The sunsets on the road home, Quebec City.

MOUNT THREE-RIVERS BLOWS UP!!!

I was in Trois-Riviere just long enough to witness a once-in-a-lifetime event--the Mount Three-Rivers volcano coming alive!!!

--Actually, it's the pulp and paper factory in Trois-Riviere. :)

So, humm, about CANADA.

Ok, so i went on a tangent in the last post ("Let's talk about the weather") and didn't even talk about the weather in Canada all that much, so i owe another post.

I did my first sales trip in Quebec yesterday, to the city of Trois-Riviere ("three-Rivers"), so named because it was established where three rivers meet. If you leave from Quebec City where I live, it is located halfway to Montreal, so it's about an hour and a half drive. I immediately liked the look of this historic city, which is known as both a world capital in the pulp and paper industry since 1930, and as the National Poetry Capital of Quebec (Thanks, Wikipedia!), with plaques of poetry installed across the city center. I guess it is odd to be the capitals for an industrial product and a creative one, but maybe the region's poets wrote so much that they felt the need to build a paper factory? Or maybe the paper makers decided they "oughta do something with all that paper" and thus started writing poetry. Hmmm.

Down the Boulevard des Forges, the biggest street in Trois-Rivieres.

Anyways, we were to meet this Quebecain lady named France in this formerly English town to discuss her getting our product in the chain of fifteen carpet-and-tile stores she manages, so the potential was already good. France was great with us, explaining that she already had six floor-warming products (When in California I am shocked if tile shops even carry any at all), but my colleagues (Gaby, the company's other distributor, and Philippe, my mentor in this venture) where great at dealing with a seemingly tough situation. France is a true professional who also does interior design, so she knows very well her work and can see that our product is of very high quality (Trust me, I worked in the factory for two weeks last year to make some cable: our standards are very strict, the quality impeccable), but she readily admits that the cheaper cables out there will simply sell more. Anyways, the product is so technical i won,t go into details about it here, but if you want an explanation of my product, visit one of our partner's sites here where you can even find a video.

I myself made sure to not say much, but instead just absorb everything. The process is fun but of course, I am dying to talk, and I make a conscious effort to talk about 1/10th of the time i want to. Ha ha.

"NO! TO ADVERTISING" -- A bus stop, in Quebec City, 5:30 am.

"So, How's the weather..?"

Ok, so you may think i am talking about the weather as people do, meaning when they don't have anything to say. but, of course, I live in Canada right now and the weather is a PRETTY BIG DEAL. Well, when it snows and freezes at least 5 months out of the year...

--but the trouble is, we have a problem because the cold isn't what it used to be. Let me put this in quick perspective: the snow level RIGHT NOW is about 2 feet, max--and i might be reaching. Normally, it is that much in NOVEMBER. And then it snows more in December, and, by the time February rolls around it entire houses are covered in snow. And although we still have a few days this month, this ain't happening. No way, Jose.

So it frightens me, and even more when i turn on the TV (And I don't think they are showing in this on American TVs) and there is footage of Londonians--People from London--literally clinging to poles so they can stay upright. That's how strong the winds are. This is happening all over Europe, and no, it's not normal at all. In southern Germany--note, not Northern--a road that servers as an artery was shut down because it was frozen over. Entire lines of cars and trucks where at a standstill and people had to sleep in their cars in the freezing cold. Why did they have to do that? Because they've never had that kind of a road. Never!

I had this fear, either right after or maybe even before seeing the movie AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (which would've confirmed that fear) that the weather would be getting so out of hand as a repercution of global warming, and the dynamics of earth so distorted that we would have to a) stop everything we are doing in our little lives--making money, buying things, partying, worrying about money, work, everything---and b) start all working together for survival.

I recently read in one of the latest issues of HARPER'S (February 2007), in the section called Findings that a man named James Lovelock, "father of the Gaia hypothesis" believed that "the Earth has a fever, and predicted that a warmer planet would be unlikely to support more than 500 million humans. He praised efforts to halt global warming but said they wouldn't do much good. "It is a bit like if your kidneys fail you go on dialysis--and who would refuse dialysis if death is the alternative.""--Now, I don't know Lovelock nor what his Gaia hypothesis is, but I trust Harper's enough to be thinking hard about the implications of that. And I am not a pessimist, so I won't ever say that efforts to stop global warming are useless, but, really, that's not too hot, if you'll forgive the pun.

