It didn’t take too long for Mike to get back to me about the idea of a management meeting. In the meanwhile, I had already arranged with a restaurant in the Merivale Mall and other PMs were informed about it.
The first meeting was dedicated to chatting about the format of the meeting and didn’t get into any specific projects, but we all understood that the time allocated to each PM had to be utilized properly. Right after the meeting when we were walking to our cars, Mike came up to me and said thanks for organizing the meeting, and I appreciate your efforts.
I finished reviewing documents on both projects and decided to hire a couple of senior consultants for those two projects. Mike supported the idea and approved the funds required to proceed. The question was where I was going to find the kind of consultants I wanted to hire.
There was a list of consultants maintained by the Project Office along with related resumés. I found one potential candidate who just finished working on something for the other directorate. His name was Tom. I met with Tom and decided to hire him.
For the other project, I thought I should get in touch with David Niles in Fredericton to check out if he would be interested in coming to Ottawa and working for me. I knew David from Fredericton when I worked there. He was my contact when I accepted the job with them to open a branch in Ottawa.
David got back to me immediately and said that he would be in Ottawa within a week. When he showed up in Ottawa, I told him that he could stay with us until he found a place to live. We had a three-bedroom house, and we decided to let David stay in our guest bedroom.
It took another couple of weeks to get the two projects organized. I decided to cut both David and Tom loose to start analyzing the documents that I had already gathered for them.
We ran out of office space in our current location. Mike told me that they had rented a couple of houses not too far from where our offices were. He also told me that I must move my office out as they had allocated a reasonable number of bedrooms for my projects.
On a personal level things were reasonably good. We were getting used to living in Barrhaven. Adam was 15 years old, and he had already found a summer job which had to do with the marketing of some products in the malls.
As soon as we got settled down, Mom came to stay with us. We used to take mom to the ByWard Market on weekends to do the shopping and have breakfast.
The ByWard Market District is Ottawa’s unique heritage destination for cuisine, shopping, arts, entertainment, and professional services for residents and visitors alike – making it the number one tourist attraction in the National Capital Region. The area is home to a year-round public market packed with artisans and culinary delights. With over 600 businesses in the district and an average of 50,000 visitors per weekend during the high season, the ByWard Market has something for everyone.
Between May and October, the market’s vibrancy spills out onto the streets. Small business owners gather outside the Market Hall, turning the area into a bustling outdoor market metropolis. Music and art can be seen and heard throughout the area, delighting the senses of all who experience it.
The ByWard Market reminded mom and Lynda of a place right in London where they used to go on weekends to help Charlie. Charlie used to have a stall to sell things on the weekends. In addition to having their hardware store in town, Charlie used to make additional money there to support the family.
One day when I came back from work, Lynda said to me there’s an advertisement in the local paper about several mobile homes or cottages that are for sale in Florida. This advertisement is focused on Canadians who spend several weeks every year in Florida to deal with the harshness of winter in Ottawa.
I remember asking Lynda what that had to do with us. She said she was just wondering if we bought a couple of mobile homes in Florida, we might be able to spend at least a few weeks there every year. The mobile homes could not possibly be as expensive as those condos that we had been interested in buying in the Pompano Beach, Florida.
I said perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea. Now that my consulting practice seemed to be working alright, we could afford to explore those possibilities. The asking price appeared to be so reasonable that we thought it was an excellent opportunity to invest in something we could use for our holidays as well as rent them out reasonably every year.
It took a couple of weeks for us to get in touch with the owner of those mobile homes in Florida. We decided that I should go to Florida on the weekend to look at the mobile homes before we decided to do anything.
I ended up going to Miami, Florida. Somebody called Fred came to pick me up at the airport and drove me to a motel in Miami close to the Mobile Home Park. It was too late in the night to do anything; therefore, I asked him to come back in the morning and I would go with him to look at the properties. Fred was very cooperative. He came back in the morning and had breakfast with me. He was supposed to pay for the breakfast following his boss’ instructions. His boss used to live somewhere in Florida and Fred oversaw looking after the site. But I decided to pay for the breakfast just to recognize his cooperation.
I went to see the properties on the site. There were several mobile homes for sale in the park and they were not in the best shape. Fred told me that he would fix for a reasonable price any mobile homes that I might decide to buy. Of course, he was in the business to make money. He was the caretaker for the park and he also was responsible for fixing mobile homes. Fred was given a cottage where he used to live with his wife.
I asked for Fred’s recommendations, and he suggested five mobile homes which were in better shape than others. I assumed that they would require less work to fix.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider was the monthly rent for parking those mobile homes. However, Fred convinced me that if I bought 5 mobile homes, he would fix them for a flat fee and they would be available to rent out to Canadians coming to Florida in the winter.
I thought it would probably work as Lynda was very good with people renting out cottages on a weekly basis, and Fred would look after those Canadian tenants.
I spoke to Lynda on the phone. She liked the idea. She asked me about the condition of the cottages. I told her that they required some fixing but Fred was capable of fixing them, for a price. I pointed out that it also would require us to spend money to furnish them. I assured Lynda that tomorrow I was going out with Fred to purchase bedsheets, towels and anything else to make those cottages livable.
Lynda wanted to know how many cottages I was going to purchase, and I told her perhaps five. Lynda appeared to be happy with the suggestion.
The next day, on Monday, I asked Fred to take me to any branch of the Bank of America. There I would like to open an account. I would transfer money from my Canadian bank to pay for the purchase, as well as for the monthly rent for those cottages.
When I was talking to the people at the bank in order to open an account, the guy who was helping me entered my Social Security number in the system. He said I already had an account with them. He said I opened an account in Chicago in the month of August, 1968. As a matter of fact there had been a few hundred dollars sitting in the account for all these years.
I was shocked to learn about that. I told him that I thought that after a certain time all inactive accounts got closed, regardless of the amount of money in those accounts. He said yes, we do that. But the money I had in in my account exceeded the amount they were allowed to deal with. Hence, my account was still active.
To make a long story short, I returned home after spending three days in Miami. Fred and his wife treated me just like a member of their family. One night Fred had a barbeque in my honour and invited their friends who had been living in the park for years. Everybody seemed to be happy with Fred’s services and they welcomed my intention to purchase mobile homes.
It only took two weeks for us to complete the transaction. We ended up purchasing five mobile homes which were supposed to be fixed and furnished for renting out to Canadians.
It turned out to be an interesting experience for us.
