Searching for Tao

So this post is a little late, but I did promise Noreen that I'd write something before the week is out. My parents came to visit last week, all the way from Kelowna, BC. It was wonderful to see them walk off that plane, and exciting to be able to show them the life I'm carving out for myself here. I lived in Ottawa and Toronto for about six years and with the exception of a brief visit from my father (and surrogate uncle) in my final year, I never really had the opportunity to share what my life outside of BC was like with my parents. This time however, the experience will be a little more thorough.

For the most part, their first experiences with the Netherlands was rather similar to my own: The instinctive aversion to the sound of Dutch, getting screwed by the NS (transit authority) payment system, and surprise at the low cost of food -- though my father did note that the Dutch appear to wrap every damn thing in plastic.

For tourist destinations, they mostly relied on me to point out the interesting sights in the city. Obviously, they wanted to visit the Red Light district (where my mom noted the absence of male prostitutes: "All I'm asking for is a little equality damnit"). At my suggestion, they checked out the Erotic Museum and giggled at some of the exhibits, and they also made a point of visiting somewhere-not-amsterdam. Since I live in Bussum, they decided to visit Utrecht, where they spent the day wandering through the old city and apparently marvelling at the soup in a cafe there.

They had the opportunity to meet and spend some time with Christina as well, which was prety neat. They all got along, and my parents were pretty impressed with her. I have a few nice pictures of Christina trying to explain my smartphone to my dad.

I suppose the other highlight for their trip was the Keukenhoff, a sort of Dutch Playland for flowers. Imagine walking for hours through gardens of sculpted flower beds: colours, and perfume pretty much everywhere. It's kind of a big deal here. Personally, it didn't do much for me, but my mom was pretty tickled :-)

Unfortunately, that week was mostly about them exploring the Netherlands on their own, since I had to do the day job thing. I wanted to ration my vacation across the year this time, so I only took one week off for their being here: this week. You see, after they left my apartment in Bussum on Monday, they went to Barcelona, and at this very moment I'm on a highspeed train to Paris where I'll be meeting them for some touristy goodness. We'll check out all the Paris stuff, take some pictures, and then head onto London, and eventually to Dublin. It'll be nice to get away from the day-to-day stuff and really do the vacation thing with my parents again. After all, the last time we did that... I think I was in high school.

Anyway, the entire visit is being catalogued online in pictures. If you're into that sort of thing, you can head on over to my G+ gallery.

I suppose blogging in general took a big hit in 2011 eh? I mean, everywhere you look now, people are using tumblr, Facebook, or even Google+ for blogging these days, and the old-fashioned site-as-blog has more or less evaporated. But I've always been part futurist and part luddite, so I've no intention on following suit. This blog may have become sparse over this past year, but it's still the one place where I can post anything I want, on any topic I want, and still retain control over my content. I'll likely keep this up and running right until Diaspora becomes more portable/accessible, or some other similar project comes along and does a better job.

But this post, I couldn't skip out on this one. It's the annual recap post. It's like the Christmas Card I never sent to anyone that recaps what's happened in my life this past year. Like all of its predecessors, it's a long one, so you might want to grab a beverage ;-)

An Unhappy Start

2011 started out pretty down for me. I'd been laid off from my less-than-enjoyable gig at Work [at] Play and had, on the advice of my good friend Chris Rhodes, decided to take the opportunity to look for work in Europe. I had moved out of my $1300/mo apartment in Vancouver's West End, and into my grandparent's basement in Delta, and was actively looking for work overseas: France, Germany, and the Netherlands were all candidates, and Japan & Korea were both pie-in-the-sky hopeful locations. I got three interviews in Europe, two in Munich and one in Amsterdam, and from them, two offers. Unfortunately, I didn't much like the prospect of those offers, and the 3rd company wasn't interested (I wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic about Perl). I was unemployed, in debt, and living in my grandparent's basement. I was 31.

But then Shit Got Real

Things started to look up though after I had an interview with a Dutch company who offered me a gig literally 15minutes after the phone interview. They offered to handle my visa and arrangements for my initial lodging, and wrapped this in a six month contract for a rate that seemed reasonable. I was set. I was moving to Europe.

I said my goodbyes to my friends, and then to my family, packed all of my worldly belongings into three bags, and got on a plane. It wasn't scary, rather I had gone into that "autopilot" mode I have, where the future is committed, there's no sense in worrying about it. In retrospect though, I'm still surprised that I managed it with so little stress.

Money!

Just when I thought that money was going to get super-tight, I stumbled into two $5k cheques: one from the Canadian government, a tax refund for the six years I'd been putting off doing my taxes, and the other for my involvement with TheChange. Together, these two helped pay off my growing credit card balance and finance my move into a new, unfurnished place here in Bussum. Kids, never let it be said that money is the problem. It's not. If you line up everything else, it always seems to work out.

Five Weddings in Five Cities

Then there were the weddings. Jesus Christ people, did you all have to get married all in the same year??? I'd missed Annie & Desmond's nuptials back in 2007 and will regret it forever, I wasn't going to let that happen again with some of the closest people in my life. Shawna & Michael had their ceremony in Yeosu, Stephen & Irena had theirs in Toronto, Chrystal & TJ had a reception in Vancouver, while my brother & Shawna got married in Kelowna, and Noreen & Craig rounded out the year with their wedding in Honolulu. If you're curious, that works out to roughly 35,653kilometres (about 1/10th of the distance to the Moon), about $5507CAD (before carbon credits, Mother Earth hates me) and 26 days off work (105% of my vacation)... and I'd do it again. Each wedding was an exciting experience and a milestone in the lives of people I love. I can think of no better way to have spent my time and resources this past year.

