The ADFE (Association of French Expats in Vancouver) is throwing a big Bastille Day party at the Rowing Club in Stanley Park.

Everyone is welcome, so come celebrate with us on July 14 – even if you didn’t support the French team during the World Cup ! (Truth be told, I didn’t either..)

Admission is $10 for members of the Association, and $15 for non-members.

For more details, please contact info@francevancouver.ca
ADFE Facebook page: “francais du monde a vancouver”

See you on the 14th!
Emmanuelle

Potlucks are fantastic. Everyone makes enough food for a small army, you end up with 7 cheese platters and 6 different desserts… life is good.

However, if this is your first time bringing food to a Canadian party, there are a few do’s and don’ts to keep in mind – after all, you don’t want to be “that guy” who brought the weird dish, do you?

What to bring?

- Dips and raw vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli and baby carrots), spreads and crackers, salads, cold cuts, cheese and fruit platters, desserts.

- If you’re going to a barbecue, bring a side dish to share, plus anything you’d like to throw on the grill: meat, sausages, salmon – or vegetables and tofu if you don’t eat meat.

- Vancouverites love ethnic food, so why not make a typical dish from your country? Pick something mild, as not everyone is used to spicy or pungent foods… and some people really hate garlic, as I learned the first time I brought Provençal food to a party…

Potluck etiquette

- Ask your hosts if there’s anything they’d like you to bring.

- Potlucks and barbecues are very informal. Dress casually. You don’t have to bring flowers or a hostess gift, but a thank-you email or phone call the next day is always appreciated.

- There are always leftovers at a potluck party. Don’t be surprised if your host offers you to take some home. (Yes, it’s OK to have leftover cake for breakfast. I won’t tell anyone.)

Potent potables

- BYOB means “bring your own bottle”. Even if the invitation doesn’t mention this, you’re expected to bring something to drink in addition to your potluck dish.

- If you bring a bottle of wine, it will usually be shared, or left open on the table for other guests to help themselves. Beers on the other hand tend to be consumed by the person who brought them – don’t ask me why, this is the Great Unspoken Rule of Canadian parties…

- Most guests will bring alcohol, but you don’t have to. A couple of bottles of juice or mineral water would be great too – few people think of bringing them, and everyone ends up thirsty!

Allergies and sensitivities

- Be aware that many Canadians have food allergies or sensitivities. Eggs, dairy, seafood, and peanuts are the most common culprits.

- Let people know in advance if your dish has these ingredients in it. To be on the safe side, I avoid nuts altogether in potluck dishes, as these allergies can be severe.

Last but not least…

- Even at an outdoor event, don’t smoke without asking first, and avoid wearing strong perfume. People around you may be more sensitive to cigarette smoke or strong scents than you realise.

- Finally, don’t forget that Canadians dine early – don’t show up at 9:00 pm expecting the barbecue to be still in full swing, unless you don’t mind being the only one still eating…

Happy Canada Day! (ahem… looks like the barbecue will be indoors this year, unless the rain stops soon…)

Emmanuelle

Image by reutC, via Flickr Creative Commons

This article from the excellent Matador Network touches on the same subject. Be sure to read the comments, as they add a lot to the discussion.

I find that Vancouver has a lot to offer to both extroverts and introverts.

The laid-back atmosphere and the huge numbers of fellow foreigners should give the outgoing folks plenty of opportunities to strike random conversations with strangers.

And what’s not to like about a city where even cab and bus drivers will go out of their way to be helpful and answer your questions?

But Vancouverites can be reserved, too. People generally mind their own business. They don’t pry and they don’t stare at passersby.

For a city its size, Vancouver strikes me as a very gentle kind of place. The pace is unhurried, and there’s enough room for everyone to be who they are and do their own thing.

And then of course there’s the serene, majestic beauty of the landscape, which to me is like instant meditation.

I can’t think of a better place to get lost in your own thoughts, sitting on a log on the beach with a good book, or journalling about your day by the bamboo grove in Dr. Sun Yat-sen Park.

Emmanuelle

PS: Falling squarely in the middle of the extrovert/introvert spectrum myself, I had never realized how many introverts felt pressured to become more extroverted. Is that something you’ve ever experienced personally? How do you cope with that kind of social pressure?

Image: Tofino, author’s own picture

If the lack of spring weather is getting to you, remember to stay active.

