The Hammond Face

Denver headache

2009-04-06T19:59:00.001-07:00

I attended a conference in Denver last week. Denver is a 'mile high' city. Apparently, some travelers get mildly affected by the altitude- myself included. I did everything wrong on arrival: I went for a long walk down Colfax Avenue, I drank a fair bit of red wine, I ate some fatty food. I had dry eyes, was extremely thirsty, and slept poorly for days.

Spring returns

2009-03-13T00:20:00.000-07:00

Things were hopping on Hastings. I spent a few minutes waiting for a bus, and saw people cross the street in the middle of traffic. Some seemed unaware of the cars; fortunately, the cars were aware of them. One man looked totally oblivious to traffic- but then swooped down right in front of a car to pick up a cigarette butt that lay in the middle of the street. Strangely focused.

Seattle- Fremont

2009-03-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

I visited Fremont in Seattle for the Elvis Perkins show last night. Fremont had pretty much what I would like in Vancouver- lots of oldtime bars, with worn-down wood (I sat at one that had wonderful grooves in the wood), neon signs, few big screen TVs, attentive, friendly bartenders (one made me a pot of coffee at 2AM), good music turned up medium.

This didn't happen...

2008-04-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

Indigenous protesters did not block the intersection of Clark and 12th in Vancouver for nearly two hours on Monday, April 28th in support of those arrested at Tyendinaga. It's not in the news, so it didn't happen.

Meet me down at Save-on-Meats

2008-03-29T16:52:00.000-07:00

I stopped by Save-on-Meats on Hastings Street for a late breakfast. It was bustling. I'd stayed away for a few months after hearing someone say bad things about the state of their kitchen. But in a moment of hunger and honesty I remembered that I'd seen the staff eat there, and that weird things live everywhere. I've eaten there many times. I'm still standing.

I ate my burger and watched many different people, construction workers, old men, disabled people, order and eat. Some people had a lot of difficulty talking, or making themselves understood.

I thought about political correctness as a way to deal with differences. It's important to talk about people respectfully (and more important to listen and learn, which is this missing component of political correctness).

But the people who work down on Hastings live and navigate differences. I doubt they've taken sensitivity training. Dealing with someone who can hardly stand up, is twisting in some sort of nervous-system damaged dance, is just part of the deal.

Political correctness misses a lot of the point.

A little technical

2008-03-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

This is also in Portland.

When I lived in Aomori, Japan, far, far away from English (except for a semi-hermetically sealed American Air Force Base in Misawa), I read what I could get my hands on. Rather randomly, I found Nietzsche's 'Thus Spake Zarathrusta' in a university bookstore in Hirosaki. I started to read philosophy. It's also when I started to make my transition from buying CDs to buying books.

Later, I discovered Kinokuniya Books in Shinjuku, a neighborhood in Tokyo.
Their English book collection rivaled that of many stores here. I remember being so happy that ended up balancing the books I wanted on my head, and was sort of dancing around the store.

Powell's was almost enough to make me dance.

Powell's at last.

2008-03-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

I visited (maybe 4 or 5 times over a two-day span) the main Powell Books in downtown Portland. They had a shelf dedicated to books on 'Experiments'. There were a lot more interesting headings elsewhere.

My only experience with a store this specialized was at the Tower Records in Shibuya Japan, with music classifications such as 'Avant Pop'.

I likes it.

Meaning making.

2008-03-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

I went to Portland, Oregon this weekend. These clips are from one of the community TV channels. I am still trying to figure them out.

4 year itch

2008-03-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

I'm going on my fourth year in Vancouver. This is the longest I've lived in one place in a while. I'm starting to feel a little itchy to move. Or maybe that's just a reaction to the cardamom I put in my eggs.

Darwin's Bear

2008-02-28T01:26:00.001-08:00

One of my favourite parts of Origin of Species is in Chapter 6, where Darwin reflects on the difficulties of his theory:

In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.

I like this passage because it suggests that the actions of the bear are a motor for its evolution, tying together environmental conditions (insects) and mutations (of the mouth). Without the actions of the bear, the mutations would likely be harmful or of no benefit, and the bugs in the water meaningless.

Darwin released several editions of Origin of Species with passages added and removed. Most modern editions reflect the first edition- in some ways, the boldest edition, with the least removed.

