In a recent comment on Expression Patterns, I complained about the poor quality of Vancouver’s newspapers, and especially their obsession with putting the Canucks on the front page come hell global pandemic or high water.
At the risk of being a massive hypocrite, I would like to congratulate the editors of the Province on this one specific occasion for successfully summing up the mood of an entire city with a photo and a couple of words:
Keep up the good work!
Last night I caught Mr E Man and Divorcing Friend* watching the last ten minutes of a show called “Deadliest Warrior“**. The concept of this high quality television programme is an in-depth and very shouty-macho dissection of a hypothetical fight between different kinds of warrior. Pirate vs. Knight, Viking vs. Samurai, Shoalin Monk vs. Maori, Spartan vs. Ninja – you get the idea. Completely stupid and pointless***.
Unless…
I decided that the only way to cope was to start suggesting even more ridiculous match-ups. I started with “drunken Scotsman vs. American crack-head”, and they took the ball and ran with it:
“A Wookie and a Klingon!”
“Sarah Palin vs. a rabid monkey!”
“Wolverine and a zombie!”
This proved to be much more entertaining than either actual show. As was Facebook. And an actual book.
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*still living with us, despite becoming the official tenant of our basement suite at the weekend. OK, so he has no bed yet, but still. I’m starting to get a bit annoyed. At least he’s using the shower down there though.
**their excuse was that they were waiting for the start of “The Ultimate Fighter: United States vs. United Kingdom”, which is kinda like saying that you only stabbed someone because you were waiting for your new gun to be delivered. And no, just because I am British, I am not suddenly interested in watching UFC-based reality TV with you.
***for the record, Mr E Man agrees, but asserts that he has a right to watch stupid and pointless TV after working so hard: 12 hours a day, 7 days a week at the moment. He may have a point.
During my last visit to the UK, I met up with a good friend who was also my roommate for three years while we both did our PhDs.
As we said goodbye at the station after a day of showing Mr E Man around the pubs of Edinburgh, she said “you know, when you moved to Canada I thought I’d never see you again. But you come back. I see you every couple of years, and it’s always like you’ve never been away. I can live with that.”
Science is weird. Everyone moves so often that you end up with friends all over the world, but with only maybe one or two friends left in the town where you all met. My experience in Vancouver has been different because, for the first time in my life, the majority of my friends are not students and post-docs. Not that people don’t move away, because they do; in the last year I’ve said goodbye to two good friends, both of whom moved to be closer to their families (Ontario and UK) after failing to find affordable childcare in Vancouver.
But on Friday, one of them came back! She still works for the company I left in 2007, and was back in town for training, along with a couple of other former colleagues who have also left the main office to spread out around the world. We all went for beers after work, and again it was as if she’d never been away. It felt so natural to sit on the sunny patio with a pint in hand, and to chat about work, families and life in general.
Having cried at someone else’s leaving party recently, I find this to be very reassuring. With some people, it will always be possible to start up again exactly where you left off. True friendship doesn’t fade with time or distance.
There are whole streets lined in pink.
It’s just stunning.
Now, I know that these are scary times. People are worried for themselves and for their families, and they’re turning to trusted news sources for information. So the CBC should be ashamed of themselves for running this story.
Fear-mongering is the lowest form of journalism.
Leave your predictions, reactions, trash talk and general playoff fever here!
Series: I say Canucks in six.
Tonight’s game: I say 3-2 Canucks, with goals from Alex Burrows, Henrik Sedin and Sami Salo.
reading: a collaborative research agreement written in really quite outstanding legalese.
listening to: a podcast of a live Bjork concert.
The word of the day is “Challenging”.
Is anyone else watching it?
How crazy was last night’s episode??!!
I was howling with laughter at the end, to the extent that Mr E Man (trying to sleep in the next room) had to ask me to be quiet. I taped it for him and just had to watch the last 10 minutes again as soon as I got up this morning.
Annie is pretty devious*, but the Rivers women… WOW.
ETA: I found video! Enjoy!
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*I like her though, I hope she wins. Her or Jesse.
I was excited this week to read an article on the BBC website about a possible renaissance of the US rail system, including talk of a high-speed link from Vancouver down to Seattle, Portland and Eugene.
Yup, I’m a train spotter lover. Love, love, love, travelling by train. Not quite as much as by boat, but close. It’s just such a civilised, human way to travel. You can leave your seat, stretch your legs, wander through to the catering car for a cuppa tea or a beer, even jump out at stations for some fresh air. Compared to trains, planes are just awful – full of that nasty recycled air and the risk of DVT due to hours of inactivity. And cars… I do not like travelling by car at all. Strapped into your seat, stuck in traffic, and all that carbon guilt. The scenery also tends to be better from a train. I like the aerial views from the plane, but you don’t get the detail. Obviously some roads have good sight lines to take advantage of nice views, but more often than not you just see a bunch of other cars, and maybe some stunted trees if you’re lucky.
I took the train all the time in the UK: to get from my parents’ to University and back, to go to weddings, football and rugby games, concerts, you name it. I’ve also been lucky enough to do some fabulous overnight and multi-day train trips, the stand out being Toronto – Vancouver through the Rockies. Toronto-Montreal was nice too, as were Paris-Marseilles, Paris-Madrid and Madrid-Lisbon. The latter journey was on our honeymoon and also Mr E Man’s birthday, so we treated ourselves to a first class sleeping cabin, featuring fold-down bunks, our own bathroom and shower, and a delicious three course dinner with a more or less open bar (we did not test the limits of the openness, but the guys at the next table were getting close). I’ve also done shorter hops around France, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, and Belgium. Man, I miss Europe sometimes.
So… regular high speed rail down to Seattle and Portland? Sign me up!* I’ve got friends there I’d like to see, and I’ll be more likely to go if I can take the train (and once I get the coveted Canadian passport and no longer have to be fingerprinted, photographed and generally interrogated at the border). The US is going to lag behind Europe for a good long while in this regard, but if some of the stimulus money can be used to stimulate the railways, I’ll be one happy traveller.
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*Barriers to going right now: there are like 4 trains a week, and they’re sloooooow. And expensive, because the only people who use them are wealthy European tourists. When I did the Vancouver-Seattle-San Francisco-LA section of my North America trip when I was 20, I had to take the Greyhound the whole way, because the trains were laughably far beyond my budget.
