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.