Up until recently, many of the photos I’ve been taking this past couple of months have been of nature; flowers, birds, the forest, etc.
Then, Vancouver went all gregarious on us. The fact is, when the days are as beautiful and comfortable as they have been, you just have to get out, and everybody else has the same idea. So this month has been a series of festivals, meetups, tweetups (think impromptu get-together flash-mob via web messaging), BBQs and general get-togethers.
A couple of weeks ago was Car-Free Vancouver day, in which several sections of the city blocked off areas to automobile traffic and vendors (and others) set up booths. Pam and I went up and down a large section of Main Street, but didn’t get to the other streets that were participating, including Commercial Drive (where the movement started) and a large swath of Denman. We saw everything from Tai Chi:
to crowds and balloons nearly as far as the eye could see:
Then, this past weekend, it was the Greek festival, which took over a stretch of Broadway to the east of us. It was an enormous crowd, and Pam and I chowed down on Souvlaki…
…and Baklava (Pam opted for a lemon pound-cake with almonds called Samali, after a Ugandan friend she has of the same name). I learned that my name in Greek is NTABINT (although phonetically it’s spelled ∆ABI∆ ). We also realized that this section of the city was full of great little Greek restaurants and delis, so now we know where to get the best pita and treats like Kourabiethes (sugar cookies), Kataifi (Baklava with shredded dough) and the nearly unpronounceable but delicious Galaktoboureko Rolla (Phyllo stuffed with custard).
Last night was the Meetup of all Meetups at the Ceilis Irish Pub downtown. A combination of the Third Tuesday Meetup, The Vancouver Sales Performance Meetup, Vancouver Blogger’s Meetup, Real Estate Technology Meetup, Young Professionals Meetup, WordPress Meetup and the Vancouver Entrepreneur Meetup Group all made for a huge crowd on the rooftop:
I was glad to see a lot of friends and fellow Vancouver bloggers there, including Raul, Tanya, Monica and Shane:
One fun part of this meetup was that there were door prizes, and by pure luck, I won one! Digital Smart Homes provided a Kanto Zed iPod Speaker system, and I’m having fun unboxing it today! Thanks, guys!
See, it wasn’t just a month of flowers, birds and trees…
Your confusion about the “phonetic” spelling of your name in Greek is understandable but still wrong. In modern Greek the “∆” (delta) is a voiced “th” sound, not quite the same as the “th” in “those.”
The hard “D” at the start and end of your name is a sound foreign to Greek as she is spoken, and therefore is written using the “NT” (ni taf; known to classicists and mathematicians as nu tau).
Several other Greek letters have similarly unexpected pronunciations and several other common English phonemes have surprising diphthong transliterations. F1 racer Jenson Button’s name transliterates as “Τζενσον Μπωττον” (or ΤΖΕΝΣΟΝ ΜΠΩΤΤΟΝ” in the slightly more comprehensible caps (David = Νταβιντ Ντρυκυρ” or something close to that)
“Ντρυκυρ” is probably more correct for your last name, sigh, and I haven’t put in the accent marks…
Thanks, Ryan! I figured that you or Rebecca could correct that if it wasn’t accurate. Funny that the lady in the booth got it wrong.