In this case, the times are of increasing illiteracy. Or maybe this is new lingo I’m unaware of. Spotted outside a restaurant last night on the north side of False Creek:
My other guess is that it was a reserved party for private perverts, though it wouldn’t seem especially private being in a public restaurant with large windows and outdoor seating. The little heart stands as compelling evidence, though! The privert people gathered all seemed happy enough.
Yesterday I went to Ambleside Park and foolishly turned down some sunscreen despite it being a sunny day in the mid 20s. My arms were a slight tinge of red last night but fortunately they faded by this morning. Lesson learned: I cannot beat the sun through sheer mind power. It has been a very long time since I’d been to Ambleside and Nic had never been, so we drove on over, parked and had a gander at the sights (the ocean, the beach, Stanley Park, the Lions Gate bridge, shirtless guys playing basketball) and went on a walk down the seawall, which, unlike the one in Stanley Park, borders along private housing. It is still somewhat amazing to me that almost all beachfront property in the city is open to the public and not barricaded behind someone’s fence.
The seawall in Ambleside is also different in that it is pedestrian-only. They have a sign on the walk that indicates it is pedestrian-friendly, though it’s a little weird to me:
It looks like they are just plain thanking you for the act of walking itself. At worst it simply promotes the stereotype of Canadians being so darned polite, so I’m not objecting.
Here’s a shot looking down the beach at low tide. Nothing funny is happening in the picture, so I have nothing funny to add to it:
Further along the seawall there is a sculpture dubbed the German Friendship Globe:
Perhaps this is Germany’s way of saying “We promise not to try to conquer the world again!” The globe sits in water and slowly rotates. You can push or pull on the globe to change the rotation, too, which is neat. I planned to get it spinning correctly and then grab a pic of North America as it came into view (so I could add a big YOU ARE HERE with arrow) after a small girl tried to see what would happen if the Earth was suddenly shifted dramatically off its axis, but after futzing with it for a minute I couldn’t get it quite right and Nic wanted ice cream and I like ice cream more than German Friendship Globes so what you see here is mainly Australia at a bit of an angle.
The ice cream was good. We ate it while sitting on a bench, soaking up the rays. Nic got sunburnt even though he wore sunscreen. Sure, you can push around a planet but no one messes with the sun.
This is an unusual convergence of news stories from the CBC News website under the B.C. section:
The takeaway seems to be: avoid boats, longboards and rodeos under penalty of DEATH.
That is all.
It has been a long time since I went to a job fair. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did. I was informed of one recently and so yesterday I found myself attending the 6th Annual PICS MEGA JOB FAIR. The ads for it suggest all caps and bold are necessary. It ran from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and was located at the North Surrey Recreation Centre.
I went with Denis and the plan was to leave Vancouver around 2 p.m., spend an hour or so at the fair and then get the heck out of there.
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being Greatest Job Fair Ever, I would rate this one -700.
It started with us walking to the Burrard SkyTrain and getting on The Noisiest SkyTrain Car In the History of Forever. I swear there were hidden speakers piping in additional sounds of the train rattling down the track. At times it was difficult to have a conversation and we were sitting close enough to each other to have Eskimo relations. Even the recorded station arrival announcements were being drowned out. I suggested Denis stand up and use ASL so people would know what stations we were pulling into. Since we had to traverse the Expo Line nearly in its entirety, it meant we had to deal with this for 35 minutes.
Fortunately, the arena the fair was being staged in was located right next to the Surrey Central station. I think it took longer to exit the station, which is mysteriously built as if to emulate Cloud City from The Empire Strikes Back (read: really freakin’ up there), than it did to traverse the short expanse of sidewalk between it and the rec centre. With the smell of chlorine from an unseen swimming pool filling the warm summer air, we followed the helpful signs and entered the fair proper.
Ten minutes later we were on our way out.
Given that the economy is not exactly overflowing with jobs right now, my expectations were minimal. The exhibitors on hand fell into these categories:
#1 and #4 actually want to take money to you, which does not seem particularly in the spirit of a job fair to me, though maybe that’s just a case of being on the wrong side of the tables covered with informative and glossy pamphlets.
#3 had exhibits extolling the virtues of everything from working for the city of Surrey to joining the Canadian Armed Forces, the Canada Revenue Agency or helping out with WorkSafe BC.