Politics and Missed Opportunities

Somewhere in there, Canada got a new King government, a new NDP Official Opposition (yay!), and the Green Party saw it's first MP elected (more yay!). Politically, it was a HUGE year in Canada and I really felt left out of it all. There are days, on this side of the Atlantic, that I feel like I gave up on a life I could/should have had when I left Toronto, or Vancouver, and I wonder if it was the Right thing to do. What would it have been like to work with Adriane Carr on her campaign? Could I have helped enough to see her take a second seat? If I'd stayed in Toronto, could I have helped keep Ford out, or even just helped another candidate take a council seat? Would I be running for a council seat in the next election? I suppose that the biggest lesson learnt from this year so far has been that each decision commits you to walking through one door to the exclusion of others, and that commitment requires a certain acceptance of this fact.

Rounding it all Out

I ended the year with a trip home for Christmas with the family, paying off my student loans, and closing my account at CIBC. I entered 2012 100% debt-Free and unsupportive of big banks. I even managed to ditch Facebook.

The bulk of the rest of the year was filled with weekend trips to different cities and towns around the Netherlands, a pair of trips to London and Paris, a short romantic relationship with a lovely girl that turned into a wonderful friendship, and a few more friends on top of that -- all of this wrapped in a cloud of shell shock, excitement, and frustration that comes with living in a new city, new country, new continent, and new culture. It's been good for me I think, and I'm glad I've made the decisions that brought me to this time and place in my life.

Central Park is so pretty.

One of the more famous landmarks in Central Park: Bethesda Fountain.

The Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park.

Times Square is huge and riddled with billboards. This is a tiny part of it.

The United Nations

"Peace"

The Empire State Building as seen from 51st street.

Congress

The inscription above reads: "In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.

The Vietnam Memorial

It does seem a shame that Lincoln's view of Congress is obscured by Washington's phallic monument.

I have committed the profoundly naïve: I attempted to see two major American cities in four days. Let it be said that while it's definitely possible, I don't recommend it -- especially if your feet aren't very cooperative. Here, on day four in my Washington DC hotel room, my feet are dangling off of the bed and are in considerable pain. The tiny blisters on my toes are a testament to my daring, as well as my ignorance concerning the task.

Now with that out of the way, here's a quick run-down of my various sights and experiences :-)

NYC

New York is BIG. I know that it looks rather tiny on the map, but trust me, it's massive. With 8 million people in the city alone and 20million in the surrounding area, New York is too big to really experience in two months let alone two days. Like most places worth seeing, I think that someone has to live there to really understand it. For my part, I was just happy to have a few days to take it in. For the majority of my trip (save for a quick ride on the Staten Island Ferry) I was Manhattan Guy, so everything that follows can only apply to that tiny island.

I'll start with the simple: navigation. Manhattan is a narrow sliver island with only a few major avenues running North/South and more than one hundred streets running East/West. As a result of this sort of layout, walking 3blocks East is roughly equivalent to walking ten blocks North anywhere on the island. People jaywalk like crazy there, right in front of cops in fact. I can only assume that it's totally legal there. Traffic is always rough, regardless of the time of day, and is in fact just like you see in the movies: about 90% cabs... except that they're not yellow, but rather a kind of nasty orange colour.

As for sightseeing, I went a little crazy. In the space of two days, I managed to visit every landmark in the city and see/do exactly what I wanted to, which in most cases was just see that place and try to understand what it must be like to walk in its shadow every day. I went to Central Park, which again, is well reflected in the movies. It's a massive park nested in the midst of millions of people crammed onto an island. And it's not a park as you might have come to expect in your own town, no Central Park has a giant pond, a carousel, a baseball park and dozens of quiet trails, bridges, trees, and creeks. It's the result of more than one hundred years of curating and management... it's amazing.

I also found time to visit the United Nations, Ground Zero, The Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Gardens, Grand Central Station, and the studios for CBS & NBC as well as Ed McMahon's theater where David Letterman does his show now. As per Stephen's advice, I took the (free) Staten Island Ferry just long enough to get reasonably close to the Statue of Liberty, and I even found the LEGO store... how awesome is that?

Some interesting tidbits about New York:

• The street food is amazing. There's nothing quite like lamb souvlaki on a pita at 11pm at the corner of Madison & 51st. I also tried both the bagels and the pretzels. Sadly, I was unimpressed on both fronts.
• The city hums, but it doesn't seem to sit well with me. It could be the American flags everywhere, or the general lack-of-pleasantries common with Americans, but I didn't feel very comfortable there.
• While cabbies are everywhere, they're not as crazy or chatty as the ones you see in movies. In my time there, I took 3 cabs: the first one was an old, Asian man, super-friendly, who'd been doing this for 23years. After all this time, his English was still pretty sketchy, but I appreciated his take on what it's like to do this kind of work for so long. The other two drivers however were like riding with a robot: little or no conversation, and very broken English when we did have to communicate.
• Rockefeller Center has tables & chairs out front in the summer since it's obviously too cold for an ice rink.
• The subway system isn't nearly as impressive as I was expecting. Obviously, I was only around for a couple days and only rode it twice, but I got the distinct impression that it was built for commuters rather than residents. Its cars are smaller than Toronto's, lacks helpful signage and doesn't service large portions of the island. Also, it smells like Toronto's subway system, which isn't a good or a bad thing, just an interesting curiosity.

