/travel/Disjointed
It's weird to be back: it's with a definite sense of disjointedness that I
flip my Macbook's timezone back to the right coast, and close the essential Firefox tabs that I've had open for two
weeks — the shuttle schedule, Google Maps of the Mission District, Muni and BART info, and various other journeys I needed to make. The trip was excellent in so
many ways — finding old friendships, making some awesome new ones, my first opera and trying out yoga, and
regrounding myself in a company that's doubled in size since my last trip to HQ and finding myself warmly re-accepted
back into the fold.
But it was so soon after I'd gotten to NYC (which in turn was after an unsettled time in Ottawa) that I return with this sense that my apartment is actually just another couch to crash on (minus the couch — need to buy one of those soon!). I decided to put together my kitchen table properly as soon as I got home, and tidy up a bit to combat this sense of placelessness, which is good — now I have somewhere to sit and type! An upcoming visit or two from friends should help build on this — better get that couch.
One of the things I liked about SF was how I didn't really worry as I walked
around random streets, so tonight I walked home from my sister's (the route had somehow entered my brain as sketchy) for
the first time, and it was totally sane. I don't know what was blocking that before — people here talk about crime a
lot more than I'm used to, I guess.
It's also good to be back. My oldest sister and her three wee ones are down from Nova Scotia, though the wee ones are hardly wee, plus of course J, D & j are still here. This is the third (fourth?!) time I've seen the Nova Scotia contingent this year, which is really great. Today we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was kinda cool but generally punctuated by long periods where we couldn't see anything, as parades in Manhattan seem to be.
Now it's time to settle in, and give this damn sleepless city a run for its money.
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/Thou Shalt Not Externalize
[from my recent flight to San Francisco]
If God had been an economic agnostic economist, he would have saved time by having only one commandment: Thou Shalt Not Externalise. Lying, adultering, killing, coveting: all impose costs on others and on society in general. Killing and other crime imposes the direct cost of crime onto the victim, as well as the social costs of policing and enforcement. Lying and adultery reduce trust in general, and contribute to the breakdown of families. Intuitively I think even coveting imposes a social cost, though I'm not sure exactly how.
A few years ago, I was mulling over some debates I had in university about free markets, the role of individual rights, the existence of group rights, and that sort of thing. I was waiting for a flight, which somehow always makes me a bit reflective — probably in anticipation of the period of calm, uninterrupted time that air travel often offers. Two women ahead of me were discussing flight prices, and per-item baggage fees (new in Europe at the time) and how they hated it, and I had a novel (to me!) thought: putting aside the philosophical rigorand the arguments about efficiency and minimal government intervention and maximal freedom and optimal wealth distribution and maximizing happiness and all that, most people simply don't like certain outcomes of market economics: the need to price shop and to be diligent about carefully worded agreements, the frequent power imbalances, and the intrinsic drive to externalize.
Since last time I flew, there are now per-checked bag fees in the US; this returns some of the true cost of baggage to passengers &mdash a properly capitalist move. The response of the passengers is to maximize use of carry-on bags. The plane can't actually support that when it's full, so the bags don't fit in the overhead bins and have to be brought back to the front through the narrow aisles to be checked —presumably for free — slowing down the departure time for everyone.
None of these actions are unreasonable; each is really very capitalist in nature, yet the outcome seems sour because the incentives are wrong.
I'm on an airplane again, reflecting: this is the most intense externalization of costs I knowingly participate in. It's a business flight and my employer buys offsets, but these still do not come close to internalizing the costs*. For many greenheads, this is "the one thing". "I try to be green, but flying is definitely one exception" is something I've heard a lot, as I've commiserated with likeminded people who struggle with the same stuff I do. Lately I've been thinking of that as analogous to "I support emancipation, so I've really cut back on my household slaves, but out in the plantations I just can't do without them." (It's in some ways very different, obviously. I said analogous, not equivalent.) It shows awareness and resistance to the externality, yet practically speaking I'm still emitting more than my own annual sustainable CO2e emissions during this one return flight which is all that really matters.
* Carbon offsets are priced based on the marginal cost of offsets in a world that's offsetting a tiny fraction of its total unsustainable CO 2e emissions. In order to fully internalize the costs you would need to pay based on the average price of offsetting or reducing our total unsustainable emissions. This is, at least, somewhere in the $50-$400/tonne CO2e range, much more than the $10-$20 of retail offsets .
