Au Bon Vivant

Me Inc.

2009-03-05T21:21:00.002-08:00

It's been an interesting few weeks.

I left my shiny new job in late February, but was promptly offered a contract position with one of the agencies I'd done some work for last September.

The interesting thing about being a contractor with the governmental organization I was with is that they only deal with a certain list of approved vendors. So I've signed up with one of them.

The question during the discussions I had with these contracting firms was - do I incorporate, or do I become a sole proprietorship?

My accountant was in favour of incorporation, as was one friend of mine. Others said sole proprietorship was fine. I was ambivalent because either choice would have been ok by me. That said, the contracting firms had a strong preference dealing with incorporated people (ok), but the clincher for me was that the CRA has been causing problems.

Specifically, the contracting firms like to keep the contractors busy - after all, they get a nice cut of every contract handed out, and the government hands out tons of them. This means that if you're in the right line of work, you can be employed continuously.

In steps the CRA. If you're working continuously care of EmploymentFirmA (EFA), then they can deem that you're a de facto employee of EFA. You can imagine the paperwork and tax headaches this can cause everyone. And has - some of the agencies won't deal with you unless you're incorporated.

So, welcome to Me Inc.

As I Please III

2009-01-20T12:58:00.004-08:00

Time flies when you're having fun. I can't believe it's been five months since I last took the time to write something here. I've been living the curse of living in interesting times.

Life has been hectic and busy and I can't seem to catch up no matter how fast I run on the treadmill of life. Honestly, I'm finding it difficult to fathom how I completed a masters degree because if I were in school right now I'd probably undergo spontaneous combustion.

Ever since convocation I've been feeling like I need something to do, and so I've signed up for the WSET "Level 3 advanced certificate in wine and spirits", which I will likely follow up with their formal diploma in wine. Fifteen weeks, over 140 wines, all starting on March 31st.

I also took Foodsafe level 1 last weekend.

Life has me in a bit of a reactive mode at the moment. I'm working on getting my time under my control so that I can work towards my goals rather than have what I'm doing dictated to me. Wish me luck!

Priceless

2008-08-05T13:09:00.004-07:00

Application for grad school: $75.00
Tuition and fees: $8,367.71
Almost 100 books: $4,000.00 (est.)
Printing and binding thesis: $97.96

New friends, knowledge, wisdom, and being published): Priceless

The Cursed Kandsinky

2008-05-29T15:42:00.002-07:00

In Paris recently, I went to the Pompidou (modern art museum) and bought a poster, a
reproduction of a this Kandinsky painting:

I then promptly left said poster on the train in Montpelier. I figured I'd just get a replacement back in Paris our last nigh in France, but the museum (and bookshop) were closed due to a strike (the cleaning staff shut the place down that particular day).

When we got back, I ordered a canvas print of the Kandinsky poster, from allposters.com. It arrived today. I paid $14.18 in brokerage fees (COD of course) and when I opened it up... it was the wrong print. The thumbnail on the bill was right, but not the print itself.

I'm perhaps destined not to own this particular piece.

Tasting Sweet

2008-04-01T14:54:00.004-07:00

In the movie (and the book) Iron and Silk, Pan Qin Fu asks Mark Salzman if he can "eat bitter" when Mark says he wants to join the Wu Shu dojo.

In typically enigmatic fashion, the question has many layers, and by the end of the book, Mark concludes with the thought that you to eat bitter means you can taste sweet.

I successfully defended my MA thesis yesterday, but will be attending convocation this fall as the deadline for the SFU library to get everything submitted is the 10th, and even had I received the list of revisions from my defense committee yesterday, there just simply isn't enough time to get everything in order, edited, approved, signed off, and all necessary copies to the library between now and then. Which is a long way of saying I'm drained and tired and want to go on my big trip to Europe at the end of the month and work on the edits at my leisure this summer. Besides, as I'm not eligible for the employee transit pass at my new job until the fall, it'll be nice to have a UPass for the summer, not to mention access to the library.

My defense is a blur. I know that I was talking and answering questions for a good hour, and my wife and all my dear friends who came to wish me well said they were all impressed with my poise and my answers, so I will take them at their word.

The biggest surprise was that I felt like this huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders - I guess it's just a matter of taking on a little at a time until there's this huge mass, and getting through the defense make that lift off.

It's also a strange feeling to be done. I mean, it's not really the end - I have a very long list of books I want to read, movies I want to see, and music I want to listen to, all of which were somehow related either directly or tangentially to work I've done in the program.

I never expected this program to be so life-changing, but it was definitely one hell of a ride. I met my challenges of taking courses in subject areas I had no expertise in, and taking chances with the work I did, and on the whole I'm very happy with how things worked out. I've also made some deep personal friendships, much to my delight.

I know I will miss the classroom, but on the other hand, what made courses in the program so special were the people I took the courses with. The program has a cohort model where only 20 people a year get in, and after spending a year together you then meet again as each takes their own personal journey in the program. That is of course the joy of the program, and even if I were to continue taking courses (I'll audit a few now and again I'm sure), I wouldn't be taking courses with the people I've become connected with and close to.

Thank you GLS - I'm not the same person I was when I started, and I'm not finished yet.

Ten Things

2008-03-09T21:11:00.002-07:00

Ten things I love about my new job...

... it's close to home! Only 3.6km. The bus takes 5 minutes.
... the benefits are awesome.
... I have the best boss ever.
... and his boss, has vision.
... my colleagues are very happy smart upbeat people.
... I feel good about what I do (somehow, I sleep better at night knowing that I'm doing something that's of net benefit to society and not just something to make some anonymous shareholders happy).
... no more cubicles!
... I don't work on an artificial calendar anymore (no more "it's quarter end!" pushes).
... my office is close to numerous lunch and coffee possibilities.
... the work is both challenging and interesting.

An Italian Girl in Algiers

2008-01-27T15:22:00.000-08:00

Last night my wife and I went to the opening night of An Italian Girl in Algiers at the Vancouver Opera.

The show was brilliantly funny, very well staged, and the singers and the orchestra really outdid themselves. In particular, the sweet voice of tenor John Tessier and the amazing range of mezzo-soprano Sandra Piques Eddy in the lead role were a real delight to hear.

Of course, I forgot to bring my Christmas present, namely opera glasses. They're now safely stowed in my suit jacket pocket for the next production, Fidelio.

Generosity

2008-01-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

A measure of friendship is how people treat you when you're down and out. I am happy to say that I'm extremely blessed by very good friends indeed.

Ten Things

2007-12-28T23:43:00.000-08:00

In no particular order, ten things I've done over the holiday season instead of work on my thesis:

taught my daughter to play Uno
made a huge Christmas turkey and then made lots of good things with the leftovers
played board games with friends
read several novels
watched movies with my daughter
watched "Yes, Prime Minister" with my wife
converted my old how-did-I-ever-get-a-job resume into a great functional resume
played a lot of "Scrabble" on Facebook
went to "thesis therapy" sessions at the pub with fellow GLSers
procrastinated some more by blogging about ten things I've done instead of working on my thesis...

Marc Tempé Gewürztraminer Rodelsberg (1998)

2007-12-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

For my birthday dinner, to complement the scallops with orzo and caramelized carrots, we had a bottle of wine - a 1998 Marc Tempe Rodelsberg Gewurztraminer.

I've had some really tremendous white wines before, and this one definitely qualified. It's a common misperception that you cannot age a white wine.

This one had a beautiful golden colour, wonderful smooth mouth feel, heady aromas you typically expect in a Gewurz, and on the palate had an extremely long finish and hints of minerals.

A lovely wine. I wish I had 10 more in the cellar.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2007-12-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

Today's been a truly nice and relaxing day.

For dinner tonight - pan seared scallops finished with lime and dill, orzo with a nice light tomato cream sauce, and caramelized carrots. Paired with a 1998 Marc Tempe grand cru Gewurztraminer from Alsace.

My 40th birthday party

2007-12-09T20:40:00.000-08:00

This coming Wednesday, the 12th, I turn 40. Since a mid-week party isn't really reasonable, I had my party last night.

Almost forty people came and wished me well and shared food and wine and laughter.

I am truly blessed with good friends.

Automated Rejection

2007-11-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I visited SAP.com to see what kind of job opportunities they had, and one of them was the generic "please submit your resume so we can keep it on file. So I did.

A short time later, I received an automated email from their site that said:

Thank you for your interest in exploring a career opportunity with SAP.

We have reviewed your background and experience as compared to our position requirements. Upon review, we have decided to pursue other candidates that we believe are stronger matches for this position. We felt it was important to advise you as soon as we made this decision so as not to delay your job search.

SAP is continuing to grow as a dominant leader in technology and further opportunities will develop. Please be assured that we will retain your application in our database for at least six months should a job opportunity develop that matches your background.

Feel free to continue to visit http://www.sap.com/usa/employ for future opportunities.

Thanks again for expressing an interest in SAP and we wish you much success in finding a position that matches your career objectives.

Sincerely,

SAP Talent Acquisition

Nothing like automation I say.

The Pike Brewing Pub (Seattle) Review

2007-10-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, one of the Seattle sights we visited was the Pike Place Market. At one end of it is the Pike Brewing Company, and they have a pub... So Gerry and I stopped in for lunch.

The place is nicely appointed with lots of Pike Brewing paraphernalia, and reminded me favourably of other brewpubs I've been to, such as Swan's and Spinnaker's in Victoria, and Wild River in Richmond.

The menu was replete with the usual pub fare one might expect, with a Pacific Northwest emphasis on local cuisine.

I ordered a bowl of the dungeness crab chowder and the "half" Rueben (the full Rueben has double the meat!), Gerry had the chowder as well and halibut & chips. I couldn't decide between the wheat ale and the Belgian style tripel so the waitress brought me tasters of both. Gerry had the stout. I settled on the tripel, though the wheat was one of the better ones I've tried.

The soup came fast, and it was hot! The mains were both ample and delicious. In short, it was nice simple fare, well prepared.

Recommended.

Ratings:
Service: 4/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 7/10
Price: $$

Score: 14/20

Taphouse Grill (Seattle) Review

2007-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

During my weekend with Gerry in Seattle, as part of the experience was to go to Bottleworks and buy and taste beer, we decided to check out the Taphouse Grill. We visited the location in downtown Seattle. Taphouse Grill's claim to fame is that they have 160 different beers on tap.

Writing a good restaurant review is easy, but writing a negative one is one fraught with a little more peril; it is not sufficient to just say bad things about a place, one has to be specific about what made the experience bad.

The easy rating is ambiance. The place has a nice atmosphere to eat and drink in, and there was nothing wrong with the decor. The pictures on the website paint an accurate picture.

However, everything went downhill from there.

Gerry and I arrived around 3pm, which is definitely the dead zone in the restaurant world. Our waitress was very friendly and nice enough, but service goes beyond ones individual server. My first mistake was to ignore Gerry's sage advice to not order the sampler. I'm used to samplers from places like Swan's, Wild River, Spinnaker's, etc - brew pubs where the samples are beers they brew. The sampler at the Taphouse was a mistake.

It was a mistake because of the four beers in the flight, one was off, one was flat, and one I didn't like. The one that was off had the classic wet cardboard aroma I've experienced with wine, but never with beer. Of course, Gerry's the beer expert, whereas I'm more of a wine guy. Also, none of the four beers in the flight was on the list of regular beers (they do say that some 10 or so taps are for whatever seasonal or special ales they have going).

I told the waitress to please take the flight away and bring me a glass of porter instead. She brought it back to the bar and Gerry and I saw the manager and she discuss my "concerns" and the manager even took a sniff of the off beer and make "that face" and put it down.

So when he came over and told me that all the beers "poured like they should" (i.e. that they were all ok), I knew he was lying. I didn't bother arguing - I just wanted my porter and my lunch.

And that was the other part. It took over an hour for Gerry and I to get out food. What did we order that took so long? I ordered the potato cakes and lentil soup from the daily specials menu, and Gerry ordered a beef dip sandwich. In other words, nothing that should take an hour.

When the food finally arrived, I was disappointed. The potato cakes were a little spongy, and the soup (very good) was only warm.

After the beer complaint, we were basically avoided by our waitress and she looked apologetic when she presented our bill. The faulty flight of beer was still on the bill, and I just gave her my credit card. When she came back she'd taken the flight off.

Too little, too late.

Ratings:
Service: 1/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 5/10
Price: $$

Score: 9/20

A note: Having 160 taps is certainly impressive, but with that many, you're simply statistically going to have some bad ones there - especially since some of them won't be very popular. In contradistinction, as we went from the Taphouse to Elysian Fields, a brewpub right by Safeco Field, they have about 20 taps, but half of them are their beers, and the others are "guest beers", and they were all busily poured.

Seattle

2007-10-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

Some six weeks ago, my friend Gerry and I made plans to go see the Mariners play a game and spend the weekend in Seattle. Little did we know at the time that the Mariners, who had a clear 4 game lead in the wild card race, would go on an extended losing streak and be out of the playoffs or that the Canadian dollar would reach parity with the US dollar.

In any event, we had the tickets and the hotel booked, and off we went. It took a little over an hour to get through the south bound customs lineup, and it was probably much longer by the time we finally got through at 9am!

We stopped and shopped a the "Seattle's Best" outlet mall and found some bargains. One of the nice things about "guy shopping" is we know what we want and if they don't have it, we move on. I found some shoes (long overdue to get replacements) for cheap at Eddie Bauer, and a new lasagna pan (Le Creuset, at an outrageously good price) which will last me forever, complete with roasting rack to go with it.

The game was good and featured everything I want to see at a baseball game - the home team winning, and a home run. (Mariners 5-1 over the Texas Rangers). I also didn't know that Sammy Sosa played for the Rangers (as their DH) so I actually got to see him at bat.

Safeco Field is a great baseball venue, and the thing that impressed me the most was that the concessions were a mix of stadium facilities and local franchises (e.g. the Ivar's fish and chip place, and the barbecue place whose name escapes me but had a fabulous pulled pork sandwich). There were also other options available, like sushi.

The most surprising though was that while Bud and Coors were the "default" beers, one in three taps featured a local microbrewery's craft beer. Very shrewd marketing!

The hotel we stayed at was close to the Space Needle so we were able to walk everywhere, including a late lunch at the Taphouse Grill (reviewed separately) and Safeco Field.

On Sunday we had lunch at the Pike Place Pub (reviewed separately) and checked out the market and the Science Fiction Museum.

The Science Fiction Museum was a lot of fun, and most of the collection is from Paul Allen, whose brainchild it is (as well as the Experience Music Project). Notably absent from the collection was anything British (Dr. Who, Space 1999, Blake's Seven, etc), and with the exception of a couple of minor items, nothing Babylon 5. Lots of Star Trek (old and new) and Star Wars, and the queen alien from Aliens. Well worth the admission ticket.

Coming home, the border lineup was a mere 30 minutes, and the customs guy, after checking the trunk to see all the beer we bought, waved us through. Lots of people being pulled over to go pay sales tax at the customs office though.

I really like Seattle, and it had been 14 years since I'd last visited. It won't be that long before I go again!

Jethro Tull at the River Rock

2007-10-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

Last Friday (the 28th of September), I went to see Jethro Tull at the River Rock Casino.

The concert venue at the River Rock is fabulous - it's very intimate, and I can't say that there's a bad seat in the place, although I had a truly premium seat in row three.

The seating is part of an elaborate $10 million system (so said the promo guy who came out to tell us about the lineup of artists coming soon) that lets the room be configured pretty much any way they liked - from music, to boxing, to a cabaret, it's all possible through automation. On my way out after the show I got to see the inner workings as the crowd filtered out through the exit corridors.

The last time I saw Jethro Tull was during their 1991 tour (at the Orpheum). I was pleased to be able to see them live again, and I expect that it will be the last time I get to see them in concert.

