Who is Farhan Lalji?

Happy Canada day!!! As it is Canada day today and a glorious day in London and my cousin is visiting from Toronto and I’m hopping on a plane later today to look for flats in Switzerland later today I thought it would be a good idea to talk about places on the blog.

Richard Florida, who a friend of mine works with, has written a book called “Who’s Your City”, it’s sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to pick it up, and after I finish the Bottom Billion it’s next on my list. I agree with Florida that where you live says a lot about you. But I also think with the world becoming a smaller place, where your networks are says a lot about you as well.

For me Toronto (born there, the Bee’s from there, went to school there and generally like Canada) and London (worked there forever, went to biz school there, lot of friends there) will always be anchors, but I’m hoping that I can cast the net wider into more of Europe, Asia and Africa as well as North America and the UK.

The Bee has a rule/notion that we shouldn’t spend more then 5 years in a place and I’m not sure if five years could be too long, too short or just right depending on the place. But I do agree that moving around is great and living in different areas of the world is exciting and makes life really worth living. I believe that part of my thinking is due to being brought up in Canada and living in the UK, both pretty international themselves. Part of it is due to being very multi cultural and mixed up myself. And part of it is just dumb luck. But all of it is a lot of fun. So happy Canada day, but remember that there’s more to the world then the couple of square miles you live in today.