So, after doing a little research, I was surprised to find out that the bear passage was one that Darwin had removed- and then restored. Evidently, he felt that the role of action was suggestive of Lamarck's work (ex. the giraffe that stretches its neck to reach plants passes that longer neck down to its offspring).

Only, I think not. Lamarck was making a claim that the muscular development associated with actions of the parent were inherited by the offspring. Darwin is claiming that in the context of certain action patterns, new developments would become beneficial and evolution might occur.

This is quite forward thinking. Stephen J. Gould proposed something similar (albeit as a stabilizing influence on evolutionary change) with habitat tracking. Here, action, namely animals following a changing climate, slowed evolutionary change. Others, like Jean Piaget, Susan Oyama, and Gilbert Gottlieb have also claimed an important role for action.

I also like this passage because I think it's pretty cool that whales evolved from land mammals. I think I first learned about that at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, MA.

Remembering Haiti

2008-02-25T21:07:00.001-08:00

This Friday, the 29th of February, there are cross-Canada events commemorating the 4th anniversary of the coup against the elected Fanmi Lavalas government in Haiti.

Most famously, this coup ended with the kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But there was also destruction of civil and municipal institutions. This is extremely serious in a country like Haiti, where so much already lies so close to disaster.

Under the coup regime, a recent Lancet medical journal study estimated that thousands were killed and over 30 000 women were sexually assaulted. This finding is disputed- generally by those who are all to happy to claim that Haitians are yet unready for democracy.

I received one of the shocks of my supposedly educated life when I learned that Canada was complicit in this coup. Ironically, at least for someone who had put so much stock in the CBC, I first learned about Canada's involvement from the American media, specifically DemocracyNow.

Even now, Canada has its federal police, infamous here for tasers, corruption, collusion with American security, and the abuse of Natives, training the Haitian police.

As Afghanistan is debated here, and held up down south as the alternative to Iraq disaster by the Democratic Party, it's important to remember that the banner for Canada's anti-democratic actions in Haiti is 'peacekeeping', and the 'Responsibility to Protect'.

A study in sun

2008-02-24T18:39:00.001-08:00

Bertrand Russell wrote the essay 'In Praise of Idleness' in 1932.

He argued "in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work".

This reduction would benefit all, both in the sharing of employment, the sensible reallocation of existing work (away from war industries), and leaving in its place time for creative work: art, building, research, writing, music.

His estimate was 4 hours of work a day.

On a day as sunny as today, the wise use of time seems especially sensible.

Over the bridge and back again

2008-02-23T18:06:00.001-08:00

I headed out to Surrey this morning to meet with one of my supervisors. The SFU Surrey campus is visible from Burnaby mountain, and elsewhere in the city, with its unusual shape and large size. Crossing the Fraser River to head into Surrey seemed like crossing a border. The vegetation seemed different than Vancouver- more conifers- if anything, the surrounds reminded me of rural BC.

On the way home, I visited New Westminster. That city is succumbing to the condo-ization of the Lower Mainland. Yet there are also some incredible old buildings. I found a great bookstore and settled on this Robert Owen book, by the founder of the industrial-cooperative movement.

Excite the nite

2008-02-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

Before Vancouver, I never realised that my mood was weather dependent. The clear days and nights make me energised.

Then again, when I was sixteen, I used to drink a lot of pop before bed and only kind of wonder why I had trouble sleeping- no connection was made. Maybe the awareness, not the effect, has changed.

The top photo has Saturn to the left of the moon. It's pretty much awesome as planets go.

Seek the Halls of Memory in the Past

2008-02-19T22:41:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time on and near Commercial Drive recently. It's reminded me of living off Commercial Drive from 2004-2006. That's how memory works.

Apparently though, we have very little idea of the mechanism of memory. For one, the distinction between learning and memory is unclear. Maybe memory is a conscious and constructive activity, and one that involves mental imagery. Learning is much broader- like learning how to ride a bike.

The mechanism of learning is synaptic change- only it may involve other changes too. I read a paper today that speculated that memory and learning is also mediated through changes in dendrites. In any case, these cells are living, changing things. So memory isn't just a place where things are stored.

Unlike the Halls of Memory. Thanks Keith, for helping me figure that one out back in the day.

Shoestu.

