Glamour baby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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?

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.

The Monkeys Are On Trial Again

In the United States, the ugly debate over evolution has erupted again. Parents in Pennsylvania have taken the Dover school district to court over their insertion of intelligent design into the science (specifically biology) curriculum.

The parents claim it's an attempt to reintroduce religion into the schools contrary to the US Supreme Court ruling on separation of church and state.

Proponents of intelligent design (ID) claim that it is simply a “competing scientific theory” of life on earth and therefore is perfectly valid to teach.

Many people make the assumption that evolution means Darwin, but he was only the beginning. Darwin himself admitted that his theory had problems, but we have accumulated a lot of supporting evidence in the century plus since his book On the Origin of the Species was first published.

My intent is not to take up the debate between ID and the theory of evolution. While I will hereby declare up front that I'm firmly in the evolution camp, my intent is to show that ID does not belong in science class. My thanks in advance to the Great Spaghetti Monster for His divine providence and assistance.

The word theory in science has a very specific meaning. It means that someone had a hypothesis, a set of reasoned and logical assumptions that can be tested. A hypothesis can fail testing. A hypothesis becomes a theory when it is tested and the test can be repeated with the same result.

All scientific theories are also open to revision if new data comes along. This has happened countless times in the course of human history. More importantly, it is an open process; the validity of a theory is not shrouded by secrecy, hand waving, a magician’s black box, or smoke and mirrors. If you don’t think a theory is valid, you can go and test it. You are even free to use work that has come before to see how the theory evolved (there’s that nasty loaded word again!)

Therefore, the theory of evolution firmly belongs, right along with the theories of gravity or Newtonian physics say, in science class.

ID on the other hand is a notion immune to empirical study and falsification, a word that in this context means the ability to disprove it. We are simply supposed to accept that some creator waved its noodly appendage and set the world in motion.

That is not science. This is the presentation of an alternative that is de facto immune to empirical study and falsification and trying to get it wedged into the science curriculum.

The theory of evolution does not attempt to explain how the world was created, but rather the mechanism by which change takes place. ID proponents are exhibiting the classic logical fallacy known as the straw man argument, namely "evolution does not adequately explain how the world was created, and we know that the creator waved his noodly appendage and set the world in motion!" That's nice. Evolution isn't about how the world was created.

Science does not claim or attempt to prove or disprove the existence of God or a creator, noodly appendages or no. Therefore, we shouldn’t undermine an entire system of inquiry that serves us well in our human and secular attempts to understand how the world works.

Ideas about how the world came to be belongs firmly in philosophy class where ideas, rhetoric (in the classic rather than pejorative sense), logic, and open debate can be freely exchanged.

Children should be taught about the gaps in evolutionary theory. This might spark intellectual curiosity on their part and perhaps lead some to become scientists who develop satisfactory explanations for those gaps. Maybe some of those gaps cannot be filled with our current level of technology and understanding. There are many things we now know and take for granted that had a mystical belief or explanation in the past.

Either way, students should not be taught it is acceptable science to fill those gaps with mystical supposition.

ID is not a scientific theory, and therefore has no place in a science class.

Frackmusik

The date was the 31^st of December 1999. I was in a melancholy mood, being alone and also officially on call just in case for the great Y2K non-event. I rented a movie and bought a bottle of Asti. The Asti was cold, refreshing, and delicious. The movie was The Harmonists.

I’ve been smitten with the music of the Comedian Harmonists ever since hearing it that fateful night. Larger than life, they were arguably the world’s greatest musical act of their time. Formed in depression era Germany, they took the world by storm into the 1930’s until the Reichskulturkammer banned them from performing; in part it was that half of them were Jewish. In part it was that the prevailing artistic climate was, shall we say, not kindly inclined toward that kind of music – it wasn’t epic or patriotic enough. Ahem.

Nevertheless, the group split in two. The three who left Germany continued their performances in prewar Europe, Australia and the United States usually under the banner of the Comedy Harmonists, while those who remained and performed in Germany became known as the Meistersextett, the name Comedian Harmonists having been forbidden along with the three Jewish members. The former lost popularity with the outbreak of World War II, while the latter were simply eventually banned outright.

Since that night, I’ve managed to collect quite an assortment of their music, which I’ve recently learned is often known as Frackmusik; frack, in English, means “evening dress”, specifically the tux jacket with tails and all that implies.

