Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

March 28, 2011 22:39 +0000 | Activism Canada Conservatives 4

I may be living in Amsterdam, but I'm still Canadian.

There's an election coming up and Stephen Harper has to lose it. He's been actively working against democracy in the House, and using the power of the PMO to cut taxes on the rich, spend money on prisons we don't need and pollute the biosphere... to name a few of many transgressions. The man has got to go, and I'm hoping you can help me push him out.

I've combined forces with Dianna and her awesome graphical/UX talents to build a new simple website: voteharper.ca. It's not up yet, and that's where you come in. This site will be a collection of Stephen Harper's record on a series of issues ranging from democracy, to the environment, to women's rights, to international affairs. Whatever the topic, I need information regarding his actions on it.

Here's what I need from you: I need facts of what he's done sent to my email in the following format:

What he did/said
Why this is bad (if it's not obvious)
Any number of links (at least one) that corroborates this fact.

Once I have a good bunch of data, I'll load it into the code I wrote just now and launch the site. Hopefully, it'll make a big splash. I've already contacted the other parties asking for help from them as well.

One last note, it's important to point out that the purpose of this site is to oppose Harper, and not the Conservative Party. It will also not be promoting any other party as I want this to be non-partisan. The key message I want to share is that Harper has proven himself to be Bad for Canada and that he has to go.

So lets see those emails! (me at danielquinn dot org)

March 20, 2011 21:04 +0000 | Language 2

This post is for my unilingual anglophone readers... which is nearly all of you. I thought I might describe what it's like to learn a language, since it's something I'm actively observing about myself these days.

But first I'll start with a nerdy analogy because this is how I've been thinking about it. First I have to explain symlinks.

In a Unix file system, a symlink is a sort of shortcut to a file. Say you have a file called "résumé.odt" and it lives under "/documents/work stuff/résumé.odt". Now let's assume that you need to access that file a lot. Navigating to that folder is a pain in the ass if you're doing it all the time, so instead you create a symlink from your desktop to that file. From now on, click the new "résumé-link.odt" on your desktop, and the computer treats that file just like it would the original.

Now here's how this applies to language. Think of the original file as a concept, like "coffee". This concept in your brain carries all kinds of data with it, such as the smell, or a craving, or taste, but it's just a concept, not a word.

When we learn our first language, we tie words to these concepts in the form of symlinks in the brain. The word "coffee" points to the idea of coffee, and so we can talk about it with a shared understanding.

When you learn a new language, the temptation is to tie these new words to the old words, essentially linking to a link that points to a concept. This obviously leads to slow lookup times, as you first have to know that "klanten" means "customer" before you can understand the meaning of "klanten service". As the complexity of a statement grows, this double-linking becomes overwhelming.

The usual response to this, is that you have to learn to think in the language you intend to use. I'm not sure that's correct. Rather I think it's important to think about what you want to say in terms of the concepts and ideas without language and then frame it in the language requested. At least, that's what I've been trying to do with my own brain. I'll let you know how that works out.

March 20, 2011 15:43 +0000 | Amsterdam 5

I suppose that this could become a sort of tradition. Here's a video clip I shot with my phone this afternoon of where I live. Enjoy :-)

March 16, 2011 20:20 +0000 | Self Reflection Television 2

It's been a few years now since it came out, but I finally got around to seeing Six Feet Under in it's entirety. Five seasons of exceptional acting, framing and lighting, and I really can't say I enjoyed it.

The finalé though, that's what everyone talks about, and now I know why. I've never seen the finality of life so brazenly captured, the truth of mortality so very clear. It made we want to live better, live fuller, and it made me question everything.

I'm a wreck right now, and just figured I should share. If you've seen the series to the end, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about, and if you haven't... then perhaps it's time you checked it out.

I promise I'll post about living here soon.

February 28, 2011 06:15 +0000 | Amsterdam Language Learning Transit 9

I think that I'll make this part of a series, though if I'm right, the number of parts will be in the hundreds before I'm through here.

