Showing Off Our New Home

If we do, in fact, live in an ‘alter­nate real­ity’, where tea par­ties and trips to feather our nest are the most mem­o­rable activ­i­ties, then hav­ing wit­nesses might come in handy. This week, some old friends who were neigh­bors of our’s in Cam­bridge are in town. Glenn and Bethany have been treated to the best weather in months. Today’s Sun Run, a 10K race through Van­cou­ver, was indeed a run in the sun. I could quib­ble about the tem­per­a­ture (about 11˚ or 12˚ C), but it really was a gor­geous day. The rhodo­den­drons and aza­leas are out, and the snow-capped moun­tains are clear.

While the news reports from the US are of more sol­diers dead in Iraq, another mes­sage from Osama Bin Laden, and an over 60% jump in home fore­clo­sures in the US, the scene here seems pretty idyl­lic. An alter­nate real­ity? Some­times I do have to wonder.

The Vacation That Wasn't

Since we’ve moved to BC, I’ve often writ­ten of the new adven­tures and dis­cov­er­ies we’ve come across in our new home and back­yard. I’m afraid that those expe­ri­ences aren’t always that pos­i­tive, for one rea­son or another.

We decided to take our first drive-out-of-town vaca­tion to the Har­ri­son Hot Springs Resort on the Easter hol­i­day week­end. That was prob­a­bly the first and biggest mis­take we made. Rather than take the Trans Canada High­way (Route 1), we decided to take the more scenic Route 7, also known out­side of town as the Lougheed High­way. We’ve been on that road many times before, usu­ally going to IKEA or some other store to the east of us. We weren’t in a hurry, and the rental car, a bright blue Toy­ota Yaris, seemed to be com­fort­able enough and it wasn’t nec­es­sary to get to our des­ti­na­tion in record time. When we left at about 12:30 The weather started out grey, and the fur­ther we went, the worse it got. We stopped for lunch at the Mile­stones in Coquit­lam, and by the time we were nav­i­gat­ing some of the more haz­ardous look­ing turns amongst the moun­tains in Mis­sion and Agga­siz, it was pouring.

We arrived at Har­ri­son Hot Springs at about 4:00 PM. There was a long line of cars that looped around the dri­ve­way to the front entrance, and fol­lowed on at the back of the line. After about 15 min­utes or so, we finally got up to the over­hang, and a bell­man cheer­fully unloaded our clothes and other valu­ables on to a hotel cart. It sat there, near the edge of the over­hang (but mostly out of the rain), while we got on the line to the front desk. I parked the car (about a 5 minute walk away), and returned to the line with Pam. We got to the front in about an hour (We checked to be sure). Pam remarked that it felt like we were in an airport.

The lady at the front desk had all of our par­tic­u­lars, but was sur­prised to see that although we were signed up with the ‘Easter Pack­age’, and had cer­tifi­cates for sev­eral meals, none of our reser­va­tions for seat­ings of those meals had been made. This meant that we had to see essen­tially the concierge. We waited another 15 min­utes or so while she dealt with another cus­tomer. She helped us as we tried to get spots in the meals we had in our pack­age: an ‘Ital­ian Buf­fet’ that evening and an Easter Brunch on Sun­day. The spot left for the Buf­fet was fine (8 PM, a time at which we are used to eat­ing) but the brunch was set for 1:30 PM, which was already 2 hours later than our car was due back at the rental agency back in Van­cou­ver. I con­tem­plated call­ing to extend the rental but didn’t do so at the time (which was, in ret­ro­spect, a good thing).

We finally went up to our room, which was com­fort­able enough, except for it being very cold. Our lug­gage had been deliv­ered, and we would have gladly tipped who­ever did it, but they were long gone. I turned on a heater to get things a bit warmer and after a short rest, joined Pam, who was scout­ing around the resort.

The place was a zoo. Not only was it very crowded, but most of the crowds were fam­i­lies with chil­dren. Now, I’m not a per­son who nor­mally has a prob­lem with that (being a cou­ple with­out chil­dren, we’re fre­quently among oth­ers who have their off­spring along with them in social sit­u­a­tions; that’s to be expected). In fact, I usu­ally get along really well with kids — maybe even bet­ter than a lot of beleagured par­ents. How­ever, con­sider what it’s like to be in a restau­rant with a table that has a scream­ing child or two. Now mul­ti­ply that by 300. This may give you an idea of what we faced for nearly every moment that we left our room (for­tu­nately, the walls were thick enough that we weren’t kept awake by the squeals all night). We couldn’t get near the hot springs (which were really just hot swim­ming pools) as they were so full of peo­ple at nearly every hour that one fre­quently couldn’t find a place to get in the water. We walked over to the the ‘Heal­ing Spa’, where by this point I hoped that a mas­sage, or per­haps some hot rocks, a ‘detox’ or even some mud treat­ment would make up for our frayed nerves. Too late, we were told. Every­thing was booked up for every hour of the next day. Sun­day was nearly always booked up too.