Washington DC

After walking my feet off in NYC, I took a quick nap overnight and headed to Washington DC by train the next day. Let me just say that if the option is available, train is definitely the way to travel. Walk a few blocks to the station, wait less than a half hour to board, ride in comfort with free wifi and a power outlet for a few hours and then walk a few minutes to your hotel. It's cheaper, faster, cleaner, and far more comfortable. Also, the free wifi let me play Gowalla all the way from NYC to DC ;-)

Washington DC is a tiny town masquerading as a state within the larger state of Virginia. For the most part, the city appears to be a collection of government buildings peppered with statues and monuments all in the classical style. More than a few times I've found myself comparing DC to a modern Rome with all of the buildings still standing.

There's a pretty obvious racial divide here. While there's clearly a healthy mix of black & white in DC, a stroll through Union Station or down Pennsylvania Avenue will illustrate the imbalance. While I've seen a number of black people walking about with bluetooth headsets & blackberries, in two days here and I've not seen a single white person in a service-related job. It's as if the white population has "allowed" the blacks into the management sector, but somehow sees itself as "above" working at McDonald's or waiting tables. I've only been here two days though, so could be totally wrong on this one.

Like NYC, I went a bit crazy with the sightseeing here, and my feet may never forgive me. As soon as I arrived yesterday, I dumped my gear in my hotel room and started gallivanting. I visited the Library of Congress and did a quick tour through there, took some pictures at the Capitol, and then headed down to the National Archives, The Washington Monument, The Smithsonian, The WW2 Memorial, The Vietnam War Memorial, The Korean War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.

Yesterday's highlight though was without a doubt, the National Archives, where I actually saw the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. The documents are ancient and faded, most of the text of which has been nearly erased with time. Regardless, it was rather inspiring to actually see it and read the words "We the People" knowing the reasoning behind those words. As Canadians, I think we often forget how different we are from the Americans: the Ideas that formed this country are very different from those that formed our own. Frankly, I think that even though we've been neighbours for all this time, there's still a lot we have to learn from each other on this front.

That night I gave my feet a nice hot bath and slept in today to recover before heading out to Arlington National Cemetery. Let me just tell you that no matter how big you think it is, no matter how strongly you might think it will affect you, you really can't prepare yourself for that place. There are over 350 000 people buried there, for each headstone, one life... and the stones go on, and on, and on, and on. Past presidents are buried here, including JFK, but I spent my time just trying to take in the acres of death. Over 200years have past since that place was founded, and nowadays they bury around 25 people as a daily average. It's a testament to patriotism and to the judgement of American leadership.

The last stop on my trip was to the White House, a palace surrounded by iron fences and concrete barricades. I took in the view from behind the distant gate, and didn't go for the tour (if there in fact was one). After Arlington, I wasn't really interested.

DC is an interesting town, with ancient classical buildings everywhere you look, and metal detectors in its food courts. It's the kind of place that everyone should visit at least once, but I don't think I'll be coming back.

So that's it for my trip. I had a really good time travelling, but will be glad to be back on Canadian soil tomorrow. America is scary, but that's a topic for another blog post some other time. I'll leave you with a link to my Gowallawalk map, a plotting of various places I've been, including all of the spots I visited on this trip.

I had a rather enlightening conversation with an Old Friend over lunch yesterday. John, a former co-worker at Work [at] Play and I meet for lunch every few months, mostly to catch up on each other's lives and talk about how things are going at my present employer. He's since moved on to be the COO at VirtualDoubloon but we got along so well, that I figured the friendship was worth the maintenance.

This time around, we didn't talk about my current employer so much as how my life was moving in general. I was on the verge of my 31st birthday and coming out of both a romantic relationship and a (thankfully unrelated) business co-founding partnership and "what's next" was the primary topic of discussion.

He asked about my political career, specifically whether I'd run in the next election, and I explained that I'd love to if the riding association in North Vancouver-Seymour is unable to find a candidate, but outside of that, every topic we hit on didn't produce any enthusiasm from me. The truth is, I haven't been motivated by much since I moved here. I've been unable to get excited about the activist scene, and frankly my job stopped being interesting over a year ago.

This line of thinking gets worse when I consider that about six months ago I was in the very same position I am now. I was re-evaluating my whole reasoning for being in Vancouver and was so desperate for something to hold me here that I jumped at the chance to start a company with a stranger -- which for the record is not a good idea :-)

Since our conversation though, I've come to realise that too many of my decisions in this life so far have been ones governed by how those actions might affect others. This isn't to say that I've been a terribly selfless person, rather that I've let my own happiness be hindered by whether or not decision x was a Right decision, or whether it would make people I love unhappy.

I'm not going to do that anymore.

This can mean a variety of things. I might take dance classes, or join a choir, or even take this job. I might move to Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin, or Seoul too... I'm not sure yet. I'm just done with letting my happiness be governed by externalities.

31years in... I guess it's better late than never.

It took a great deal of concentration, but I made it through the day yesterday... barely. I did what I could to explore Seattle in the "free" time I was afforded from the aforementioned mixup with regard to the timing of my arrival. Unfortunately, the exhaustion didn't help and I really wasn't operating at 100% for the entirety of the day... more like 30% actually.

As you may have guessed, my hotel didn't have my room ready (why would they? it was 9am), so I did a little directionless sightseeing. I visited Seattle Center, the remnants of Seattle's own Expo experience years ago. Nowadays, it's mostly an amusement park and science centre. I did however ride the monorail, which was kinda cool. Here's a train that's bigger than the SkyTrain, but likely just as expensive to build. Also, people drive it... but what do you want? This thing came out in 1962.