#2 had some overlap with #4, mostly by having an exhibit for BC Corrections, one of the top jobs no one really wants. Mr. Lube and Safeway were also seductively offering the lifestyle of oil changes and stocking shelves to attendees.
We did one loop, insuring that we had seen every exhibit, then left, our freshly-printed resumes staying with us. We ended up returning briefly — to use the washroom, which turned out to be the most worthwhile part of the trip. We climbed back up into the upper reaches of Surrey Central station, where the upper atmosphere begins to thin and waited for one of the newer trains to arrive, since any one of them would be quieter than the tooth-rattling one we had arrived in. The first train to come into the station was an old one and Denis decreed it better to leave Surrey noisily now than less noisily 6 minutes later. I agreed. Fortunately the transit crew had remembered to oil the wheels on this train so it wasn’t that bad.
And that was it. We made the round trip (70 minutes of travel time) on a single transfer. There are no zany stories to report, no colorful characters to recall. It was a complete dud. But now I know about the modern state of job fairs and knowledge is power. Right now I’m feeling pretty powerful.
Weather-wise June can be a tad unpredictable. Any day could be sunny and warm or cool and showery. It’s no gauge of how the overall summer will be. Come July you can usually tell if you’re in for a stinker or not.
Today summer officially arrived in Vancouver:
The official forecast calls for a high of 30ºC tomorrow, which means it will only be one day before people start complaining about the heat. Run under a sprinkler, I sez.
Is this a new trend in Vancouver? Recently I have come across two depictions of male genitalia etched or sprayed onto a sidewalk in the local neighborhood. What compels someone to memorialize such a thing for all to see? I cannot say.
The first one is on Glen Drive, along the route I take to China Creek Park for my runs. It was carefully created before the fresh concrete had a chance to set. At first I thought it might have been the start of a brontosaurus or some other similar dinosaur since the scrotum looks more like a pair of legs. I hope this was not a self-study.
The second one appeared recently on the sidewalk beside a boarded house where Knight Street turns into Clark. By coincidence the house was being torn down today when I took the picture, so it is possible this particular piece of art may not last much longer. There is little ambiguity as to what the artist is depicting here in bold, vibrant strokes. I wonder if this spot was chosen because it was next to an abandoned property. I suspect so. It suggests a certain thoughtfulness one wouldn’t necessarily expect from someone spraypainting a penis onto a sidewalk.
One of the advantages of hybrid or electric cars is the relative silence of their operation. No longer do you have loud engines rattling and revving along the roadways. Instead the streets are quiet, save for the delightful laughter of the children playing hopscotch on the sidewalk or the cooing of the young romantic couple out for a stroll through the neighborhood.
But not if American legislators have their way. The silence of electric and hybrid cars is a liability, not a benefit, they say. It turns these vehicles into quiet killers and something must be done to protect those who would unwittingly put themselves into the path of one of these deadly, shark-like terrors.
“This is an example of too much of a good thing. Cars got quieter, that was good. Suddenly they got to be so quiet that it added an element of danger.” – John Pare, executive director for strategic initiatives with the National Federation of the Blind
It seems to me that quiet is good, unnecessary noise is bad. If you’re stepping into the path of vehicle, regardless of the level of noise it is making, I am thinking the problem is with the person doing the stepping, not the vehicle. Bicycles have been a threat to the vision-impaired and elderly for over a hundred years on the streets — why hasn’t it been legislated that every bicycle be outfitted with mandatory baseball cards in its spokes to warn of its approach?
Here is my solution that requires no legislation at all: Remind drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles that the low noise level means they should be extra vigilant as society slowly transitions to the idea that a car doesn’t have to make a lot of noise in order to function properly. Remind others like the vision-impaired or elderly of the same thing and to use aids or take extra care when out on the streets.
Either that or give everyone in a hybrid a vuvuzela.
Scott Jennings has some interesting thoughts on social networking on his blog Broken Toys. You can read the entry here. The included quote he references is especially worthy. Sites like Facebook allow people to share every mundane event in their lives — and furnishes them the ability to create many more — but does so without the context that comes from everyday conversation that occurs face-to-face, so you are left with a jumble of random updates that don’t resonate or particularly inform. And yet some people post these non-essential bits of personal errata to the point where they wonder if they are becoming addicted to it. (I also realize the irony of talking about all of this on a personal blog.)
