30.09.06
    We had dinner with visitors from Singapore last week. Later that night we were driving on Hastings towards their hotel downtown when they asked if we were the bad part of town yet. Having just crossed Boundary, we were seeing people on the street shopping and passing gas stations and numerous Asian restaurants.
    “No, not yet.”
    I watched as the blocks went by and storefronts more regularly had bars on the windows. Soon enough we stopped at an intersection with three women* who were obviously sex trade workers. A hushed round of whispering ensued from one of our visitors to her daughter.
    Singapore is not a land of lenience. This is a country that banned chewing gum to clean up their streets. Trafficking drugs gets you the death penalty. Of course there is prostitution, but I don’t know if it is quite this visible.
    Driving on we passed large groups of homeless people, a police squad car with someone sitting handcuffed on the sidewalk, and the general highlights of the Downtown Eastside. Then, within a block or two, we were seeing high-end jewelry stores and gleaming office buildings.
    I don’t know if this would become a particularly vivid memory of the sights of Vancouver for our guests. As hosts, are we supposed to shield visitors from the uglier reality of our cities? As a tourist, I would want to know the truth, but I’ve never been that fond of simulacra. Is this our counterpoint to the souvenir shops and smiling mounties in red?, our sad vignette which no one wants to see, but everyone probably should.

28.09.06
    Heck the what??? One of my goals was to back up and organize my image files before I start full-time work. Going through my stack of CD-Rs, I found a few unlabeled ones. Most turned out to be blank, but one was full of music. I played it to discover that the first three songs are all Christina Aguilera’s “What a girl wants”. The fourth was “Bye, bye, bye”, it could have been the Airband CD at this point. There were a few R&B numbers that sounded familiar, then Savage Garden’s “I knew I loved you”. The penultimate audio file was some new-age instrumental thing, and the last song was Canto-pop.
    I am baffled. There is not a wimpy snowflake’s chance in the ninth circle of hell that this CD is mine. I figured it was my sister’s right up to the last two songs. I’m going to guess it was a CD made for my sister by one of her friends, who threw in a couple of things at the end because they had room, and “Hey, you should listen to this”, or something. I should torch the thing and exorcise the immediate area, but instead I just put it back in its case and shoved it back into the drawer.

27.09.06
    This is the month of blogging, eh? What muse have I found? Why, this one. Her name is Ursula Vernon, she’s an artist. She writes in her LJ about freelancing in art, and gets into the mechanics of commercial commissions and actually says CONCRETE things about art practice, instead of all the “oh just find what works for you, I can’t really teach you anything” crap you run into. She knows her art history and we have much the same political opinions. And she’s damn entertaining, the LOLs are regular and the ROTFLs are not infrequent. When we were in Toronto and staying with Wendy, I used her computer to email my parents and check Ursula’s blog. Her art website is www.metalandmagic.com, where she draws underrepresented wildlife and cute and evil things. And she gardens and goes birding. Were she not married and in the Southern US, well… actually I’d probably still just stalk her from another country, but you get what I mean.

26.09.06
    We were having lunch outside next to a woman and her two young kids. They were sharing sushi and the woman was switching back and forth between English and French. It pleased me to find out I can keep up with French aimed at the 8-and-under set. We were sitting in view of the Navy frigate the HMCS Vancouver. This prompted the kids to ask: “What’s that?”, then: “What’s a frigate?”, then: “What’s a Navy?”, then: “What’s an army?”, then “Why do we need an army?”.
    The woman did an admirable job of explaining things, talking about a country’s sovereignty and the context of the armed forces in protecting the citizens from external threat. “But why would anyone want to invade us?” asked her son, who was maybe five.
    I can’t remember what she answered, because I was too busy thinking about what my answer would be to the same question. It is a crucial question. Imagine a game of Risk, where everyone laid out their troops, then said:
    “Well, I’m pretty happy with my part of the world, I’m just going to sit tight. You?”
    “Yeah, me too.”
    The game is predicated on some territorial desire to rule the entire world, which is perhaps not something you want to teach a five-year-old. Invading nations for resource exploitation boils down to a matter of money, which leads to power, which leads to the same kind of idea of global domination. Similarly, when watching some cartoon combat video game at my cousin’s, one of my (then) little cousins turned to me and asked, “Why are they fighting?” And really there was no good reason other than they were in the same room and some voice counted down and said “fight”. Fighting for the sake of fighting was no answer to give either. Like fighting for power, this would mean that only evil people could ever start wars.
    I came up with the reason of: “a conflict of ideologies”, which could be explained as “what you believe and how you express that belief”. The world is full of people who believe in different things and live in different ways, but some people believe that their way is the only way, and try and get other people to live that way too. That’s all fine, but if someone says “that’s nice, but it’s not for me”, then that should be respected. It is when nations force their ideologies upon others that we have wars. Ca s’appelle une guerre.
    Now the question becomes; when, if ever, is it right for a nation to force its ideology upon another? By whose moral standards do we judge such an action? Wars of this nature have been fought against religion and in support of religion, and of course the major players would tell you that divine-being-of-your-choice is on their side. The UN would seem to exist for just this function, but we have seen that they are not infallible and unilateral action still occurs. So what then? Let might make right? That takes us back to the power struggles we’ve already discussed where war is only ever a tool for evil, which maybe it is.
    But I’ve gotten far beyond the scope of what I set out to do, which was originally just to point out that kids are cool*. Whilst I get mired in my ontological construct, the five year old resolves all the new (and partly scary) information he’s received by saying that if an army invades, his imaginary friend, who is also a ghost, but a good one, could take them all anyway.