/travel/canada/Another Sad Trainride
I was on the train back from Halifax when this happened. :-(
/travel/canada/I love snow!
The way it billows and blusters. Hits the window and dies against the warm glass. Collects on window sills, and in troughs, and on pipes.
I have no idea why, but it's one of the few things that makes me respond with what can only be described as "glee."
There's about an inch on the ground now, enough to cover the horrible ice that necessarily underlies any southern Ontario snowfall.
In other news, things are well. I mostly work from home now, since I have no immediate coworkers in the office so there's not a lot of point in commuting.
I'm taking Hapkido, and enjoying it. They're making me be flexible and grow some muscles. Clare's into a photography course. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my upcoming leave. Our flat is great. Seeing people I haven't seen in a long time is good too.
We kitted out the flat from Freecycle, Craigslist, Ikea, a bit of Canadian Tire, and a finishing touch of Walmart. I'm pretty happy with the end result. I refinished a table that my landlord gave us, and it looks pretty good. Clare spraypainted a TV table she got for $2, and it looks good too. We've had two rides to grocery stores (from Josh & Katie the first time, for $675 of groceries, and Deirdre the second, at a measly $300.)
Clare and I went to a "GreenTOpia" book launch about greening up Toronto a couple weeks ago. There seems to be a tonne of work in that area, and the city council seems very supportive, which is great. I got a couple contacts and ideas there, and they ran two pretty good panels. I was surprised that in the discussion about the merits and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of individual actions like recycling, nobody even mentioned the potential for amplifying things at work -- maybe because the panelists all work in green organizations. To me, that's totally the biggest scope for making a difference as an individual. Leaning on your bosses to do things more greenly, and applying resistance (no matter how slight, if job security is at risk from it) to wasteful practices (even if they're cost-effective, though there's plenty of evidence that, not surprisingly, there's plent of scope for efficiency improvements that are both profitable and green) can be amplified by the millions of widgets a company makes, or the thousands of computers it runs, or the tonnes of carbon it emits. Especially once you've carved out the big things in your own life (i.e. household & transport efficiency) this seems to me to be what's left.
There was also a general confusion from the panel about sacrifice. Some people said we wouldn't have to sacrifice anything. Many people said anything predicated on individual sacrifice was doomed. Some people said "sacrificing stuff isn't bad, it's great, you'll love it. Therefore we won't be sacrificing anything." All are sentiments I agree with, to some degree. I think the problem is, as a society, we're going to have to sacrifice some things. But as individuals, I don't feel like I'm "sacrificing" a trip to Japan just because it's more than I want to pay for it. If "sacrifice" is higher prices to reflect the real costs of certain goes, it won't "feel" like personal sacrifice.
I also went to a forum at the St Lawrence Center on "The Politics of Food". It was pretty good, though a little lefty in general. One of the questioners from the Ontario Farmer's Association said that instead of international trade rules saying we shouldn't be able to export for more than selling locally, we should have it that we can't import for less than selling locally. Yeah, 'cause I want to pay $25 for a pineapple grown in a greenhouse. That's efficient. In general, it was surprising to me that nobody raised carbon fees ("taxes") as a way of fixing some of the efficiencies. He (or maybe another OFA guy) said that factory farming was the cleanest, safest, etc., kind of farming available, and got booed a bit. He didn't actually say anything about how humane it was -- I'm not sure if that's 'cause he got cut off, or 'cause he wasn't worried about it.
I'm working on a secret, slightly nerdy, slightly activist project. Hopefully it ends up pretty cool, and makes a teeny tiny difference in the world.
/travel/ireland/Comp Day
Today was a comp day — a day off in exchange for a weekend oncall. I went to the Garda station to get my Garda card, wrapping up my immigration troubles for the next 6 months. I went to the Canadian Embassy, but they're only open 9-12, so I can't get passport documents. I did a bit of shopping.