Ian Anderson was in fine form, cracking many jokes, and poking fun at their age. They opened their show with "Some Day the Sun Won't Shine for You" from their first album (This Was, 1968) and then joked their next one would be from "their more recent album from 1969".

I wrote recently about Al Stewart's musical talent, and I need to make the same comment here. Everyone in the band can play multiple instruments, and play them well. I know that Tull's music isn't everyone's cuppa tea, but there's not denying their musicianship.

Ian Anderson's voice isn't what it used to be, but he's adjusted his singing style and his passion for his music is still apparent. Their playlist did feature more instrumental pieces than one might normally expect at a rock concert, but for the better part of two hours, they provided great entertainment.

Here is the set list from the show...

Someday The Sun Won't Shine For You (Ian & Martin only)
Living In The Past
The Donkey And The Drum - from their new album, "to be released some time in 2012" [joking]
Thick As A Brick - from the eponymous album, a rather lengthy excerpt and very well done
Pastime With Good Company (King Henry's Madrigal)
Mother Goose
My Sunday Feeling
Bourée
Sweet Dream
After You After Me - from one of Martin Barre's solo albums
Aqualung - a new arrangement with lots of flute (Ian noted that this song, probably Tull's most famous work, features no flute in its original incarnation)
America - From "West Side Story", an arrangement by Emerson (of Emerson, Lake, & "the other lawyer in the firm")
My God
Budapest
Locomotive Breath (the obligatory encore finale)

The Mathematics of Finance

2007-09-25T16:11:00.000-07:00

When I look back at my undergraduate days and do a mental inventory of the courses I took, a select few really stand out.

One of them, which was an elective, was a second year mathematics course called "The Mathematics of Finance".

Of all the math courses I suffered through (calculus, linear algebra, statistics), this one was by far the most useful one I've taken. Mortgages, declining balances, amortizations, simple and compound interest, stocks, bonds, coupons, strips, and so on.

Over the years, this course has been worth its textbook's weight in gold (probably literally) in helping me make smart decisions about money. It has saved me literally thousands of dollars on my mortgage (a tale unto itself).

Recently, I've begun working with a professional financial planner. I know about stocks and bonds, and to avoid mutual funds like the plague, but there is simply too much inherent complexity in the system for a retail investor like me to deal with intelligently - at least if I don't want to simplify my life with just investing in an index ETF.

My financial planner calls me about once every two weeks or so and he's been educating me about the markets on the whole. Jim educates me about the markets for two reasons - one so that I feel confident in his recommendations, and two so that if he's feeling bullish on a particular investment idea I have to be able to understand what the idea is. Because as he says, if I don't understand it and he can't explain it to me, then it might not be such a good idea after all.

Thanks to that math of finance course, I can make intelligent decisions with Jim's help. That is an amazingly useful tool.

On Making Sausage

2007-09-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

Today I made sausage for only the second time ever. The first time was at the tail end of the Dubrulle "serious amateur" 6-day advanced culinary class.

My cousins Anita and Karlheinz from Germany are visiting my parents and so I took the adorable granddaughter to be doted upon and took up Karlheinz's offer of showing me how to make classic German bratwursts (his rendition of them naturally). He'd made a batch before our trip out there last weekend, and they're really awesomely good.

I brought along my KitchenAid stand mixer as it has a stronger motor than my dad's, and after lunch, we set to work.

First is the meat (all pork) - the ratio is 8 parts shoulder to 2 parts belly. If you want slightly moister sausages you can go 7 to 3. You want the meat ground coarsely - I learned that commercial ground meat is actually twice ground, but as a general rule for sausage you just want it run through once.

Then after mixing the secret seasoning recipe (secret = I'm not going to post it) you sprinkle it over the ground meat (we had 6.5kg of it), you knead it. Like bread dough. Aggressive, hard, making sure you mix in all the seasonings well and thoroughly. And you know what - if you want to see how the taste is, to make sure the seasoning is right, you taste it. Raw.

Now, I'm sure lots of people will freak out - but that's because we've been conditioned to avoid raw meat, especially chicken, as if it were radioactive waste. But let me tell you something - it was GOOD. So good in fact, that last week I spread some of the "we ran out of casing" sausage meat straight onto bread. Mmm mmm mmm. It's really no different in any fundamental way from steak tartare.

Once the meat has been worked, it becomes quite firm, very much like bread dough when it's ready. The proteins in meat have the same reaction to the kneading as the glutens in flour.

We let the meat mixture sit for about an hour to let the flavours infuse (that, and we went and had lunch). After lunch, we went down and set up the KitchenAid with all the attachments and got to work.

Slipping sausage casing onto the end of the nozzle where the meat comes out suggests and looks exactly like what you think it might, and no doubt contributes to the notion that those who love the law and sausages should watch neither being made.

Once the casing was ready, you need two people - one to feed the meat into the machine, one to deal with the extrusion of meat into the casing. To process 6.5kg of prepared meat took us about 40-45 minutes. I joked at the start that I would probably get the hang of it about the time we were almost done, and I was right.

It was interesting to me that we did the links only after the casing (about 2m long) was filled. At Dubrulle we made the links as we went along (using artifical collagen casing), but Karlheinz did it after the fact and showed me the easy technique to do it - at least it looked easy, kinda like how an old Italian grandmother makes fresh pasta look easy.

After the sausages were in links, they were hung to dry. The sausages "settle" into the casing, and also change colour. The sausage recipe we made is very flexible. You can cook them as bratwursts of course, but you could also let them dry out in a cool room and in about eight days they'll go from fresh to coated in white (salt) to turning red (cured). You can also cold smoke them (aka Mettwurst) and then cook them or spread it raw on toast (sprinkled with a little bit of onion, mmmm...).

The local JN&Z deli said any time I want sausage casing I can just book ahead, and that if I like they'll make me 50lbs of sausage to whatever recipe I like. I might just take them up on that, especially as I'm not getting a side of pork this fall.

Nostalgia for Sale - SOLD!

2007-09-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

In my last year of high school, I became best friends with "the new kid". Mark's step dad was the manager at CKDA, 1200AM, the local rock station. AM radio was still cool in those days, albums vinyl things you had to flip over half way through and came with covers with cool artwork and liner notes. CD's were on the cusp of becoming mainstream, and mp3's and iPod's weren't even a glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye - heck, he and Wos were still selling Apple IIe's.

One of the perks of being the manager of the local rock station was free concert tickets. One of the perks of being best friends with the son of said manager was getting to go to the concerts with him (until he got a girlfriend, but then that's how these stories go - I still remember her breaking up with him just before Dire Straits was in town the day "Money For Nothing" hit #1 on the charts, so I got to thank her for that ticket).

It was March of 1985, and Mark said "Hey, my dad got me some tickets for the concert this Saturday, wanna go?"

"I guess so. Who's playing?"

"Al Stewart."

"Who's he?"

"I dunno, never heard of him."

"Ok!"

I need to mention that this was the first "real" concert I'd been to - ever. I loved music, had tons of LP's, but I'd never been to a rock concert.

That Saturday, my musical landscape changed. Al and his band totally blew me away - and Mark too for that matter. I didn't stop listening to the bands that I'd always listened to before, but something had definitely changed - an appreciation for the sense of musical craftsmanship was born. It was a musical epiphany, the like of which I did not experience again until I heard the Comedian Harmonists (through the biopic The Harmonists on New Years Eve 1999).

As Fate had it, I was looking on eBay yesterday and I stumbled across ... the promotional poster for that 1985 concert. It was being sold by one of the guys who was on stage that night, Steve Recker.

I bought it. It was obviously meant to be.

Book it Danno

2007-09-09T21:44:00.000-07:00

We've been planning a trip to Europe for a while and we've finally booked our tickets. We used Aeroplan points to do it - 180,000 points and $849 later, we're all set for next April/May.

$849 might sound like a lot, but the regular fare would have been $3187.78. We can spend some of the over $2K savings on good food and wine while we're over there.

Pumping Iron

2007-09-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

Well, for the past four weeks I've been working on Lisa's "100 program", and today I did 5 rounds of sets of 20, or 100.

Yay me!

So, because it's nerdy, and annoys people who know that it doesn't work that way, I rowed 4,000 lbs, pressed 3,500lbs, and squatted 23,900lbs.

The 2007 First Annual Slow Food Cycle Tour

2007-08-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, the Vancouver Slow Food folks organized a cycling version of the Circle Farm Tour in Agassiz.

My darling wife and I packed our car, put the bikes on the rack and after leaving our delightful daughter with her doting grandparents in Chilliwack, arrived at the starting point and were on our bikes by 9:30am.

It was a splendid way to spend the day - we visited the eight sites on the tour and had a pleasant spin through the pretty countryside in Agassiz. It was almost completely flat too. Five hours later, pleasantly sated and with pannier bags full of goodies (mostly fabulous cheese from Farm House Cheese), we headed back to my parent's place.

The finale on the tour was the Valedoorn Farm dairy, the twelfth largest dairy in BC, with 400 cows, half of them milkers, the other half everything from new born calves to pregnant cows. They produce about 14,000 litres of milk a day.

Every cow has an ear tag, and the tags use RFID chips to talk to the milking machines, which in turn provide all manner of data to the farmer; and the daily report gets sent to his Treo.

Three people run the farm, and it's a 24/7 operation. Our "tour guide" told us he's up every day at 4:30 and by the time the last rounds are done, he's up until midnight.

The weather was mostly nice, though we did get caught by a little drizzle, but it was a fun experience. I'm definitely going to do it again next year.

Flatlining

2007-08-18T16:06:00.001-07:00

I took this week extra easy. I did go to the Y on Tuesday morning for spin class, but that was mostly to help me recover from the Saturday ride. I'll make up the missing pieces of my 100 workout next week by going every day I'm not doing the spin class.

I took my bike to the shop this morning to repair my broken spoke, which they said would run me about $25.

I took a look at my fitness "spreadsheet" which mostly keeps track of my weight and after 27 weeks, the graph looks pretty flat. It's down from where I started, but to misuse an analogy, if it were a stock in my portfolio I'd sell it for under performing.

Of course, all the good food and beer and wine I've been drinking can't possibly be contributing to my lack of weight loss progress *koff*koff*. Ironically, it's not escaped my attention that in the past, when I've taken weight off, it's been in the fall or winter, when summer's party's, my summer preference for beer, my love of ice cream, and so on, are much more easy to forgo.

Oh well. As a good friend of mine says, fit comes in all shapes and sizes - and a good thing that's true.

The 2007 MS Vancouver Scenic City Bike Tour

2007-08-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

For the second year in a row, I signed up for the MS Bike Tour here in Vancouver. They changed the route from last year, no doubt in part because of the mess that Stanley Park is still in, so instead of 60km it was 65km. It was also a LOT of hills. A lot of them. Fortunately, on the whole, they were not as nasty as the steep monster down Slocan.

For the record: 3h 13m to do the ride this year, and my heart rate monitor claims I burned 3,102 calories. I didn't eat that many calories at the best event bbq ever after the race, which is put on by the Terminal City Club.

My company's team came in 2nd for overall fund raising, at a little over $6,000, of which $2,188 was me (not including the extra amount everyone on the team received for group activities like the 50-50 draw we ran last week). If I were a "team", I would have come in 7th.

My darling wife and beautiful daughter were on hand at the finish line, and my daughter rode her tricycle alongside me through the finish line, wearing the "Club 1000" cycling jersey I received for my fund raising effort. She looked really cute and many photos were taken.

I'm definitely signing up again next year. :-)

The 100 Plan

2007-07-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today's personal training session with Lisa featured two things. One, that she's taking the month of August off, and two, since it'll be about five weeks before I see her next, that I get to do the "100 Plan".

The 100 plan is deviously good. You start small and work your way up. To wit, my new regime is:

10 standing bent over rows
10 ab crunches on the exercise ball
10 chest presses on the bench
10 squats on the leg squat machine

Repeat 5 times, or a total of 50 each.

Each week, add 2 repetitions to each individual exercise (i.e. 12, 14, 16, 18, 20). By the last week in August, I'll be doing five rounds of 20 each, or 100 of each per workout.

Scary. Cool. Very cool.

The 2007 Vancouver Folk Music Festival

2007-07-16T09:19:00.000-07:00

After a week of being on the Sunshine Coast on a lovely vacation, we returned just in time to spend Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver International Folk Festival.

The Saturday was amazingly hot and I managed not to get burned, but I sure did get a lot of colour... Sunday was nicely overcast and being right by the water, it was lovely and cool.

I have to freely admit that while I always have a good time at the Folk Fest, pretty much none of the artists at the show are on my normal music radar. The music they play there is the kind that is really enjoyable live, especially when two or three different bands/artists are in a collaboratory set and jam together, but for the most part doesn't really translate well as something you'd listen to at home. In part it's because at a concert venue, you're actively engaged with the artist and the music, but at home music is often relegated to the background.

My wife had a lovely definition for folk music, that goes something like this: folk music is music that is consumed by the people who create it. It's a lovely definition that works on several levels.

I was talking to one of my good friends who has been volunteering at the Folk Fest for over a decade now about how the festival runs and learned some interesting things. For instance, the festival does not pay its performers (one of the few if not only major festivals in North America to do so), and as such, they usually don't know until about May what the final lineup will be. Hence why, unlike say Mission or other festivals, they don't post the schedule/lineup until June. Of course, the few "big name" groups/artists are usually booked as much as a year in advance, but until the whole lineup is known, the schedule can't be published.

Anyways, to cut to the chase, I had a lot of fun at the festival this year, and we bought three CDs:

The Carolina Chocolate Drops: old time music from North Carolina. Fiddle, banjo, percussion, and very fun.
Tapia eta Leturia: a Basque ensemble encompassing accordion, fiddle, keyboard, and tambourine. The tambourine player is unnatural - I've never heard or seen it played like that before. Has to be seen to be believed.
Ndidi Onukwulu: This fine Torontonian has an amazing voice and an incredibly fun stage presence. She spans all manner of genres, and has endless energy.

Progress

2007-07-05T11:53:00.000-07:00

My personal trainer has been working with me for about four months now - we meet every three weeks or so, which has felt like the right amount of time. She refreshes my workout plan, and then I execute the plan just long enough to feel comfortable with it and ... I do something else.

So what's the prognosis so far?

Pretty good I have to say. When I started, I was doing an indoor cycling class twice a week. Now I'm still doing that but adding two Lisa-designed workouts, and now that the weather is finally nice, I'm cycling once a week - if only to prepare for the 60km Ride for MS in mid-August.

So let's see... in four months I have...

distinctly improved my overall fitness level.
distinctly improved my posture.
strengthened my back and abs (those core muscles you always hear about).
almost doubled the weight I can lift/push/press/pull around the weight room.

One thing that has not been cooperative is the scale. While I've lost a little over twelve pounds so far, it's definitely been a case of three steps forward, two steps back. Averaged out, it's a little over half a pound a week. While I know logically that losing weight and more importantly, keeping it off, is a long and laborious process, emotionally it can get quite frustrating. And as someone whose reaction to stress or feeling blue is reaching for the munchies...

However, onward and upward - all progress is good! It's summer and fresh fruit and veggies about, and I'm getting enough sleep and sunshine to get me to the gym four times a week, and that's all very positive for me indeed.

My current workout, for anyone interested is...

Three sets of 8 each on the rowing, chest press, and hamstring curl machines.
Three sets of 12 each lunges with weights (front, back, and side), or 108 in all.
Between all of those, in sets of three to coincide with above, crunches and obliques working out to about 115 crunches and 120 obliques all told.

In under an hour.

I'm looking forward to what Lisa has planned for me next time.