2008-02-17T19:11:00.001-08:00

I went snowshoeing with Anna and Gabor on Cypress. Going up was good, going down, slightly off the main path, was amazing. Snowshoe technology has improved since the last time I went, in Grade 4 at Le Phare Elementary School.

Venezuela and over here.

2008-02-16T20:52:00.001-08:00

I attended a meeting on Venezuela this afternoon. The speakers, from Toronto, had visited Venezuela as part of an Australian tour with the paper Green Left Weekly. They spoke about local communal developments: community kitchens, local councils, children's creches. These things could, and probably need to, appear here in Vancouver, especially in the Downtown Eastside.

I like hearing about developments at the local level, and at the interpersonal level (like education and work relations). A lot of activism takes a high-up perspective- which is important in anti-war work. But what does socialism mean at work, school, or in day-to-day life? I'm pretty favourable to anarchist answers to these local and interpersonal questions. Seeing conflict resolution in collectives, like Spartacus Books, in action is impressive.

I believe in higher-up organization, or coordination, of the local too. That organization can involve a form of sharing like a (idealised) version of science, rather than people being told what to do. There's a lot of creative things going on in people's heads just waiting for space to come out.

Night Walks

2008-02-15T11:05:00.001-08:00

When I was young, I sometimes had altered states of consciousness when I got sick. I remember hallucinating vivid sounds when I had fevers from earaches: people talking, voices. I also had sensory hallucinations in my hands- my rounded bedside felt sharp. Most frighteningly, I had a sense that something was going to fall on me. A feeling that something was hovering above me about to snap.

All this gave me a keen sense that perception of the world is dependent on thought. When I had a pain or ache, I learned to move the pain around my body, which would lessen it.

I'm a bit of a dry science type now, and I especially like to study things that escape our consciousness, and shape it, rather those that are evident. But part of me still loves the mystery of consciousness and its own strange, maybe limited, control over the world. I think that Fichte, Hegel, and Nietzsche built their systems on this realm.

Sometimes, when I'm up late at night, and outside, alone, I get a little bit of this state again. I like it.

Occasional Vancouver Awesomeness

2008-02-14T11:45:00.001-08:00

I found these hearts attached to bikes along Commercial Drive this morning.

This is the beauty of citizen power. Culture flowering from below can make a city really special.

Philosophy pays

2008-02-12T16:31:00.001-08:00

I spent a year studying part-time at McGill in 2001-2002. Then I stayed in Montreal for another year and a half studying at the Université de Montréal. I kept McGill as my mental home base. I still think of its library as my library.

I took a few philosophy courses that, years later, have proven really useful. One course, on the precursors of Hegelian philosophy, left me totally baffled at the time. I just struggled to read the books assigned, especially Kant and Fichte. Years later, I see the relevance of Hegel's work (even if I don't like it) in the assumptions underlying the view of the individual in corporations and Marxism- which both rely on Hegelian thought.

Another course, on the philosophy of biology, had Darwin's Origin of Species as its course book. Amazing. I feel really honoured to have read that book. Evolutionary theorizing cuts through a lot of classic problems. That said, I find a lot of what is called evolutionary thinking (à la Dawkins and Dennett) totally nuts.

Philosopher of science Mario Bunge is at McGill- unfortunately on sabbatical when I was there.
Definitely my favourite philosopher: reading his stuff turned me on to Donald Hebb and Jean Piaget. Which is where I'm at now.

Musical communication

2008-02-11T00:38:00.001-08:00

There is an idea in psychology, ripped right out of Descartes, that other people's minds are impenetrable (and yet our own is knowable and known).

It follows that in interacting, people have to construct 'theories' about one another in order to successfully or skillfully cooperate. So, when you walk into the room smiling, I have to construct some kind of theory of why that is, based on my own experiences. This area of study is known as 'theory of mind'.

There are many problems with this idea. One counter-example is music. Jamming with other people- it just happens. The song that you end up playing is constructed cooperatively. You don't where it's heading, you don't really know what you're going to play, and you don't know what the other person is going to play.

In conclusion, turning SFU's psychology labs into late night jam spaces is totally justified.

Scientific Sleep

2008-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

I saw this sleep book (Lee-Chiong, T. L., ed.) while I was looking for a book on perception. It covers everything sleep-related: dreams, sleepwalking, sleep bruxism (grinding of teeth), sleep at high altitudes...