My new address for the next six months!!!

On the Plane from Houston to Newark...

6:35AM

This morning, at 12:20 am I left Los Angeles for the first of two stops (Houston, TX and Newark, N.J.) on my way to Quebec--and it's the last time I'm doing it willingly! Two stopovers is brutal, even if there are girls in bikinis with flower necklaces waiting for me there--which didn't even happen!!! :(

Here's what I wrote, hastily, on the plane to Newark..

On departure I struggled mightily to open the hatch to my window to check out the view, but was instantly rewarded with a landscape featuring an unfiltered rising sun shinning down on the iceberg-like clouds below our feet.

Fighting laziness once more, I whipped out my new Canon digital camera and took, as usual too many pictures, including the prerequisite one of me taken an arm's length away by me, ha ha.

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On the way to the airport last night, Jean-Marie (my step-dad) confided in me all sorts of advice I at first wanted nothing to do with. He spoke of being 'Americanized' in our ways, specifically in my packing habits, since I brought almost my weight in luggage. Of course, he was right, and halfway to the airport I was totally pumped to pull over and drop half the weight in clothes I had (for the record, which included button down shirts, short sleeve shirts, long-sleeve shirts, sweatshirts, sweaters, heavy jackets, light jackets, pants, hot pants, sleeping pants,..)---which was my French way of over-doing it, this time the other way around.

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Nowadays, of course, you hardly have to talk at all to a ticket-counter person, because these have mostly been replaced by machines. I did however get to speak with the lady who hands you the stickers, to which I confessed my shame at being over packed. She replied, only half-kidding, "Well, we need to bring all of our shoes, don't we?"--which sucks because, well, I nearly HAVE!!!

I remembered this lady from the last time I flew Continental and told her so, to which she replied "Yes! i remember your accent!!" which is pretty funny, since over Christmas I spent time with a French family who where convinced I was "just an American who could speak *really* good French". Hmmm...what gives?

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Back to JM: He reminded me that I had to be successful and energetic there, and be sure of what I was going for (''Are you clear on your goals?"). He also reminded me that I could learn a lot, but that I already knew quite a bit too--JM sorts of laments me going here, because, really, to find success people go from places like Quebec TO Los Angeles; they don't go from Los Angeles to Quebec. I am of course clear on this, and on the fact that the decision to come here was partly based on the mentality of the Quebecan investors, who literally where FARMERS before entrepreneurs, and as such keep a simple farmer's mentality. They are therefore weary of taking too many chances, or going into the unknown of making business across the States.

The second reason of course is that being surrounded by Philippe and some very terrific salesmen will help me grow tremendously, which is true, but then JM was ready to have me 'dive in' to the California business waters. I don't know which is best long-term, but I think both options will end up being worthwhile for me, and if we don't waste time and energy in Canada, then I will be very well set up for the next leg of this operation, in six month's time.

Introductions

My name is Byron Shirley; I am a 24 years-old business student and aspiring entrepreneur. The Past two and a half years, I was Director of Interactive Marketing at an Internet company i helped found, Jiggerbug.com. I left the company in August, and at the invitation of Philippe, a close family friend, will work with and for him distributing his product--radiant heating. Radiant heating is a form of a heating which works by having either electrical or hot water tubing installed, usually, underneath floors, particularly tile floors. My product is electrical, and Philippe--a Frenchman like me--left French having won over sixty percent of the underfloor heating market there. Now, Philippe thinks I can do the same thing in California, starting with my home bases of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

So, in preparation for hitting the California market (and by extent, the entire West Coast as well) Philippe has invited me several times last year to visit him in Quebec, where his company is based, and now for six month, where I will be selling his cable all over the Quebec Province. And that's where this Blog comes in; a few of my friends have asked me to start one to chronicle my experience of this very particular bit of Canada, with its Quebecois French- and English-mingling population and the Amerindian tribes further North of Quebec City (Which will be my 'home base').

I hope you will enjoy this! It for you as well that I am doing this. :)

-Byron Shirley