Through Internet happenstance, I stumbled across Ensemble Six, who have revived the genre and have a large number of Comedian Harmonists songs in their repertoire. Andreas Wellen, one of the Ensemble Six tenors, has a project to collect all 179 78rpm recordings of the Comedian Harmonists and put them out on CD. The first set of CD’s was printed last year; the rest of the project is temporarily on hold.

I made the rather silly assumption that the Comedian Harmonists were the example, singular, of the genre, never mind that The Revelers from the United States were one of their big inspirations. They just happen to have history on their side; after all, there is a lot of material available about them, including many CD’s of their music.

While there were many groups that were their contemporaries, who themselves had good songs, you won’t likely get to hear any of it unless you buy the modern Ensemble Six renditions on their recent CD, Zieh Dich Wieder An, Wir Gehn Ins Bett, (translated: Put Your Clothes Back On, We’re Going to Bed!) It is a collection of songs by 1930’s Frackmusik groups that are all quite amusing and entertaining in their own right. I particularly like Mein Bruder Macht Beim Tonfilm die Geräusche (translated: My Brother Makes the Sounds for the Movies, although the reactions to "My Brother is a Foley Artist" are more fun).

I’m both happy and thrilled that Ensemble Six are around, and I hope they produce more CD’s for my collection. To them I say, “Viel Glück und viel Erfolg!”

Cycle Paths

Vancouver’s a city where you’re expected to have the right gear for whatever sporting activity you participate in. If you’re a cyclist, you’re supposed to have the look – the de rigueur gortex jacket, full coverage lycra cycling pants (or cycling shorts), the right shoes – cleats optional for mountain bikes, and oh so fashionable wraparound (e.g. Oakley) sunglasses. This informs the casual observer that you own a bicycle and might occasionally ride it.

I live on one of the designated cycle paths in Vancouver and after my daughter was born, seeing as going to the gym as often as I used to was not going to be in the cards, I bought a bicycle. Of course, it was six weeks before I actually finally rode it, but I have used it ever since. I admit up front that I don’t want to ride in the rain or the freezing cold or the dark – in part it’s because I don’t want to invest in all the gear. In part it’s because I do have a membership at the YWCA, and they have ample facilities to meet my fitness needs in the “it’s not fun to be outside anymore” season.

I love my bicycle, and in the two years I've owned it, I’ve been using it more and more for mundane things like picking up take out on the Drive (I managed to get from my place to Memphis Blues, pick up the platter I’d ordered, and get back in under 15 minutes – I can’t even drive there and back that fast).

But the thing I enjoy the most is Sunday morning rides around Stanley Park – it almost exactly 30km round trip from my front door, around the sea wall, and back.

On my ride yesterday, I noticed my back tire was kind of mushy just as I got to the tourist info area at Coal Harbour. I looked back and my tire was definitely low, so I stopped, pulled out the tire pump and … pssssshhtt! … goes the tire. Fortunately I had a spare innertube and patch kit (best $6 I've spent). I’ve never replaced one before, but it only took about 15 minutes, and replaced innertube securely in place and inflated, I decided to head home instead of around the sea wall.

Good thing too, because just as I was riding past Provence Marinaside in Yaletown, the back tire went flat again! This time I notice a puncture in the tire, and hear the air hissing out. Merde.

I walked the bike to the Stadium skytrain station and took the skytrain home.

But I still got a good workout!

This Sunday was probably my final ride for the season. I got a late start this year, but after getting the bicycle a spring “tune up” and installing the bike computer I got for Christmas, up to yesterday I managed to get about 335km in (thank you bike computer odometer).

Singing in Italian

Opera was invented in Italy near the end of the 16th century to recreate the classic Greek drama experience, as it was believed that the parts of the Chorus were sung.

Indeed, most of the Greek tragedies that we know and love included a chorus, and some manuscripts include some form of musical notation. Unfortunately, the meaning of these notations are lost to history, and nobody knows how to interpret them. There's no Rosetta Stone for the music.

Since the Italians invented opera, it's not a big surprise that they were all, at least originally, written in Italian. However, as opera naturally evolved and changed over time, the language stopped being exclusively Italian. French composers started using French librettos, British composers started using English librettos, and German composers ... kept using Italian librettos.

Why did German composers like Mozart continue writing their operas in Italian?

