A lot of you have been pestering me about getting some pictures of the new place up here, so given the AMAZING weather today, I've decided to oblige with not one, but TWO videos of what I see when wake up every day.
I KNOW that you Toronto folk are jealous, but that need not be the case! You too can move to Vancouver and enjoy the awesomeness of real mountains, and the beautiful ocean and river!
I'm here not more than 3months and already I've jumped into the CCTV debate. It's funny, I had no intention of getting involved, but the cover story of the Province was so offensive, I just had to write something.
The story is this, murderous cowards shoot drug dealing murderer in font of a prestigious high-end restaurant downtown. Public is freaked out, mayor says that we need more cameras as a result. However, the cops are already reveiwing footage for 30 other cameras that were in use on the scene as well as numerous eye-witnesses. This may sound a little familiar to the Toronto folk readin this.
Here's the Original article in the Province.
And here's my letter to the editor response:
I am positively baffled by the Mayor's insistence that increased CCTV cameras are the wisest response to the shooting outside Gotham steakhouse. As if the 30 cameras already being sourced by police weren't enough, Sullivan seems bent on wasting more money on devices that clearly will not make the streets any safer.
We have mountains of data from countries around the world proving that these contraptions do nothing but cost millions of dollars and have little or no effect on crime.
We also have a long list of eye-witnesses to the event, and that tells us one very important thing: these criminals don't care about being seen. These acts were brazen and violent and watching it all on TV will not prevent this from happening again.
Ms Fry at least has it half right. We need better citizen interaction with police, better lighting and a crack down on guns and drugs running across our borders. These are methods actually known to work in the prevention of crime.
I don't know if it'll get published, but if it does, I'll post a link here.
Update: 2008.02.07 08:51:00 PST
While I'd given up hope that the letter would be published, it turns out that they did in fact print the letter -- if only a few days late. My parents found it and my grandmother sent me the link, so here you go if you're interested.
I've got a lot to recap here, so this might be a bit long. Basically, I've slowly been putting a life together out here and as always, life has been getting in the way.
I'll start with a big public thanks for the Christmas present I received from Stephen, a book from very talented Canadian author Chris Turner called Geography of Hope: A Guided Tour of the World We Need. The guy's also a former Shift Magazine contributor, a publication while no longer in existence has always held a soft spot in my heart. Turner's articles especially were the highlight of my short-lived subscription with Shift and I'm excited to dive into my new hardcover.
For those of you who've been asking... constantly, the new job looks good so far. As previously stated, the view from my desk is incredible -- a 180° view of Coal Harbour including the north shore and Canada Place. The code I'm to work on is... well it's not what I was hoping, but there's hope, and there's a lot of promising stuff to come. This week I'm due to start work on their widgetting system and for the most part I'll be playing with nifty stuff like Ajax with Jquery and a new module called flot which is SUPER COOL. Generally, I'm mostly pleased with my decision.
The new apartment is shaping up nicely. There are a few oddities with it's construction though. The placement of light switches and inappropriate position for closet hanging rods vs. shelves etc. The landlord has promised to fix the latter though so I'm still quite happy.
The housewarming went off beautifully, though the presence of a few was missed. Guests arrived and left in waves so the party was always attended but never too crowded. Poesy and Paula went all out and made a series of home made dishes for the event and some people came from as far as Abbotsford and Langley so I was very happy with the result. I also had a couple surprise guests: Soomi and Apple.
You might remember Soomi and Apple from my time in Yeosu, Korea. They're friends of Shawna's who helped take care of me in such a foreign place and now that they've accompanied Shawna to Canada for a few weeks, it was my chance to return the favour. Originally under Shawna's care, she had to rush off to Manitoba for a family emergency and so she left them with me. I do, after all, live in Vancouver which is far more fun and interesting than Langley :-)
We spent most of the weekend sightseeing: Science World (not The Telusphere, wtf were they thinking?) and Granville Island made up the first day and Sunday was reserved for Victoria. More than 10years ago I went to there and after being stranded on that rock over night due to the ridiculous ferry hours, I swore I would never return... I blame Shawna for putting the idea in their little Korean heads...
For the not-of-Vancouver-folk, Victoria is the tiny little government town on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. In terms of geography, it's south of the U.S. boarder and of Vancouver but if one wanted to, you could quite easily build a bridge from Vancouver to Victoria much like the one to Prince Edward Island... but such a bridge does not exist. Instead, in order to get from the largest city in B.C. to the second largest city, you must:
So it's roughly 5hours by bus to get to downtown Victoria, 2hours in town to see a castle and then in order to avoid the chance of getting stuck there (and missing work Monday morning) we had to leave by PCL bus ($37.50 guarantees that you'll make it to the ferry on time and you won't have to transfer twice through Ladner back out to Vancouver.). The whole gruelling event cost about $50.00 each and about 12hours of our day... I blame Shawna :-P
When Monday rolled around, I went to work and left my keys with the girls to find their way around town, then we met up after work and we went to my grandparent's house for dinner. Everyone seemed to enjoy the company (and the food) and Trish, Shawna's sister (who is even cooler now than I remember) gave me a ride back to the Skytrain where I'm writing this... I might even get to sleep before midnight.
It's hard to believe it sometimes, but I just realised it today. It's been 3months since I left Toronto. Not that I've had time to settle of course. Only one month here in Vancouver, and while I'm well on my way, I'm no where near "settled"... won't be for some time I think.
Adjustments have been tough too. Sure it's still Canada but Vancouver is a very different place... at least for me. I've had to move back into the life I left, crowbar the new me into the old me's social circle. Some people still fit, others don't. And family... well we're always family, but it's taking them some time to get used to who I am now and not fixate on who I was when I left.
Living with the grandparents has been entertaining though. Aside from the fact that they're unapologetic racists, I've had pleasure of trying to explain to my grandfather that the reason his computer crashes with this program has performed an illegal action when he's looking at certain sites is not because they are trying to prevent it, but rather that his computer is running Windows 98 and is over 12years old.
I've also been able to "come out" to my grandparents with regard to my religious leanings. Until now, they were the only members of the family who didn't know that I was pagan and strangely enough, I was able to have a quiet, civilised conversation with my grandmother about it. She's Orthodox Christian, therefore she's not big on evangelism, so it was easier than one might think.
My grandfather still thinks I'm crazy for not believing in his god though, but he likes talking to the Jehovah's Witnesses so I don't take him too seriously :-)
For the most part though, I'm glad to be back. It's hard to explain, but the feeling I get when I tell someone that I'm going to the Vancouver Public Library is pretty great. It's a hell of a thing to live in a city with so much beauty. Seriously, Toronto people: come visit, see what I'm raving about.
It's official, I now have an apartment. It's a nice one bedroom place in the core with a view of the mountains, a balcony, dishwasher AND a washer and dryer. All this for the low low cost of $1200. Trust me, that's low (how sad is that?)
Anyway, I take possession on the 15th of December but will likely not be sleeping there 'till after Christmas as I'm still not sure of how I'm going to get all my stuff from the Parent's place in the Okanogan down here. What's more, after all the money involved, I'm out of pocket roughly $2400 (half month rent + damage deposit + first month's rent) I'm going to be so poor that I can't really afford a real bed for the place. Looks like my futon will be it for a while longer.
Soon though, everything will be settled again... and I can't wait. I'm so tired.
I'm sure there'll be lots of be people who don't like them, but personally I think they're awesome. Check out their origin video!