Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

November 24, 2008 03:15 +0000 | Art Vancouver 2

Hand made with silicon, this cellphone camera shot doesn't do it justice. See more here

This guy was about 3' tall and looked so real you'd swear that he was going to walk out of the room any mintue to put some clothes on. Again, my cellphone camera fails to convey the detail.

I went to the East Side Culture Crawl yesterday and thought that it might be fun to share with you some of my experiences.

For those of you who have never heard of the Crawl, I suggest a perusal of the website (it's still on for one more day!) but here's the gist: Vancouver's East Side is home to a lot of really talented artists. Once a year, these people open their studio doors to the public so we can see what they've been doing, sometimes even take part in the creation of art ourselves. It's a family-friendly event and some of the stuff you see is just awesome -- in the literal sense of the word.

The highlights for me for the evening were Avatar and Kurve, both very talented designers, an honourable mention going to Grace Lee who had some really nice photography and some pretty jewelry that Melanie picked up.

The night was really quite exciting, despite running headlong into a mirror on the bus and cutting my head open... that part was no fun. Anyway, I took some pictures of the cool stuff from Avatar, so I'm including them here, but I encourage you to check out all three pages linked above as well as the site for the Crawl itself. Good fun ;-)

November 12, 2008 08:21 +0000 | Politics Vancouver 3

Mayor
Greggor Robertson	Vision Vancouver
Council
David Cadman	COPE
George Chow	Vision Vancouver
Heather Deal	Vision Vancouver
Kashmir Dhaliwal	Vision Vancouver
Kerry Jang	Vision Vancouver
Raymond Louie	Vision Vancouver
Geoff Meggs	Vision Vancouver
Andrea Reimer	Vision Vancouver
Tim Stevenson	Vision Vancouver
Geri Tramutola	Work Less Party
Park Board
Richard Mayencourt	Independent
Stuart Mackinnon	Green Party
Constance Barnes	Vision Vancouver
Sarah Blyth	Vision Vancouver
Raj Hundal	Vision Vancouver
Aaron Jasper	Vision Vancouver
Ivan Doumenc	Work Less Party
School Trustee
Bill Bargeman	COPE
Al Blakey	COPE
Jane Bouey	COPE
Alvin Singh	COPE
Allan Wong	COPE
Patti Bacchus	Vision Vancouver
Ken Clement	Vision Vancouver
Sharon E. Gregson	Vision Vancouver
Mike Lombardi	Vision Vancouver

What better way to spend a Remembrance Day than to exercise my civic privilege and research whom I should support in the upcoming municipal election?

After hours (and this is by no means exaggeration), I've finally come down to a list of all the people I'll be supporting in this Saturday's election. For those of you not living in Vancouver, you may be interested to know that Vancouver doesn't have a ward system, instead we elect our representatives at-large. In other words, we get a list of a bunch of people looking for our vote and we pick ten of them.

On the surface, it looks all very democratic, even holistic if I can use that word in this context. While in a ward system you have to deal with the perils of NIMBYism, Vancouver councillors must theoretically represent the whole of the city which should lead to decision making that places the betterment of the city first.

I don't really know if it all works out that way though. I'm still new here.

What I can tell you is that there's a very real division here between East and West. Acknowledged or not, culturally and economically Vancouver has been referred to as as a two-ward system. This fits well with the two-party system we have... well sort of:

There's the Non-partisan association, which is traditionally rather right-wing, and an alliance of left-ish candidates comprised of three parties: Vision Vancouver, The Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) and The Vancouver Green Party. The funny part is that alliance thing. Since this party system is all about who controls the council, Vision, COPE and Green have reached an agreement not to compete with each other and instead campaign as a sort of team. As a result, NPA is running 10 candidates for council, while Vision is running 8 and COPE 2. There are similar splits in the parks board and school trustee races.

The problem for me is that I really don't like COPE. I find many of their policies (and even some of their candidates) to be naive, and their priorities to be sorely misplaced. However, if I don't support the NPA (who brought us many notable problems like CCTV cameras in the streets, private police, panhandling bylaws etc.) then I cannot vote against that agenda without supporting COPE. Or can I?

There are independents running as well, many of them clearly unfit for office let alone my vote, and there is also the Work Less Party whose platform is very forward thinking and dare I say enlightened. Their only problem is that the group seams plagued with non-professionals incapable of actually doing the job for which they're attempting to get elected. Their policy paper is riddled with typos for chrissake.