The answer, oddly enough, is that Italian is easy to sing. Italian has no dipthongs in the language whatsoever, and the vowel set only uses one primary pronunciation. Note that in making this statement, I am using "proper" Italian as the basis; no doubt there are regional accents and exceptions, as there are to any linguistic rule one cares to name. With German on the other hand, dipthongs abound and there are numerous ways of interpreting the vowels with every sound from long to short to umlauts possible.

Mozart didn't exclusively write Italian operas of course, but the three he is most famous for, namely The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Cosi Fan Tutti all are.

Barbecue Sauce

In the kitchen, I like to know how to make things so I don't have to buy them. For instance, I routinely make my own salad dressing; I haven't bought bottled premade salad dressing in years.

On the other hand, many condiments I just buy. Take mayonnaise for example. I know how to make it, I have made it on occasion, but generally I find it more convenient to put a jar into the shopping cart. I've never made mustard or ketchup, and while they're easy enough, they fall into the same laziness category as mayo.

One condiment that I love is barbecue sauce. There are a few I like out there, but on the whole, commercially made barbecue sauces aren't all that great. For the past few years I've been experimenting with my own recipe. Lest anyone think I've devoted huge amounts of time to this enterprise, my consumption of barbecue sauce is quite small, and a 1 litre batch lasts me quite a long time. That disclaimer aside, I've dabbled with barbecue sauce making about half a dozen times.

I needed some earlier this week, and I decided not only to make a batch, but to be bold and experimental and just wing it.

Well, hot damn, if I didn't make the best barbecue sauce I've ever made. I wrote the recipe down in my kitchen journal and it's now my official canonical barbecue sauce. Sweet yet spicy with just the right amount tang and smoke (and for the record, I didn't use any liquid smoke), and best of all, the right consistency. Previous sauces were on the runny side. This stuff is perfect.

No, I'm not going to post the recipe. :-)

Zut Alors!

Well, my intended travel plans for a study-travel in Scotland towards my MA have been alas been cancelled.

There are many reasons... but the main one is money.

The course, three weeks in Scotland, is $3,800 per person. This was only a little bit more than I expected (I was expecting in the realm of $3,200-3,400 for the whole thing, but the $3,800 figure would have included a rental car at my family's disposal so my wife and daughter could do something off-tour).

The $3,800 includes the following: all travel within Scotland, all accomodations, all breakfasts and dinners, most lunches (but the places we would have stayed in had kitchenette facilities), and admissions to all the various sites on the itinerary. Not bad value for the money! I must hasten to add that SFU travel study is run on a cost-recovery basis - that is, there's no "profit" margin built into that price. If I went out to replicate the itinerary day for day, I would probably even end up paying more since I wouldn't be getting any group rates.

But outside the base price, the costs started to escalate. Airfare, what's currently available for the dates in question, was going to add about $3,400 to the mix. I know that you can get $600-700 flights to Glasgow from Vancouver right now at flightcentre.ca, but that's for travel in the very near future. Come May, those fares might still hold, but I'm not willing to take the risk.

Then there's the unfortunate surprise that in order to get course credit for it, I would have to pay the tuition equivalent to one course, which, factoring in textbooks, adds another $1,000. I should have expected the need to pay tuition above and beyond, but still...

A $12,000 commitment before even buying one dram of whisky in a Scottish pub.

$12,000 is "trip of a lifetime" money.

I'm sure Scotland is a beautiful country (and my wife assures me it is), but it's not a trip of a lifetime destination.

So no travel study this year. As I won't be done my MA until 2008, there's always the summer of 2007's travel study trip, wherever it might be. Last year's trip was four weeks in Italy and Switzerland; this year is the Scottish trip; next year's is yet to be announced, but will undoubtedly be somewhere in Europe again.

Teacher Teacher, What Can You Teach Me?

There has been a lot in the news lately about the possibility of a teacher strike here in BC.

Indeed, from the newpaper headline hyperbole level and the shrieking harpies on radio call in shows, you'd think they were already on strike when they haven't even had the vote yet; a strike vote is being held by the BC Teachers Federation BCTF starting today, we should know the results by the end of the week.

The only thing missing is parents on the human interest segment of the evening news wailing "Think of the children! Oh, won't somebody please think of the children!"

I've been following this story a little more closely than I might have in the past since my daughter would be starting school around the time the next contract would theoretically be due to expire, assuming they have a three year deal in place like most public contracts tend to be.