There is a chapter on napping. The best napping involves napping at the low point of the afternoon (2PM for most people), and drinking caffeine beforehand to avoid post-nap drowsiness. The caffeine kicks in about 20 minutes after you drink, lifting you out of the trough of sleep. Scientifically speaking, I am a near optimum napper.

A lot of napping research is done in Japan, where it's integrated in an industrial psychology context. That seems enlightened. Maybe the Workless Party could take that up as a platform?

Oh yeah, give me some sugar

2008-02-07T22:47:00.001-08:00

i.e. sun.

Escape from the Mountain of Learning

2008-02-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

It snowed a lot at SFU. A helpful email was sent out: buses are canceled.
Our resourceful team (two people were especially resourceful) made it off the mountain. It was a good reminder that winter is totally awesome.

The Oracle of Clark Drive

2008-02-03T17:28:00.001-08:00

One of the many mysteries of Vancouver, hiding in plain sight on a busy street.

Snow Day!

2008-01-29T17:22:00.001-08:00

Snowy Vancouver, and snowier Burnaby, closed down SFU today. I got some work done and then met Ranae at Trout Lake. Nanuk and Frances got to meet.

I called James on the way home and asked him to make coffee. Yay roommates.

I'd like to nap and then work at the diner booth for a few hours. But instead I'm off to a meeting planning for a speaking tour next month... I'm going to try to work that nap in somehow.

Pigeon Posters

2008-01-28T22:01:00.001-08:00

This is an art project Laura and I did one night in 2006. The owner of Pigeon the Cat, and commissioner of the project, was living in New Brunswick. Now he lives here, at Hotel Manitoba.

At the opposite hour

2008-01-27T21:48:00.000-08:00

Visited the Gurudwara in Surrey at 4Pm for a vigil for Laibar Singh. The vigil was calm, with a few speakers, including some words by Laibar himself. He looked very tired. I have enough trouble imagining how I would feel were I suddenly disabled. To have the stress of deportation, of media scrutiny, of uncertainty, on top of that must be crushing.

After the vigil, I ran into someone I know from Spartacus Books inside the temple, while I was eating dinner. The temple feeds people, although differently from a food bank (or maybe not...). People take turns preparing and serving food, and cleaning up, so it's a collective affair, without the giver-receiver relation of charity.

Yukon, 2006.

2008-01-27T19:15:00.001-08:00

Mini-glaciation

2008-01-26T02:27:00.001-08:00

The deforestation caused by the windstorm of 06(!), and the subsequent clean-up, has led to a bare wall on the side of the Seawall past the Lionsgate Bridge that is covered in ice.

The top picture is unrelated to ice. Onigiri (salmon, in this case) is on my list of favourite foods.

Ominous D

2008-01-25T17:07:00.000-08:00

This is the tallest building in Vancouver. Maybe this is the coming of Tokyo in Canada (see http://tokyoyakei.jp/).

There should be something fascinating about tall buildings. We approach ancient sites (pyramids, temples, etc) with a certain respect and reverence and tend to disregard skyscrapers. We know what they are, so we ignore them.

But we can't ignore them completely. These big, big buildings put us in some kind of perspective.
They affect us somehow. They are doing something other than housing offices and people.

I stopped believing in Christianity one day, when I was about 12 or 13. The reason being, I was laughing at all the Roman and Greek Gods, after studying them for a school project. Then I tried to think of how a person in the future would see my religion. I really couldn't see any reason they'd take it seriously, and the floor fell out from my belief.

Skyscrapers are the same thing. They are projections of societal power, ones that will have a different significance than we accord when seen by a future person.

Hotel Manitoba's House Band

2008-01-24T18:41:00.001-08:00

Playing their hit, 'D jam'.

A DJ appears

2008-01-23T00:18:00.001-08:00

I met some excellent (and very tall) people in Amsterdam, and visited some self-organized bars, shops, and movie houses that had a relaxed, homey feel.

I also had one of my best Critical Mass, but not really Critical Mass, experiences as I biked back to Pieter Lodewijk Takstraat at midnight in a posse of other bikers. I felt totally safe on the road.