I did a lot of pointless wandering and learnt a lot about the city in general in my short time. Here's some stuff in my favourite format: point form:

• The highway system has some really impressive tree-coverage. Where we just mow everything down, Seattle has Great Big fir and cedar trees alongside the highway and twisting around the interchanges.
• Subway restaurants have spinache and herb havarti. Yum.
• Much like the highways, the downtown core has a remarkably large tree canopy. It's very common to see trees 2 and 3 storeys high alongside the street. On top of that, a number of these trees have bright green paper taped to them with a notice stating that the tree is protected by the city and cutting it down would result in a substantial fine. Each tree even has an estimated value raning from $4000 to as much as $11000.
• Many of the sidewalks are also wider than those you might find in Vancouver or Toronto. Of course the trees often take up a big chunk of it, but either way, there's lots of room to walk. However the cyclists appear to use the sidewalks illegally as well.
• The Pepsi tastes different. They use high-fructose corn syrup here. I don't like it.
• The busses running around the downtown core are free, however, they suffer from the same idiotic problem Vancouver has: there's no way to know where they go. As a tourist, I'm not really interested on boarding a bus only to find out that it's not going anywhere near where I want to go.
• Seattle made the same mistake as Toronto with regard to its waterfront: They build a highway between it and the rest of the city. To get to the waterfront, (which looks a lot like Toronto's) you have to go under a noisy, ugly, overpass.
• The bus shelters are ad-free, and in the nicer parts of downtown, there's great big ad-free maps showing you where you are, and what other stores etc. are near you. They're not as cool as the ones in Gangnam though (the relevant portion is at the end).
• There are lots of phone booths. I'm not sure if they're actively removing them like they are in Canada, but from my perspective, there's lots.
• The pedestrian signals are really slow. If you think the car has dominance in Vancouver or Toronto (and it does), you should see Seattle. Cars are the boss.

After surfing in my hotel's lobby, talking to friends with IM and looking for interesting stuff in Seattle for a while, they finally hooked me up with a room and I half-crashed on my bed while I talked to Susan before she went to bed herself. After that, I decided that I needed to stay awake 'till at lest 7 or 8, so I cleaned up and went back out, intending on making my way down to the "welcome party" portion of the Gnomedex conference.

I stopped for "lunch" at 1600 and walked down to the conference centre where I got a badge, a book, and a lanyard & card from Microsoft. The card is intended for Microsoft Surface and let me tell you, it's really cool. Sure, you can trade photos and contacts etc (which are locked into the Microsoft site) but the potential for applications is really impressive. There's a dj-style game, where you take (prefab) audio tracks and load them onto a spinning disc, that you can then layer the sounds and vary the volume based on their proximity to the centre. The disc will even work as a scratch-thingy if you want. I wish Jeremy or my brother were there to try it out.

For the most part, last night was rather tough, not only because of my limited hours of sleep but also the fact that I suck at networking. I just have to care... and I don't. This conference is a hybrid of Nerds and business-types and I just don't feel social enough right now talk to anyone. It also doesn't help that everyone here seems to know everyone: imagine the twitter pools from all over the country coming to one place to twitter... it's creepy.

Months ago, realising that my company had this annual training budget for all of it's employees, I decided to dig around looking for conferences in interesting places that might teach me stuff and I found Gnomedex. It's in Seattle and now, so am I.

The whole thing's gotten off to a rather rough start though. I woke up at 4am to board a 0630 flight and be downtown for the conference start by 9. There was only one problem though: the conference doesn't start 'till 1900, and that's not even the real conference. it's just a mixer.

So now I'm in downtown Seattle, which is nice, but I'm totally beaten down by the early hour, which is not so nice. I do however have reasonably stable Internet access, which is pretty sweet and I'm sitting here in the hotel lobby looking for fun stuff to do in Seattle. I've already ridden the Monorail, so don't suggest that :-)

I figure I'll try to do some sightseeing today before I head down to the mixer... or maybe I'll just skip the mixer and get an early night's sleep for tomorrow. I'm not really in any condition to be social anyway.

So far, Seattle appears to be a nice little town. The streets are pretty quiet and the geographical size quite walkable. I did a reasonable-sized lap through town already, hitting Seattle Center (I feel dirty spelling it that way) and part of the shopping downtown core. If I weren't so exhausted, I'd probably be having a very nice time right now.

This was the main tourist attraction near our hostel, a beautiful pagoda right next to a Buddhist temple.

The view of the courtyard from just inside the Asakusa temple.

This is a fragment of the density that is Shibuya. I've heard that Bladerunner was modelled after this.

The Meiji Shrine is really a great big part in the heart of Tokyo.

This is the present home of the Emperor of Japan. The role is purely symbolic now (unlike Canada, he isn't officially the Head of State), but he's still treated as though he is.

One of the few good shots taken of me on this trip. This is in Hama Rikyu Teien, a giant garden within walking distance of the world-renouned Tsukiji fish market.

Susan made a face for this one to be funny, so don't worry, she's not mad :-)

Susan loves ladybugs

The The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building is one of the tallest in the city and they offer a free elevator ride to the top so you can check out the skyline.

The seat of Imperial power for nearly 1000years, this is was shot in the garden of the Imperial Palace, Kyoto.

This is the closest they would let us get, but I still feel all special for being there.

