Quebec City love

Le vin tue lentement. On s’en fout ou n’est pas pressé! (Something I loved written on the wall at a little French restaurant in Old Quebec!)

After a week in Quebec City with work I’ve determined two things: 1) I love wine and all food bad for me and 2) I desperately need to learn how to speak French, (I know… I should be embarrassed to have a last name like Lafleche and not speak the language). Being there I realized how beautiful the language is, and also how much my career will suffer if I don’t learn to speak it.

Living in Ottawa and working in communications (especially in government) you need to be bilingual.  I have until September  to learn how to speak French, or I’m looking for a new job.

I have no problem admitting that this terrifies me. Don’t get me wrong, I have faith in myself and when I set my mind to something I do it, but that doesn’t mean that underneath the calm and cool exterior that is Cait Lafleche (joke) there’s a 23-year-old freaking the heck out! (Let’s be honest people confidence is key, but there isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t questioned themself at one point or another).

However I’m quite aware  that I need to set my doubts aside before they completely blind me, and so begins my French learning journey. For starters I ordered French for Dummies, which is very basic and a lot of things I already know but good to have anyways. I’ve gotten all of my friends who speak the language to send me e-mails and messages throughout the day only in French, I started reading French magazines and listening to French radio, and I’ve decided to sign up for an intensive French course at Algonquin in January.

I know I can do this, not only for my career but for me. I like to challenge myself and do things that I fear I can’t (like running the Beat Beethoven 4 K race this past weekend, and kicking his butt), and learning this beautiful language is one of them.

If you have any advice or tips on learning the language, please let me know!

As for Quebec City, I was astonished at the beauty and culture. The chocolate croissants, sugar pie, duck dishes, and wine basically made me the happiest girl in the world!

 

10 funniest people on Twitter

So it’s been a while… Mainly because I’ve been away with work a lot, which I’ll tell you all about later. For now, I thought I’d do a quick update with an article I came across tonight that I enjoyed. Click here to read the 10 funniest people on Twitter! (They make me giggle!)

Short and sweet I know, but I’ll be back!

DELICIOUS!

Besides writing about and reading PR blogs, I’m also addicted to reading food blogs. I don’t know why I do it to myself, because it makes me so ridiculously hungry and envious of amazing cooks. My favorite food blog belongs to my mother, probably because I’ve had her meals many a times, and she is a phenomenal cook. Check out her blog here!

I’ve been doing some cooking as well… Which would make most people I know fall over laughing. However, I’ve been really experimenting in the kitchen and this weekend while visiting my hometown Peterborough, I cooked a meal for my grandparents who were uber impressed (and they weren’t just being nice).

I cooked stuffed peppers and an put together an awesome salad! For all you non-domestic people who get laughed at for stepping foot in a kitchen this is actually an easy thing to make.

Stuffed Peppers: Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Start with some uncooked ground beef, mash it up in a bowl and throw in a bunch of garlic (I used garlic puree, but anything you have will do), some cut up onions, cut up mushrooms, pepper, a tiny bit of beaf broth, some diced tomatoes, and about a cup of uncooked rice. Mash all together. Stuff into peppers (that you cut the middle out of). Put in big casserole dish, throw beef broth on the top ( a step I missed and the top got crunchy) as well as just randomly around the dish so the peppers have something to soak in. Add some diced tomatoes in there as well. Cover in tinfoil (another thing I missed, it took extra long to cook). Cook for about an hour.

*Eat plain yogurt with your peppers. My Turkish friend and her family use plain yogurt with most of their food, and I thought it tasted particularly awesome with stuffed peppers.

Salad: Cut up garlic and onions together (a trick I learned from a friend, instead of putting the garlic in the dressing put it right in the salad) then add tomatoes (I had an assortment of different coloured ones), add cucumber, iceberg lettuce, and then avocado. For the sauce: Mix together olive oil with freshly squeezed lemon juice, throw a dash of orange juice in for sweetness, and some pepper.

** Keep in mind I’m not domesticated so yes I will say things like “mash it” (instead of mix it)  and “throw a dash” (instead of a tablespoon). Who do you think I am? Betty friggin Crocker?

What I love about Twitter

So I said it was coming.. and after work and travel keeping me busy.. I’m finally sitting down to write about why I love Twitter.

First and foremost I love Twitter because it’s saved my butt more than a few times. For quite a while I was doing a lot of design work from home, so when my Quark expired on me with a four o’clock deadline I nearly passed out  because it was the only design program I knew (the only one I was taught in school). I knew that my boyfriend had InDesign on his computer, and that it was my only option. So I opened it up and starting designing a newsletter,  and the basics were easy and very similiar to Quark but there were many little tricks that I knew in Quark to make my design work look extra awesome (value added of course), you know those finishing touches that complete the whole project. Well, that’s where I ran into the problem. I couldn’t find the little tricks anywhere, even after google searching them. So, I logged on to Twitter, and I tweeted out to the world if anybody knew how to do them. Instantly I received replies, from some classmates, but also from a lot of people I didn’t know at all. By the end of the day I had tweeted several questions, and found all of my answers on Twitter. Twitter is the perfect resource for when you don’t know the answer to something, because guarantee someone out there will.

Another reason I love Twitter, is because I find out about all sorts of events and news happening around Ottawa.