We retreated back to our room and changed for din­ner. I antic­i­pated that there would be might be a wait again for our table, so we to the ‘Lake­view Cafe’ a lit­tle before 8:00 PM. We indeed waited again, for about 25 min­utes. I noted that our wait time (with reser­va­tions) was only 10 min­utes less than what the peo­ple with­out reser­va­tions were told they’d have. The buf­fet was not bad, although I had to dodge chil­dren right and left as I brought my plate back to our table. Most of the meal was once again spent wait­ing on line, try­ing to get near some largely depleted plat­ter of veg­eta­bles, fish or pasta.

The next morn­ing, we got up, show­ered and looked out on the lake (we had splurged on a nice room with a view). The rain appeared to have stopped. We headed up back to the Lake­view Cafe for some break­fast. It was at the point when we were told that there would again be another wait that I realised that things weren’t going to get any bet­ter. I told Pam it was time to cut our losses and head back home. We’d still have half of the week­end left to us, and try­ing to make the best of the sit­u­a­tion just wasn’t some­thing I wanted to do any more. We went to the front desk, and the woman there (who had actu­ally checked us in) was some­what under­stand­ing. She went to a back room and talked to her man­ager. ‘It’s amaz­ing what you can get when you get down on your knees’, she said. She offered to refund us about a third of our reser­va­tion and I didn’t think we were going to get any more at that point. We headed back to the Café, waited some more, and finally got some breakfast.

It looked as if the sun was going to show for a bit, and we peeked out­side. It was indeed taunt­ing us with a nicer day, but it was also very cold (I’d esti­mate around 4° or 5° C). We took a few pho­tos before we left. We did some shop­ping at Linens and Things and IKEA before return­ing home. After a deli­cious and unruly-tot-free din­ner at the Dock­side Restau­rant (with some mar­velous Jamaican-style Fruit Beer scented with Hibis­cus brewed in their brew­ery) in nearby Granville Island, and finally some gro­cery shop­ping and we col­lapsed grate­fully into our own bed.

Today I’ve had a lit­tle time to think about our out­ing and looked at the Web site for the resort once more. I was look­ing for peace, quiet, and per­haps even a bit lit­tle of a roman­tic get­away. I main­tain that they gave no inkling that instead, we’d be stay­ing at a Disneyland-style fam­ily resort. You can bet I’ll be writ­ing them about what I feel is false adver­tis­ing, but in the mean­time, I’m get­ting ready for a work of week with some new sheets and tow­els, but not much of a renewed body and mind.

A New 'Third Rail' in American Politics?

I’ve been watch­ing reports of demon­stra­tions all over the US, from New Mex­ico, Min­nesota, Michi­gan, Iowa, Alabama, Utah, Ore­gon, Idaho to Cal­i­for­nia. What really caught my eye were the last cou­ple para­graphs of a report tonight:

Voter reg­is­tra­tion and cit­i­zen­ship edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives are set to begin in sev­eral states after a “Day With­out An Immi­grant” cam­paign planned for May 1, an event that asks immi­grants nation­wide to stay home from work and school, and refrain from buy­ing U.S. products.

“Marches will only get you so far,” said Armando Navarro, coor­di­na­tor of the National Alliance for Human Rights, a net­work of His­panic activist groups in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. “There has to be an elec­toral com­po­nent to get the Repub­li­cans out of the majority.”

I also noticed a head­line that Bush is blam­ing Democ­rats (and in par­tic­u­lar, Harry Reid, the Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader) for “stalled immi­gra­tion reform”.

If I saw a wave of indig­na­tion sweep­ing the coun­try, the last thing I’d do is blame the other party for being on the pro­test­ers’ side. Could Immi­gra­tion Reform be the final blow to the Repub­li­cans that removes their grip on the House and Sen­ate? Jour­nal­ists have always talked about Social Secu­rity being ‘the third rail’ of pol­i­tics, mean­ing that any­one who tried to ‘reform’ it would be removed from power, like some­one step­ping on the sub­way power trans­mis­sion track. Could the sleep­ing giant of immi­gra­tion be the new area of vul­ner­a­bil­ity they hadn’t even seen coming?