Visiting Amsterdam's 'legitimized squats', I began to feel that community organization contributes to the cultural health of the city.

A city where the municipal government created space for people to organize would be a far more interesting, more vital city. Amsterdam, and other Dutch cities, seem to have done just that. The history of squatting in the Netherlands is complex, yet clearly many people in municipal and federal government see value in squatting. A progressive government can free up land and buildings and let the community fill in the gaps.

Currently, Vancouver is going in the opposite direction. The government is pushing communities out of the way. Marginal places are getting swept out of the downtown, and even established places, like Richards on Richards, are succumbing to the condo-wave.

Meanwhile, in Amsterdam

2008-01-22T17:32:00.000-08:00

Last night, I started to think about Amsterdam, where I spent about a week this summer. Biking in Amsterdam was wonderful. The city is compact, and most of the buildings are low, which has a good impact visually and in terms of the actual climate of city (e.g., no skyscraper wind tunnels).

I went for a lot of long walks and bike rides in Amsterdam, and most of the city seems to look like the pictures above (which are mostly from near Ceintuurbaan street, from what I can remember). I felt like I was in some repeating loop of Outremont, Montreal. But that's not a bad place to be trapped.

Thinking about the daily grind to get to work and school had me fantasizing about a world where my morning started with a 20 minute bike ride through bricks and canals.

Over a year ago, there was a week where I had to go to the Vancouver School Board for training in delivering an elementary school program. I got to the VSB on the 10th Ave. bike path. True, it was September, before the rain. Still, starting the day with a slow, traffic free bike ride left me very happy.

Surroundings can have a difficult to catch yet important effect on mood and thought. Like today, walking home on 12th, having cars whizz past me didn't fill me with love of my fellow citizen. I can only hope the urban planners of Emily Carr make further inroads in transforming the city to a bike and pedestrian paradise. I think a lot of people would (eventually) be a lot happier.

Voyageur on the Railmachine

2008-01-21T21:22:00.000-08:00

It's hard for me to believe that I've been riding the Skytrain to SFU nearly 3 1/2 years. I have a theory that SFU was deliberately put on the hill, in an age of student activism, to depress people, and prevent them from forming associations. The experiment was a success.

I went on a couple of dates with someone who told me that SFU's campus was designed monastically (even though the dates didn't go very well, I've always appreciated this information). The 'Academic Quadrant' is the cloister. And to encourage meditation, rather than worldly thought, the windows all face inward, if they are there at all.

The result for me is working in an office, which, if it had windows, would look out
to the Coast Mountains, and which, if it had windows that opened, would let me breathe in fresh mountain air. Instead, I sit in recycled air, looking at the walls.

Except not really, because a little while ago, a toilet overflowed, filling my research group's lab, and many others, with sewage.

-In exile-

Nanuk visits Spartacus Books

2008-01-16T00:10:00.001-08:00

Nanuk is my roommate's dog. I call myself 'secondary master'. I'd like to think that Nanuk learns something when I take him somewhere new. He seems to like going down near the Aquabus docks off the Cambie Bridge.

My parents took my sister and I to lots of different places, mostly on the East Coast (New England, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania) when we were young. We also came out West, once.

I wonder what kids get out of their early experiences? Children seem to need to do things over and over before they stick. I once saw a joke (but I forget the joke) spread through a grade 1 classroom at lunchtime, as the kids repeated it again and again to each other.

I'm sure I did and saw all kinds of things on these trips. All I have left are little snatches. I remember the pyramid hill from Granville Island, and drinking Cherry Coke in Florida.

I hope Nanuk dreams of something he saw today.

Oot and aboot

2008-01-15T00:46:00.001-08:00

I had access to a car the other night, so I went for a drive, listening to an indie shoegazer mixed tape a friend made me in 2000. All very good, except when the convertible roof popped open when I was driving over the Lionsgate Bridge.

The last time I listened to that tape driving I was probably driving to Aomori City in my little Honda Civic.

I know it's bad for the environment, and I know it doesn't matter what I think since I don't own a car anymore, but I love driving at night.

Around the other Main

2008-01-12T15:54:00.000-08:00

I'm going to an event at the library tonight in support of Laibar Singh. One of the speakers is a University of Victoria professor, Dr. John Price. He writes about post-war Japan history and about Canadian policy towards immigrants from Asia, and Canadians of Asian descent.