So after much research and personal debate I have arrived at this list. If you think I've missed something worth noting, please let me know. Notably missing from here is Michael Geller, a charismatic, intelligent, well travelled candidate... who is running with the NPA. I couldn't in good conscience give my vote to someone who could potentially be motivated to support some of the more disastrous NPA policies either out of loyalty or political pressure. If he were running independent however, I'd support him in a second. Also, Lea Johnson, an independent, seems like a decent guy, but his website talked about his work in Ukrainia... He's probably best suited for working with RainCity anyway.

Notably on this list are Richard Mayencourt (independent) and two Work Less Party candidates: Geri Tramutola for council and Ivan Doumenc for park board. I had the opportunity to hear Tramutola speak last Friday at the VPSN's Last Candidate Standing event and was blown away by the passionate and eloquent nature of her arguments. It's clear that she knows her stuff and she's by far my favourite candidate. I only know Doumenc from his profile on the WLP's website, but his ideas for parks & rec appear to be in line with my own so I included him as well.

So that's about it. My basic strategy: Start with known favourites, then add Vision. If I needed more, I went down the list of independents and COPE people. If I needed fewer, I went through the Vision list and pulled out weak profiles. It's about the best I can do with 86 candidates and such a short period of time.

If you have different strategy, I'd love to hear it ;-) For those of you just wondering where you can get started, I suggest you take a look at the list of candidates and their profiles on the city's website.

September 28, 2008 05:48 +0000 | Activism Technology Vancouver 2

I spent most of my day today at Barcamp Vancouver 2008, the third incarnation of its kind in this city. For some of you, the name might ring a bell since I blogged about going to the Toronto Barcamp back in 2006. The ideas behind the Vancouver version were similar, though the experience was quite different. For the sake of brevity though, I'm going to do the rest of this post in point form... in part because the sentence structure of this paragraph is painful to me:

The Good Stuff

Lots of people using Twitter, Flickr, blogs and wikis to their full potential. It's so nice to see technology being implemented the way their creators (and pushers) hoped.
Really smart people who like talking about stuff. I sat through a lot of really interesting presentations regarding the mobile web (and how it doesn't exist), django-bloom (REALLY fucking cool), and cloud computing (it may not be as cool as you heard, but it's still really cool).
Had some really great conversation outside of the presentations. I met Karen Quinn Fung, an activist and organiser for the upcoming Skytrain Security UnConference. She's a striking young woman with a solid understanding of social media and community activism and with a few others in a small group we all tackled the touchy subject of activist infighting and community outreach.
Granville Island doughnuts. Best I've found in this city. Seriously. Go there. Now. ...and bring me back a few ;-)

The DoublePlusUnGood Stuff

Really short presentation times. Seriously, who holds an unconference in three separate buildings, offers no time to move to different venues between talks and then makes each session only a ½ hour? There was no time to actually flesh out any ideas in any session.
Presentations, not conversations. The Barcamp I went to in Toronto was all about multi-way communication. You didn't attend a presentation, you joined a conversation. All parties contributed to the greater whole that was Barcamp. This was much more in the form of a unidirectional dialogue and therefore far less interesting.
No mixing space. They got three buildings, and four rooms to hold presentations, and barely a hallway for space for people to talk about stuff. Barcamp is supposed to be about people talking to each other, not just listening to speakers... If I just wanted to hear one person's opinion, I'd read a blog.

So yeah, good things and bad about Barcamp this year. I hope that they're not all like this and that some of these things will be remedied in future incarnations. Until then, I'll probably be hitting other unconferences around town as I hear about them. It seems that they're becoming pretty popular lately.

September 25, 2008 20:22 +0000 | Activism Transit Vancouver 2

Translink is organising it's own unconference probably in much the same form as Toronto's Transit Camp. This one coming up will be based around security, but I imagine that it will be a good place to meet smart activist types and learn more about how transit works and what it needs in Vancouver.

I've you've got the time, I encourage you to register on the SkyTrain Security Unconference website. I've managed to schedule it into my day just before my interview with NextUP as they've accepted my application (yay!), and I was just invited to an interview with them on the same day at 3pm.

September 22, 2008 18:49 +0000 | Chrystal Melanie Personal Life Vancouver War 0

A lot of interesting things have been happening lately that I've yet to document properly here. My apologies to those involved for falling behind, but as you'll see, I've been rather busy.