As part of the lantern festival in Gion, this pagoda was illuminated.

Everything is cute in Japan, even the cookies.

The view from our lunch stop in Okinawa.

I've not been very studious about my Japan update and for that I'm sorry. Life's been a bit crazy since I returned "home" and I guess I figured that if I put up the pictures, I could put it off a bit but as the details of the whole trip are beginning to fade from memory, this is becoming more urgent.

So where shall I start? Lets start with a good one: Susan is awesome. Our relationship before the trip was a rather disconnected one. We knew each other only a little when I left Toronto, but I honestly believe that we've grown much closer as a result of this trip. It's always a risk, choosing to travel a foreign country with a friend and I'm really glad that it worked out so well. She compensated for my weaknesses and I for hers. I just thought that I might get that out first.

General

Japan is an interesting place. Though not as foreign as you may think, it's still quite different from Canada. This became quite clear to me no less than 15minutes after we landed at Narita Airport: I was fingerprinted as I came through customs. Those of you who know me know that this was quite traumatic for me. I've managed to go 29years without being treated like a criminal and here I was, at customs in a foreign country where I didn't know my rights in this regard. The man pointed at the little computer, and holding my passport he said: "Fingers. Put". I complied and it's really been bothering me ever since. I've even found myself trying to think of ways to mutilate the tips of those two fingers...

So yeah, Japanese folk seem to have fewer concerns about how much power the State has over them. This probably bothered me more than anything during my stay. A close second though would be the social acceptance of smoking over there. They still ask you: "Smoking or non?" when you enter a restaurant. Nasty. At least they can't smoke on the subway.

The subways were a bit of a disappointment really. All those stories you hear about pushers on the trains? Never saw one. In fact, the trains we were on never got any more crowded than a TTC or Seoul subway car does. From what I hear though, the JR Line trains from the surrounding areas are what started this rumour, as they support the suburbanites, but since we never went there, it never happened.

Tokyo

Transit is a good place from which to segue into Tokyo though. My gods it was impressive. Not so much the stations or the trains themselves, but the sheer number of lines and how the city manages its mass. Tokyo supports within its borders the entire population of Canada. 12million in Tokyo proper, and 33million when you include the suburbs.

But here's the kicker: you wouldn't know it. Excluding a few famous intersections, the focal points of the city are sufficiently dispersed that you don't have the "downtown" problem that plagues most North American cities. Instead of funnelling all 33million people into a single urbanised core, Tokyo supports many, many "cores", each with a mix of residential, commercial and even industrial uses. People will often live in Shinjuku and work in Roppongi, both "downtowns" in their own right, but within the same city. For the Vancouver people, imagine if Burnaby were a real destination for people, or if it wasn't unique to live in Vancouver but work in Richmond. Now imagine that all of that space were one great big city. That's Tokyo -- but with real transit.

One more note on the transit: it's massive. It's a mesh of 13 subway lines and 282 stations (not including the commuter rail (JR) lines) criss-crossing above and below ground, all different colours, sporting hard-to-remember names and managed by two different private companies. Now, imagine that even with all of that complexity, that it was super-easy to navigate: Each station is sequentially numbered and colour-coded so if you're going from A to B, you find the coloured line you're likely to take on the many free multi-lingual maps, find the start and end points and take their numbers. If you're going from 13 to 26, then you make sure that the numbers are getting bigger as you ride. If not, you're going the wrong way. Transit way-finding in Tokyo was never a problem.

Another common myth people hear about Tokyo is that it's a concrete desert, but nothing could be further from the truth. True, much of it is paved, but there are beautiful gardens everywhere, and I'm not talking about these lame Toronto-style parkettes, or these new mini parks that are popping up in Vancouver, I'm talking about acres of tended streams, trees and flowers right in the midst of the city. Some like the The Hama Rikyu Teien Gardens near the Tsukiji Fish Market cost a few hundred yen (100¥ was roughly $1.30CAD), and others like the Meiji Shrine are totally free. Beautiful landscaped public spaces nestled between the urban spaces to help keep people sane. It's really very impressive.

We only had three days in Tokyo though, so we couldn't possibly have seen everything we wanted to. Squaresoft and Joypolis would have to wait for another time. We did however see the busiest intersection in the world, in an area of town called Shibuya, visit Asakusa for its beautiful old Buddhist temple, walk through Shinjuku to see some awesome architecture as well as the Imperial Palace (though we couldn't wake up early enough to get inside the grounds). Tokyo is awesome, but expensive. You should go, but make sure that you're prepared to drop about $75CAD a day... assuming that you're staying in a hostel.

Kyoto

Like every rational country, Japan links its major cities with high-speed rail that plugs into local transit. You can take the subway from Asakusa to Tokyo station in 20minutes and without leaving the building, hop on a bullet train to a city hundreds of kilometres away. We were in Kyoto in a matter of hours.

Kyoto is pretty much the opposite of Tokyo. Where Tokyo is sky scrapers and 33million people, Kyoto is a quiet, traditional Japanese town riddled with centuries-old temples and a less-than-impressive subway system. You don't come to Kyoto for the bustle and night life, you come for the culture, history and peace.

Susan had booked us into Tani House, a hostel that bills itself as a traditional home converted for hostel living. We got a whole house to ourselves, complete with kitchen, living room, bathroom and a few bedrooms and the old woman who runs the place even made us tea when we arrived. We ate on the floor, we slept on the floor in the paper-walled bedroom and let the high-energy memory from Tokyo fade away. It's a great place to stay, I muchly recommend :-)

While digging around for a link to Tani House, I happened upon this YouTube video of the interior. Check it out if you're interested.