I didn't know he was speaking at the event, or who he was, before reading an announcement today. I'm pretty excited to meet him, as I like reading books about these things (e.g., John Dower, Herbert Bix, Chalmers Johnson).

Price has also written about a Canadian diplomat and scholar named E.H. Norman. Norman tried to engineer the Japanese Constitution to be more democratic, and was pushed out by General MacArthur, among others. It's a fascinating and paradoxical period- a democracy being built from above by academics and planners- covered in John Dower's book 'Embracing Defeat'.

My old Japanese professor in Montreal, Hasegawa-sensei, introduced me to E.H. Norman's work, and encouraged me to read his study on the 'Japanese Aristotle', Shoeki Ando. I even tried to read some of Ando's work in Japanese- one of my usual brave but doomed endeavours to read anything other than manga in that language.

UPDATE: Dr. Price's talk was really good. He gave a quick summary of the history of who is considered a 'Canadian'. He pointed out that in the early 20th Century, Canadians were 'White', and that 'White' was a near synonym for 'Scottish'. Europeans were excluded. The influx of Chinese, Japanese, and Indian people broadened that definition a little, if reluctantly. So it's all a little relative, eh?

Nightscene

2008-01-11T14:40:00.001-08:00

Have resumed drinking coffee at 10Pm to keep working until 2AM.

Pitter patter

2008-01-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

It's a classic Vancouver rainy winter day today: balmy and wet. Looking forward to a little bit of sun and shadow.

CORRECTION: The 'balmy' part was based on weather reports rather than direct empirical evidence. It's cold and wet. Still wanting some sun.

At the Gurudwara

2008-01-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a midnight to 6AM stay at the Gurudwara in Surrey, where Laibar Singh (http://supportlaibar.blogspot.com/) is in Sanctuary. The Canadian Border Service Agency never showed to deport him- which they had threatened to do at 430AM. I helped make and hang up some signs and drank 5-6 cups of chai tea. It felt great to go upstairs to the temple area, and meet Laibar when it was all over.

UPDATE: What happened is that the RCMP came and picked up Laibar's lawyer and took him to meet with the CBSA. They reached some sort of agreement, and the lawyer, Zool Suleman, announced that Laibar would not be taken away that night. A lot of the comments I've read on-line say that Laibar should leave Canada in respect for due process. Yet law officials and lawyers seem to operate on backroom (or closed car) deals. None of that is Laibar's doing.

Home work

2008-01-08T17:35:00.001-08:00

I did some note-taking and writing today, from the Piaget book on emotions. The typewriter lets me read my notes later. My handwriting is probably just as bad as it was in elementary school, when we used to be graded on how we wrote our letters, and not what we were writing. That was a string of Ds for me.

Hotel Manitoba: Now even more value for your money

2008-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

Hotel Manitoba now has a diner booth table. It's taken the place to a new level.

Vancouver is no Paris

2008-01-05T15:14:00.001-08:00

In many ways.

Grindrod

2008-01-04T13:00:00.001-08:00

It's too easy to get distracted in the city.

Cartesian bus ride

2008-01-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

The closest I've had to 'cogito ergo sum' moments have all occurred in the middle of the night on overnight bus trips. Drinking coffee in a bus depot in Kamloops at 230AM is incontrovertible evidence that I exist.

Field, Car, Alcohol

2007-12-29T16:38:00.000-08:00

I lived in Japan twice for a total of 3 years. One night, during my second stay, I borrowed my girlfriend's digital camera and walked around Ina City taking photos of the night lights. The first character, for 'rice field', appears in a lot of people's names. The second, part of the word for 'parking lot', I had to learn to recognize very quickly after my car was ticketed in Aomori City in the middle of the night for parking in a no-parking zone. The third means 'booze'. It's from a Circle K.

Mornings at the Homer Cafe

2007-12-23T12:36:00.001-08:00

This bacon and eggs' days are numbered. Yaletown is crowding in with non-baco-establishments. Someone is going to regret that, some rainy hungover day.

Along by the water

2007-12-18T21:39:00.000-08:00

This part of Vancouver is probably proof that urban design can work. I'm a sucker for anywhere with railroad tracks and bridges. Add in some water... sweet.