I saw Stephen (I don't know Stephen, but he shouted loudly into his cell phone that "this is Stephen." Or perhaps it's Steven.) Where was I? Oh yes, I saw Stephen, running with a bunch of flowers, making an urgent phone call. I saw a taxi driver yelling at a lorry driver that he was "just sittin' there and you bloody ran into me!" while the lorry driver pointed out that the taxi drivers was making a bloody left turn across two lanes, and was invisible to the lorry driver. I saw a lot of pedestrians doing carefully timed sprints across the road. I did some of those myself. I rode the wrong way on a lot of one-way streets, and survived.
I saw a lot of immigrants in the Garda National Immigration Bureau, and got friendly treatment from behind the glass that seemed to be relieved that I spoke fluent English. I sat waiting for nearly three hours. I estimated that they served one person every two minutes. They were serving around 140 when I got in, and I was 228.
I went to visit a ("my"?) financial consultant at Allied Irish Banks. I didn't like the meeting very much. I don't like being sold funds. I don't like that they didn't have ethical funds. I'll have to find out who does, 'cause investing in Exxon just doesn't really fit my groove.
Last week I had the culmination of my dispute with my former landlord over the "missing" rent and withheld deposit, in the form of a face-to-face adjudication at a large round wooden table — big enough that the disputees didn't have to sit too close together. I think it went quite well. I don't know which way the decision will come down (or whether they're allowed to slice down the middle) but I'm glad I pursued it. The adjudicator was friendly, extremely neutral and professional, and barely gave away a hint of what he was thinking; the only such indication was that he seemed displeased with the landlord's poor maintenance of my rentbook.
I had a wee dinner party on the weekend, and I think it went quite well.
I'm trying to work less. Or rather, I'm trying to spend less time at work, but work about the same amount. I think it's working a bit. Work is otherwise good. I'm a "Team Lead" now, and got my first n00b yesterday. I'm also down from splitting my time between 4 projects to "only" three, which is nice. I'm also hopefully going to be serving on a lightweight committee to assess and address the office's environmental impact, which is very exciting.
In two weeks, Clare and I are going to Paris. How romantique. I've put my phone into French so I get some practice. There's a cute little bakery just down the street from me that mostly employs francophones, but I haven't got up the hutzpah to start speaking French to them.
My flatmate has moved out, mostly — some of her stuff is still here — the dampness and mould in her room were too much, which is fair enough. The landlord is going to do something to try to improve it — more insulation and a vapour barrier, I think. I've borrowed a humidity sensor and been taking measurements around the flat, but they're fairly inconclusive. I'll start looking for a new flatmate in a week or so, once that work is done.
I'm taking ECON 247 from Athabasca University. It's been pretty basic so far, and I have to force myself to remember that I dispute a few of the fundamental assumptions while still pretending to accept them so I get the answers right. However, I got a good few hours of studying in at the Garda Station, so that was good.
I think that's a pretty good update. What's that you ask? Have I seen any good movies lately? Yes, I have.
/travel/ireland/Being an Immigrant
Today, I was an immigrant.
In Ireland, the term mostly applies to those from a place east of Germany, south of Spain, or west of Alaska. Since people from the "old" EU countries have been able to come and go as they please for a while, they're not really seen as immigrants. Since the so-called accession countries have joined, and many countries opted to not allow them to enter for the first two years. Ireland and the UK didn't, so they've come in droves, and been perceived as immigrants.
So, here's my story for getting my visa renewed.
In any case, my work visa was due up on December 24th. I was contacted by someone at work in October, but decided to delay, since one's passport needs to be valid 3 months beyond the end of the visa. Since my passport expires in October 2007, I decided I wanted to wait until I could get a new passport, so that I could get a full-length visa, rather than one that just ran to July. But since I was going to London in late November, I needed it for that, so I couldn't get a new one yet. The Canadian Embassy's website made reference to a certain amount of flexibility in the face of urgent travel concerns. I assumed this meant they could accelerate the passport application process, but in the end it meant that they could give you papers for a temporary passport.
Since work had told me that my visa application could go in up to the last date that my current date is valid. Obviously I didn't want to leave it quite that tight, so two weeks ago after I'd gotten back from London, I started trying to take care of things. That's when I found out I couldn't in fact get a passport in time -- it takes 15 working days, which left things too tight. So then I started trying to collect everything for the application.
