Giving colleagues subtitles

In 1995, I was working full time for the Corporation. I was alone in an office with no window. Near the door of our offices, we had an office tag displaying our names and the number of the office.

One morning, I realized when I arrive to work, that my office tag has been modified: my name and the office number were still there, but just below my name, there was a funny subtitle: Adameister.

Modifying an office tag was easy, as it was printed on transparent support with a standard laser printer.

I guessed immediately who had done that: an American senior engineer named Alan. I confronted him, but he denied it, smiling. So, I told him that if he knows who did it, he should tell him or her that the font was not correct. The next day, my office tag was updated with the correct font.

Then Alan and myself, we started to give subtitles to other engineers. We never put anything pejorative, and most people kept their modified office tags.


I tried to always put something related to the person or their name and something related to their job. Here is an example. In an office, there were two engineers that were working on data modelling: Billy Hui and Vicky Fan. I named them respectively: "The Modelling Kid" and "The Data Ventilator".


Having a subtitle became very popular. I even asked the boss if it was OK to give him a subtitle, and he agreed. He was the head of what was called the Software Factory" and his first name was Arthur. So, I named him "The King of the Factory".

Never lie to cops: Dumping stuff illegally

It was 1994. I was going to move in less than a week to Vancouver with my four children. I still have some stuff in my house that I wanted to get rid of.

I was lazy and scrooge, so I did not contract to have this stuff disappear. I had noticed a nearby construction site that was almost abandoned and where people were dumping stuff.

So, one night around 9 PM, I loaded my car with my stuff and went to the construction site. As soon as I arrived there, a police car showed up from left field. I stopped and wait for them.

One of the policemen asked me what I was doing there. I replied: "I was about to commit a crime" ("Je m'apprêtais à commettre un forfait"). The policeman was quite surprised by my answer. He asked me to open the back of the car.

They looked at it and noticed two big loudspeakers that I had bought several years ago. I believe the brand name was Braun. Yes, I told them, they are still working. So, they took them and put them in their car.

After checking that I was not dumping any medicament/drug or anything organic, they left after hinting that I was free to do what I wanted. So, I dumped the remaining of my stuff.

A third case when I was in the wrong, but I suffered no consequences when I told the truth to the cops.

Never lie to cops: Driving slow with no insurance

I was a young Navy Officer in Toulon and I was broke. I owned two cars and I was going to sell one. Only one of these two cars was insured.

As I was moving from a house to an apartment some ten kilometers away, I asked one of my friends to drive the insured car and I took the uninsured one.

I made sure that I was going well under the speed limit all the way, so that the police would not arrest me for speeding. Big mistake. In the south of France, going slightly over the speed limit is the usual way of driving. So, the police found my way of driving slowly highly suspect, and they stopped me.

My friend seeing that I was stopped by the police did not wait for me. I told the policemen the truth and explained that indeed I had no insurance for this car. They checked that the car was not stolen. They were almost friendly.

After they made sure that I owned the car and they got enough information about my whereabouts, they told me to continue to my destination, driving my uninsured car.

Later, the police went to check that I was indeed a graduate student at the Navy Instruction Center, and I was asked to present myself at the gate so that they could make sure that I told the truth.

As I remember, the case did not even go to court and I got no fine for my bad behavior.

This second case comforted me in my belief that you should never lie to the cops, whatever the consequences you imagine.

Never lie to cops: speeding on the freeway

It is my firm belief that you should never lie to cops (or to immigration officers), whatever the situation. If you do it, they will usually see through your lies and it will not be to your advantage.

Furthermore, if you tell the truth, the police officer will usually take this into consideration and you may end up with only a warning. Here is a first example.

In September 1974, I was driving from Paris to Toulon on the freeway. I had a fast car at the time, a Renault 12 Gordini, that could reach a speed of 180 km/h (around 110 miles per hour).

At some point, I was passed by a Porsche at 170 km/h. I was bored by a long drive, so I decided to have some fun and to follow this car for some time.

I new that the "gendarmes" were patrolling the freeway in fast anonymous cars, so I watched all the cars we were passing to try to detect a gendarmes'car.

After following the Porsche for some 10 km, I noticed in my rear view mirror a car that was gaining on us and that was flashing its head lights, presumably to pass other cars faster. So, I slowed down to the speed limit and two minutes later I was passed by a black Peugeot 504 break at 200 km/h. This was a gendarmes'car, with an Maserati engine. They did not make me stop then, they were pursuing the Porsche.