Here in Canada, Immi­gra­tion is also in the news, but it’s a far more pos­i­tive story; It’s a for­mal apol­ogy and poten­tial repa­ra­tions for the ‘Head Tax’ that was placed on Chi­nese immi­grants here in the past. Nev­er­the­less, I can’t say I’m sorry to see the Repub­li­cans feel­ing the wrath of the chang­ing Amer­i­can elec­torate. Maybe the far Right won’t be able to count on the social con­ser­v­a­tives within the Latin Amer­i­can com­mu­nity to push through their agenda after all.

An Open House at BCIT

This morn­ing I went to the BCIT Cam­pus where Pam works dur­ing the week. It was entirely a coin­ci­dence that a focus group that I was invited to be a par­tic­i­pant in was being held hap­pened to be on the cam­pus. As a fur­ther coin­ci­dence, this was a big week­end for BCIT. They were hold­ing their Open House, which comes around once every other year. It’s a com­bi­na­tion Career Day, Car­ni­val and Sci­ence Fair. Stu­dents and Fac­ulty vied for who could come to their par­tic­u­lar demon­stra­tion, be it weld­ing, food tech­nol­ogy, con­crete fab­ri­ca­tion, robot­ics or any other tech­no­log­i­cal or trade-oriented field you could imag­ine. For me the high­light of wan­der­ing around tak­ing in all these giz­mos and other fun (and some­times daz­zling) equip­ment and stu­dent projects was com­ing into close con­tact with a device that I’d only read about in Wired Mag­a­zine: a 3D Printer. The idea here is that there’s a device about the size of a large office copier with a bin full of corn­starch. Layer by layer, it cre­ates a solid model of what­ever you send to it, much like send­ing a 2D image to a laser printer. You can see a typ­i­cal one here. It’s used these days to make pro­to­types of designs. The pro­fes­sor who was on hand to show it dis­played a bot­tle and a small Egyptian-style sculp­ture, and an entire ball-bearing assem­bly, all ‘printed’ on the device. This was the cheap­est type of stere­olith­o­g­ra­phy, he said, and the corn­starch in this one could be replaced in other types of these devices with plas­tic pel­lets that could be melted pre­cisely so that you could get a real, usable squeeze bot­tle. Onboard the Inter­na­tional Space sta­tion, he said, rather than ship items up from Earth, they planned to fab­ri­cate items right there using some­thing like this. So those transporter-based food repli­ca­tor units from Star Trek are really not that far away!

Later, when I got home, I kept think­ing of that ball-bear assem­bly (which was cre­ated not piece-by-piece, but all at once!), I was reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s early film Sleeper. It’s when he and Diane Keaton have infil­trated the Orwellian gov­ern­ment build­ings and are imper­son­at­ing doc­tors who are going to clone the dic­ta­tor, who’s nose is all that’s left from an acci­dent. Des­per­ately bluff­ing (and squab­bling) as they stall for time, Woody lays out the cloth­ing on the bed and places the nose where it would be on a face, claim­ing that they would clone the leader right into his clothes. “When we’re done you’ll have a fully clothed man lying here.” Those lit­tle balls of corn­starch rolling around in the corn­starch flange or what­ever it was are what reminded me of the Fear­less Leader being cloned into his clothes.

The teacher quoted William Gib­son: “The future is here. It is just not widely dis­trib­uted yet”.

What a cool place to get some fresh future.

A Site for a Good Cause in Record Time

On May 12^th (roughly a month from now) peo­ple all over Van­cou­ver won’t be dress­ing for ‘Casual Fri­day’. (In a town that some­times appears to me to be per­pet­u­ally in sports­wear mode, going any less for­mal on Fri­day is some­thing I’m not sure I want to con­tem­plate any­way). As part of a fund-raiser for Ovar­ian Can­cer Canada, a small (and grow­ing) sup­port group and edu­ca­tional non-profit, women and men will dress up that day, wear­ing “the dia­met­ric oppo­site of wear­ing jeans to work”. Glam Day, as the lit­er­a­ture puts it, will let us all “Fight ovar­ian can­cer and be fabulous!”.

What I have to do with this orga­ni­za­tion and event is that two cowork­ers and I worked on the web site for glamday.ca. Ovar­ian Can­cer of Canada is a pro-bono client of the com­pany we work for. We’re all pretty proud of a site that I think looks good and works well. What’s more, it was con­ceived, built, and launched all within less than a week. Here’s to web devel­oper Matt Ben­ning and graphic designer Edmund Arceo for a ‘fab­u­lous’ job. This is Glam Day’s first year. I bet that next year it will be really big. Think plat­form heels and dia­mond tiara big.