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The tea, leadership, loyalty axis

About six months ago, I switched from coffee to tea because I wanted to reduce the influence of caffeine in my life. After a somewhat painful adjustment period, I now look forward to my morning tea ritual as much as I once did my morning cup o’ Joe – and I feel better. Until yesterday morning, though, I hadn’t given much thought to the impact of how I was drinking my tea.

It started with a quote from a Fast Company article about leadership (Buddha Had It Right: Relax the Mind and Productivity Will Follow) that inspired me enough to end up on this index card:

In the article, author Faisal Hoque explains why mindfulness is important in our professional lives. Whether or not you ascribe to Buddhism, we all get value out of bringing our “complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis” (Marlatt & Kristeller, 1999). More gets done, better. I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of singular focus challenging at work, where I often feel the pull to be in two places (or two mindsets) at once. So, I create little strategies to force mindfulness: I listen to classical music on headphones, go to cafes to work for a change in scenery, come to work early when no one is around, set timers on my phone so I don’t have to watch the clock during meetings, and make a daily list of my top three priorities (which I relish drawing a line through upon completion). Interestingly, though, most of those practices are designed to close out the world to make solo focus easier. The article reminded me to bring more mindfulness to my collaborative experiences.

(Read the rest of this post on Cooper’s blog.)

The Great UX Debate

Are designers responsible for the impact of their work upon human behavior?
Is it actually possible to create “connected” experiences across devices?
Do designers need to speed up, or do stakeholders need to slow down?

In January, Angel Anderson, Mikkel Michelsen, Robb Stevenson, Lou Lenzi, Donald Chestnut, and I poked and prodded at these topics during the Interaction 13 conference. About 500 people attended the debate, and they threw their own perspectives into the mix in the latter part of the conversation. Have a listen in the video below.

(And thanks to SapientNitro for the opportunity to meet such interesting people, expand my own perspective, and make use of what I learned on my high school debate team. Ha!)

Designing Culture

I’m heading to Toronto in a few weeks to lead a half-day workshop about designing team and organizational culture at the Interaction13 conference. My colleague, Kendra Shimmell, and I will coach 30 people through thoughtful, creative, intentional development of principles and practices that will change the way their teams work. I’m over-the-moon excited. This is a workshop I’ve been brewing, stewing and chewing on for a while. It’s a delight to finally have a chance to put it into action. Let the magic begin.

WHEN: Sunday, January 27th, 9:30am – 12:30pm
WHERE: Interaction 13, Metro Toronto Convention Center
COST: $300
REGISTER! (there aren’t many seats left)

Designing Culture: About the Workshop

“My designs were torpedoed.”
“We’re way off schedule.”
“Everyone is disengaged.”
“I’m not proud of the work we’re producing.”
“We can’t get everyone on board.”

Sound familiar?

Design doesn’t happen inside a vacuum. It happens inside teams, inside the context of relationships, inside physical spaces, inside organizations with very particular cultures. Ignore that intricate ecosystem, and you might as well give your project a death sentence.

In this workshop, Teresa Brazen and Kendra Shimmell draw from their experience as team members, team leaders, and team facilitators to identify tools and techniques you can use to shape projects that are not only successful, but enjoyable. They’ll discuss the benefits of proactively designing team culture, walk you through the process of creating a healthy foundation, empower you with methods to improve unhealthy culture mid-stream, and show you ways to keep everyone engaged throughout the design process. Then, you’ll try it out for yourself: with instructor feedback and mentorship, you’ll craft new methods and approaches that are appropriate to take back and try out in your team or company… no matter what your job title.

By the end of this hands-on workshop, you’ll know how to get projects started on the right foot, co-create without compromising output, and inspire teams, clients, and stakeholders. More importantly, you’ll find that you can work towards dramatically improved project outcomes… without all the drama along the way.

REGISTER!

How to make friends without speaking

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

When you don’t speak the local language (or even if you’ve mastered basic words), it can be challenging and a bit intimidating to connect with new people when you travel. Lucky for Zak and I, we’ve got a fun tool to jump-start engagement that doesn’t require words at all: marbles.