After the brunt of my jet lag had passed, I took a day to do some exploring. I needed some raw materials for some Grandma Soup, an needed to get my bearings in the city, especially with the transit system. In my day out, here's a list of what I learnt:

Language:
- klanten-service == customer service
- Hele kip == whole chicken
- trekken == pull and duwen == push (of course, I learnt these the hard way
The area of town referred to as Niewmarkt is an actual farmer's market where they sell all kinds of fresh fruits & veggies. I bought what I thought was a parsnip, and though it was tasty, I'm not convinced that it was one.
The transit system here is multi-tiered, managed by multiple companies, but unified under one payment system by way of the OV-Chipkart I mentioned in a previous post:
- Busses serve routes from the outskirts of the city into the core and around the suburbs.
- Trams run throughout the downtown and into the suburbs.
- The Metro is mostly above ground and serves much of the suburban space.
- There are also inter-urban trains that run from metro hub stations into the more independent suburbs like Naarden (where I start tomorrow).
Google Transit is available here, which is awesome, but the directions appear to be broken when it comes to the Metro lines. While it maps the correct route, it gives you the wrong terminus station, so navigation can be tricky.
Dutch Pepsi tastes like Canadian Coca Cola, and the grade of aluminum used is higher than back home.
They have carbonated iced tea here. It tastes like Canadian iced tea (not like American, ew)... it's alright.
I'm passively learning basic numbers in Dutch. When people ask me for €5, I don't have to translate it.
- The language-learning process is strange to behold. Like an outsider, I can feel my brain learning a word, and consciously working to translate it into English, even though, I've already comprehended the meaning. As an example, in the push/pull case above, I figured out that "trekken" meant "pull" when I saw it above the handle and I couldn't push the door open. At that point I understood what it meant, but still made the mental note "ah, trekken == pull". It's very odd.
Amsterdam Language Learning Transit 9

February 26, 2011 08:06 +0000 | Amsterdam 3

I've gone and done it. I've moved to Amsterdam. The sum total of my worldly possessions have been whittled down to a few bags I took with me, and 3 boxes of keepsakes that I left back in Vancouver with my grandparents. After saying my various goodbyes, and a long "last walk" around the Vancouver Sea Wall, I hopped onto a plane for a couple days with my parents in Kelowna where I managed to de-stress in preparation for an even bigger Ball of Scary. Wednesday morning, I said goodbye to my parents, and boarded a flight back to Vancouver, where my brother, his future wife (hi Shawna!), and their dogs met me at the airport and shuttled me to Delta to pick up my stuff. We had Grandma Soup, said goodbye to my grandparents and then Butthead drove me back to YVR for the big flight over the North Pole.

The flight was as comfortable as you'd expect any flight with FIVE children younger than 2 years old only a few seats away. Luckily I had a pair of those nifty silicon headphones, so the screaming wasn't as painful as one would think. Those, coupled with the Gravol and sleeping mask, and frankly, I don't remember much of the flight.

I landed in Schipol with more energy and clarity than I expected, re-charged the T-Mobile SIM card I acquired last time I was here, and called Tineke, my to-be-landlord to let her know that I'd landed and would be arriving soon. I grabbed a cab, showed him the GoogleMap location of where I needed to go, and €58 later, I was hobbling through the front door of my new home.

My lodgings are... well they're small, but Tineke is really quite friendly. She left fruit in the room, and some fresh squeezed orange juice the following morning. The rent is pretty good though considering (€450/mo) and I'll likely be here for a month or two while I get my bearings and look for a more permanent place to live.

The jetlag though... it's been brutal. I stayed up until 1900 the first night and woke up at midnight. Most of that day was a write off, and today I awoke at 0400. I'm feeling a little better though, so I'm going to do some more exploring today. On my todo list: buy an umbrella and purchase an OV-Chipkaart (a transit pass) while getting used to how to get around the city.

Now the bad news: the new job isn't where I thought it was. I could swear that I'd seen it on a map, checked the address, but that must have been a different company. MarketSims is in Naarden, a suburb of Amsterdam about 22km from where I want to live. Now thanks to the wonders of transit in this city, it's not that big a deal in terms of my commute (about 30min door to door) but the realisation was rather unsettling when it came.

For the graphically inclined, here's a Google map of where I am:

Check it out in a larger version

Lastly, for those of you interested in following my travels in a more real-time way, You can check out my Gowalla page or better yet, follow @travellingjack on Twitter, an account I created after Melanie suggested I take her little stuffed Jack Sparrow doll with me and take pictures of his exploits ;-) Should be fun.