25.09.06
    My dad is the official get-rid-of-telemarketers person in the household. He will shut people down with a simple “not interested” and a quick finger to the off button. My mom will try to be nice, which takes several repeated refusals and much sitting through uninterrupted breathless spiels on their part. I do that too, but I’m losing my desire to be nice rapidly.
    The same is true with people at the door. My dad just switches the hanging up with the closing of the door. My mom won’t answer if someone else is available to do it, whereas I’m the one who stands there and debates evolution.
    However this all changes should a kid come to the door fundraising for his/her soccer team/school something/extracurricular whatchamacallit. This weekend such an incident occurred, my dad opened the door to find a munchkin selling milk chocolate covered raisins. I don’t know about you, but those were the first things I traded away from my Halloween candy. Chocolate adulterated with cow over shriveled grape has-been; yummy. My mom would have inquired if they offered a selection of nuts instead, and if they failed to produce, would have sent them away. But luckily for the kid, they got my dad, slammer-of-doors, bane-of-telemarketers, who smiled indulgently and pulled out his wallet.
    Having been on the other side of that door, I’m glad he did that, but I’m not the one who’s going to eat the box of chocolate lingering on the table.

23.09.06
    Alright, it’s been a day and they haven’t called back to say they were just kidding. The new job’s at the big museum at the university (two and a half years since graduation and I still haven’t left campus). They are beginning a ‘renewal process’ involving major renovations and databasing the collection. My role will be as one of three photographers who will capture images of the objects in the collection. I’ve seen the setup, and it’s phenomenal; better digital cameras than I’ve ever been able to touch before, professional studio lighting, a fleet of Mac G5s with widescreen studio displays. The studio is visible to the public in the temporary exhibition space, between open storage and the entry ramp, for those of you who know the museum. The contract is for year, with possibility of renewal, but we are on a finite grant. I start after Thanksgiving weekend.
    Contrast this to my volunteer work at the Herbarium, the idea was the same; capture and archive the vascular type specimens, but the process involved one guy at a scanner and me at home on my laptop. Still, without that experience and the wonderful referral they gave me, I doubt I would have landed this job.
    I’m ridiculously excited, I couldn’t sleep last night and I still don’t know if it’s really sunk in. And hey, I’ll finally be able to apply some of that art history stuff that’s been languishing in my brain. I knew it would be good for something. Sure I did.

22.09.06
    *whispering* I got a job.
    *waits for rug to be yanked out from under feet*

20.09.06
    I’m on Isoretinoin as of last Monday; acne meds for those of you who aren’t Tree. This follows me trying everything which made a lick of sense on the shelves of the drugstore, and my mom buying the rest of them. My dad, having gone through this exact scenario in his youth (not a shred of doubt about paternity here), has been recommending prescription drugs for a while. I’ve been resisting because: a) I’m supposed to outgrow this, damnit!, b) really, the problem is cosmetic, it’s not like I’m dying any faster than anyone else, c) extended health coverage nonexistent at the moment, and d) these are some serious drugs.
    However, unrelated skin condition caused me to visit a dermatologist. From the moment he walked in he was listing possible acne treatments, and happily whipped out a syringe full of something I can’t remember and began jabbing it into my face. When I stopped bleeding, we agreed on a course of action, then I had to ask him to take a look at what I came in for, which turned out to be some type of eczema. (Anyone want to trade skin?)
    So now I need monthly checkups and I can’t have alcohol. Also the drugs themselves are the most warning-covered, sign-a-waiver, see-your-doctor-immediately-if type of drugs I’ve ever been on. By far the most serious side effect is birth defects, but as I’m not planning on becoming pregnant …ever, it’s not that big an issue. I’ll have dry skin and lips, and there’s a possible chance of increased rates of depression or suicidal thoughts, so if I’m trying to slash my wrists with chapstick, you’ll know why. The packaging is also scary, it’s a little book of pills, each in their own foil-covered depressions, and next to each one is a little pregnant woman with a “no” sign through it. The pills are not to be exposed to light, neither am I, actually, and they came with three separate information sheets telling me same scary things. Perhaps all the packaging justifies the rather exorbitant price, which, I’m informed, has already come down significantly. Then I did that oh-so-helpful thing and multiplied this month’s cost by the five to seven months of treatment required. Ah well, I’m resigned to it, and if it works, I’ll be grateful. Two months until definite effects are noticed, or so they say, so I’ll just go back to staring in my mirror.