Some facts first. For over a decade now, there has not been a negotiated settlement between the BCTF and the Public School Employers Association (PSEA). Every single contract has been legislated by the provincial government. Yesterday, the government appointed a "fact finder" to hopefully find some middle ground, as the PSEA has said they and the BCTF are at an irreconcilable impasse.

The PSEA is offering 0%, 0%, and, no drum roll required, 0%. A friend and classmate in my grad program is a teacher in Burnaby and she said that she has not had a raise in 5 years. I'm not going to dig into the details to see if there were some benefits improvement in that time, but I think that this fits my recollection of the past few teacher deals. The PSEA claims the BCTF is demanding over 35% in wages and benefits increases.

The BCTF for its part says that the figure is both ridiculous and contrived, seeing as they haven't even tabled their demands. They did say yesterday that they are looking to get a cost of living increase and also some level of parity with Alberta and Saskatchewan, both of whom pay a fair bit more than BC does.

I know it's popular to bash the public sector as both lazy and greedy, but a 0-0-0 offer sucks. I got a 2% raise last year, and about the same the year before that, and will probably get something along the same lines next year. If I can get a 2% raise, then why can't they? Oh, right, I forgot, these are lazy greedy public trough feeders. Never mind that it would probably mean fewer opportunities for the government to give tax cuts to the rich.

Those who are facing the possibility of a strike from the student side of the equation are trotting out the same tired old arguments: teachers shouldn't be allowed to strike because they're an essential service (like nurses I guess - someone might die!); the burden on families who suddenly have to take care of the kids because there's no school (and what did you do this summer?); and the best one I've heard, "there are no other options, the school system is a monopoly!"

The last one is no joke, I heard that one this morning on my way in to work from none other than the parents association (what was once called the PTA, but I don't recall offhand what the acronym is these days). They should know better - with the number of home-schooled children on a steady rise and the availability of private schools (albeit for those who can afford it), it's a bald faced lie; it gets good headlines though.

I also love the statements you often hear that teachers don't work that many hours and have all those vacation days in the summer. I'm not a teacher myself, but I know several people who are or have been, and they work harder and put in more hours than I do. Another argument that's been popular, especially on the facile yes-no radio call in shows is that if the teachers don't like it, they should quit and get another job.

You know what? The best, brightest, most creative, and most talented teachers have been doing just that. They're leaving because they've had enough and they're smart and talented enough to get something else. Some might even have stayed in teaching in a private school, but most will have left the profession entirely.

Great! The best and brightest are leaving because they can, leaving the average ones, the truly dedicated ones, the fresh from university ones, and the ones too close to retirement to quit. Need we mention the thankfully small minority who might love to leave but can't because they aren't one of the best and brightest?

This isn't the system I want for my daughter, or for the people who will be teaching her. We pay a lot of lip service to how important teachers are, and how important our kids are for the future. I guess lip service will have to do since there doesn't appear to be any cash coming.

Arr Me Mateys!

Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Everybody should do their part and Y'arr!

If you need help getting into the mood, head over to fidius.org and get your Pirate name.

I'm Dirty Roger Kidd. Y'arr!!! My daughter's Iron Ethel Flint, and my wife's Mad Dog Flint. Flint's they may be, but they're part of the Kidd clan now, y'arrrrr!!!

Advanced Education Redux

While I wrote here yesterday about the UCFV press release, one thing I did not mention is that I wrote to the UCFV communications office. In my email to them, I said essentially what I wrote here yesterday – that they could have phrased things a little better.

Jane Jacobs in her book Dark Age Ahead writes about what I’ll dub credential creep; what used to be elite education (a university degree) has increasingly become mass education. With the societal push for everyone to become a certified whatever, the piece of paper has almost become more relevant than the skill it’s supposed to certify.

It’s only reasonable that universities (and university colleges, and community colleges, and anyone who can hang out a sign saying “get a certificate in …”) are trying to get a piece of the action.

I won’t reproduce the entire UCFV response here, but I will highlight a few passages.

“The evolution of universities from university-colleges is not unprecedented. UBC was once a university-college under the auspices of McGill University; UVic was once a university-college under the auspices of UBC. …. We believe that this natural development will increase the credibility of our degrees, including those that have gone before.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what how I feel they should have said it in the first place.

One other excerpt:

“Over the years we have had to verify the value of our degrees to various places that did not know what a university college is. For example, President Bassford has written to graduate schools explaining that we are full members of AUCC, that we are a public BC institution and that our programs are all vetted and approved by the province's ministry of advanced education. There simply is a tendency for many people to rate a credential more highly if it has the "university" name attached to it. This is truly unfortunate, because the situation is one of perception rather than reality.”

