Finally summer has arrived in Whistler, B.C! We had cold and wet June and July (the average highest temperature in July was below 20 C!) and many people wondered whether we ever will have summer this year or not. It HAS arrived! Since I came back on August 2, the weather has been gorgeous with temperature around 25 or below and clear. The sun is bright and the air is crisp, making people stay outside to enjoy the sun.
No wonder many people come up for the weekend to make the Village very lively on Friday evening (see photo) and make staff at grocery store work non-stop at the register. (People stock up for the weekend for BBQ etc.)
Farmers market which is held every Sunday is very crowded with families with children. (I see many families ride on the bike, some young people on skateboard and few with Roller blades!) (I am always amazed at the fact that small children probably aged 6 or so, trying to catch up with their Dad on the bike! They try everything!)
I joined the crowd and went to the Farmers market to pick up locally grown strawberries, rasberries, blueberries, black berries and cherries. (They are all in season, which is rather unusual, I believe.) When I was ready to drive back home with fruits and vegetables, however, I could not locate my car!
I had thought I parked at the Lot 4 near the entrance/exit. T here are seven outdoor Parking Lots for free, each of which is quite big. Lots 4 and 5 are close together. I checked all the cars at Lot 4 after I could not find mine at the spot (I thought I had parked), but in vain. So I decided to give it a try at Lot 5 and there it was at the spot which I had remembered.
This is not the first time I could not locate my car. Once when we were in Arizona for holidays, I parked my car (Town car we rented as there were five of us!) at the huge shopping mall parking. I could not find mine after we did some shopping and asked the security to locate my car. (It worked as I had the key with the license number and the model. For rental car, sometimes it is difficult to remember!)
I ended up looking for my car in the bright sun (I had good pair of Sunglasses!) for about 20 minutes, looking for my car in Whistler!! I got a lot of sun for the day and it would help me to shake the jet lag!
Yoko Ishikura is a Professor at Hitotsubashi University ICS in the Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in Japan. She has held positions as a professor at the School of International Politics, Economics and Business of Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, as a consultant at McKinsey and Company Inc. Japan and a visiting professor at Darden School.
Professor Ishikura is a consultant to a number of multinational companies and has been a frequent speaker at management conferences, seminars, and workshops throughout the world. She was a member of the Regulatory Reform Committee for the Japanese government and the International Competitiveness Commission for METI. She is currently a Forum Fellow of the World Economic Forum.
She is the author of Strategic Shift from OR choices to AND paradigm, Building Core Skills of Organization , and the co-author of the following publications: Managing Diversity in the 21st Century, Strategy for Cluster Initiatives in Japan , and Building a Career to the World Class Professionals – all in Japanese. Her books in English include: Asian Advantage, Hitotsubashi on Knowledge Management and Trust and Antitrust in Asian Business Alliances.
Professor Ishikura’s current research interests are focused on global competition, innovation, and knowledge management. She received her BA from Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan; MBA from Darden School, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia; and DBA from Harvard Business School.