February 12, 2011 00:33 +0000 | Health Care 5

Those of you who know me know that I can get pretty defencive about the health care system in our country. I've been lectured by friends and cab drivers about how much better off we'd be in a for-profit system, so when something like this happens, I feel like I need to write it down somewhere.

Earlier this week, my grandmother and I took the ferry from Tsawassen to Nanaimo, and on the way back, badness ensued: As pedestrian passengers, we had just made it onto the platform for the 3pm ferry and were hurrying down the various walkways to the ferry. A mere 2m from the boat, my grandmother tripped and fell flat on her face on the metal "on ramp" to the boat. I, along with the four BC Ferries staff rushed to help her up and we all helped walk her to the closest private room where they had an on-board emergency first-aid person.

Stubborn as she is, my grandmother insisted that she was fine, and that we had no intention of getting off the ferry on the wrong side. She was going home, Grandpa would worry otherwise. The first aid lady was less than impressed however, my grandmother had an ugly bump on her head, and the pants on her right knee were soaked with blood, pooling on the floor below. She was going upstairs to the first aid office and she'd have to examine her.

When we got upstairs and laid Grandma out on the table, she got some ice for her head and the first aid tech went to work trying to find out what was going on with that knee. once she cut the pant leg open, she turned around and put a call up to the crew: she was requesting that any doctors and/or nurses report to the first aid office.

Not one, but three nurses showed up: two young women, and one older man. The attending pointed them toward the supply cabinet and the three of them went to work. One preparing the supplies, another taking her pulse and the other cleaning and dressing the gaping hole in my grandmother's knee. They cleaned the wound, splinted the leg, and stitched it closed with sterile paper strips, then wrapped it all up tight so she'd stop bleeding all over the place. They were all helpful, professional, and oh-so-caring. They asked for no payment other than our thanks, and went on their way.

Two hours of hanging out in the first aid office later, we were met by an ambulance at the ferry terminal, who bound Grandma up and lifted her into the truck -- all the while with her insisting she was fine, and she just needed to go home. Those of us who'd seen her knee new better, and so she was going to Delta Hospital. As this was a non-emergency though, the ambulance didn't run the lights or the sirens.

Upon arriving at the hospital, we were met by friendly, professional staff and Grandma was initially given a bed in the hall and an ice pack for her head. Their ER is rather small, so the non-life-threatening cases were not given top priority. My grandmother was not pleased. She wanted to go home, she didn't want to be waiting in a hospital for six hours only to get a pill and be sent home. I attempted to counter this by calling my her daughter in Kelowna and telling her the short version of what had happened, and then letting the two of them talk. My phone bill might hurt come next month, but 15mintues later, we were met by a wonderfully helpful doctor who wheeled my grandmother into a little curtained-off space and she went to work.

The doc checked all of the scary spots in her bone structure: did she break her hip? fracture a femur? The answers to everything: no. Then when she pulled apart the dressing the 3 nurses had applied earlier, griping about the excessive wrapping... that is until she saw what had happened to the knee, then it all made sense. My grandmother's knee was pretty bad: the skin had split right open, on account of the thinness of the skin itself leaving the subcutaneous fat exposed, and blood leaking everywhere. Now that the doctor insisted that this was a Big Deal, my grandmother had finally stopped protesting. She would need fifteen stitches.

The doc was really helpful and friendly. She briefed me on what had happened, and what she was doing and why. She let me watch the process and answered every stupid question I had, as well as fill me in on the possibility of infection with such a large cut. She then had it wrapped up and ordered a few x-rays of the area just to be sure. The nurse that did the wrapping was additionally helpful and even gave us extra dressing for when the knee needed to be re-dressed because she knew it was expensive and that my grandmother was on a fixed income.

Total time at the hospital: 2 hours.

I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a country where a pensioner has to decide if a trip to the doctor is financially viable. How many seniors out there don't have adequate medical coverage, and how many of them do you think would opt for a big band-aid when faced with the costs of doctors, nurses and stitches? Say what you like about Canada's health care system, but every time I deal with it, I'm routinely impressed with the professionalism of the workers and efficiency of the system.

I'd also like to take a moment to thank the exceptional staff of BC Ferries and Delta Hospital for their work in taking care of my grandma.

February 11, 2011 23:30 +0000 | Family Health 0

If you're honestly curious about the technical details of Multiple Sclerosis, don't read this blog post. Read the exhaustive Wikipedia article instead. Same goes for the CCSVI treatment. I'm going to try to simplify it here in my own words/understanding.