The person who was helping me out at work had pasted me stuff from an Irish Government webpage, but it was neither complete nor concise. Because of this, it took a few tries to get the right stuff to her: copies of my passport's information page plus entry/exit stamps, payslips (to prove I've actually been working where my visa says I have), and a form. And a copy of my GNIB (Garda National Immigration Bureau) card. I couldn't find it last week at work, nor on the weekend at home. This is where things start to go a bit crazier.
Each time you get a new visa, you have to get a new Garda (the Garda are the Irish police force, from local and national policiing to traffic and immigration. They're large, and widely perceived as moderately corrupt and highly insular and resistant to proper internal investigations) immigration card. Since last time I got one, these cards have started costing 100EUR. But I also needed it to take a photocopy to apply for my new visa.
Last time I went to get a Garda card, I took a ticket and sat around for a while, then was called up, went through some form-filling-out, then sat down again, and later someone mangled my name and I went and got the instant-printed card. Not exactly painless, but not bad either.
This time, there was a pre-ticket line. Instead of taking a number, you now stand in a line that's about 15 minutes long with one person serving it, doing a "first pass" to make sure you're there for the right reasons, with the right documentation, etc. Unfortunately, this fellow has the job of telling people they're doing the wrong thing in a byzantine system all day long, so virtually by definition his job satisfaction must suck.
But here, we need to back up. The immigration office is not a pleasant place. I find it intensely stressful -- all the little things that you might have done wrong could get blown out of proportion here. More than anyone else you hand your passport to, these people are likely to try to keep it, or give you a really hard time. It's full of people who don't want to be there, most of whom are, like me, honest people doing good things for Ireland. It's not even clear to me why all that stuff is necessary. In a free-capital world, why should my personal capital be restricted?
So, I made it to the front of the line. The guy is sitting behind a glass panel, with a little slidy-slot thing for passing papers back and forth. He's virtually inaudible through the glass; I had great sympathy for all the people there who didn't speak English first. I tried to explain my situation as he looked up my information on his computer. He was immediately irate, asking why I had waited so long to apply. I explained that my employer had told me there was no rush, and he looked exasperated. And then I want on to why I was there -- I sorta needed a new Garda card to take a copy of it to apply for a new visa, for which I would need a new Garda card in a few weeks when the application came through.
He responded tersely that, in order to get a new Garda card, I'd need a letter from my employer explaining that they had applied for a new Visa. I said that they couldn't do that until I had a Garda card that I could copy. Then he said he couldn't do anything about it until I had filed a lost-property report with my local Garda station. I said I didn't know where that was, he asked where I lived and told me where the nearest one. Off I went, a bit frustrated, but not too bad, since things seemed to be progressing.
My local Garda station is the Kevin Street station, which I now know is "a big one." I spotted it only by the large Garda van in its characteristic white and yellow that was going into the complex. There were few signs, none indicating which entrance might be the visitor's entrance. So I went in the only one I could spot, which seemed awfully unfriendly, and parked my bike -- not locked to anything, for once, given the location -- and went inside. There was a little room with no useful sign, and an inner door that someone was stepping out of. I went in the inner door, and was promptly turned around to the unlabeled waiting room. A minute later, a little wooden window-thing slid open and I explained what I was there for. The Garda asked me to sit down, and so I stood around reading the various posters about depression and racism and rights and Garda policies and driver's licence applications forms in English and Irish. After about 15 minutes, he beckoned me over, and I explained that I had lost mhy card sometime between when I last used it to get in the country after my London trip, and, well, two days ago. At first, he was fixated on the exact time and date that I last had it, but when he realized how long the window was, he seemed to relax about whether it was 9pm or 10pm that my flight had landed. Eventually, he filled out a little proof-of-report form, stamped it, and sent me on my way. My bike was still there.
So I went back to the Immigration office, waited in the pre-line line to get a ticket to get a new Garda card. Now, he seemed to remember me when I got to the front, which was nice. He asked me for the letter from my employer, and I explained that I didn't have one because they hadn't applied for a new visa yet because I couldn't give them a copy of a Garda card that I didn't have. He replied that I couldn't take a copy of a Garda card that I didn't have. At this juncture, I'd like to point out that I don't think this man was dim, but rather that all of the circumstances -- my frustration, his frustration, the system, the glass that sat between us, and the fact that I was on a bad footing because I was applying late -- conspired to make this transaction very difficult.