Red Burrito

2007-07-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

I'd heard good things in passing about Red Burrito, on the southwest corner of Commercial and 1st in Vancouver, but finally had the chance to try it out today.

There's a joke about fast food that you can choose any two of fast, good, and cheap. Red Burrito is a place where you get all three.

The place is small, but very functional. Lots of nice small bar height tables as well as eating bars along the windows.

The service is excellent - the two people behind the counter worked harder than the entire line in any fast food place you'd care to name.

The menu is nice and simple too - burrito & burrito fajita (with peppers and onions instead of beans) are the main two items. They also had taco bowl salads and a couple other items.

In order to keep their business model simple, what you pay depends on the meat you choose. You make your choice of item, decide which meat you want (chicken, beef, veggie, etc), and then you get your toppings/fillings.

And how is the food? Excellent. I had a burrito fajita with chicken and guacamole (extra charge for guac - and here a sidebar rhetorical question: why is guacamole always extra? It's not like avocados are that expensive). It was very big and left me quite stuffed.

Ambience: 3/5
Service: 4/5
Food: 7/10
Price: $

Total score: 14/20

Nerd Games

2007-07-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've been an avid board gamer for over a quarter century. I played the usual games when I was young, my dad introduced me to chess when I was only three or four, and when I was a kid Monopoly and Risk and Clue were the games that ruled my household.

Then in 1980, I discovered Dungeons & Dragons (the old Basic set in red and the added Expert set in blue), and not long after moved to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. That was also the year I was introduced to Ogre and it's been an unrelenting succession of board, war, and role-playing games ever since.

The other day I was in Imperial Hobbies in Richmond buying Chicken Cha Cha Cha for my daughter to try out, and the guy behind the counter made a comment about getting kids hooked on "nerd games". I thought that was a great term.

Over the decades, my interest in games and gaming has waxed and waned to various degrees. At the moment, it's in a waxing state - for the past six weeks I've had a lot of board games hit the table. Hopefully that will continue all summer.

Organic vs Local

2007-06-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

It's been in the news a lot lately.

Now that "organic" groceries have become "mainstream", more and more companies are busy slapping the organic label on their products. A lot of the time, those same products come in conveniently pre-portioned pre-wrapped pre-packaged portions; let's also not forget that they come from thousands of kilometers away too.

As much as I disdain the "100 mile diet", the authors have a good point, one that I still think Nabhan is better at making, that you should know where your food comes from.

It makes no sense to buy "organic" strawberries from Mexico, when conventionally grown local ones are available.

Here's something the pro-organics movement doesn't want you to know - farmers hate using pesticides. You know why? Because it's expensive. Even when they do spray, they use as little as possible to keep expenses down.

My local farmer's market had a survey last summer and people overwhelmingly said they wanted to see more organic produce at the market. I don't. I want to see stuff I can't get at Safeway, and stuff that's fresh. Organic doesn't really matter to me.

So here's a radical idea - buy local produce. Don't worry about the organic label (but hey, if you prefer and can afford "organic", great - go for it).

The truth is that if it's local fresh and seasonal, it'll taste better than that imported from Mexico organic stuff.

Facebook

2007-06-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

I recently was invited to join Facebook by a friend of mine, and I decided I'd give it a try.

Like most new users, I quickly invited everyone I knew, checked to see if some old lost friends and acquaintances were "out there" and experienced some of the obsessive-compulsive feelings I had when I was a kid collecting hockey cards. Look at how many friends I have! Collect them all!

But Facebook has a bit of a darker side too. I scoffed when my friend quipped that he refused to sign up because he didn't want to be on it when the stalkers came, but now I'm reconsidering that. My boss joined a work related group, and quickly jumped off because he didn't want to read all the rants and negative comments some people were leaving. (Making comments about your workplace online in a public medium is naive at best). I've had colleagues who I don't really know, except that they're on the employee roster, add me as friends.

My wife is on Facebook and she told me to make sure to check my privacy settings. I've pretty much locked my profile down, and I've even limited a bunch of people to only have access to my limited profile. I think though that what will ultimately happen is I'll be dropping people - the acid test will be, "would I invite this person over for dinner?"

If my answer is no... poof!

A Random Haiku

2007-05-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

My poppies are in bloom in my garden (and I saw fields of them at van Dusen Gardens last weekend), and while I was at home today, this popped into my head.

Orchid's only rival
Poppy's red origami
Blooms make me happy

Phases of a Thesis

2007-05-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

Tell me why I want to do thesis papers again?

My darling wife, who's been through both a MS and a PhD, told me that by asking that question I was at the "it looks like an insurmountable peak" stage.

I asked what the other stages were.

Apparently, next comes the "work like a demon" stage, followed by the "I don't care anymore" stage.

The weirdest one is the "I can't believe I got away with that" stage. That's the one that happens after convocation.

In between the "I don't care anymore" and the "I can't believe I got away with that" stages comes the "I'm too blotto to form sentences stage"...

... that's the one that happens after a successful defense.

I have lots of good wine in my cellar for that!

Fencing

2007-05-26T20:40:00.000-07:00

No, not the fancy footwork kind with epee or rapier, the more banal kind with posts and cedar panels with latticework.

When we bought our place in 2003, the fence was given "a couple more years" by our realtor. Our neighbours to the north who own several properties in the neighborhood concurred.

Over the winter, our fence finally showed its age and one of the board kept popping out of its panel. I finally did some makeshift repairs to hold that in, which prompted the stress on the fence to show in another place and soon the side was sagging and looking disorderly.

We conveniently had a Home Depot flyer in our newspaper back in April that said they would come and give us a free quote, remove the old fence and dispose of it and then install the new one.

A brief digression - we have debated many a time to push the fence out closer to the sidewalk, but several things made us decide to replace the fence exactly in place:

the Telus box that was in front of our fence was nice and small, but in February Telus came and replaced it with a huge box (for Telus TV among other things) about three times the size, which meant any previous plans for fencing around it would have to be redone.
we would have had to move the garden over.
any space we'd gain would not really be a net benefit. Notwithstanding that we have essentially a postage stamp sized back yard, we have several parks and playgrounds close to us, including one literally half a dozen houses down the alley, so any theory that the back yard would be a good play space for our daughter would not be fulfilled.

So we had AIM Cedar Works come out and give us a quote. We were technically too small a project (they wanted a minimum 60' of fence, ours was 54'), but they said they would do it anyways, and gave us a quote. 10% off if we booked by the end of April.

Well, we thought about doing it ourselves, but the price was very reasonable (much lower than we expected) so we booked it.

Yesterday, they came and installed the fence. It took them all day, as they hit a snag. The owner before the one we bought the place from had poured concrete in the back yard (torn out by the previous owner, and further reclaimed with a grass installation last year by us), which meant they had to jackhammer out and dig a trench to remove the gate posts. Lesson learned, aside from relief that we'd hired professionals, was that it's easier to install a new fence from scratch than to replace an old one.

The new fence is a thing of beauty. The old one was 4' tall and had a bracework of crossed bamboo poles for the Japanese hops we had to create privacy in our back yard. However, the hops are aggressive plants that in the spring grow as much as 6" a day or more, and further go to seed in the fall and die off until the spring, so there's always a mess to fix.

The new fence is 5' tall, and it's just the right balance between giving us more back yard privacy and less maintenance. I expect more back yard time this summer.

As a final comment - AIM Cedar Works rocks - they came when they said they were going to, did a great job of removal of the old fence, installing the new one, and cleaning up before they left. On time, professionally done, and on budget. I would happily recommend them to anyone.

$1.234

2007-05-11T14:49:00.000-07:00

I bought my fuel efficient Tercel in 1998. At the time gas was $0.399/litre for regular gas.

Yesterday, I filled up and the price was $1.234/litre. It cost $42 to fill up, the most I've paid for a fill up on my car since I've owned it.

I'm glad I have a gas sipper rather than a gas guzzler!

Missing the Point - Incandescent Bulbs

2007-05-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

The minister did not reply to me, but my MP did. Her reply was:

Thanks for your message about the proposed phase-out of incandescent lightbulbs.

The most common replacement for incandescent bulbs currently is the use of Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs (CFLs). I recognize this is not always the perfect replacement for the phasing out of incandescents though.

I also want you to know that Paul Dewar’s Bill to phase out incandescent lightbulbs, as it is being drafted, does not specifically recommend the replacement of incandescents with CFLs. We recognize the new technology is being developed all the time, and hopefully we will soon have a solution that addresses all our concerns.

The phasing out of incandescent light bulbs is one of many alternatives that can help place Canada on the path towards ensuring environmental security and sustainability.

Thanks again for taking the time to write and share your concerns.

Sincerely,

Libby Davies

I did send a reply:

Dear Libby,

With all due respect, the point I was making, and which bears repeating, is that banning incandescent bulbs does not generate a desired result.

If the desired result is to reduce the power consumption of light bulbs, then the answer is NOT "let's ban incandescents", but rather "light bulbs must not consume more than x watts per y lumens".

To once again use the example of California, they did not ban internal combustion engines, instead they set emission standards.

THAT is what I am advocating our government do.

So don't ban incandescent bulbs, set power consumption standards. THAT will achieve the stated goal.

Thank you.

Will keep all y'all posted...

Risty's Redux

2007-05-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

When I first moved to Vancouver back in 1998, I took a lovely one bedroom apartment in Marpole. It's a great neighborhood and between 64th and say 72nd on Granville, you can find pretty much everything you need - doctors, dentists, banks, grocery and produce stores, and last but surely not least, restaurants.

One of my first pleasant discoveries was a classic family diner called Risty's. It became one of my regular haunts and I'd go there at least once a week. Even after I moved near the Drive, since I worked in Richmond, a former colleague and I would go there regularly for lunch.

A couple of years ago, the family who'd owned it when I first moved into town sold it. The new owners were very nice, and the food was every bit as good. They even kept the original menu.

However, and this is not meant in an unkind way, the new owners had, for the kind of restaurant it was, poor English. I have countless times been in eateries in Richmond like at the food court Yaohan Centre where I've pointed at what I want, or been to a hole-in-the wall place where I've had the opportunity use what few phrases of Cantonese I know to order dim sum.

But for a classic diner, a burger and fries place with endless coffee, where the regulars are as white as the Wonder bread they make toast with, having to point to the menu to order a club sandwich is bad for business.

For me, having been a regular since 1998, loving the food, and being a little more flexible about language barriers, I was willing to put up with the minor inconveniences. However, as time went on, I did see fewer regulars, and for that matter, business seemed to be slow.

Just recently, someone else bought the restaurant, and they've now been open for a couple of weeks. Today was the first chance I'd had of going there.

The new owners, as with the previous two sets, are also Asian, but speak flawless English. Hopefully word gets around and business builds back up quickly.

Little seems to have changed at Risty's in terms of decor, which probably hasn't changed since the ... 60's? 70's? Certainly unchanged since 1998!

The menu has changed though. Gone are the salads, which were always a weak spot in the line up, and sadly, gone are many of the breakfast options (like the Denver hash and the famous Risty's omelette!). However, they have streamlined the menu and played to their strengths. A strong lineup of sandwiches and burgers, including the new "super burger" that has cheese, mushrooms, bacon, and... a fried egg. The soups are still home made and delicious.

The service was diner efficient - never did my coffee cup see its bottom, and the food was fabulous - hot, fresh, well prepared.

Risty's still strongly recommended by me!

Ratings:
Service: 4/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 8/10
Price: $

Score: 15/20

Kal Tire

2007-04-25T14:57:00.000-07:00

I take my car for routine service to the Toyota dealership, and I have nothing but nice things to say about how well my car runs and the service I've had there.

But for little things, the Kal Tire near my office is ideal.

Last fall, I managed to get a flat tire, and the Kal Tire folks fixed it for free (under the Michelin warranty), even though they didn't sell me the tires.

Today, I drove in to replace the dead headlight bulb, and again, no charge for the installation, only the bulb.

They'll definitely be getting my business when I finally get around to replacing my shocks and struts...

On the Stupidity of Banning Incandescent Bulbs

2007-04-25T09:48:00.000-07:00

This morning's Globe & Mail (online) had the following headline - "Ottawa Moves to Ban Incandescent Lights"

I will spare you the diatribe, and instead share the letter I wrote to the right honorable John Baird, minister of the environment. Please write him too!

Dear Mr. Baird,

I am writing to you about the government's announcement that it intends to ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012.

While I am all for conserving energy, the specifics of the ban are highly problematic.

It would be far more reasonable and progressive to instead require that light bulbs, regardless of type, produce a certain level of light per watt. While this won't get you the same spectacular headlines as "Ottawa Moves to Ban Incandescent Lights", it will solve the problem.

As a convenient example, GE recently introduced something they call a high-efficiency incandescent bulb, and according to their press release "[t]he target for these bulbs at initial production is to be nearly twice as efficient, at 30 lumens-per-Watt, as current incandescent bulbs. Ultimately the high efficiency lamp (HEI) technology is expected to be about four times as efficient as current incandescent bulbs and comparable to CFL bulbs." GE has set their target to be 2010 for these bulbs. I'm sure other companies are working on similar ideas.

It seems that it should be possible in the forseeable future to have incandescent bulbs that are, for the purposes of reducing energy consumption, on even par with the current crop of compact fluorescent bulbs.

The government's role is not to ban certain kinds of goods, but to set the standards by which manufacturers will compete. Just as California has demonstrated that stringent emissions standards will cause manufacturers to innovate and create more fuel efficient vehicles, hybrids, and electric cars, this is an opportunity for your government to show environmental leadership and encourage technological innovation.

Thank you.

I'll let you know if I hear back...

Tosca!

2007-04-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

If ever one were to say to oneself, "I'd like to see a good opera, one that would definitely let me decide if it's something I might like", then one need do little more than to go see the current staging of Tosca put on by the Vancouver Opera.

Even the usually critical reviewer from the Vancouver Sun called it a "tour de force".

In its splendid season-closing production, Vancouver Opera gives us the goods with this nasty thriller, set in a stunning stage design from the Milan-based Scenographie Sormani-Cardaropoli, which is spacious but feels close with dread.
Cynthia Lawrence, a soprano praised for her work in this role at the Met, is the real deal. She is fiery in a plot that is fueled by Tosca's jealousy, yet in her one great aria, Vissi d'arte, raptly removed and soliloquy-like with a feeling of being intensely caught up in a world not of her making.
This is tremendously difficult to sing, holding the high notes dramatically and for a long time, as Puccini wanted, then making a proper diminuendo -- also observing most of the grace notes, showing a firm cleanness on the marcato notes and a focus in the lower half of the voice. It was all there and thrilling to hear.
Singing actors is what Tosca must have or it's just a recital. There isn't a less than fine voice in the cast or one singer who doesn't act persuasively and naturally.

The Italian tenor Renzo Zulian as Cavaradozzi was impressive just minutes into the opera with an effortless Recondita armonia, though he didn't start it softly. He much later gave an even finer E Lucevan le stelle with fine control, power and resonance at the climax and the image of a man lost in reflection.
That's two of the three leads, which we saw early, inviting speculation as to what Scarpia would be like. And he, baritone Yalun Zhang, was wonderful too, applying extra weight to his voice to suggest bestial authority. He was very firm and consistent, though he might have changed his tone at key places to show that Scarpia can also be mellifluous and oily to get what he wants. This would only have enhanced the sense of his loathsomeness once the gloves come off.
But what a production. The minor parts were cut from the same cloth as the leads: Nicolae Raiciu as the sacristan, John Arsenault's Spoletta and John Conlon's Sciarrone.
Act II, where Scarpia interrogates Tosca, was a killer: suspenseful, dire with atmosphere and top lighting that made Scarpia look very sinister. Director Stanley Garner spares nothing and it's just what it should be. For once there's no hokiness to the moment when Tosca hurls herself from the parapets. She falls backwards, letting gravity do its work.
The chorus is terrific too, and conductor Robert Tweten gets nothing but beautiful playing from the Vancouver Opera Orchestra.
This is a dream closing for an opera company, something that should get the subscriptions going for next year.

