19 Oct Tony’s Tips Video: Finding Friends in Europe

Creativity Feast Milan

I was very fortunate to spend the past 11 days in Europe. I got to meet the friend who taught me to juggle over a decade ago and his wife as well as their new baby boy, Alec. Congratulations Jon and Elena! They are living in Santander, Spain and they showed us just how beautiful that part of Spain really is.

Next we popped into Milan to see some Italian friends and were treated to some amazing hospitality and very delicious food and wine.

And then it was time to get to Florence. That was the location of another very good friend’s wedding. I was an usher for this celebration and as such there was a suit rented for me. We all looked sharp and had a wonderful time. But on the following day, the suit got left behind with me by accident. The best man needed to take it back to the UK but with all of the goodbyes etc, it slipped his mind. I didn’t want to mail this thing to him from Canada! So what could I do?

Well, I knew that he and some other friends were flying back to England from Pisa, so I arranged to get myself there in another car. I did so and gave those friends a call. But there was no connection and no answer. “Hmm, how could I be sure that our paths crossed in Pisa so that I could make this delivery?”, I thought. “I’ve got it! I’ll juggle by the tower until they get there”. That would be hard to miss, right?

Knowing that they would certainly visit this heavily photographed monument, I decided to do so but also added a social media challenge to the situation. I posted a status update on Facebook that tagged each of the people in their car. The experiment was to see if they would just bump into me in the square or if they’d see it on Facebook first.

What do you think happened? This short video explains how it all rolled out.

While the computers in our pockets can be helpful, we don’t need to remain glued to them at all times. Keep your head up and have human conversations. You never know what you might find out.

Stay human.