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In the above video, President Barack Obama thanks a group of his campaign staff for all their hard work in helping him get re-elected. I cannot imagine what he has gone through in the last few months as he strived towards a second term. For a job that offers few days off, I hope he can rest up and re-charge for the next four years.

It’s been just over 24 hours since President Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney. In those hours, there has been a flurry of activity from the conservative right-wing in the US. First, there was sadness, oh so much sadness. If looking at pictures of despondent Republicans is the kind of thing that gives you joy (count me in!), then you’ll be wanting to visit this site. Then came the anger. If there’s one thing the right-wing are good at, it’s generating sputtering, frothy anger. The finger-pointing began in earnest. Some pointed it at Romney himself. Like so many conservatives, others choose to blame everyone but themselves. New Jersey Chris Christie was a target, mainly because he gave President Obama a bear hug. Fox News was quick to blame the mainstream media in influencing the election. Oh the delicious irony of that. If you want to read a more even-handed analysis of why Romney lost, you can start with this piece from CNN.

Then there was the absolute, insane reactions that you’d expect from moronic right-wing voters from across the mental stability spectrum. We can start with Donald Trump who had what can only be described as a honest and old-fashioned meltdown on Twitter. Just hours before the election, he tweeted that no matter what the outcome of the election, the American people were the ones who still needed help and that they needed to be the focus. That all went out the window as soon as the President won re-election. Calls for a revolution were his message then. He really went off the deep end. He deleted some of those tweets but everyone screencapped all of them. So much for cooperation and bipartisanship eh Donald?

Then there were those who filled Twitter with promises to buy as many guns and ammunition as possible today. What a curious and dumb thing to focus on after the election. I suppose the thinking here was that President Obama was imminently going to remove the right to bear arms from the US constitution. Strange how in his entire re-election platform no mention was made of any changes to the right of arms ownership nor any laws pertaining to gun control. Guns were not the focus of this election in the slightest. President Obama never once said he was even thinking about changing course on gun ownership. And here’s the real kicker that I could not and still can’t figure out. President Obama has been the President of the United States for four years now. He didn’t just become President today or will be President in January. He’s been doing that job for four years now. If your guns haven’t been taken away yet, what makes you think they’ll be taken away now? What? Did they think he was just waiting for a second term to outlaw guns? Oh yeah, I’ll risk waiting for a second term that might not ever come to repeal laws. People need to think before saying dumb stuff.

Last but not least, there was the outcry from the religious right. Oh man, these people are frightening. Take a look at this reaction. Or this one. Better yet, how about this Twitter account? Now when I say religious right, let’s just be honest and call it what it really is… the Christian right. These Christian fundamentalists are in absolute throes of agony that President Obama got re-elected. They’re bitterly disappointed that somehow their nation is no longer a nation that represents their Christian God. How deluded and out of touch are these people? The United States is not some theocracy, where the President rules with a law book in one hand and the Bible in the other. America is populated with people who practice many different religions, not just Christianity. There are Americans who don’t practice any religion. The US government serves and protects all their citizens without regard to their religious beliefs. There’s a reason state and church have been separate for many, many years now. There’s no Department of Christianity now is there? So spare me your lamentations about the decline of the United States as some God-fearing Christian holy land. The election was about voting for a President, not a Pope. They should go live in Vatican City if they want a church to control their government.

Wow, so that was just day one of watching US conservatives scrambling to find some direction. I wonder what other reactions we’ll see in the days and months to come.

So what was everyone doing last night? Oh man, if it were possible to sustain myself on just the sweet tears of right-wing conservatives across the US, I’d live for a thousand years. I congratulate every American who took the time out to vote. You honoured your country and everyone who made it possible for you to have that honour. For those who Americans who voted Democratic on the county, state, and federal level, thank you for having the clarity to keep your country moving forward. I, and the rest of the world, appreciate your choice.

The road ahead for President Obama will not be easy, not that it has ever been but I hope this new validation gives him the strength and courage to keep his nation moving forward. Unfortunately, I see no change coming from the spiteful right. Bipartisanship is a word not in their lexicon. They would rather burn America into the ground than work with the President for progress. May the next four years be prosperous and safe ones for our neighbours to the south.

So here we are again. Every four years since the year 2000, the world watches as Americans flirt with utter and complete disaster as they choose who will be their President for another four years. On one side, we have the Democrats, who at worst, are the lesser of two evils, and at best, are America’s best choice to continue to lead their country back towards prosperity and sanity. On the other side, are the Republicans, whose policies and stances are clearly repugnant to the rest of the world but for reasons that I still cannot comprehend, have found alarming support from racists and extremists alike.

It’s so clear to the rest of the world that President Obama would be the better choice in 2012. Of course, this clarity is nowhere to be seen in the US which is why it is so maddening for the rest of the civilized world to watch this election unfold. If the stakes were not so high and so serious, it would be laughable but alas, this is no laughing matter. Under Republican control, a George W. Bush White House brought a war to Iraq and a recession to the US, amongst many other bad things. These events were not isolated to the US. The war pulled many other countries into a futile attempt to find non-existent WMDs. How many non-US soldiers died in Iraq because Bush was elected? How many people outside the US lost their jobs because the US allowed their banks to get too greedy and destroyed their economy? The US does not operate in isolation unfortunately.

