Catching Up

How to cover so much that has hap­pened since my last post? As is often the case, I hold off on new entries when I’m about to upgrade Word­Press, and then put off doing the upgrade, which makes the gap wider, which makes me put off the upgrade, mak­ing this a vicious cycle. Well, cycle bro­ken. Now, on to what went on dur­ing the gap:
A Wed­ding
Our friends Matt and Oana got mar­ried. We feel par­tic­u­larly priv­i­leged to have known both of them through all of the stages of courtship, engage­ment, and now get­ting hitched (they are on their hon­ey­moon as I write this). The Roman­ian Ortho­dox cer­e­mony was unlike any­thing either of us had ever seen, com­plete with chant­ing, incense, tin crowns, and all sorts of other eth­nic touches that one doesn’t encounter in most mar­riage cer­e­monies. We were both a lit­tle thrown off by the absence of any music for the pro­ces­sional or reces­sional, the talk­ing, pass­ing out of candy, and other eccen­tric­i­ties dur­ing the cer­e­mony by many of the rel­a­tives, and a cho­rus of women women singing a repeated refrain to the priest (which I later found out was roughly the equiv­a­lent of the Latin ‘Kyrie Elei­son’ ). As I also found out later, we could have also been treated to magic tricks, sto­ries, and bear train­ing, so in ret­ro­spect, it was a pretty restrained event. But get those Roma­ni­ans danc­ing at the recep­tion! That was another thing entirely. The recep­tion was a blast. Matt and Oana had char­tered a boat that cir­cled in and around the Van­cou­ver area, includ­ing points as far north and west as Light­house Point, as far east as the Ironworker’s Bridge, into False Creek and all the way down to the Sci­ence Cen­tre and out again. Despite a lit­tle driz­zle, it was quite smooth and com­fort­able, and we all enjoyed an absolutely spec­tac­u­lar din­ner includ­ing salmon (of course), chicken, veg­eta­bles and a piece of an enor­mous wed­ding cake pro­vided by one of Oana’s rel­a­tives. We all had a great time and were glad we could be with them for the event, which I’m sure will be remem­bered fondly by all who attended for a long time.

The Blog­ger Meetup
This monthly event been cov­ered by many oth­ers, includ­ing Jan and John, so I’ll keep this brief. We con­gre­gated at Cuppa Joe on Broad­way and Main, who pro­vided cof­fee, pas­tries and free wifi. At one point it almost seemed as if we would out­grow the room but we moved chairs around and some of us adapted. It’s nice to be a part of a group of so many clever peo­ple and we often find the con­ver­sa­tions mov­ing from one topic to the next at furi­ous speed: the state of James Doohan’s (Scotty from Star Trek) ashes to video­con­fer­enc­ing to ‘The Secret’. A few new atten­dees also livened things up, and cam­eras caught a lot of us in mid-sentence (or laugh!) I regret that I’ll have to miss next month’s meet­ing, as I’ll be back East vis­it­ing friends and fam­ily then.

Eat! Van­cou­ver
We made it for the sec­ond time to the food show that takes over BC Place (the air-supported dome that had a bit of a defla­tion prob­lem this last win­ter). Once again we tasted, sipped and nib­bled on all sorts of free sam­ples and got tons of recipes and coupons. I noticed a big growth in the num­ber and type of bev­er­ages, includ­ing not only teas and soft drinks, but vitamin-waters, juices, con­cen­trates, smooth­ies, and cof­fees. I won­der if the fast pace of people’s lives is favor­ing liq­uids as they are eas­ier to take with you in a bot­tle or can, and hence, a grow­ing mar­ket in that sec­tor.
We man­aged to make the demo by Rob Fee­nie, Vancouver’s most famous chef, who is actu­ally quite a local celebrity. He demoed a recipe for minia­ture ham­burg­ers made from shred­ded short rib meat, which I have to say was not a very unusual dish, at least in terms of ingre­di­ents and cook­ing method; Pam was shocked as I con­sis­tently knew what he was going to say or do next (‘now he’s going to add some mire­poix — chopped onions, cel­ery and carrots…now he’s going to deglaze the pan with some wine or broth’…etc.)

My New Strate­gist
After my trou­bles with my Career Man­age­ment com­pany didn’t improve (and in fact, they seemed to me to get worse), I told them that things weren’t work­ing, and that I needed a dif­fer­ent strate­gist. They agreed, and tomor­row I meet with the new strate­gist. Here’s hop­ing they can help me and can work with me a bit bet­ter. So far I’ve been hit­ting a series of brick walls, and I’m try­ing really hard not to get dis­cour­aged dur­ing this period.