My New Macbook

2007-04-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

My new Macbook arrived yesterday, and I have a few first impressions I thought I'd share.

First, for the propeller heads, I got the white Macbook with the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Intel processor, 1GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive - in other words, I took all the default options. ALso comes with built in iSight camera, Bluetooth, wireless, firewire, USB, and a DVD burner. Full specs at the Apple site.

Second, I bought a Macbook both to complement my iMac and to have available to take with me wherever I go so I can work on my thesis papers. It will also allow me to surf the internet when my wife is using the iMac.

I would have bought a refurbished one because they're cheaper, but since none were available when I ordered, I used my student discount (there are some perks to being a grad student).

In strictly aesthetic terms, the laptop is very attractive. The white housing is made of a slightly opalescent hard plastic that looks like it will be quite durable. The unit is very light (a bonus for carrying around), and small - less than an inch thick! The 13.3" screen doesn't feel small and looks great.

One of the things Apple does well is think about what their end users need and therefore they put a lot of effort into design. The keyboard has a really nice tactile feel to it, and the touchpad is pretty nice although I prefer using an external mouse. Speaking of mice, Apple still uses the single button mouse concept in its design, so the touchpad only has a single button. Since I use a two button scroll-wheel mouse on the iMac, I'll be using one with the laptop whenever reasonable.

A cute and useful design feature is that the power cord connects with a magnetic clip - if the power cord is tripped over, it'll merely pull off without either destroying the power connection or hauling the laptop to the floor. Another nice touch is that there's an AC extension cord for the power adapter, although it requires pulling out the flip down power plug, which I could see losing.

The pleasant surprise came when I turned the laptop on. During the inital "welcome to your new Mac" process, it asked me if I had and existing Mac and if so if I wanted to synch it up with my current one. Well, yeah!

A few minutes later, after borrowing my existing iSight's firewire cable, my Macbook was busily transferring everything over from my iMac - applications, user accounts, music, photos, etc. This is the point where I discovered that I should have spent the extra money on a slightly larger hard drive. Once the initial transfer was complete about two hours later, I had to do some judicious file editing and another synch to get the rest of my applications over. On the other hand, there was a lot of data transferred over that I just don't need on my laptop! In the end, I have about 10G usable left on my 80G drive.

However, since the laptop was now synched and everything was transferred over, it behaves exactly like my desktop does and I didn't have to set up any preferences since that work was done a long time ago on the iMac.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with my purchase, and I think I'll be getting a lot of mileage out of the new laptop. All I need now is for the iSkin laptop case to arrive (UPS says tomorrow).

Feeling Great

2007-03-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

I mentioned about a month ago that I was going to work on my fitness goals, and I'm pleased to report that things are going well. Down 11lbs so far in about six weeks, only 24 more to go to where I was two years ago, and then a lot more to where I was nine years ago. Go me!

I decided not to do MetSyn and instead leveraged my membership at the YWCA since it's a first class facility and more importantly, easy for me to get to and from home given the other constraints that real life has for me, like the commute to work, day care, etc. So now in addition to my two spin classes, I've added two mornings of weights. This might become three times a week, although once the weather improves and more importantly, the sun rises early enough, I'll be cycling on weekends again.

I've been working with the absolutely brilliant, talented, and fabulous Lisa Wagner and she has put together a cracking workout for me. This morning while I we were chatting she was talking about her long term plan for my fitness goals and said she would start me on a program where, I would do "100 pushups, 100 crunches, 100 rows, and 100 step-ups, in an hour, and we'll start on that in about, hmmm... 4... 5..." and in the pause I inserted "months?"

"Weeks," was her reply.

Fantastic.

Luther Wright & the Wrongs

2007-03-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

I like a wide variety of music, and what's in vogue on my iPod varies on my mood.

Recently, I was over playing board games at a buddy's place and he puts on an album called Rebuild The Wall by Luther Wright & the Wrongs.

If you liked Pink Floyd's The Wall, imagine it done by a very talented bunch of country & bluegrass folks.

It's both really good and really funny at the same time. Y'all.

Playing With Numbers

2007-03-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

It's tax time, or will be soon, and so I've been collecting my stack of information slips.

One of the benefits I have at my company is an employee stock purchase plan. Similar to many companies, the company I work for allows employees to contribute some chunk of their base salary into a fund that is then spent quarterly buying stock for us at a 15% discount.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I sell my shares pretty much as soon as I can. It's usually 5-10 business days from the date of the stock purchase to the time it's in my stock account and accessible to me, so in the interim, the price has fluctuated somewhat.

Now, as everybody knows, when you sell a stock, you're taxed on the capital gains; but here's where the fun with numbers begins.

To contrive the example with nice round numbers, I bought something worth $100 for only $85, but paid income tax on the $15 difference, so the asset, from the tax man's point of view, is $100.

Thanks to this little peculiarity, on paper, for tax purposes, I almost lost money in 2006 on the stock market.

Financial math really appears like voodoo sometimes.

Free is a Very Good Price

2007-03-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have a KitchenAid stand mixer, one of the tilt-head kinds. I bought it about seven or maybe even eight years ago, and love it. Mostly I use it to knead bread dough, but I've also used it for:

making pasta (with the pasta roller attachment)
applesauce (with the fruit/veg strainer - no more peeling or coring apples required!)
cakes
whipping cream
cookie dough
grinding meat (with the grinder attachment)

It's a great kitchen appliance and while they're expensive, they're incredibly durable and well built.

If I've had a kvetch about mine, it's that the bowl is perhaps a little small for my usual bread dough batch. More often than not, it's fine, but sometimes the dough creeps up the dough hook and I have to stop and scrape.

For years I've been collecting Air Miles. Every once in a while I check to see if there are any rewards I'm willing to be parted from my points for, but a lot of the rewards haven't interested me, and despite the opportunity for "free flights" using points, you're still on the hook for all the taxes and surcharges and booking flights on points is a PITA (pain in the (_(_)).

However, just recently, they had the KitchenAid Professional 600 on in pearl grey. I thought about it and by the time I decided to act, they were gone. DOH! However, I've been keeping my eye out and lo, they now have them in white.

I've ordered one. 4600 air miles well spent! I'm looking forward to using it.

Marcello's on Commercial Drive

2007-03-06T23:49:00.000-08:00

Marcello's is an Italian restaurant on Commercial Drive. My wife was working late and so I thought a nice way to spend the evening would be to take my daughter, who's almost three, out to dinner after work. I thought of taking her to White Spot, which is a place she likes, but she wanted pizza (I did offer her the choice - pasta, sausages, or pizza), so I thought I'd try out Marcello's.

Marcello's offers a nice well laid out place, with plain but elegant tables. Along the wall of the open kitchen is an astounding wood oven where they bake the pizzas. It looks like a giant stylized face of the sun, with the mouth being where the pizzas go.

Once we were shown a table, we were given menus and left to deliberate. The menu has a nice selection of pizza and pasta as well as salads and some other main courses. It's obviously meant to cater to family style dining, where orders are shared amongst those at the table.

We ordered a mushroom pizza for her and a gnocchi for me. I also ordered a glass of the sangiovese ($8 was pricey for what I got), and a steamed milk for my sweet pea.

The steamed milk came way too hot and with no spoon. When I asked the hostess for a spoon, none came, and by the time toddler agitation was setting in, my waiter finally came by once more. I waved him over and he said "your dinner's coming!"

I expected dinner to take some time, after all this wasn't Domino's, but all I wanted was a spoon. What we got was one of those long handled dessert spoons. Argh.

Cardinal restaurant sin number one was committed next. My gnocchi arrived, but the pizza did not. Generally speaking, dinner time's pretty easy going, but now the promised dinner was not on the table and there was no way she was going to even try the pasta. By the time pizza finally came, she was past wanting to eat so we pretty much had to pack up and go home (although the leftovers will be delicious).

The food was fabulous though. I'd go back in a group any time. Alone with kid in tow on a week night would be a different story.

Ratings:
Service: 2/5
Ambiance: 3/5
Food: 7/10
Price: $$

Score: 12/20

Restaurant Reviews

2007-03-06T22:22:00.000-08:00

I think a lot about restaurants - I like to eat out, and when I do, I like to have a pleasant experience. While it's always about the food, ultimately, service and ambiance are also important.

I've decided that I'm going to have ratings with my reviews. They're completely subjective of course, since they ultimately reflect my likes and dislikes. However, the same rating for two places does not mean they're equivalent. For instance, if I were served a Risty's burger at Bishop's, it would still be a great burger, but for Bishop's it would probably be a 4 or 5 instead of an 8 or 9.

So on to the ratings...

Service: rated from 0 to 5.
Ambiance: rated from 0 to 5.
Food: rated from 0-10.
Price: rated from $ to $$$$.

What I'm looking for when I rate:

Service - essentially I want the staff to acknowledge my presence, make sure my food gets delivered on time, and if I'm dining with others, that we all get our food at the same time. Relatively speaking, my expectations for a diner are different than for an haute cuisine establishment.
Ambiance - this spans the gamut: cleanliness; decor; comfort.
Food - this one gets the most points since it's really the most important thing. My expectations depend on the kind of restaurant it is; the chicken noodle soup at a diner is not the same as of the consommé de volaille at a fancy French restaurant, but both could score an "8".
Price

$ means inexpensive. Most diners fit here.
$$ means about $20-25 per person. Most family restaurants like White Spot fit here.
$$$ means we're getting expensive. Ironically, most places I end up disappointed in fit in this price range.
$$$$ means bring your gold card. If it's got four $'s next to it, it had better earn a 16 or better.

A rating under 10 means I'm unlikely to eat there again.
10-12 means it's a decent place worth visiting.
13-15 means it's good and I'll go there happily.
15-17 means the place is great and I'll recommend it to others. I'm probably a regular.
18-20 is the creme de la creme. Highly recommended.

Timing is Everything

2007-03-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

Late last week, China had a stock market "correction" and took down most of the North American markets with it. This week the markets are still down.

I could have predicted this - after all, I had just invested in an index fund (XIU on the TSX). However, I'm only down 5% so far! I wish I had more cash in my stock account to buy more actually. Market overreactions are always a good time to buy.

Ariadne auf Naxos

2007-03-04T09:59:00.000-08:00

Last night we went to see the third production of the Vancouver Opera's 2006/07 season, Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.

It was a lovely production. The story follows the play within a play model. Two groups have been hired to perform for a duke at his estate - one is for the opera "Ariadne auf Naxos", a tragic tale taken from Greek myth, the other a comedia del arte farce, involving Zerbinetta and her four suitors.

Hilarity ensues as the duke, concerned that the entertainment be complete for the 9pm fireworks, orders that the two groups combine their performance. Surely, his majordomo contents, such a "minor" change should be easily accomplished.

Of the operas I've seen, this is probably my favorite production to date.

Speaking of which, I've seen...

Nabucco (Vienna, 2001)
Die Fledermaus (Vancouver, 2001)
Turandot (Vancouver, dress rehearsal, 2005)
Dialogues of the Carmelites (Vancouver, dress rehearsal, 2005)
Macbeth (Vancouver, 2006)
The Magic Flute (Vancouver, 2007)
Ariadne auf Naxos (Vancouver, 2007)

Soirée Alsacienne

2007-02-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Last night was the annual Soirée Alsacienne at Le Crocodile, one of my favorite restaurants here in Vancouver.

The menu, a very reasonable $58 prix fixe, included the following:

Tarte à l'Oignon
Consommé de Volaille au Foie Gras
Salade Frisée aux Foie de Volailles
Choucroute Garnie au Riesling
Mirabelle Sorbet
Feuilleté a la Poire Glacée Vanille Chaud Caramel

The tart wasn’t actually on the menu, but was served as an amuse-bouche. Onion tart has to be one of my favorite dishes.

The soup was really splendid. A rich full body and the small pieces of foie gras floating amongst the brunoise vegetables were full of flavour.

The salad was a huge hit with me – three beautifully crisp yet tender chicken livers surrounded a mound of escarole with a perfectly poached egg on time, garnished with tomato compote and sauced and dressed to perfection.

The choucroute was a marvel too. We took more than half of it home, as there was more food on those plates than we could reasonably (or even unreasonably) eat. Six kinds of meat atop some of the most subtly flavored and delicate choucroute I’ve eaten, including a Straßbourg sausage, a knackwurst, a smoked pork chop, a portion of pork belly, a very thick slice of smoked bacon, and a piece of pork hock. Steamed potatoes rounded out the overflowing plate.

The Mirabelle sorbet was delicious and enhanced by a little Mirabelle eau de vie poured on top.

Dessert was also sublime and simple. Thin slices of pear over a puff pastry base in a caramel sauce that was subtle and delicate, topped with honey-vanilla ice cream.

All of the above was accompanied by a bottle of 2002 Zind Humbrecht Riesling (Turckheim), and ultimately followed with a Siggolsheim Poire Williams as a digestif.

Le Crocodile continues to be one of my favorite dining experiences here in Vancouver.

Cat Surgery

2007-02-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

My cat is about fifteen years old, and for the past eight of them, has had a chronic constipation problem. a variety of medications and other nostrums have kept him more or less under control, but every eighteen months or so he needed to be taken to the vet to be, um, emptied.

It was a messy and expensive process, and as pleasant for the vet as it was for my wallet. However, the cat's a part of my family and whatever he needs, he gets.

Over the past ten weeks or so, he's been plugged up three times, the most recent being yesterday when I took him in again, and the vet and I agreed it was time - major surgery would be required, and a bowel resection was done on him to remove his colon.

The operation went well, the cat's in good shape, and he should be home tomorrow or Friday.

I can't help but think that if I were in a similar situation, I would probably have had to wait three months or more to get a similar surgery for myself given the state of waiting lists for surgical procedures. On the other hand, it also wouldn't cost around $3K...

Auction Fever

2007-02-25T20:27:00.000-08:00

I'm a fan of the Comedian Harmonists. I own a number of CD's of their music, and probably have most of their repertoire in my collection.

I check eBay once in a while to browse and when I do, I always check if there's anything new under "comedian harmonists". Just recently, the autographed photo below was offered for sale.

Comedian Harmonists
(from left: Robert Biberti, Erich Collin, Erwin Bootz, Roman Cycowski, Harry Frommermann, Ari Leschnikoff)

The photo is well known - it's the one you'll find in Wiki for instance. An autographed copy would be very rare indeed. The photo was being sold through eBay's "Live Auctions" by a company in Ohio. They had a pre-auction estmate of $75-100 with an opening bid of $40, so I put in a modest bid (considering US$ exchange, shipping, my current budget for frivolous purchases, and the 22.5% buyers premium).

Apparently I need not have bothered to strain myself - the winning bid? $380.

Ouch.

Pedalling for MS

2007-02-20T10:57:00.000-08:00

Last August, I rode in my first ever bike tour to sponsor multiple sclerosis. It was a 60km bicycle ride, and I did it in 2h49m.

It's an annual fundraiser for MS and I managed to raise just over $1,000.

This year, I've signed up again, and I want to beat both my time from last year, and also beat my fundraising total.

So, if you're willing to make a charitable donation (you get the tax receipt, I get the exercise) to MS, please click on this link to the the MS Bike Tour and consider donating $25 or more.

Thanks!

Appreciating Schoenberg

2007-02-18T16:32:00.000-08:00

One of the books I bought as research material for my Kandinsky paper is called Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider, which is actually a catalog from a museum exhibit, but it includes five lengthy essays on the two men, plus a bonus CD that has performances of Schoenberg's music that was played at the 1911 concert that enraptured Kandinsky.