Zak has collected marbles for years: Antiques, some hand-blown by his friend Michael, even one made of fiber optics. When we travel to foreign countries, we often bring along a bag, keep our eyes peeled for a flat area (beaches are the best), and then design a course. Think mini putt-putt course. The goal is to flick your marble around and through obstacles toward a hole. There are lots of flicking styles, but here’s the basic idea: Make an OK symbol with your hand and then flick your pointer finger in the direction you want the marble to go.

The rules are simple:

  • Each player takes a turn. You get one shot per turn.
  • If your marble goes outside of the obstacle course, you must return your marble back where it was before you flicked it. Basically, you lose a turn.
  • You can aim for other players’ marbles (for all you feisty competitors).
  • First one to get their marble in the hole wins.
  • You can make up new rules. I.e.: If you hit a specific object in the course, you get another turn.

(We kept having to shoo away dogs that were obsessed with our goal. At one point that white object the dog above is sniffing mysteriously disappeared. Hmmm.)

The best part is that natural curiosity will lure locals over, and before you know it, you’ll have a full-blown game in the works. My advice is to:

  • Design for complexity. It’s no fun if you can get to the goal in three shots.
  • Design for engagement. Make interesting shapes, not just functional obstacles. A weird-looking course is more likely to attract attention of potential players.
  • Design with the local environment. Use materials that are already around you; it’s a good constraint to challenge yourself with and will force you to be more creative. Plus, the hunt for flotsam and jetsam is half the fun. Also, choose an area where kids are already playing. They are the easiest to engage, and adults love watching.

We played a game on the beaches of Sri Lanka with a group of six kids from approximately ages 6-13. They didn’t speak English, and we didn’t speak Sinhalese; smiles, gestures, and marbles were our mutual language. Unfortunately, I was having way too much fun to remember to take photos while we played, so this is all I have to remember them by.

Sweet & Sour

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

A scruffy little boy with one leg and crutches made of tree branches bangs incessantly on our parked car demanding money. Hobbling, he takes his banging from one side of the car to the other, and back again. He opens one door, tries to enter, we shut it. When our driver starts the car, this child jams his crutch under the car tire and yelps, pretending we’ve run over his foot. Our driver yells back at him, and as we drive away, the boy gives me a wicked, wicked grin.

This is in stark contrast to giggling groups of children in small towns who run out to me, begging me to take their photo. All they want in exchange is to see their image. Photography becomes a game: they try on different poses and faces, bursting into laughter when they see the digital result. They could do this for hours, if I played along.

The best part is that the photos become a communication bridge to their mothers who are often shyly smiling nearby.

I find that every child, every situation in India, must be judged case by case. With time, you get better at assessing motivations at a glance, but, still, sometimes you must simply take the risk. Travel to a new place is nothing if you don’t get to know the people — even if you get sweet with a sour bite.

There’s no place like homestay

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

My best friend, a.k.a. “G Money”, says the way to my heart is through my stomach (good thing Zak can cook!). The Brazen family joke is that I have a hollow leg where I stuff large quantities of tasty delights. So, it should be of no surprise that my favorite place in all of India is a sweet little homestay with amazing home cooked meals.

Homestays are, hands down, the way to do India. You stay in a cottage or a room on a family’s property, they make local meals, you see a little bit of their family life, and you learn a lot more about India. The one that gave me so much tummy lovin’ is called Kaits Home, and it’s nestled sweetly on the banks of the Kerala Backwaters, a beautiful maze of canals and waterways in Southern India. Jossy, the father, comes from a farming family that has been in the area for over 500 years. In addition to running the small homestay, they farm fish and grow organic food which sometimes ended up on our plates.

Upon Jossy’s recommendation, we explored the backwaters via an early morning boat ride. As the sun rose, we watched villagers brush their teeth in the river, women slap wet clothes loudly against washing rocks, duck herders wrangle their fowl, men fishing with bamboo rods, uniformed girls giggle their way to school, and Hindu temples come noisily, boisterously to life. You can learn an awful lot about a place by watching how it starts its day.