19.09.06
    I just got a call from the Canadian Family Action Coalition (google them for some fun reading). They asked for my dad, but he’s not home, so they asked if I was over 18. Usually I just lie at this point, it ends the conversation quickly and I can get on with my day. But now that school’s started, it would be slightly less plausible that I would be under 18 and home at two in the afternoon, unless I dropped out or was home-schooled or something. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve talked with random right-wing organization, and I was feeling kinda punchy.
    “Yeah,” I said, “I’m over eighteen”.
    “Alright,” said the woman on the other end, “the question is about same sex marriage: should gays be allowed to marry?”
    “Yes”, said I, lining up my arguments about church and state, nature and nurture, and good old biology.
    “Okay, that’s the question, bye”. And she hung up.
    Heck of a survey, that. I wonder if they talk to you longer if you say “no”. Maybe they try to get off the phone with the “yes” people before the moral degeneracy seeps through the telephone wires and infects them. But perhaps it’s just a prelude for some targeted marketing aimed at saving our souls by buying Christian Rock albums or something. We’ll see when the pamphlets start to arrive.

18.09.06
    Oh my goodness, I watched TV. The first thing was Planet Earth on CBC (“available in HD”), nature documentary narrated, of course, by Richard Attenborough*. The entire program was “freshwater” and seemed like an excuse to take the most visually arresting, though unrelated, video of anything involving freshwater and string them all together. Stunning, yes, but cheesy at times. Particularly the sound design, with the grandiose orchestral swells as we round the corner of a canyon or do the fly-over-the-edge-then-swing-around thing for waterfalls. And the foley must have been working overtime to simulate the beating of Amphipod swimmerets or the munchy sounds of a piranha feeding frenzy; no one’s underwater microphone is that good. And of course the clichés abound; crocodile lunges out of the water to seize a wildebeest by the throat (Dad: “I’ve seen this documentary”), shot of a caiman’s eye opening just above the waterline, flocks of snow geese in flight, etc. And the human impact on the planet’s freshwater ecosystems seems to have been largely ignored. It was only an hour-long show however, and the fragmentary structure of the program didn’t allow for more than a brief glance of anything. Still, the aerial video of sulfur-yellow clouds of mating flies rising like licks of flame above Lake Malawi was literally jaw-dropping, and if it gets people interested in looking deeper into the natural world, then kudos to them.
    Then we had the Simpson’s season premiere, about which the best that could be said was that it wasn’t all about Homer. The self-referential nod to the ridiculousness of the storyline makes one despair about the state of television writing…
    Except for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I loved the West Wing, and by extension Aaron Sorkin for not insulting the intelligence of their audience, and the legacy lives on. The opening rant is dead on, exposing everything that is wrong with mass media culture, and yes it’s a television show about a television show, but in this case the self-referential construct works. You could feel the pins being set up in the pilot, but for the most part it generated more interest to see where things go. Jordan’s character, around whom the episode was centered, could use a little more depth, right now she’s a bit too omniscient and likeable and gorgeous, but it was only 44 minutes, in which she doesn’t even get to change clothes, so character development can come later. And like all good stories, it ended with me going “It’s over already? Noooo, I want moooooooore”; only in my head, and not so whiny. Good show, though Aaron: why did you have to name the main character “Danny” when you had the guy who played “Danny” on the West Wing as another main character under a different name?
    Dang, could you imagine how much TV I’d watch if I had cable?

*Actually it was David Attenborough, on closer reading of the credits. But I mean really, disembodied British male narrator, you know the type.

17.09.06
    I strongly dislike browser incompatibility errors. I realize how computer-geeky this sounds, and how most of you won’t care. But still. I’m not even doing anything complex in my web design. If HTML were literature, I’ve gone a little beyond Cat in The Hat and am perhaps somewhere around Animal Farm. Simple, but well put together, appealing, and just a tad subversive if you look hard enough (okay, that’s a lot to ask for from computer code, I know). And the browsers cannot deal with it. I design on IE because that’s what the majority of people hitting the sites are using. Within the academic world there seems to be a bias to Firefox, Safari, and Opera. I had the experience of viewing my sites with a client and having an operation that worked like a charm in IE fail utterly in Safari. It was basic HTML, I eventually tracked it down to a syntax error which IE could deal with, but no one else could. The problem I’m running into now is browsers not recognizing my cascading style sheets. All I’m doing is defining font styles with them, no tricks. I tried running a search on known CSS browser compatibility errors and found a site that has a very nice list, but they’re all operations I’ve never heard of. I’m giving the dang browsers elementary school fiction and they’re looking at me like I handed them Gravity’s Rainbow… in Aramaic. Grrrrr.