I knew very little of Schoenberg up to this point, but I did know that he had a reputation of having music that was cerebral - that is, if Mozart is pleasant and easy to listen to, Schoenberg is something you need to think about. A lot of his music was, at the time, highly experimental, atonal, and he also dabbled with a 12 note scale rather than the standard 8.

In short, I found his music remarkably likable. It is cerebral, but I quite enjoyed it. When I mentioned this to my wife, she expressed mild surprise but once she thought about it, "but then I forget that you really like [Tangerine Dream and other, mostly German, electronic/synthesiser composers like Klaus Schulze]".

And that's when the penny dropped - Schoenberg definitely fits into that mold in the musical continuum, in terms of cerebral sound.

At least for me.

Going from Gold to Silver

2007-02-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

So the medico my doc sent me too runs something called a Met-Syn program - short for Metabolic Syndrome. My only risk factor is the weight, all my other indicators (bloodwork = excellent, blood pressure = perfectly normal, cardiovascular response = excellent, strength and coordination = fine, etc etc... I'm the fittest fat man I know...).

Their schtick is they have a very extensive assessment (at $250, thankfully fully billable to extended benefits, it had better be) and then they have you join "the program". Now, the program is, looking at it from a detached point of view, working out at their mini-gym three times a week while they put you through an all cardio workout and keep tabs of everything and monitor your progress with the assistance of a heart rate monitor.

One of the reasons I posted my little comment about time management myths the other day is that I don't see being able to get to the facility (only 10km away, but in about the most inconvenient place you could imagine relative to work, daycare, and my home) without either sucking up that 90 minutes of family time in the evening, or making it exceedingly awkward to get back home in time to take my daughter to her wonderful family daycare; said morning program is from 6:30-7:30am.

So, huzzah, there's a "silver" program that's only twice a week. I said I'd try it, and my first morning's tomorrow - but, and this is a big but, if all the workout at their facility turns out to be is a glorified cardio workout attuned to my key heart rate on ye olde heart rate monitor, then I'm not going to stick with it - I have a YWCA membership, and if all that I really need to do is go more often, then so be it.

After all, I know what all my key heart rate target zones are, I know my food plan works (restarted last week and lost 3lbs already) and my solution of brining lots of fruit to the office to nosh on instead of the endless parade of donuts, cookies, pizza etc works brilliantly.

It's not the money for the program - between my wife and I the extended health benefits will reimburse me for it - it's the time and aggravation to get there, especially when I can get to the Y, work out for an hour, and be home by 7:45am. I can't do that with the MetSyn program.

I'll go tomorrow, but if it doesn't work out in terms of getting me home on time, then I'll have to persuade them to either work out something with me where they can advise and monitor me via the heart rate monitor records and checking in regularly.

If not, oh well. It was still time and money well spent, and knowing what I need to do is more than half the battle. I also know what supports I need, and I can find those as needed (the YW has lots of personal trainers who can advise me, not as well as the MetSyn guys, but a good coach is a good coach).

Time Management Myths

2007-02-13T09:40:00.000-08:00

I was comparing notes with my friend at work about so-called work-life balance. We're in similar situations - married, one child, both parents working.

Let me add also that one area that is always highlighted on my performance evaluations is time management, as in, I'm exceedingly good at it (or at least that's the perception my manager has).

So why is it that M and I are both perpetually feeling gassed? Well, I did a time inventory to see what my "time vampires" might be, and here's what it comes down to.

In my house, we get up around 6:30am (I get up at 5 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go to the Y). By the time we get everyone showered and fed and dressed to go, we're out the door by 8. I drop my daughter off with her wonderful family daycare people and get to the office around 8:30 most days. I'm here until about 5. I pick up my daughter on the way home and if we don't have a quick shopping stop we're home by 5:30. My wife gets in around the same time.

Then we have dinner (I do 99.44% of the cooking in our household), usually around 6:30, and then after dinner until 7:30-8:00ish is family time.

After family time, the bedtime routine starts - story, bath, pj's, more stories, sleep. My wife cuddles our daughter to sleep at night, and if she's lucky, she's out by 9:30. I usually catch up on email or zone out with internet surfing in the interim, although I try to make more productive use of that time (like, reading the Kandinsky-Schoenberg correspondences for my thesis paper).

So, between 9:30 and betime, usually 11pm unless we're really lucky, my darling wife and I are doing domestica - dishes, laundry, lunches for the next day, giving the cat his pills, etc...

I'd manage my free time much better - if I actually had any.

Plus ca change

2007-02-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, about December 2003, I developed what I called the R Food Plan. It worked. In 12 months I'd lost 56lbs. At the peak of its efficiency 14 months after I'd started, I'd lost 60lbs.

Well, I wish I could say that they'd stayed off.

Last week I went for a physical and my doctor read me the riot act. And, well, I deserved it. Of the 60 I'd taken off, 35 had come back in the past 24 months.

But at least I'm still 25 down from where I started. And quite frankly, given the stress of the past 24 months, I'm surprised I didn't put on more. See, when I'm under a lot of stress, I eat. And it's not that I eat more helpings of terrine de foie gras at Le Crocodile or twice as much roast chicken and vegetables at home - no, I reach to the common table behind my cubicle for some of the endless parade of bagels, cookies, doughnuts, pizza lunches and other junk.

Still, last week was a needed wake up call. I've always struggled with my weight, but sticking to my food plan means I keep my weight steady, and if I exercise more than the twice a week I always do, I actually lose weight.

So this is me saying that I plan to get the gut back off. My doctor sent me off to a medico who specializes in putting together programs; I can get professional advice and whatever additional support I need. Knowing what I need to do (stick to the RFP and exercise at least as much as I currently do if not more) is a good start, but nothing beats having a "coach" who can help you keep accountable to yourself.

I have a long ways to being as fit as I was when I moved to Vancouver in February of 1998 (the fittest I'd ever been, but I' was a total gym junkie at the time), but getting back to where I was 24 months ago would be a good start.

Aloha

2007-02-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

Last week I was in Hawaii on a much needed vacation. My parents took me and my family on a cruise with them.

Hawaii was wonderful. I got a tan, the weather was gorgeously sunny (I'm obviously heliotropic).

My favorite island was Kauai - there are chickens everywhere - beautiful Bantams. It was very amusing to be splashing around in a lagoon full of beautiful tropical fish and then hearing cock-a-doodle-doo!

We were on a seven day cruise with Norweigan Cruise Lines. While I can't say I'm sold on the cruise experience, it was a fun way to see what Hawaii has to offer.

Applause for Steve Jobs

2007-02-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

I love my iPod (the first piece of tech in years that I've been really excited about) and one complaint I've heard from people is tht they don't like them because they can only use an iPod for music they buy off iTunes.

Well, Steve Jobs writes a very interesting open letter on Apple's website on this very topic - here's the link: http://www.apple.com/ca/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Mozart and Well Beyond

2007-02-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

I recently ordered Mozart and Well Beyond from CD Baby.

There are a lot of classical discs out there spanning the entire continuum of bad to great, but much of the time you either get a greatest hits compilation or the insert-generic-orchestra-here plays insert-popular-symphony here.

This CD is splendid on several levels.

First, Sweeney is obviously a passionate devotee of his craft. His playing is rich and nuanced and really brings the emotions of his selected pieces to the fore.

Second, Sweeney really did his listeners a service by including some modern compositions along with his beautifully rendered Mozart piece.

Third, it's lovely to see a CD where the focus is on the bassoon; the bassoon has an unmistakable sound, but it's not very often the central instrument.

I would highly recommend this CD to two kinds of people: the first is the classical devotee looking for something different (bassoon Mozart); the second would be those who want to expand their listening experience beyond what is traditionally available (Sharman, Mozetich, Welsh).

CD Baby, I Love You Too

2007-01-20T20:33:00.000-08:00

Now that I'm firmly a member of the iPod generation and my collection is mostly on my Mac's iTunes library, I listen to music more than I have in years, but at the same time don't often buy a CD any more.

I usually buy one or two at the Vancouver Folk Festival if there's an act that particularly inspires me; that didn't happen in 2006, but I bought 4 the year before. I'll also always buy the latest from a few select performers whenever they put out something new, Al Stewart for instance.

Beyond that, between iTunes, my increasing interest in classical music (bred in part from my academic pursuits, in part by my taking up bel canto singing) and my general disinterest in the vast majority of what's playing on the top 40 airwaves these days, I might buy a few CDs a year.

Rodney Sharman, my favorite professor, is also a composer - indeed, it is better stated that he is a composer who also teaches at SFU as a sessional instructor. When I talked to him about my papers the other night, I mentioned that through various circumstances I had not yet managed to hear anything he'd done, including missing a premiere of a flute and piano piece on the 12th when everyone in my house was down with some bug or another.

He asked me if I liked Mozart, which for the most part I do, and recommended a CD called "Mozart and Well Beyond", recorded by Michael Sweeney, bassoonist for the Toronto Symphony. In addition to a Mozart piece, it includes three modern pieces, including one by Rodney. Following all the links to purchase the CD took me to the site for CD Baby.

The transaction was completed with the usual internet shopping efficiency and I thought little more of it until I got my email to confirm the order. First off, the from name was "CD Baby Loves [L'Etat]". The top part of the message was the usual transaction log (item, price, net total), but then the rest of it was brilliant:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with
sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure
it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over
the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money
can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party
marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of
Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in
our private CD Baby jet on this day, Thursday, January 18th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all
exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little CD store with the best new independent music
phone: 1-800-448-6369 email: cdbaby@cdbaby.com
http://cdbaby.com

Well, that was probably one of the funniest things I've read in a long time, and it led me to go back to the site to check them out in more detail.

They have a great collection of stuff based on my idle browsing. I particularly like the Flavor section of the site, which has suggestions based on an astonishing array of fun categories. For instance, under the "Match Your Mood" rubric, they have a category for "Sick of all Normal Music", described as "Sick of music? Tired of verse/chorus pop songs, major/minor keys, 4/4 rhythms, or ANYthing predictable? I know the feeling. These CDs defy any expectations, and blow your mind wide open."

This is a site after my own heart, and I'll definitely be shopping there again. They're also down in Portland, OR, so now I have two reasons to go (the other being Powell's Books).

Focus

2007-01-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

One of the features of the "new" version of blogger is it tells you how many posts your blog has. This will be number 100. So, in honor of #100, some meandering chat about goals and positivity.

This morning at the gym, the cycling class instructor asked us about New Year's resolutions, and mentioned she's already broken two. I had to chuckle a little, because I remember the last time I made a New Year's resolution - it was 1978, and the resolution was to no longer make New Year's resolutions. So far, I've stuck to that quite successfully. After all, if something's worth doing, then why not resolve to do it regardless of what the calendar says?

Recently, I took a one-day "How to give presentations" course through work. The instructor, Bruna, was fabulous. She added me to her mailing list and sent out a link to a wonderful article she wrote on the power of thinking positively.

The article brought to mind my "life plan" document, which was the product of a lot of introspection and hard work during a philosophy class I took in the fall of 2003.

My life plan gives me focus. It's not something etched in stone, it's just an electronic document that I've printed out and I carry it with me. Every once in a while, I'll pull it out and have a look - sometimes it's to remind me what I've written down as important, sometimes to make little edits or notes. I update it once in a while as goals I've set for myself have either been completed or have dropped off my personal list of ThingsIHopeToAccomplish(tm).

Now, I'm not going to share my life plan per se, but I will share the elements that put it all together. It's a two page document (one double sided page).

The top left has a photo of me. It happens to be from last April when I was on business trip in Paris enjoying a moment in the sun at the Rodin museum. To the right is a paragraph that I would describe as my global outlook on life - it's quite positive (and for those who know me well, that should come as no surprise).

Following that is a statement of my intrinsic values. What I think makes me, well, me!

Those two things are actually the hardest parts of the entire document. It requires that you do that navel gazing introspection that most of us are absolutely loathe to do. The mirror isn't always pretty.

The next section is the meat of the document. It lists my currently most important goals in a variety of categories. Before listing any goals, one need to do a personal "inventory" for each category. It's quite possible you don't have any specific goals in a given category at the moment.

The categories, briefly, are...

moral goals - what kind of life do you want to lead, ethically speaking?
spiritual goals - do you believe in a higher power (like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, say)?
love goals - are you happier single or in a relationship, and what should that look like?
friendship goals - what kinds of people do you want as friends, and what kind of friend are you?
education goals - formal or informal, what makes you want to fire up your brain?
career goals - what kind of work do you want to do? and what's holding you back?
leisure goals - what do you do for fun that lets you recharge your batteries and gives you a sense of accomplishment?
health goals - super fit or couch potato? Or somewhere in between?
economic goals/consumption level - do you crave endless amounts of money or are you happy with less? are you filling the world with more krap from Wal*Mart or do you have more minimalist expectations around stuff?
place-of-residence goals - happy with your condo, or do you want a mansion with servants?
political goals - vote? run for office? speak out about issues you're passionate about?
autonomy goals - leader or part of the herd?

My goals have shifted over time. Some have been accomplished and have been replaced by other things. Some have been dropped as I've decided to do something else instead. Keeping a written list has been an interesting experience. There's an immense satisfaction in crossing off accomplishments, and an equally immense one in saying "phooey! I don't want to do that after all."

The next section is "my rules for sane living". I only have seven, and I should probably edit them down to four.

Finally, I have a long list of things that bring me pleasure, including simple things like eating a ripe pear from the tree in my back yard. I have about half a dozen categories.

It's a great tool. Even I feel like I'm in a rut sometimes. Focus is a good thing.

In closing, a great quote, courtest of Bruna:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?" - Marianne Williamson

I have that printed and posted at my desk at work.

Ready?

2007-01-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

Simon Fraser University, where I am a grad student at the moment, has decided to change their crest. The current crest is over on the right.

For various reasons, they are taking out the crosses on either side of the book and replacing them with more books; the new crest will have three books across the top. According to an article on the 27th on canada.com, "Gill [VP external relations] explained the crosses, combined with the fact the university is named in honour of a person (explorer Simon Fraser), has led ''foreign cultures'' to mistakenly conclude the university is ''a private religious university, as opposed to a provincial institution.''

For my part, I don't mind the change. However, while I was dining solo at Risty's yesterday, I picked up the Friday Province and was browsing through idly when I saw a letter to the editor (this is where I learned about the planned change to the crest).

The letter, written by someone claiming to be a current student at SFU, was of the usual knee-jerk reaction to any form of change, with the opening line of "SFU's mandate is as a provincial learning institution, and it has been primarily funded by provincial dollars"; but what amused me the most was the notion that the change dishonored the entire current crest, right down to the latin motto.

This is where I had to laugh out loud. The motto on the SFU crest says "Nous Sommes Pret".

I don't think the writer is "pret" to graduate yet.

Pointless Quizzes Amuse Me V

2006-12-19T21:29:00.000-08:00

You Are Best Described By...

Farbstudie Quadrate

By Wassily Kandinsky

What Famous Work of Art Are You?

Things My Prof Told Me

2006-12-19T14:53:00.000-08:00

After taking six courses, there are three ways to finish your MA in Liberal Studies at SFU. First is to take one more elective and then a graduation seminar, known as the "capstone" course. Second is to do a major project; it must be academically based, but can (and has) take many forms. Third and final is to write to extended thesis papers (25 plus pages each). These latter two options require approval of your proposed project/papers.

When I first started GLS, I had planned all along to do the coursework and go the capstone route, but this semester just past, I thought I'd see about writing two papers instead.

As it happens, my Avant Garde prof is also head of the department, and so I met with her last night to discuss my possible papers.