For starters, Melanie has finally moved to Vancouver. After months of preparation, fear and goodbyes, Mel packed her bags (and her two cats) and hopped on a plane to YVR. In the space of less than a week, she had 4 interviews for two jobs and it's very possible that she'll be offered one of said jobs today or tomorrow. The cats were comfortable in my place almost immediately, and I'm already beginning to notice the effects of Mayday's fur all over the place. (She's such a princess).

It's been a bit of a shock to Melanie so far. I don't think that it's completely sunk in that she's a Vancouverite now. I suggested that she "take the day off" today and wander through Stanley Park while the weather is still pretty. I hope she takes my advice.

Chrystal has also broken some rather big news: she's moving to Kandahar. You know, that place from where we keep shipping people home feet first? Of course she won't be serving in the military, rather she'll be working in the diplomatic office, on a military base, surrounded by big people with guns. This is a really exciting career move for her and she's been wanting something like this for a very long time. I can't say that I'm glad she's going, but I suppose I have to be happy that she's doing what she wants with her life.

Just come back alive ok?

September 09, 2008 06:07 +0000 | Activism Dream Vancouver Vancouver 0

I've recently started looking into helping out with Dream Vancouver an activist group here in the city that focuses on things like affordable housing, transportation and citizen engagement. They seem like cool people with some solid goals for the city, so I'm interested.

Anyway, the reason that I'm posting about them here is that one of their big projects right now is to collect all sorts of data on the what people want in this town. To that end, they've developed a survey and I thought that some of you may want to take it. I don't like all of the questions, but it's a start.

Click here to take the Dream Vancouver survey.

September 02, 2008 03:23 +0000 | Vancouver 4

My brother just found this one while doing his own apartment hunting on Craigslist. Poesy especially will appreciate this:

Hi,

There's lots of light and plenty of space in the living/dining/kithen room. There's some old stained glass work but some of it is busted out and I've got plexi glass to patch it. The kitchen stove has two burners that work if you hold the dial just right. There's a big sink for laundry, and a dish rack hanging over the stove to dry things out with. There's an old oil heater in the basement that I can fire up sometime in Novemeber. There are two lamps, but the rest of the light fixtures don't work. You'll need a cell phone because we had to rip all that out to wire another place. The fridge smells a bit but it come with a set of good sealing rubbermaid containers, albiet you gotta clean em up good as they've been in there awhile. I remodeled the bathroom back in '82, when I put all of the crap from my own house into there; it hardly leaks. The floor has a drain in it anyway. The shower leans kindof funny but it wont fall over; I've checked, and I way 350 pounds. The hardwood was a bit stained by engine oil when my buddy Zeke rebuilt his Harley there. I'm looking for a single slave to occupy my suite. The other bedroom is actually a den and is taken up by my junk--Stay the fuck out. There is a bed in there that I can get for you, but it'll cost ya another 20 bucks a month. There's a garage but me and zeke have a "project" in there. You can park on the street but the city wants somethin from ya, I donno how much. The tenant in question can not: 1.)have any pets 2.)smoke or burn incense 3.)make any noise whatsoever 4.)leave smelly beer bottles outside 4.)recycle or compost 5.) watch television after 9pm... And is fine with me doing all of the above, in excess. I live in the loft, and I piss off the deck when I can't make it to the bathroom I share with you. The slave, i mean tenant, will have great credit, a great job, and sign a detailed year lease in his own blood, and hand me a year's worth of postdated checks before he/she gets the keys. Contact me if you figure it's a fit.

He was asking $900.

August 29, 2008 19:48 +0000 | Vancouver 15

While helping my brother look for a new place downtown with Craigslist, I received a few emails looking like this:

Hello

My name is Rev Way the owner the home and also want you to know that it was due to my transfer that makes me my wife and Son to leave the house and also want to give it out for rent and looking for a responsible person that can take very good care of it as we are not after the money for the rent but want it to be clean at the time and the person that will rent it to take it as if it were its own. So for now, We are here in west Africa, our new house and put all my worries off concerning the maintenance of the apartment for, since i am not residing there for now.I left behind some Facilities and electonics which include the rent, and a DVD player, air conditioning, alarm system. The kitchen is fully equipped with all necessary cooking utensils, arefrigerator-freezer, four-hob and oven, microwave,dishwasher and washing achine, My Computer Connected with Internet Acess Also the keys to the House are right here with me, and the lease document. Which i can send to you after all necessary agreement has be accepted.Our apartment location 989 Nelson St,Vancouver, BC, Canada. Also i will like you to know that the rent charges is not really the issue ,but your absolute maintenance of my apartment is most important thing so will want you to get back to me with the Application form below.