MS is basically a disease which sees toxins in the blood stream build up in the brain, leading to a degradation of the nerves connecting the brain to the spinal chord. This results in reduced mobility, significant pain, and eventually near immobility. A debilitating disease, those afflicted often can't work, walk, or in extreme cases even hold a fork to eat. Within the western scientific community, the cause is unknown, and there is no cure. Also, my aunt has it.

Now the deal with CCSVI. A few years ago, there was this vascular surgeon named Paolo Zamboni whose wife was diagnosed with MS. The romantic that he is, he devoted his life to finding a cure, and in 2008, he claimed that he'd found one. As a vascular surgeon, he looked at MS from a perspective of blood flow as opposed to a neurologist, who typically approaches MS from the brain. Zamboni found that in most of the MS patients he examined, the veins from the brain to the heart were constricted, leading him to believe that his was causing a backlog of iron deposits in the brain leading to MS. He performed a simple operation of re-expanding those veins and lo-and-behold most of the patients got better.

Now there's more to this of course. There's a lot of criticism for Zamboni's results: claims that it wasn't sufficiently scientific, that the numbers and proportions of sick vs. control were inappropriate -- all good criticism and there are new tests being done along the same lines all over the world now.

Now here's where things get sticky (and anecdotal). As horrible as MS is, people aren't waiting for additional clinical trials. This discovery was made in 2008, and here in 2011 we're still waiting on the scientific establishment to give the nod. MS patients all over the world are frustrated and angry, and a lot of them have been getting the treatment anyway -- with amazing results.

As my family is directly affected by MS, we've been following this "Liberation" or treatment for some time now. Canadians can't get it here, as it's still not a sanctioned procedure, so we've been looking overseas. Ameds Centrum, one of the most prominent hospitals in the world for CCSVI is in Poland, and they've been doing this procedure for about a year now. You fly in, they pick you up at the airport in an ambulance, rest you at a hotel and do an MRI the next day. If in fact you have the aforementioned vein constrictions, They can do the vein re-expansion in a few hours and then you're monitored on-site for another couple days. Costs vary depending on the amount of expansion done (if you need stents etc.).

My grandmother managed to contact one of the patients who had this procedure done, so we went to meet her on Vancouver Island this week. I must tell you, scientific study aside, CCSVI appears to work. Before her trip to Poland, this woman suffered from dramatic loss of mobility. She could walk, but only against a wall, and only very slowly. Bending down wasn't an option, turning her head made her sick and dizzy, and her concentration was vastly diminished as well. But now you wouldn't know she ever had MS. She walks, she talks (a lot), she can do squats: 100% mobility. Her cognitive response is right back where it should be, she is a changed woman. She even claims that she felt the effects almost immediately: before the procedure, she couldn't hold a fork, but 10minutes out of the operating room, she was clenching her hands into fists repeatedly. She was totally amazed.

I'm writing about this because I want to share this woman's story, and the controversy surrounding this new treatment. I also want to point out that drugs with known damaging side effects are actively being used to treat MS symptoms in this country, while there's been little or no movement on CCSVI. Dangerous drugs have somehow managed to be pushed through to the pharmacy counter in record time and yet a relatively low-risk procedure like this somehow still requires more study. The aforementioned patient voiced her sincere distaste for both the MS Society and her neurologist, and while I understand the need for careful controls on new drugs and procedures when it comes to public health, I can't help but share some of her frustration when it comes to the apparent double-standard in this case.

If they can clear their backlog of requests, my aunt will likely be going to Poland for CCSVI this year. It may not do anything, but given the low risk involved, and the potential for getting her life back, we all feel that it's a good choice.

February 11, 2011 22:19 +0000 | Amsterdam Employment Job Hunting Moving Netherlands Unemployment 6

For those of you who follow my life on Twitter or Facebook, I apologise for taking so long to post the details of the recent changes to my employment status. Stuff's been kinda crazy these past few weeks, so I've had other priorities that I'll talk about in other posts.

So here's the full story: On January 18th, I responded to a job ad for a web developer at MarketSims that I found on an online job posting board, possibly monster, but frankly, I don't remember. The application included my usual fun-sounding cover letter and a PDF copy of my CV along with a link to this site.

