Deja Vu all Over Again

Photo by Bruce Ben­nett from Canada.com

We real­ized shortly after we arrived in Canada that one of the keys to under­stand­ing Cana­dian cul­ture is to fol­low and appre­ci­ate the sport — no, it’s greater than merely a sport, the Cul­ture of Hockey. Hockey was invented in Canada, and ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ is prob­a­bly the high­est rated TV show in the coun­try. I’ll bet it has been since it first aired. Typ­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion at work in the morn­ing is about last night’s game (although for a lot of the younger pro­gram­mers, these days they’ve been talk­ing about UFC — Ulti­mate Fight­ing Championship).

What was the best way to become a par­tic­i­pant in this essence of Canada? I’m too old to learn to play the game and it is extremely demand­ing ath­let­i­cally. So, being well-informed fans will have to suf­fice. The best place to start becom­ing a real fan is to par­tic­i­pate in the biggest games of the year: the Stan­ley Cup Play­offs — that’s the final cham­pi­onship where the win­ners of the year face off. Since Hockey is so big in Canada, it takes up nearly half of the year to get to that point. While the tem­per­a­ture out­side is balmy, and we’re see­ing mar­velously long days end­ing sun­set between 9 and 9:30, they are still fight­ing it out on the rink. March may be the month of mad­ness for Col­lege Bas­ket­ball, and late January/early Feb­ru­ary may be the time for the Super Bowl, but June is the biggest month for Hockey’s final 7 games. This year it’s par­tic­u­larly good to get ini­ti­ated into root­ing for Hockey in Canada, because the final 2 teams are the South Car­olina Hur­ri­canes ver­sus the Edmon­ton Oil­ers. We get to root for Hockey and Canada! (It’s no stretch for us any­way. Hail­ing solidly from the North­east, we were never big fans of the Car­oli­nas. I know there are plenty of fine peo­ple in South Car­olina, and some beau­ti­ful stretches of coast­line, but I must con­fess that I always asso­ci­ated the state with mon­strous indus­trial hog farms, Jesse Helms — and I know, he was from North Car­olina — OK, Strom Thur­mond, and Big Tobacco.)

The first game of the Stan­ley Cup was last night. We did it right, drink­ing beer and watch­ing from begin­ning to end. I have to admit, the game felt some­what famil­iar, at least emo­tion­ally. Let’s see, it started out well, with an early lead, that reached 3 to 0. But the other team fought their way back, and tied the score. In the final min­utes, the Hur­ri­canes not only won the game, but a key player for Edmon­ton, goalie Dwayne Rolo­son was injured and will prob­a­bly be side­lined for the remain­der of the play­offs. In short, it had all the ele­ments of a Boston Red Sox game: Early con­fi­dence, a mid-game crum­ble, a dev­as­tat­ing injury, and final ignominy. Gee, we feel per­fectly at home, at least in terms of the arc of our sports team. Hockey, base­ball, it’s not how you play the game, it’s how you lose, and we had nearly 15 years of learn­ing how to lose in Boston. I only hope that we don’t go 15 years here with­out any team in Canada win­ning the Stan­ley Cup.

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.

One more Thing

Today marks the six month Anniver­sary of our move here. I was think­ing of all that’s changed since then, and how we’re set­tling in and start­ing to enjoy a good life here. While I do miss our friends and neigh­bors from Cam­bridge, we have made friends here as well. Last night we had our next door neigh­bor over for din­ner, and we’re tak­ing it easy today before the week kicks into high gear. In another 6 months, I can see a lit­tle party. Maybe on the beach.

It's Still Raining and Everybody has a Cold

When I got back to work after the hol­i­days, I found out that sev­eral peo­ple had got­ten sick over the vaca­tion (in fact, one had his entire fam­ily sick and even made one trip to the doctor’s office). So, I guess it was lucky that I didn’t get a cold last week or the week before. Of course, in keep­ing with my out-of-synch health these days, I have a cold this week instead. I’m clearly not alone. Not only does blog after blog that I read tell of cold suf­fer­ing, but every third com­mer­cial on tonight’s TV has been for cold med­i­cines. The most intrigu­ing one I’ve seen is a euca­lyp­tus tablet that you put in the shower. Sort of a cross between a bub­ble bath and a vapor­izer, I guess.

I’ll bet a lot of peo­ple get a cold this time of year. It’s been rain­ing on and off for about 3 weeks, and it’s due to keep doing it for another 1 or 2, at least. I know, I know, I was warned. It’s actu­ally not both­er­ing me that much. The only real drag is if I hap­pen to be out with­out an umbrella when there’s a break. My quota for get­ting caught in a down­pour (and it’s not usu­ally that strong) is 2 times in a week. As for the rain quota, we are now just about at the point where the accu­mu­lated pre­cip­i­ta­tion is aver­age for the year, as shown by the chart at the top. The one on the bot­tom shows what it’s been like, and as you can see, it has indeed been rain­ing for 3 weeks (apart from a brief lull of driz­zle right on New Year’s when we were out of town. Doh!)

For­tu­nately Pam hasn’t got­ten a cold…yet.

You Think That's Close?

My brother sent me a link to Microsoft’s http://local.live.com that does the close-up arial from MIT one bet­ter, and it even does it from an angle, so you can see the height of the build­ings. Not only that, but you can actu­ally see 1) the satel­lite dish on our roof and 2) our old car. I’m not sure I like this, although at least it’s not live (that car, like us, no longer lives there and the satel­lite dish was later moved to a higher place on the roof because the trees were grow­ing too high and we were los­ing trans­mis­sion in the sum­mer months). I make it to be about 3 or 4 years old.
Click each of these to see them at full mag­ni­fi­ca­tion:

I have to say that I’m sur­prised that the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity isn’t start­ing to get worked up about these map­ping sys­tems (Maybe they are and we just don’t know about it, a com­mon sit­u­a­tion these days.) Add in GPS locaters (as you can do with the Google sys­tem) and you’ve got some­thing of an Urban Tac­ti­cal Map­ping sys­tem on a shoe­string. There’s an elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion near the top left of one of the maps, and tak­ing it out would be a lot eas­ier if you could see all of the side-streets, where the police would be most likely to come from, as well as your escape route(s). With the power out all out for the neigh­bor­hood, rob­bing the busi­nesses in the area would be a lot eas­ier, bat­tery back­ups aside.

I hate to be look­ing at just the bad (crim­i­nal or ter­ror­ist) side of this. After all, sys­tems like this could also insure that fleets of ambu­lances and taxi­cabs reach their des­ti­na­tions faster and with less fuel spent idling in traf­fic jams and less exhaust spewed into the air. Tech­nol­ogy is always neutral.