When I think about why I post the occasional update to a site like Facebook — which I clearly have a tepid like/hate relationship with — it basically comes down to one thing: attention whoring. I know there is a built-in audience of at least 29 people (my Friends list) and that others via proxy will also see my updates. Everything that’s posted is done in easily-digested chunks. There is no need nor even desire for in-depth discussion. In fact, discussion just gets in the way — it bogs things down and clutters up the page for the next update about not much of anything.
When I write a post here, it is either as a journal entry to myself — the jogging updates, for example — or because I want to muse on a particular subject or experience. Occasionally I post something that fits the Facebook criteria but that occurs less often. And on this blog, I do all of this with the knowledge that the audience is minuscule or accidental. The only time people are likely to see a post here is when I specifically link to it elsewhere. But here I can provide context, I can expand and ruminate. It doesn’t seem so much like attention whoring as genuinely sharing ideas and thoughts. How worthy those thoughts and ideas are is, of course, open to debate.
If I Like R.E.M. on Facebook, it’s a piece of trivia that is irrelevant to people in a general sense, if I write about R.E.M. here it will be something like my recent review of Accelerate that attempts to convey information or opinion with a smidgen of substance behind it.
Ultimately I don’t object to social networking because I can’t articulate why sharing a bunch of random trivia, photos, links and simplistic musings is a terribly bad thing. It just seems unnecessary.
On June 12th I attended the Miss WESA competition at Celebrities. Being a drag show in a gay club you might imagine that there was loud dance music playing. You would be correct.
I have not been to a club of any sort in quite awhile so the experience left me a bit dazed, though I enjoyed the show. During the competition I was on the dance floor with several guys from the Vancity team. To our left several people would whistle every time someone came onto the stage or did something — anything, it seemed. Their whistles were of a high-pitched, squealing variety that would make dogs bark then go insane. I flinched every time. My left ear felt like it was being stabbed. I did not like this.
The next day my ears were ringing, which did not surprise nor even bother me. A few days passed, the ringing stopped and all was well. Or was it? Dun dun dun!
The answer is no, all was not well, alas. A week after the show I could hear a distinct ringing in the left ear that matched my heartbeat. It’s one of those sounds that once you hear it, once you notice it, it becomes very difficult to ignore. I tried and failed.
I went to the clinic and the doctor explained that the ear became irritated and fluid had built up. The artery near the eardrum was pulsing against the fluid, hence the ringing. He prescribed an aggressive steam treatment to clear the nasal passages and get it to ‘pop’. He recommended tea (I have tea!), hot showers (every day), a vaporizer (do not have) and maybe even a towel over the head with a steaming pot of water underneath (sure, why not?)
I tried all of these things except the vaporizer. Keeping your head under a towel while steam wafts into your face is not exactly an unpleasant experience but it is a rather damp one. I don’t recommend it.
Alas, after over a week of this I noticed no change and under doctor’s orders returned to the clinic for a reassessment. The second doctor said there was no fluid in the ear, so perhaps I misunderstood the first doctor. He theorized that there was inflammation or blockage in the nasal area and prescribed a nasal spray I am to use for a week. Two shots in each nostril twice a day. I started this treatment today and I offer two observations:
1. This better work!
2. Shooting a liquid up your nose is grossbuckets.
Next time I’m wearing earplugs.
I came across this video on Qt3 and am compelled to share it. It’s a size comparison that starts with our moon and ends with the largest known star. Talk about putting things into perspective.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q
This post is in place of what would have been “This is not the July weather I ordered (showers).”
Instead, Happy Canada Day! I should look so good at 143.
I’ve made a few updates to ye olde Photo Galleries, adding several to the School Photos section (not sure why some of the photos aren’t linking to each other, still sorting that out). I still marvel over what I thought was pretty stylin’ hair back in junior high and high school. In my defense, I can claim to have never worn bell bottom jeans. I think. I’ve also added some photos that were taken yesterday (June 29) by Denis in a gallery cleverly called June 29, 2010. The outdoor shots were taken in Nelson Park, safely away from the ‘all dogs poop here’ area.
The contrast between me in June 2010 and July 2008 (not quite a month after I totally changed my diet) is interesting, to say the least. Not only did I lose about 40 pounds, I also shed my full beard, got rid of my big-ass glasses and generally became a lot healthier.
July 2008:
[singlepic id=32 w=320 h=240 float=]June 2010:
[singlepic id=81 w=320 h=240 float=]