Things my prof told me:

she usually doesn't encourage students to got the papers route; in fact, she paid me a high compliment, saying that she wished all her students would write as well and clearly as I did. She thinks my writing two papers would be great.
she thinks my Kandinsky paper (that I wrote for the course) would be a fine starting point for one of my thesis papers. Furhter, she said that Kandinsky is a hard artist to understand and that I seem to really comprehend what he was all about.
she would like to see my Kandinsky paper published once it's done, even it's "only" (her wording) for the department's journal, but the implication is she would like to see it in an academic journal somewhere.

She also said that she wants me to be done by the end of 2007. Well, if all goes according to plan, I should be able to do that. One paper on Kandinsky, and one on Death in Venice, and we're off to the races.

Pointless Quizzes Amuse Me IV

2006-12-19T10:41:00.000-08:00

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher.
You'd make a talented professor or writer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

Coffee

2006-11-30T09:44:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the end week three of "no more coffee" for me. On my trip back from Hattiesburg/New Orleans, I drank a lot of coffee on the plane. And then the next morning with breakfast, I had two large mugs. And then when we went shopping, we stopped in at our favourite coffee shop, and I had a cappucino.

And I felt absolutely rotten. Over-jittered, nauseous... It was bad.

So I gave up morning coffee. And aside from a few minor withdrawal headaches the first few days, I've been just fine. It's not the caffeine - I've been drinking lots of tea. I suspect the acidity of coffee and I just don't mix well anymore.

I haven't completely abandoned coffee, but it's a treat drink as opposed to a regular beverage now. And that works fine for me.

Pointless Quizzes Amuse Me III

2006-11-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

You scored as Storyteller. The Storyteller is in it for the plot: the sense of mystery and the fun of participating in a narrative that has the satisfying arc of a good book or movie. He enjoys interacting with well-defined NPCs, even preferring antagonists who have genuine motivations and personality to mere monsters. To the Storyteller, the greatest reward of the game is participating in a compelling story with interesting and unpredictable plot threads, in which his actions and those of his fellow characters determine the resolution.

With apologies to Robin Laws.

Storyteller

80%

Character Player

60%

Casual Gamer

55%

Tactician

50%

Weekend Warrior

50%

Specialist

40%

Power Gamer

20%

What RPG Player (Not Character) Type Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

A Night at the Opera

2006-11-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first of the 2006/07 season of the Vancouver Opera, and we went to see Verdi's Macbeth.

It was an absolutely wonderful production. They used some "holographic" display technology for the sets to wonderful effect (the assassination of Banquo in particular stands out for me), the orchestra played splendidly, and the lead bass-baritone playing Macbeth, Greer Grimsley, was fantastic - he had an aria in the fourth act which generated a roar of spontaneous applause.

At the end of the show, when everyone was taking their curtain calls, even the orchestra stood up and applauded Grimsley.

A fantastic opening night, and a most excellent start to the season.

On an amusing note, it's been snowing here in Vancouver almost constantly since about 5pm yesterday, and the Skytrain downtown was packed solid both to and from the opera, as not only was there a Canucks game on, but also the delayed Rolling Stones concert.

The snow doesn't look like it's going to be stopping any time soon either.

Shostakovich

2006-11-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

CBC Radio 2 has been playing a lot of Shostakovich in celebration of the composer's centenary (he was born in 1906).

He was rather prolific, despite living under a repressive regime in the USSR. The state had rather specific ideas as to what was acceptable and not, much like the Nazis shutting down the Comedian Harmonists for producing music that wasn't in keeping with the atmosphere patriotic fervor they were hoping to engender among the masses.

Shostakovich has arguably produced some of the best 20th Century classical music. He's certainly one of the most prolific.

My favourite piece is Waltz 2 from his Jazz suite #2.

Cassoulet

2006-11-21T17:12:00.000-08:00

I love cassoulet. It's a great dish, especially at this time of year.

It's also a dish that's both easy and hard to make. Easy because no one step is difficult. Indeed, as recipes go, it's among the easier of the classics. Hard because you need about three days to assemble everything. Not literally, but rather "day one, do these tasks, day two do those tasks, day three do a few last things and throw together and cook".

Fortunately, here in Vancouver we have the Oyama Sausage Company, an old school charcuterie deli and every year around this time they have their "Festival du Cassoulet". You pre-order, they make as many as they get ordered, you pick them up. You get a nice large tray for $12.99. Feeds two very hungry people, or four people for dinner with other things.

And looking at the ingredients list, I can barely make it myself for less money.

Delicious!

Pointless Quizzes Amuse Me II

2006-11-20T13:38:00.000-08:00

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Glamour II

2006-11-05T21:06:00.000-08:00

I'm safely back home. The rest of the business trip unfurled nicely.

I managed to get about 5 hours of sleep each night, mostly due to insomnia induced by time zone changes and unfamiliar surroundings. The beds in hotels sure aren't as comfortable as the ones at home (with the exception of the Peabody in Memphis, which had a most astonishingly comfortable bed).

I had a leisurely breakfast the next morning at the hotel buffet, making eggs "benedict" out of biscuits and sausage gravy and the over easy eggs I ordered from the waiter.

The sales guy and my colleague arrived at the site around 9:30am and we spent the next 5 hours straight with them - it was time well spent, and very productive. We headed back to the hotel, checked out, and around 4, managed to find a place that had been highly recommended to us - a barbecue joint called "Leatha's".

Wow, best barbecue ever. The ribs were smoky and tender, the sauce delicious, and those were defnitely contenders for the best baked beans I've ever had.

Around 5pm, we were on our way to New Orleans.

New Orleans is a fun town, even post-Katrina. All the street signs are still warped funny from the winds, and there are signs of wind damage throughout the town.

But Bourbon Street is still full of bars, "gentlemen's clubs", and every bar has a take out window so you can carry your tipple of choice down the street with you. I also had the obligatory beignets and coffee at Cafe du Monde, where the service is almost as bad as the beignets are good.

I did manage to find a non-cheesy-touristy gift shop in the French quarter and bought a couple of souvenirs. A quiet night in the hotel and the next morning we had a couple of hours to wander about.

New Orleans by day is as pretty as it is seedy by night. I had a mufulletta sandwich for breakfast, which I regretted as we later passed the famed "Central Grocery", which is the original. Oh well, next time. Not that one can't make a good mufulletta oneself.

We got to the airport very early, but our flight was on time and it was a leisurely wait. The flight home was nice and quiet and routine, and I was back home in time to tuck my daughter into bed at 8:30pm.

Time away from home: 63 hours
Time in transit to/from airports or on planes: 22hours
Time in transit to/from Hattiesburg (which has no airport): 6 hours
Time with customer: 5 hours
Time enjoying New Orleans: 6 hours

All in all a much more relaxing trip than the last time.

Glamour baby

2006-11-01T21:10:00.000-08:00

Well, since my last "business travel is glamourous" post went over so well, another installment...

Today, 5am, get up.
5:30am call cab
6:08am arrive at airport
6:10am have filled in customs form and enter interminable lineup #1
6:50am clear customs lineup and enter security lineup. Attempt to persuade the "first class" lineup harpy that my 7:23 flight is in jeopardy due to long lineup met with "you'll make it"
7:20am clear security after security staff manage to avoid potential national security risk by confiscating and discarding my shaving gel as the container moderately exceeds the "rules"
7:24am sprint to gate along with other LAX bound passengers and make plane just so.
10:20am land in LAX at gate 82. Run to gate 71 as flight to New Orleans is already boarding.
11:15am plane leaves 45 minutes late due to replacement of switch in cockpit.
6:15pm arrive in New Orleans (Central time zone)
6:40pm arrive at Hertz rental counter where once again they have manage to cock up my reservation.
7:40pm colleague who joined me in LAX and I stop in Picayune, MS for dinner.
9:05pm after waiting almost an hour for pizza and wings (hello?) finally get back on road.
9:30pm arrive at hotel

It's 11:12pm local tme now. Who knows when I'll manage to get to sleep. I'll fill in the rest of the schedule tomorrow, but it looks like this time we'll get to spend 3 hours with the customer...

Singing Along

2006-10-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

Inspired in no small part by the opera course I took, I started taking bel canto lessons from Gary (http://www.zellermusic.com/) last June.

It's been tremendous fun. I have a slightly better than two octave tenor range, really good breath control, and lousy pronunciation. It's not actually that bad, but it's something that needs to be learned. What I do have trouble with is timing. I have incredibly good imitative skills, but I can't read music very well, so while I know that on paper that note is a whole note or a sixteenth, singing it is a different matter altogether.

Gary, like me, is German, and so we work way too hard when we're together! We complement each other very nicely and get along extremely well, and most importantly we have a lot of fun. We often run over our allotted hour as the time just flies by.

One thing I appreciate about Gary's teaching style is he has no interest in teaching me many songs, but rather in teaching me to sing correctly. So far, my repertoire (so to speak) includes Caro mio ben, Sebben crudele, and most of Amarilli mia bella; we've set that one aside for the time being to start on "O Holy Night" in time for Christmas.

My wife has often despaired of me and Christmas, as I can be quite curmudgeonly about the season (mostly because I tend to completely ignore it until after my birthday, which is almost mid-December); now she gets to enjoy me releasing my inner tenor. I'll try not to drown out the rest of the singalong party we'll have this year.

O Holy Night was originally composed in French, but Gary only has it in English. That and he wants to get me singing in English as a change of pace from the so far exclusively Italian that we've been doing.

English is really a horrible language to sing in. Italian is wonderful, French and German are both good, but English... bah!

Gary has a nice future list of fun songs that will be added to my repertoire in time - the aria from Martha, the Volga Lied, the flower song from Carmen, die Forelle, and others. As long as I'm having fun, I'll keep taking lessons.

Graduate School

2006-10-30T13:18:00.000-08:00

It seems that my blogging interest waxes and wanes, but sometimes I have a few moments and the right topic arrives.

I'm currently taking a course on the Avant Garde, and it's unfolding well. It is in most respects a good course. We're looking at both art and literature of the period, and the first half of our weekly sessions is art, and the second literature.

I'm mildly disappointed that the prof has decided to give us a lecture style presentation on the art. I would have preferred to hear what my fellow classmates would have had to present about the art. The second half discussions are far more interesting because the scheduled presenter discusses the literature and then we have a proper seminar.

However, I have my two paper topics under control, although I'm behind schedule in getting them written - the deadline is the 28th of November, which is not that far away.

Several of us in the class have taken to visiting Steamworks after class, most of them from my cohort. We were chatting about what we were planning to do to finish, and during this conversation, I had an epiphany...

Neither of the January course offerings really grab me - I was contemplating the merits of the seminar on Madness Self and Society over the one on War and Society.

The epiphany was this - I should take a directed studies course from my favorite GLS prof.

He was a guest lecturer for one session in the very first course I took - he talked about Verdi's opera Otello; his passion about music rubbed off on me.

I took his course on opera last fall, and loved every minute of it. Indeed, I got my paper back and for the first time ever in my academic history took the notes and comments and revised it! I'm even considering submitting it (in a slightly revised form) for publication in an academic journal.

He a guest lecturer again this semester, talking about Debussy, Schopenauer and Stravinsky in the context of the Avant Garde.

So, I emailed him that very same epiphanous evening, and he said he'd be delighted to do something with me, provided it would be next summer, and that I get the department to ok it (he's a sessional). They did. Done and done. Win-win.

The icing on the cake is that he's teaching a course on 18th century music next fall, so it will be a fitting penultimate course in my GLS program (the final course being the graduating seminar in January 2008).

One of the things I enjoy most about school is the interaction of the live classroom. I've done directed studies before in my undergrad degree. I had my favorite philosophy professor run a one person section of Workplace Ethics for me, and my French professor allowed me to do a third year French literature course independently of the class. I've also done online courses.

However, working one-on-one with someone who is not only passionate and knowledgeable about their subject matter, but can bring out those same strong emotions in me about what they're teaching is an opportunity not to be missed. Especially in a program that is both interdisciplinary and "is designed to satisfy wider needs".

Now if only I can persuade the department to have him teach the graduating seminar too... :-)

Global Warming

2006-10-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

It's interesting how when something gets a price tag associated with it, suddenly there's interest.

I refer to this morning's screaming headlines that global warming will cost the global economy on the order of $7 trillion dollars.

Global warming is an interesting phenomenon in itself. If you listen to the vast majority of climate scientists, it's real and it's happening and it's going to have enormous impacts on all life on the planet.

On the flip side, governments and business leaders have been doing their level best to pay lip service to the problem, and often spend more time pooh-poohing the whole notion of global warming.

Leaving aside the dire "the sky is falling" predictions aside, last June an article appeared in Nature discussing climate change. Some scientists from ten European nations took a very deep core sample of the Antarctic ice allowing them to look at the earth's climate over the past 740,000 years.

The findings are quite telling. There have been several cold periods (ice ages) interspersed with warmer periods. A natural ebb and flow.

To wit:

The analysis has shown that the earth has undergone eight ice ages in the last 740,000 years – periods when the climate was much colder than it is today. These ice ages were interrupted by eight warmer “interglacial” periods. During the last 400,000 years, these warm periods have had a climate similar to that of today. Before that, the warm periods were cooler but lasted longer.

Scientists can now draw parallels with earlier episodes of climate change. Without the interference of humans, the warm period we are now experiencing, which began 12,000 years ago, should continue for at least another 15,000 years.

Now, one could argue that we're merely in part of one of those warmer trends. But, and here's the rub, it seems that human activity is having some effect:

Analysis of the air bubbles in the ice reveals variations in the mixture of various gases in the atmosphere over time. Preliminary research indicates that today’s carbon dioxide levels are higher than at any other time in the past 440,000 years.

So based on this snippet of information, it seems that we are contributing to global warming, but also that we're about mid-point of a natural warm/cool cycle of global climate.

The question then becomes what we should do about it. On the one hand, it seems that the climate will continue to warm up regardless of what we do.

However, it seems unreasonable that we do nothing. Pollution of our environment affects us all, and will also affect our descendants.

So, while Kyoto as written is probably a bad idea (conceptually good, but the notion of "buying" emission credits from poor countries is asinine), continued research and development of cleaner energy and alternatives to oil and other carbon emitting resources, combined with increasingly stringent regulation of allowable emissions, is a very good one.

Off and Running

2006-09-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes not only can you not win, you can't even lose decently.

But that's just how my week's been going.

My new class is off to a roaring start and even though I feel behind
already, it's just the nature of the beast when there's so much reading
to do and only three hours a week in class to discuss it.

Tonight's class was, alas, a bit of a disappointment for me - I was
supposed to present (10-15 minutes) on the Impressionists and
Post-Impressionists, probably my favourite art period in what led into
the Avant Garde, but the prof spoke at length about art history up to
and including the Impressionists and then we were out of time and we
moved on to William James and his discussion of stream of
consciousness.

So, I suppose in some sense it's not so bad since I'm off the hook, so
to speak, for the rest of the semester since everyone else has
something to present on or about. I at least still have all my
presentation notes handy and did learn a lot in the preparation of
them.

The class on the Avant Garde has a nice tight focus - art and
literature. The Avant Garde encompasses so many facets of the first
half of the 20th century that it would be a poor effort to try and get
through it all in a one semester seminar.

The rest of the evening whooshed by for me too, as it seemed I never
had the mot juste at the right time, or when I did, someone else had
something else to say and I couldn't get a word in edgewise. There's
always next week.

Besides, now I can focus on writing my two papers.

Sweetness

2006-07-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

I watched the Germany-Italy semifinal of the 2006 World Cup yesterday. The game was played in Dortmund, where Germany's national team had never lost (12-0-1). On the flip side of the coin, Italy had never lost to Germany in a World Cup match.