Exercising and getting enough natural light – even when it’s grey out – are the best ways to shake off the winter blahs. So go for a bike ride in Stanley Park, a long walk on Kitsilano beach, or a nice (indoor !) swim at the Aquatic Centre on Beach Avenue.

Need a longer break somewhere sunny?

Do like the Canadians, and book a vacation down in Mexico or Cuba, two favourite destinations for the sun-starved Vancouverites. All-inclusive stays in a beach resort can be pretty inexpensive, and you will soak up enough sun rays (not to mention fruity drinks) to recharge your batteries within a week.

Last-minute update: the Cuban government has just made health insurance mandatory for all foreign tourists. According to the new rules, your insurance policy will only be accepted if it covers medical evacuation by air, which means that MSP (BC health insurance) coverage isn’t enough. Ask your travel agent what additional coverage is available for your trip – if you travel abroad, you should have travel insurance anyway.

Have fun, and don’t forget the sunscreen!

Emmanuelle

Image by eNil, via Flickr Creative Commons

Why? Because it tells you that you’re serious about your business. Especially in the beginning, you’ll notice that fear rears its head when things are about to become very real – launching your first website, making that important phone call, or signing a contract with your first big client.


Fear is a sign that you’re moving forward.

If you don’t feel any business-related fear, ever… it’s time to ask yourself if you aren’t playing it too safe. Are you missing out on opportunities that involve greater risk, but also greater rewards? Are you trying new things and generally growing as a business owner?

Do you have a lot invested in your business – be it financially or emotionally – or have you made it so low-stakes that it doesn’t truly matter if you succeed or if you fail after all? If so, how do you get motivated to give your very best day after day and ensure that your business grows?

Instead of seeing fear as the enemy, or as a negative emotion to be suppressed, I suggest that you accept it as a useful indicator that your business is alive, constantly evolving, and going places. And while I’m not suggesting that you look for reasons to feel afraid – we expats already have enough to worry about in our everyday life – when things get a little too comfortable, ask yourself what you could do to stretch your limits a bit and reintroduce some excitement in your work.

Was this post helpful? Subscribe to the Winning Away newsletter to receive exclusive expat tips and resources in your inbox every month.

Emmanuelle

Images by calico courtney (top) and clodius-maximus (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

If you want to get ahead with your business, you can’t afford to let negative feelings affect your productivity and concentration. It’s all too easy to lose hours, if not entire days, to worry, guilt, and sometimes even sheer panic. So what do you do when your stress levels get out of control?

Here’s the method I use to nip negative emotions in the bud – give it a try next time you’re having a bad day.

Play out the worst-case scenario

Your first reaction may be to try to “get a grip”. As you probably know from experience, that doesn’t work. Putting a lid on your emotions will only leave you all tensed up and feeling even less productive than before.

Instead, try the exact opposite.

Whatever it is that you’re worried about, allow your mind to race for a few moments. Go ahead, play out the worst-case scenario in detail – not just a vague sense of dread, but the specific consequences you’re afraid of.

Done? Good. Now come back to the present moment, and take a cold, hard look at your fears. Are they warranted? How likely are they to come true?

How bad is it really?

In most cases, you’ll be relieved to see that you were merely overreacting. No, you’re not going to lose your business because there’s a typo in your newsletter. Just let it slide and get back to work.

In other cases, you may want to take corrective action, but that still doesn’t mean there’s cause for alarm. OK, you didn’t understand half of what your local supplier was saying when she phoned you today. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to end up a social pariah in your host country – but consider signing up for conversation classes to boost your oral comprehension skills.

Finally, some of your fears might be entirely justified. While you’re unlikely to literally end up living under a bridge if you miss your deadline, you could very well lose business and damage your reputation. What you need in a case like this is an effective contingency plan.

How can you limit the inconvenience to your client? What changes do you need to make to manage your time more efficiently? What concrete actions can you take to put your mind at ease, and soften the blow should your worst-case scenario come true?

Connect the dots

Now that you’ve put your mind at rest, take a few moments to compare your worst fears to the list of triggers you wrote down the other day. What theme do they have in common? Money? Being wrong? Other people’s approval?

Identifying your hot-button issue is worthwhile, because it’s much easier to stop panic dead in its tracks when you can name clearly – I’m tempted to say coldly – what’s causing it. Use this as a shortcut to snap yourself out of a funk, restore your serenity, and go back to focusing on your work.

Whew. Doesn’t that feel better already?