We didn't have a lot of time there, so sightseeing of Kyoto was rather rushed. We spent one day visiting the Imperial Palace1 complete with English language tour and acres of cherry blossoms and continued into the rest of the city to do some general sightseeing. Kyoto is divided by a massive river that the public uses for everything from jogging to picnics to makeouts. It's really quite beautiful. Have I said that enough yet? We spent an evening in Gion at a lantern festival, and we even paid a rather entertained cab driver to take us to The Nintendo Building. That's right, I can has culture.

Kyoto: Learn Your Pronunciation

One final note on Kyoto before I move on. We realised early on in our stay there that as Kyoto is overrun with beautiful old temples, the locals (and for the sake of this story, the cab drivers) usually navigate by the temple names rather than street intersections. This can be dangerous if you don't have the pronunciation down.

We'd done everything right. Susan had acquired a map of the city and directions to our hostel. We'd found the temple nearest our hostel (Daikaku-ji) and circled it on the map and after a long day of sightseeing, figured that a cab ride home was only appropriate. We handed the map to the driver, pointed at the circled portion and we were off.

It wasn't long before Susan and I both started to feel as though we weren't on the right track. The surrounding areas looked less and less familiar as the ride continued on and eventually the city began to fade away. With fewer and fewer lights on the streets outside, we started to freak out just a little. We asked the driver: "Daitoku-ji?" and he smiled, though looking a little confused and nodded. We had put all of our faith in a map and a stranger and now there was a lake coming up on our right.

30minutes and about 30 000¥ later, he pulls into a dark, deserted temple and asks for his cash. We panic. Much confusion ensues. Clearly he was sure that he'd taken us to the right place, but this was obviously not where we wanted to go. The driver figured that we did in fact want to be at this temple, we just didn't know where our hostel was from here. He turned off the meter and took us a little further into town where he proceeded to ask strangers for us regarding the location of this "Tani House" place. No luck. We got him to take us somewhere near civilisation, paid the incredibly patient man and got out. It was 10pm and we were on a strange street in a foreign country with a phrase book, an (apparently useless) map and just under about 100000¥.

It took us some time (and a few fruitless enquiries with non-English-speaking locals) to figure out that when we'd initially circled the temple on the map, we'd gotten a syllable wrong. Daikaku-ji was in the middle of nowhere. Daitoku-ji was where we wanted to be. It hadn't been a problem before because we'd followed the aforementioned directions to our hostel the first time.

So let this be a lesson to you kids:

• Get a map
• Make sure you've got the right place on that map.
• Trust the cab drivers in Kyoto, they're awesome, but feel free to second-guess yourself.
• Make sure that you have lots of cash -- just in case.

Tangent: Language

For those who already know, I apologise for stating the seemingly obvious, but since I didn't know, I must assume that I'm not the only one. Written Japanese is in fact three different character sets: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Most people know this much but what surprised and impressed me was the fact that each of these character sets have their own purpose -- ie. they're not exactly interchangeable.

Kanji for example is probably the closest thing to what Westerners often assume all Asian languages are like. Each symbol is a single character (as opposed to Korean which is a composite of symbols representing a syllable) which represents an idea or thought. "Home" has it's own symbol, as does "food" and "vehicle". These symbols are then combined into statements, often only a few symbols long that culturally mean something. "Car parkade" cannot be represented in Kanji, instead they symbol for "vehicle" and "place" are used and everyone understands.

The problem with Kanji though is that it's limiting. You can't really create full sentences with it easily. For this, hiragana is provided as the sort of "glue". The symbols are noticeably different and actually "spell out" into words rather than independently represent ideas. I don't really understand much more than this.

Lastly, there's katakana, which as my guidebook explained, is often used for foreign words. My name would be spelt with katakana as would "Vancouver" or probably even "meat loaf" as there's likely is no Japanese word for it. katakana appears deceptively similar to hiragana (for the uninitiated) so understanding signage with a little guidebook is really tough.

If there's anything that I've taken away from this trip, it's that I apparently have an aptitude for languages, or at the very least a sincere interest. I managed to pick up the basics in no time and have little touble handling navigation and simple conversation. It's fun! You should try :-)

If you're interested in finding more information about the various writing types in Japan, I found this handy site that covers not only the modern usage, but the historical roots of all three types as well.

Okinawa

Frankly, I was surprised that you can't take a train to Okinawa. Of course I knew that it was an island, but I figured that Japan of all places would have tried to run a train there :-) Sadly, this wasn't the case though, so we took a train from Kyoto station to Kansai airport in Osaka and boarded a short flight to Okinawa where we met Susan's friend Yasuko (pronounced "yes-ko") who would serve as our awesome guide for the duration of our stay in Japan.

The differences between Okinawa and either of our previous destinations are night & day. Everything from climate (tropical) to urban design (far more suburban) to culture (it's like another country) is drastically different from either Tokyo or Kyoto. Where Tokyo has skyscrapers, Okinawa has decaying low-rises, instead of subways, there are highways. The presence of Americans too is staggering. There's a US air force base within the city limits and everywhere you look you see American military types with their families. It's amazing how your personal feel for safety changes as well. In Kyoto Susan watched a girl leave her laptop on a table in a Starbucks while she went to the bathroom, but that kind of thing is much less likely in Okinawa.