Obviously, one streak was going to end. Unfortunately, it was Germany's unbeaten streak in Dortmund, but kudos to Italy for the win late in the extra time.

For today's semifinal, I don't have any strong preference as to who wins, although if France go through, I'll be cheering for them in the final.

My friend S opined the other day that he wished every soccer match could end in a draw. When I inquired further, he said that he would like to see people satisfied with good play and that the draw would ensure that nobody would be crushed when their team lost.

After the match, I had the time to run a few errands and walked along the Drive, where many Italian fans were still hooting and hollering with joy and euphoria.

I think that my friend S is wrong. The fact Germany lost was sad, but they did a lot better than almost anyone predicted, and I was proud of them. I think it's far better to have a life where there are great moments of joy as well as sadness.

In the movie version of Mark Salzman's Iron & Silk, Mark experiences a moment of wisdom, beautifully expressed as "you have to eat bitter to taste sweet."

The Glamour of Business Travel

2006-06-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

My friend WCW once opined that she felt business travel added to the glamour of a job, and so I'm posting this for her.

I was sent to New Hampshire to do a customer presentation and had myself booked to fly out on the Wednesday, spend the day at the customer site on Thursday and to come home Friday.

Here's the summary...

Tuesday evening: Pack.

Wednesday morning:
- 0-dark-thirty, get up and have a shower.
- 6:30am the cab arrives
- 7:00am I'm at the airport. The check-in is painless and I've of course packed so I only have carry on luggage. I've also travelled enough now that I always get United's "Seating 1", which means I am in the first batch allowed to get on the plane to fight it out for overhead luggage space. I used to resent those people who brought a bag/briefcase and a small suitcase, but I'm one of them now, especially after the time my luggage unsurprisingly didn't make the five minute connection I once had in Salt Lake City en route to Dothan, AL.
- Then comes the customs lineup. It's essentially random who you get, and I was in the lineup for the CustomsAgentFromHell(tm). The lady in front of me was getting a grilling and was even having her fingerprints taken and photo taken. By good fortune, the customs agent in the next line over was free and waved me over and wished me bon voyage and I was on my way.
- My flight left Vancouver more or less on time and we arrived in Chicago, where my connection was supposed to be at 4:10pm. Now, when I arrived, the departure board said "on time!". Since this meant I had a short connection, the colleage I had run into on the flight out and I went to a fast food place for what was lunch for us. It was one of those moments where had we known, we'd have braved the lineup to get into Chili's. As it transpired, my flight was moved from gate F14 to F12, but still on time. Then back to F14 (no announcement this time), at 5:30. Then back to F12. Then back to F14. Then around the time it would be close to boarding, the announcement comes "It's been moved to gate E3!". Grrrr...
- We didn't even get off the ground until 6:10. This meant that, unlike the plan I'd had in my head, I arrived after dark, too late to get dinner anywhere, but there was a grocery store open not far from my hotel. Since this particular hotel had a kitchen in each room, I picked up something to make myself as well as cereal etc for breakfast. It's after midnight by the time I get to bed. Fortunately my suit survived the trip unscathed and I didn't need to iron it.

Thursday: o-dark-thirty... I awaken to NPR on the radio alarm clock. I like NPR.
- 7:00am, which is 4am as far as my body's concerned, my sales guy comes to pick me up for the hour plus drive to the hospital we're visiting.
- 8:30am, we arrive and they set us up in the board room where we'll be presenting.
- 9:00am, about four people are late for the presentation and we get the go-ahead at 9:15. I give a decent presentation (could have been a little more polished, but it went ok) and we have extensive Q&A with the customer.
10:30am, the competition arrives and the customer demonstrates just how bush league they are by letting them in and let them start to set up while we pack up.

My sales guy takes me to lunch at this great diner we picked at random, and we talk about the meeting and debrief, dissect, and talk shop. After lunch, he thanks me for coming out and drops me off at my hotel. I check with the travel agent to see if I can come home early since I'm done.

As luck has it, I get the final seat on the late flight to Vancouver. This leaves me about an hour to get to the airport and return my rental car. I go check out the absolutely enormous Barnes & Noble across from the hotel. I make a nice lunch box out of the leftover groceries I have for the flght home. I pack. I check out early and the hotel's nice enough not to charge me extra time even though checkout was at noon.

I get to the airport in plenty of time for my flight and security is painless, although once you know the drill (unpack your laptop, take off your shoes and your belt, empty your pockets...) it gets easier.

The flight to Chicago was smooth, and the 7:50pm flight to Vancouver was delayed until about 8:30pm but we still arrived in Vancouver close to scheduled arrival.

After a painless trip through customs, I took a cab home and was in my own bed by midnight.

Total trip time, starting from the time I left home to the time I got back: 42 hours.
Time spent in transit to airports, waiting in airports, and flying: 24 hours.
Amount of sleep I "officially" got, including time zone insomnia: 5 hours
Time spent in transit to and from the customer: 3 hours.
Time spent with the customer: under 2 hours.

Glamour indeed.

The World Cup

2006-06-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

There was a time, perhaps as little as a decade ago, that I was "into" sports - I used to follow the Montreal Canadiens exploits (or lack thereof), I'd watch the NHL playoffs, I'd watch the World Series, I'd regularly watch the NFL (go Broncos!) and sometimes I'd even watch a little NBA action.

I'm not "into" sports anymore. I do watch the occasional NHL playoff game, but I didn't watch a single game of the Stanley Cup final this year - the NHL season is too long. The Cup was won yesterday and tomorrow's the first day of summer.

However, if there's one sports vice I do have, it's the World Cup. In 1994 I marvelled at "the beautiful game" and through an improbable set of circumstances, watched every single match at work. In 1998 I was working for HP, IT infrastructure provider, and through the new implementations of technology had the scores updated "live" on my desktop at work, and revelled with France as they won it all over Brazil 3-0. In 2002 I set my alarm for an improbably early hour of the morning, perhaps 2am, to watch Brazil agonizingly win it over my beloved Germany 2-0, their first goal coming mere minutes after the German captain almost scored on what would have been a highlight reel free kick.

I find the World Cup compelling sports for a number of reasons...

There are games every day. The tournament starts with 32 teams, so every day there's someone playing a game - you're not left to wait for the "travel day".
Unlike the Olympics, where there are many events that each have a small following, the World Cup has one thing - soccer. Several billion fans can't be wrong.
The crowd is as much fun to watch as the game. During the Korea-France match, the Korean fans had tribal drums going and chanting Beethoven's Ode to Joy (in Korean no less). Then they went absolutely bananas when their team scored.
The game doesn't stop. The clock starts, the half is 45 minutes long; the referee will add usually 2-3 minutes at the end to make up for "stoppage time", but there's no break in the game.
There are only three substitutions for the entire game. The 11 people who start are it, save for subs.
There are no substitutions for players sent off. In the Italy-USA game, for most of the second half Italy was down to 10 players and the USA was down to 9.
A strict penalty system - one yellow card's a warning, get a second in the same game and you're not only sent off, but you miss the next game. Yellow cards carry over too, so if you got one in your first game, and another in your second, you miss the third. Boom. Done. No endless appeals.
The "I can't believe he just did that with the ball" factor - it's amazing how much skill these players have.

There's more than that, but in terms of sports, it's my only "must watch must see" event. I think my wife's grateful it's only every four years.

Happy Father's Day Indeed

2006-06-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful Father's Day. I got up really early and went for a 30km bicycle ride, the first of the season for me, but will hardly be the last as I need to get in shape for the 60km Rona MS Vancouver Scenic City Bike Tour on August 13th.

Beyond that, I actually got to watch part of a World Cup soccer game, my car was washed and now looks less like a dad-mobile and more like a car with a child seat in it, and we had a great dinner with some good friends of ours.

A good day all around.

Singing

2006-05-15T16:39:00.000-07:00

Gary had to cancel our scheduled lesson on the 4th because he had the WorstColdEver(tm), and so I finally had a chance to meet him last Friday.

He told me his theory of singing instruction, which I won't bother to repeat here - suffice to say that he has over thirty years teaching experience, and everything he explained made sense to me, and hey, I have no basis of comparison.

That said, he said that he teaches unlike pretty much every other voice coach out there, but it worked very well for me.

I've always thought I had a good ear for music, as does my wife, but it was still good for the ego to hear Gary tell me I had a really good instinct for music, and that furhtermore I took instruction exceptionally well.

We spent the first part of the lesson going over the basics of the human voice, how we make sound (which Gary termed "the human grunt") and how to turn it into not only musical sounds, posture, breathing, and so forth. I had brought along some music (Comedian Harmonists and Ensemble Six) as samples of what I wanted to be able to sing well some day, although I also want to sing Nessun Dorma, Toreador, and other opera arias that are just plain fun to sing.

In seemingly no time, I was singing scales, and if you've ever heard an operatic singer warming up, well, that's what I was doing although with frequent coaching, variations on technique, and practice practice practice.

Gary said he was going to be my "instant feeback mechanism", and that he would keep raising the bar as we went along. Indeed, in our first hour, he says, we did a lot more than he usually does with a new student.

Interestingly enough, he told me not to practice before our next lesson so he wouldn't have to undo anything. So, I'm keeping my end of the bargain so far, but still singing along with my favoiurite songs the same old way I ever have.

I've signed up for lessons until the end of the month, but I'll definitely carry on until the end of the summer. Hopefully grad school this fall will allow me to carry on with the singing too.

Bishop's

2006-05-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

My beautiful wife's favourite restaurant in Vancouver is Bishop's (http://www.bishopsonline.com), and I must say it's one of mine as well. Since it was her birthday last Thursday, I took her there for dinner.

The service, as always, was impeccable, and the food was delicious. The whole wheat pumpkin seed soda bread that came was particularly tasty.

I had probably the best fresh raw oysters I've had (and not a grain of grit to be found, which with raw oysters is an amazing feat), followed by a splendid grilled breast of duck with sweet potato mash and seasonal vegetables, and the chocolate hazelnut torte for dessert.

For her, the cream of asparagus soup, Dungeness crab cake, and crème brulée. Everything was fabulous and we have a wonderful meal.

We also took advantage of the "new" law that says you can take leftover wine home. This might seem like a small thing, but what it does is open up the wine list when there are only two of you dining. Just about every restaurant has wine by the glass and a small selection of hald bottles; but, the wines by the glass tend to be, without being a snob about it, ordinary, and the selection of half bottles is quite limited.

When there are only two of you, and you've both had a pre-dinner drink, and one has to drive home afterwards, it doesn't make sense to have a full bottle of wine. The ability to take the rest home is the perfect compromise.

The sommelier suggested the Noble Ridge Pinot Noir to go with our dinner, and it was fantastic - an excellent pick to go with out excellent meal.

Charcuterie

2006-05-02T15:10:00.000-07:00

This is posted a week after the fact, but then, just like the products of charcuterie, a little time makes a good thing better.

Last Tuesday, the local Slow Food chapter organized a tour of the Oyama Sausage production plant down in the industrial area under the Oak Street Bridge. There, we were allowed to sample very generous servings of a wide selection of their wonderful products and given a tour.

John van der Lieck has been in the charcuterie business for a very long time, and has been here in Vancouver for over 20 years, making and selling his fantastic products.

What is charcuterie I hear you ask? Well, a simple answer would be "it's about sausages and hams" - but there's a lot more to it than that. These days, many companies make sausages and hams (and not always very good ones), but classic charcuterie was all about preserving meat for later consumption. As John put it so succinctly, "if you want to understand charcuterie, think of a European winter."

And it's actually as simple as that. In the days before refrigeration, people wanted to have food available in the winter and into spring so they would have something to eat before the bountiful fruits of summer and crops of the fall. Meat was a particularly valuable commodity, and the Europeans developed all manner of techniques to preserve meat - every combination one can think of to salt, smoke, and spice meat so it would keep.

There are many books available on the subject, so I will not comment further on preservation methods - suffice to say that if you're interested, I'm sure you can use Google and the library as well as anyone else.

Every meat product they sell at the Oyama store is made at their plant, and everything they make at the plant is sold exclusively through the store. They use special breeds of pig and boar for their sausages, hams, and salamis, and the choice comes through in the rich flavour of the meat. One particular delight at the sample table was a ham which was over a year old that had been brined in ale and treacle and smoked for three months.

I have always liked their products, but I am thoroughly impressed by John's passion for his craft, a craft which is slowly dying out as large corporations make bland generic hams for the mass market.

If you haven't tried Oyama sausages, terrines, hams, and salamis, you need to go to Granville Island soon and try their products out.

Vancouver truly is a foodie's paradise.

Bel Canto

2006-04-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Because I have nothing better to do...

Ok, you can stop laughing now.

Because ever since I took that opera course, I've been exploring my own musicality and musical interests, I've decided to try some singing lessons. I enjoy singing, and particularly am interested in operatic singing.

As fortune had it, I spotted a classified ad in the Georgia Straight for Gary Zeller, who teaches Bel Canto, which literally translated is Italian for "beautiful singing" in the operatic style. Since the kinds of things I like singing best are parts of the repertoire of the Comedian Harmonists, Ensemble Six, and various opera arias, I thought I would try it out.

The best part is the lessons are reasonably priced, and Gary lives withing a short walk from my house.

I'll post more next week after my first lesson.

Vancouver Opera

2006-04-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

I bit the bullet and bought seasons tickets to the Vancouver Opera for 2006-07.

One thing about having a family is that unless you buy seasons tickets in advance, a lot of talk about "we should go and ..." occurs, but very little going out does.

The coming year looks good too: Verdi's Macbeth, Mozart's Magic Flute, Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos, and Puccini's Tosca. My darling wife has always wanted to see the Magic Flute, and after my opera course, I'm more appreciative of coloratura.

Now to renew seasons tickets to the Playhouse...

I Love Paris

2006-04-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

I came home last Thursday from a business trip to France. As fortune had it, I and my travelling companions were able to enjoy a weekend in Paris as part of the overall trip.

There's just something about Paris I love. Maybe it's all the museums, or the vibrant street life along the Champs Elysees. Maybe it's the food (always good), or perhaps it's just that it's different enough to be charming and same enough to be comfortable.

One thing about Paris is that all the cafes have the chairs facing the street, so that you and your companions sit side by side and watch the world go by rather than face to face. It's a rather enjoyable pastime to enjoy the view while one drinks really good coffee.

Take out coffee is almost impossible to find - indeed, the only place we ran into where you get it "to go" was a Starbucks. Yes, even Paris has Starbucks now.

I walked everywhere in Paris. With the Metro, there's no reason to drive and walking everywhere is possible. I actually ate very well and still lost weight!

I'm going back in June - I can hardly wait.

The Best Deal In Town

2006-03-06T15:01:00.000-08:00

Last week was the 28th International Wine Festival, a fundraiser event for the Vancouver Playhouse, and also the largest wine event in North America.

I went to the Friday night tasting, with the intent of buying some reds, but ended up buying almost nothing but whites! Some years it just goes that way - you have to buy what's good and what's a bargain. There were to be sure sme gorgeous reds (the theme country this year being France after all), but in terms of real bargains, they were mostly in the whites.

This year's tasting was only the second I've been to since moving to Vancouver, and this time, unlike when I went two years ago, was disappointing from the point of view that there were very few "mom & pop" wineries. It was almost exclusively the large distributors, which meant that, with little exception, there were mostly things on offer that once finds commonly at the local liquor store. This isn't to say it's not nice to try something easily available, but rather that there was little to be discovered that was of the "if I don't buy it now, I'll never have the chance again" kind.

However, on Sunday I went to my favourite event of the wine festival, the Vintner's Brunch. It's the best deal in town for great food and wine. It's like attending a very upscale potluck really. There are 14 restaurants in attendance, each of whom has a special dish for the occasion in a tapas sized portion, paired with wine. And... unlike the tasting menu at any restaurant you care to name... if you really like something, you can go for seconds. Or even thirds and fourths. You can experiment on your own too. If you think the tuna dish from Joe Fortes would go better with the wine from Aqua Riva, well, try it out!

