In the South & The Incredible Disappearing Contract

The other big difference here in the southern US (and when I say ’southern’, I mean ‘Maryland’, which is as far North as you can get and still be below the Mason Dixon Line — which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania) from the Pacific Northwest is the heat. It has finally started to cool off a little since I got here, now at about 26 C, which is a little warm but tolerable. Prior to today, I pretty much had to stay inside with the air conditioning going all day. The same was true of going out - all stores, cars and restaurants have their air conditioning blasting so hard that you frequently have to take a jacket with you to keep from getting too cold when inside! I can’t bear to think what the electricity usage is here. The Onion made fun of the whole global warming and rise in air conditioning story this week.

The heat means lots of insects, plants (my parents live in a lush area to the north of the Baltimore beltway), birds and animals. We’ve seen cardinals, finches, hummingbirds, mourning doves, mockingbirds, woodpeckers, chipmunks and if course, squirrels. I missed the visit of a semi-regular visitor to the property, a red-tailed fox, who my parents spied this morning as he loped across their backyard and woods.

It’s a Done Deal. Or Not.
I’m still dealing a bit with the time change, and trying to stay in touch with work and life back home. The day before I left, I had an exciting potential contract that I responded to immediately with a major web company (whose name I’ll withhold for the time being) that looked like it was about to go through. While I didn’t burn any bridges back at my current job, it looked like upon my return to Vancouver, my old part-time job would be more or less over (with a few things to tidy up, some good-byes, etc.) and I’d be starting a new 6-week contract. Resumés, samples and a follow-up phone call had all gone through with encouraging words from my contact, a staffing person with the company.

Somehow all of that went terribly wrong while I was on the road, and the staffing rep’s emails got sketchier and vaguer with each passing day. Now it looks as if that person overstepped their authority in offering me the job, and that someone else was referred to the company. Since I was out of town (and our phone voice mail was still MIA), I was too hard to reach, and the whole thing has now vanished and another staffing person from that company is telling me to ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’. I’m really disappointed about this, and feel like I was treated pretty shabbily (The original contact has still not contacted me with a definitive ‘no’ and any sort of apology.) If I had gotten the nibble at any other week of the year I could have been able to push for it (or at least I thought I could — this is, in all honesty, just speculation). Such is the way life goes. Sometimes it is indeed, all in the timing.

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.

A Beautiful Day and Career Counseling from the Pointy-Haired Boss

Pam and I made every excuse we could for one more errand out in this sparkling, crisp (sounds like a soft drink) day. All of that rain has resulted in flowers and green everywhere, and we could see mountain ranges to the North from Broadway that I don’t think we’d ever seen before, or at least not this well.

We got lots of odds and ends, and in general, prepared for Pam’s trip that will take her to our old haunts in Boston, her brother’s family in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and a final stop in Minneapolis for the STC (Society for Technical Communication) Convention. She’ll be on the road for nearly 3 weeks. I hope none of her Koi die while under my care.

As for me, I get to continue my job search, which has continued with help from friends and a new career management company that I’ve signed on with. The latter has involved lots of definition of career goals, compiling ‘narratives’ of my work accomplishments to date, and meetings with my assigned contact at their offices. I leave off names and companies here for a reason: The meetings, and my interactions with this person are not going as well as I would hope. Why? As it turns out, the person who is to be my advocate, coach and adviser at this company is decidedly non-technical. Really non-technical, as in not knowing much about the Internet, Computers, the Web, or anything remotely related to Technology. This has proved…challenging to me and is fairly troubling. After all, how can someone advise you on your career if they have absolutely no understanding of what you do to begin with?

Case in Point: At our last meeting, they brought up their Savings and Loan’s web page on their screen, turned it to me and asked point-blank: “Is that all you do”? I was a little taken aback. “Yes, I answered, after a moment of silence where I held back the urge to lean across their desk and punch them in the face, “But that’s not all of it. It’s like asking a Furniture Designer if all they design is chairs.”