I will miss the calm of this region, the front porch swing of our cottage and watching the beautiful hand-woven house boats float by.

But, I do have one deliciously simple way to bring a little Kaits Home back into my life:

Banana Curry Recipe

  • Slice 1-2 ripe bananas
  • Boil them in a little bit of water for 5 minutes.
  • Add a little sugar, butter, and ground cardamom while boiling and stir.
  • Sprinkle in a bit of shaved coconut and serve.

I stumbled upon a pile of shoes…

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

It’s customary to walk barefoot inside homes in India, so you’ll usually see a few pair parked outside front doors. But when I saw this, I knew something especially interesting was amiss:

It was…Yes! High five! A wedding ceremony!

Zak tried to discretely capture a few photos from the doorway without drawing too much attention. Okay, okay, I admit it: we were hovering, hoping they’d invite us in. Good thing, too, because they did. Men sitting on one side, women on the other, Zak and I split up and nestled in.

It was a ceremony of the first dimension (there are five) for not one, but two brides – sisters. The final ceremony would be in two days. Indian weddings are a community affair, and this particular family expected 900 on wedding day, 2,000 at the post-wedding event!

I think they found our American tourist-ness curious because the women did lots of giggling and smiling at me, and the wedding videographer turned his camera (and blinding spotlight) on each of us. As I ate sweets, drank chai, and watched, I thought, “No WAY would Americans invite random, hovering foreign-traveler-wedding-crashers in with a smile.” Lucky me.

Marriage: It’s complicated

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

I’m the the honeymode, so of course I can’t help but curiously collect information about how marriages in India work. I’ve discovered that, like so many other things here, marriage looks wildly different depending on your caste, region, and family. For example:

The Week Magazine in India tells the story of a girl and boy from different castes who married for love against the wishes of their families and castes. The result was the suicide of the girl’s father, violence that ended in the burning of 268 houses, and a town empty of men because they were all put in jail. The girl’s mother said, “I don’t want her back. But I don’t want her to live with a lower caste boy.” You could say the family cared more about their name than the daughter’s happiness, but it’s more complex than that. They were completely ostracized, and it appears the father killed himself not so much because of his upset at the marriage, but because of the intense pressure of the community.

A British traveler told me about a family she met: three boys and a girl, all married by age seven. When they were old enough, they would live with their spouses. I’m not sure what age “old enough” is. Yes, child marriage still happens here, though it’s not legal. Enforcing this law can be tricky, as evidenced by this story, told to me by the same traveler:

A lower caste woman who worked as a social worker was supposed to, as part of her work, let local police know about child marriages she discovered. She tipped the cops off to an upper caste father who married off his one year old and fourteen year old daughters. Why so young? It’s a better deal; you fork up less dowry. When the father found out the social worker exposed him, he and another man raped her as punishment. The police, meanwhile, attended the wedding…and did nothing.

That’s the ugly side. But that’s only one side, and there are many.

In urban and wealthy communities, love marriages are more common. The younger generation wants this option, though if their parents don’t approve of the person they pick, they are likely to end the relationship. Think about it: different generations typically live under one roof with the wife going to live with the husband’s family. When you all end up living together for the rest of your lives, it makes a lot of sense that parental endorsement matters a great deal.

Given my own Western experience of choosing my husband, Zak, out of love, it’d be easy to write arranged marriages off as terrible. But, again, it’s more complicated than that. Yes, some such marriages happen against one or both person’s will. But, in many cases parents try very hard to find a good match for their son or daughter who, ultimately, still gets to say yes or no. I talked to a man who met 12 different potential wives before he met the one he wanted to marry. He said both parties can back out after meeting, and he obviously did, multiple times. Because families are so close, parents may very well have an informed idea of what “good” for their child might look like. Think about it like your best friends setting you up with someone they think is a good fit. That might be a slightly romanticized version, but I think it gives a sense of how arranged marriages could be different than we Westerners suppose.

That’s probably one of the biggest challenges of traveling in a country so very different than my own: turning off my inner critic and just listening. Frankly, there are many more pieces to the marriage puzzle than I’ve uncovered, but it’s been fascinating connecting the pieces I have.