I dread to think how many calories vanished into me on Sunday, but it was fab-u-lous!

At $120 a ticket, it might seem steep, but it's really the best deal in town for fine dining.

Pointless Quizzes Amuse Me

2006-01-30T15:52:00.000-08:00

Inspired by my friend WCW's dabbling with an online quiz...

I am a A Moon Dragon!

Hey, I took the http://dragonhame.com online Inner Dragon quiz and found out I am a Moon Dragon on the inside.

In the war between good and evil, a Moon Dragon tends to walk the fine line of Neutrality....

When it comes to the powers of Chaos vs. those of Law and Order, your inner dragon is a risk taker and answers to no one....

As far as magical tendancies, Your inner dragon has the ability to conquer the world of magic, but it will not be easy....

During combat situations, whether by spells or by claw, your inner dragon will do whatever it takes to get the job done....

The Moon Dragon has translucent scales and emits a soft white glow from it's body, thus earning it's name.'

The moon Dragon is an especially large Dragon, but beautiful and graceful. It makes it's home in mountainous regions, often picking a large cavern to be it's lair.'

Moon Dragons are nocturnal in nature, only coming out at night. They silently fly through the nighttime sky, hunting deer, antelope or other woodland creatures. The Moon Dragon has a particularly long lifespan even amongst dragonkind. Some Moon Dragons have been known to live for several millennia, making it one of the longest lived creatures in existence.

This Dragons favorite elements are: Moonstone, Starlight, and Longevity

http://Dragonhame.Com

Monday's Election

2006-01-20T11:25:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I've had many ideas of things to write, but somehow have not felt an overwhelming impetus to do it. I'm sure that as the daylight increases and my classwork lightens I'll post some more, but in the interim, don't expect huge amounts of text here.

However, today's post is about the upcoming Canadian Federal Election on Monday.

I will quote Heinlein:

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong. If this is too blind for your taste, consult some well-meaning fool (there is always one around) and ask his advice. Then vote the other way. This enables you to be a good citizen (if such is your wish) without spending the enormous amount of time on it that a truly intelligent exercise of franchise requires.

I also found this fun link: http://www.politicswatch.com/VoteSelectorQuiz2006.html

It's a little quiz which will, with little investment of time, let you know based on your answers which political party's platform most closely matches yours.

I encourage you to go out and vote. If I were made emperor for a day, I'd have a law in place making voting mandatory (like they do in Australia and other places). We give up our voice in government too easily and cheaply.

Colossal Opera

2005-10-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Vancouver Opera season opened officially last Saturday with Puccini's final opera, Turandot. For those who've seen the ads about town, they've been pitching it as Colossal Opera!

As part of my class experience, we went to see the final full dress rehearsal on Thursday night. The best part is that dress rehearsals are only $12, and general admission, so you can sit in truly excellent seats. The seats I and my companions were in would normally have been $87!

In theory, a dress rehearsal can have anything happen; after all, this is a rehearsal and the last chance to iron out any bugs. However, the performance was smooth and uninterrupted.

The big draw for this rendition of Turnadot is the soprano, Audrey Stottler, who has reprised this role many times around the world. She was truly on form and put on a terrific vocal show. The lead tenor was decent, and the staging was splendid. I highly recommend it (and tickets are almost sold out, so don't delay!)

Amarone

2005-10-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ostensibly, this blog is supposed to be about food and philosophy.

Looking back at my postings of late, I’ve not written about food a lot, so herewith, some overdue food posting!

The nice thing about a great bottle of wine is that you get to talk about it for several weeks before enjoying it. (I don’t pretend to be a wine expert, but I know what I like; I did take the WSET Intermediate program which doesn’t hurt.) I had a bottle of 1997 Amarone that needed a special dinner to go with it, and Thanksgiving two weeks ago was as good an excuse as any to open it up.

My wife and I had invited our good friends J&E, which we had not seen in too long, over for dinner. Since we and they were both having turkey later in the weekend, I looked in my freezer to see what I had available.

Now, it is said that Amarone and Osso Bucco are a marriage made in heaven, so I went for the beef shanks that were in my freezer. There are many great ways of making beef shanks, but I went with a slightly Creole variant to go with basil mashed potatoes and some very simple sautéed vegetables.

Dinner was fabulous. The wine was stellar. 1997 was one of the best years in recent times for Amarone, and this one didn’t disappoint. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to get more of it, seeing as this bottle was purchased two years ago, but if I can find it again, I’ll buy a case.

Musings About the Teacher Strike

2005-10-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

The teacher’s strike is now in its second week, and I suspect that it will not be much longer before the public support the teachers currently enjoy will slowly but surely turn against them. The BCTF leadership has unfortunately painted the teachers into a corner and now they can only lose.

The headlines in the Sun have both the labour minister, Mike de Jong, and the head of the BC Business Council saying, respectively, that they will not negotiate while the teachers are engaged in an illegal action, and that the rule of law must prevail or else (in a fine example of hyperbole), anarchy will reign. People forget that social change often comes through technically illegal actions. We don’t have 40 hour work weeks, benefits, and so forth out of the goodness of business owners’ hearts.

The government, no matter their history of legislating away contracts they didn’t like, ignoring “binding” arbitration rulings, and general roughshod approach to negotiations with public sector employees will soon not only still wield the legislative hammer but also public support to use it. As H.L. Mencken said, "democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." It’s like watching a train wreck.

The problem is not the illegality of the strike per se, but rather that other public sector contracts are all due for negotiation and renewal this coming spring. If the government accedes to teacher demands now, then it will set some level of precedent for negotiations to come.

Unfortunately, it’s going to go very badly for the teachers. For all they are right about classroom conditions having deteriorated badly in the past decade, they have resorted to playing a high stakes “all-in” game which they can’t win.

The judge who didn’t fine the union but rather innovatively froze the BCTF assets gave the teachers a graceful out. The teachers could have gone back to work in the classroom and then worked on creative solutions to continue their protest. One very simple way would be to evaluate and mark work and communicate that to the students and the parents but refuse to report it to the administration. This then allows students to learn while putting pressure on the PSEA to come to some kind of accommodation. (Incidentally, this worked exceptionally well for the teaching assistants up at SFU a number of years ago).

They could also work to rule, which means no extracurricular activities for anybody. This might annoy parents enough to have them put pressure on the government to improve working conditions.

The dispute isn’t about money. Yes, they would like a raise. So would you. Show me someone who wouldn’t like and take more money for the work they do; the banal whine that it’s about money is a red herring.

The problem is much more complex than the newspaper headlines would have us believe; the challenge I’m putting to people is to become genuinely informed. Learn what the issues are, and then do something helpful to help get it resolved.

Essential Services

2005-10-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

The teachers are still out on strike, and today the court imposed no fine on the BCTF for their "illegal" strike action, but did prevent them from paying strike pay to anyone, nor for third parties (i.e. other labour unions) from doing so. A good primer on the history of teacher-government negotiations in BC since the mid-1980's can be found here.

I put illegal in quotes because I find it disingenuous of the government to simply put forth the rhetoric that the teachers are breaking the law and engaging in illegal activity when they pre-emptively passed legislation (Bill 12) making it so only last Friday; indeed, the passage of Bill 12 precipitated the full scale strike - up until that point, the BCTF had not engaged in strike action (and for the hairsplitters out there, yes they did engage in labour action, but were most definitively not on strike and were only planning on rotating one day strikes down the road).

I got into an interesting debate with a friend of mine here at work about it - she contends that teachers are an essential service. I contend they are not.

The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

2005-10-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

I’m a fan of the funny pages in the newspaper. I keep my subscription to the Vancouver Sun as much for the comics page as I do for anything else they print, and there some days I’m so busy that all I get to read are the comics.

There are many strips I really enjoy: For Better or for Worse; Betty; Monty; Bizarro; Speed Bump; Fisher; Mutts; Dilbert; Adam; Ben; Big Nate; 9 Chickweed Lane. All of those are comics that I read daily; some of them are only available to me online because my papers don’t carry them.

But if there’s one strip that I just adored, it was Calvin and Hobbes.

"Calvin and Hobbes" – named after the 16th century theologian who believed in predestination, and the 17th century philosopher who called human life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" – follows the adventures of a boy with an adult's maturity and penchant for finding mischief. – ABC News

A couple of days ago, I received my copy of The Complete Calvin & Hobbes.

If you’re a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, it’s worth every penny. The books are beautifully bound and printed on nice heavy coated paper; this is the kind of binding and paper you might well expect of those tomes of artworks museums publish – they weigh a ton! This edition is definitely meant for the dedicated fan as a permanent addition to their personal library.

If you're daunted by the price, relax. If you bought every single book, you'd spend more and still not have all the comics. If you have all the books, buy this set anyways.

The first volume includes a preface with the history of the strip and commentary by Bill Watterson, the cartoonist. It was educational reading about his battle with the comic syndicate over the licensing of spin off products like t-shirts, coffee mugs, greeting cards, plush toys, etc. Bill said no to all of that, and I admire him for both his reasons for that and more importantly standing by his principles. Any Calvin and Hobbes merchandise you find is bootleg.

My first adventures with Calvin and Hobbes were as a university student. The strip was funny and enjoyable and really appealing to me on many levels. I particularly enjoyed Calvin’s snowmen and his irrepressible enthusiasm for adventure. Now, a decade after Bill Watterson put down his pens and ended the strip, I’m rediscovering the joy of his humour. As a parent, some of the strips are even more poignant and meaningful, and yes, funny; some have made me laugh so hard, I had tears in my eyes and difficulty breathing.

It’s been like welcoming home an old dear friend that you haven’t seen in too long.

Home Canning?

2005-10-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

I’ve been following a series of articles in The Tyee called The Hundred Mile Diet. I’ve enjoyed the articles more as they’ve strayed away from the political soapbox and delved more into the food side of things.

Their latest article talks about canning, and they say the following:

Preparing for a Hundred-Mile winter is like adding a part-time job to our full-time lives. Like most Vancouverites, we're stupidly overscheduled most of the time. Adding hours of gleaning and canning to our days has more than once pushed us into the wee hours of the morning. "Sometime in the winter, this will all pay off," says Alisa like a mantra. "We won't have to buy any food; we won't have to cook any food." In the meantime, though, tempers flare as midnight ticks past and there are still 48 ears of corn to husk, blanch and cut into niblets for freezing.

I can so relate to that comment. The first year I tried my hand at pickles, in my small but very functional apartment kitchen, I was up until past midnight making batch after batch of them – five different kinds in all. My wife laughs about it now, but at the time...

The summer my daughter was born, I was still able to make a lot of stuff. Since then though, I’ve started grad school and have a toddler at home. This summer I’ve made nothing. Not a single jar of jam, no pickles, nothing. Stupidly overscheduled is certainly one way to put it.

Ok, I lied. I did manage to make and jar some applesauce on the weekend because we got some free apples from our friend’s tree; but compared to the cases of jam I made in the summer of 2004, and the several dozen jars of marmalade in January, I’ve done nothing.

We are beginning to realize that a Hundred-Mile Diet doesn't only hint at a more ecologically sustainable way to eat and drink. It also points to a deeper shift – an actual change in life patterns.

I wish them luck in their quixotic enterprise. Let’s see if they apply it to everything else they buy, like clothes, furniture, glassware …

As for me, well, maybe I'll get a chance to make some marmelade after Christmas, but I won't hold my breath. At least the cellar still has lots of the bounty of 2004.

Welcome Back

2005-10-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

The CBC has apparently reached an agreement with its employees according to several news sources, and will shortly be back on the air – quite possibly this week.

This is happy news to my ears. As much as CKNW has been entertaining in my morning commute, I’ve missed Radio Canada (the French CBC station).

During the lockout, I’ve heard a lot of commentary, especially by the neo-con business commentator Michael Campbell both on NW and in the Vancouver Sun, about the cost of the CBC to the taxpayer. The wisdom goes something like this: we should spend the roughly $1B we currently allocate to the CBC on programs or tax cuts and let the CBC float free to fight it out with commercial television and radio. At best, they would have the CBC become voluntarily funded entities like PBS and NPR in the United States.

To support this position, they cite polls showing that somewhat over 61% of Canadians don’t care that CBC is in lockout and don’t miss them, whereas only 12% have expressed strong support for the CBC.

However, despite possibly valid arguments that CBC programming caters only to the “eggheads” and “intellectuals” among us, I think the CBC is an important and culturally vital entity. It is the only place which has uniquely Canadian content – this includes a lot of stuff that I freely admit I find tedious or boring or just don’t care about. However, nowhere else will you find shows like CBC radio’s “Ideas”, television series like “Canada: A People’s History”, or shows by and for teenage consumers like “Common Cents”. Incidentally, “Canada: A People’s History”, was an enormous success when it first aired – in terms of ratings, it was absolute king of the Canadian airwaves.

PBS in the US, for all that it has a lot of good programming, doesn’t have anything like this – they have more highbrow fare than you’ll find on the mainstream broadcasters, but they also show an enormous amount of foreign entertainment to get the $$ flowing in. In terms of cultural content though, it doesn’t have anything comparable to the CBC.

The CBC isn’t perfect, but there’s nothing else like it on television or radio. It’s worth keeping.

Smoking or non-smoking?

2005-09-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

I’m not a smoker, and I despise the scent of cigarette smoke. Indeed, possibly the only thing I loathe more than the stench of cigarettes is the bilious aroma of pot, which if you live in Vancouver, as I do, is unavoidable in certain parts of town.

I want to be crystal clear on the following point: if I were king for a day, I would ban all smoking, period. I don’t care how “medicinal” your pot is; I don’t care how addicted you are to nicotine; I don’t care how nice your pipe smells or how tasty your Cuban cigar is with that glass of port – if I’m king for a day, boom, gone. Never to be seen again.

While I have little sympathy for either smokers or tobacco companies, I nevertheless feel bothered by yesterdays Supreme Court decision that allows provinces to sue tobacco companies for smoking-related healthcare costs.

Let’s be clear – the Supreme Court was only speaking to the constitutionality of the law, not, and let me emphasize this again, not about whether or not said attempts to sue will be successful; but I have a problem with is the galling hypocrisy of the provinces suing tobacco companies for smoking-related healthcare costs.

This might seem to be a paradoxical position, but for at least twenty years, and possibly longer but I’m only going by my own personal experience, cigarette companies have been telling people “hey, our product is poisonous and might kill you!” That it was government regulation that required these warning labels is beside the point – the labels have been there! Let’s also not forget the millions of dollars that the federal government has spent on ads and education initiatives to tell people (and especially teens) that smoking is bad for you. Endless studies have shown the potential and real harm that result from smoking.

So, there is no excuse for any individual to claim ignorance of the risks – smoking is bad for you. Not might be, will be, or could be – IS! It costs our healthcare system a lot of money to treat people’s smoking-related illnesses.

But wait a minute. Governments at both the federal and provincial level have been complicit with the continued sale of tobacco. They collect huge amounts of taxes from cigarettes – billions of dollars annually. Some pundits claim that the amount we spend on healthcare for smoking-related illness is actually pretty close to the amount of taxes we already collect on tobacco.

Furthermore, cigarettes are trivial to get. Compared to beer, wine, and spirits, which are only available at government operated liquor stores or specialty private shops, cigarettes are available almost everywhere – corner stores, gas stations, grocery stores, … The list is almost endless. If the provincial government made cigarettes as difficult to buy as booze, I might have more sympathy with their attempts to sue.

I don’t like the tobacco companies and I wish smoking would go away, but this is hypocrisy writ large.