In any case, I said that was true, and that I'd really rather not get one now and then have to get a new one in a couple weeks. He pointed out that it would only be valid for 12 days, and that wouldn't make a lot of sense to get one now. So he sent me on my way, and said to use a copy of the lost-property report in the stead of the Garda card copy.
So off I went.
If I could wave a magic wand, here are some things I would change:
- Clear signage at the Immigration Bureau entrance, saying what things you might be there for, what you need to have to accomplish them, and where to go to get in line
- No pre-line line. I understand the desire for some kind of triaging, but taking a ticket and sitting down is an immensely more pleasant way to have that happen than standing in a line with lots of other stressed people.
- Ditch the glass. I realize it's there to protect them, but for any serious threat a wire mesh would be just as effective, and a lot less headwrecking to communicate through.
- Big signs at Garda stations, even "big well-known" ones like the Kevin St. ones, indicating the entrance. Once you get inside, it should have a sign indicating what visitors should do. There should be lost proprty forms that you can fill out, rather than waiting to have a Garda fill it out for you.
- The process should be set up to be as unarduous as possible for "honest" types. Because anyone who can effect change in the immigration process is untouched by it (since you don't get to vote nationally until you're a citizen), I don't think it gets a lot of attention other than efforts to catch the "bad" ones.
- The document that my employer sent me needs to be corrected for our particular circumstances. (I'm working to get this done), and the misperception that the deadline is the expiry of the current card needs to be dispelled.
- All of this documentation should be found on the internet when I search for Garda Immigration and click the first link. The search engine is doing the right thing, but the web page is only basically useful.
So that's a brief trip through the troubles of being an immigrant. Who loses things. At bad times. And pushes deadlines. (All of which is to say that I recognize the debacle above was somewhat of my own creation, but, err, still.)
/travel/Morocco
On Wednesday, I got back from Morocco. It was a short trip, just 4 days. A terrible abuse of the necessary flying. We flew into Marrakech via London Gatwick, uneventfully.
Marrakesh was pretty cool. There was a large square with lots of little
stalls, and snake charmers and story tellers and musicians. It was very
much a part of the local life, it seemed; the stories were in Arabic, and
only a small amount of what went on seemed particularly targetted at
tourists.
Nearby there was a large area of tiny, windy streets filled with people and mopeds and donkeys and the occasional car creeping slowly through. There were shops of all kinds: clothes, cloth, food, mirrors, dishes, etc. The haggling was friendly but intensive, and not surprisingly they were much better at it than I was.
The country was poor, but things seemed to be fairly functional. While it's much lower on the Human Development Index than Ukraine (124 vs 78), things seemed less broken, perhaps simply because there wasn't the obvious contrast of how things "might have been" or "nearly were". The people seemed honest: willing to take your money, but not trying to scam you out of it. I was much more edgy about being scammed than I needed to be, I think.
Given the short time (Clare and the two friends we were with stayed on for a total of a week, so they're just back today) we took a ready-made trip to the near Sahara. It was about 6 or 7 hours of driving, with a few stops along the way. Our minibus had us, two slightly overwhelmed Americans, and a pack of six gap year (between high school and uni, so about 18) Australian gals. They were fun, if slightly loud.
We arrived to Zagora just around sunset, and then rode camels for about an hour and a half into the desert, in three lines of four camels, each lead by a Berber. Luckily, unlike horses, it turns out I'm not allergic to camels. We camped in a traditional Berber tent, each on a thin foam pad.
The desert is a desperate, rugged place. We weren't really into the Sahara...the sand dunes were small, and there was parched gravel ground that they flowed on top -- it wasn't "sand all the way down" as it is deep in the Sahara. It's dry and oppressive in a way that's hard to convey. On the drive, some of the landscape was completely barren, and lots of it was barren but for a few rugged, wispy shrubs clinging to the earth. I couldn't get the notion of dying of thirst out of my head. It's an expression we use lightly, but it seemed all to real there. One of the camels was acting up (we guessed he was too young to be carrying people) and so I opted to walk for the last half hour or so, partly to see what it was like. I drank a lot of water, and felt funny later, presumably due to lack of salts.
The food was alright, but veggie options were not always available, and they were virtually always fairly plain couscous or stewed veg dishes, so I had a few meat meals, which were more tasty. Constantly being paranoid about food ("peel it, bake it or boil it") is a bit tiring.