While it’s a good thing for me to make sure that I can relate to a non-technical person (which is not something I usually have a problem with; I’m a self-admitted geek but I am a result of a Liberal Arts Education), I have to say that rewriting my resumé so that all of the technological reference are either eliminated or simplified is not something I would have done on my own, and I wonder if it’s going to serve me well. Will I have a ‘David for Dummies’ version of my resumé that I trot out for someone who I think will give me a blank look if I mention the words ‘User Interface’? Then again, how would someone like that ever be interviewing me for a job in the first place?

On Tuesday, I am to appear for my meeting in formal job interview attire. According to their rules, that’s a dark suit and tie.

Techies in Vancouver: When was the last time you appeared for a meeting in suit and dark tie? It’s not that I don’t have one, or haven’t worn one in my life, but it seems to reinforce the idea that these people have no freaking clue whatsoever what tech culture is like.

If this continues to irk me and interferes with my job search, I may request a different person to work with, which may prove a bit uncomfortable for all concerned. Nevertheless, I’m going to give that some serious thought. In the meantime, it’s back to my old resumé, which I’m trying to use to create more ‘narratives’: “Once upon a time, there was a need for a clickable HTML prototype…” (*Doh!*)

More Livable for Ducks

A short while ago, Vancouver was once again named one of the most livable cities in the world (It came in third, behind Geneva and Zurich, and tied with Vienna, out of 215, just like last time).

And once again, it’s raining like crazy.

It reminded me of a Mercer Report video that MJ (Urbanista) also pointed to:

For readers not in Canada, The Mercer Report is a is a comedy show seen throughout Canada which, like Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, satirizes News Shows, etc.

Yes, it is livable here in Vancouver, and this week I’ve been able to enjoy a bit more of it . I had a tasty pizza-for-one by the fire for lunch with a colleague down by Coal Harbour at The Mill, a spirited farewell party for another co-worker at 6 Acres in Gastown a decent Vietnamese dinner with Pam, last night, downtown (too new to have a listing or web site), and that’s not even counting last week’s outing at the VanDusen Gardens. Tonight, we will hopefully catch some more of our Canucks’ winning ways (the last game was their looongest ever, but they still came out on top!)

Still, sometimes I think some of those scenes in the video are not that far off.

On the other hand, I’m not too upset about Toronto-based Mercer kidding us about our high real estate prices and heavy rainfall. It’s just as well the ‘Most Livable’ moniker didn’t encourage too many more to move here and spoil it all. So let’s not try to talk them out of these caricatures, shall we?

Rainy Weekends and Comfort Food

Just like last weekend, we went out, despite the pouring rain, for several errands (trying to locate some replacements for some unusual light bulbs that had burned out, a trip to the market, etc.). It doesn’t usually rain like this here, or so I’m told. The water comes in drizzles, showers, maybe even a cloudburst or two, but not drenching, pooling downpours that keep going all day and the next. It’s another bit of climate change, I suppose. Australia is still suffering from a horrendous drought, so we end up with our water plus theirs. I had even read or heard something about the soot from factories in China changing the storm patterns on the Pacific ocean, which I watch the way that Papillon watches the waves coming in toward the island, looking for a pattern in the chaos. The best I can do is note that lately the circular whorls make their way to about Hawaii, at which point a straight line of clouds points right to us. Someone referred to it as ‘The Pineapple Express’.

With these sodden weekends, I’ve taken to culinary solace. Last night, at Pam’s request, we had classic French Onion Soup with melted Emmental and Grueyère on top. Tonight I’m making some fresh Fusilli and Meatballs. Tomorrow night it’s chicken with mushrooms; 3 kinds, including some gorgeous shiitakes I saw at the market - I guess all of this water is good for growing something.

I know that this wet patch will end soon. Then I’ll switch to all of the spring foods. Bring on the asparagus, fiddlehead ferns and strawberries!