironically, many people refer to these characteristics in a person as being ‘professional’.

Interestingly, they had to seperate this particular type of shark from the others because, well this shark is the kind that would eat the others.  If that happened then there would be no more sharks for people to come to the acquarium.  Well, there would be that one last shark that couldn’t eat itself.  I suppose some would come to watch the last swimming shark.

I love the acquarium.  As a child I used to bread tropical fish and at one point I had close to a dozen tanks set up with breeding aparatus.  I had quite an stock of fancy tail guppies going.  So, it was wonderful to watch the fish in an environment resembling their natural habitat.  The films were quite informative as well.  There was an 8 minute documentary on Australia and how it has six months of flooding and six months of fire season.  Did you know that the water level swells so high in Australia during the rain season that the fish move into the mainland, which is otherwise dry for 6 months of the year?

Then there was the exhibit showing that we’ve already lost half the rainforest that we had in the early 1970’s.  Scary isn’t it?

My favourite was the biosphere area they had set up where I could actually walk into the rainforest and smell and feel the plants and animals.  It’s not unlike the biosphere at the Ontario Science Centre, where I once worked.  But, if you really want an experience like that I recommend the butterfly sanctuary near Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Oh, and lets not forget the biggest attraction of all at the Acquarium - the huge main acquarium that has all kinds of stingrays mixed in with some sharks.  one of the stingrays is about 8 feet wide.  Check that out if you’re there.  And then there’s the sea turtle that was found off the coast with frostbight and they had to amputate one of its front arms.  It’s about 4 feet in diameter and still too young to tell its sex.

That’s it for this entry.  Have a great day!

I’ve travelled to many cities around the world.  It’s not always a pleasant experience going through airports and the job that airport management and employees have certainly isn’t an easy one.  So, imagine my surprise when I was greated with a polite “How may I help you sir?” as soon as I walked through the automatic doors at the Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

To begin with the airport wasn’t busy at all, which made everything a lot easier.  But, as I waited to board my plane I couldn’t help but notice how observant all the Air Canada employees were.  So much so that when I was returning from buying a snack I could here one of the employees point out to the other that I was over there.  Never mind that he knew where I was, but also knew who I was.  Now, that made me feel important and valued, not like just another number.  Do you know what I mean?

Even before I made it to the gate, as I had passed through security the personnel were adhering to their security measures, yet very considerate and respectful.  But, then again I didn’t give them any reason for problems - right?  Well, yes but the experience itself was different from other airports.

I was a little surprised when I saw the airplane though.  I didn’t realize that my agent had booked me on a Dash 8.  In case you’ve never been on one a Dash 8 seats 37 passengers, excluding staff and pilots.  I almost giggled when the stewardess was asking the 13 passengers to sit in different seats to balance off the weight.  This is very important when flying small planes as I learned when I was going through my flying lessons.  It was a great ride as the plane climbed through the thick layer of fog brought on by a day of snowing.

All in all I give the BWI a 8.5 out of 10.  They lost points for not allowing passenger pick-up in front of the doors and gained points for giving away the first hour of parking for free.  They also lost points for limited offering of snacks throughout the terminal.

Which is your favourite airport?

Today was the opening of the Italian Film Festival.  My long-time friend and Festival founder, Fred Lamberti has been at this for 9 years now and I have to hand it to him for being so committed.

The VIP party was at the Windsor Arms near Yorkville.  It was an intimate gathering of about 200 community leaders and supporters of the Festival.  Then we headed on over to the opening movie “Natale A Miami” (Christmas in Miami).  It was Christian De Sica was the main character and he was hilarious.  De Sica is the actor that does the TIM cellular commercials throughout Italy.  His ads were running everywhere while I was in Siciliy last summer.   The movie had some really funny, gut hurting scenes to it.  If you get a chance go see this movie.  But, even with the English subtitles some of the humour will be lost if you don’t understand Italian.

Afterwards we headed off to teh Opening Gala where there were about 300 guests and lots of crews from various TV stations hunting through the crowd for the celebrities.  I used my regular tactics for avoiding another interview.  For example, if you stand next to a beautiful blonde with silicon breasts, slinky dress and high heal shoes you are certainly to be caught on film.  Hmmmm….I wonder why that is.

Anyway, I was having a great discussion with some of my friends.  Hilton Mijovick, the eye-patched philantropist was there along with Paris Rogers of the Laough Film Festival.  Fortunately, the media didn’t pay attention to us which gave us the opportunity to catch up on our projects.  Needless to say, being in Toronto right now is being at the forefront of economic opportunity.

Hope to see you at the Italian movies - Ciao.