Fifteen kilometers later, they had stopped the Porsche and they signaled me to stop. I deliberately stopped more that 100 meters from the Porsche. A gendarme came to me and asked me what was my speed. I admitted to the truth that I was going at around 170 km/h.

He asked me for my papers. So, I first showed him my military ID card. He told me that this was not what he asked for, and I showed him my license, registration and insurance.

Then, he told me to not do it again, otherwise "next time, no gift" ("la prochaine fois, pas de cadeau") and he let me go without a ticket.

I believe there are two reasons why I was not penalized: first I admitted to the truth and second I was a military officer. The gendarmes are also part of the military, so showing my military ID card was a gamble, because the gendarme might have been upset that I was trying to take advantage of my occupation, but in this case it paid off.

Not smoking

I have stopped smoking on around April 1st 1978. I am not sure exactly when I smoked my last cigarette, but deciding it was on April Fool day made it easier for me to remember.

When we were teenagers, our parents allowed us to smoke only when we had reached the age of 15. Neither of them had ever smoked. I think that the reasons they did not forbid us completely to smoke were that they were not really aware of the health risks at the time and also that they probably guessed it would have been counter-productive.

So, I started to smoke at the age of 16. Up to 19 years old, my consumption of cigarettes was mostly limited by the lack of money.

When I enter the Naval Academy at the age of 19, I enrolled in the program to buy sixteen packs of cigarettes every month for the equivalent of one US dollar! This program has been cancelled since, of course. I also got more money so I was able to buy more cigarettes.

Five years later, I was smoking an average of 25 cigarettes a day. I realized that smoking was bad for my health, but I was addicted and unable to stop. It took me five more years and several failed attempts until I finally did it in 1978. For more than a year, I thought every day about smoking. After two years I only thought about it when I was in the presence of other people that were smoking.

I am now completely free from this addiction and I have never regretted stopping.

Testing my self-control at the casino

I don't like the idea of addiction. I have been subject to some minor addictions in my life (tobacco, TV) and I had a hard time getting rid of them. For a long time, I did not want to enter a casino to gamble, because I was not sure I would not become addicted to gambling.

In 2002, I was feeling good about my self-control, and I decided to test it at the local casino in Richmond, BC, where I was living. So, I wrote a plan:

• Whenever I win $100, I will stop gambling for a week.
• If I lose $1000, I will stop gambling forever.

I was gambling at the roulette on a dozen, starting each series of bets with $10, the minimum, and adding 50% of the total bets in the series each time I lost. Whenever I won, I would start another series.

As the maximum bet was $500 on a dozen, losing 13 times in a row will make me reach the $1000 limit, and then I would stop gambling.

I was able to stick to my plan. For 13 weeks, I won around $100 dollars a week. Then, on the 14th week, I lost $1200. So, I stop going to the casino, and since then I have never gambled in a casino, even when we spent 3 days in Las Vegas with my brother Philippe in 2005.

This exercise did not cost me any money (I was even $200 ahead at the end), provided me some free entertainment (watching people gambling is fascinating) and I was happy to realize that indeed I had enough self-control to stick to my plan and that it was very unlikely that I would become a compulsive gambler. At least, not in casinos.

The price of an espresso

The third year of instruction for French Navy Officer, after two years at the Naval Academy in Brittany, was practical experience on two ships, the "Jeanne d'Arc" and the "Victor Schœlcher". We were more than a hundred "officer students" on the Jeanne d'Arc and we had our own wardroom and our own bar.

There were two sailors that were spending their year of military service as bartenders. They would serve us our coffee and alcoholic drinks (there is no alcoholic restrictions for French Navy officers on ships). The cost of an espresso was 50 centimes, equivalent to 10 US cents at the time.

At some point, the two sailors indicated to the bar management that collecting the 50 centimes for each espresso after lunch was taking them too much time. As the bar was making an healthy profit on alcohol, and the income from the espressos was not very much, it was decided by the bar management to no longer collect the 50 centimes.

However, the consequence of this decision was very surprising: the consumption of espressos after lunch doubled! And the two sailors had to work even more making espressos than before when they were collecting the 50 centimes. So, the price of the espresso was quickly back to what it was before, and the consumption of espressos too.

I have always wondered why some of us, who were making more that the equivalent of US $1000 a month, would not spend 10 cents for a coffee, when we could not spend our money at sea.