The country is a former French colony, so my french was very handy. It was nice to give it some exercise. They seemed to understand me fairly well, and only a few of them spoke better English than French.
Every few hours (starting at just after 5am) there was a wailing call to prayer, no matter where you were. Both male and female tourists are admonished to cover knees and shoulders (and everything in between, of course). There was no alcohol to be had, at least easily, since drinking in public places is illegal. I kinda liked the lack of alcohol. It was replaced with simple mint tea (made with fresh mint leaves and a healthy dose of sugar), which they drank morning, noon and night. And when you checked into a hotel. And pretty much any other time. In the mornings, there were mopeds stacked with giant mounts of tea leaves cruising around, making deliveries. Others were loaded up with giant wicker baskets full of who-knows. In the countryside, women were seen carrying big loads of branches and stuff on their head, presumably to keep warm in the cool desert nights, or perhaps just to make a roof. Kids would run up to us, certainly to ask for money (often in exchange for "gifts" of small folded-grass animals), but it seemed also just to see us and say hello. Again, most of them were very friendly, though a couple seemed a bit aggressive (which I can't blame them for, really.)
I've very nearly finished reading The State of Africa, which is an excellent, eye-opening perspective on Africa. It changed most of what I think about the source and solution to the problems that Africa faces. I hope to review it more properly soon, but who knows if I'll find time. It was good to have read so much of it before stepping foot on that continent.
/travel/freighter/More Photos
I've finally posted the rest of the
photos from the rest of my time on the MSC Malaga. I thought I'd done this
a while ago, but apparently not. My bad.
I've told lots of stories about it to lots of people, so I sorta forget what I wrote about. After the last (truncated) entry, I basically spent the last day hanging out with the various pilots that came on board to guide us through the St. Lawrence Seaway. We got into port at about 3am, and I was told I'd have to wait 'til 9am for customs to come onboard to clear me.
At 9am, I was told a cruise ship had come in, and they got priority. I was stuck on a boat, moored in a port of my own country, and I wasn't allowed to hop off onto the land. Weird feeling.
Finally, they came onboard. Two women, one in tough boots and generally tough looking, one rather more dolled up. Very good-cop, bad-cop. They asked me a lot of detailed questions, about why I took a frieghter, etc. They asked if I had obscene material on my laptop. They searched my stuff really thoroughly, but didn't pat me down, presumably 'cause they'd have had to call in a guy to do that. Finally, they decided I was clear, and pointed me at how to get out. They sat in their van, running the swabs that they took of my stuff, and then made certain I left the port area, and had the guy at the little entrance booth place call me a cab, and off I went.
I watched the finals (IIRC) of the World Cup while eating a pizza in the Montreal bus station, and caught a bus to Ottawa to visit Kathleen.
/travel/ireland/The Irish Don't Either
The committed reader may recall that getting a smile from Finns was hard work. I've finally started running again, and it's pretty clear to me, the Irish don't smile much either.
They do the same no-eye-contact thing, and many seem to do the same I'm-smiling-because-I-think-you're-crazy thing. On Thursday, the only proper response I got was from a sharply dressed Indian boy, who appeared be late for school, and so was running in the opposite direction. I got a couple of reactions today, but most people dont' even look at you, and avert their eyes when they realize they've accidentally made eye contact.
I had convinced myself that my runners were too old, and combined with my iPod being hosed, running was too unpleasant. Now, my iPod is back, and away I go. Hurrah.
Yesterday we had an "offsite" with work. It was the sort of team-building exercises you might imagine it to be -- cooperation, leadership, blah blah blah. But we have pretty good input into what we do on our offsites, and this one was organized by another engineer, so we all have a good time. It's sorta funny how the people running these things seem to assume (1) we don't want to be there and (2) we're not used to working as happy team. The closing little "goodbye and thanks" speech from one of the event people was all about how they hoped we'd gained something from it all. Hah.
The offsite was in Carlingford, near Dundalk. Clare and I spent a weekend there with another couple just after I flew back to Ireland, so I knew it well. It's a really gorgeous setting, and there seemed to be some interest amongst my co-workers to go back there to do some sea kayaking.
Work is really good these days. The whole Dublin office is doing well, and we have some exciting stuff coming up that we're getting ready for. We've had lots of visitors over the last couple months, including a guy sent out to train me on some new stuff, which was great. He was a fun guy, and did a good job teaching me what I needed to know.
