Category: Uncategorized

Weeee! I’m posting this using the WordPress Android app. Anyways, it’s a long weekend here in BC with Family Day. I’ve sent home the staff here at et.com so they can be with their families, of all things. We’ll return tomorrow with our regular programming.

As a follow-up to my previous post, it was a record-breaking day in Vancouver this morning. The temperature fell just below -8 degrees Celsius at the airport, which broke a record for a low for this particular day of the year. I know everyone else in Canada’s is amused by our “cold snap” but this is the type of weather is definitely outside of our comfort zone. I know that if there was 10 cm of rain last night, no one here would even care.

The low tonight is going to be -7, which means I’ll probably keep the heat on during the night. I usually turn it off (if it’s needed) when I’m in bed but I’m afraid I’ll wake up shivering.

In years past, I’ve challenged myself to not turn on the heat at all during the winter months. This was done partly because I’m an idiot and because it does save money on my electricity bills. In previous years, it wasn’t too difficult to complete this challenge. First, it rarely got too cold in Vancouver, even in the height of winter. Second, warm air used to blow into my apartment from underneath my front door. All of these things changed this year. Vancouver has been hit with some major cold spells this winter, with temperatures falling well below freezing for days at a time. This is unusual for this city. I also sealed up the bottom of my front door during the summer. I did this to stop dust-filled air from blowing into my apartment twenty-four hours a day.

All of this has led to me to relent and turn the heat on in my bedroom in the evenings. It would be frightfully cold otherwise. While this means the challenge won’t be accomplished this year, I’d rather not have my ass frozen while I sleep at night.

On the way to work, I have walk across several intersections. These are all controlled by timed, “walk, don’t walk” signals. Anyone who has lived in a modern society has seen these things. With the law of averages, sometimes you’ll arrive at a cross walk just at the right moment so you don’t have to wait, sometimes you’ll have to wait just a few seconds, and sometimes you’ll have to wait the whole cycle of the light. Normally, it’s extremely rare that you’ll always time it right so you never wait or you time it so that you’ll always be waiting the longest time. I have, however, discovered the worst cross walk for my luck.

If you’re crossing Nelson Street along Mainland be prepared to witness the most frustrating cross walk. I come upon this cross walk every day as I go to work in the morning. In the five months or so that I’ve been walking to work, I believe that 99% of the time I get to the cross walk just as the “hand” finishes flashing and becomes solid. That means every morning, I have to wait the maximum amount of time possible before I can cross. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could pull this off. Every morning I keep thinking this is the morning where my timing will be random enough that I’ll arrive at the cross walk in a different part of the light cycle. Every morning I’m wrong. No matter how fast or slow I walk or if I change my pace (speed up or slow down), I always manage to time it so that there’s just not enough time for me to cross and I’m stuck waiting the theoretical maximum time.

There must be a scientific explanation for this but I’m currently too tired to think of a hypothesis. All I know is that it’s a daily source of frustration I face every morning.

The weather forecast calls for temperatures to fall to -6 degrees below freezing tonight. With it being February and the new year, I thought the cold temperatures were done for this season but I guess I was wrong. This isn’t even the worst of it. The forecast calls for a low of -10 on Friday night which is sufficient enough to cause your testicles to freeze.

I was looking forward to perhaps taking the down liner out of my jacket but that won’t be happening this week.

Rob Ford is the troubled mayor of Canada’s largest city. I live in Vancouver and I have trouble eating enough vegetables. Mayor Ford and I don’t have a lot in common. Even as I read on Friday morning that Ford was in Vancouver to attend a funeral, I didn’t think we had anything in common. Then Friday night rolled around and things started to get interesting. Ford was ticketed for jaywalking on the border of Burnaby and Coquitlam, two large suburbs of Vancouver. What was he doing all the way out there?

From the information I have, I’m guessing he was staying at the Executive Plaza hotel in Coquitlam. By the way, that’s where my high school reunion was held last October. Weird. Ford was quoted as saying he was on his way to a Chinese restaurant near the hotel. Based on all the social media pictures that were taken of Ford, this restaurant was most likely Yan’s Garden, which I’ve been to many times. Coincidentally, I had dinner there tonight with my parents, and my sister and her husband. Since a lot of the photos were taken at the Shell station near the hotel, Ford was probably jaywalking across North Road, which is extremely busy at this intersection with Lougheed Highway. I’ve walked this area countless times during my “summer of me” as it was on my walking route. North Road is at a minimum four lanes in this area with traffic regularly exceeding the 50 km/h posted limit. Personally, I’d feel uncomfortable jaywalking across North Road at that time of night but then again, Rob Ford is probably capable of doing many other things I’d also feel weird doing.

I have to admit, Ford keeps surprising me in new ways. If you think that a big city mayor will never come to your distant suburban stomping grounds, never lose hope. Strangers things might just happen.

I didn’t watch the State of the Union address this week but I see that Joe Biden liked at least one part of it. I think the world needs more Joe Biden. I’d love to have a meal with the guy.

So when Target announced they were coming to Canada, it was big news to a lot of people. The stores finally opened and it seems like there was some disappointment. My mom thinks that Target isn’t better than Wal-Mart. Well, about two weeks ago I finally went to my first Target store. I bought a bathmat and two packages of frozen fruit (raspberries and blueberries).

The bathmat was nice but it wasn’t cheap either. I was most impressed with the frozen fruit. They were on sale for $3 each which is a steal. Frozen fruit is expensive normally and a package that size usually goes for $5 and up at any supermarket. I was more excited to get the fruit than my bathmat. I didn’t spend enough time at Target to get a full assessment of the store. The impression I got is that it probably is very much like other stores in many areas but perhaps better than others in a few select categories (like frozen fruit). Could Target be the ultimate source of men’s underwear?

At the end of the summer I folded up my patio furniture, namely two chairs and a table, and slipped some fancy black garbage bags on them. This was to protect the furniture from the elements and the harsh winter weather. The bags fit the furniture quite well as the rectangular shape of all the items matched the shape of the bags.

For several months the bags did their job as the wind, rain, and cold set upon my balcony. As the wind blew, I would always hear the plastic of the bags rustling. It became a familiar sound at night. Well, several weeks ago, it became very, very windy. I noticed during the wind storm that I couldn’t hear the rustling of the garbage bags anymore.

The next morning, I went out onto my balcony and discovered all three bags had been blown off the furniture. They were nowhere to be seen and I assume they had escaped to the sky. I very impressed by the power of the wind. The bags were actually anchored in place by the weight of each piece of furniture so it must have been a fierce wind.

I wonder where those bags went.

So India made its own version of the series 24, which originally starred Kiefer Sutherland. Also entitled 24, this version stars Indian superstar Anil Kapoor in the role of Jack Bauer (though that’s not the character name). Kapoor and Sutherland both appeared in season eight of the US version.

If the Indian version had subtitles or something, I might have even considered watching it. Their first season concluded last month. Sutherland’s version of 24 returns to the airwaves this May with 24: Live Another Day. That Kiefer, he’s a good Canadian kid. Thumbs up!