And all we got was this photo…

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

At Periyar National Park in Kerala, India. Note my leech protection in the form of ugly brown canvas sock-like things. Trekking (well, I’d call it more of a walk) and riding a bamboo boat for eight hours led to the sighting of a few buffalo through the trees, wild pigs and a couple of malabar pied horn bills that made this crazy whooshing sound when they flew overhead. Spoiled after our national park visit in Sri Lanka, it was apparent this park isn’t as healthy or vibrantly full of life. Plus, the tour company sold the trip as having a max of 10 people…we ended up with 20. Not much chance of seeing animals when you sound like a giant herd of buffalo. Apparently there is a successful program to turn poachers into tour guides, which is great, but our guides were lazy, giving us more “break” time than hiking time. Oh well, at least we got this great photo.

The smaller, the better: Miniature paintings of India

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

When I paint, I paint BIG. Stand on my tiptoes to reach the top, big. I use the kind of brushes that you’d paint the walls of a room with. My paint strokes involve my whole arm or body. I’m sloppy, messy, and I do not do itty bitty teeny weeny detail.

This is why I’m in love with the miniature paintings of India: They are everything I don’t create. The artists use brushes made up of just a few hairs. I can picture them, hunched over, focused, making micro-strokes to define hair, jewels, and the leaves of a tree.

Below are a few miniatures we picked up in the Udaipur region, which is known for this craft. The figures are about 2-3 inches tall:

I put these beauties out in every guest house we land in so that I can look at them a little more. You can spend a whole lot more to get the teensiest weensiest of details, but I like these, and that’s what matters most.

An Indian Pied Piper fed me a song

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

A most peculiar, beguiling melody snuck upon us as we wandered through an itty, bitty town in the mountains of Udaipur, India.

“Do you hear that?”

Nodding, I watched the air for notes.

A group of young girls giggled, and pointed the way.

A short walk, and we found the source: a many storied house with cool stone floors. Tentatively, we yelled over the music, “Namaste?!”

And so, the Indian Pied Piper greeted us, invited us in, fed us sweet treats, and scribbled the song’s name on a scrap of paper. Hypnosis complete.

Now, it’s your turn. Close your eyes, wander through town, and listen.

“Kaala Rey” by Sneha Khanwalkar on the soundtrack for the film Gangs Of Wasseypur 2.

Hullo, magic potion!

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

Introducing my new favorite treat: Lemon soda. Enjoy on your most challenging travel days in India; it’s sure to do the trick.

Pour 1″ of fresh squeezed lemon into a glass.
Open 1 cold bottle of soda.
Mix, enjoy, forget.

It’s bound to get interesting…

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

I’m still reeling and recovering.

Once a year the little tiny town of Pushkar explodes as thousands of camels and horses are brought in for trade at the annual Camel Fair. On top of that, it’s also Kartik Purnima, a time when Hindu pilgrims come from all over India to bathe in the holy waters of the lake the town is built around. Hindus believe Brahman created this lake when he dropped a lotus flower from the sky. I swear, everything in this country has a romantic story to it.

When that many people, animals, and motivations collide at one small dot on the map, it’s bound to get interesting.

We watched men make beautiful Marwari horses dance (a rare, expensive breed that you can identify by the curled tips of their ears). One horse stood on its hind legs for a good thirty seconds, to my utter disbelief. The horses were in immaculate shape, in contrast with their owners who often looked like they hadn’t eaten well or bathed in a long time. I imagine their entire livelihood banked on these creatures.

Of course, long-legged, lanky camels were everywhere. They were covered in all kinds of adornment: Designs shaved into their fur, mustaches and swirls painted just above their tails, metal rods through their nostrils, and something that looks like your grandma’s shawl draped over their humps. Women carried big pots of camel dung on their heads (we think they dry it out and use it for fires).

The Indian Circus was in town with ferris wheels, clowns, and second-rate acts. Contortionist families performed bendy feats, which fascinated/disturbed me because the kids always looked miserable. I didn’t get the impression they had much say about their profession.