RENT APPLICATION FORM

Your Full Name

Your Full Address & Phone Number

How old are you?

Are you married?

How many people will be living in the house?

Do you have a pet?

Do you have a car?

Occupation?

When do you want to move in

How long do you want to stay in my apartment

Pictures of all the Occupant that will stay in my apartment

One Mr Brasson called me about the apartment,I told him that I can't give him the apartment because he loves smoking,drinking and dont want him to get drunked and damaged my property one day so If you are still interested, Note that the rent is going to be $745 Per month No extra fees.I will like you to give me a call on this effect to know how serious you are.I personally will actually come visiting you sometimes during the year as our new tenant.Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that i can have it in my file in case of issuing the receipt for you and contacting you. Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the keys of the house to you.

and this:

Thanks for your email and it is my gladness to hearing from you.I am Coleman Andy,the owner of the Apartment you are making inquiry of.Actually I resided in the apartment with my family,presently we moved away due to my transfer from my working place,my apartment is Located in 1200 WEST GEORGIA STREET DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER BRITISH COLUMBIA and presently my apartment is still available for rent for $660 per month including the utilities like hydro,washer and security,it is furnished.More so Now, I went for a Crusade in the West Africa and i will like you to get in touch with my wife in the states for more discussion as She is with the keys and the documents to the Apartment.Please i want you to note that,i am a kind and honest man and also i spent a lot on my property that i want to give you for rent,so i will solicit for your absolute maintenance of this apartment and want you to treat it as your own,is that taken,I want you to keep it tidy all the time so that i will be glad to see it neat when i come for a check up.I do that once in a while.I want have trust in you as i always stand by my words.Where are you located? let us know how soon you are willing to move in.Email my wife Mary, on( myhomerentals@gmail.com )and she will attend to you better..

Thanks for your interest.

Coleman Andy

If the above doesn't sound fishy to you, it should. They're clearly both scams, so I thought that I'd post them here. If you're looking for a new place (apparently, especially in Vancouver), here are some good markers of scammyness:

Ridiculously low price. Both examples above are underpriced by at least $400
Poor spelling/grammar
No phone number
Owner lives in Africa, claims wife has authority by email etc.

Basically, that rule of "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" is very much applicable here. Happy hunting ;-)

August 12, 2008 22:36 +0000 | Cycling Public Space Vancouver Vancouver Public Space Network 3

The following was in the Vancouver Public Space Network newsletter today and I thought that I might share it here for those who might be interested. This segment touches on something I mentioned a while back called Ciclovía, an event in Bogotá, Columbia. Apparently, the brain behind that event and others like it down there is doing a talk here in Vancouver. Space is limited, so register now if you're interested:

We are now facing a “perfect storm” of increasing global warming and environmental degradation, growing traffic congestion, an obesity crisis and other public health concerns, soaring energy costs and slowing economic growth. It is time to go beyond baby steps and take some major leaps. We must re-position walking and cycling as key parts of the solution to these major challenges.

As Bogotá has shown, creating great public spaces for walking and cycling contributes enormously to creating healthier, happier, more thriving communities. Hear former Bogota Commissioner of Parks, Sport and Recreation share his experiences and his lessons for Vancouver. The evening is being co-sponsored by Translink, the SFU City Program, the City of Vancouver and the Vancouver Public Space Network.

Event takes place Wednesday, August 20th at 7:00pm, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street. Admission is free but reservations are required.

To register - 778-782-5100 or email cstudies at sfu dot ca

For further information see vancouverpublicspace.ca.

August 08, 2008 07:57 +0000 | Cycling Vancouver 0

I just returned from teaching Poesy HTML-foo at her place on Commercial. Rather than taking a bus or the SkyTrain though, I decided to make all my travel arrangements today by bike: Home to work, to Posey's, to Home.

The reason that this commute is significant enough to post here however is not the means of transport or even the route, but the time of day. I just rode down the Sea Wall at midnight.

It's a very different experience at this time of night. Nearly no one is around at this hour, no kids, no dogs, no one playing volleyball or going for a jog -- just me, my bike and False Creek.

It was o so quiet.

I'd like to go again some time, maybe even with a friend, but next time I go, I shall have to invest in a new light. The one I have isn't built for illumination, but visibility... not so handy when you're on the sea wall and there's no light on that curb up ahead ;-)