“I love finding out things (events, news etc.) as they happen,” says fellow PR grad and avid Twitter user Nicole Reid. If you follow CBC or CNN, or basically any news outlet, you’ll see constant news updates as they’re happening. Also, it’s super beneficial for us PR and communications folk because there are constantly workshops and social gatherings being posted which really gives us an opportunity to network.

Networking! Another reason why I love Twitter. Although I’m a firm believer in face to face communications, Twitter is a great way to network  with other people in your field. When I first joined Twitter, I went through lists of people who my PR friends followed, and came across many people in my field all around the world who I now follow daily. This is perfect for finding jobs, receiving advice and tips, learning things you didn’t know and seeing different perspectives, and of course forming relationships with people in your field. This is also an excellent way to get people to check out what you’re doing, and if you have a blog it’s a great way to get people to read it and recommend it.

Finally, a guilty pleasure of mine and another reason why I love Twitter is following certain celebrities (that’s fine you can shake your head and mutter smut under your breath). Personally my favorite is following John Mayer, because his tweets are mostly his random thoughts which are usually hilarious and which really make him human and personalizes the whole celebrity thing.

So now that I’m done, what are your favorite things about Twitter?

(Follow me on Twitter!)

Taking viral marketing to the next level..

Check this out!

Apparently this is just some viral marketing campaign for the movie 2012 directed by Roland Emmerich coming out later this year. I was just sitting here watching some TV, when a commercial for this site came on. I was thinking you’ve got to be kidding me!!! A lottery for the 2012 end of the world? So I googled it and this site came up, and for a few minutes I was actually believing the site was for real, and fear started to creep up on me. However, looking into it more I soon realized that it was a viral marketing ploy… But still, I can’t imagine how many people actually believe this lottery is real. Has viral marketing gone too far? What do you think?

Summer adventures: Prince Edward Island with work!

The summer of rain..

Jobs in social media

Algonquin PR alumni really are superstars and here is a perfect example:

Kelly Rusk is pretty much a social media goddess, no lies.
Someday I’d love to have a social media job, it’s pretty much a dream job of mine at this point.

What bugs me about Twitter!!!!

Q. What do they call someone who Tweets too much?  A.  A twat!
      (I’d love to take credit for this, but a friend randomly said it the other day…You know who you are!)

Okay so this blog has to have  a certain level of professionalism, but I have a sense of humour and that line was too funny for me not to post! (I apologize for any of those who are offended and find it crude!)

What gets me the most about Twitter are the people who constantly post every two minutes! I don’t need to know that a) you’ve brushed your teeth b) you are driving to work c) you are driving home from work d) you just ate dinner e) you put the kids to bed f) you had icecream as a late night snack or g) you went to bed early. First of all, if that’s all you have to say take it as a sign that you need to step it up on the fun scale!

It also bugs me when somebody is at an event and tweets every two seconds about what is happening. Taken directly off of one of my friends twitter page: “Note: it’s not necessary to Tweet everytime you think you’ve heard something inspirational. There is such thing as Tweeting too much!” As a PR professional I love to use Twitter to learn about PR, and yes I definitely want to see what you have to say, I also want to hear about your adventures, but I don’t want to log on to see nothing but you hogging the feed! Twitter is meant for short and sweet updates, spreading out what you have to say in 563634 new tweets defeats the purpose completely. Write a blog about it instead!

Another annoying aspect of Twitter (just mentioned to me by Henna Singh of Canadian Beauty) is when companies tweet only about their products! Now don’t get me wrong here, there is nothing wrong with trying to market yourself or your product, but please taker down a notch or at least find a clever way to advertise without being so shamelessly obvious about it! If I wanted to know details about new products every three minutes, I’d browse through the Sears catalog.

So delete these people you say… Well the problem is some of them are people who I find intelligent, influential, and who do at times have something interesting to say. What’s a girl to do?! (Okay that’s being a bit dramatic, but really I’m not going to go on a deleting spree, I’ll just suck it up.)

Lastly, I’m not trying to say I’ve never tweeted anything boring or irrelevant because I probably have at one point or another. However I make an effort to try to have something somewhat interesting to say and I will never clog up your feed so that all you see when you log on is caitlinlafleche caitlinlafleche caitlinlafleche caitlinlafleche caitlinlafleche caitlinlafleche (although it does have a nice ring to it….)

Let me know what you think my fellow tweeters! (I do afterall appreciate and value your opinions and knowledge!)

Next post: What I love about Twitter!!!!

Lame jokes make Cait laugh

Good PR

Moses and his flock arrive at the sea, with the Egyptians in hot pursuit.

Not knowing how to proceed, Moses calls a staff meeting.

“Well, how are we going to get across the sea?” Moses asks. “We need a fast solution. The Egyptians are close behind us.”

“Normally, I’d recommend that we build a pontoon bridge to carry us across,” the General of the Armies says, “but there’s not enough time – the Egyptians are too close.”

“Normally, I’d recommend that we build barges to carry us across,” the Admiral of the Navy says, “but time is too short.”

“Does anyone have a solution?” Moses asks.

Just then, his Public Relations man raises his hand.

“You!” Moses says, “You have a solution?”

“No,” the PR man says, “but I can promise you this: If you can find a way out of this one, I can get you two or three full pages in the Old Testament…