Alongside all the party hubbub, bona fide spiritually had its’ place. Sadhus (ascetics who give up all worldly possessions and supposedly have supernatural powers, amongst other fascinating things) walked about with an unmistakeable intensity that would stop you in your tracks. Thousands of Hindus bathed in the over 50 ghats (bathing pools) at the edges of the holy lake, making offerings of rose petals and marigolds, and prayer.

Like all of the India I have experienced thus far, the Camel Fair was, to put it mildly, a complex experience. I found myself simultaneously delighted, taken aback, disturbed, exhausted, and inspired…all the while aware that I was only scratching the surface of what swirled about me. It would take a lifetime to get to know this country.

We’re not in Kansas anymore

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

India is…complicated.

Beauty and squalor live side-by-side. The colors! The textures! Women in vibrant, breezy saris. Temples and grand havelis crumbling, offering glimpses into an era that must have been magnificent. Delicate, fading paintings cover every inch inside temple walls. Alongside these beauties, mangy dogs, garbage in the streets, cows eating said garbage. Hustlers, hustlers everywhere in the form of pretty young girls asking, “Want photo?”, children yanking your sleeve, tuk tuk drivers doubling their rates, and old ladies with open hands. You must be vigilant. And yet, repeatedly, you will stumble upon the kindness of strangers, curious inquiry, smiles.

I wasn’t prepared for the smells. Let’s start with the most profound: India hasn’t much in the way of waste disposal programs. There are few public trashcans, if any. Garbage is thrown in the streets, behind buildings, in lakes and rivers, or burned. Polluted water runs through open drains along side streets. The train stations reek of feces because the “toilet” on the train is basically just a hole leading directly to the track below. With thousands of people doing this in packed India, you can begin to imagine the stench. Walking the streets, wafts of human waste as well, and yet, delicious moments of rich incense, food, and spices. Contrast and contradiction with every inhalation. I talk about the smells because it’s something you can’t capture in photos, and it so shapes your experience.


Then, there are the sounds. Cars, motorbikes, and tuk-tuks squeeze through tiny spaces, lanes abandoned, muscling forward with the beep, beep, beep of horns. Music, drumming, chants blast from giant speakers in the streets. This symphony is enriched by the vocals of cows, camels, dogs, cats, monkeys, pigeons. The auditory onslaught is enough to tire you on its own.


Yet, they say that human beings get the vast majority of their information through sight. This is where the real reward and curse of India lies. Surrounded by throngs of people, it is hard to find a resting place for your eyes. Everything hits you much too quickly, like the rapid flashes of a music video: snippets of grandiose architecture, rickety carts, street food, turbans, rich fabrics, grit, manure, monks, Sadhus, sculptures of Ganesh and Buddah, wet laundry hanging from clothes lines, dirty feet, smacks of intense color, gold bracelets, and the hardest to digest: miles and miles of slums. It is one thing to see photos of poverty, but another entirely to stand in front of it, watching its children run about. Then, you will want to avert your eyes, wondering at the riches you saw moments before.

These are my complicated first impressions. I know that India, like any interesting person, consists of layers, and that my perception, at this point, can only be superficial. But, as they say, “Trust your gut.” Mine says this is a land of extremes that will take you on quite a ride. I am certainly getting the adventure I asked for, with all it’s beauty and bruises.

PS: Some recommended reading for you: The Pulitzer Prize winning “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” by Katherine Boo. It’s a throughly researched story about India’s slums that I couldn’t put down. You’ll be in shock; all characters and stories are true.

What I’ve learned so far: A Sri Lanka brain dump

{A blog series about our 2 month honeymoon adventure through Sri Lanka & India. To read more, just type “honeymoon” in the search field to the right}

 

Crazy, but time just did that speeding up thing, and our journey in Sri Lanka is at a close. Zak and I now head to India. Here’s a quick rundown of things that stood out to me about Sri Lankan culture and getting around, for those of  you contemplating a trip:

People will give you a big smile – if you smile first. If they initiate, it’s because either they are curious about the foreigner (you) or because they want to sell you something you don’t want. Over time, you get better at figuring out which is which.