I wish them success in their campaign. Hopefully they'll come up with a suitable name - anything except Fraser University!

Advanced Education

My Alma Mater, the University College of the Fraser Valley (UCFV) had a press release today stating they wish to ascend to full university status, much like the former University College of the Cariboo is now Thompson River University. The full text of the press release is here.

There is one part of the press release that irked me, namely the statement from Skip Bassford, president of UCFV, that “changing the name would increase the credibility of degrees earned by our graduates, [emphasis mine] enhance our reputation nationally and internationally, and simply make it easier for people to understand what we do.”

Now hang on a minute. What exactly is being said here? Is the implication that somehow I wasted my tuition money and school time by not going to a “real” university? Good thing I’m getting a masters degree at Simon Fraser University! Who knows what would have happened to my education if I’d attended a school that wasn’t “credible”.

Ok, I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole here, but the point remains. I went to UCFV for many reasons, not the least of which being that they were a degree granting institution covered under the University Act. The importance in attending a recognized institution is to ensure yourself and others that you didn’t get involved with some fly-by-night organization that may not give you a worthwhile education.

A Ministry of Education website says, “Students in British Columbia have many institutions and programs to choose from. Whether you decide on a public institution or a private institution, it is your responsibility as a student to ensure the program and institution you choose is a good fit with your educational priorities and expectations.” [emphasis mine]

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Apart from getting the education you want in the first place, I don’t see why college vs. university-college vs. university should be a make or break issue.

A former professor of mine at UCFV also puts this spin on it, “While I do think that there is modest attention paid to the place in which one studies, in my opinion, the real value in becoming a degreed person in our society has more to do with the qualities of the person one becomes through the process, than does the name of the institution that one attended, or, for that matter, with whom one studies. It is not that these latter things are of no consequence. But attending a 'recognized' institution or program is often a 'sufficient' condition for one's future, but a more 'necessary' condition is the judgment about who that person became through the process. Some of you who have been with me in class may recognize my distinction between ‘getting a degree’ and ‘becoming degreed’.” [emphasis mine]

Of course, I’m probably getting irked for nothing. UCFV is trying to become a full-fledged university with all its attendant trappings. The comment that somehow this will make their degree more “credible” is just marketing spin, plain and simple. Still, they could have at least tried to spin it without demeaning the alumni and the institution!

UCFV is a great place, really. I enjoyed my time there even if the commute from Vancouver was sometimes tedious, and the quality of instruction was fabulous. I wish them every success in continuing to serve the needs of BC students.

Lamb

By good fortune, my winemaking friend knows people up the valley (the Fraser Valley) that raise sheep, pigs, and chickens. The critters are well cared for and free range, and the quality of the meat is excellent. At the start of the "growing season" I put in order for a whole lamb, a side of pork, and some chickens (turns out I'll be getting four).

I was told today my lamb is at the butcher's, and that I'd be getting a call soon for cutting instructions.

The cutting's being done by Davis Meats on Mt. Lehman Road in Abbotsford and they are splendid. They know their meats, they know their cuts, and if you want the "offal", namely the liver and bones and all that, they're more than happy to package it all up for you (unlike many places).

$3.49 for whole lamb, top quality, cut the way I like. YUM!

I can hardly wait for my side of pork, coming next month!

The Sweet Smell of ... Smoke?

I can’t abide cigarette smoke (although pot is far far worse on my scale of unpleasant scents), yet I generally like the smell of pipe smoke and a very small selection of cigars. In general, I find smoky hazy places uncomfortable and unpleasant.

I mention this in passing because Burns Bog is on fire and a pall of smoke haze and a gentle rain of ash is settling over the lower mainland. It has irritated the asthma of several people I know, and has been quite irritating to those colleagues of mine who live in the vicinity of the bog.

Still, when I went out at lunch yesterday I couldn’t help thinking the aroma, while cloying, was not unpleasant. Indeed, there was certain sweetness in it, and I found myself smacking my lips a little and thinking food thoughts.

It wasn’t until last night that it struck me – of course! Single malt! The sweet peaty aroma reminded me of scotch.

Figures. Most people find the smoke from the fire annoying, and here I am finding something pleasant about it.