But outside of the city, Okinawa is surrounded with tropical forest. Yasuko drove us all over the countryside to holy shrines and sleepy little villages where we took pictures of the flora, were eaten by bugs and enjoyed the scenery. We ate at a little place called "Pizza and Sky" with an amazing view and visited a series of cottage factories where people were making glass sculpture by hand. This is the kind of thing you just can't do on your own and Yasuko made this possible. She is awesome.

Our last big stop in our Okinawa trip was the Churaumi Aquarium a massive building on the shore that plays host to hundreds of different aquatic species. There was the traditional dolphin show as well as the biggest fish tank I've ever seen. I saw a fish that was bigger than a house dude. Crazy, crazy stuff.

Going Home

All of the above took place in the space of a week. There was more of course but as it is, this post is already way too long. Japan is just fascinating. With its mountain of cute toys (Hello Kitty anyone?), ancient culture and honourable people, it's an amazing place to experience. I'll have to go back, as I just didn't have enough time for everything I wanted to see. Next time I'll have to spend more time in Tokyo and Kyoto and be sure to visit Hiroshima as well. When I do return though, I hope that Susan will come with me too. She was fun :-)

Footnotes

1. Kyoto was actually the original seat of the Emperor from way back in the 8th Century. In fact, "Kyoto" means "capital city". It was later moved to Edo (Tokyo) in the 1800's.

You know, I intended on updating more often than this, but frankly my life here in Seoul hasn't been all that "epic" :-) I guess a post every 5 to 7 days will have to suffice.

Shawna & Friends

Even with Emily-Jane's poor timing in her moving back to Toronto only a week before I arrived, I've still managed to spend lots of time with friends in Seoul since Shawna moved here from Yeosu (여수시) at roughly the same time as Emily-Jane left.

At the end of my first day in Seoul, Jeong-Yeon and I were quite tired from our wanderings as we headed home.

Shawna and I messing around at the restaurant where I had the kangaroo.

Yes this says what you think it says. It's a little clothing store in Itaewon.

Paul is Shawna's really cool neighbour who babysat me for a day and speands a great deal of time with Shawna. He's a cool guy and it was nice to have met him.

Seoul uses a turnstyle system for it's underground. You can buy a Tmoney card and charge it up with Won, which is later automatically debitted by these two-way machines. Billing is based on distance travelled rather than Toronto's one-price-for-all or Vancouver's zone system.

This is Shawna's washing machine. If you had only a week's worth of clothes to your name, could you be sure that you knew how to operate this thing?

My first night here was shared with Shawna, her new English-teacher neighbours and an old friend from high school, Jeong-Yeon (whom I visited last time I was in Seoul). We ate pizza, talked about Buffy and got along swimmingly. As the week has gone on, Shawna, Paul (one of her neighbours) and I have spent a great deal of time together -- pretty much every evening has had the three of us doing something. Paul got off work early and took me around town to buy some tailor-made shirts and pick up a loner phone (call me or txt me! 011-82-10-8686-6551) and Jeong-Yeon did some wandering with me as well. Everyone here has been really helpful and supportive.

Some of you had expressed doubt as to my ability to survive in Korea due to my horribly picky eating habits, so I thought that I would mention that I've yet to consume any traditionally Korean food this week :-) Instead, I've enjoyed unlimited steak at a Brazilian steakhouse, some incredibly good kangaroo at a high-end restaurant & winery, french toast at a cafe down the street and ice cream at Cold Stone. Paul even brought over some gelato last night :-) Shawna has assured me though that tonight we're going out for real Korean food. I hope it's BBQ :-)

So yes, Seoul is very much an international city. Not nearly as foreigner-friendly as Berlin or even Florence, but you can see that they're making serious efforts. Unlike Yeosu, where white-folk are extremely rare, I've noticed a rough ratio of 1:40 in the subway system. Some neighbourhoods like Itaewon (이태원동) are more westernised but anyone navigate the awesome underground thanks to the excellent way-finding signs and maps throughout the city.

Quest for the Spatula

It was based on these observations that I decided to go out wandering on my own yesterday. Armed with about 60 000 원, (won) (about $52 CAD), a phrasebook, a cellphone, and some rudimentary phrases like "hello", "thank you", and "I'll take that", I went for a walk with the intention of getting lost and finding my way again. Turns out it wasn't all that hard to do both.

The plan was to return home with a new power strip for Shawna's desk, a plastic spatula (she only has a metal one for her Teflon pan) and some groceries. The power strip was tough. I walked into a hardware store to find someone who spoke just enough English to tell me how much something cost but not enough to figure out what I wanted. She handed me a pen and paper and we played pictionary for a few minutes while she bounced around the tiny store pointing at things to see if that's what I was looking for. Eventually we got it though. She asked for "one, two" and I handed her twelve-thousand won.

The rest of the trip was far less fruitful. I would walk down a street for 20 or 30 minutes passing a pharmacy, then a phone store, then a office supply store, then another pharmacy, then another phone store... repeat until exhausted. Then I'd turn a corner and it'd be the same thing, only this time with furniture stores. Who would have thought that finding a cheap plastic spatula would be so difficult? I spent much of the rest of the day just strolling through zig-zaggy streets, stopping in to corner stores looking for some salt & pepper for Shawna's kitchen or some cooking oil but nothing was more elusive than that damned spatula... so I gave up and got on the subway, deciding to favour the entropy approach: I picked a station that didn't look to be too far away (I was getting tired) and hopped on.