Com­ing Up
Besides my meet­ing with my new strate­gist tomor­row, that evening I’m plan­ning on attend­ing the big mul­ti­me­dia con­cert and Con­tem­po­rary Shadow Play, ‘Semar’s Jour­ney’ by the Game­lan I used to play in, Madu Sari. Since I’m still on their mail­ing list, I’ve been see­ing the amount of rehearsals they’ve been sched­ul­ing and frankly I don’t know how I could have done it. I hope it goes well; they cer­tainly have worked hard to pre­pare for it.

The weather con­tin­ues to be gor­geous, and the sun­shine stays until just after 9:00 at night. Van­cou­ver sum­mer is just about upon us, and it’s always worth the wait.

Colya

I just learned from Face­book, of all places, that on Tues­day morn­ing, Colya Kaminiarz, a fel­low that I had met through ApplesBC, the local Apple User Group, was found dead in his apart­ment. He died in his sleep but the exact cause of death is not known yet. He was a Res­pi­ra­tory Ther­a­pist, and I would fre­quently read of his trav­els, some­times via heli­copter, sav­ing someone’s life here or in Toronto. He was a charm­ing and easy­go­ing guy, and one of the first friends I made after mov­ing here. Recently we traded IMs and emails, mean­ing to get together for cof­fee. I regret we didn’t get to spend much more time together, and will miss his face and name on my Buddy lists. Face­book will have some infor­ma­tion about a ser­vice to cel­e­brate his life, and I’ll try and post here as well.

Some Words to Remember him by

Jerry Fal­well deliv­ered these words a few days after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001:

“I really believe that the pagans and the abor­tion­ists and the fem­i­nists and the gays and the les­bians, who are actively try­ing to make that an alter­na­tive lifestyle, the ACLU, Peo­ple for the Amer­i­can Way — all of them who try to sec­u­lar­ize Amer­ica — I point the fin­ger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’”

The fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian Tel­e­van­ge­list, and spokesman of the iron­i­cally named ‘Moral Major­ity’ died today at the age of 73.

I imag­ine that the world may be just a few ounces lighter in hate today.

Back in Town & Tips to US Visitors

Yes­ter­day I returned from my visit to my brother and his fam­ily in the Seat­tle area. It was great to spend some time with them, and they have plenty of room (espe­cially when it’s just me and not a whole slew of fam­ily mem­bers descend­ing upon them, as some­times hap­pens). I also picked up a new Mac­book Pro (woo-hoo!), and hope­fully will be post­ing entries from that com­puter from one of the many, friendly cof­fee­houses that seem to be designed for just such an activ­ity some­time soon.

Pam is still out of town, now stay­ing with her brother and his fam­ily in West­ern Mass. I’ve checked the fish and can’t find the one that was sick; I fear that a crow may have come and got­ten him, but I can’t be sure. In the mean­time, I’m cook­ing, doing laun­dry and try­ing to keep the place rea­son­ably clean. With a beau­ti­ful day like today, it is hard to resist the urge to sim­ply go and sit in the park. For­tu­nately, it’s just a bit too chilly to just sit.

As the com­ments on my post: A Beau­ti­ful Day and Career Coun­sel­ing from the Pointy-Haired Boss have sug­gested, my work with the strate­gist at Career Man­age­ment com­pany have had hit a rocky patch. I’m sure this will all work out in the end, but I’m not used to being the ‘prob­lem cus­tomer’ in any busi­ness rela­tion­ship. If they are run as well as they should be, it should still work out in my favor.

Advice to US Vis­i­tors
Its been a long time since I explored the whole US to Canada expe­ri­ence. Part of it is that I’m set­tling down, I sup­pose. In just 2 months, we’ll have been here 2 years(!)

Nev­er­the­less, with an upcom­ing flood of US rel­a­tives due to visit my friend Matt for his wed­ding, he is com­pil­ing some ‘Advice to Amer­i­cans’, with some tips and FAQs for those who may not have been to Canada before. Some are as sim­ple as ‘Do I need a volt­age con­ver­tor?’ or ‘Will my Cell Phone still work?’ (No, you won’t need one, and Yes, but it’ll cost you some hefty roam­ing charges), so I thought a lit­tle bit about things that I’d add, and couldn’t come up with much. Is this because I’m start­ing to for­get the way things used to be and am tak­ing dif­fer­ences for granted? Here are my addi­tions, for the record:

• Watch out for some vocab­u­lary dif­fer­ences, like ‘Parkade’ instead of ‘Park­ing Garage’, and ‘Homo’ instead of ‘Whole Milk’.
• The tem­per­a­ture in Centi­grade can really take some get­ting used to. (is 10 degrees hot? Is it cold?)
• Be care­ful about using credit cards. They often employ a ter­ri­ble exchange rate (which is slowly but surely mov­ing toward 1 US dol­lar = 1 Cana­dian dol­lar these days) and also can charge a ‘ser­vice charge’ for each pur­chase. Bet­ter to con­vert as much money as you can to cash, if you feel com­fort­able doing that.
• Most pedes­tri­ans obey cross­walk signs to a sur­pris­ing degree of strict­ness. It’s just the way it’s done here. (I’ll bet I get some dis­agree­ment on that point…)
• Expect sur­veys. You’ll get sur­veyed on every­thing. Not just hotel rooms, but tourist attrac­tions, and even some stores and restau­rants. Unlike the some­what cyn­i­cal view they are viewed within the US, Cana­di­ans take sur­veys very seri­ously, and are sur­prised that oth­ers don’t. I can’t explain why this is the case, but it was true years ago when we went on our hon­ey­moon in Nova Sco­tia, and it’s still true today.
• Some­times restau­rants and clubs look worse on the out­side than they actu­ally are on the inside. I have no idea why, but this is fre­quently the case. Don’t let it stop you from explor­ing some shops and eater­ies that look a lit­tle dicey. Chances are they just have a lit­tle worn facade, but the tables and kitchen are fine.
• Unlike the US, in Canada, buses are not just for the poor and mar­ginal mem­bers of soci­ety. Here, every­one uses them, so don’t be afraid to.
• Don’t be sur­prised if you see an Adult Book­store in a rel­a­tively nice area. Unlike the US, where they only occupy the worst areas of town that one should never be caught in after dark, they are bet­ter inte­grated into soci­ety here. That’s doesn’t mean that you’ll see them in really nice areas of town, but don’t assume just because you see a Porn pur­veyor in the neigh­bor­hood that the whole block is a slum.
• Iced Tea here is always sweet­ened. For­get about try­ing to get some with­out sugar added. I hope this will change some day.
• In the US, which was sup­posed to be ‘the melt­ing pot’, peo­ple still seem to define oth­ers by where they came from. A coworker is not just a coworker, they are a Chi­nese or Indian coworker, and peo­ple from the US inevitably ask some­one from Asia where they are from, and are sur­prised when some­one who is clearly from Asia doesn’t speak with an accent. That’s not the case here. If you work or inter­act with some­one who is of Chi­nese, East Indian or some other decent, they are fre­quently Cana­dian, born here and with no trace of an accent. Remark­ing on someone’s lack of an accent may brand you as igno­rant, an Amer­i­can, a bigot, or all of the above.

That’s all I could think of for the moment. Most of the other dif­fer­ences I remem­bered that I had to adjust to (aspects of bank­ing, gro­cery shop­ping, doctor’s appoint­ments) were the sort of thing that applies to liv­ing here, rather than visiting.

Hanging on by their Thumbs

As I write this, the Canucks are in the last-ditch effort to stay in the series in Ana­heim. The game is in over­time with the score tied 1 to 1, and Roberto Luongo, the extra­or­di­nary goalie (with a face by Modigliani) has made save after save as the Ducks keep shoot­ing (nearly 3 times as fre­quently as Van­cou­ver). It’s a nail-biter, to be sure. I can’t stand the tension!

All right. (*pant, pant*) Here’s a time out:

While stay­ing (loosely) on the hockey theme, I noticed (from some of the TV com­mer­cials he appears in) that Sid­ney Crosby, the rookie player for the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins (and the first pick of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft and one of the lead­ing scor­ers dur­ing last year’s NHL sea­son) bears a strik­ing resem­blance to Andy Sam­berg of Sat­ur­day Night Live. Don’t believe me? Take a look:

Sid­ney Crosby	Andy Sam­berg

Sep­a­rated at birth? I guess if they ever do a Hockey sketch on SNL, they’ll know who can play Crosby.

First time out is over. Still no score.

A Visit to the South
Tomor­row I’ll take a quick visit to my brother and his fam­ily in the Seat­tle. It’s the first time I’ve been down there since a day-trip in January.

And It’s Over
That’s it. The Series is ended with a bizarre shot by a guy named (of all things) Nie­der­mayer, which was the name — dif­fer­ent spelling, though — of one of the bad guys in the movie Ani­mal House…the one who would be “killed in Viet­nam by his own troops”.

*sigh* Well, it was nice while it lasted.