Into the culinary realm, I like many smoked foods, from pretty much everything available at the JN&Z Deli, to my dad’s smoked salmon, locally available apple wood smoked cheddar, and I’ve even made tea smoked chicken. On my list of things to build, buy, or find is a smoker I can use in my back yard.

Maybe I can sneak some peat and test it out on a batch of sausages.

Singing All Day

Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Singing all day, singing 'bout nothing,
Oh, my, my, my, oh, my, my, my.

Jethro Tull, “Singing All Day”,
from the album Living in the Past

Last night was the first class of my Opera in Context course, and it was a lot of fun. The professor, Rodney, is absolutely passionate about music and it’s a joy and a pleasure to listen to him. It’s going to be a great semester.

One thing we talked about, tangential to opera per se, but relevant even so was – when and why do we sing? After all, in opera, there is a lot of singing (and dialogue, and melodrama, and recitative)

If you think about it, we seldom sing at all anymore. We sing to children (although Rodney mentioned on his last trip to Toronto, he saw advertisements for a course for new mothers to learn how to sing to their children). We sing “Happy Birthday”. We might sometimes sing at a funeral or a wake or similar situation.

But in our quotidian lives, we hardly ever sing.

For myself, I like singing, even though I have no training and possibly sing off key – still, I don’t see why I shouldn’t indulge in such a simple pleasure. Maybe more of us should!

"New Orleans is sinking man and I don't wanna swim"

With a nod of appreciation to the Tragically Hip for the title of this post.

One of the nice things about my summer vacation was that I missed most of the news, had no internet access until I got home, and only was peripherally aware of what was going on in the world.

The hurricane that has simply become known as the disaster named Katrina did a lot of damage, including to the levies that protected New Orleans.

New Orleans was once a beautiful city. It's too bad that I didn't have the opportunity to visit before its essential destruction.

But here a comment; to the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, and the US feds, who have all said "we will rebuild!", don't.

Don't dig out the mud and toxic sludge that was once a city. There are times to wipe the slate clean and start again, and this is one of them. The New Orleans of old is gone. The French Quarter is destroyed, rebuild it above sea level.

It won't cost any more to build anew than to rebuild, and it will be better. Let the sea wash away what's left and build on higher ground.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Ah, summer vacation. It’s a time when you get to flee the city and the domestica that commands your time even when you're not actually working. In theory, you get to decompress and enjoy yourself.

We were all more than ready for a break. It had been far too long since we'd fled the confines of the city and home and we started our trip with several days in Logan Lake.

Logan Lake is a small town about half an hour from Kamloops. It was originally built to house the workers at the Ashcroft mine, but nowadays only 10% of the residents work at the mine. Many people are starting to flee the rising real estate prices in Kamloops and looking to Logan Lake a bedroom community. What might have been a $150K home as little ago as March would now sell in the $200K range, although that's still cheap by Vancovuer standards.

We went to visit my friend D, who retired there from Victoria and is really enjoying the rural life. It's close enough to the "big city" (Kamloops being the 3rd largest city in BC after Vancouver and Victoria) for all the amenities one might need, and far enough away that two or three cars is a lot of traffic. It's also higher up in the hills so even though it can get almost as hot as Kamloops during the day, it cools off quite nicely at night. Even so, it seldom snows in winter and doesn't get much below -10C.

It's really a nice small town, and I hope that by the time I want to retire and flee the large city for something a little quieter, that I end up in a place like that.

There are several provincial parks in the area, including many lakes, and the amount of wildlife to be seen is quite lovely. I had some fun trying out "quadding" for the first time ever - riding one of those 4WD ATV's. They have a lot of torque and can take you over some amazing terrain, and they don't behave one bit like motorcycles...

On the subject of provincial parks, there are several of them between Vancouver and Kamloops off the Coquihalla highway, but there are no signs! We had thought it would be nice to stop for lunch in one of them along the way to visit Logan Lake. Perhaps some of the tolls could be rolled into some signage? Hello!

My good friend is working on a travel photography book, and I think he's eminently qualified – he’s been shooting between 125-150 rolls of film a year for about 40 years now, and if anyone has an opinion about photos and their relative quality, it'll be him.

He's broken down and purchased a digital camera, a Canon D20, which he considers, compared to his Leica film cameras, a piece of junk. However, he knows that just like VHS won over Beta, digital photography has won over film. Indeed, he is finding it difficult to get film processed these days; it’s very quickly becoming a niche market. Many of the premium films have vanished, B&W film is becoming hard to find; in short, an era is passing (if not already gone).

