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.