So, tomorrow the world watches again as the US flirts with ruin, like watching a toddler walk for the first time. Will this child gain strength and continue to stride forward or will it all come falling down again?

May the world have enough resolve to survive another US Presidential election.

When I was preparing for my trip to Toronto last week I went to the drug store to look a travel-sized container of body wash. I wasn’t sure if the hotel had any so I thought I’d bring my own. The drug store had a large selection of travel-sized toiletries. I was immediately shocked by the stupidly priced items. A small container of body wash, about 100 mL, was more expensive than a full-sized one, at over 700 mL. It was the same for the rest of the items in that aisle.

It’s clear that companies are charging you a premium for the convenience of a smaller container of what they hope you consider to be essential travel item. Earlier in the summer, a report out of the UK showed mark-ups in the vicinity of 645% for travel-sized items. A money-grabbing practice for sure.

In the end, I balked at the idea of paying that price. Instead, I just decided that I’d wait and see if the hotel did have body wash in the room. Luckily, they did. A much cheaper way around this is to just buy a set of empty of toiletry plastic bottles. You can then just fill them with your own supplies from home. It saves money and because they’re re-usable, better for the environment as well.

The US presidential election is just days away now. It’s difficult to get a big picture view of what voters are thinking if you go by single polls run by just one organization. The most misleading polls are the ones that have President Obama and Romney in a “dead heat”. That completely ignores the electoral college system that’s in place in the US.

The best place to see what might happen on election day is Nate Silver‘s blog. Widely regarded as the best and most accurate political statistician in the US, Silver honed his work with numbers and predictions in baseball. Silver takes data from many different polls and sources, and analyzes them. As of this writing, Silver predicts that there is over an 80% chance that President Obama will win the election. He also predicts President Obama will most likely win just over 303 electoral votes surpassing the 270 required to win the election. Of course, this is just a prediction. Even Silver warns that this will be a close election and that reality is most unpredictable at times.

I am most superstitious and I’m wary of voter suppression tactics that are almost assured to be employed by the Republican party. All of this prevents me from having even an ounce of optimism for next Tuesday. May that day bring good fortune to the world.

The video game industry here in Vancouver is big on Movember, the month long charity event where men grow moustaches for charity. I’ve never participated in Movember since I can’t grow anything close to a decent ‘stache. Just recently though, I let my facial hair grow on my upper lip when the skin there got really sensitive. What did grow there turned out to be a patchy and gross looking thing on my upper lip. It made me look like a child molester.

Tomorrow is the first day of Movember so I still have a chance to participate. Hmmm…

When you travel, sometimes the benefit of leaving your home is your destination might have better weather. It rained the first night I arrived in Toronto. It was grey, cloudy, and rainy every single day I was there. On the last day, it was also windy like a hurricane. When my plane touched down in Vancouver last night, raindrops immediately coated the windows. It continued to rain today.

It’s times like this I think back to when I went to sunny San Diego not a year ago.

I have arrived back home from my cousin’s wedding in Toronto. I had a lovely time in Canada’s most populous city and quite enjoyed all the wedding festivities. As always, it’s great to see family.

As many of you know, there are some exceptional weather conditions plaguing the east coast of North America right now and I was quite concerned that my flight this evening was going to be delayed considerably or even cancelled outright. I checked the status of my flight before leaving for the airport and everything seemed alright. When I arrived at Pearson International, I soon found out that many others were not so lucky. Most, if not all, flights to the northeastern parts of the US were cancelled. It was only until boarding time did a wrinkle appear in my travel plans. We were late in boarding because our gate was being used by another flight that was delayed in leaving. Once that plane left, our plane could then finally take its place at the gate. The flight next to us was in even more dire straits. Their plane was at the gate and ready to go but their crew was delayed getting into Toronto and the airline was scrambling to get a replacement crew onto the plane. Imagine a gate full of passengers and a plane readied and fully fueled but no crew to operate the plane.

Lucky for my flight, our crew was ready to go and everyone boarded quite quickly. We then unfortunately had to sit at the gate for another thirty minutes. Apparently Transport Canada requires some maintenance check for every aircraft before a flight. A plane cannot leave without it. With the craziness of the day, the maintenance crews were way behind schedule so we had to wait for some dudes to come around to our plane to do a walk-around inspection. We wound up leaving an hour after scheduled departure time which sucked. The rest of the flight passed without incident.

I suppose I should consider myself fortunate in that I was able to leave Toronto at all. In fact, our plane was scheduled to take another set of passengers back to Toronto this evening but that flight was cancelled. As we left the gate, I could see a line of those passengers waiting to talk to an airline employee about what they could do instead.

I am happy to be home and am in need of a good night of sleep!

Apologies to my loyal readers for not writing a post last night. I was in a major rush to pack for my trip to Toronto where a cousin of mine is getting married. i didn’t start packing until I got home from work and my flight out was less than 12 hours later.

I have arrived in Toronto now. This is the first time I have come back to Canada’s most populous city since 1987, when I was just a very young child. Though I am only here until Monday evening, I am hoping to see much more of the city compared to my last trip.

Have a good weekend everyone!