Was this post helpful? Subscribe to the Winning Away newsletter to receive exclusive expat tips and resources in your inbox every month.

Emmanuelle

Images by LunaDiRimmel (top) and Anna Gay (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

The problem is, you cannot productively deal with your feelings unless you define them clearly. It’s like the old management axiom: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Identify your feelings

So your first course of action should be to put your finger on what it is exactly that you’re feeling.

“Stressed out” is too vague. “Overwhelmed by the number of tasks I have to complete before tonight” and “Afraid to make that important phone call” are much better, because they point to two concrete issues: time management and procrastination. That’s useful information.

Recognise your triggers

The next step is to identify your triggers. When exactly do you switch from your normal mood to Overwhelmed and Afraid? What are the circumstances and the associated feelings? What’s the pattern here?

Be as specific as possible. You may want to take notes, even if some of your triggers may look silly once you write them down – I know mine certainly do! Keep a record of the information you’re uncovering, because it will come in handy further down the line.

In case you’re wondering, you’re not just playing detective for the fun of it, or for the sake of self-knowledge.
Recognising your triggers is important, because with a bit of practice, you’ll be able to take a deep breath, pause, and calm yourself down before your emotions become too distracting. In a matter of minutes, you’ll be back to working efficiently and building a successful business, instead of wallowing in negative feelings and self-pity for hours, if not days.

In the next post, we’ll look at a technique you can use when things get really bad – when you’re not just scared, but downright panicked and unable to focus on your work.

Was this post helpful? Subscribe to the Winning Away newsletter to receive exclusive expat tips and resources in your inbox every month.

Emmanuelle

Images by n0r (top) and Phil Romans (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

We all know that’s not how it works. Running your own business is often hard, and it can be downright scary. So, enough with these displays of entrepreneurial bravado – it’s time to accept the fact that we’re human beings, not robots.

Acknowledging your feelings may be the best thing you’ll ever do for your productivity. All these tasks you’re procrastinating on? It’s not because of laziness or lack of self-discipline - it’s all about fear and vulnerability.

To deal with your emotions and prevent them from impacting your business, you have to be willing to look them in the eye. So go ahead and take stock today. How have you been feeling lately? And how are you feeling right now?

If you’ve been trained to believe that emotions don’t belong in the workplace, you may be afraid that you’ll look weak, unprofessional or easily flustered when you start acknowledging them fully.
Please. Give me (and yourself) a break. By choosing to take on two of the most difficult jobs that I know of, those of expat and entrepreneur, you’ve already proven how strong, resourceful and driven you are.

Was this post helpful? Subscribe to the Winning Away newsletter to receive exclusive expat tips and resources in your inbox every month.

Emmanuelle

Images by Adam Foster / Codefor (top) and tany kely (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

Sounds familiar? Welcome to the club! Being an expat is a full-time job, and being a business owner often feels like two or three full-time jobs – combine the two, and something’s got to give.

Fear and stress aren’t glamourous topics. Yet they’re very real, and they can have a disastrous impact on your business. How many talented entrepreneurs have prematurely thrown in the towel and gone back to the perceived “safety” of a day job, just because they couldn’t take the pressure anymore?

Self-employment gurus and glossy business magazines carefully avoid this subject, simply because they don’t have a clue how to deal with the emotional impact of having your own business. Thankfully, there are some quick, easy techniques that can help you manage your stress levels, just like you would manage any other aspect of your business.

Want to know what these techniques are? Stay tuned for our next series of posts (better yet, subscribe by email or RSS in the right sidebar), where we take you from this:

… to this:

(aren’t otters the damn cutest – and most relaxed – critters on earth?)

Do you want more expat tips and resources? Subscribe to the Winning Away newsletter to receive exclusive content in your inbox every month.

Emmanuelle

Images by Flipped Out (top) and mikebaird (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons

A very rich interview, full of inspiring lessons for expats not only in Vancouver, but all over the world.

- Can you tell us what brought you to Canada, and how that move has shaped your career?

I wanted to learn more about my Canadian heritage, and although I understood the importance of this, I don’t think I fully realized the magnitude of it, or the impact it would have on the person I was becoming. Having been born and raised in Mexico City, I knew very little about vast open spaces and the profound changes they produce in people.