That same night, I received a response asking about my preferences for CMSs and/or frameworks and we had some good dialogue about why one CMS might be chosen over another, and why I prefer frameworks in general etc. etc. We also talked about my salary expectations, volunteer work, and outside interests as well, all over email. He thanked me for the info and said he'd get back to me.

Then he got sick for about a week so I didn't hear from him for a while. When we reconnected on the 31st, we talked about doing a Skype interview and settled on a midnight gig on the evening of the 4th.

The interview was with the CEO, CTO, and COO and covered in greater detail what they're looking for. Basically, they're looking to unify the many sites they have into a single managed solution as well as build a portal site for people in their industry. We talked about options and preferences and I made no secret regarding my preferences for Python/Django -- something I was happy to hear was positively received. The interview was largely non-technical, and when it was finished, the CEO said that they'd like to talk about me privately for a while and get back to me... in about 20minutes. A little surprised, I said thank you and we ended the call.

About 15minutes later, the CTO called me back and offered me the job. I'll start March 1st.

The pay sounds good, though it's tough to tell when you don't really know the cost of living over there. Regardless, it works out to a lot of money in Canada, so that doesn't suck. There's lots of vacation time, as European standards more or less require it, and they're accessible by transit. The CTO may even be able to hook me up with some inexpensive temporary housing with some friends while I look for a place of my own once I know the neighbourhoods better.

All-in-all, things are looking pretty good, though I try not to get too excited. Contracts etc. don't get signed until I come in for my first day and somehow, all of this doesn't feel like it will be "real" until then. I'm definitely leaving though. I've already bought my flights:

Vancouver » Kelowna Feb 21

Kelowna » Vancouver Feb 23

Vancouver » Amsterdam Feb 23

If the temporary housing doesn't work out, I'll look into Couch Surfing, then hostels, then hotels, in that order. Obviously, that's a rough route to take, but I'm not sure how else to do it. I will however endeavour to blog the process, if for no other reason to chronicle how very painful this kind of thing is.

January 26, 2011 11:04 +0000 | Animals Death 6

Warning: the following post can be rather upsetting for animal lovers. If you're at all squeamish about bad things happening to tiny creatures, you may just want to skip this one.

I tried to do the Right Thing, really I did.

As part of the experience of house-sitting for my parents these past few weeks, I've discovered that they have a mouse problem. It seems that when the weather outside gets cold, they look for warm old houses in which to hide out and you know, do mouse-things like eat, breed and defecate.

As an urbanite, I stand decidedly on the side of ignoring the problem until it goes away... since you don't generally have problems like these when you live in a glass box in the sky. Besides, the idea of killing a mouse just seems horrible! They're not bugs, they're cute, and have fur, and tiny little legs!

But then I talked to my parents who insisted that the only right thing to do was to lay out the mouse trap. The little bugger could chew through electrical cables and start a fire, or start breeding tiny little defecating mice all over the house. Catch and release wasn't an option they insisted, they apparently always find a way back, even from as far as 5k away.

I decided to be an adult, do the Right Thing, and set out a trap, a trap I knew to be less-than-instantaneous, but sadly the only trap we have here. Maybe the one time I'd seen it take a couple minutes to kill a mouse was a fluke. Maybe the trap was, as my father insisted, a quick and efficient end.

It isn't.

I never even heard the trap go off. I only know what happened because I checked in before I went to bed. I opened the cupboard to find this tiny mouse just lying there next to the trap, little bits of mouse blood scattered about. It would seem that she managed to struggle free, but now lacked the motor skills to do much more than that.

She wasn't dead though. Looking closely, I could see her little lungs pushing her belly up and down quickly. She was dying and terrified.

I didn't really have any options. I grabbed some paper towels, bent down to pick her up and her little legs waved around sporadically for a moment, and then she lay still. I put on my father's shoes, carried her out into the front yard and crushed what was left of her, little bits of blood coming through the white paper towels. When I was sure she was dead, I tossed her into the garbage, came inside and washed my hands... a lot.

I'm not writing about this to upset the animal-friendly folk on here. I don't think this is cool or even interesting. The whole this is rather upsetting for me, so I wanted to write about it. Maybe I shouldn't be upset, maybe I just need better, more lethal traps, I don't know. I just hate how I feel right now and needed to share.