I found a couple of blog postings that never made it, from my trip to Ontario. They're below "Crude Awakening" or you can find them in the significant new /travel/canada category.
I've been working on an essay that I hope to submit to the Globe and Mail Facts and Arguments page, though it was rather longer than they ask for, and I like it less now that it's been shortened. We'll see.
In other news, a couple days ago I received the final, utter, total rejection to all things I applied to: I was on the waiting list for University of Victoria Law, despite having no intention of going (and I told them as much), just to see if I made it. I got the mail a couple days ago that I hadn't. My plan now is to take some distance ed economics courses from UW this winter. We'll see.
/travel/canada/Toronto to Halifax and Back
I'm sitting in a Greyhound bus, soon to depart for St. Catherines. It's much cooler than the train I was just on, for the Montreal-Toronto leg, and much warmer than the train I was on from Halifax to Toronto. In fact, it's just right.
There were no unseemly events on the rest of the train journey there, or back. I finished "Blink" and it was pretty crap, but not as crap as Tipping Point. Or maybe I was just braced for it. It had interesting stories and anecdotes and studies, but it was desparately trying to be rigorous when it wasn't. And, unless my recollection of Aeron chairs is incorrect, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between "dependent" and "independent". His word-choice is frustratingly lax, and the way he draws parallels if often dubious. I guess that's why it's called Pop Psychology, and not Psychology literature, but I wish he'd find a slightly more rigorous middle ground.
On the way there, I met an Irish girl from Galway, but who now lives and teaches in Dublin. We chatted about our various countries and their stereotypes, pros, and cons. I was surprised to find someone like that on the train. In fact, I'm surprised to find a lot of people on the train. There were single people, high-school aged couples, old couples, families. Most of the way I was sitting solo, but for the last leg of the journey, I spoke at length with a Kuwaiti-born of Indian descent studying in Canada. He had interesting -- if somewhat pessimistic -- views on the Middle East Conflict, and seemed to strongly concur when I mused about my utter lack of understanding the strategy of provocation involved in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. We talked about oil, Iraq, Canada, I gave him a brief overview of the (largely defunct) Northern Ireland conflict, and the current status quo. There was also a fellow who could only be described as a pimp; he wore matching bright sports top and bottoms, two big gold chains with pendants, and some kind of brass knuckles with what appeared to be lion head engravings. He talked quietly on the cell phone, admonishing the other participant not to share news of his arrival. At least one other person was taking the train for environmental reasons -- her Nalgene bottle announced that "environmentalists do it for future generations."
This bus driver is doing the semi-standard announcments. He seems a bit eccentric: he's talked about the weather, the fact that we can't chat with him about the World Cup since it's over, and the interior temperature -- "Which is set to 22 degrees Celsius, for you Canadians you know what that means," he said with a light brogue, "for you Americans, that's...'nice'." Apparently 22 is the guideline from the Ontario Ministry of Transport. And traffic is light. And you can use the washroom in an emergency, but you're better off to wait until we get to St. Catherines.
I had a good time in Halifax, saw all my family, hung out on a nearby beach, each day building a more grandiose sand castle with my nieces and nephews, each day hoping the tide was coming in to provide a classic struggle of Man vs. Nature, each day being disappointed by the tide heading out. On my last evening, we went back to the beach hoping the tide would be coming up, to watch the destruction of all our efforts. We were greeted, instead, with a lively lightning storm, and eventually with rain, which probably won the race to destroy the rock-reinforced castle, and the nearby forest of sand-trees.
I played Scrabble, Boggle, and Trivial Pursuit aplenty. Two years of reading the economist have helped my history immensely, which my Econ 102 prof ("The history of economics is the history of society.") would no doubt be delighted by. I was also bested by my 8 year old neice at Boggle. Just once, mind you, but beaten nonetheless!
Tonight I'm visiting my aunt on my mother's side, and hopefully tomorrow my aunt, uncle, and cousins on my dad's side. The future beyond that is fuzzy. I fly back Wednesday night, arrive Thursday morning, and proceed directly to a wedding. Do not pass go, do not collect $100. (I played Monopoly, too, and was beaten by my sister, as expected.)