서울

There wasn't much at Nakseongdae Station (낙성대역) either but as I was sitting there waiting for the subway I started to realise that I understanding Korean writing really isn't all that hard. The name station name Nakseongdae was written on a support beam just above the Korean and without thinking I began sounding out the script. Once you understand the basic composition of the vowels and syllables, everything seems elementary. Once on the subway, I began scanning the map looking for other station names I could pronounce -- it was awesome. I can't say that I understand Korean yet, but it's a hell of a thing to feel that click in your brain when you at least start down that path.

Software

My only regret so far (and frankly, this isn't that big of a deal) is that I've not had much time to work on my own technical stuff. I wanted to finish my password-tracking program so it could handle groups, or learn more about Django but neither of those have happened. I've done a lot of relaxing though and that, more than anything else is what I've needed lately.

Susan is arriving from Daegu (대구) tonight and she'll be staying here at Shawna's with me and Soomi. This tiny little place is going to be a full house, but not for long -- Susan and I will be getting on an early flight out of here to Tokyo in the morning. Then begins the really foreign part of my trip :-)

Sharpied in green onto the paper-dispenser in a YVR bathroom:

"Why can't the world learn to get along?"

A response, scrawled in black next to it:

"Too many people"

It's true. I'm still alive, though I couldn't blame you if you'd considered otherwise. I've been neglecting this blog of late. Actually, I've been neglecting most of my life lately but soon, very soon, I shall have a break and I wanted to get this Long List of Stuff out of the way before that happens so here goes:

Carmen

A little over a month ago, I attempted to expand my cultural horizons by taking in My First Opera at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I accompanied Margaret, Dianna, and Aisha to the show and like good opera-goers we dressed up pretty for the night, then quietly mocked the yahoos who felt that jeans and a tshirt was appropriate.

For my part, I can't say that I really enjoyed the opera. (Sorry Diana). I didn't hate it either though. Frankly, it didn't do much for me at all. I found much of the music frustratingly simple when compared to a symphony or even broadway show, and the characters completely unbelievable. The emotion they conveyed (quite brilliantly I admit) didn't make any sense when the story seemed so trivial. I guess Opera just isn't for me.

I still have trouble getting over the fact that they would hold something like an opera in a venue that doesn't really lend itself to acoustic projection. The QE Theatre, while quite functional as a normal theatre, doesn't hold a candle to the acoustics you find in The Orpheum, yet they hold rock concerts in the latter and opera in the former. This makes no sense to me.

Choir

Not too long after my night at the opera, I went to my first choir practise in years. Simple Gifts, a local amateur choir run by Ieva Wool and for the most part, I liked them. The people I sang with had talent, the director was patient and helpful and overall everyone in the room seemed to really enjoy the whole experience. The only negatives were the average age of the singers (~50ish) and the fact that the practise was held on Tuesday nights... I had no idea how tiring a regular weekday practise from 7:30 - 9:30 would be, but it was.

I had the opportunity to try out the choir for two practises before I decided whether or not I was "in" or not, and the decision of whether or not to keep going came down to a simple gut feeling: I was just too tired. That is, the idea of going to choir on Tuesday felt more like a responsibility ("you're going to like, this so you have to go") as opposed to a joy ("yay! choir!"). I chalked it up to the general energy level of the choir (dear gods I miss Mr. Rhan sometimes) and my own energy reserves at the end of my work day. I just couldn't give anymore, so I declined to join.

If my situations changes for the next "term", I'll drop in again and give it another go, but for now, I just didn't feel like I was getting what I needed out of it.

The Super Secret Project

My father is an Idea man. Much like myself, he has new ideas all the time, though the difference between us is that his ideas are usually profit-driven while mine remain the betterment of mankind-types. His latest idea however has been snowballing into a full-blown project and will likely launch this year. Through the life cycle of his this beast, he's been coming back to me asking questions about how he could do "x" and I would work out with him roughly how everything would work... well it's time, now he wants me to build it.

I've done some research and it looks like I'll be installing Gentoo Linux on one of these running a really cool Python script I wrote that captures mouse clicks and logs stuff to the database and then pushes said data over the Internet to a master server via one of these things. It's gonna be fun.

Korea and Japan

And now for the big one: I'm going to Korea on Saturday and then to Japan on the 14th, then home by the 22nd. It's gonna be frickin' cool. My friend Susan, who's currently teaching English in Daegu, Korea was looking for company for a Japan trip and I jumped at the chance (finances be damned!). The way I see it, Japan is too foreign a country for me to be comfortable exploring on my own, and frankly, few of my friends have the money or the interest in making the trip. This opportunity was too rare to pass up... and so I go!

It looks like th total cost of flights, trains and accommodation will be in the neighbourhood of $3000CAD which may sound crazy high but you have to remember that it is the other side of the world -- the two trans-Pacific flights alone make up 50% of that sum.

It'll be fun to hang with Susan though -- we never spent enough time together when we were both in Toronto, so this will give us time to catch up :-) She has her heart set on a traditional costuming thing that they do regularly in a park in Tokyo, and I'm really stoked about both riding the subway in there and visiting the Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto... no, I don't know if they have tours, but I don't care. I just want my picture in front of the Nintendo sign :-)

I'm currently taking orders for stuff people want me to bring back, so if you want on the list, just drop me a comment. Also, if you think that there's something I should see out that way, let me know and I'll try to add it to our itinerary. The cities I'll be in are: Seoul, Daegu (maybe), Tokyo, Kyoto, Okinawa City, and Naha.

Alright, I figure that makes up for my rather long absence. I'll try to be more studious when I'm blogging on the other side of the planet :-)