Oh, and the site I'm working on? Its: the Ceiling

13.09.06
    I was complimented on my veins today, which was nice. Then came the needle...

11.09.06
    I was walking home a few days ago, and when I turned into my street, a rivulet of opaque brown water, like a mochaccino gone bad, was washing down the gutter. There was a massive hole in the immaculate lawn of my neighbour across the street, and standing around the hole were representatives of five out of the nine households in the cul-de-sac. Several had shovels, while a couple were standing in the hole bailing out said water with industrial-size buckets. The communal dog came running up to me, seeing another partygoer. I said my hellos, pet the dog, and retreated inside. My dad, who had previously been one of the group, explained that their water main broke, and soon envoys from the remaining houses wandered over to offer jokes about Noah’s Ark and unsolicited plumbing advice (I’m guessing, but I doubt I’m far off).
    It’s an odd little enclave, this street. All but two of the families have lived here since before I was born, we know everyone. We hang out with these people, and the Christmas gifts are messengered back and forth. I make small talk with the dog owners when I pass them on my way to the station. And no one can mow their lawn without at least waving to everyone else driving by. It’s quiet enough that when the windows are open, I can hear other people’s phones ringing. This morning someone was whistling “La Cucaracha” and now someone’s working on something, as evidenced by the metallic clanging, occasionally followed by a muffled curse. It’s the kind of neighbourhood people look for so that their kids can grow up here, as I was lucky enough to do. Well, you’re going to have to wait a bit longer, because we’re not going anywhere.

10.09.06
    So today’s my parents’ anniversary, and they remembered without me reminding them, unlike last year. No grand gestures, while on the phone with my sister this morning we resolved that yes, in fact we will go out for dinner tonight. Within August and September we have my sister’s birthday, my father’s birthday, my parents’ anniversary, and my mother’s birthday. The cards have been crossing the Atlantic with some regularity and we’ve all been forced to scribe sentimentality onto cardstock.
    I’ve read some parents’ accounts of how they do something a few times and suddenly their young kids latch onto it as an unassailable tradition for the rest of their lives. With the flurry of memories and birthday wishes being exchanged, we dredged up a few of our own: picking blackberries in the woods, grilling satay for my sister’s birthday, hyper-organized family picnics and road trips. My mom said the birthday parties and Christmas celebrations were all intended for such memory-building, and now that we’re grown they can slack off. But of course these traditions are unassailable for me, so I’m the one putting up the tree in December.
    That I even have these memories is proof that their clever plan worked. And as much as the internet is a great place for complaining about how much parents suck, on the whole, mine rate pretty darn well. So here’s to them on their twenty-eighth year of holding it together. But I’m still not giving them the address to this site.

07.09.06
    I'm still here, sorry if anyone panicked. If you have no clue what I'm talking about: I changed the index page on the site to go directly to my portfolio and not here. I’m redesigning my portfolio; more content and better navigation being the main reasons. These changes however, mark a stylistic break between this part of the site (set up as my personal journal), and my “professional” (well I do get paid) portfolio. So I decided to separate church and state, as it were. The portfolio was not to link to this area so that there would be no visual discrepancy within the site, and also to allow me to write freely here without wondering if potential clients would object to anything I said. I still intend to do this, but I’ll transition into it. I’ve put a link to this part of the site back on the main page, but it will be removed by, oh… October. So bookmark either the home.html page or this one, or bug me in person when you can no longer find the journal.

Ah, and the full-page Korean popup on the index page? The super-awesome linguistic skills of Liz inform me that it says my host will no longer be accepting new accounts, but that existing ones will keep the status quo. Click the box at the bottom and hit the button and it should go away permanently.

05.09.06
    August 27th marked the one year anniversary of this site. On the one hand, I’m rather pleased that I haven’t given up on it. On the other hand, I find that I’m in a similar situation to the one I was in a year ago. The early entries now stand as a monument to my disappointment, but there were also achievements sprinkled throughout, and a whole lot of fun stuff. I’ve never been able to keep written journals; the entries usually peter out after a few months when I lose interest. Perhaps having an audience is enough motivation to keep going; so thanks to all of you for reading. There is still more to come.

More Pho pictures up, and the Seawall pictures are online.

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