Many people speak basic English. If you speak English, you’ll be fine. You’ll also probably find yourself speaking broken, simple English when you return home for a few days, out of habit. Like, “What time bus?” or “Where toilet?”

Everyone loves President Obama (this includes all the traveling Europeans and Australians we met). When they find out you are American, they will ask if you love him, too. If you do, you’ll get smiles and responses like, “He good man.” You might even get a joyous fist in the air, like we did.

The island has a whopping EIGHT Unesco World Heritage sites. Sigiriya will blow your mind. I think it just might be the most compelling archeological site I’ve been to. Photos don’t really do it justice.

You’ll see a lot of monkeys, and that’s pretty cool. You’ll also see a lot of mangy, stray dogs, and that’s not as cool. For wild elephants (and a whole lot more), definitely go to the national parks.

The local buses are a really great way to get around. Surprisingly easy. Most times, you’ll get a seat. If you ask the bus driver to tell you where to get off, they usually will, which helps if you can’t read the road signs (though many are in English and Singhalese). Once in a while you’ll get a bus with exhaust that will make you gag the entire trip. But, usually, you’ll be just fine. You might even get to watch a movie on a flat screen while you ride. It happens.

The train between Ella and Kandy is an amazing way to see the mountain countryside and beautiful tea plantations. Don’t miss out on standing in the open doorways and leaning out to see all the other passengers who are doing the same.

Toilet on a train = a toilet with a hole that goes right out onto the tracks. If you’re on a train for six hours like we were, you’ll use it.

Sadly, there generally aren’t public trash cans. Most trash is burned or tossed on the ground.

However, they do have a great energy conservation practice: all power outlets have on/off switches, which they use. Why? (1) Electricity is expensive, and (2) during monsoons there are electrical storms. Apparently many people have been hit by lightening or had lightening literally come through their open windows. Most Sri Lankans turn off all their power outlets and lights during these storms. Some are nervous enough to turn off even their cell phones.

There is zilch, zero, zip graffiti, anywhere except the awesome murals by our new friend Alain Parizeau (Graphic Design professor at the Academy of Design in Colombo, Sri Lanka).


People make their own food here, so there isn’t much of a “restaurant scene” in small towns. If you do go to a restaurant and want an authentic Sri Lankan meal, you have to tell them in advance (i.e.: earlier in the day) because they make it just for you. This takes a minute to get used to because it requires planning, on your part. Also, try the curd and treacle (Made of buffalo milk and something that tastes like honey, but isn’t. Apparently there are two kinds, made of either coconut or kithul). They don’t refrigerate the curd before use, but we haven’t gotten sick from it. They store it in these clay pots (this batch was transported on our bus):

The guest houses cater to Western food tastes. Unfortunate. Personally, if I wanted spaghetti or sandwiches, I’d just stay home. But, I guess there must be a lot of travelers who do want spaghetti because, I swear, every guest house we went to had the same menu – dominantly Western. Sigh.

The tuk-tuks (a three wheeled scooter with a back seat, a roof, and open sides) are everywhere, a great form of transport, and are individualized with funny sayings like “Still water runs deep” or “Don’t waste time”. It’s entertaining to watch for and collect these phrases. You need to negotiate with these guys, and if you’re in Colombo, insist on a metered ride (likely quite a few will refuse you, just keep looking till you find a willing someone).

Hinduism and Buddhism seem to intermix and mingle. You’ll see imagery from both in temples and buses.

No shoes in temples. Even ancient crumbling down temple ruins that are no longer in use.

Don’t stand with your back to a Buddha sculpture and pose for a photo. Big no-no. In fact, it’s such a big no-no, it applies to tiny sculptures of people, too. I know this because I tried to take the photo below with our honeymoon mascot facing the camera. A guard reprimanded me, explained “no backs to Buddha”, and made me delete the photos. Then, an old man scowled at me and said, “Photo no good.” When I tried again, the appropriate way, the guard made me show him my new photos (he didn’t believe I listened to him). It all worked out, but I felt like an ass, because I actually know better. It just didn’t occur to me that the same rules applied to our little mascot. Now I know.