Canada is full of people unpacking their personal and cultural treasures. The land is silent, but welcomes dreamers. The space acts like a blank canvas, and being far away from everything that is familiar gives you a different perspective on who you are because there are no longer any givens. The context is completely different and that forces you to re-examine, re-evaluate and re-define your core. You sift through your cultural baggage in an effort to hold on to what makes you, you – and the rest is taken by the wind back to where it came from.

Canada has changed me. In good ways. This awe-inspiring landscape – holder of truths – beseeches us to question not only who we are, but also what we do and how we do it.
I started craving a more organic approach to design and remembered my first two years of university, where the use of the computer was strictly forbidden. Hands on – ink, paper, scissors. Me, and the world forgotten, in a room.

I started imagining graphic patterns. I took a letterpress course. I started drawing again. I bought a letterpress… Ink, paper, scissors. Handmade magic, gently held by the mountains that surround me, and deeply infused by the rich colors that inspired me to begin.

- Was there anything – good or bad – that surprised you about Vancouver when you moved here?

Moving to a different country is an incredible experience, but it certainly has its challenges. The first time I came to Vancouver I fell in love with the city and its radiant bustle. The vast array of cultures, languages and traditions immediately intrigued me.
I instantly knew it was the right place for me, so within a few months I moved.

Vancouver has no mold; anything goes and there is something here for everyone. But there’s a learning curve. I felt lonely, and I hadn’t expected it. I never imagined having this feeling while being surrounded by so many people. I felt homesick… I was terrified. If only I had brought my friends along for the ride… The city and its people felt cold to me and I wanted to hide inside a box with the lid shut tight.

Building solid relationships takes time, and I’ve found that you have to be very patient. Over time, I realized that there are few true Vancouverites, which means that most of the people living here had to go through that same transition, and it’s a scary thing to admit to, let alone talk about it with people you barely know, especially when you’re feeling vulnerable, but once you figure that out, it lightens the load. You have good days and bad days – and you carry on, letting the city in and letting yourself out.

- You’re currently launching your new business, Texture & Finery, a line of haute couture wedding invitations. What are the main challenges you are facing as an expat entrepreneur?

It’s a circus and you’re on the tightrope, trying to stay on your feet, while juggling 500 things and holding a baby that needs all your attention. It’s scary, so you try not to look down, and sometimes it feels like you might just lose your balance so you compensate by shifting your weight here and there.

Learning the balancing act can be extremely tricky at times. There’s a lot of push and pull back and forth. You’re an expat AND an entrepreneur: that’s two jobs, both equally demanding.

I think one of the most challenging things for me has been learning to listen to my own rhythm. Sometimes you just have to stop for the day, and sometimes you have to go go go and then go some more. I think it’s about integrating both the expat and the entrepreneur… one needs more attention than the other on any given day, and acting upon that is crucial.

The second challenge is fear. It’s the part of me that actually looks down when I’m on the tightrope, and it’s paralyzing. Nothing moves, time stops and the world goes so quiet you can hear a pin drop. Sometimes you just want to run back and hide in the box with the lid shut tight and cry. So you cry a little. Ok, so you cry a lot, but you keep on juggling, and balancing. And you make room for fear, because it’s real, and because you’ve also made room for excitement and optimism and they all just need some room to be. Just accepting that it’s there makes it easier to zoom out and look at the big picture. And when you do, it’s extraordinary.

- Any advice you’d like to give to fellow expat business owners?

Breathe. Breathe in and out. And give yourself some credit. Starting a business is not easy, and you have to fight fight fight for it. And it’s exhausting and beautiful and worth it. And we’re all going to be okay. And we learn so much from this. And we have to learn to breathe.

- What are the most important lessons life abroad has taught you?

Living abroad changes you forever. You become a mixture of old ways you choose to keep and new ways you learn. You become richer, deeper, stronger, better, wiser, weaker, calmer. Big adjustments take time, so it helps to be patient. Very patient, with yourself and others. Things are not better and they’re certainly not worse: everything is just different, and being able to understand that makes all the difference.

Originally from Mexico City, Christine Delano is a graphic designer living in Vancouver. She is currently launching her new business “Texture and Finery”, inspired by the haute-couture tradition and providing custom designed, hand-crafted letterpess wedding invitations and stationery.

Did you find this interview as inspiring as I did? Share your biggest takeaway in the comments. What advice would you give to expat entrepreneurs?

Emmanuelle

Images by JOHN CORVERA (top) and Anna Gay (bottom), both via Flickr Creative Commons