My good friend C, who was best man at my wedding, is also a shutterbug. He says that every time he spends a few days with me, he has an overwhelming urge to cook for about two weeks afterwards. I take it as a great compliment. Similarly, D has the same effect on me with respect to photography. I sometimes regret not buying that used Leica he had for sale.

Having recovered from city life in the country, we spent a pleasant half-day traveling to Summerland on Lake Okanagan. My daughter had a delightful time at the beach, and we bought some “eat now!” plums and pears, more than we could possibly eat, for only $1 per bag.

We only stayed one night in Summerland and then headed south to Oliver, with a shopping stop in Penticton on the way. Penticton is home to the best used bookstore in BC in my opinion. I haven’t encountered any other shops with as much selection as they do. I bought a biography of Orwell, the complete works of Oscar Wilde, and a book called The Turk about a mechanical chess playing machine from the early 1800’s.

Oliver is a beautiful small town; we’ve stayed there several times on getaways. It bills itself as the wine capital of Canada, and given the plethora of vineyards in the area, it would be hard to argue with them.

The treat of the entire trip was staying at the guesthouse at the Tinhorn Creek Winery. We had a gift certificate for a two night stay there – a good friend gave it to us because she doesn’t drink wine, but I think had she known she might not have cared. The house was beautiful! Expansive views of the valley, nestled right among the vines (Syrah was closest to the house), a pool, and more square feet than our place in Vancouver, even though it was a one bedroom. Just to make things complete, our names were on the sign as you entered the winery tasting room, “Tinhorn welcomes its special guests…” If that weren’t enough, there were two bottle of wine for us in the house – their pinot noir, which is good, and a chardonnay.

Now, I’m not a huge chardonnay fan; indeed, as a rule I avoid it. Tinhorn’s was very drinkable though and I daresay I liked it! One of the few chardonnays I like.

Tinhorn does make my favourite BC Gewürztraminer, and their reds are also very nice. I particularly liked the Oldfield Collection Merlot and bought some for the cellar. I signed up for their “Crush Club”, which means I get a 15% discount on all their wines (and any merchandise with their logo) and twice a year I’ll be getting six bottle of wine delivered to my house – whites in spring, reds in fall.

Dinner, with a gorgeous view, was accompanied by the pinot. The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast (with a gorgeous view!), we spent the day in Osoyoos at the beach. It was a delight to let my little gal play in the sand, and the water, and then the sand again, and then the water. She’s a real delight.

That evening, we went for a walk among the vines along the trail that runs through the winery and encountered two of the dogs who live there. Zoe, a friendly border collie, accompanied us up and down the hill and at one point wandered on ahead, went into the vines and started barking. She then scampered back to us and stood beside us as a black face popped out among the rows of syrah – a bear! A cute fuzzy, um, wild, black bear. It was pretty small and given there was a notice that a bear and her cub had been spotted along the trail, it was a good bet this was the cub.

The bear didn’t like our singing so went off into the vines and Zoe walked us back to the house (good dog!). It was splendid.

We also saw other wildlife including a brown and green praying mantis, a pileated woodpecker, quails by the dozen, and many other birds.

The second morning we had pancakes and bacon for breakfast on the deck with a gorgeous view.

Did I mention the view? Spectacular.

We found out during our sojourn that the guesthouse is not available for rent. The absentee owners use it when they’re in town, and they also make it available to folks in the wine trade (by invitation only). Sometimes, they give a gift certificate for a stay to a charity auction – that’s what we had. Maybe they’ll invite us back.

The trip back was uneventful. We stopped at the always interesting Grist Mill museum in Keremeos and had a chance to enjoy a nice picnic lunch and see the latest discoveries on the site. The grist mill was on the Klondike gold rush route and is a mill constructed with belt and pulley systems instead of gears. It was all for the sake of expediency! It's truly a worth a visit if you're in the area. My one disappointment is that they no longer sell the flour they mill there - instead they have flour from ... Chilliwack!

We spent the weekend at my parents place and let them get their fill of playing with their granddaughter. She pulled out all the stops and was her delightful charming best.

We arrived back in Vancouver on Sunday, late in the afternoon, and unpacked an astounding amount of stuff from the car. Who knew you could pack so much into a small car?

Now if only I had more vacation time. Another 48 weeks would suit me fine!